Journey to Self-Discovery: The Coming of Age story

By Shernell Pather

One should not try so hard to fit into to society, when one is born to stand out.

21^st April, 2009, Graduation Day, Sarah* had just arrived at work when she received a frightening phone call that she thought would be the hardest and the most emotional obstacle she would have to overcome.

The year was 1994 and for Sarah*, a newly fresh high school graduate, life was just beginning. After twelve years of studying at school, she decided to take a gap year, in order to weigh her options on the career path she wanted to pursue. A year later, she had decided that her love for jazz music and singing would lead her to pursue a career in studying music at the University of Cape Town. “It was an eventful for a lot of reasons and a lot of those decisions impacted those reason there on in, and kept me more determined,” Sarah* explained.

Sarah*, who started to feel out of control over her own destiny, had decided to move back home, which was located in Johannesburg. However, she was faced with an emotional heartache of discovering that her father was having an affair. This had torn Sarah’s* family apart and contributed to her developing an eating disorder, known as bulimia. “With eating disorders it is usually about control and a lot of the control issues had to deal with how your future is being controlled and you feel very disempowered,” says Sarah*. This back set pushed Sarah* to a point where she lost a sense of who she was and what she wanted to accomplish in life.

After completing a short course such in, Journalism, she was still pressured by her parents to pursue a career in music. The end result of this was her father refusing to support Sarah* financially. Although she did love music, studying wasn’t something she was eager to get back into, but it was her love for the English language and literature that changed Sarah’s* mind.

From 1996 to 2001, Sarah* was now more determined to start picking up the broken pieces of her messy life and began repairing each bit. She started recovering from her eating disorder with necessary check-ups at the doctor and she began raising funds in order to pay for university.  Sarah* accomplished this goal by putting her first deposit towards her first year of studies, a General Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology, but she ended up failing it.

Sarah*, who had pressurised herself in trying so hard to achieve in this course, soon realised psychology just wasn’t for her. This motivated her to switch her major to media studies. “I was much more focused,” she explained. Sarah* had finally graduated in 2001 and thought her journey was going in the right direction, but it wasn’t long until she was faced with another obstacle.  During 2001 to 2006 she had taken a five year break. During this period, Sarah* had lost two grandparents and had to deal with her parents’ horrible divorce, where her relationship with her father started to crumble.

Although this devastated Sarah*, she had decided that she was emotionally, physically and financially stable to tackle her honours in English. She accomplished her postgraduate studies and in 2008 the final leg began in obtaining her master’s. She decided to take another break and started working but needed to find the balance between working, studying and having time to herself.

The last breaking point for Sarah was a day she will never forget; she arrived at work on the day of the graduation and had received a frightening phone call to find out that her mother was having a seizure. Through a serious of tests performed by doctors, Sarah* was informed that her mother had a brain tumour. During that week Sarah* had to deal with, working, pulling out of the Master’s course and the possibility of saying goodbye to her mother. “The doctors called us in and said you’re going to have to say goodbye to your mom, I was sitting next to her filled with emotions and I said to my mother; you are going to see your grandchildren that is worth fighting for, and then I said that you’re going to see me graduate with my masters and ambitiously said with distinctions,” she explained. The operation was a success.

The last stretch for Sarah’s* journey was obtaining her Masters, she had given everything and as a result on, June 2013, Sarah* had obtained her masters with full distinctions. Sarah*, had gone from failing her first year of varsity to succeeding in masters with distinctions. Her life lesson was that through her strength and determination she was able to discover who she was and find her true passion in life.

*Name have been changed in order to protect the person’s identity