If I Didn't Have Kids...

(By Joy Isi Bewaji) - If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t keep a job. 

I would travel the world, have a lover in every city I visit, stay for a year, maybe two… then move to another destination. I’ll make trifling sums enough to buy my food, pay for the space I occupy and keep an uninterrupted Clarins tradition. I’ll read many books. I will write many screenplays. I will criticize everything from religion to politics to the receptionist at my favourite hotel, which would be somewhere in Paris. I will eat good food. Flirt shamelessly and make magic from conversations. I will spend carelessly on all my little pleasures.

I realize I have no deep desire to be wealthy; I have only been pushed into the habit of money-making because children have to live well. I find that denying children of things leave me extremely tortured. I begin to break out in sweat. I am tormented by a child’s lack.

It is never about me. I know I will always be ok. I can always jump on a plane and head to Malibu, find a cottage and read 20 books in a month, meet a slightly potbellied handsome male and find hidden treasures inside of him (I am not attracted to six packs, at all!).

Then I’ll head back to a tiny place I’ll have locked up in, say, Ikeja.

But I am here, living the regular life, making money, despising the pressure of society; exceptionally bored by everyday routine.

I fit into society because of my children. I am sure I would never have truly had a well-defined ambition if I was without child. I am accessible because I have children. I am understood because I have children.

My life has become about children. The life of every regular adult. And the ones who don’t have kids are praying to join this regular life. As if it is not enough to watch the tantrums and sacrifices from afar, and be content that, at least, you get to sleep three extra hours without the silence in your house assumed to be as a result of electrocution in the children’s bedroom.

With the increase in rape, you just want to NOT have a child… because you will definitely kill someone. No Nigerian Police will treat that crime like a Sunday sermon. God forbid. You won't allow that shit happen to your child. That rapist must die!

Children make this earth your home. You think about Nigeria, afraid of tribal “quit notice” because you have children. If it was just you and your cute derrière, you could live or die and it would be ok. Because you would have had the best sex, ate the best meals, travelled to the best places, lounged at the best resorts, met the best people, made the best snow man, looked into the most amazing pair of eyes, watched the best soap opera...

And you could walk away from anything. It’ll be just you and your next meal.

I sincerely don’t know how 21 year olds cannot see how beautiful the life they have that they need to be in relationships that control and stifle their voices. I feel like slapping the demon outta them sometimes.

And I still cannot understand how 20-something year olds can ever be broke or unsure whether to leave one city for another. Or slay on a job like a bawse!

You are young. You have the world in your palms. No children. No row of suitors trying to be your next husband.

Why are you not living like a wild eagle?

Why are you trying to be an older woman?!

Life is all about freedom. Why do you want to give that up so quickly just to iron cotton shirt for the man you just had sex with whom you should save for lonely days in your 60s?

Beats me.