A couple of weeks ago, the news of the death of a Lagos big babe, Folake Abiola, who worked with one of the leading telecommunications company in the country went viral. She was only 45 years old. Folake took her own life by ingesting insecticide suspected to be sniper and died inside her beautiful Osapa London home. For a lady who earned big pay and was seen to be financially comfortable, what made her death not just shocking but also puzzling was the fact that she was said to have been battling depression long before death came knocking on the door. According to friends and colleagues of the deceased, the cause of her depression was attributed to the fact that she was unmarried and childless. Despite the fact that she was not lacking anything in terms of financial security, issues like her marital status and childlessness still troubled her severely until she slid into depression which ultimately ended her life.
Depression, according to the dictionary, is a mental illness in which a person is very unhappy, worried and anxious for a very long time. The longer a person stays in depression, the higher the chances of the condition aggravating into a graver situation. Folake Abiola’s case is just one of the thousands of cases of depression going on presently amongst women in the country. Two weeks ago, a lady, an acquaintance known to this writer, passed away in a private hospital in Lagos after battling with depression for months. This lady actually willed death to come take her because, as far as she was concerned, life was no longer worth living for her. The only man she loved and in whom she invested a large chunk of her savings by helping him secure a visa to travel to the United Kingdom and paid for his ticket and other expenses jilted her and left her totally shattered. She had been dating the young man for a stretch of years. She was 40 years while he was 42. She was a banker while he had been out of job for a while. The understanding was that he would arrange for her to join him as soon he possibly could and she would make funds needed for the visa and traveling expenses available. Four months stretched into eight, eight months stretched 12 and 12 into 2 years, yet no progress had been made as far as their plan was concerned. The lady began to get desperate. She was in tears all the time. She was starting to suspect something was wrong, especially owing to her man’s recent coldness towards her and his apathy towards their arrangement to have her join him. Her worst fear was confirmed five months ago when she called his UK line and a lady picked it up and warned her to stop calling her husband and allow them enjoy their marriage in peace. She passed out immediately. She then went into depression. Till she passed away, the guy in question never called to apologize to her for his action or explain to her what happened.
These are just a couple of the many stories of depression that thousands of women out there are battling with. Some have dealt well with theirs while others have not been so lucky. Beyond the issue of troubled relationships or the lack of it, there are other reasons why many women are going into depression lately. A lot of women are in troubled marriages. And we are not talking about marriages contracted only a few years ago alone. Some of these marriages have lasted well over two decades or more but have probably been in dire straits since the last ten years or so. And the economic downturn in the country has not helped matters either. Conflicts over financial issues have become recurring decimals in homes and most times it leaves many marriages embroiled in bitterness and often heated arguments, with each party despising the other as the days roll by. Gradually, they begin to drift apart, share separate bedrooms and stop any every form of sexual intimacies together. For the woman, nothing can be as tortuous as this. Some even suffer domestic abuse but are too ashamed to reveal it to anyone, they will rather continue to present a façade depicting that their marriage is intact. Owing to the pressure the society puts on women with failed marriages, the women are often left with no other choice but to continue to endure the bad marriage and the depression that comes with it.
Some will also tell you they have chosen to stay in the marriage and suffer the depression for as long as the marriage lasts because of their children. They cannot bear the thought of leaving their kids under the care of another woman who will play the role of their step-mum. According to a few women spoken to, this is one of the reasons why a lot of these women don’t miss Owambe parties, it’s a medium for them to enjoy themselves and dance away their depression.
A lot of women are in marriages that are no longer nothing but marriages of convenience. The couple barely talk to each other. The man simply picks up the bills, provides shelter, pays the children’s school fees and that’s where it ends. No woman will be in that sort of situation and not suffer depression. Every woman wants to love and be loved in return. But when she is reduced to nothing more than just a part of the furniture in the house, she cannot be happy.
Many of these depressed women are living with randy, philandering husbands who have become not just an embarrassment to themselves within the society but also to their poor wives owing to their incurable hunger for anything in skirts. Others are enduring torrid abusive marriages. They have become punching bags and objects of ridicule in their own home. They sit down at home and hear about how their husbands are painting the town red, or is it white, with their God given semen and putting several women pregnant in the process.
For the younger, single ladies, theirs is a different case altogether. They have had to endure many failed relationships. It can be a huge emotional and mental torture for a woman when the society can count the number of men she has dated and yet has remained single. It is one of the most terrifying nightmares every woman dreads to experience. Most women cannot endure the stigma. And coupled with the loneliness they face as single ladies, the entire situation gradually begins to push them further and further into depression. For some inexplicable reasons, the good men are becoming increasingly hard to find. And the few available good ones are terribly scared of commitment. After a long spell of frolicking with these women and eating up all of ‘the forbidden fruits,’ the very mention of the word ‘marriage’ sends the men scrambling away with their tails in between their legs, leaving behind harems of heartbroken ladies. And sure enough, the only place these women will find solace is depression.
There are so many women out there suffering from depression, the statistics will shock you. And there is no guarantee the numbers will come down. Not for as long as the prevailing circumstances continue to persist.
-WALE LAWAL
(08037209290)
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