Fitness expert and media personality Maje Ayida has shared his emotional journey through depression following the breakdown of his marriage to Nigerian on-air personality Toke Makinwa.
Recall that their union, which began in 2014, ended two years later in 2016 and attracted widespread public attention.
In a now widely circulated video, Ayida is seen speaking at a church in the United Kingdom, where he candidly described the emotional turmoil he endured after the separation. He explained that the situation left him feeling embarrassed and led him to isolate himself from people.
Maje revealed that he became the subject of public scrutiny and lost hope for an extended period. According to him, the mental toll caused him to stop working and led to missed professional opportunities. Over time, however, he began to emerge from the difficult period by embracing responsibility for his actions.
He said, “I will be honest about the fact that I went through a divorce which resulted in me being depressed. It was a very publicised divorce.
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“And that left me feeling very alone. I withdrew from society, I was really ashamed of my situation. Not just for myself, of course, my self-esteem was affected, but legacy is very important to me. I was ashamed of what I felt I had done to my family’s name. As a result, I went into hiding.
“I didn’t want to interact with anyone. I wanted to be alone, stay at home. I stopped going to work. I found it very difficult to work. It was very hard.
“I not only lose focus but also motivation. I lose the essence of to even get up in the morning. What am I getting up for? Everyone already feels a certain way about me. So, I started to lose work as a result of it. That was when it really started to get to me.
“As a man, your work is your identity, and I started to lose work, business deals so it became a real problem for me. That was when I made a decision. I had to make a decision for my own survival because I was living in hopelessness. It went on for weeks.
“I was out of the look for a whole year. I checked out of life for a year to recoup. I realised that I was in a very dark space. I was in a hole but I needed to get out of it… I was on the floor. What’s sleep? I didn’t even know what that was. I had insomnia.
“I was paranoid as well so the few chances that I do get to go out, I have created a scenario in my own mind that everybody is talking about me, people are looking at me. And that would just send me back into my own home.
“That feeling of hopelessness and the noise that was going on around me even though I was in silence was insane. I made a choice. I decided that I didn’t want to stay in this space.
“I did research on how to deal with it. The top of the list of the research that I did was accountability. I took the blame on myself. It made me feel worse at first until I began to take practical steps.”
