Hi! My name is Beks, and I’m 29 years old, the age where people assume you should have life figured out. But here I am, just starting to figure out life.
Let’s rewind a little, to the actual beginning….
I’ve always lived life in the fast lane. The earliest story that comes to mind is the one of how I started school. It is the norm that kids have to meet a certain age requirement before they can start school, history shares that back then in the day, they would have to check if your hand could extend over your head to touch the opposite ear to decide if you were “grown enough” for a class. In my time however, most kids were put in nursery school (which is the first level of education in Nigeria) between three to five years range. But me? I was around two years of age.
My mom likes to share the story of how I started school every now and then, according to her…..every time the school bus came for my older brother (he’s four years older btw), I would cry and cry to follow him. One day, after I had wailed enough, she let me climb in, with the plan to dress up and meet up with the bus at the school so she can take me back home. To her surprise however, by the time she arrived at the school, I had already been put in a uniform and was seated happily in a classroom (the school played a fast one on her 😂). She shared that she could see the joy on my face and thought, maybe I was really ready to start school then. Guys, that’s how I started nursery school at two years old lol, I mean now that I’m a mom….. I lowkey think she let me go so she could have time to herself.😂
From then on, everything else moved quickly. I breezed through kindergarten and primary school, finishing at Primary 4 instead of Primary 6. I graduated secondary school at 15 — even after repeating SS3 because I failed math in WAEC and NECO (iykyk 😂). I finished university at 19, landed my first job at 21… and the pattern continued.
My life wasn’t just fast-paced in academics though, every part of it seemed accelerated…..that explains why at 29, I feel like I’ve being alive for 40 years 🥲. I have passed through every major life milestone that you can think of……education, jobs, entrepreneurship, falling in love, heartbreak, loss, marriage, motherhood, friendship breakups, being broke, having money, relocation, recession — you name it, I’ve lived it. I’m literally one of those people who can always relate to almost any story you tell. It sounds wild, but it’s true. Lol.
Yet here’s the cliché twist: even with all this, I still feel like I haven’t really lived. I feel like I rushed through most phases, but I rarely paused to be present in them. I’ve been so busy checking off society’s boxes — the ones everyone else set for me — that I forgot to check my own, I didn’t even create any. I forgot to ask myself who I am outside of what I’ve accomplished, and I’m only just realizing it less than four months away from turning 30. You are probably curious to know what brought me to this realization? Did I just wake up? What was the canon event?….well if you stick around for subsequent posts, you just might get your answer.
This post however is me embracing the realization I’ve made and choosing to start again.
If I were to put it in religious terms, I would say I am being born again. That is, I have made the conscious decision to choose myself, to live intentionally, to slow down enough to actually be here.
And I am choosing…
- To live, not just exist.
- To be seen, not just noticed.
- To be listened to, not just heard.
- To create my own boxes, and check them at my own pace.
Because that’s the beauty of life and the free will that God has given us. We have this free will so we can choose — and it’s so amazing that even when we choose wrong, we can always choose again and that no matter how many times it takes, we can always keep choosing until we choose right.
So if you’ve read this far, welcome. This blog is one of my choices — a space where I can reflect, rant, and right (yes, write — see what I did there? 😂).
This is how I start again.
This is how I choose myself.
And maybe, just maybe, it will encourage you to choose yourself too.
With love,
Beks 💜
Beks Unfiltered 