Fear Of The Known

The first time I came face to face with adulthood, I had the shock of my life. It was like being in a boxing ring with an opponent who was definitely going to kill me and having the world as my audience. In that audience were my friends, family and loved ones who could easily jump into the ring to rescue me yet, they only stood outside and cheered me on when I had no boxing experience and no clue what I was even doing in the ring.

Anytime I ask people to guess my age they would start from 17. They never cross 21 which always makes me happy because deep down I really never want to have any business with growing especially physically. In terms of age, I’ve been an adult for some years but mentally my adulthood only started last year. I was doing service at that time. There was this particular day in the office that I had to work with someone on a project. A day to submission, he messed the project up. He consulted me and of course I got angry first and said my mind to him.

I knew it was going to get him hurt but I still did it because at that point that was what I wanted. There!That’s what’s hard for me about being an adult.
Sometimes, you truly know that this particular thing is so wrong and has consequences but you still go ahead to do it. You could write a whole essay to justify yourself but the main issue is your actions brought forth consequences and you would need to take responsibility.

It was when we were children that we would push our friends not really knowing they would get hurt and then our parents would have to tell us “Abena say you’re sorry”.
It’s different now, this time I have the chance to think about my actions before acting because I know the consequences. I’m no more a child so nobody would say “oh she’s just a child so leave her, Oh she’s last born so allow her”. Nobody would say she didn’t know and that’s why she did that.

Life was so simple when I was a kid because I didn’t know anything. Now that I’m an adult it scares me to know things. Sometimes I really wish I didn’t know things because with knowledge comes many responsibilities but it’s unfortunate that knowing things is actually part of adulthood. The more you know, the more responsible you have to be and it gets really exhausting sometimes. That’s why sometimes people know the consequences of things yet they just brush it off with the saying “y3 b3 wu ntsi y3nnda? (should we be afraid to sleep because of death)”,because they are really tired.

It gets hard being an adult because I’ve lived all my life as a last born and suddenly some stranger called adulthood starts giving me responsibilities I didn’t ask for, can you even imagine?