The Transition

 When I was much younger, I was a “highly above average” child. It wasn’t much of a big deal to me. It came easily. All I did was read a lot, and I remembered things. My memory was irritatingly retentive. Sometimes it still is. Whenever I remember a random thing that happened to me when I was as young as three years old, or when I say something so smart that I can’t believe my brain put it together, I just smile and shake it off because, in those few minutes, it feels good to be that child again. But I do not revel in it because that is not who I am anymore.

The change was mad, to put it lightly. It was painful. The person I was before everything had changed and I did not let go of her on time. The first trace of struggle I had was getting into University. I got in on my first try but I didn’t come in as what I’d been my whole life. I was alright. Just alright. Nothing special. Even after I got in, I continued to struggle. I struggled for years, the entire time if I’m being honest. I don’t remember any point in University that I felt like school was easy. It wasn’t. I’d developed concentration issues, I couldn’t study for long, my memory was in the gutter. To put it lightly, everything I was, everything that made me who I was at the time had gone to shit. 

So who the hell was I then?

Now that I’ve crawled through that river of self-loathing, I think I understand myself better. I have clarity on a lot of things about myself. If I had half of the awareness then that I do now, it would have been easier to look myself in the eye every day and not ask why I’d let myself down. Man, I was down bad.

I can’t believe I wanted to kill myself over this shit.

A few weeks ago, right after the Twitter ban, I was in a conversation with my friend about Nigeria, my least favourite topic, and I was ranting about a lot of things (May this country not end us) and he said “DSS will come and pick you now”. It was a joke, but the next thing I said, without thinking, was “Oh, that’s okay. I’ve already lived longer than I thought I would.”

I’ll give you a second to process that.

See, I didn’t even know why I said that at the time, but later on, I remembered that I'd been cleaning my room earlier that morning before the call and laughing my head off. It had occurred to me that there really was a point in my life, not that long ago honestly, that I couldn’t see my life past uni; past the failure that I thought I had become. If I lived through it, I didn’t know what I would be. 

But I did. I lived through it. I'm every bit the person  I hoped I would be, and then some. Not perfect, but I'm good. 

Maybe the only downside is that even in my "everything-ness", I still see myself as ordinary, not special, and it pisses me off when I run into people who used to know me when I was…well, what I was. It makes me mad when they want to reminisce and banter about it, because I’m hurt. I know they mean well, but in my head, I want to tell them to stop. That person isn’t here anymore. What I am now is a person who can only focus on books and stories. But I can’t pay prolonged attention to anything else: not people, and sometimes, not even really good gist. 

That’s who I am now. I can’t focus if my life doesn’t depend on it, I can’t stay in one place for long and I’m addicted to movement. Sorry, progress. Or movement. I don’t know really, but I think that if I stop, everything I’ve conquered (or run away from) will catch up to me and if that ever happens, nothing short of the highest grace of God will save me. Thank God the grace is sufficient. 

In all, I just know I can’t stop moving. My mind is overdoing it at this point because I leave things and people I’m not ready to move on from. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.

Now, what’s the lesson you should learn from this?

It’s simple. Things change(d). You have changed. You are changing. You will change, and changing doesn’t make you less of yourself. You will be different. Not necessarily worse or better, just different. Have some mercy on yourself, and be ready to adjust when the time comes. If you hold on too tightly to what is no longer true, you will arrive at reality very late. If you arrive at reality very late, you will lose out on the many good things that are happening right here, right now. 

Always be ready to move. Please be ready when the time comes.

I am ready. I will be ready as many times as I need to be because I’ve wasted so much of my young life being utterly and soul-crushingly sad, too sad for how young I was. I will not waste any more of my life mourning a person I will probably never get back. I’m moving forward. 

Please do the same.

I hope July is kind to you.

Love always.