Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Are you ready to read today's episode of "who send me message?" :)

Stress is a part of life, they say. We experience stress in so many ways but when it begins to tell our health, then we know we are in serious trouble. Anything can cause you stress; it could be physical fatigue or mental disorientation, it can even be an emotional imbalance. All these put together result into stress in many ways and may even become interwoven, then cause cluster wahala inside your body.

Oya, makei tell you my as e take start

I am someone that never checks her blood pressure, I never saw the need to and just go through my daily activities without bothering. When I feel out of breath, I lay down. Right, what should I do? When my brain starts to feel like it is about to burst, I put cold compress or warm cloth. 🤔 And then one day, I ran into my sister checking hers and I decided to just check it and see how “balanced” my blood pressure was. I felt the purrrrrrr sound of the whirring tool and I started joking about how it felt like the item wanted to cause obstruction of blood flow. She just laughed and told me that I’d better be checking my BP regularly because people die of high blood pressure. I waved it off and told her that it can never be me.

Maidear, shey you dey whine me ni?

“I know how to regulate my body," I said with pride. She nodded and stared at the tool’s monitor. When she started to shake her head, I knew maybe the yanga of my balanced BP is about to be stabbed in the stomach. She showed me the screen, '199/100 (99)’. I didn’t even know what this meant, I just smiled and said, “but this is balanced. The numbers align.” She had a worried look on her face and stared to ask questions, ‘what are you thinking?', ‘how well do you sleep?',  'what is your set?', 'do you check your weight often?' I got frustrated and told her to just tell me what the numbers meant and she said that it was a very high result. The 199 shouldn’t have been more than 131 and the 100 shouldn’t have been more than 78. She said the pulsation which was the 100 in bracket shouldn’t have been more than 70.

Na eem I should chimo!! Wetin be this?

I felt neglectful of my health at that point, I had issues in the past with my mental health and I knew how hard I had to work and what I had to medically do to get out of the space. I never really checked the BP result but the doctor had always said, “work on your BP. Stop thinking so much." Chai, that flashed through my memory when my sister went on a talk about why I should not kill myself over bla bla bla. 😊😊 a story of another blank space that I'd share with you later.

Fast forward to a few months later after the conversation with my sister and I said let me just check the thing again, I saw 31/94 (89). That was good news to me but it was still high, according to what I had researched. I had consciously made some decisions from the last time I checked it, improved on my thinking and removed a certain trigger I had.

E clear for my eye, one time!

I had conditioned my mind over some stuffs and had intentionally removed it from being something I would get triggered over. And well, it had worked, I had been able to bring my BP down without any medication. A simple change in my mind-set and intentional thought process had done it. But it was still a little high so I decided to even take things easier. Rest well, relax and clear my mind. And then, because of something that was beyond my control,  my hold over the trigger had been loosened, I alet my mind linger for about 10 minutes and guess what, 7.03 a.m. of two days after the 31/94(89) reading, aunty BP monitor stared at me with an ‘142/95 (83)’.

Na eem I shout,  "Jesus! which kain life be this? 😆 🤣

But I can't help to let this thought and this person into my mind, and then I realized what my mistake was. I realized what I had done that may have caused. I GAVE A F#CK!!! 🤣 🤣. Yes, this long epistle is about how I went from not giving a fuck about my stress trigger to giving a fuck and getting an upward pang in the small BP I had been managing to get down to normal.

This life no just balance.

I began to reflect on how many of us stay in a mental bondage that is killing us slowly. Many of us are set in a mental loop that seems to be taking us in a merry-go-round of entanglement fatigue. I will never talk down on people having mental health issues, because no one wakes up and decide that, “today I choose to be depressed!”

E just get as these things dey happen.

Losing someone, falling out of love, falling in love, loosing a job, fighting a health battle; all these are triggers that can take someone’s life if serious depression sets in. If the sudden sadness that envelopes you whenever you think about someone, or whenever you walk into an office space or maybe whenever you see a message from someone; is so overwhelming, then you need to take several steps back and have a new reflection.

Life no suppose hard laidis.

If things happen, people will only tell you sorry. Social media will carry your story and you’ll become a hashtag for a little while. Two months is what your news will get if the story is interesting but trust me, one month after you’re gone, people go back to hunting for the new hashtag to follow.

Na so e be for this virtual world we dey.

How often do you check your health? Do you even do any kind of medical check up? How many hours of sleep do you get in a day? Do you know the best diet for you? Have you noticed your stress trigger and taking a cue from it?

Make una ask unasef these questions. 

And when you do get a response, kill the trigger, I repeat! Shoot that f*** down!!