Some days I hate adulthood and what growing up has done to me.
I never understood the purity of children when I was a child. I knew what was wrong and what was right. In fact, I didn’t really get it when people spoke of the innocence of childhood.
Now that I am deep into adulthood and a well-established senior member of the female gender; I understand just what adulthood destroys and why to a large extent, human beings get jaded; especially as they get older. I also understand the crime that it is to steal away a child’s innocence.
Life in a way doesn’t progressively get better. The world is a scary place. The more you know with time, the scarier you understand the world to be.
Childhood and youth shields one in part. I am specifically talking about children or youths who have had a stable and sheltered beginnings.
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I trusted more as a child. Indeed, I believed what I was told irrespective of who was telling it to me. So long as adults were involved, I trusted they were telling the truth. I trusted that their knowledge wasn’t questionable. I trusted that they always had my wellbeing at heart.
Adulthood destroyed all of that.
It is hard to trust. You have been lied to so many times that your antenna struggles to pick up what is true or false. The worst part is that I am part of this falsehood. When I was younger, I deliberately guarded against telling lies.
Now, it is easier for a lie to slip through.
I believed in love as a child. I believed that people were meant to be together; that when they found themselves, they would live happily ever after. I believed that only love made a person propose and only love made another accept.
Boy! Didn’t life explain things better when I grew older.
Love has to be one of the most complicated notions to exist ever. People love and still go their separate ways. People fall in love, get married, fall out of love and get divorced; all in the midst of so much bitterness.
People marry without loving for a million and one reasons. People remain in marriages without love for a million and one reasons. There is no happily ever after on this earth. Happiness comes in pockets. Sometimes, it is spaced so far from each other one barely recognizes it. At other times, it comes in tiny bubbles that break away in just seconds and everything sad about life sticks closer to a person than all that is happy and light.
I believed siblings would always be there for each other and protect each other. I guess I never really paid attention to Cane and Abel. Or to Jacob and Esau.
Now I know that sometimes within a family, relationships can break down irretrievably for no apparent reason. Sometimes, the closest siblings will ever be remains in their childhood.
I believed all I had to do to have a good life was to be good to people. No one would hate me if I was good.
But I have learnt that while being good is good, it will never be a shield against evil.
Adulthood has taught me that evil doesn’t look for who is deserving. Bad things happen to good people and there really is no explanation to that. Karma sometimes is deaf, dumb and blind. Sometimes, there is no plan to reward people who strive to live good lives.
Life is an equal opportunity fucker. Life is pansexual. It doesn’t really care what you are. If it finds you attractive, it will fuck you up. There is no rhyme nor reason to this.
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Permit my French.
When I was a child, there was only two columns. Right and wrong. It was easier to categorize everything and everyone.
Now that I am into adulthood, I understand nuance. I know that there are many columns. Circumstances will always colour situations. Some things will be wrong simply because of timing. Some other things will be right simply because of timing.
I didn’t support divorce. My upbringing never gave this a good light. Now I know that some marriages are untenable. Now I know that no matter how hard you try to keep a marriage, it can end. And you don’t even have to believe in divorce for this to happen. I know that divorce is the only way for some people to prevent themselves from killing each other.
I think that the hardest thing that growing up has hit is my faith. It has only stood the test of time simply because of a supernatural grace that I cannot explain. But the fallibility of human beings and the seemingly impossibility of completely adhering to a faith has brought me to some of the lowest points of my life.
Somehow, my faith still exists.
I think it is the only thing that is pure within me. If I lose it, I would have lost the last string of sanity in me. If it disappeared, then the halo this world wears will disappear…All that will be left is darkness.
My belief is like a rainbow. It is like the sun fighting to peep through clouds. And though it disappears completely sometimes, it comes back the next day. It is what gives me hope. It is what makes me look ahead into the future and not fall deep into the abyss of nothingness. A place where nothing matters and nothing has meaning.
Some believe in humanity. I don’t. Humanity is a big fat fallacy.
I believe in God. I barely can explain Him. But He is real to me.
That is why I can face tomorrow.
If he did not exist, I would have no reason to try at anything. I would just exist till I stopped existing. A disappearing mist.
I think that my faith is the only semblance of innocence from my childhood.
Remember all the Bible said about children.
They remain the purest form of human beings.
So, yes! Adulthood is no fun. That is why all the bad things are only legal when you are an adult. They know that adulthood requires succour.
