Everyone has their fears. Fear could cripple your mental nerves until you gasp for freedom. Growing up, my biggest fear was peer pressure. I had learned some of the good side and bad sides of it, but it was the negative impacts of peer pressure that stuck with me. There were street tales of boys who were lured into drug abuse, smoking and drinking. There were those who went mad or died as a result of drug overdoses. Girls who dressed indecently were raped or died of abortions or dropped out of school due to their desire to belong with their peers. It was scary. I wanted to be the good child, then the perfect girl when I grew up, even though the Bible teaches that no one is perfect. To make no mistakes nor have any regrets. It was so terrifying. My brain told me that in order to avoid any form of peer pressure, I should be on my own and avoid bad friends. It was a struggle to tell which friend was good, and which one was bad at first encounter. And I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by cutting off an association. Hence, I drastically erased friendship from my mind.
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Life began to feel lonely and unsatisfying during my first year as a young adult. The desire to feel a close connection to someone else other than my family became a hole in my chest. I tried to have an open mind towards making friends, and that was the point we met each other. I was an avid reader and an introvert, but a great conversationalist during book club meetings at school. That was where, and how I met Chidimma. My favourite lines of the song, Like You, by Tatiana Manaois which I would never forget, are:
“People will find you, but they won’t define you.
And you will find people, who help redesign you.”
Those lines define what friendship is all about, and summed up my experiences with Chidimma. We were two months apart by age and from Christian homes. We both did very well in academics. She was dark in complexion, and tall, while I was her total opposite. We shared similar hobbies of reading books, telling stories and travelling. While I was afraid of peer pressure, she feared pretenders. Our closeness grew from being book club members, book exchange mates, library mates and then to bosom friends.
Being Chidimma’s friend made up some part of my best life memories. I became the best version of myself within the last one and half-year we shared as secondary school students. She helped me channel my storytelling passion towards story writing through the essay assignments we did at school. Academically, we competed with each other for outstanding grades by individually working on our assessments and then comparing our answers or solutions to each other’s work, and that was something I couldn’t have enjoyed if not for her. The yearly goal of reading twenty books extended to thirty books, in different genres. I always remember how we argued over the plot of the book “Faceless” by Amma Darko, especially the market scenes, and then our shared pity on Fofo’s sufferings as a teenager. We also exchanged novels like Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, Things Fall Apart, The Kidnapper Priest, Impregnated by a Fellow Woman, Sun of the Soil etc. My hidden argumentative skills were awakened through our discussions and arguments.
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The very first time I opened a Facebook account was so as to remain in contact and keep our book discussions going during school vacations. You could never count me among the group of students who ironed their uniform daily because I misunderstood it as showing off and being proud since our classmates made a big deal out of it. And for me, anything my peers made a big deal of could lead to peer pressure and should be avoided. Chidimma simply told me that she ironed her uniform so as to look smart which gave her more confidence. Her ideas made me adopt the importance of good grooming. I attended my first youth seminar with her at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. It was an all-girls event organized by UNEC Nursing Students, which Chidimma heard about from her sister in another school and then extended the invitation to me.
After we passed out of Secondary School, I went for Computer training lessons with Chidimma as we waited for the tertiary institutions’ admission lists. The outcome of the admission lists took her to School of Nursing at Abuja while I got into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in Enugu state. It was through one of our phone conversations that she introduced me to websites like Medium, Quora, and Wattpad and helped me to create my accounts. Watching my recommended Indian-Hindi movie; 3 idiots; analyzing the relationship between Farhan, Raju and Rancho; then reviewing its educative and socialization lessons for students and friends has remained an annual routine. That movie and Akeela and the Bee birthed our curiosity to learn new dictionary words. Sometimes, I wondered if I brought out Chidimma’s better side as much as she helped me to grow into who I am today. She would always insist that I gave a new look towards trusting people and not being judgmental. We have learned to associate with other people without letting ourselves get drowned in unnecessary pressure or fake lifestyles along the way.
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Her influence was so subtle and good that I could never count the number of times I was out of my comfort zone, doing things I enjoyed but wouldn’t have tried. Things that have positively changed my personality and beliefs. These days, we have more physical distance between us, with life happenings and other priorities. But we have occasional WhatsApp video calls through which we fill each other in on our recent goals, achievements and challenges. I believe that we should share and hear as many good stories of friendship and family lifestyles just as we should the bad ones. I also believe that some peer pressures are enzymes to our growth.
Living is a risky unpredictable journey. Getting to know someone can be terrifying. But risk and pain become life’s guides, if we have someone who holds our hands to cross them all in genuine friendship.
This Creative Nonfiction was published in the December 2022 edition of the WSA magazine.
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