Happy new month, it’s a new day and a new month and it’s so exciting, maybe because it’s also my brother’s birthday but then I mean we woke up feeling good, we have food to eat, we are healthy, we can walk, we can talk, the list goes on. There are a lot of things we should be grateful for, most of which are sometimes overlooked.
So it’s a new month, what are the things you planned out for this month, what are the things you want to do? Where do you want to go to this month? Do you usually plan your day ahead? Do you write out what you need to get done?
I know the pandemic has really disrupted some things but still we can still get things done. I’d suggest writing your goals down for the month and breaking it to weekly and daily goals. Breaking…
Have you ever compared yourself to someone? I know I have and you have too. I guess it’s just part of the human nature. Often times either consciously or subconsciously, we find ourselves comparing ourselves to someone either in a positive or negative way.
Comparing yourself to others wouldn’t do you any good at all so you shouldn’t waste your precious time comparing yourself to someone, feeling sad and getting into depression. You don’t need it.
Comparing yourself to others is unhealthy for you in all ways possible. It lowers your self esteem, it makes you sad, it makes you angry, it could also make you depressed and envious. So tell me do you want to feel this negative emotions? Comparison is the thief of joy, when you compare your success to someone’s, you don’t feel to pleased with yourself. Take for instance, I’m feeling happy that I just accomplished…
Being single can be lonely sometimes but I’d definitely pick being single than being with the wrong person. You can definitely enjoy being single but will you enjoy being with the wrong person?
You’re definitely lucky being single, some people are stuck in a toxic relationship they can’t get out of and are craving to be single and away from the person. As you’re craving for a relationship, someone else is craving to get out of theirs.
THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR AS YOU’RE SINGLE
YOU DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE STRESS OF A RELATIONSHIP: you’re free from the stress and hurt that comes from being with the wrong person. You are not constantly thinking of getting away from someone and being on your own. You’re not worried about someone not treating you right or making time for you. You’re stress free from a relationship.
Hey love, we’re back with a new topic in the single series, we’ve already looked at reasons why you are single and today we’d be looking at the different types of single people. So keep reading to see which category you fall under.
THE ROMANTIC: you’re a die hard rom-com fan. You’ve read every romantic book and watched every romantic movie. You have an expectation of what your boyfriend is going to be like. Piercing blue eyes that makes you want to drown in them, six feet tall so he overshadows you, six packs that you want to trace with your manicured fingers as you lay in bed…you just have an exaggerated idea of what your boyfriend is going to be like and what he’s going to do or how you’re going to meet. You’ve planned all the romantic getaways, how you’d travel to Paris the city of love, how…
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I finally regained consciousness I realized I was in a moving vehicle. I woke up with a throbbing headache and a weary body. My eyes could barely stay open, everything around me was wobbly and my head spinned from dizziness.
When I finally forced my eyes open seconds later, I realized I was not alone, there were about sixteen other young girls in the vehicle – age range between 10–16. We were packed like sardines inside the steel walled vehicle, which I later realized was a shipping container.
Chiddy! Everything came flooding back and once again I began to panic, my eyes moved from one girl to another in search of her. After seconds of fruitless search my eyes rested on a small frame, curled into a ball and pressed to a corner of the moving vehicle – Instantly I knew it was Chiddy , she had on the same dress as the last time I saw her.
I tried to go to her but my hands and legs were tied, so I called for her, more times than I can count, but she did not stir – she was fast asleep.
“Please wake her up.” I pleaded with a girl seated next to her but she ignored me. Somehow I couldn’t take my eyes off the girl’s face – it was in a terrible state. Her eyes were swollen shut and had red patches around it. Her lips were also bruised and broken.
In return she glared at me angrily for gaping at her.
“Sorry.” I murmur turning away in embarrassment.
I had to make my way to Chiddy on my own. With my hands and feet tied in front of me I dragged myself on the hard steel surface of the shipping container until I got to her.
“Chiddy, wake up…it’s Chinny.’’ I tapped her lightly as soon as I got to her. She sprang up immediately – frightened. But as soon as she saw me relief washed over her already strained features and she burst into uncontrollable tears.
“Chinny! I have been trying to get you to wake up, I thought you were dead’’ She cried and grabbed me in a hug. My heart bled for her, I could see she had cried herself to sleep.
“I am fine Chiddy…why are we here Chiddy?’’ I asked taking her hands in mine.
“It’s Gida he kidnapped us!’’
The drive was never ending, I slept off twice and each of those times I woke up only to find out we were still on the road.
“Where are they taking us and why hasn’t the police found us yet?’’ I murmured to myself, but then I realized that the Nigerian police never really stop and search truck drivers, they only prey on innocent motorists from whom they are sure to get bribes.
What a rotten security system we have in my country, I connected my fist to the steel container in anger. The so called police officers in my country have renounced their humanity in pursuit of bribes, sometimes change as small as a hundred Naira – only a dollar divided in three places with some extra change. Every sector of the economy is sprawling in corruption at the expense of the masses.
The vehicle finally came to a stop at about 5pm after about six to seven hours long drive.
They had stopped to allow us a few minute of rest and bathroom break. Before they let us out they untied our legs but not our hands. Because we were not allowed to go earlier, some of the girls – my sister included had wet themselves in the vehicle, so it was quite a relief to be let out of the urine smelling container even in the middle of nowhere.
Why did Gida do this? Does he want money? What is his reason for taking us from our home? Those thoughts were racing through my mind when I saw the scoundrel. As soon as our eyes met, he gave me the most sadistic smirk I’d ever seen! His reaction instantly ruffled my already falling feathers. Without thinking I launched for him like the Apollo heading for its first space mission – forgetting that it’s hands were still tied.
“You bastard! How dare you do this!?’’ I yelled reaching for him, but he eluded me like the infamous Bermuda Triangle, laughing like a maniac every time he escaped my grasp.
When he had enough of toying with me he grabbed me and slapped me so hard it sent me reeling backwards to earth where I belong. My sister screamed and tried to run to me but Gida pulled her away while I struggled to pick myself back up. If slaps could make one see stars, I would swear I saw a constellation of dancing stars that evening.
However, the journey soon began again.
But after another thirty minute’s drive. We were told that the rest of the journey would be on foot.
We had walked for almost an hour when we finally arrived at a camp hidden smack in the middle of substantial greenery. It was almost dusk when we arrived.
The camp was in a warehouse in the midst of a thicket, it was like an abandoned testing site of some sort. It was shrouded roundabout by tall grasses and trees. Small shacks covered with palm fronds dotted the empty spaces around it. Barb wired fence covered in grasses surrounded the facility roundabout. Trees and tall grasses serving as shrouds stood on every part of the property.
The camp was filled with men – about fifteen in number. As soon as they saw us they began to jubilate.
These men had different ammunitions and guns strapped to their body. Most of them had keffiyehs of different colors wrapped around their heads. The clothes on some of their backs were overworn and in a terrible state. The general outward appearance of some of the men bordered between downright shabbiness and nonchalance.
It wasn’t long before I realized where we were.
The closer we got to them, the more I pleaded with God to rescue us forthwith. The men in the camp were the same men I had watched on my phone some weeks back, looting, kidnapping and murdering people in the name of religion.
Since they popped up on my phone screen I could not get the image of them out of my head, tales of what they do with young girls were still fresh in my head. My eyes darted towards my younger sister immediately and tears began to pour down my cheek – I am only sixteen how do I protect my ten year old sister from these monsters. I thought with overwhelming sadness.
My mind was in an erratic state when I spotted a girl of about 12 or 13 heavily pregnant and struggling to draw water from a well in the distance. Seeing her so young and pregnant confirmed my worst fears and drove me to further tears.
We met about four young girls there when we arrived but they did not acknowledge us or act like they had seen us.
After they made us all cleanup they put all sixteen of us in a single file. Then the leader asked the men without kwarkwarar – concubines/companions to pick one each from the girls. However, Gida quickly made it clear to them that he had taken I and my sister for himself – I almost threw up in my mouth as soon as those words left his foul mouth.
Thereafter, we were selected like second grade clothes from a local market by those men.
After the exhausting selection, three girls were left, they were given one of the shacks outside to stay in since all the men had picked out their own kwarkwarar’s.
I thought those young girls lucky and wished my sister and I were a part of them until later when I discovered the perverted reasons behind it – Those young girls became the camp prostitutes. The men could go in to meet with them and molest their young bodies whenever they needed a change of girls.
Happy New Month loves, thanks for checking out my post again.
The high value woman is a woman that knows her worth. She is confident and sophisticated. Every woman is of high value, most just don’t realize it.
TRAITS OF A HIGH VALUE WOMAN
SHE KNOWS HER WORTH: the high value woman knows her worth and is grounded in her values. She knows what she deserves, she knows that she’s the prize, she knows her trust and love has to be earned and not bought. She sets standards for herself and others. She has a clear vision of what she wants from life and goes after it. She believes in herself and doesn’t need anyone’s validation. She isn’t a people pleaser. She sets clear boundaries and doesn’t put up with ill treatment. She knows what she wants and stands for so she doesn’t fall for just anyone or anything. So…
Growing up as a teenager – especially as a relatively popular one, it is not unusual to have a group of friends in your circle. These friends sometimes come with an invincible but extremely vociferous companion called PEER PRESSURE.
Ever been a teenager? Then you’d know peer + pressure is a friend you shouldn’t listen to. Still it’s difficult to ignore the coaxing whispers – it’s always there, lingering in the corners of your mind, steadily buzzing like a swarm of bees.
Back when I was a teenager, secrets like being a virgin were safely tucked away from certain friends – these friends must not learn that a member of the clique is still a virgin, otherwise they won’t be by the weekend.
For boys being a V is a taboo at a certain age, and when a boy is still a virgin at 16, his peers with their invincible pal pressure would be there to whisper to said boy…
come on man! you can’t still be a V at sixteen.
They’d stare at him like an alien from a distant planet and then make it their duty to find him a girl. And that’s it for his virginity – gone with the wind, poof.
I hear it’s more rife now, young adults are ashamed of being virgins in high school.
Now the term virginity has become so unpopular – a friend actually called it a myth for the Z Generation. Even though I do not think that to be true.
Personally, I just wish young people would stop yeilding to their peer’s pressure.
Truth is whether you are a virgin in high school, or throughout the phase of adolescence, it doesn’t really matter to me or anyone for that matter.
What truly matters is that you do you at your own time. External whispers have only led many astray and in some cases to the waiting arms of their maker.
CHOOSE YE YOUR MASTER
Loads of young adult are serving life sentences today because they listened to that friend with his tag along buddy pressure. Some are dead today because they followed that friend/his chum – pressure.
Others live in constant regret because they allowed themselves be coerced into doing something they never would have done if they were thinking for themselves.
So many people today choose to make wealth the wrong way because of the level of duress their more privilege peers put on them, both on the gram/real life. They are everywhere, the…
It’s either we make it or die trying group.
Please do yourself a favor, never ever think like that. Thinking like that is like putting a timeline on your life.
Truth is some folks do not even need a lot of pressure – their peers don’t even need to do shit, their greed already done it.
Take note, when young people have no inside guidance, from a parent/guardian they become even more dysfunctional. Some follow the wrong crowd not because they want to but because no one cares enough to see them, listen to to them and call them back.
Others do not feel LOVED at home so they follow the first person that shows them a fraction of that human affection and sometimes when family fail to their peers readily step in.
Many teenagers spend their lives in and out of rehab today because they chose to listen to pressure’s human assistant – peer. Remember the word CHOSE, then remember this…
YOU are a master of your own mind. No one has the power to influence your decisions/thoughts except you give ears to them.
It is either you choose to be the master of your life or you let someone else control you and enslave your mind.
Choose the master of your life today – YOU OR YOUR PEERS.
AMARA AND PEER PRESSURE
My sister Amara lives in regret today because she wanted to be like that friend whom she looks up to – Izzy. The same one who kept whispering in her ear – damn girl you have to sleep with him, give this thing up already…you are not gonna get a medal for keeping it.
The friend with the opium goes – you have to try this stuff, it’s crazy…its gonna get you fucking high, and take you to a whole new level.
Honey, the only level you are getting to is the secluded floor of a lunatic assylum…
That is the truth no one told Amara.
Honestly, sometimes these friends do not know any better, they are oblivious to the superior underling they bring with them.
That’s why they think using illegal drugs is rad at first – youthful exuberance and shit. Until they scratching like lunatics and craving the next fix. Some survive the onslaught of these illegal drugs but others die with its pangs in them.
Illicit drug use is one of greatest killers of young adults.
This data from the National Center for Health Statistics talks extensively on drug related deaths in America ALONE. The number of drug-related deaths spiked from 2012 – 2018 in the Country.
NCHS Data Brief No. 365, January 2020 by Holly Hedegaard, M.D Arialdi. M. Miniño, M.P.H and Margaret Warner, P.H.D.
The accuracy of the data presented in this article is proof that as the world advanced technologically at the speed of light, drug use became even more rampant. That’s my take on it, what’s yours?
Amara was screaming for help while Isreal ripped her clothes and spread her naked legs apart. That whispering friend and peer pressure’s agent could not be found anywhere – even though they had coerced her into visiting Isreal’s house, alone.
They did not come to her rescue when he beat her to submission and forced himself on her.
Yet when Amara told Izzy that Isreal had assaulted her, Izzy’s characteristical reply was – Don’t be a baby, these things are normal.
Now Amara thinks rape is normal.
In time Amara became used to stiffling abuse and the term LOVE became foreign to her. She’d always say to me – no man can truly love you, except your father, and that’s if he is sober enough.
Izzy and her collaborator were quick to advise Amara to get an abortion when Amara got pregnant from the rape. Izzy whispered things like – your parents will kill you…and your church? You shall be a scorn, I will take you somewhere to get rid of that thing growing inside you.
But she did not go into the quack doctor’s shack with Amara where they poked and probed her body with all kinds of ominous tools to take out the life growing inside of her, neither was she there to hold Amara’s hands while she cried herself to sleep that night for killing her child.
Even though Amara survived the scabs of peer pressure Izzy did not, she wasn’t so lucky and ended up overdosing on the same drugs she and Isreal had hooked Amara on.
For Amara it remains a struggle, but she fights still, tooth and claw just to break out of the compulsive shackle of the illicit drugs that has messed up her mind and left her in a mental asylum.
Now the boisterous voices in Amara’s head are growing quite, and she is hoping they quite down forever, soon.
Amara did not realize that drugs is peer pressure embodied and when put into the human system, it becomes ones worst nightmare.
Like a pandemic it slowly destroyed her self control and impeded on her ability to resist it’s urges. Then finally it rendered her powerless and unable to think for herself or breakaway. Yet she fights, desperately to rid herself of its torments.
Up until this day Amara lives with the nagging regret of listening to peer pressure in the body of a friend and falling in love with illicit narcotics only after one blind date.
Escape!
This may sound very platitudinous but I still have to say it…
Many young people today are Amara, they listen to those friends who whisper things into their ears.
You need to know this, they are not your real friends, please know this (this does not mean cancelling all form of advice it simply means separating the good from bad).
A true friend will always look out for you, they would never put you in harms way even if they already in harms way themself.
Peer pressure is a great evil represented by some of our friends, and their tongues – never ever listen to that wagging tongue.
Do not listen to your peers especially when you know they’re up to no good. Remember you have a choice, ALWAYS.
Choose to say no when you know what they ask of you is bad. Choose to shun their chivvy voices when they try to tear you down for not following their lead – they do not own you…
Only you own you…remember that.
Realistically speaking, friends who try to make others into delinquents like them are very unhappy, they are not pleased with their lives and they want someone to take down with them – misery loves company.
Do not be the scapegoat, be the cat, use your nine lives – escape everytime!
Somehow I am talking especially to the younger generation, especially because I can deeply relate with you, I have seen first hand the consequences of listening to terrible advices from peers.
Young people need to stop giving peer pressure a voice. Subdue it’s voice, do not let it speak through you. Do not be an agent for the destruction of your peer.
Truth is life in it’s entirety is pressure. So such unhealthy pressures will always be there lurking in the corners, most times it will come into your life in the body of a friend, and like a malady it will slowly infest your mind until it contaminates it entirely –use one of your nine lives. Escape!
To put it more plainly, everyone is susceptible to peer pressure…
Even our grown ass parents still suffer from it’s vices.
But I believe the younger generation are more prone to its wiles.
This article from springer.com proves the viability of my earlier deduction.
Article by Shelly.S. McCoy, Laura M. Dimler, Misaki N Natsuaki.
Like I said in my short story Finding Humanity - we are all zombies looking for the next person to rip apart and tear down with our words.
Note – not every friend has a bad motive/intentions; hurt people hurt people and there are so many hurt people in the world today.
Can I beat peer pressure.
My fourteen year old niece (Amara’s daughter) asked me this question some months ago. Her question kinda prompted the writing of this article.
My answer to her was…YEAH OF COURSE! You can do anything you put your mind to.
First choose who you listen to – filter out the garbage from the ton of whispers around you, and sieve out the hate these whisperers would throw at you for kicking out the debris they mumble in your ear.
Shun peer bullying and listen to only you. Because you alone know what’s best for you.
The only way anyone can bring you down or cause you to stray is with words – never ever listen to words. Sometimes they are laced with bile and its aim is to destroy your mind/life. Do not give anyone such power over you.
Always bear in mind that you can be the boss of anything even dirty gritty, little peer pressure.
Today I am giving peer pressure a body, I am making you see it as human so you know you can kick it’s ass.
Truth is we are all potent to the words of the people around us – so your best bet is to build…erect those barricades, build those walls around your ears and heart. And carefully sieve through the things you listen to and the words you give thought to.
Consolidate your mind. If you can control your mind then you can control all of your senses. Your mind is your greatest weapon.
Learn to wield it!
In conclusion, Parents/Guardians need to be better role models, children/young adults need constant guidance. Some need adult guidance more than others, and if they are not properly guided and taught at an early age to make their own decisions they become confused adults and just follow the herd…
A blind man cannot lead a man…
DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CHILDREN/WARDS BLIND.
Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions on the topic.
Fire Cracker 
You must be logged in to post a comment.