Owoeye Jesuloba Grace
Candice wasn’t human.
At least that’s what everyone who knew her said about her.
She was a wife, mother, life coach, teacher, pastor, fashion designer, doctor and a singer.
Everything that had to be done, she did it.
And in every one of these roles that she took on, she excelled.
She was everyone’s hero.
She was a giver and a peacemaker.
She counseled other people’s marriages.
She was the one that everyone dumped all their problems on to fix.
The truth was Candice was out of strength and tired of being everyone’s hero.
But her inability to say NO, and the feelings of guilt from being tired and inadequate for everybody in her life fueled her selflessness.
And so she never complained when she was asked to represent the Senior Pastor at an event, or when kids were sent to her home for therapy sessions.
In fact, she kept on taking up more duties and tasks.
Candice looked at her husband Jakes, shook her head and buried her head between her thighs.
“Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to us. But you left me with no option when you were always too busy for me” he said.
Candice slowly brought her head up and asked the question that would change everything.
“How old is her pregnancy?” she asked amidst the hot tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Five months” Jakes replied quietly, too ashamed to even look at his wife.
Candice suddenly got up, grabbed her bag and her car keys and marched angrily towards the door.
“Baby wait!”
“Candice!!! Let’s talk things through!!!” Jake cried
But she dealt him an icy look and stormed out of the house.
The following day, in her office, at the hospital where she worked, a nurse walked in to find her slumped on the chair and a bottle of pills on the floor.
On her desk was a note which said:
“Too Pressured to Continue. I’m sorry but I exceeded my PSI.”
The Pound per Square Inch (PSI) is a unit of pressure or of stress.
Most materials have their PSI in which they burst if the load or pressure on them exceeds that which they can withstand.
The same goes for humans.
No matter how strong, tough, intelligent or resourceful you are, if you keep doing and doing without ever stopping to measure how much you’ve got going on; you would eventually carry on a weight load that’s too much for you till it feels like the top of your head is about to come off.
Pressure comes when there is no release.
It comes when you keep on doing so much till you’re overwhelmed.
It comes when you have more coming at you than you have coming from you.
It happens when you are giving more than you are getting.
How many people are giving back as much as they are getting from you?
There has to come a point in your life where you stop living to other people’s expectations and understand that their NEED doesn’t constitute your EMERGENCY. Hence, sometimes saying NO is what will keep you from being in a coffin with everyone talking about what a good person you were and how you were always there for them.
To protect your mental and emotional health,
It’s okay to cancel a commitment.
It’s okay to say NO.
It’s okay to speak up.
It’s okay to not answer that call.
It’s okay to want to be alone.
Thank you for reading and I love you always.
Very educative and insightful