As Told By Ada: I Keep Discovering Parts Of Myself That Don’t Fit My Parents’ Blueprint

As Told By Ada is a Culture Custodian weekly series exploring the unique and often chaotic experience of navigating life as the oldest daughter in a Nigerian household. Over the course of these mini therapy sessions, we give you a peek into the ups, downs and lingering effects of growing up “the first.”

I was a funny child. Quick, witty and very restless. I liked to play, my brain worked very fast and I was always on the move.

I got a bit more chaotic in my teens. Suddenly, I was always at odds with my parents.  I think we’re just very different people. I was also socialized in a very American way because of the schools I attended, alongside the fact that I actually lived there for some time. Socially, my parents and I just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.

I was an only child for about six years before my sister came along, and then we have a younger brother who I’m eleven years older than. I’m really close to them, especially my sister. We had such a unique upbringing that sometimes it feels like she’s the only person in the world who completely understands me. I like being a space that she can retreat to. She tells me absolutely everything. I genuinely don’t think there’s one thing about my sister that I don’t know, and I love that.

We’re very different, though. I’m quite adventurous. I was a very risk-forward teenager, so by the time I got to a certain age, I had already formed a pretty good understanding of what was and wasn’t for me. My sister, on the other hand, is super cautious. Sometimes I think that if she had been my older sister, I would have lived under this huge umbrella of expectation. She’s my parents’ blueprint realized, whereas I’ve definitely veered very far from the mold—I don’t think they saw that coming. 

Being the oldest meant there wasn’t really anyone ahead of me figuring life out first. My parents had a very clear layout for what my life was supposed to look like: finish school, find a good job, get married and have children. As I got older, especially once we started having conversations around mental health and all those things, that shifted a little. Ultimately, they want me to become the best version of myself.

The problem is that I keep discovering parts of myself that don’t fit their blueprint.

My parents are very appearance-focused people. How our family looks is very important to them. It even comes down to aesthetics. If you look like what a traditional Nigerian girl is supposed to look like, then you’re probably happy. But people are a lot more complicated than that. I think my parents’ worldview often lacks nuance, and that has always put a strain on our relationship because authenticity—being true to myself—is incredibly important to me.

I grew up in the digital age and, coupled with the fact that I lived in different countries, I was exposed to so many different stories and realities. I met people from different walks of life and realised pretty early that there wasn’t just one way to be, one way to love people or one way to understand yourself. 

The more I saw of the world, the more limiting my parents’ version of adulthood began to feel. The life they imagined for me started to feel less like the only path forward and more like one possibility among many.

When I think about what people expect from the “good Nigerian woman”—the femininity, the meekness, the quiet subservience—I honestly don’t know where I fit into that picture anymore. I think I’ve outgrown it. I’ve spent a good part of my life figuring out who I am and what feels true for me. 

Out in the world, people probably see me as someone who’s confident in herself. But the second I get home and my mom critiques my appearance or my dad comments on the way I carry myself, I immediately shrink. As much as I know I don’t need my parents’ approval anymore, I still find myself subconsciously craving it.

So I’m constantly caught between the person I know myself to be and the person my parents think I should become. It’s not that I want the opposite of everything they want for me—that would be an oversimplification. I just don’t think I want to do life in the way they’ve imagined it. 

I think that’s part of why my parents and I often feel like we’re speaking different languages. There are parts of me they still struggle to make sense of. My mom knows I’m queer, but she’s hoping it’s something I’ll grow out of. I don’t think she sees it as a permanent truth about me; I think she sees it as another phase that will eventually give way to the life she imagined I’d have. That definitely adds to the issues I have when it comes to taking control of my own life. My queerness is a huge part of who I am, but a huge part of queerness is also charting a path that hasn’t already been mapped out. Sometimes it’s an almost crippling helplessness because I’m trying to build a life I haven’t really seen modelled before.

I tell my mom all the time, “You’ve given me privilege. You’ve given me access to incredible opportunities and different parts of the world. Why don’t you trust that I’m going to make good decisions?”

She hovers over almost every decision I make, even the smallest ones. Till today, she still does that, and it’s frustrating because I already worry enough on my own. I don’t need her adding to that worry. I need her to help me trust my own voice.

Compared to a lot of Nigerian parents, mine are generally more chill. I know that. But image is so important to them that they become very controlling in very specific ways. I’m nearly three years older than I was when I moved back home from university, yet somehow I feel like I have less control over my life now than I did then. I think my biggest goal over the next two years is simply to move out.

Somewhere between the constant critique, the infantilization and the feeling that I have to keep negotiating my identity, I lose myself whenever I’m at home. It’s hard to think. And with the queerness, that’s a whole extra layer. Navigating that in Lagos is already difficult enough. Navigating it under my parents’ roof in Lagos? Impossible.

It’s very easy to forget who I am.

I think my mom would love for me to have one cemented plan. One career. One clear direction. Maybe even one serious boyfriend. She has a very specific picture of what me “getting it together” would look like. I still don’t. I know the kind of life I don’t want. I’m still figuring out the kind of life I do. 

My parents love me. I don’t doubt that for a second. But loving someone and understanding them are two different things. They love me, but they don’t really understand me. Understanding is something I get from my friends. They’re the people who make me feel seen, not just loved.

If I ever have children, I don’t want to become the kind of adult who stops learning simply because they’re the parent. I don’t want to close my mind off. I want to keep growing alongside them. I want to understand them as they become whoever they’re meant to be instead of forcing them into an idea I already have of who they should become.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to become someone else’s version of me that now I’m learning to become my own. Maybe that’s what adulthood really is: slowly choosing yourself, over and over again, until your life finally starts to look like your own.

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