The thrills of adulthood

We always talk about how adulthood is a scam and also how nobody told us that it's going to be full of bills, work and lots of responsibilities but we can all agree that there are certain benefits that come with being an adult and these benefits are relative to each person but there are some similarities. For those of us in Africa, growing up comes with a lot of restrictions on the things we can and can't do but those restrictions phase out as we grow into adults.

When I was younger, my mom was the one who bought clothes for me and initially, I didn't mind but when I approached puberty and became a teenager, I started paying attention to the way I dressed and that involved amending my clothes so that they are body-fitted but my mom didn't like that and the day she noticed, she removed all the amendments I did. According to her, body-fitted clothes make me look too tiny and like someone who doesn't eat but big clothes make me look big 😩 then she ended the discussion by saying when I start buying my own clothes then I can do whatever I like.

That was one of the things that made me look forward to becoming an adult; wearing the type of clothes I like but in the meantime, I just had to continue wearing my big clothes and endure the cruel jokes from my friends. But now, I can wear whatever I like without my mom trying to fight me 😅 She can only advise me if she doesn't like something, like during my bad boy era when I mostly wore ripped jeans, had rings on all my fingers and a magnetic stud on one of my ears.

Yep, that's my hand in that picture, I took that photo back in 2018; it reminds me of Ariana Grande's song titled 7 Rings. Aside from clothes, I also had restrictions on the type of hairstyle I was allowed to carry, and it must be skin cut or I leave the house, my dad enforced that rule and on some occasions when I tried to rebel and carry one of the trending hairstyles, he always sends me back to the barbing salon to scrap the whole thing off. But now, I can carry whatever hairstyle I want, I even weaved my hair at one point (again, during my bad boy era).

Then there's the issue of keeping late nights which was something I was not allowed to do back when I was a kid. My dad always came into my room at night to check if I was still awake and that was how I perfected the art of fake-sleeping. There was a time I always borrowed the phone of one of my friends to use at night (it was one of those Nokia Java phones) because my mom forbade borrowing someone's else things, so the only time I could safely use the phone was at night when everyone is sleeping. I could stay up till 4 AM just playing video games, and then still wake up early later to prepare for school.

But now, nobody cares if I sleep or not. My mom only advises me to get enough sleep at night but it's not like I'm even playing games, sometimes I work on projects that carry on late into the night. These days I can't even keep myself awake for long like I used to do when I was younger, it's only when I have something very important to work on and sometimes I even rely on caffeine. Aside from all these, the sweetest part of adulthood is that I can buy whatever I like. That wasn't the case when I was a child, I didn't even have the money in the first place

I guess that's the nice thing about having a job or doing something to earn money. The process of earning money itself isn't all fun, but at least the money you get is used to buy yourself some nice things. Meanwhile, when we were younger, we could only depend on our family to get us what we wanted, and that's mostly possible if you come from a rich home which isn't the case for me. Adulthood is tough but it does come with a lot of freedom which we never had when we were kids. In the end, we can't have it all, we always exchange something to get something else.

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