I closed my eyes and I saw nothing.

I write to you, to you who break into homes of innocent people and instead of taking what you desire, you beat them, you try killing women, while their young watch from the inside of a wardrobe praying that their father comes in and saves them, I write to you, you who came into my home and held my parents at gunpoint, I write to you who would probably never know how it feels standing two feet away while your mother is getting beaten with a firearm.

Do you know how it feels being paralyzed with fear? Your legs won’t move, your hands can’t reach for the phone to call the police, it’s fight or flight but you know you need to fight but your brain already boarded the plane. I write to you, can you imagine 4 men in your home and you don’t know if they’re gonna break your door and shoot you or if you’re gonna open a door and find every loved one covered in blood.

I write to you, you who traumatized us, all crimes are wrong, but to hurt our women, to scare our children, you have destroyed our trust in this South Africa. I pray that the lord so good to have his hand over us during this trying time, I pray that same hand will open your eyes and make you realize that you can’t keep hurting women and children, stop, please.

Am I really okay?

It’s been months, I’ve suppressed every bit of anger and sadness that I’ve been feeling towards life. I no longer know the meaning of “take one pill before bed”

I mean why would I? On one hand I’m trying my best to not have a seizure but on the other hand I’m angry that I ever had one. The world tells you that you’re supposed to be strong, get through it, it’s gonna be okay? But no, I have all this bitterness waiting to break out and shout that it’s not gonna be okay and I no longer know how to be strong and get through this, so yes I may have developed a substance abuse problem, I may have stopped feeling any kind of positivity towards living, but I’m silent because I feel like maybe I don’t get to talk about my issues, maybe the days go by and I’m gonna feel the same shit and no one will understand it but me.

Because at the end of the day, after every seizure, emotional breakdown, the low to my high, I’m awake staring at the ceiling and nothing makes sense, but my pain.

I’m the background music.

I feel people slowly drifting away from me, I hear the tiredness in their voices, their enthusiasm depleting the more they see me, I notice the days that turned into weeks where yet again, I’m forgotten.

I think I’m the music in the background, I’m here but not enough to be noticed, I’m supposed to board a plane but I’m left behind, I don’t know if I did this or if it’s something I should try repairing, but I feel my company becoming unnecessary, but I guess, I’m okay with that.

Take me back.

It feels like your heart just sank, shivers run up your body, you feel a rush of tears, you hear your heart race, your palms sweat, you hear a buzz in your head like you’re blank. That’s when you know, your heart just broke.

As a child you look at the world in bright colours, you see the good in every situation and the only time you ever cried was because you scraped your knee or because you wanted your mom and dad. Little did we know the harsh reality that comes with age, I see more black and blue, I cry even more than I should, I want to cry for my mom and dad but not because I miss them.

The truth is, we always wanna believe that things get better with time but sometimes more damage takes place in time, I wanna wake up one day and hear birds chirping and admire the blue skies, I wanna wake up one day and know my parents still love each other, but that’s a night sleep away, there’s no birds but loud screams and devious whispers, my skies are filled with black clouds and I’m scared to wake up in a house where a broken family now lives.

More than anything I’d love to love myself.

From a young age I was forced to accept that I’m not good enough, my complexion was darker than the rest of them, my behaviour was too playful, I wasn’t like the other girls, I was running around, climbing trees and jumping off walls, I was happy with the way I was, but it was one of these moments where I was most comfortable that ruined my self esteem, forever.

Here I am sitting on a wall, singing a song I heard on the radio station, as usual no one noticed me, no one wanted to join me because I was the odd one from all my sisters so it just so happens that i overhead a conversation that will break my heart everytime, my sisters who were popular chilling with all their friends, gossiping and giggling when someone noticed the little girl who sat on the wall, “ whose the small girl on that wall?” They asked, to what my sister replied, “ Eww, that ugly black pig? She’s my tenants child, she’s from the farms.” I was just a child, but it destroyed my self esteem, I remember the same friend walking pass me a few months later and asked me where’s my parents because apparently I’m not from here.

I grew up wanting to fit the image that my sisters considered perfect, I wanted to be skinny, I wanted long black hair, I wanted to be light brown and I wanted to be known as their sister and not the tenants child.

So I tried, I stopped climbing as much, I stopped cutting my hair, I stopped eating a lot and for a little while I think they liked me, maybe throughout my teen years, they picked on my scars and my glasses but I was abit prettier to them now so I could live with that.

But when the seizures started, I had to gain weight, but I’m back to self hatred and no longer having a self esteem, I’m now an embarrassment to the family, I’m too fat and my weight is disgusting, and if it comes down to it maybe it wouldn’t bother me this much but I’ve never been good enough, pretty enough and loved enough to accept when they criticize me, it ruins me, it makes me want to punch mirrors and throw away my comfort food, it makes me wanna stick my toothbrush down my throat until I can’t throw up anymore, it makes me wanna hide underneath a hoodie so no one can judge my weight and complexion.

And no matter how many compliments I receive, no matter how old I get, it always comes back to “she’s my tenants child.”

I’m afraid to be alone .

No I’m not scared of the dark or of ghost, I fear myself and what I haven’t yet fought, I’m alone which means war, war with the thoughts I’m afraid to become reality, thoughts that eat away all my happiness like death eaters, thoughts that remind me of my every failure.

You can hide from your saddest thoughts but they always come back to consume you, you’d do everything to avoid the reality it wants you to believe, you’d even try ignoring it to pretend you didn’t see this pattern before but deep down, you did. It may have been years ago but you’re never fully ready for that trainsmash.

I’m afraid to be alone because my thoughts may consume me, they’ll show me the bitter end and all my fears magnified, I’m scared to be alone because that gives me time to analyses what I’m given, I’ll destroy myself before reality decides to destroy me.

We need to change

We wait everyday for new cases, news stories that break your heart and make you want to be religious even if you haven’t pray in years, where racism doesn’t end and women are being beaten to death, where children are being murdered all for the purpose of sacrificing a child for good health or prevention from a virus.

What’s wrong with the world? Why do we go against each other when we all should be helping each other, why do we do more wrong when we’re all in panic and should be doing more good? Why is a pandemic a joke and why are statistics just numbers when they should be known as people’s lives, loved ones, family and friends?

Why are women bleeding from their eyes and nose when they should be taking care of their family? Why are children being thrown into fields when they should have been protected by the people who murdered them? Why are police killing people who aren’t fighting back?

This pandemic is an eye opener, the earth heals when humans stay home, animals are safer and happier when we don’t interfere with them, people are bad, people can be in experiencing the most difficult time of their lives and they still won’t have a good heart,

Are there any good people?

It’s been 4 months into lockdown, I could have been blogging and spending time doing something I love but how did my lockdown begin?

It starts with the South African crime rate, where people think it’s okay to take from others, even if these “others” are financially unstable and have a lot of health issues, it’s not the poor stealing from the rich, it’s the criminals stealing from good people. I remember rushing home to find my door broken in half, my clothes scattered on the tiled floor, they touched everything I owned even placing their hands on my underwear and climbing onto my bed, I lost a lot of material but I also lost the security and the feeling of being safe in my own home, all because 3 men decided to break gates and doors in my house, take all I owned and leave, I’m unemployed, I’m a student and my parents don’t have much money. We go into lockdown a few weeks later, when I didn’t have time to get a phone or laptop for online classes, not just because of lockdown but because they took all my savings.

Fours months later and I’m still trying to sleep without jump scares, I’m trying to be comfortable in my own home, I’m just praying that they don’t come back, I have nothing but I’m alive, alive in a place that is cruel, that is selfish, a place not meant for good people.

Be still, be silent.

I’m disappointed for being too “respectful” the kind of respectful that had me stuck in situations where I accepted the outcome because I didn’t have strength to overcome it or I just didn’t have faith that there’s any chance that I’d get out of my situation.

It breaks me and steals a little of my faith everytime I write this but the words that do laps around my head will always be “be still and be quiet, it’s you and nothing ever works out for you”

I remember rapidly losing weight, I went from 58kgs to 47kgs in less than two months, my iron became very low and I just didn’t have much energy to be productive. I tried eating but I still didn’t put on weight but because of people making me think that being thinner was better I convinced myself to suffer in a body that can barely survive, it’s always society that paints you a picture of how things should be even when it’s wrong.

We dive more into 2019 where I just kept dropping weight and began getting these jerks or shivers from time to time, I didn’t take much thought into it because everyone said “wow, you lost weight and you’re looking so much prettier.”

It was July when it finally hit me, I’m not safe and something was going wrong, I remember walking pass a lake with my younger sister and asking her if she also saw these stars and snakes flying around from time to time, these “shadow looking kinda things” and she looked at me asking me “Are you gone mad?”

Well that’s the last I remember after waking up covered in my own blood, flat on the ground surrounded by people and my brother in law asking me “Are you okay?”

Well of course I’m okay because I was walking around perfectly but why is there blood all over my jeans, why are both my knees bleeding? Why is there blood all over the floor and why am I tasting blood?

He looked at me in shock and said “you’re okay” but I heard someone calling the ambulance and I shouted “WHAT HAPPENED?” They said you just fell and bust your lip, nose, knees and you have some bruises on your fingers. I asked to look at myself and I couldn’t hold back the tears, my lips were slit in half, my nose bleeding, my front tooth loose and about to fall out and everytime I asked what happened I just received a weird look like no body wanted to stress me.

I then found out that I had a grand mal seizure, an epileptic attack. I went two weeks unable to talk properly, unable to eat, I had to stick to liquids and till today I can’t bite using the front of my mouth because I’m afraid that my tooth might fall off because I haven’t yet gone for my root canal, my lip has a bump on it which will remain here forever and I had to limp and walk for a few weeks but that’s not where it ends.

In August I had my second seizure in campus, I didn’t receive any injuries and I was taken care of during the seizure however I was still recovering from my injuries in July. As much as all this really affected my self esteem and I lost faith and trust in myself, it doesn’t seem to get easy.

A few days after my seizure I began teaching practice, I made it aware to the school that I have low iron and I’ve been having seizures, I’m very shaky and due to my tooth being loose, some of the words I say don’t come out clearly, my writing will be untidy because I’m very weak but I will try my best.

It’s days like these where you see the lack of humanity and understanding, due to my illness I was taken out of the school because they believed I’m sick and physically incapable, they believed my writing was too untidy and I’m not good enough because of my health and this has delayed my degree and it breaks my heart till today that they wanted me to keep quiet and accept that I was taken out of the school due to my health, it breaks my heart that I’m unemployed and I now have to pay to study an extra year.

I feel as if it’s time that women stand up and voice their opinions; express their feelings and make it known when they’re being taken advantage of, make it known that they’re not sheep and will get things done given the opportunity, that things shouldn’t be taken away from us because of our health, that we’re strong and will succeed no matter how difficult things are and I know even with my physical health being testing, I would have succeeded in all I did if I was given the opportunity to try and not just taken away from it because they didn’t have any faith in me.

I’m now on medication and I’ve put on a lot of weight and things have been much better for me, it’s safe to say I’ve learnt to be healthy and not worry about the opinions of others.

Continue reading →

The beauty often brings pain.

We grow up bruising our knees and falling off a bike only to get back up and walk around unashamed of the scars we have, not afraid of the trouble the bike caused or even the fact that jumping back into what hurt you will reopen the wounds it caused you.

Much like love we run back to what causes us pain because we keep holding on to the beautiful moments and forgetting all the bitterness that we experience just to cling to that temporary satisfaction and happiness because we have something to love. It’s the belief that these moments can only represent happiness and love that leaves us wanting more and not being afraid to swim in the deep end knowing there could be consequences to every move we make.

But everything can hurt, the beauty in the night sky can just as well be the pain you feel in the darkness, the water you consume to hydrate yourself, can sometimes be the pool of depression that you’re drowning in, the picture perfect smile you’re portraying so society sees your beauty belongs to the same person who grinds their teeth because of the constant anxiety that they have because of not knowing that they’re good enough.

And we said the scars and falling down are better than being an adult, but that’s because we avoid these situations, we avoid physically hurting ourselves because we’re constantly running around in a circle of finding new ways to emotionally damage ourselves. But what’s worse? The purity in falling off a bike or growing up knowing that age brings deterioration of your health, of your skin, of all the beauty you were okay with scarring..

Today I write fully aware that sometimes the stars in the sky are the most beautiful thing you’d experience but it’s also the most painful thing you’ll see when you’re staring blankly at your surroundings and your head starts spinning like a record and you see these spots of the light, light, that’s not even there, it suddenly hits you like standing in the middle of a field and getting hit by a ball and you’re on the ground, you don’t know how you got there, you don’t know why you’re bleeding, but as you remain there feeling helpless and hearing nothing but your heart beat because you’re afraid of knowing why people are asking you if you’re okay and wiping the blood of your knees and lips, with a calm smile they tell you “You just fainted, you’ll be okay.” But that’s the last thing you need to hear, you don’t wanna know that you’re failing at being physically and emotionally strong, that you can see something beautiful and it’s not even there, it’s just a picture your mind draws up before you fall to surface, painting the ground red with drops off blood so you can wake up the next day and be asked if you’re okay, so you can wake up two weeks later and be afraid that one day you’ll see the sparkling stars but it’s not always a good thing, so you can wake up a month from today and be afraid of yourself because you don’t even remember how you ended up destroying your body with the scars and wounds that heightened every insecurity you ever had. So you can wake up everyday with uncertainty, not knowing if you’re gonna be okay, so you can wake up knowing you’re a seizure away from breaking a mirror because you can’t deal with the memory your epilepsy leaves behind.