The Year I Choose Gratitude
Happy birthday to me but I have been an ungrateful little child.
For as long as I can remember, I don’t think I’ve experienced any birthday in my adult life where I didn’t cry. I should tell you that the tears were not due to loss or tragic accidents or things terrible enough to make an adult cry.
I’ll give you a few instances.
At 18, I cried over just gaining university admission when my friends gained theirs at 17. Mind you, I repeated primary 4 and primary 6 because I was such an olodo. So exactly whose fault was that? Hmn, Hauwa?
At 20, I cried because my mates (whom I finished secondary school with) were driving cars in university while I was trekking in my university.
At 21, I cried because I was finally out of university but I was not making money while all my peers seemed to have great jobs.
At 22, I cried because I was stuck at a job I hated and was always queuing for BRT at Ojota every evening. This one was quite brutal because I got sexually harassed at Ojota one evening. So I think the tears were well deserved this year. lol.
At 23, you will not believe I cried because I was not married and didn’t have a kid yet. Mind you, my salary was N45k so how exactly did I plan to pay for a wedding and raise a child?
I did not know but I wailed regardless.
At 24, I cried because I was getting older.
I could go on and on but there’s no need. You get the gist.
This year, in May, a month to my birthday, the blues started to set in and I knew that very soon, my brain would latch onto something for me to obsess over and I’d be on track to crying on my birthday but I stopped for a second.
What if I fought back?
What if I confronted my birthday blues?
What if I thought about it logically?
I looked back at all the years that I shed tears on my birthday and the reasons behind those tears and I cackled. Life certainly wasn’t soft and splendid because I am no Otedola but my parents did the best they could.
I wasn’t driving in university because my daddy simply didn’t have money to buy me a car while paying my international school fees in dollars. Was I insane?
Yes, my job out of university was a crappy one but almost nobody gets their dream job right out of uni. Also, if you had asked me what my dream job was at the time, I’d have said “Office Job”.
“Okay, what office job?”
I’d have come up blank. I needed those years stuck in that crappy job to figure out what I really wanted to do. Interestingly, that job led me to what I love doing now - telling stories right out of my imagination.
The boy I was crying about at 23? I promise I’d never give him the time of day now. Yet, I was crying about wanting to have his kid?? I’d have been in a marriage, depressed and probably stuck at my ‘office job’ with 3 of his big-crainum children to look after.
Crying at 24 for getting older is killing me because what will I now do at 50? I must have been very silly.
I am glad God didn’t actually give me something to cry about because was I really okay in the head?
This is not to say my life is perfect. No. I definitely have things to cry about but I’m sure I’ll look back in 5 years and the reason will be as stupid as my reason at 24.
So this version of me chooses contentment and gratitude. I simply do not subscribe to that life anymore. I have wasted enough years crying on my birthday. I plan to enjoy the rest.
I am very grateful for the things I have and for the things that are not here yet, I choose to believe that they will come. And if they don’t, then they were never for me.
If you deal with the blues too, I’ll be the first to say it is not easy to brush things off and you might need some time to finally see the light but please, choose gratitude. Don’t let it take you as long as it took me.
Find joy and be grateful for the things you have while you wait for the things you want.
Even if it’s the small joy of being able to buy amala or a pretty shirt you like. Find it.
Yes, the bad times will come because that is life however, do not turn the good days into bad ones because that’s how you slowly end up in a bad life.
I love you.
Till I write to you again,
Hauwa.
Happy birthday to me and I leave you with this song that I found on Osas’ page.
Happy birthday, Commandant.
My birthday's next week and I've been getting blues too, but I'm going to sit up straight.
Happy Beautiful Birthday celebration, Hauwa.🥰
Eid Mubarak.