if there's one good thing about staying in the dorms, it is that you get to meet a lot of people from different backgrounds and experience life outside your comfort zone (home).
During my years in the university, I've met a number of awesome people. Some have impacted me positively while others have not. But I'm grateful to have met all of them.
There was a girl I met through a friend's friend in my first year. We weren't really close but we were cool. Whenever we crossed paths, we always did the necessary formalities and went our separate ways.
In my second year, things had changed. My roommate, her friend was no longer my roommate. So we didn't share ties anymore. But after a while, we somehow started getting to know each other outside the friend's friend boundaries. She began coming to visit me alone. I didn't have a problem with that though.
I love cooking. Most people around me, know how I love cooking. And if I love you, I might even get to cook for you😂.
Somehow, we got closer and I happened to cook for her. We stayed in the same hostel and all of a sudden, cooking for her became an everytime thing.
She would come in the morning 'Frances, have you eaten? What did you eat?' If I felt like, I'd answer. If I didn't, I'll shrug her off. Soon, she opened up to me that her groceries had finished. And that's why she hardly cooks. She'll either starve or end up buying food from outside. I felt for her. As a fellow student, I understood that yes, it's normal for one's foodstuffs to finish. I still had enough foodstuffs, enough to last both of us the whole semester and possibly remain. That's how I began my unpaid chef work for this young lady. So, anytime I wanted to cook, I'll always cook for two. Or if I had an extra mouth, I'll cook for three.
During the course of the semester, she had an event where she had to go home. I expected her to at least come back with some groceries. No parent would have their child in school and let them leave for school like that. Dear reader, this girl came back to school with rolls of peanut, cornflakes and biscuits.
Howww?!!!
We were just halfway into the semester. What did she expect to be eating? That was when I began noticing loopholes in her story.
First of all, she didn't have a stove. When I asked her about it, she said one of her friend was helping her keep it. Since she didn't have foodstuffs, it was fine. The bowl of contention was meat and fish. The cost of stocks for the food we both ate was always on me. The day I asked her to support with meat, she said her brother had not sent her money. I believed that. The next week, I asked her again, she said why don't we eat the food like that. What do you mean? I should starve myself of meat because you didn't want to contribute.
I decided to study the way she spent her money. After all 20 out of the 24 hours in a day, she was always in my room. I noticed that she would rather spend her money on creams and perfumes rather than food.
What do you mean you would rather starve than spend your money for creams? I also noticed that her parents were actually very well to-do. But they weren't so strict with her. Hence the resuming without foodstuffs.
Slowly, I began to cut things off with her. I started cooking for just myself and we started becoming distant. Our only connection was the food!
The Hive-Naija weekly prompt for the week said >At what points do you need to set boundaries and turn down someone who needs our help despite our natural instinct to help others?
There are times when people begin to infringe on your personal rights, times when helping them begins to exhaust you, times when helping that person begins to seem like a burden. Those are points/times when you need to cut back and reflect on whether helping that person is still the right thing to do.
There are people who have this sense of entitlement to people helping them. They believe it's their right to be helped. And when they get that help they needed or wanted, they begin to misuse it. And when they begin to misuse it, it's good to help them again by setting boundaries and turning them down.
That is what I believe is the right thing to do. The moment you begin to question yourself if helping someone is or was the right choice, you should turn down or set boundaries. Doing the right thing will never make you question yourself twice.
As for me and that young lady, we still talk but we aren't close anymore. I don't think she's gotten a stove yet.
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