What goes up doesn't always come down

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"Everything that goes up must come down"

...the rules of gravity.

Up to a certain point in my life, I did think everything that goes up must come down. It's something I grew up learning, what most of us grew up learning. As I grew older, I came to the realization that the rules we thought we knew were different, nothing was ever really straight forward.

Inflation as I have come to understand, is the increase in the price of goods as well as services over a period of time. Things used to be so much more easier in the past. I remember there was a time we used only one thousand naira to celebrate my birthday and I invited so many friends.

Now one thousand naira can barely feed you a whole day. Everything that goes up must come down, yeah right!!(ignore the sarcasm).

When I first entered school back in 2016. Although things were hard that time, I still managed to make it through. I lived on four hundred naira a day, I ate just two times and the food was filling. It wasn't the best thing but it was enough to get me through.

Now it's way worse. I spend almost one thousand a day on food if I calculate correctly and it's barely enough sometimes. That's just food, everything else has gone up.

I used to live in school back then so transportation wasn't really a problem, everywhere I needed to be was within a walking distance. It's different now, very different. Fuel used to be 97 naira at some point, now it's 400 where I live which has in turned increased the amount of transport I usually pay.

Many Nigerians face it everyday, it's a hassle. I'm afraid it'll get worse over time and people will not be able to have standard living

How do I cope with it?

It took time getting used to believe me. I remember getting angry at some point because no human being deserves to be overcharged. I sat and wondered how families coped, how students coped and I knew it wasn't easy.

I realized that most of my money was spent on food and transport. The transportation part was easy. I had just recently started being an extrovert but it looked like the universe preferred me being an introvert. If going out would cost me so much, not going out was a solution. I only go out when it's important or when where I need to go isn't far from my house. Besides what's out there? Hot sun and crime(I used that to console myself).

The food part wasn't as easy, it took sometime but I got the hang of things. I started buying food in bulk, it cost way less(even though it was still expensive) than buying it in bits. That helped me because as long as I wasn't going out and there was food, I could worry about other things.

I don't know if things would get better in future, every indication I've seen has only showed me that the price of things will continue to go up but I know we can adapt to any economy and/or situation, it's in our blood.