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Sharing my draft with you. Happy new year.

Sike aka Shike shikuku.

Growing up was tough for me, I had to live amongst many angry and unhappy women. The atmosphere of my environment used to reek of sadness and unspoken weariness. It is a fact when they say, your environment has a great impact on who you become. I have lived seventeen years of my life asking, will I also become an angry woman?

The day I was supposed to travel to school, my grandmother made me Ofada stew, packaged an iro I can use as a blanket when the nights are cold and gave me a purse filled with money. She had told me, "Sike, know the daughter of whom you are and do not come back home without the honors." I interpreted it as a reminder and a threat. It was a reminder to work my ass out in pursuit of a first class degree even if it will cost my sanity.

My grandmother used to be a midwife; my mother a nurse and my elder sister a medical doctor. Again, Sike, what do I have to offer?

The last night before university was dedicated to thoughts about how I will live my life from here. Away from the environs of Ifo, the women in my life and most especially the mentality I grew up with.

I set out the next morning to school, feeling completely new with an intention to become an accomplished lawyer and a happy woman. The generation that comes after me will never know sadness or pain because of money or unaccomplished dreams. I Oluwasikemi Ilupeju will live satisfied.

The Lagos state University is my first choice, getting into the school was my greatest achievement apart from being able to remove the water drawer from our well with a bamboo stick. The journey has begun, my only mission in life while I was in school was to live as a happy woman. I wanted to break away from the normal turn of events. All the women in my life were very unhappy probably because they were unable to become or achieve what they wanted.

My mother had told me that my father said if she marries him, they were going to build a clinic. He took the promise to his grave. She had said that was the biggest mistake of her life; letting another person make decisions for her. My father was a great husband my mother and a wonderful father to us, but she said it was her responsibility to fulfill her dream not someone else's. She lives every day of her life with regret. I summed up all their stories with the intent to pick all my lessons and transform them into a better version of myself.

Five years down the lane, I am graduating from Lagos state University as a first class student who is currently in a joint partnership with few other people building their own law firm. I could not be happier because with great intentions, my dreams were my religion.