10.9
I want to remember exactly who I was on the evening of September 10, 2026.
Not the version of me I will become. Not the person I will be five years from now when I eventually stumble upon this piece and wonder what took me so long to grow into her.
I mean this exact version of me.
The girl sitting here tonight, still trying to understand how quickly life has happened.
Yesterday, I wrote my final examination in university. Yesterday, I graduated. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I also got the confirmation that my contract role would be retained. Two things I had spent years, in completely different ways, working towards.
I am happy. Very happy, actually.
But more than anything, I am curious.
I keep asking myself: How did I get here?
How much of this was effort? How much was grace? How favoured have I been to find myself at this point in my life, with all the things I once worried I might never have?
Because I remember who I used to be.
Growing up, I was a very timid girl. I still have traces of her in me, but back then, she was much louder in my life than she is now. I struggled to associate with people. I struggled to put myself out there. I struggled to say what I felt.
I had a particular way of dealing with hurt: I would go quiet.
If something upset me, I rarely said it. I would keep it inside, brood over it, and let my silence do the talking. Sometimes that silence probably hurt people more than my words ever could have. I didn't know how to communicate that I was unhappy, so I simply withdrew.
It is strange to look back now and realise how much growing up has really meant learning how to exist with other people.
I think about this sometimes because of something a teacher once told us.
I was reminded of it recently while talking to a friend about boarding school. We were discussing how disciplined we were back then, and he said something that made me think about my secondary-school years differently: we were disciplined largely because the structure around us demanded it. There were teachers. Prefects. Rules. Timetables. Consequences. There was always somebody reminding you what you were supposed to be doing.
Then I remembered Mr. Umoren.
I had just finished SS3. Our final examinations were over, and graduation was only days away. One morning, around the SS3 class block, he prayed for us.
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He prayed about everything.
Marriage. Unborn children. Careers. Our futures. The lives we were going to build.
Coming from him, a strict teacher, some of those things felt almost strange to hear. We were young. Marriage and unborn children felt like subjects that belonged to some distant future, not something an adult was supposed to be praying over us about.
But then he said something that stayed with me.
He told us that as we progressed in life, nobody would always be there to compel us to do better. The systems would not always be there. The teachers would not always be there. There would be no prefect standing somewhere to tell us what to do.
We would eventually have to choose discipline for ourselves.
And I remember being tense.
Because even then, I understood what he meant.
The structures we had spent years complaining about were also the structures keeping us in place.
Then he said something else.
Some of us, he said, might lose our parents along the way.
He was not telling us this to frighten us. He was preparing us. He wanted us to understand that life would eventually take away some of the things we thought would always be there, and that when it did, we could not afford to lose ourselves too.
I remember the goosebumps I felt that morning.
At the time, I thought I could at least console myself with the thought that my parents would always be there to put me back on track.
Life has since shown me that not everyone gets that privilege.
Thankfully, I have not had to experience that particular loss myself. But some of the people I have come to love have. Some of my amazing friends have had to learn how to keep going without their parents.
May their parents' souls rest in peace.
I did not know then that Mr. Umoren was giving us a preview of adulthood.
I only knew that I was standing there, having just finished secondary school, wondering what the world outside those walls would look like.
Years later, I think I finally understand.
...to be continued
