In life, I believe we can all give advice to others to the best of our knowledge. Some people give advice based on their personal experiences, others give advice based on what they have seen or heard.
While some advice seems to help, others sometimes make things worse. I believe we all make mistakes and in those situations, we seek advice on how to move forward, especially in bad situations. However, not all advice given should be adhered to as some might end up doing more harm than good.
But when giving especially to your loved ones, it hurts when they don't listen probably because they think you "whyne" too much or trying to be all up in their business. Either way when it gets to a point when their words and actions tell you to mind your damn business, what do you do?
I once had a case of my cousin who once stayed with me for some months. She was done with her secondary school education and needed a change of scenery hence her reason for coming to stay with me.
I loved having her around as we always talk and I made sure she felt safe to talk to me about anything without censoring. When she came around, I was on a 2-week break from work which afforded us time to talk and bond more but after my break was over, I had to go back to work which meant she would be left alone at home.
It didn't take long before she started getting bored being all alone at home till I got back from work, so she suggested enrolling in a computer school not too far from the house as it would enable her to gain some computer skills.
I enrolled her and saw that it made her very happy and everything was going fine until I saw her one day on her way back from the computer Institute with three girls whom she introduced as her "friends". They also attend the computer Institute and merely looking at them, I knew there would be trouble.
I started asking her questions about them to know more about the girls and from what I learned from her. Those girls spend money like they don't work for it(maybe they don't) and the worst part is what they spend money on (the latest shoes, bags, hair) and so on.
I warned her about them as I told her to focus on what she went for but It didn't take long before I started noticing the change in her as she tried so hard to "belong" to their circle.
As her big sister, I warned her severally about those girls and told her to disassociate herself from them and make friends with other students who seemed focused on what they went there for. At first, I thought she had stopped moving with them, not knowing she didn't listen. When I asked her why she was still friends with them she told me she couldn't help it since they both attend the computer training together.
The day she withdrew a large amount from her savings just to get one sandal for a ridiculous amount, I knew it was getting out of hand.
She once told me about that savings as she told me she had been saving since she started senior secondary school. According to her, she learned students mostly go broke when they get to a higher institution so she is planning ahead as her savings will help her in times of need. I remembered applauding her and telling her to keep it up.
Now seeing as she is already squandering the money that took her years to save bothered me and I figured if she wouldn't listen to me maybe she would listen to a more elderly person and that made me report her to her mum hoping she would talk some senses into her.
My decision seemed to aggrandize the issue as she changed completely towards me. She barely even saw me and would just mumble a "greeting" just to fulfill all righteousness and when I saw that she had taken it too far, I decided to let her be and allow her to have fun.
After some time, I noticed she was always feeling very sad and almost seemed like she wanted to cry. I wanted to ask her what the problem was but I felt she should reach out to me whenever she wanted to talk.
I was sleeping one night when I felt someone tapping me. I opened my eyes to see her sobbing while kneeling and I immediately knew there was trouble. I carried her up and allowed her to sit close to me. I waited for her to calm down before asking her to narrate what the problem was.
She told me all that happened between her and her "friends", and how they made her withdraw all her savings one day when they went to get some weave-on. She had told them about her little savings and they borrowed it from her and used it to get weave-on for themselves after promising her they would refund it soon.
She told me that when she noticed they weren't forthcoming about the payment, she started asking for her money and that was when they she started shouting at her telling her she couldn't even use it as a gift for them. When she told them that wasn't their agreement they told her she can't provide any proof that she gave them the money which was true since she gave them cash, so they could deny that they didn't get any penny from her. She told me that at that moment they told her to go her way and they stopped being friends with her.
She apologized to me and told me she had learned her lessons the hard way. I figured there was no way to get the money back from those girls but I believed what goes around comes back around.
This is my response to The Thinker's Corner Challenge by 
