It is interesting how at 16 years, a girl cannot wait to grow up. At that stage of life, all she wants to do is get out of her parent’s/guardian’s/teacher’s box and have them respect her for who she feels she is, no matter how fickle that self-image is.
The problem that we make is that we end up growing up too fast before our time. We later realise we missed out on so much and the urge then is to either get frozen in time or try to go back. Many of us do, not without consequences. A common scenario may be an old woman who is unable to gracefully let go of youth. She continues to scramble for kiddie clothes and younger men to maintain that feeling.
One girl whose name I will omit just did that, to the consternation and maybe trauma of many. At the age of 16, she decided she was too in love to live without her boyfriend. She hurriedly did her class eight exams –performed not too well, if I may add- and in the same huff, moved in with her boyfriend. Less than nine months later, she was a mother, wife and well looking it.
What is so wrong with that? A lot. But I would have forgiven it had she stuck with it. But five years later (I am surprised it took so long), she finally ditched the family and went back to her mama’s house. Her husband has already cheated on her enough times, even had had a child with another girl. At 21, she already knew the trauma of a broken marriage and was now a single mother of a five year old. She could counsel you on bringing up a toddler, living with a stepchild, handling mother-in-law spurts, dealing with a cheating and abusive spouse, all from experience. Talk of growing up before your time!
The last time I saw her, she had slowly started reclaiming her youth, and though still a beautiful girl, you could see the lessons of the years in her eyes. I hope she will dump her pride and go back to school. But even if she doesn’t, I am sure the lesson nature taught has not been wasted on her.
“Do not hurry up life,” wisdom I wish she would have listened to. It reminds me of an email I received along time ago about the way we cannot wait to progress to the next stage in life- we can’t wait to go to school, move to the next grade, finish high school, go to college, graduate, start dating, get engaged, marry, have kids, see them start school, graduate, move out- the suddenly it hits us: we have grown old, are bound for the grave and we were in such a hurry to go to the next phase in life we forgot to live.
Life really is too short to waste doing all the wrong things. But then again, that is the only way many of us seem to learn. Another naïve girl told me the other day that she would be a fool to keep on repeating the mistakes others have done in the past. She should be able to learn from them and if she has to mess up, then it would have to be in an undiscovered territory. Save from pointing that no mistake has yet not been done by man, I reminded her that knowing the right thing to do does not necessarily stop you from doing the wrong thing, even when the consequences are staring you in the face. Often the thrill of the moment is just too great, you do not really care you are making the same mistakes others have made for ages before you.
This will not necessarily impel you to make better decisions. Our words of caution to the young wife hit brick walls. May be she did not see how we could possibly understand how in love they were, how perfect they were for each other and how ready she was for the path she had undertaken. May be she did, and still dared to take the risk. I might never know. I hope like girl no.2, we really do not have to learn from the school of hard knocks. One story of a girl in Argentina who even after giving birth to four kids by age fifteen and the local authorities moving to give her land and a house, still went ahead to get triplets a year later. At 16, she is a mother of seven. For her even experience quite lost its lesson on her.
totallyfemale 