© shewrite_s

18th of January 2018

Waking up to a new day wasn’t always something Alice Okorie looked forward to. Most times, she went to bed hoping it would be the last but somehow, she always ends up making it to the next day. Each day she made it to a new day, she beats herself up about being alive. She had this extreme jealousy for people who went to bed and never made it to the next day. Often times she wonders how they did it, whether they prayed for it or took some kind of concoction to make it just easier. It was a beautiful act to her and she had always wanted to go that way. It was painless, peaceful, reassuring and exhilarating to her like, an art within an art. She was so obsessed with the process she wondered if maybe there was someone who made such pronouncements on people. She felt people who cried when someone left through that process were still decades away from understanding the world as it was and believed that people who saw the world as they wanted to were still far away from understanding the magnificence of the universe in its totality. Crazy right? Well that’s what everyone called her on good days and in the bad days, she always ended up in the psychiatric ward.
She was the insane 28-year-old lady who lived in the suburban part of Abuja, Nigeria and was always on a 24-hour watch for any attempt to end her life. Dr. Lade Nana who was her specialist never quite understood why a lady like Alice was so obsessed with the act of dying that she made different attempts everyday just to realise it. Alice had been in her care for the past four years and all she knew about her was the information provided by her parents Mr and Mrs Clement Okorie who had quite given up on their only child. Once upon a time, she was the happy, jovial girl who had so much passion for singing and worked as a paralegal with JOHNSON MAJA & ASSOCIATES which happened to be the largest law firm in Abuja. She was kind, the humblest of all and treated everyone with so much compassion. she was a financially independent lady who graduated from the University of Abuja with a first class at the age of 20 but never went to law school because she had no interest in practicing law rather, she wanted to aid those practicing because to her, they did most of the work. She worked part time at the Cita’s bar down town as the lead singer to the designated band at the bar and her favourite days were the open mic nights where she got to hear different people come in to share a piece of their music with the rest of the world. The pay check wasn’t much but she didn’t mind because she wasn’t doing it for the money and whereas, she was earning large from her job as a paralegal. Her father worked as a surveyor in Canada so he and her mother weren’t resident in Nigeria but they had such an amazing relationship and kept in touch at all times. They were her best friends and she never hid anything from them.
No one understood how someone who was so full of life was suddenly broken in such a million pieces, like she was the gone but her body was still there, like there was some kind of swap with a demon who took over and maybe she was lost in someone else’s body. It’s been four years since she’s been this way and even her parents who were almost sure they knew everything about here were confused as to what went wrong. The last time they spoke to the daughter they knew, she told them that love was like a deadly shot that never killed and even though it was advisable to love a little, she refused to do so. They never quite understood what she meant but they knew she was not doing well. Mr Clemet was so convinced that something traumatic must have happened to his baby girl for her to be so broken and he already lost hope on the chances of her being fixed. Mrs Hanna on the other hand who was quite superstitious was of the view that her daughter’s ailment was as a result of the works of her enemies who must have struck such madness into her angel as she fondly called her so, she diverted all her faith in God believing he could get her angel out of the unpleasant situation her enemies has confided her daughter into.
Alice was a little bit of a loner so her parents knew she barely ever had friends and Sarah, the one girl who everyone knew she was always with, no one knew where or how to find her. Citana Ajayi who was her boss at the bar had since moved out to another state after a fire incident gutted down his bar and her parents knew nothing about her band crew. The only person who could have told the story of what happened to Alice was nowhere to be found. Her former colleagues at her work place in the firm knew her to be a very reserved when it came to her personal life so no one really knew what happened to her. Most of them were surprised to hear she could sing, let alone work at a bar because they didn’t think she was the type of girl who went to bars.
As Dr. lade walked into Alice room for her follow up, she was fast asleep from the heavy sedatives that were administered to her earlier because of the tantrum she was throwing. She was earlier brought into the hospital by her parents who have been taking care of her since her mental state started deteriorating. They moved back to the country four years ago after the first mental episode Alice experienced. Dr lade went close to the window opposite Alice’s bed, closed the blinds then drew a seat close to her bed. She stared at her with so much empathy reminiscing on everything Alice had gone through throughout her stay in her care. She adjusted her blanket just a little further to her waist, took her pulse and wrote down a few things in her chart board.
‘if only I could just know Alice, if only…’ she whispered as she walked out of the room shutting the door behind her.