Toyin Abraham is one of the brightest stars in the movie industry, with over a million fans on social media. She began acting in 2003 and known for her comic roles in films, most especially with her personal production titled ”Alakada”.
Toyin is currently one of the biggest brands in the movie industry, featuring in almost all the blockbuster movies, with lots of big and reputable companies taking turns to make her their brand ambassador. She has excelled in both English and Yoruba Movie Industry and loads of awards home and abroad to show for her hard work.
Despite all these achievement and success, she has been through some difficult period in life and always glad to share her stories, to serve as a lesson for lots of younger ones in the industry and millions of fans that look up to her as their role model, she once talked about how she suffered from drug abuse with marijuana, codeine, and other vices but later realized that she had to stop them to attain her greatness.
Just recently she talked about her walk with Depression in an exclusive interview with Chude on TVC. She revealed what she went through and how she was able to overcome it before her marriage to her colleague in the industry Kola Ajeyemi. City People Senior Showbiz Reporter ABIODUN ALAO brings you excerpts from the exclusive interview.
According to the beautiful mother of one, while she was suffering depression” I gave everything I had out and now started staying in a hotel, and if anybody says, he or she wants to come and visit me, I will tell the person to come when you come, I will go and pay for another room and just stay there.”
Most times, all I want to do is just to go and work, get the money. I was not even picking jobs. I just wanted to do everything. So I just collect the money, pay for the hotel bills, and whatever I like. That was how I was living my life.
At times, I will just stand up the middle of the night and walk around and imagine things. I wasn’t scared of anything, not even death. There was a time I was telling someone, that I can actually swim inside the third mainland bridge. It was that bad. At times, I will be like I can actually jump inside, someone will save me, so when I want to jump, I will shout, people will come and save me, you can imagine. How is that possible? At times, I will just sit and when someone is talking to me, I will be lost in thought and the funniest part of it is when you ask me what I was thinking about, I won’t be able to say anything I will just be totally blank.
At times I get scared my heart will be beating so fast. I will be like, am I going to die, I can’t really explain some of those things, it was really crazy. I used to sit down and tell myself, Toyin, if you die, imagine the kind of crowd that will come, you will be more popular .yes, I was looking at the crowd that will come to my funeral.
What is the one thing the therapist helped her with to conquer her fears?
“Number one is willingness, I was willing. Number two, they made me discover myself, they gave me reasons to want to live, they gave me examples, they asked me, who I look up to, like great actors and actresses, they keep talking to me, they were open. I call them anytime. my counsellor and my manager, they were all working back to back, they were there for me.sometimes when am broke, I will call my manager, I can just say I need 40k, he will send 100k, they were always all over me. They made me discover myself, I had reason to live again, I started looking up to lots of people. They were like is she as talented as you are and see, where they are now.imagine yourself. Now I will be like ah, if I can achieve this in just a year, I would have achieved more, why did this happen to me.”
So what about her family? What did they do during all these?
“I don’t know what happened, I just didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to get attached to them. I’m from a Christian home and I use to smoke a cigarette and they were totally against it, so I was always avoiding them. I didn’t want to see them. Also, I was like am going to die soon, so I didn’t want to get too close to them, so they won’t miss me too much.it was that bad.
I use to tell myself if I die now, I was looking at the crowd that will come for my burial if I am not thinking about that, and I start thinking about something positive, I will become very sad. There is always negative thought always coming forth.fear of the unknown. I always feel, there’s someone out there looking at me. if I am alone in the house, I just feel there’s someone recording me, just fear of the unknown.
There’s actually something about this thing that I can’t really explain, you have to be in it to understand.
What about now? my fear is gone now. right now, I talk to people about it, my fear is totally gone. I think if all those things happened would have happened later not then, it would have affected my career, so they happened and that’s the end. I think I have the face, I have the story. God just want to use my life to touch a lot of other lives, because right now,
I won’t stand in front of you and tell you, I want to talk with you about depression and fear of the unknown, falling and standing strong and you will tell me, you won’t listen to me.you will listen to me because you know my story and that is the reason a lot of people love me. oh, that she came out to say it. To be gold or diamond, you have to pass through the fire to become that beautiful thing.
What advice would you give to someone that says oh I have found the love of my life?
One thing I would say when it comes to the matter of the heart, which is love.you can’t advise anybody.but as we grow older, you will realize that even says husbands love your wives, then wives honour your husbands.you will realize that most people that have the most successful and sweetest wedding is either the man was neither in love with the woman when they got married or the woman was never in love, they were living together and grew to love each other,
So it is always a process, so when it comes to the matter of the heart, you can not advise anyone, just pray for them. The way people advise especially on social media, my husband or boyfriend is beating me, the next thing you hear is just left the marriage or relationship.some will say, why did you leave, oh because you want to go and do prostitution, some will say you want to die there. you see, the truth is that I will rather have a cut, than have a psychological problem, because the cut, I will treat it, the psychological problem will make me the biggest cut, I won’t be able to treat.
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