Growing up being a loner, I hardly talk to anybody or even interact with my neighbors. So, at that time, I didn't know what it felt like to be pressured by peers. I only play Smackdown with my brothers, being the only girl among three guys. Apart from playing with them, nobody else.
I was in Secondary school then, and I used to keep my sit far from the other at the back, so the majority of my classmates avoided me cause I wouldn't follow them to discuss anything. Until I got into senior secondary, I had these three friends who wouldn't let me be. They always wanted to chat with me, but I would just look at them.
But they were persistent, their names were Elijah, chinwe, and Uju. So gradually, I started losing up, and I don't know how they did it, but I find myself being open and close to them. I didn't know I could be jovial and funny in this life. But they brought out the best in me.
Elijah is timid and shy but very loud around people who understand him but a brilliant guy, chinwe is the social butterfly and she is brilliant too and Uju is the life of the party, although she is not brilliant at all she has a way of removing herself from any problem even if she is the one that started it.
We became best of friends just like that; we study together and we are always on conference calls, especially during the weekends. We will talk till morning time. Life was good, no pressure at all.
When we finished secondary school, that's when the pressure started, Elijah got admitted into the high institution immediately to study engineering; we were all happy for him. I was still struggling with my waec, it was seized, and every other person's own came out very well. I was so unhappy but they kept encouraging me to continue studying and sit for another one.
The next year, chinwe and Uju got admission, and it was just me. I became bitter and very unhappy. I was a very bright student, so why are they always seizing my results? One night, I was talking to them and Elijah suggested that I buy a nursing school form, which I have to travel to Enugu to get, but guess what? I missed the exam.
The pressure was getting worse; I kept trying for 6 years, but my waec was constantly canceled. I was looking like a failure; you know a typical African home. Everybody was reminding me how my friends had graduated from high institutions, but I had yet to pass my waec, but my friends were friends indeed.
Uju finished and got married immediately; oh, I forgot Elijah was in his two hundred level when he got a scholarship to study in India. It is funny how they weren't pressuring me, but I was pressured inside to be like them; that year that Chinwe and Uju graduated, I studied like my whole life depended on it; I got an admission that year, and I passed my waec that same year everything falls in pleasant places for me.
That wasn't the end; Chinwe got a scholarship to do her masters in the United Kingdom. I was happier; they never made me feel like a failure, but with their help and encouragement, that's how I got where I am today. Sometimes friends won't pressure you, but you will be pressured by their success, either in a good way or a bad way. The choice remains yours.
Images are Ai generated
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