I spent the first one hour contemplating whether or not to write this post, the other twenty something minutes thinking if I should skip some things.

"We feel more pain from the hurt caused by those closest to us than we do from random strangers."

The greatest pain you can feel is when the people closest to you withhold ways by which you can succeed. There is this expression: "Give a man a Fish, and you feed Him for a day, But teach Him to Fish and you feed Him for a lifetime."

MY EARLY DAYS

When I was younger, my dad lost a chunk of fortune to a bad business deal and we had to spend several years after that living in a condition close to the description of hell.
In other to cope, I had to give up hopes of ever going to the junior high I always wanted to attend. Even though the loss of that fortune could have been avoided, we had to acknowledge it had happened.
I won't come and write lies on being born into a poor home because we were never poor, but we lost a vast majority of that wealth and we had to move past the first four stages of grief to the fifth stage of grief quickly, else, we would sink deeper.
The worst part of it was family members who were also responsible for the loss and could help out refused to help. I mean people who my dad helped, refused to help, but thank goodness my dad is a hardworking person.
Right there and then I learnt my life's first lesson;

Failure is a bastard, but success is a father to many

I decided I will never be in a position of having to beg anyone to succeed, I will choose both hardwork and smartwork.
The worst part of my early days was when I had typhoid fever and nearly died. It was after then I learnt another lesson which was:

Never die until you accomplish your life's mission.

MOVING ON

We moved to another state and I was finally taken to a catholic mission junior high school because of it's affordability and standard. Heck! it was a 2 in 1 bumper deal.
Funny truth is am sure this is where you would expect me to thrash the school, but on the contrary, I had beautiful moments there. I loved to play soccer and being a day student, I was always going home dirty or injured or both. People never understood that my hyperactivity was due to an indiscernible fact I never wanted to be alone. The truth is am an extrovert by association not by default as most characteristics traits of extroverts do not apply to me.
Back then, there were some students in school who always felt superior, funny thing was those people just seemed too shallow to me and I made up my mind

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"I was going to succeed in life no matter what"

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Like 50 cent said "get rich or die trying", only in my case dying was not an option.
People always viewed me as this weak or sickly boy because of my slim body but truthfully I was more healthy, agile, strong and active than most of them. If only they knew I practiced taekwondo, karate and basics of kick boxing.
Their views about me served as an added advantage. I had the element of surprise many didn't and this even prevented people from bullying me.
I forgot to mention that before I started entering the football selection where we'll take sets to play, I was always overlooked due to my physique, but overtime I proved them wrong. I earned my constant spot over time.

I realized it was better to earn than to buy your way in.

Taekwondo's motto also helped too: "A black belt is earned not bought".

SENIOR HIGH

Okay this is where the first love story comes in. I was in high school, yay!!! But still in the same catholic missionary school.
Ever heard the saying "worst enemies make the best lovers"? Well that was my case. High school was where I realized some teachers played favorites and if you do not get it right at first, they tag you the nonentity and treat you like one. Turns out there was this girl, I always hated her then because I felt she and her friends were being treated preferentially.
I preferred the people who earned to those who got it on a whim. I attended a school where you got flogged for flunking a test or even coming late to school whether it was your fault or not.
I just hated school at some point because my dad always insisted on dropping us off everyday and the distance of the school from my house was not walk-able, and no matter how much I hurried my dad, we always got to my school late. I will admit it was not his fault, the school lacked a school bus. Like I said the school was affordable so they had to manage the funds being given to them.
No school bus, dad had to drop my little sis off at school first and then it was my turn. I was branded a perpetual late comer. I remember the times I never even wanted to enter the class because I was so late.
They beat the shit out of me, still came late, washed toilets, still came late, did manual labor, still came late. some times I cry when I think about it.
It got to a point when no one seemed to care anymore and that was when i started having falling grades.

School had given up on me and I was starting to return the favor

My turning point came when I was in my second year of senior high. We had a new geography teacher, a woman who had a beautiful smile. She always tried to talk me out of my newly found shell, until one day she gave us an assignment to be treated the next day in class. The next day, she started by asking questions on the assignment and I will never forget her words when I answered her question. She said to me "You have a desire to learn more, keep it up and one day you will be successful".
Those words stuck. So I mentioned first love right? Funny story that turned out to be......
She asked the girl a question and she couldn't answer properly, I found myself laughing, something I found weird. The geography teacher asked then teased me by saying why I teased the Asian girl. Make no mistake, she wasn't Asian, she was an African girl who had this Asian look back then. I retorted saying "the asian girl was ugly". The class laughed and I the girl felt bad. I felt like a jerk, maybe because I did something jerky. I approached her after we had closed for the day and apologized, funny thing was she just laughed it off.
We got to talking and she asked why I only had interest in geography, I simply explained some, not all of my pains to her. The truth is she is brilliant but even a brilliant student was not perfect and if the teachers could overlook some flaws on her part, why didn't the same apply to all? They paid special attention to her and her clique, questions were only directed to them, it was like there was a conspiracy going on, and that was the problem!

Everyone should be given an equal chance to succeed!

She started spending extra hours after school to explain maths and chemistry to me and the chemistry between us started improving too.
One night she dropped the bomb on me.....she loved me!
I was happy, very soon we were dating and practically all our colleagues knew and the best part MY GRADES WERE IMPROVING
I was happy.

THE SAD TWIST

After high school, my dad's finance were not at it's peak, but was better than before. We applied to the same university, she got accepted and I wasn't. The distance started to take it's toll on our relationship until we broke up. Little did I know that the relationship was sabotaged by my "friend" who wanted her for himself. He was secretly filling in the missing gap, pretending to be her friend, until he achieved his aim.

Not everyone who smiles with you wants you to be more successful or happier than them.

I moved on and got into another university.

ADAPTING TO WORSE SITUATIONS IN THE UNIVERSITY

When I was in my freshman year, I was living on 2,000 naira ($6.35) weekly as allowance plus some minor provisions.Imagine having such weekly when it was never enough, coupled with inflation, the money was worthless. Since it was what my parents could afford, I had to manage and after all it was my price for success. Sometimes a friend added an extra 1000 naira each week ($3.18) and that was what I had to live on.
I couldn't live on the good will of others, I needed to do something fast!
I opened an entertainment group (though we just started the process of getting it legally registered), we started showing movies in school, sadly people with better funding who saw our ideas as profitable, took it all away.
See proof of the tickets
Look at the date!
Let me show you the preview ![Screenshot (92).png]
(https://steemitimages.com/DQmPUvAXMzwT1e5yoomntFoUH2bxzF1F2T6yisRLyCpy1R4/Screenshot%20(92).png)
So people took away my source of livelihood JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD!
They made a fool out of themselves and a fight broke out during their movie screening the school had to place a ban on showing movies.
I was approaching my finals, I knew I didn't want a government job, I was not that kind of person (hell! a female lecturer was harassing me already), cult boys were disturbing me and believe me these guys are not the kappa beta breed, they are vicious murderers, time was ticking...
The only upside was my elder brother got a government job and was assisting from time to time. I wish my country was like some countries where you could school and work and your lecturers would understand. Over here, they consider you a scum to miss out on class and would intentionally fail you.
Dad had started improving but I realized something

I didn't want to be the type of child whose success would be attributed to his father, I wanted to be a man of my own.

I graduated in 2016 at 22 years of age. I wanted more from life, I kept searching until eureka!

Welcome to steemit!

Early this year I noticed some friends of mine were always online doing something and saying stuffs like " O I just made $10 and all that, but they never let me in on their secret. I wasn't totally impecunious (poor) but I had my life's goals I needed to attain.
Finally some days to my birthday, I got lucky, one of them slipped up while we were talking about life's goals and voila I found steemit.
I always wondered, why refuse to help when you can?

IT IS BECAUSE PEOPLE WANT YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL BUT NEVER MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THEY ARE!

When I found out about steemit, I had to sell a few stuffs I owned and I acquired a used tecno p5, a used nokia xl (back up) and a used hp 630 pc
Sadly, on my way rushing home to type a post for steemit, my nokia's screen got damaged
Here is the proof:

IS STEEMIT A DREAM COME TRUE?

Yes and no!
Sounds controversial right? Let me explain.
While there are those like @stellabelle, @pfunk, @berniesanders, @raymonjohnstone, @surfermarly, @cryptofiend, @mynameisbrian, @infovore, @steevc, @redhens, @onetree, @andrianna, @cathynsons, @destinysaid, @joanaltres, @jlufer, @ericvancewalton, @everittdmickey, @papa-pepper, @mindhunter, @fyrstikken etc who genuinely work towrads the growth of steemit and steem, there are some who rape the reward pool dry JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN.
They forget that steemit and steem will only thrive on the existence of continuous patronage and consistency and everyone is equally important.
This moth alone, I have consumed over 11 gigabyte worth of data at $3.18 for 1.5 gigabyte. I keep using inside the money I have saved to purchase data because I believe steemit is an investment and STEEM is the future.
See proof...


I use my phone as mobile hotspot because the cost of a modem is 7 times that of the subscription.
Talents like that of @raymonjohnstone who is a brilliant programmer is going unnoticed. H e invented a community dispenser which enables you send more steem to more people faster, yet people do not encourage him with a simple upvote but prefer to sell their conscience for a few SBD. @steevc is a musician with potentials but he is going unrecognized because some are using all the upvotes to rape the reward pool.
New people are frustrated because of this, some even steal ideas from them and earn more because their followers are more.
Thank you @stellabelle, @pfunk, @berniesanders, @raymonjohnstone, @surfermarly, @cryptofiend, @mynameisbrian, @infovore, @steevc, @redhens, @onetree, @andrianna, @cathynsons, @destinysaid, @joanaltres, @jlufer, @ericvancewalton, @everittdmickey, @papa-pepper, @mindhunter, @fyrstikken etc for your continous effort towards making steemit better.
People need to understand, for people who don't have much, an upvote and a resteem means a lot and if steemit will grow, it will require promoting talent and content over rank and this will create the competition needed in this environment.
Thank you
Don't forget to UPVOTE RESTEEMFOLLOW@ehiboss on steemit for more