Day 14 - Skeletons out the closet & Cpt living in the air

 " I really did consider silencing you forever and didn't even feel an ounce of remorse at the thought of doing that to you. How could I just conspire against myself like that Thembi?"

 

......all I kept hearing you say was, " How do these people know how much pain dealing with this stuff is?".... me on the other hand, I couldn't be bothered about them anymore, you see the people that you're talking about Thembi.... I'm at a place where I feel like I don't want to fight this war anymore. I can't be any more strong for you than I can be for myself Thembi I just want to run far away from you and this struggle right now!!

Skeletons out the closet

 

Going through tough phases like these and not knowing if you will overcome the horror ,must be the scariest thing about existing. All that's been happening is that I keep falling into these dark holes and getting out of them alone. This year was the year where I learnt how really dark it can get, and only when you are in that darkness does your hidden skeletons pop out and let you know they are not going anywhere.

 

The story is really long but you'll only know what it feels like if you've ever grown tired of doing the right thing, tired of doing what everybody expects you to do, tired of being strong no matter how unjust the situation may be  to you/ on your side of things. The very reason that I don't want to go home anymore and would rather be drugged and shot in the streets of Durban instead is because of these very skeletons and secrets.

 

The honest thing about secrets is that they never stay hidden for long, the minute all the anger and pain you've been suppressing all those years erupts from its build up and explodes violently... is the day you will know how barriers get broken in this world we live in.

 

The root of all my personal destruction stems from dependence struggles that I've battled all my life that came in the form of neglect, rejection and disappointment. ' Till this very day I still feel my blood boil every time I think about my father. It's not because he hasn't been trying to make things right but because I can't forget and get over damage from past experiences of continuous neglect and the dents that energy left behind in my life.

 

Your footprints stay tracing you back to the ghosts you keep trying to run away from ' coz the universe can be small enough to be inside of you. The story of these damages and scars is a narrative that I wish everyday of my life was physical damage and not emotional and psychological because physical bruises heal quicker and hurt much less.

 

No Dad, it's so deep that it's not the time that I got so ridiculously sick that when I got to the hospital I was told that I couldn't get help because you had taken me off the medical aid before I was 18. No it was also not the time that you refused to pay for living arrangements back in high school and I had to be put out on the street and hustle a plan for myself at that damn age coz I you couldn't be bothered busy playing too high and mighty in your new ' life' and your new ' wife' to care about what was going wrong in mine, I still can't get the answers to exactly who you were expecting to pay my school stuff after you refused to, given the fact that you knew I didn't have a mother alive to fit the bill like the rest of your slew of stray children.... you never had a flipping care so if I didn't relocate myself to a township school that didn't require fees I'd be without a matric right now isn't it? why can't you still tell my why you did that?

 

It was none of any of the above but its still shit I'll never forget in my life. It was kak being treated like the unwanted child by a person who chose not to wear a condom when they could have. My being unplanned was never something I had a say in.... With the biological mother passing before I was old enough to remember what she looked like, I was left with him as the one parent I was rightfully dependent on as a kid. Of all the slew of children that he was popping everywhere with different women, I was the only girl kid with a deceased mother among the lot.

To think that he would have the sense to be responsible was completely above him.

 

Everybody thought I was too young to see what was going on but I was well aware of everything.

He came in and out of my life bribing everybody with money playing Mr Bigshot in a small town where nobody could see through his act. Years went by and he'd continue popping up whenever it suited him pretending that everything was ok and that he never once treated me like an unwanted bag of memories he was trying to forget.

 

My Grandparents kept defending him and hiding him behind reason and screwed judgement but it was too late at that time. I'd already seen him for his true colours. He was not the virtuos man that they presented him to be to the rest of the community. This is the same man who took me and my youngest brother, hid us out in some dodgy racist boarding school somewhere out of town because we didn't fit his idea of a ' perfect' family picture so we had to be edited out after his massive wedding that we weren't invited to. He couldn't tell his own parents that his kids were not allowed in his new life because his wife didn't like them... so he found somewhere he could leave all of that behind. We couldn't exist in the future with him as his kids ' coz this man secretly wanted to erase his past and start over with his new wife which is why we never attended to that massive ceremony of a wedding that all we saw of were pictures from!

 

So... do I feel sorry for his life crumbling, loosing his job, getting a divorce and loosing the mansion we never set foot in? F** No.... I feel no bit of sympathy and think karma knows best and he's well deserving of his fate right now... do I wish him any better? No.. rot in your misery Mr, you made life very miserable for me while growing up. Everyday had me asking why didn't this man just wear a condom and not pop kids everywhere to treat them so shitty as though somebody sent babies to him in a basket or some shit. He's never been responsible and deserves the dish of crap he's facing right now and boi do I wish it gets worse for him.

 

The problem with coming out of such a situation is.... all that rage, pain and rejection that you suppressed inside for all those flippin' years expresses itself eventually whether you want it to or not. The stuff that collects dust up there in your mind is like money in a bank coz value forever accumulates, you get a build up of emotion and all that psychological damage will F** you up mentally until you do something about it. That kind of emotional baggage is the greatest monster to carry around ' coz it will keep showing its head whenever you think that the storm is over.

 

Breeh actually thought I was just looking for easy ways out, that I was so young for this busy telling me how everybody's got their own struggles along with other reasons why I should bring myself together and carry on ignoring the scars. Jee what a friend! I've been keeping myself together all my life and playing strong even while this stuff ate at me thin!!! in silence and darkness and the F**king world still wants me to continue?

 

It was fairly easy for her to say, being somebody whose following her dreams smoothly with no interruption acing her drama honours with a strong support structure 2 mothers (biological + step) and a father whose paying for her flat and all that other stuff she needs so how could she begin to imagine what I'm talking about?

What would she know about the strains of having to go it alone before you are ready to? Whay to go mamis... I'm sure you have the utmost understanding of what it is like to live off of a limited loan you're gonna have to pay off yourself much later and still have to battle family. Really wishing that they would be helping me get through this institutional phase of my life and not making it any harder than it already is though. It only makes the hill much steeper.

You wish you didn't have to be so alone fighting to get your life rolling smoothly. You want to surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you and have got your back. Not people who want something from you.... All these scars and bruises keep showing themselves. So the war continues. Skeletons pop out and remind you of what it felt like growing up as that mistake kid that everyone in the family treated like the unwanted extra.

 

The frustration that I had to go through with family leaving me to my own devices when I needed them was horrifying. How will I forget having to survive on scraps ' coz sometimes the loans cash wasn't spilling out enough to cover all of the months necessities, groceries included. How could I forget how family turned its back on me after I had my first break in here and lost everything that was important. Not one person threw a couple of cents out as a lifeboat out of the deep waters for me. I had to get my own self out of that hole...

 

With the dependence scars that developed over time as a result of the relationship I had with my father. I believe I could have healed much sooner from those disappointments had my grandparents not defended and hid his claws from me seeing them. For as long as I could remember, people kept sweeping dirt under the carpet ignoring everything nobody had the balls to address.

 

Often I feel like my grandparents did to me what Nelson Mandela did to all black people when he said " forgive and love your oppressor, forget everything they've done to you and carry on like nothing ever happened" The problem with that idea is that nothing ever gets fixed, addressed or dealt with it is just swept under the mat again and expected to disappear. It only creates a build up of problems, pains and emotions that will eventually explode in a revolting and violent way... Look at the damn crime rate in our country to begin with.

 

My meltdown was just frustration at breaking point. I saw no pint in proceeding in the path I was proceeding on after the cold shoulder I got from my family at a time that I needed their help the most.

 

I was ready to collect all my money and take a bus out somewhere far from everything and everyone. somewhere I've never been before and where I can just start over again. I later decided it would be Cape Town. I wanted to drop everything and pack 2 bags and just take off and leave everything behind.

 

I didn't really care what I was going to do when I got there, A waitressing job didn't sound like a bad idea at all at that point. Sleeping at libraries and Parks sounded like so much of an adventure. I imagined in my mind how amazing it would be to work during the day and roam the city all night writing my heart out continuing my journey in a different environment.

 

I'd be so very free prouncing about with a loaf of bread in my bag as the only thing I needed and nothing else. Writing about all the discoveries and adventures in a new city, a new life and new people! Dropping out of my degree study for that didn't sound like such a bad idea to me. It was actually exciting... only that in reality that isn't how things pan out.

 

Working a simple job enough to survive from and living in the air as a free person creating magical works as I go sounded like a dream to me. I really am tired of having to do things by the book. I want to free myself from family ties and friends and when opportunities present themselves I might just find myself backpacking to other parts of the world!!

 

Somebody once asked me why I hate my father so much. I couldn't respond to that person that time, but as I've gone along I've come to understand the conflict better.....I think it's because of everything I've had to go through with having him as a parent. All that pain and resentment that built up over time and ate at me inside, & the feeling of being rejected so many times as a kid by somebody who was responsible for my birth. The one person who was supposed to love and protect me did the exact opposite of that and turned out to be the one person in all my life whose hurt me the most through disappointments, neglect and repeated forms of rejection.

 

I could scratch people in the face every time I hear words like " you're better than this" or " you're so much stronger than this" or any kind of judgment. 'Coz you could never see inside the mind of the next person so who are you to intervene?.... The same way I day dream about blinding my father with an HB pencil is the same way I imagine attacking such people.

 

about the Cape Town thing.......

 

as much as I'd love to give up and run off ' coz I've been going from depression to meltdown and back into frustration all over again - crazy vicious cycle. I believe I would be better fighting the difficulty I'm experiencing now by saying "I refuse to be stopped, I will continue nomatter how crazy it gets"

It's been really tough with grades looking bad ' coz I've been dealing with so much and juggling more than I could handle but hey...look at me, I'm still here and things can still change for the best.

 

I'd be standing victorious to say "I'm not going to be stopped, I won't be run down by anything that isn't worse than what I've had to put up with prior these hiccups and the kinds of fire I've been roasted through before... I simply won't give up" This could be my way of showing the middle finger to every factor against me getting through this period in my life.

 

I'm still going to explore Cape Town and live in the air.. Just not now anymore but after my graduation.. (throws the confetti!!)

 

Tracing back to how long my mind has been struggling with rejection, neglect and disappointment as stuff I've been trying to deal with for so long. Last year I wrote and recorded "I am" to an Eminem record that had a similar concept drawing on his conflict with his mother. Click link below to hear what I did with the joint:

' Click' to play the recording- " I Am"

end of fucking day 14.. I hated it like shit!