#4 – Put yourself first

Sound selfish, doesn’t it?

But, where would be the appropriate place to put yourself? Would last be fine? Do you want to come last in your list of priorities? Would that not cause you to lose yourself? Am I asking too many questions?

I am an avid Twitter user. If you know about that space, you would know that a visit would leave you feeling furious or happy after laughing like crazy. Well, the former was me yesterday. I may or may not have fantasised about dragging some netizens by the ear to talk some sense into them. But, I am a firm believer that arguing on social media is a colossal waste of time. If anything, it leaves you open to whatever anyone has to say. For me, that’s not ideal.

Yesterday … or probably the day before, I read some tweets about a vile lady who destroyed a man’s soul. Apparently, she did not love him enough to marry him but accepted his proposal. She then dumped him, leaving him destitute. Tweeps said it would have not been so if the guy was rich (this is really a heartfelt story for another day). Curious – but not enough – I decided to NOT read the original story. In case you do not know, discussing gender matters on Twitter is like you have decided to willingly rip off every single one of your fingernails. Pretty stupid. So, I absolutely ignore.

Anyway, as I was scrolling through my feeds, I saw a story about a lady and a guy whose love did not work out after she got a Ph.D. admission in another country. The guy proposed after she got the admission. She said he may not have if she hadn’t. She decided that she did not want a marriage of convenience and told the guy that he could come to Canada for her if he was interested.  The lady talked about this with what I perceived as a hint of regret, which grew as she became a ‘single lady’ who received pressure from home to “go and marry”. She finally shut those voices out. A few years later, she met the love of her life.

At this point, you’ve probably realised that this story is the same as the wild one above. Or not? Now, here’s the kicker that Nigerian Twitter was twerking all over the place for. At some point in her thread, she prayed against “destiny destroyers”. To be honest, I attributed this immediately to the ones who were pressuring her to get married, unlike many tweeps who were convinced that she was referring to the guy. Sigh.

Of course, I “I-told-you-soed” myself because I had unwillingly gotten entangled in the web of Twitter gender wars. As expected, I couldn’t help but put into perspective the accusatory tweets I had read before stumbling on the original story. They seemed so crazy to me. Why was this lady being accused of being a potential gold digger? Why was she being castigated because she did not marry the man? Why did it seem okay that she could have sacrificed her happiness and life for him just to get him to Canada by marrying him? Why did this seem okay to multitudes?

Of course, I know the answer to these questions.

Stories of women as well as my own stories tell me that women are expected to be at the bottom of the pile. Even your contributions and the results of the work of your hands come miles ahead of you. Let others go first, else you are selfish. Think about how your own life decision will affect others before you think about yourself. Even if you have achieved more, don’t rub it in the face of the men … or anyone around you. In fact, don’t talk about your achievements because they definitely need to feel superior to you. They are the heads, remember? Stay in your lane.

Well, here’s a newsflash. I will stay in my lane. In that lane, I come first. Anyone who comes before me, I choose to put there. I am not selfish because my decision is inconvenient for you. Boohoo.

Ladies, boldly put your happiness, peace of mind, success, prospects, desires (and so on) first. You can’t help anyone if you are suffering, so you need to take care of yourself. It would be helpful if you take your independence seriously. Perhaps, the most significant form of independence is financial freedom. Don’t depend on anyone, especially men, to feed, house, or clothe you. I will talk about the importance of financial freedom in one of my #500WordADay series. Until then, put yourself first!

 

This is 500 words (or more ?)! Talk to you tomorrow!

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