The Wild Life

I remember when I was living in Liberia, people would ask me,

“Why are you like this?

Why are you out here?

You don’t belong here.”

And sometimes I would think, Well, where do I belong then?

I was going to clubs, partying, and not taking school as seriously as I should have. After high school, I made it to college and started studying fashion design. But things became difficult for my mom financially, so I dropped out.

After that, I slowly found myself returning to the same life I had been living before.

I was angry.

I was frustrated.

And honestly, I stopped caring.

I wanted better for myself, but nothing seemed to be working. It felt like every door had closed. I knew there was more to life.

“Because I kept thinking what is the meaning of life if I don’t fulfill my purpose.”

I wanted to be successful, but I couldn’t figure out how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.

And while all of this was happening, people could see my behavior.

They just couldn’t see what was underneath it.

One day my mom told me, “Joy, time is fleeting, and you know it. One day you will look back and realize you have wasted your life. Think about it.”

I listened.

But at the time, I didn’t really care. Or at least, I acted like I didn’t. Her words touched something in me because I knew they were true. And maybe the truth was just too frightening for me to admit.

My mom kept trying anyway. She found somewhere for me to learn how to sew. I never became an expert at it, but I learned the basics. Somewhere around that time, I read The E-Myth, and that book completely changed the way I looked at business and learning.

That became the beginning of something.

I fell in love with reading. Books became one of my safe spaces, and self-education became a way for me to keep moving even when I didn’t know exactly where I was going.

But learning didn’t immediately change everything that was happening inside of me.

There was still this longing.

There has to be more to life than this.

I wrote the vision, I saw it in my imagination, but I kept questioning how and when it would happen.

Then one night, around 8:00 p.m., I packed my things and left my mother’s house. Nobody knew I was leaving.

I was tired.

I was running.

And that decision became another journey of its own.

Eventually, I found myself back in the streets. I was drinking again. Smoking again. Partying again. And how was I supposed to become something different when I kept surrounding myself with the same things?

People say you become what you surround yourself with. Looking back, I understand that differently now.

I call that period of my life

the wild life.

When I say “the wild life,” I don’t just mean partying, drinking, or smoking.

I mean living without direction.

Living one day at a time because you don’t have anything meaningful that you believe you’re moving toward. You survive today, and tomorrow can worry about itself.

As long as there is food to eat, somewhere to go, something to drink, somebody to be around, you keep moving.

Sometimes that life can look like freedom from the outside.

But there is a difference between being free and having no direction. (Repeat)

I didn’t live every part of the wild life.

But I was in it.

And when I look back now, I think the question people were asking was wrong.

They asked, “Why are you like this?”

Maybe the better question was, “What happened?”

Because underneath everything people could see, there was still another girl.

Who was I when nobody was watching?

I was the girl who loved to write. The girl who cared deeply about people. The girl who brought joy wherever she went. The girl who had the fear of God in her heart. The girl who wanted to help her mother. The girl who loved deeply but rarely showed much emotion. The girl who listened. The girl who was hurting.

And somewhere underneath all of that,

I was still the girl with the pen.

She hadn’t disappeared.

She was becoming.

I think sometimes we judge people by their behavior because behavior is the easiest thing to see. We see what someone is doing, where they spend their time, the decisions they’re making, and we decide who they are.

But we don’t always ask what is causing the behavior.

What happened?

Why are you living this way?

Who are you when the walls come down?

And is there room for you to become someone different?

Some people heal.

Some people change.

Some people become.

And some people stay in the wild life.