Kentice Tikolo

This woman’s story triggers something very deep in me. Naona picha zake nalia Tu. I have not written anything about her since her death. Perhaps because I have been trying to find the words. Chemu is many of these women. She is many of women who loved with both their hearts and our pockets. Women who gave everything they had to the people they loved. Women whose first instinct, when they begin to succeed, is to make sure the people they love are okay. When you are a giver, the first beneficiaries of your success are often the people you call family. And sometimes, painfully, those same people become the ones who break you. The people you love can carry you to the edge of yourself. Chemu did not simply wake up one day and decide that she wanted to die. She was carrying a weight that had become unbearable. The weight of betrayal. The weight of disappointment. The weight of loving people who did not love her with the same tenderness. She was trying to escape pain. And when someone is drowning in pain, they are not always thinking about tomorrow. They are not always thinking clearly about the people they will leave behind. Sometimes, even the people you are trying so desperately to protect become tangled in the pain you are trying to escape from. That is what makes suicide so devastating. It is not always about wanting life to end. Sometimes, it is about wanting the pain to end. And I am so sad. So deeply sad. Because as we continue to write about Chemu, I hope we remember the many women whose generosity becomes the very thing that destroys them. The women who gave until there was nothing left to give. The women who carried families, lovers, children, friends and forgot that they, too, needed somewhere safe to put their own pain. Let us talk about suicide beyond the final act. Let us talk about the loneliness that comes before it. The betrayal. The exhaustion. The humiliation. The feeling of being trapped inside a life that has become too heavy to carry. And perhaps, most importantly, let us learn to notice when the people who are always saving everyone else are quietly drowning themselves. Because sometimes the strongest-looking people are the ones desperately needing someone to say: Put it down. Put it down girl. Put it down You don't have to carry all of this alone. 😭😭😭