Onika L. Dainty

When I was a little girl my mother and I would bake cakes together. She would put all the ingredients in a bowl–flour, butter, sugar, vanilla essence, eggs and a generous pinch of salt. She never forgot the salt even though it wasn’t a part of the recipe in the What’s Cooking in Guyana cook book that travelled with us from back home. One day curiosity got the better of me and I asked my mother why she put something salty in something that was made to taste sweet. The conversation went as follows:

“Mama why do you add salt to the cake? Won’t salt make the cake taste bad?” I inquired.

My mother smiled at me with a knowing smile she still gives me today and said, “You want to know a secret the recipe book won’t tell you? Salt will actually bring out the sweet flavour of the cake, it will make the cake taste better Nika.”

My little girl mind started to process what my mother was telling me and another question came to me, “So mama is salt in everything in the world? Does everyone know what salt is, what salt can do?”

She smiled again and gave me a surprising answer, “Yes Nika, salt is in most things it’s an essential part of life; it's in the Earth, in the animals, in us and the food we eat. Salt is a common thing but no, not everyone uses it in the right way, some people overuse it but everyone knows what it is.”

Because my mother was a registered nurse and a knowledgeable woman of science, I believed she was telling me the truth and from that truth came a surprising truth of my own. As I stirred the ingredients in the bowl, I considered each one carefully and realized that the one ingredient necessary for the world to be sweeter, better and nicer was a generous pinch of salt to bring forth its natural goodness. 

 I thought about the mean kids at school who bullied me relentlessly since my arrival to Canada the year before. I thought about the little boy that called me the N-word the first week of kindergarten and his father that encouraged him to do so. I thought about the challenges I had faced so far and were bound to face because I wasn’t like other kids. Then I thought about what it would be like to achieve the new desire growing in my heart and said with a steady and determined voice, 

“Well mama, one day my name will be as common as Salt.”

That was where my heart led me at 6-years old after a seemingly ordinary conversation with my mother about salt. I was a little girl with a big dream and though I had no idea how to make it happen it was born and grew in my heart over a bowl of cake mix and a generous pinch of salt and I was determined to see it through. 

The Long Painful Road to Losing My Way

When I was in high school I started scouting universities years before most students my age. At 15-years-old I went to a university fair and fell in love with Carleton University in Ottawa, ON. I took it as a done deal that I was destined to be there when I won a Carleton mug at one of the information sessions. I drank everything from that mug knowing that one day I would be sitting in a dorm room writing my New York Times bestseller in between lectures. 

When my senior year came and it was time to apply for schools, It was time to follow my heart to Carleton University. However, my parents were against me going away to school. They were worried about the 4 hour distance from Toronto to Ottawa, they were terrified something would happen to me and they couldn’t protect me. They loved me and wanted the best for me. They wanted me to take the safest route to higher education, a life with financial security and very little struggle or adversity. I told them on the final day to send in an acceptance letter that it was Carleton University or nothing. 

In September 2001, I sat on the front lawn of Carleton’s Glengarry residence–my new home–holding tight to my Carleton mug, watching hot air balloons float in the Ottawa skies like an oman of great things to come and waved goodbye to my family as they drove away. I had arrived, I had followed my heart and it was time to conquer the world. Go Where Your Heart Takes You. 

During the five years I spent in Ottawa I made friends that I still have today, I wrote articles, literary papers, historical essays, an honours thesis and thought provoking poetry that I performed on slam poetry stages across the city; I struggled with Major Depressive disorder and Generalized Anxiety disorder; I fell in love with a beautiful man who broke my heart and I graduated with an Honours degree in History.

I also developed a drug problem and experienced my first Manic-Psychotic episode and hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. When I moved back home with my parents I was unrecognizable. I continued to have rapid-cycle highs and lows for almost 17 years. I fell hard and fast and somewhere along the way I lost confidence in my internal compass, I stopped following my heart, allowing life to simply happen to me and allowing other people’s fear over my mental instability to dictate my actions.  

There were events that felt like wins along this long and painful road. I graduated from Humber College with a graduate certificate in Public Relations and Communications, I moved to Toronto to be an event planner after studying Event Management at Durham College and I became a Peer Support Specialist working for a major Toronto hospital which made me feel I had regained my sense of self and that my internal compass was back on track leading me in the direction of my heart’s desire. 

During this period of what I believed was wellness, I hosted a successful podcast, I became a mental health advocate and I had secured my dream job yet it all felt wrong, it all felt life the lies of an imposter. I knew in the deepest part of me that I was not listening to my heart anymore, rather I was leading with the fear in my head. I was living up to other’s expectations of me by pretending to be alright when inside I was not alright, I was dying and my heart was broken. 

When Your Heart is Broken It Still Speaks

In 2022, two years after COVID-19 turned the world upside down I had to take a hard look at my myself and my life choices: I was a woman with an unmanaged mental illness, I was non-compliant with my medication, I was self-medicating with cannabis and I was smoking a pack of cigarettes daily all while trying to balance work obligation and life obligations. I was stressed, depressed, depleted, avoiding my unaddressed trauma, Hypomanic–on my best days, Manic–on my worst. I was an overweight, people-pleasing burnout pretending to have it all together, pretending to be happy when in reality I was drowning. 

How did I get here? I truly believe it's because I did not go where my heart was trying to lead me. Instead of being the fearless little girl with a big dream I had turned into someone I did not recognize. I lost my way and had no idea how to find the right path, the one that would lead me down the road to fulfilling my big dream.

TRIGGER WARNING…

On November 7, 2022, I made a plan to end my life by driving into my parent’s poolhouse. My mind kept telling me I was an unloved, unwanted failure and I didn’t need to be here anymore. I remember the moment before I put my car into gear it was as if every broken piece of my heart went into gear as well and screamed at me, Onika! Stop! Don’t Do It! Remember Your Dreams! And at that moment, when it mattered the most my internal compass that lives in the centre of me came back to life and reminded me to lead with my heart and not my head. 

I remembered I had parents, nieces, a grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends that loved me. I remembered that I had been lost before and found my way back to myself with hard work and unwavering determination. I remembered that the only way out is through, that there was light at the end of the tunnel, sunshine after the rain and that this awful time would pass if I just fought for the happiness I deserved. Go Where Your Heart Takes You. 

Final Thoughts - Go Where Your Heart Takes You, It's Worth the Journey

Millions of words ago and hundreds of lived experience stories I started a blog and today I write #100. I’m a different person than I was at article #1. This blog has changed me but I had to make the necessary changes in my life to be able to be as real, raw and authentic as I’ve been with the readers that have supported me on my journey to wellness.

I’m still living with a severe mental illness but now with the support of my family, friends and healthcare team I’m not only managing my illness, I’m thriving in it. I’m over a year and a half sober as of this week and I have not touched a cigarette in the same length of time. I’ve lost 30 pounds by re-introducing structure, routine and healthy habits into my life. I practice self-care and mindfulness daily and I give myself grace and self-compassion when I fall short of achieving my goals. I’m kinder and more patient with myself accepting that I’m fabulous and flawed all at once.  

I focus on my passions and staying well so I can simply enjoy my life. I experience peace, love, joy and happiness and don’t allow the stresses that inevitably come overwhelm me. I haven't seen the inside of a psychiatric unit in almost 2 years. I live to please myself rather than others. Finally, because I put the pieces of my heart back together through resilience and grit my internal compass has never worked better.

Since that day in my childhood kitchen, I have made it a habit to follow my heart even when logic dictates I should go in a certain and usually safe direction. I have always looked inside of myself, to my internal compass that lies in the centre of me and gone my own way. Even when bad things happen and I want to give up I remember that if I hold onto my 6-year old self’s courage and determination, listen to my heart and embrace the journey regardless of where the road takes me I will not fail and I will find my dreams waiting for me to catch them. Today, I’m a writer, a blogger, a public speaker, a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece, an aunt, a cousin and a friend to a tribe that loves me and that is a dream come true. 

I walked into my 7th floor apartment the evening of New Year’s Eve, my mother standing by the dining room table tears in her eyes, my aunt and uncle stood frozen in my living room and three of my girlfriends who had proceeded me to the apartment stood awkwardly with party supplies in hand and regret in their eyes. I looked at my mom and the next words out of her mouth shattered my world, made all thoughts in my head disappear because life or rather death had happened when I was out making plans.

“Gran Gran Alvira died yesterday in Guyana,” my mother could barely get the words out past her tears. 

My response to the devastating news is silly to me now, “Yesterday was my birthday.” 

Then I fell to the floor and screamed from my soul where she had always lived and collapsed. I was never going to see her alive again, I was never going to smell her neck as I snuggled in her strong lap, I was never going to feel her arms around me or hear her soft voice telling her baby girl how I gave the best hugs, She wasn’t going to be at my graduation or wedding or the birth of my first child and we were never going to dance to Ella Fitzgerald or sing Summertime again. Life had gotten in the way of my plans.

After flying back home for the funeral and saying goodbye to my soulmate I simply stopped living life, I stopped making plans, I stopped smiling and laughing and loving the way I did when my grandmother was alive. She was 82 years old when she died and as an adult I understood she couldn’t live forever but the child she helped raise, that she encouraged to dream big couldn’t comprehend a world where Alvira didn’t exist. I spiralled out of control, I made a lot of bad choices after she died and two years later I found myself in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit being diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder. That was never the plan but life continued on around me, life continued to happen to me regardless of whether I had a plan or not. Sometimes choosing not to plan becomes the plan and life still happens whether you like it or not.

Fast forward 20 years, I recently went back home to Guyana following my spirit, my heart and my soul’s calling to be in the last place my grandmother was. I spent a month there including my 42nd birthday, I celebrated Alvira, I danced in the rain, I laughed until I hurt, I explored my birthplace and I remembered things forgotten long ago. I found what I thought I had lost so many years before: I found joy, happiness and the freedom to be me.  I had no real plans for this restorative and transformative adventure home, It's how I’ve learned to live my life, minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day because when you deal with a severe mental illness characterized by unexpected highs and lows you learn to enjoy life taking things as they come and feeling gratitude for every little moment of sanity I’m blessed with. 

Thank you Mr. Lennon, you taught me that living in the moment is better than making plans for an unknown and uncertain future because no matter which way the wind blows life is what happens when you are making other plans.