MY LIFE, MY STORY… in 2012 (MY BIRTHDAY MESSAGE)

Funny how life can be, I have been living with this grief and sorrow for over many months and I have decided to hold them back pretending and hoping everything will be fine. I know I am not the first nor I am going to be the last to experience failure, but belief me not, I have experienced some massive failure and draw backs in my life in 2012. My heart confronts me not to write these thoughts of mine down not even to post them to my friends and readers to have a pip into the life I am living and sorrow I have been going through. Actually, it is time to break that silence and cry out those tears stored in my tear bank until I have no reason to cry no more. I have been broken by my failures and I have fallen by my faults, really I need to pick myself up and mend my broken wings, pathetic how most times I see myself as a walking copse, because I see myself failing in most things I get myself involved in, whether; academically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and what have you. I choose to speak up because so many youths my age are facing similar psychological masturbation and depression and decide to keep it to their hearts and commit vicious act, but I don’t want my story to end that way. Sadly, how I was broken to the point to think that God is interested in punishing me and He careless about me. I am always also confronted by the fear of the future even after believing that I have a bright future set in place to assist my peers and helpless youths and children in the world, I still question my existence and His’ as well. Most times I am being frustrated into cursing the country and putting all blames of my shortcomings as the fault of the government. Every day, I erode my mind with thoughts of becoming successful, I develop the zeal of doing great things but most times I am pushed by my failures into thinking that God is not in support of making me successful either because of my sins or my fathers. This is not the way I want to live my life, sitting on the fence and folding my hands without moving things or making things happen I can beat my chest to repeatedly say. I am now seen as a laughing stock, mockery and tagged as a failure by my peers, friends and foes at school and at home. I have visited so many counselling centres in Lagos and Ibadan, I get the same rather pathetic advice and saying “keep doing what you do, it is just the experience and the storm you are supposed to face, you will end well to be successful in whatever you do…” And I still can’t figure out where the problem is coming from aside from the fact that something is wrong with me. I have heard and read about it, “nothing good comes easy” or “all success stories come with a prize or some challenges”; maybe you all don’t know when I have been on the street hustling or where I am coming from. My family and background is another kind of a rueful story, as we go through some ‘life painful experiences’. Talking about my dad( I will avoid talking about his academic qualification and background because it doesn’t flow with what he is going through today), all I can say is that, he usually sit on a chair located in one of the two rooms in our ‘face me and face me’ apartment, my dad sits there thinking and feeling pathetic about how life is treating him, he even gets frustrated to the point of accusing my mom as a witch responsible for his failure and shortcoming in life, what a gross depression he must be going through(intellectual masturbation I call it, despite his degree of education). He stopped fending for the family and stop paying his children school fees all with the excuse that he invested money in a business that flopped and he has to keep paying debts for the rest of his life, what a pathetic life you may say. Lets stop for now about my dad and begin talks about my mom, she is out there feeding four children of hers, I didn’t say five because one of us who is a lady after me have decided to feed herself and leave the house since she was fifteen(15), don’t ask me what kind of job she is involved in because I am not going to answer, but every day I pray in my mind that God touches her and bring her back into the family(maybe to continue suffering with us) so that my mom can be happy. Back to my mom, she is always stressed out and share in the frustration of my dad’s, even though she pretends to be fine so as not to make us feel sad, I can see them(frustration and unhappiness) in her face as she starts developing a black face with stress on it when things left frying pan to fire in the family. She earns around seventy thousand naira per months from her place of work and she has two kids who are in the university struggling to get a good grade and she have one who recently secure admission into a private college where he can study Education Management, while lastly she has her last kid in a private missionary primary school, I wonder how she can survive. Well, God has being providing and helping her in many ways to be able to get money to finance all her expenses and that of her children. Many a time she console my dad by telling him not to think of money as a problem but should be thankful and happy about the fact that the family has good health, i was almost in doubt of her claim or consoling words when myself and my elder brother had to go through a life and death illness. I can’t say what really happened or caused it but I can say it was God who rescued us and made us alive, my little sister (the last born) is not left out of this ill-fated sickness that has come to rob my mom and the family the last of our happiness and hope. Consequently, before now I use to read books and hear talks that opines that your background shouldn’t stop you from achieving your dreams and living your ideas, but apparently, those sayings seems to be false to me as even after ignoring my background and gathering resources for myself and decided to work on my ideas and my dreams I encountered the biggest failure of my life, ignoring my background and living by the words of some of these sweet talkers. ‘My life!’, I usually exclaim for every little thing that happens, it is very pitiable when I recall all the money, time and academic sacrifice I have put in the line to become successful in the publishing industry, only to lose all of them to challenges that I can’t pinpoint. But I am grateful today that I am alive, hale and healthy coupled with the fact that life has thought me lessons that I cannot forget. Conclusively, this is not a grief message or write-up but an essay filled with hope and great aspirations that the future will be bright for me as I undergo the process of learning life teachings. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME AS I CLOCK 24YEARS OF AGE TODAY MARCH 15 2013.