not for the faint hearted

It wouldn’t be me if I did not talk about this and indeed I shall. Maybe it would help me, be me, or get over it.

I have these cousins that bear the same last name as I do. Growing up, her family right from her grandfathers didn’t like their name so they adopted mine, so they are not really my cousins per se, but they have the last name as I do, so indeed we are. When I was younger, as in Kindergarten young, I used to be very smart; some even thought I was some kind of child prodigy. So her mum proud of me, and wondering if something was wrong with her two children, a boy and a girl a few years younger than I, she asked me to coach them teach them over the summer. So every morning they would drop them off and I would teach them English, math, etc. I don’t know if they liked it, I really didn’t but when you’re smart you share your brain especially with your cousins.

When I went to college to study Law, her mother told me her daughter wanted to study Law as well. She wants to be just like you, just like her mum wanted to be just like mine, but that’s a while other story. Then, I was in school for donkeys of years. In between that, I can’t remember when exactly, I know I did see her briefly when I studying for the Bar exam and I think that was the very last time I saw her. She decided to go to college in America, despite the fact that she had gotten admission into one of the best schools in Nigeria, to study Law, her mum felt her education would be more worthwhile if she studied it here. So she did, and then, I did mine, and moved here in 2000.

The other day as a joke I put my name through a search engine and there it is. Her name pulls up. She is an attorney with one of the best law firms in the country. She must have been so good that they gave her the job without her having even passed the Bar for the state she worked in. In a little while she did, so they put up all her data online. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from her college in Economics, and went onto to Harvard Law School (how she paid, beats me unless it was a scholarship) and she works as an Energy and International relations lawyer. This is the same field I would die to work in, I am trying to work in, and I am so far from even getting close to working in. She achieved my dream by pretending to be me, she did it and she did it better than me.

Yes, stories like this illustrate my sadness and bitterness. They explain where I am from and what I am up against. Most times I say to myself n consolation, “girl you are not in competition with anyone, you have your achievements and she has hers, and she achieved being you, only better version of you, with your last name and everything.” My question is, and I have achieved what exactly?

Ever since I have known myself I have wanted something to take me away from my boredom, to offer me a world of excitement, an escape, from humdrum routine of life, a meaning to my existence. I would sit in between my studying and hope for a sliver of excitement, maybe it was that hope and the daydreams that stopped me from becoming magna cum laude, maybe it was that dream that led me to come to America, and it is that dream that made me fail in becoming the better version of me. I need to wake up from that daydream because it is not going to happen, I am 30 years old and it has not happened, it probably never will happen and I should just concentrate on the reality of my existence and forget whatever there could possibly be.

I just feel like I robbed myself of a better life. I had a plan for myself and that plan was badly executed and without a good execution I can only be what I am now. A rough estimate of what anyone in their right mind would have imagined I would turn out to be. A tool. A stupid old tool, who is as brain dead and devoid of any sense of worth whatsoever.

I wish there was some formidable way of ending this deep heartfelt rant. This is as deep an insight into me and my frustration as anyone of you are ever gonna get.
But there isn’t a chance of hope. Sometimes I pray I can be content with my mediocrity. At moments I wish I didn’t feel I owed myself a smidgen of success in my dreams, but there are times when I wonder why did I ever feel like there was something special about me, why? Why didn’t I just wish for other things young girls like me hoped for, a good husband, dozens of kids, money, and a comfortable life. Why did that seem so mediocre, and why did I want something exciting to happen in its stead, and why did that pursuit ruin everything else in between?