This Is 30. This Is My Life.

The girl walked slowly, barely seeing anything but conscious of the car honks and the white markers dotting the asphalt. They were the tiny strings bridging the semi-conscious state she was in. After a few puffs of her inhaler, she finally got to the top of the hill, away from three girls whose giggles were so loud they sent the swans skittering.

She brought out her copy of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The book was worn out from constant reading and she planned to continue until the words faded. She scrunched up her braids, pulling tightly at her scalp, even though it had been a month since her last visit to the salon. Oh, the woes of the tender-headed.

She delved into the first chapter, but the loud shrill girls’ laughter stroked a volcano of anger within her. Almost pushed to tell them to lower their voices, her ears caught the train of their conversation:

“Oh! I can’t wait for my white wedding. It’ll be a ball gown, and my prince charming will sweep me off my feet!”

The girl sighed almost dreamily as her companions squealed like birds.

Overcome with an emotion she couldn’t name, she wanted to yell at them and ask why their dreams had to involve a wedding or a man. They were only 12, for God’s sake, she thought. Her thoughts swirled like a roller coaster: Or was she truly weird, as the kids in high school claimed? Was something wrong with her?

However, at that moment, a chord of self-acceptance struck within her, helping her stand a little straighter than she used to.

♣

Eight years had passed since then. The girl had journeyed through a kaleidoscope of experiences. At first, she believed she had touched the apex of love, only to realize it was merely the sexual awareness of adolescence. Then she felt love looking down at her, only to discover she admired his brilliance, not his being.

♣

At 20, the girl decided that marriage wasn’t a do-or-die affair, contrary to what society and culture preached. She informed her parents, who refuted her decision. They screamed, they cajoled, and she watched them with the calm interest of a lion watching its cubs.

♣

Now 30, the girl feels all the blues that come with it. She is no Martin Luther King Jr., but she wishes she had the superpower of mind-reading to communicate to every woman:

“This is the year 2090, and this is your captain speaking: You’re good, you’re fine, and you’re enough. Marriage is a choice, not a must. The same goes for children and childbirth.”

She would broadcast messages like this, and they would be her starting point.

She never liked how children came to be. It felt too primal, too animalistic. Perhaps it was fear, but it was also valid. She remembered her leg ulcer, a wound that refused to heal, exposing muscles and veins for the first time. It was raw, carnal pain. She felt death until she couldn’t.

♣

Her second message would be, “Hey, ladies, you are not invalid, and you are not illogical nor are you ‘too emotional’. If you have pain, talk about it. You shouldn’t be spat on or dismissed because society expects you to fix everything simply because you possess a vagina.”

♣

Children stress her. They cry and moan and scream and then annoy you. They then proceed to gaslight you and cut up your heart into pieces and make you chew them. How did she know?

Well, simple. She’s someone else’s child.

♣

The girl has found that it’s difficult to say a lot of things due to the history dotted with lies so that people like her would be exactly what would make the society seem strong whereas it is made up of basket holes, untaut, dripping water, and waiting to snap.

♣

The girl overhears ladies lamenting that they don’t have husbands at age 20 and she wants to scream into their minds. “Why are you in a rush? Must you marry? Do you truly want to get married or that’s what you’ve been taught, urged, groomed, and conditioned to do and want?”

♣

The girls see some girls with mirror stances like hers, however, they’re tired of being outliers. So, they are willing to shove down their standards and trade them for a grandstanding in society as a married woman with resentment. They want men who think the kitchen is attached to their vaginas and that their vaginas come with spices and cleaning materials like the mop and the toilet brush, whilst also being willing to dabble in the arts of escorts almost every night.

♣

The girl sees women who after one child decide that they can’t go through it again but they decide to get policed by their husbands who, out of selfishness, want more children whereas the child won’t take and take from their body for nine months. Four or five layers of their skin won’t be cut through in the event of a cesarean section.

♣

Her third mass message broadcasted into all the female minds across the world would be, “Hello! This is your fellow in the struggle, the phrase ‘your time is running out’ is a carefully concocted lie propagated by society to make sure that you’re compliant and perhaps to see to it that the world’s population does not decrease. If you decide that marriage is for you, take your time, do not settle, ask those questions, leave if you want to, and never settle. There is always someone that would meet up to those standards, whatever your variations are.”

The girl has always wondered whenever insensitive acquaintances and potty-mouthed relatives keep urging her with phrases like, “Time is running out o! This isn’t the time for a Ph.D. Your mates are married and popping children. Don’t be left out.” She always wanted to ask them this: whose time? Your time or her time? Her utmost desire is to look on the horizon on her deathbed and know that in each season, irrespective of the varying flavours life presented her with, what would be stamped on her DNA is that she lived by her principles and it gave her the miracle of not a just mere existence but the richness that came with full presence amidst the irregularities of life.

So, it is not their time for them to dictate how she uses it or not. Those people wouldn’t be there for the silence and swallowed words for whichever man she decided to call her own. It almost feels like those people were in some sort of sadness and were trying so hard to spread the sadness around like the flu. Being single isn’t a curse or a cause for alarm or misery. It’s a journey and it’s yours to do and to will and to know when to cut it short. Have you been found yet or you are still in a state of yearning? Or are you simply lonely that anybody who comes looking will do?

As for the ones popping babies. The girl reasons that she has nothing to lose as she’s not in immense pain or on the verge of losing her life trying to bring another into the world. She’s not worrying about another mouth to feed when there’s a lot to feed in herself.

♣

The girl wishes to remind everyone who compares her to her peers that she is not, and will never be, like them. Just as DNA and RNA define each individual’s uniqueness in biology, she too is distinct and incomparable.

♣

Her last broadcast to the minds of all women would be, “And my dearest, when you know that it’s time to walk out and leave that marriage. You do it with all the love for yourself and dignity. You won’t give yourself false excuses and you won’t for one minute think of society. Divorce is fine and beautiful just like marriage is. If separation is the path of least resistance, forge on ahead and take that step.”

♣

The girl ignores the call of an acquaintance calling her phone on her 30th birthday as she opens her heartfelt thoughts in an essay.

“This is 30. This is my life. And with each candle I blow out, I claim it fully—flawed, resilient, and wholly mine.”