I’m just so hurt that this is the future I find myself in. When I was much younger, I had a very different picture in my head. I don’t even know if it was me being naïve or just hopeful, but I genuinely believed things would be better by now. That adulthood would feel like arrival, like you work hard, you grow up, and eventually you step into some form of stability where life starts to make sense. I really thought we would have made significant progress as a nation.
There was no other version of the future I could properly imagine. In my mind, things were always going forward, always improving. It didn’t occur to me that you could “grow up” and still be stuck in the same cycles, not even stuck but regress, and still be struggling with the same basic pressures, still trying to survive more than you are actually living.
Even now after i came back from my masters, i’m here, and I feel disappointed in the country I’m in, and honestly in the world in general. What hits me the hardest is this, nothing right now even feels like it is being done in a way that guarantees a better future and that thought is scary, because it means we are not just dealing with present problems, we are actively shaping tomorrow with the same habits, or even worse habits and the same systems, the same neglect and then people will act surprised in 10 or 15 years when things look the same or worse.
A lot of us Nigerians grew up believing adulthood would come with stability, at least it looked like that in our childhood not this survival mode. Back then, there was this promise in our heads that by this age, things would have “aligned.” That life would have opened up. I actually used to think I’d be rich at this stage of life. Lol!! I was certain about it in that childlike way where doubt doesn’t exist yet.
Sometimes I’m disappointed in myself, most of the time, I’m angry at the systems and the people who keep reinforcing them. Especially those in power who seem more interested in preserving their own advantage than building anything meaningful for the future and looking at the incoming elections It feels like some people are not just occupying positions of power, but actively training the next generation of their own influence, securing continuity for a system that has not served the majority well.
Still, I write this not because I have answers, but because I can’t pretend I don’t see it anymore. I can’t keep acting like this frustration doesn’t exist in me. It does.
