#BN2015Epilogues: Tare Writes about Beginnings & Changes

Happy new year to all our readers! As promised, we are continuing the 2015 Epilogues due to the volume of responses we got. We’d like to thank every one who sent an entry, and if you sent your story before the 15th of December 2015, you will see it published on BellaNaija.

If you’re reading this and wondering, ‘What on earth is the series about?’ please catch up HERE.

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At the start of this, I wondered if I had anything to share at all — any story that was worth telling. 2015 has been a year of many unique stories for me. Like every other year, it has a significant tag attributed to it. For me, it is ‘beginning and change’. Of course, it isn’t the year I marry, or, the year I become a mother or any of those grand transitions per se; still, it birthed so many beginnings and changes for me.

It is the year I chose to be more intentional with my life. It is the year I decided to be more forward with my dreams and aspirations by taking learning more serious — school inclusive. Most of all, it is the year I learnt a lot of life lessons that made it a genuine experience.

A few months before the year started, I had ended an emotional attachment. That kind of attachment you enter unintentionally and find yourself fighting through ropes of pain and ache that have stiffened with time because you let them. Friends helped me through this — good friends. When I finally came through, it shocked me how we all move on eventually, even in the hardest of circumstances. By it, I started talking to myself. Now, this is something I do—talking—but for the first time, for myself. And, it worked! Praying did too.

Slowly, the slice of contentment and gratitude began to enter by the realization that my life, though bland in my eyes, was another person’s dream. It still amazes me that I lost or nearly lost satisfaction in and with myself and started to live through another’s eyes.

And when love came again because as with all life’s happening, love reoccurs — I was prepared for it, not awed, not perplexed but ready. I learnt too that mistakes we learn from can give a sense of preparedness for life’s reoccurring events. Life, as I have come to see it now, is a cycle of hot and cold events that test the strength of our collective and individual human spirit.

Towards the second quarter, school work became tougher, difficult to balance but with will came courage to withstand the challanges. The first semester of my third year was beautiful. It rolled on to be my best semester academically. I learnt the role of hardwork and for the first time in a long while, it gave me hope in the system. Probably too much hope in the possibilities ahead, I can’t tell but when the the next semester began, I pushed myself so hard that the very concept of impossible was neglected. I didn’t fail but I didn’t do as well as I had previously and for weeks afterwards, I fought a sense of loss, saying to myself “but I worked hard. I tried.” It didn’t help. This time talking didn’t help. It was saddening to learn that hardwork is not enough that there are many other statutes that thicken the soup of success.

2015 has taught me to accept certain things that I cannot change and work hard to achieve the best possible future for myself, family and society by daring myself daily and that in living intentionally, there is so much that the universe can do for me to achieve all I plan to and more. Though, I face challenging days, it’s inevitable and expected. 2015 taught me too how empty life is without Christ.

As 2016 approaches I hope to learn more about the woman I hope to become and build in myself a better, more deliberate consciousness of my mission to the world. Do have a pleasurable 2016, too!
Oyintare.

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