January 6, 2024. Yewande Joseph.

Seventeen and Passionate.

The truth is, at this age, teenagers want to do many things they've seen adults do.

They want to fix their nails. They want to dress a certain way they've seen some adults dress so badly. They want to plait certain hairstyles and do many things they've seen adults do. They want to use the same phone an adult uses. They desire everything an adult is doing.

They would like to live and be like some brothers and aunties they admired while growing up. 

Should I say teenagers want to grow up so badly?

But as a teenager, what should you be passionate about at this age?

I was once seventeen and so many things occurred at this age, but I will share one with you. 

Before I shared mine, I came across a video by thecoachlara on YouTube. She decided to share her story of how she had a child at nineteen, had fifteen abortions and had fourteen heartbreaks. But it all started when she had a boyfriend at seventeen and became pregnant.

I also came across a video of Davido's cousin on Instagram. Who spoke about the darkest moment in her life and revealed how she was pregnant at sixteen on a podcast show.  

I remember coming across a nineteen-year-old girl's video on Instablog who claimed to love a particular guy who wasn't giving her an audience and decided to call him out when she realised she was pregnant.

For me, I knew I wasn't going to have sex as a teenager when at the age of thirteen my agric teacher at my school fellowship sang 2 Timothy 2 vs 21 into our ears.

'Keep yourself pure'.  

And then told us the dangers that come with having sex at an early age. I didn't like all that she stated they get to face. 

There is a song we all smiled and laughed at any time she was singing it. It says...

Don't break the gate, don't plug the thing. Divine intervention into our lives as teenagers.

Not sure if I can remember the song correctly, but now as an adult, I have seen how these mistakes shaped some lives.

Dear teenager, at this stage, one mistake without proper guidance as you continue to live can hold you back in life for a long time.

Sometimes it starts with having a boyfriend at an early age when you know nothing about sex and he tells you not to worry that you will both be fine. You know nothing about protection but he acts like he knows it all. You know nothing about becoming a teenage mother but he acts like he's got it all covered until you drop the news, and many of them run because they remember they've got a life ahead of them, and they didn't plan for that.

One mistake at this stage of your life...

Can affect your self-esteem and self-worth as you eventually become an adult.

It can make you feel like you aren't enough.

It might make you feel less qualified among your mates, lose your confidence, make you feel you don't deserve some things, fall into depression, and have delays in certain things in life. 

In the year 2015, I turned 17.

I was living with my maternal grandmother who was strict. A teacher with strange principles I didn't understand at that time. She never really had friends. She never really went out. Only when there were parties to attend and when she was going to work. 

"I'm counting already. One, two," she said many times she sent me on an errand. "One hundred and twenty-five!" 

How?

How does she reach one hundred and twenty-five when I haven't left the house? 

I would laugh and I was always eager to come back home on time and choose not to branch anywhere even when I knew she stopped counting the moment I stepped out of the house. 

"You will be back in ten minutes, right?" Grandma said many times I planned on visiting a friend.

Haba!! Grandma!! I should still be trekking to the place by that time. I'm not running 200 meters.

So, I would give her the time I will be coming back home, making sure I keep to it. She encouraged me to bring my friends and she got to know them.

That was the woman I lived with even at seventeen, and if I was to run errands the distance is just from the
living room to the kitchen, my head is filled up with, this will happen if you do this, that will happen if you do that. Truth, I got tired of listening to the same thing. 

At that age, the majority of the women in my life were graduates and no cases of teen pregnancy. I knew to cross over to my adult life, no boyfriend, no sex, no abortion.

January 2016.

I found myself coming back to Wattpad as a writer and this kept me so busy inside the house, that my only aim was to write an interesting book that would gain so much reads too.

So, instead of being outside, I was reading my old novels back to back. 

I would only come out in the evening to see how the neighbours in my street were doing.

Or come out if there is light to watch television.

I had food, clothes, and a junior friend who lived next to our house whom we always met to gist in my house or her house. So, the only thing I was worried about was becoming a recognised Nigerian writer on Wattpad. 

At seventeen, I found the writing skill that kept me busy. At that moment I knew I would be writing for a long time when in the space of one year, my life changed on Wattpad. Because of the writing style I chose and what I wrote about when I first started, I knew I couldn't afford to make some mistakes or live anyhow. I was already getting messages on how I encouraged them and made them see life with a bright hope just when I was eighteen. 

So I knew the kind of woman I wanted to grow up to become.

Especially when I wrote my book 'Meeting with the President's son'. A book that talked about teen pregnancy. And was influenced by the rate of teens that got pregnant in my area at that period.

I believe when a teenager finds something beautiful about life and knows what he or she wants and doesn't want, such a teenager will passionately pursue such dream to reality and will be too busy for frivolous things and move away from anything that might stop him or her from achieving it. 

From time to time, teenagers need to be spoken to. I can't remember any fellowship that my agric teacher never talked about 'keeping oneself pure'. 

Don't limit what you should tell your teenagers because other teenagers are living in the reality of what they've been told was wrong already. 

Even if they frown and murmur now. They will thank you later.

You've been there.

They are just starting.

_______________________________

Coming up next

Leaving the house at 17.
I gained a lot of attention from men and was offered more than I was given at home when I started leaving the house.