Growth Is Scary & Difficult

Glee greetings, .

Today's musing isn't written by me. On Sunday afternoon, Girlie wrote a piece that had me snapping my fingers in agreement. Couldn't resist sharing with you. So, here we go, in her words:

More often than not, we hear people emphasise why we should embrace growth and aspire for it, like it's as simple as reciting the alphabet. However, we rarely see them lay as much as emphasis on how tedious and scary the process is.

The past few weeks have had me regurgitating my plans for the year, and every single time, my throat either let out a loud cry of tongues or my lips move in prayer. You might wonder how enormous my plans are and how far-reaching they are, lol. I won't say they're not big enough; I just think they're little compared to my expectations for myself or God's.

However, I can actually dïe on the hill that my heart has done every kind of backflip there ever is, and I've felt my head compress and decompress several times. Growth is hard.

If you don't have a problem being mediocre, you don't know what you've done for yourself. Yes, I'm preaching the pros of being mediocre.

Tears. Blood. Exhaustion. Migraine. But you're seated there, bent over that online course, chewing at the crown of your pen, and wondering why your tutor's process is providing answers, but yours isn't. Leemao. Eyes are red. A throbbing that could send you to the great beyond is ravaging the walls of your head, but the healing power in your fingers is doing magic. So, you continue to massage your temples and forehead mek you no for mäd.

You move around with a slouched back now, even though you're a distant four inches away from being five foot four— such irony. Your neighbours tease at the bulging hunch sprouting between the crane of your neck and back, and you chuckle within yourself. Because, where you wan start dey narrate the wahala wey you use your hand chook yourself inside?

Lately, you always wake up to find the sitting room deserted after devotion, and most of the chores done because na when you dey round up midnight studies na hin dem dey call for prayer. You're a man, but mummy's beginning to look at you with that pregnancy-decoder eyes African mothers possess. You want to reassure her that it'll take a while, say, five years before she should start thinking of expecting a grandchild from you, but even in your head, the explanation no dey add up.

You'd choose to rest your back and eyes for a day, but you remember that vacations in the Maldives don't sponsor themselves, neither do flights book themselves. "YOLO," you yell, pushing your study table and equipment aside, but almost immediately, your accountability partner's "how far?" pops on your phone's screen. The thought of losing 2,500 Nigerian naira— scratch that; you calculate in dollars now, so 3 USD thereabout— scares the shit out of you. So, reluctantly, you return to learning, training amidst murmurings while threatening to bring heaven down if you don't make it in this life eventually. "E dey go well," you punch violently into your phone.

You're a do-it-as-it-comes-to-mind kind of person, but now, your alarms wouldn't let you breathe properly. You even think that your alarms are louder and more violent these days because they seem to have hacked how coconut-headed you can be. "I go do am, but no pressure me," but you know that it isn't by like that that you'd get that which you are gunning for.

Your pillows tend to be out of reach these days, and you sigh because you know why— small frustration fit set in mek you grab one of them, bįte am hard so you go fit muffle your screams of exhaustion.

There was nothing wrong with the way you previously lived, but your overambitious self finds it difficult not to get bored shortly after achieving one thing. Now, look at you, Olivia Twist.

____________

What do you think of growth, ? I'd love to read your thoughts.

With ❤️

Jaachị Anyatọnwụ