uMwizerwa wa Ngoboka

Today I did my last final for the fall semester. I finished my first semester back from medical leave, and all these little things are making me remember times past. I ate a flavor of ice cream, I don’t really remember the name. It’s after taste was just like these cookies I used to eat sophomore fall before I took the leave. It reminded me of a time when my diet consisted of cookies and milk and sometimes the occasional cereal. It reminded me of how I thought it was practical. How I didn’t know how to change this. I've been thinking about going to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Finally, having finished the semester and with free time on my hands I decided to concretise the idea. However, I couldn’t help but think of the first time I went there. I was with a friend I met at the hospital. He was then manic and very friendly and I was very depressed but willing to interact. So we decided to go to the MFA together around a month after we were discharged from the hospital. I th...

Last weekend, I celebrated a week since I was hospitalised for the third time. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I had to go to medical for a check-in. The check in turned into me being hauled to the hospital in an ambulance and the works. This is something for me because the year before, I barely passed a month without having an episode. Now, it has been a year since my last one. In all honesty I did have a number of close calls. When I was waiting for the results of my return application, I was showing signs of anxiety and depression. The suspense and anticipation were killing me. However it wasn’t very alarming, and my application was accepted on a Friday night. I cried of happiness. I expected to become manic after that, because of how hectic things were and how excited I was. I was never afraid of my mania, it makes me invincible and very confident. However, it always ends in a depressive episode and I am terrified by that one. Going back to MIT was hard. T...

September is Suicide prevention and mental health awareness month. And an incident that happened recently just accentuated why we’re in a critical condition and things are only going downhill. Yesterday, a girl in Kigali jumped from Makuza peace plaza building and fell to her death. In a number of letters she left, she mentioned all the stressors that have been happening and led her to that. While this is heartbreaking; I was even more heartbroken by Rwandan’s reaction to the ordeal. One acquaintance of mine mentioned how she will burn in hell. Others made memes about it. As she had mentioned that one of the reasons she did it was her lover’s rejection; they’re saying that “loving one who doesn’t love you is a ticket to Makuza’s” or “that no girl will be allowed in the building without showing proof that she’s in a loving relationship with someone” This broke my heart on multiple occasion and I ended up cutting ties with a number of people. It breaks my heart that our cul...

Waiting is one of the most anxiety inducing phases in life. The bad news is we’re always waiting. We wait for the day to end, for plants to grow, for friendships to blossom. We’re in a perpetual state of waiting that at some point we forget what we have in the moment. At the end of last year, I left MIT campus with hopes to return a changed mentally stable human. I had gone through one of the hardest semesters, even though I’d only been there for a little over a year. Walking away felt eerie and deep inside I didn’t want to leave. However, I needed to. Fast forward, 7 months later; I have worked on what had sent me home. I’ve avoided any major crisis and maintained a stable mental state. I went to all my appointment and started taking classes. All this mainly thanks to my ingenuity and courage but also due to good fortune. I’ve been waiting and hoping for a time like this to come. However the closer we get to the finish line, the harder it gets. I gave it my all, told the CAP...

Today, I met a girl we went to school together five years ago, she was with another one we studied together in primary eight years ago. I recognized them and they recognized me, but that’s where it ended. If we had tried to talk to each other it would have been some shushed awkward small talk. This made me wonder what makes friendships last. What keeps the light going. And this is something I can only speculate about as I have no super long term friendships. By super long friendships I mean those that last more then five years. The friends I had then we’re either estranged or I follow them on social media or we have small talks every other year. In the past years I have learned a bit of what makes friendships stronger. One, it is to has to be a two way friendship, if both parties are not interested in making it last then it will dwindle into nothingness. The second and most important thing I learned is to give space your friends. Nobody wants a clingy friend no matter how good...

Trigger warning: may contain strong imagery and upsetting language. PS: this is a true story, the experience of someone who was and is still hurting but wanted to remain anonymous. I needed closure, and I found it in the String. May 01, 2016; 11:30PM I am laying in my bed, holding a metal string around my neck. In the darkness it feels cold and stifling, but I had made my mind. I pulled harder, and then harder. My breath halted; bitterness filled my mouth; my tongue felt like it was coming out. I felt like my head was expanding and then it would explode into a zillion little pieces. I started getting weaker, and my hands could no longer pull on the string. As a young girl, I have always been shy- unable to break out of my shell. Every time I saw a group of people I distanced myself from them. Even if it was my classmates. As I grew up my shyness dissolved, but my fear to engage with people did not. I was my own person, and I depended on no one else but me. Starting grad...

Two weeks, five roommates When I first arrived in the hospital, it was November 24 Saturday.  My very first roommate was Jaala. Jaala told me I am beautiful when she first saw me. This boosted my ego, made me feel good. I never saw her in the room though; they probably moved her to the room she was in the rest of her stay here. She is an amazing person. Even though she talked about being old, she looked young and hip. She would get very invested in things. On walks, she collected pines and moss and tree bark for Christmas decorations. She made a very beautiful something, and I’ll always remember her by it. Two days later, I was moved west, and my roommate was called Jisca. Jisca has beautiful hair, it is long and smooth. I was surprised because she seemed to me like someone who would have shorter hair. I think she was brave. She would say no when she didn’t want to do stuff; this was very impressive for me. Selfishly I thought she was in a much worse shape than I was and ...

Success is defined as accomplishment of an aim or purpose. So successful people are those who accomplish what they aim for. What happens after we succeed we don’t tell. What happened before succeeding we don’t say. There are a humongous number of self help books about how to be successful, this won’t be about it. This is about what it means to succeed, how it feels. what we do with it and what happens when we lose it. For most of my life, I considered myself successful. I focused on what I knew I was good at and put in all my effort. What I was good at was academics. I was first in class most of the time, and I ended up being valedictorian in high school. However focusing on what I was good at, I forgot there was more in life like having friends, doing fun things, indulging in guilty pleasures and more. So the moment I ended being the best academically I had nothing else to act as a buffer. I fell and fell hard. This ain’t a pity story though, it’s all part of reflections....

My body and I have a weird relationship. I tried to love it, but it did not love me back. In my tender age, it had the appearance and size of that of a grown woman. And I loathed it. Just recently, as I was complaining about body shaming, a friend of mine hinted that I might have self hate. He was not completely wrong. In high school, we used to play a game, one would name 3 body parts they loved the most. I could only name one- my nails. It is very easy to hate the voluptuousness of my figure. To look in the mirror and see the 36 inch waist, the 52 inch hips, the 5ft2 height that coupled with weight makes my BMI way off. However, I would be ignoring the joy I find in watching my shadow. The beauty of my lips layered with black lipstick. The sexiness of my bosom. The dark and uniqueness of my nails. If I focus on what's wrong with me, I will be driven to loathe the one thing I am stuck with, the one thing layered with so many beautiful things It would be so easy...