Dancing With The Devil
Inspired by the True Life Story of Demi Lovato
I have been a Demi Lovato stan since her Disney days — Camp Rock, Sonny with a Chance, Princess Protection Program — and while staying up late binge watching Netflix movies, my latest addiction, I remembered that I needed to see the new YouTube docuseries on Demi Lovato, Dancing with the Devil.
The series shows how at some point in Demi’s life, she began spiraling out of control. Due to her addiction to drugs, she almost met with death…and it got me thinking about my mental health.
…it got me thinking about my mental health.
I would encourage you to watch it too because seeing someone live a truth, a truth that I never wanted to admit, helped to set myself free from the same truthful lie that ‘’I am fine’’ or that ‘’everything is okay’’.
Her truth got me thinking about my mental health and like Demi, I learned to admit that:
I have been dancing with the devil, too.
My second semester at Cornell was one of the worst seasons of my life. At a Friendsgiving dinner with my friends yesterday, I tearfully shared how the one and a half years I had spent at Cornell felt like the worst time(s) in my life because of how much stress I’d been through physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Why does it always have to feel like I’m fighting for my life? Why does it always have to feel like if I don’t join them-those aspiring to the perfect Engineering career- I can’t ‘’beat ‘’ them? Why am I always feeling tired and unfulfilled…even for someone who holds faith so dear and knows that His strength is made perfect in her weakness?
The United States of America was supposed to be my El Dorado, but my experience of its academic system turned out to be f̶o̶o̶l̶’̶s̶ ̶g̶o̶l̶d̶ Little Fish in a Big Pond type of scenario. Cornell was about to cost the world an Engineer and give her another Ivy League ‘’drop-out’’ (shout-out to Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath).
The daily readings feel like waiting in the Bus Stop Bagels line on a Monday morning, the weekly assignments feel like climbing the West Campus slope during the winter, and the project deliverables feel like the anger from having to pay for every damn thing at Cornell. Being a grad student, heck any kind of student, at Cornell is like walking a thin rope over Niagara Falls with bricks on your head. You definitely cannot survive the fall.
For several months at Cornell, I pushed with all my strength to keep my head above water. After a while, the music stopped, and I could no longer fake it till I made it. The devil Demi danced with was recreational drugs, you know, coke, Xanax, Fentanyl, and some other opioid names I can neither spell nor pronounce.
My devils were the TV shows I lay watching late at night. Breaking Bad, All American, Dynasty, YouTube subscriptions videos, The Voice filled my room with welcome noise while my poor Professors chatted away on Zoom University.
My teammates began to worry about the consequences of my TV habit on their grades, my friends began to complain about my silence that was mistaken for abandonment, and I no longer cared that I was making these hurtful decisions.
Mental health experts say to “Choose yourself’’or “take care of yourself’,”but what does that even mean? If Netflix and chill is self-care, then why does it seem to be hurting me more than it’s caring for me? I was lost and uninterested in my future and unbothered about the consequences of my actions. I was just tired of churning out work every week that didn’t matter to me.
Here I was facing the regular worries and anxieties of an international student in America: would I get a job after I graduate? Am I really supposed to be studying engineering? How do I tell my parents who are paying six figures for me to be here that I want to quit? Why did I quit my job back at home to come here? I didn’t drown these questions in alcohol or joints, but I also couldn’t find answers.
I refused for the longest time that there was a problem. I ignored the bad, inconsistent sleeping patterns, the caffeine addiction, and my reclusive behavior and accredited it to being a grad student at Cornell but the problem only mushroomed, wider and even deeper.
No doctor puts a stethoscope to a ‘’mind’’ to check the health or the sickness of it thereof but they try to talk to you into seeing someone. A meeting with a counsellor was one I was not willing to schedule, at least, not yet. I was sick in my mind yet refused to admit it.
I saw how I lived day-to-day, free of suicidal thoughts YET, there seemed to be a power outage of some organ in my body. I was suffering, suffering, from low productivity, the lack of survival instincts, and the woes of grad school.
Suffering from the lack of trust in myself to be responsible and get my schoolwork done. Why did my mind feel so sick and weak like it can no longer function on its own? My mind: the only part of my body that I BELIEVE is stronger than my brain, why did it feel like it needed a crutch just to make it to the next phase of my life?
So, you see, the night before Demi almost lost her life, she had begged her friends who she partied with, to sleep over and spend the night at her place.
One of the friends recounted how they thought it was weird that Demi had asked them to sleep over and almost decided to stay back but said to themselves: ‘’Hey, she’s a big girl’’, ‘’Won’t we all just go to bed anyway even if we stayed over?’’, “Don’t worry we’d call you in the morning’’. No one stayed over. After they all left, Demi called her drug dealer over.
She overdosed that night.
She found company with the devil, and he danced her to sleep. A sleep of almost no return. They thought too that everything was perfectly okay. The truthful lie.
This particular recount hit home for me. I too, always asked the one or two friends who would come over, to stay a little longer, to sleep over if they wanted. I always wished someone would ask me a second time, how I really was. Well, I must also say that if you picked up the phone to call me to find out how I was, I’d probably tell you how I am planning the next hang-out or kickback at my place or how I’m cooking up my favorite Nigerian dish to eat while I overdose on TV shows. Yes, I would tell you I was okay no matter how eaten up I felt inside.
Anyway, that stops today.
It’s one thing to admit it, and admit it openly but a whole ‘nother thing to put a label on it. I have now put a label on it. My time at Cornell has been tough. I have struggled and I’m almost coming out on top. Still alive and gasping for breath but I will make it.
Graduation is around the corner; I still have a lot of questions but now I know where I would rather be and what I would rather be doing. I would rather be on TV than in front of it. Also, it took me so long but now I know that Jesus still loves me. He never left my side. I was lonely but never alone. I was always cared for even when I didn’t ask for it.
‘’Oh, you’d be fine’’, ‘’This too shall pass’’, ‘’It’d soon be over’’, words that felt like non-existent hugs and fake smiles. You don’t tell that to a girl who wants to sleep all day, so she doesn’t have to get out of bed to once again sit in front of a laptop all day wishing that giving up was an option. You don’t tell that to the girl who spends her daily bath time wondering what she’s going to make of her life after grad school. You don’t tell that to anyone, anyone at all, whose whole semester feels like a blur because they are on the verge of failing a graduation requirement class or dropping out of school.
One thing this season proved to me anyways, is that God is the only thing that fills my void. What a Friend I Have in Him. Needless to say, I got lucky with my addiction. Some people never have the chance to break away nor come to admit that they need help or a way out. I look back and the only thing I see is the constant of who God was in all of it. I learned to truly kiss the silent waves that threw me against the Rock of Ages, Charles Spurgeon. On Christ, my solid rock, I stand because all other ground is sinking sand.
I’m grateful for my faith and the opportunity to have built a firm foundation in Him. Rain came, wind blew, but my house was built on Him. In Him, I live and move and have my being. I’m safe in Him and I’m going to make it through. Let all strivings cease because I have the mind of Christ.
Demi Lovato’s experience was definitely the rude awakening I needed to come to light of all my struggles and to know that I was not alone.
I AM NOT ALONE.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Anyway, the music stops now because I am no longer dancing with the one who seeks my downfall or destruction.
I am no longer dancing with the devil.
Happy Mental Health Awareness month!
Epilogue (A Note to Self) :
Dear Tolu,
“Mental Health” is not a conversation only for the Western world.
It’s one for White people,Asian people,Hispanic people,Mixed people, Colored people,Black people, BIPOCs, heck, AFRICAN people!
Learn to have the conversation and take it as seriously as they do, too.
Peace.
P.S: I finally got around to starting that podcast I talked about here. I did it, I’m proud of it and you can check it out right here too. Enjoy and Thank you! :)
P.P.S: Author’s note- Article originally published in May 2021 and edited in November 2021.
