Growing up Was The First Betrayal.

How I got to this point so fast is still something that stirs up clouds of confusion in my mind. I remember fitting so perfectly in my mom's traveling box while playing hide and seek with my brother. I also remember the bus ride with my mom, yesterday—or not yesterday, but it feels that close. I sang my lungs out: nursery rhymes, traditional poems, anything that came to mind. A woman handed me ₦200, saying I was such a cute child.

Then I slept and woke up to this life,a life where the dynamics are so scary.

This new life—on some days, my body feels like the deadliest trap I could ever be in or the heaviest burden I’ll never be able to shed. Sometimes, I even joke to myself: what if there were a surgery to shrink me back to six years old? Back to when my body was smaller, simpler, freer. A body that didn’t feel so heavy, so complicated, so loud in its existence. Wouldn’t that be something? A return to days when our bodies didn’t demand so much, didn’t carry the weight of expectations or the gaze of the world.

Growing up feels like a betrayal, especially when you’re a girl. Once, our bodies were playgrounds—free to explore, to stretch, to stumble, to fall. We could latch onto someone’s arms without hesitation, drape ourselves over someone’s shoulders or a parent’s lap, and no one questioned it. Back then, our bodies were light, easy—not just in movement but in meaning. They weren’t topics of discussion, weren’t weighted with implications. They just WERE.

I think about those days often, about how carefree it all was. Standing in front of mirrors, toothless grins stretched wide, cheeks smudged with dirt or breakfast, thinking we were the cutest thing alive. Our bodies weren’t something to scrutinize—they were vessels of joy, of curiosity, of freedom. We danced in the rain because it was there, spun in circles until the world blurred, ran barefoot without a second thought. No limits. No self-consciousness. No comparisons.

But then came the paradigm shift. Puberty, adulthood, society—whatever you call it, it crept in and rewrote the rules some of us never knew existed. Our bodies became more than just ours. They became something to manage, something to protect, something to explain. Suddenly, we had to think twice about how we moved, how we stood, how we existed. Climbing trees, skipping steps, taking up space—things we did without hesitation—became luxuries we could no longer afford.

And the world? It doesn’t make it easier. Every step feels like a performance, every glance a judgment. Am I walking too fast? Too slow? Do I look confident? Am I too much? Not enough? It’s exhausting, this constant dance of awareness, this balancing act between who we are and who the world expects us to be.

Then there’s the mirror. I used to stand before it as a child, seeing nothing but potential and playfulness. The only thing I ever noticed was how my maxilla and mandible moved rhythmically against each other and how one day I would stand in front of a court room with that face and save the world. Now, it feels like a confrontation. The curves, the angles, the imperfections—they all scream for attention. They beg for comparison. Am I graceful enough? Beautiful enough? Acceptable? I squint at my reflection and wonder if I’m seeing myself—or just the fragments the world has chosen to highlight. My mind now feels like a mess that'll never be sorted. Same way I sometimes confuse my sadness and erupting traumas for hormonal imbalance.

This isn’t just my story. I see it in others too—in the subtle ways their bodies have metamorphosed, grown heavier with age, with life, with time. I think about the older ones, whose bodies have become fragile, slower, more delicate. Their minds remain sharp, bubbling with ideas and energy, but their bodies have other plans. It’s cruel, isn’t it? How our bodies betray us, first in the rush of growing up, then in the slow inevitability of growing older.

And yet, the child inside us remains. She hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s still there, watching, waiting, longing to play. She wants to run barefoot again, jump into someone’s arms, twirl until she’s dizzy. But the body she once knew is no longer hers to command so freely.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever truly understand these bodies we inhabit. They carry so much of us—our joy, our pain, our memories—and yet they also feel like strangers. Strangers that demand care and attention, that grow and change in ways we can’t control, that hold us back even as they push us forward.

And the weight of it all? It’s not just physical. It’s the weight of knowing this body is the only one I’ll ever have, even as it grows older, harder to understand. It’s the weight of missing the simplicity of childhood while trying to embrace the complexities of adulthood. It’s the weight of living in a world that sees our bodies before it sees us.

Some days, life in this body feels fine. Other days, it’s a mess of contradictions—a place I want to escape, a home I’m trying to love, a vessel that carries everything I am and everything I’m still trying to be.

And maybe that’s okay. Or maybe it isn’t. Like I said,my mind keeps inhabiting these confusions. Either way, this is where we are, trying to make sense of these bodies that never stop changing, even when we wish they would.

And maybe that’s okay. Or maybe it isn’t. Like I said, my mind keeps wandering through these layers of confusion, a tangled mess of questions I can’t quite answer. Either way, this is where we are—caught between acceptance and resistance—trying to make sense of these bodies that never stop changing, even when we desperately wish they would.