You get to a point in adulthood when you have so much in your mind, your heart is heavy, and you really want to open up to someone, then you look around and realise there is no one to talk to.
It is intimate stuff that is eating you up. Gobbling you up like an aggressive cancer. You need a confidant. You need a comforter. A mentor. A spiritual advisor. Someone who can make you see life from a different dimension, or at least introduce new perspectives or lenses to view life with.
Typically such person could be a parent, an uncle or aunt(senje, in that traditional affectionate sense). It could be that wise friend who seems to have figured out life.
Then one day in your adulthood, your parents are gone. The uncle or the aunt who could pump some hope into your life is gone. And you have drifted apart from your friend, or he or she is dead. Another worse situation is when they exist but now your existential problems are misaligned with whatever advice they may offer you. Say, you want to divorce an abusive spouse but your trusted parent or uncle/aunt only believes in kuvumilia. You don't exactly hate or despise their advice. If anything you see their point, but their adamant stance is completely anti-thetical to your angst. You need different gears and levers to move your life forward.
This particular problem can smack you any time after 25, but it gets objectively worse as you age. And then, later in your 30s, the problems become deeply personal. Every man or woman you open up to, is either battling their own demons, or is ill-equipped to offer you the padded shoulder to lean on in such times.
As an adult you will battle a lot of problem. Some could be frivolous, some serious, and some life-threatening. From infertility problems under the probing eyes of relatives and friends, to a diabetic man with other attendant problems causing all manner of problems in his marriage, to unemployment, unrealised and unfulfilled dreams, unmet expectations, disappointments, relationships that didn't work, jobs that didn't deliver the high hopes they promised, can only ruin a person.
But there are higher spiritual problems that we battle with. The question of identity. Who are we? What are we doing here? Is there a point to life? After all this suffering, we die. Just like that. Gone and forgotten.
The internal battles, away from those problems that can be fixed(e.g, if broke, we can fix that if you get a job or money), have a way of isolating us. Hence the friend who stops picking calls. The friend who disappears under the radar. The poor choices like alcoholism or drug abuse, as an escape from the harsh reality of life.
The worst poverty is to be in a place where you have no one to confide to your worst fears, whatever their nature.
Hence later in life, you will learn a certain sad fact about a friend that will break your heart. "You mean he was going through all that and we didn't know? Poor thing..."
People say when something tragic happens to a friend and with hindsight you start to think it was completely avoidable. It wasn't. We only confide things to people when we feel safe.
That is why kujitia kitanzi is something that I understand. Someone who does that means whatever that that was troubling them, in their assessment, no human being was capable of understanding their pain. People could trivialise the pain, laugh at it, or fail to understand the enormity of the problem. As human beings we are very poor at assessing people and what they are going through.
I don't know if I am making sense.
But I know many adults have so many battles inside them, some they will win with time and creative adjustments to their situation. But some, may take time and unfortunately the pain may never be resolved. Resentment is permanent human condition, and mastering how to handle it is not an easy thing.
To understand the loneliness of internal battles, allow me to use the example of Jesus. Remember when he went to Gethsmane to pray. I often think about his last days before being crucified. He took three disciples with him to pray. When he moved away from them to pray, asking God to take the cup from him, he asked the disciples(John, James and Peter) to pray so as not to fall into temptations. Two times he came back to find them asleep. Later that night, Peter even denied him, and Judas did betray him eventually.
Sometimes you can tell your friends what you are going through and they can laugh at you, deny you, or betray you and now that we live in the tea culture, you become the hot tea. Motivational speakers will tell you to be there for yourself. But what if the self is scared, afraid and inadequate?
We used to seek refuge in family, but family in some cases the source of the pain you are going through. A believer can turn to God. What A Friend We Have in Jesus? the old beautiful hymn asks, and answers more profoundly what a friendship with Jesus means.
But what does a non-believer do when walking through that Valley of Darkness? By and large, we get by, human beings are surprisingly resilient. What we never talk about is the mental scars we accumulate as we age. From the heartbreaks, the betrayal of friends, the unmet expectations, unfulfilled dreams, the realisation that there isn't so much to life, unless you assign meaning to it, and the many things beyond our control that are thrown at us. But finding a comforter, a confidant, a trusted friend, is truly one of the most blessed gifts life can grant you. Not all of us can be stoics( though I encourage it). Count yourself lucky if you do become a stoic. Count yourself lucky if you escape crippling internal battles.
Written by Silas Nyanchwani.
X @nywanchani.
A seasoned author and publisher.
