I am full of life, Joy is my name, and I radiate that essence. I grew up full of life until I married. I did not become unwell all at once.
It happened slowly, so slowly that I mistook survival for strength.
I married believing love would be a shelter. Instead, it became a place where I learned fear in quiet ways—through the tightening of my chest when his voice changed, through the silence that punished more deeply than blows, through the constant measuring of my words so they would not turn into weapons against me.
Oh yes, I married 18 months to whom I presume to be my lover and by extension to protect me.Â
I thought getting pregnant would make it easy, but I was glad I never did
The violence was not always loud. Sometimes it was a look. Sometimes it was an absence. Sometimes it was being made to feel small for needing tenderness. Over time, I disappeared inside myself, and I thought that was what endurance meant.
My mind began to change before I understood what was happening. Sleep abandoned me. My thoughts raced at night and froze during the day. I forgot joy. I forgot myself. I told myself it was my fault—that if I loved better, obeyed better, endured better, things would improve. That lie kept me there longer than the violence did.
When I finally broke, people called it mental illness. They did not see the years of restraint, fear, and silence that preceded it. They did not see how my mind was trying to save me when my body had nowhere to go.
I wish I had known earlier that suffering is not a marital duty. That love does not require bruises—visible or invisible. That leaving is not betrayal, and staying is not holiness.
The right thing would have been to speak before silence became a habit. To ask for help before fear rewrote my identity. To believe that my life mattered more than appearances, vows, or shame.
But I did not know then what I know now.
Healing did not arrive as a miracle. It arrived as permission. Permission to rest. To be believed. To sit with a professional who named what happened to me without judgment. Medication steadied the chaos. Safety softened my thoughts. Slowly, the illness loosened its hold as my life stopped being a battlefield.
I am not the woman I was before. I am someone else—someone who understands that mental illness can be born from violence, and that survival can look like silence until it learns to speak.
If I could speak to the woman I was then, I would not scold her. I would tell her this:
Living is not selfish.
Leaving is not failure.
Choosing yourself is not a sin.
I chose life—late, imperfectly, trembling—but I chose it.
And that was the right thing.
I live now with my worries swept beneath my feet.
I returned to my single life. I am wiser to make healthier choices
True Life Story Written and Adapted byÂ
Owoeye Oluwatobi Ajibola
Psychiatrist
08131860275
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