When I was growing up, the major reason I wanted to become an adult very quickly by getting into the university was because I could get freed from farm work at home because farm work was damn heavy at home. I knew I wouldn't feel the financial burden that much because I was used to fending for myself from an early age, apart from food, which I knew my parents were going to keep providing as long as I was in school. But when it came to other things, I would fend for myself.
But things became more real when I left home. There was a big difference between when I was living at home and eating from my mom's pot while also hustling to cater for other personal needs, and when I left home, still being supported with food by my parents while fending for my other needs. The difference was very huge. I would do a lot of tasks at school to earn money, but the money was never enough to sort out my bills, and I would be troubled. But if I were living with my parents at the family home, I would easily push the needs aside when I had tried and couldn't sort them out. After all, I was living in a home where the basic needs were sorted out.
There was a day when I went to work from school. Like, a stadium was to be built in our school, and my friends whom I tagged along with in hustling informed me that the foundation work was starting that day. So I went to the site after class, and that was it. We dug and dug with unstable borrowed spades, which slowed down the work because we weren't with our own spades, and the people we were borrowing from were using theirs as well.
The work lasted till 9 p.m. that night, from the afternoon when we started, and honestly, if I were still living with my parents, I would have abandoned the work and left. But at that moment, I needed the money very badly, and I just had to scale through.
By 9 p.m., my roommates were already calling my phone. They were scared something had happened to me because I had literally left for school that day and hadn't told them I was going out for work.
I got back around 10:30 p.m. that night, and I couldn't believe how "mature" I had become and how much I had come to play along with the demands of adult life.
Thanks for reading.
Photo: Chatgpt
