There are songs I listen to when I want to encourage myself to live my most authentic life – Greatest Day by Take That and Good Life by One Republic. When I listen to those songs there is a picture I see in my head of me. It is so real to me, I can see the roads, the city, the shops, what I am wearing, what I am doing. However, that picture in my head did not look like my reality and it made me sad. I refuse to look back and think, “I’ve really suffered but thank God for life” which is how I feel when I look back at the last 3 years of my life.
You know that sound that Outlook makes when you get an email? That sound was such a trigger for me. I would hear it and my heart would race, my palms would get sweaty, and my first thought was always, “what have I fucked up now?”. I was in a constant state of anxiety and fear over a sound. Sure, it would be more digestible if I enjoyed the work, was being paid in something other than naira, if my supervisors had a habit of giving constructive feedback and not personal insults, and if the country itself was not trying to kill me at every turn. When I talk to my parents about this, they always say that life isn’t meant to be easy and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like to get to where you want to be. If that is how life was for them then cool, but I refuse to have that be my own reality. Life is not meant to be this hard. It isn’t easy, weapons will form against you, but the weapons shouldn’t form then call their family members to take part and multiply all before you’ve had a chance to process and fight the initial weapon.
The COVID-19 lockdown has been a blessing for me as it gave me time to really reflect on my reality. My decision to throw the towel in on this reality and opt for a new one started at the beginning of the year, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the moment the first positive COVID-19 case was announced in Lagos. I noticed how terribly most countries were handling the pandemic and something in me just could not take it. If all these first world countries were doing such a poor job, then what would happen in Nigeria? And do I really want to be a part of it? That night I went home and told my Dad that this country is not for me and I am not mentally prepared and not far enough in my career or life to risk my potential by staying here. He started with his usual, “the grass isn’t always greener on the other side” but I knew that deep down it was. Even if it wasn’t, it’s easier to water it there than here. I was constantly anxious, I was dealing with a broken heart, working every day to find joy and avoid slipping into a depression.
I appreciate all the people that want to make Nigeria a better place (though I have noticed that the ones that want to do this the most aren’t even in Nigeria) but it is not one of my goals and I am okay with that. I checked the price of a flight to London and booked it that night. I had no job lined up, no home there, and now no money in my savings.
So, there I was in April of 2020 and all I had was a plane ticket for late June. At this point, the government had closed the airports so I knew my flight was cancelled but I knew I was going to use that one-way ticket eventually. I had not gotten any of the jobs I had applied for. I had used referrals from friends and the network my parents had, still nothing. Jobs were barely being posted online and the company’s I was able to reach all had the same response “we are only hiring non-client facing roles” or “we need someone with more experience”. My spirit was deflated, finding a job is difficult in a good economy, imagine the recruitment landscape when there’s a global pandemic. My prayer to God was “I do not know what, but something must come. Whatever it is, we move”. I kept praying it, thinking it, begging it to be true. Lord knows the weeks I spent avoiding my actual job to apply for jobs and then the weeks where I did neither because I was defeated and felt like a failure. I had made a huge life change with nothing planned. I didn’t feel like I had made a mistake, but I did feel like I had picked the absolute WORST time.
I eventually gave up on finding a job, clearly, that was not the plan God had for me and who am I to argue with God. I won’t lie and say I was confident in God’s plan; I did not know what it was and every day I would panic, give up, then start again. A friend of mine said that she believes she hears God’s voice in her gut, that tiny voice at the back of your mind. I am not the most religious, in fact, most people think I am not religious at all, but I hear that tiny voice all the time and that voice was saying “maybe it’s time to consider a masters?”. So, I decided to look for a master’s program that would help with my experience issue. I knew I had to find a master’s program that would make me competitive which is how I found that you can get a masters in Management. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head when I found this course. It felt ordained, it felt tailor-made, it felt perfect for me. It was scary leaping into something that felt so right because we’ve all been there before where someone or something feels so right and ends up being so wrong.
In mid-May, I applied to 3 schools, the London School of Economics, King’s College London, and Imperial College. I didn’t tell anyone because I was not convinced that I would get in, these were top 5 Universities and I had no GMAT and my undergrad grade was just on the cusp of a 2.1, a heavy breeze would’ve knocked it down to a 2.2. Safe to say I was looking at God with a side-eye. Within 2 weeks I had heard back from LSE and KCL and I didn’t get in. God’s plan was looking very suspicious at this point and my brain was convinced that if I could not get into KCL or LSE then how did I expect to get into Imperial. To make matters worse, I had completely checked out of work and was pretty sure I had turned into a liability to the office rather than an asset. I knew that there was no way I was staying in Lagos once the airports opened. I had tunnel vision and this current situation was not good enough anymore. On the 6th of June, I was accepted into Imperial College London.
There was no forethought or perfectly executed plan I made, all there was was a desire to change my reality and embark on a new life adventure. The old one was not working for me and no one cared enough to help me change it. The only person was me and I had to take a huge leap of faith. Without faith there is nothing. Faith in yourself is unparalleled. There is nothing you can’t achieve once you have faith in yourself and your destiny.
It is so important that as you make life plans and tell yourself what you want to do, you do not allow your desires to be derailed. That is not to say you should not consider the important people in your life. I am a firm believer that my life is on a path made up of the things I want to achieve and the people in my life are here because we have similar goals. If someone is no longer in your life then your paths are now different and that is all it is. No more, no less, do not give yourself anxiety over the reason. It is not worth changing the life plans you genuinely want for yourself because of another person. Whether that is a relationship, parent, friend, sibling. You will be the person that lives with the consequences of your decisions, not the person you made them for. Everyone has an agenda in life and the only one that matters, when it comes to your life is your own.
