Veteran rapper MI Abaga and his wife Eniola Mafe Abaga are enjoying marital bliss but things haven’t exactly been perfect as the union has been affected by their battle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
In a recent chat with popular influencer Aproko Doctor, the pair got candid about living with the illness and how they have coped with the reality.
On being diagnosed with ADHD, Eniola shared that it came with the realisation that it is not like a cancer prognosis; it isn’t something that can be cut out.
“The one thing about people getting diagnosed or thinking they may have ADHD is the realisation that it’s not like a cancer prognosis.
“It’s not this thing that you can cut out. It’s actually who you are.
“It’s ingrained into how you think, how you see the world, how you accept the world, how you accept rejection, everything”, she disclosed.
On his part, MI (real name Jude Abaga) revealed that his childhood was marked by his love for music, ideas, and books.
“It was tough for me to read in class but probably ’cause I wasn’t paying attention, you know.
“And if I was really interested in something in the arts, I would have excelled really well… But I also had parents that were like, my dad is a pastor.
“So, they weren’t like, ‘You must excel!’. They were just like sort of easy… By the time I went to college, I figured out that the ADHD they were talking about, Oh yeah, this is me”, the rapper quipped.
On how ADHD has impacted their relationship, Eniola said: “I mean, fundamentally, ADHD is how my brain works, whether I know it or not.
“So, it has a propensity to go to things that are maybe more ‘short-term-y’ cos I’m getting dopamine. I’m getting like a high from seeing a bright colour or something that gives me… social media!
“…So, when you’re telling me that there is a relationship that I could be in for forty years and for the rest of my life, that I’m not gonna get the benefits of immediately on one day, that I have to work towards this goal.
“That I’m not always, that you’re not always gonna get dopamine from your relationships, right? That other person is struggling.
“That other person has needs at a time when your listening power is going down. You’re gonna have to will yourself.
“So, in a normal relationship, you can cut out the white noise with a new atypical brain, You can cut out the white noise.
“You can say, ‘I need to focus on my partner, whatever it is that is happening to them at this point in time. They’ve asked me to listen and that means I have to act in this kind of way.
“So, my brain, when that same thing would happen, is it depends.
“If I have my phone near me, if I’ve had just had a quick phone call, if I haven’t been to the gym and therefore it hasn’t given me my fix somewhere else, if I’m in a very low energy mode where I, myself have anxiety and you know, I’m trying to build up on own energy and still have to do things in the morning, and then my husband comes to talk to me about something, it’s very different.
“He’s against multiple different like there’s a massive orchestra and my mariachi band playing right behind me… it’s not because that thing isn’t important. It’s because he has to fight through all the noise…”
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