I Was the One Laying the Burden on Myself #LOH289

I was so tired I had to drop it all. I feel relieved just saying that out loud.

I had just graduated. No money, no clear plan, just that very familiar Nigerian pressure of figure it out and figure it out fast. So I got a teaching job that was paying me next to nothing. Added a part time news writing job on top of that. Was leading in different spaces, showing up for people, being responsible everywhere I turned.

And underneath all of that was this voice that had been with me my whole life — be more. Do more. Be the perfect daughter. The best student. The financially stable one. The one who always makes the right decisions. The responsible one in every room she enters.

I thought that voice was helping me survive. It was actually wearing me out.

The headaches started first. Then I kept falling sick — the kind of sick that comes back before you even fully recover. I stopped sleeping properly. My body couldn’t take it anymore, and I still kept moving because stopping felt like failing.

Until I stopped anyway. Not because I planned to. Because I had nothing left.

I packed up and went to stay with my aunt. I won't pretend it was some peaceful healing retreat — I didn't particularly enjoy it. But the expectations there were different. Lower. The pressure was a different kind and somehow that made it survivable. So I stayed.

For four months I just existed. For once, nobody expected me to have answers.

Here is what those four months taught me that nothing else could:

The burden I was carrying? I had put most of it there myself.

Nobody actually told me I had to be all of these things at the same time. That was just me. My own fear of what people would think if I slowed down, if I wasn't enough, if I needed rest like a normal human being.

I had been so busy trying to meet expectations that I never stopped to ask which ones were even real and which ones I created in my own head.

I came back eventually. Not because I was fully healed or had everything figured out. NYSC was calling and life doesn't wait for you to be ready. But I came back knowing something I didn't know before — I am not a machine.

Pretending otherwise doesn’t make me stronger. It only makes the fall harder when everything finally catches up with me.

If you are reading this while running on empty, constantly chasing a version of yourself that is never satisfied, I understand that feeling more than I wish I did.

And maybe that was the lesson in all of this.

I just needed to learn how to live for me.