Are you in fact, mad?
Welcome to 2025 in which I have promised myself a full and productive year, filled with content, contentment and peace and goodwill for all. But first let me take you to a good deed I was doing in 2024.
2024 was the year of “the cousin” and God, in his infinite mercy will ensure I will never have another year like that again,
There were various cousins messing with my chi. but this was cousin 3 that was screwing up.
Cousin 3 is 24, in university for architechure and has been studying architecture for the past 6 years. All good so far as architechutre is a 7 year course, ie. he finishes at the end of next academic year.
He asked me to help him get to the UK to study and find bursaries for him. I said cool, sure. I thought he wanted to study for 1 year which would be £30k, which between the entire family was completely do-able.
Turns out he wants to study for 3-5 years which is £90k+ living costs. which is wild. My family is middle class to upper middle class, and so they have money, but not a lot. £90k-£200k on 1 person’s education is wild. when we struggled to get Cousin 1 through medical school and that was probably £80k in total.
The pretention is wild, but when you add the fact that this this cousin didn’t know that the UCAS deadline (the way you apply for university) is on the 29th of January??? Bearing in mind that I told him this less than 3 weeks to the deadline, he hasn’t started and he hasn’t applied but he wants the family to find anywhere up to £200k in the next 5 years.
Arrogance of the situation irritates me. Because it says, “I want something enough for you to spend money, but not enough for me to even know the timetable for my own life.” What would have happened if I had told him on January 30th? Why am I the subject matter expert on something so important for his own life? Also is there any point applying when all the rich aunties and uncles are retired? My mum, eldest uncle, and youngest aunt is going semi retired now she’s put her youngest son through school. This requires pre-planning of the funding, because if you are only able to go if the school pays for you you can’t afford it
I decided to stop involving myself because there is only so much foolishness one can handle in one day. £30k was a push for a year considering everyone is retired/retiring (I am sure as hell not doing it) but also if you lack the motivation to help yourself at 24 I am not going to spoon feed you. Nor am I putting the next 5 years on hold so you can have an education, bearing in mind your father didn’t even see fit to call me when my dad died (oh yes I’m using that card) when your parents are doing the best they can already.
This comes to a wider conversations about why are all my male cousins so very slow at doing anything.
I have 4 adult male cousins. Only one has a job. One has just finished university and is trying to get a job. The 3rd is an abject failure of a human being, and the 4th is this cousin.
My cousins in Freetown have what I call “extended adolescence.” 2024 I came face to face with that concept. Time after time, incident after incident showed me that my cousins were not just “Not Westernised” no matter what my mother said (my mother is chief liar and justifier of African BS) they are simply not adults. They may even have a job, but living at home and living in Sierra Leone means they are absolute damn children with the foresight of the end of their noses. Last year I had someone 3 hours for a 4 hour event that I was paying for, I was stitched up for £550 for the Ritz, had to Uber an inanimate object (29 year old woman who later feigned injury to stop walking 3 miles) Somone, who wanted to drive my car but not badly enough to speak to me about it. As well as a cousin who is old enough to know better give my enough sexism and misogyny that it dented my confidence into 2025. Be embarrassed. These people are meant to be my peers and all they were were an expensive headache which God will now forbid me from meddling with again. Then there was the male cousin who has a job cheating on his girlfriend because “she cheated first” (This is a lie, but if it were true, just leave?) The cousin that just graduated blowing £1,800-£2,500 of his parents money by missing his flight back to Freetown. (How do you miss a flight if you got there ontime????") Then the cousin who deliberately built her house too small for her family so she could force her mother to take care of her kids, by the way she marries another man next year… I’m actually over it. Also the cousin who asked for a £200k education (which by the way means abandoning the degree his parents have been paying for for the last 6 years) this same cousin asked me for a £3,000 laptop. The laptop I am writing this on cost me £200, so no… I don’t have £3k for a laptop. And why ask for a £100k education if the family said no to a £3k laptop?
There is a world of difference between someone doing something differently from me and someone being an actual child and actually I can’t deal with that.
Are you in fact, mad. These people are wildly irresponsible and they have been failed by their parents. i.e. my aunts and uncles have basically spoiled their kids because they had rough childhoods.
The only difference between 2024 and 2025 is that I will not be spending a single penny on their madness. I will be kind (to myself) and that’s it. My cousins are not my problem. They all had an equal opportunity to host me when I was in Freetown, they had 0 foreplaning and so their problems are no longer my problems. I have divorced myself from this madness.
Here’s to rich me.
I also don’t want my useless uncle to come to the UK this year either. I don’t want any more relatives in my damn house (yes, my mother’s house is 50% mine) so I want peace. Because if they come I will be expected to pay for an activity of some sort.
Much as I want my mum to be happy I don’t want it to cost me a single penny.
I’m done being nice to people who weren’t nice to me. Last year was a joke at my expense.
So no more family. Something I constantly have to keep reminding myself of because frankly their behaviour disgusts me.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith