Goodbye 2020

I don’t want to miss my window to be deep and meaningful and wise and philosophical and inspirational and, and,and, as we usher 2020 out and welcome a hopefully sparkling ,well behaved 2021.

Societal pressure says I should have had a life altering experience in 2020 and I should be ready and eager to share said experience with the world and inspire the hell out of some lucky soul.

I didn’t. 😅

But that’s not the point of my share. I want to raise a glass to you.

You who barely made it through the year,dodging horrendous attacks from all angles.

You who went through pain you couldn’t share .

You who felt forgotten and thought the world was passing you by.

You who in the midst of the world developing new skills, discovering new hobbies, finding new ways to express themselves,opening up new streams of income, finding new love, stumbling upon themselves, all you did was breathe and make it through the year. Cheers to you.

If all you did this year was hold on to your peace and your mental health, cheers to you.

If all you learnt this year was to walk away from toxic, low vibrational family relationships which only work when only you put in the effort, you did good.

If you used the forced time to nurture yourself and have nothing to show for it except emotional clarity, you did good.

It’s quite alright if all you were in 2020 was yourself. It’s quite alright. Cheers to you.

Goodbye 2020. You were a total plot twist. Hello 2021. Be good. We are overdue for some good news.

Cheers

Happy Thanksgiving

I miss me

He said he misses me…and I realised

I miss me too

My dreams desires ambitions

That accidentally fell through life’s cracks and I very nearly forgot about them.

I miss my rage my fizz my drive.

My spark my near arrogance…

My fire my flame

He says he misses me

But

I miss me too…

Where are you?

Home

Image courtesy of Pexels

Is not a place….

It is where my heart tripped and fell and the strings tug at the most inconvenient of times.

Home is the people that contribute to the fragrance of wistfulness.

Home is the treasure of collective feelings whose blotchy stains refuse to fade away.

Home is my innocence and naivete wrapped in daring dreams and plans, half forgotten wisps of repressed joy and naughty secrets.

Home is the sweet pain I carry for a place that does not exist but formed the intricacies of my emotional, moral and spiritual plateau.

Home is a respite, home is….

A slow burning love

Not because he was handsome…he was ,

Not because he was charming…he could be.

Not because he set her mind alight,though he did.

But because he was constantly and consistently kind

Generous spirited and unwilling to be cruel ….

THAT was the fuel that kept the slow burning love going…

Phoenix

Because I very badly wanted to be part of something explosive and amazing, I spent an unwholesome amount of time waiting to be noticed, to be saved, for the calvary to rescue me. The calvary was either delayed or did not receive my location. Yet, still I waited. All evidence said I should give up, fade away, disappear into the background, accept my lot, throw party after pity party.

And then it happened. I did not have a flashing light bulb moment. I was not suddenly illuminated, not suddenly filled with knowledge on what came next.

Slowly, creepingly, I thawed from my frozen sexy poise of damsel-in-distress, of helpless female, of hard-done-by woman, Jilted Juliet. Slowly, I awoke from slumber. Hesitantly, I began to question the position I had assumed was mine in the larger scheme. Haltingly, I did a one step forward, two steps backwards cha-cha to find ,identify, define, redefine,reassess, repackage, reintroduce myself.

I am irrepressibly, overwhelmingly, staggeringly, wonderfully, amazingly enough. I am capable of so much more than I have given myself credit for. I am uniquely positioned to transform into the very person I should be. Shaking off the inertia, peeling off the dead layers that no longer serve their purpose. Shocked to find not just signs of life but evidence of a thriving, fighting spirit.

And I present to you…phoenix. Me: 2.0 thrusting foward, powered by a life force that absolutely refuses to be extinguished. I am me. I am enough .

Nostalgia

He yearns for the land of his birth

He hungers for the place that still stands but in reality does not exist anymore.

Familiar feels, smells, sounds, voices, emotional textures.

Heartsick for a particular slice of remembered bliss,

Violently longing to step onto the soil that bears the imprints of his most intimate experiences. To breathe deep of the fragrance of his history. His spirit thirsts for the land where his umbilical cord was cut and is buried.

He has become a pseudo man in limbo and in danger of forgetting himself. A breath away from being potentially unhinged. Unspoken dread hidden behind the polished surface of social dexterity. Terrified to be revealed as the fraud that he thinks he is.

Overcompensating for his perceived misstep in behavioural nuance. The chasm of his rapidly eroding identity an ever present shadow staining into his consciousness. Home. Motherland.

The place once treasured but now a hollow shell of its former glory. He yearns for a home that remembers but doesn’t exist anymore…not the way he remembers it. Nostalgic for the ruins of his youth…….

I fell in love

I fell in love

I fell in love with emotion, wanted to feel it,

I fell in love with passion, wanted to have it.

I fell in love with love, wanted to celebrate it.

I fell in love with a notion, wanted to hold it.

I fell in love with sensation, wanted to be in it.

A glimpse of tenderness

The novelty of companionship

The ecstasy of feeling

The joy of giving

The excitement of receiving

The discovery of selflessness

The revelation of selfishness

The reality of fantasy

The fantasy of pain

The pain of jealousy

The jealousy of rivalry

The rivalry for territory

I fell in love with an idea.

I’m sorry

Mother of all lies

Women are liars by nature. Mothers are liars, expert level. To be a mother is to be a liar. It’s shocking that nobody prepares you for this. You open your eyes and you’re trying to swim at the deep end. Most of these lies are regarded as a symbol of strength and are upheld as the standard by which your woman-ness, your woman-hood is measured.

“How are you?”,is a greeting and not a question. The polite and anticipated reply is “I’m fine “,or as close to that as you can afford.

I am not fine. I am not coping as a mother. I can’t breathe. I am overwhelmed. It is not coming as naturally to me as I expected, this mothering thing, I need help. I need specific, actual, helpful, physical help. I want non judgmental advice. I want to ask seemingly inane questions, obvious questions, answers to which I should have but I don’t. I want to ask and not feel stupid.

But that is simply not how things are done. A woman is the backbone of society. Motherhood and motherliness are invisible superpowers passed through generations via unuttered sacred osmosis. Nature has provided. Culture has provided, and (oh, thankfully)Google has provided all the answers you might need .You can not not know how to be a mother. You can not be tired. Fatigue and guilt are your dirty secrets because countless women have done this before so what could possibly be wrong with you that you don’t automatically get it?

Having found a balance, you never really let go of the secret conviction that everybody else is doing it better than you. You wear your proverbial big girl breeches and handle it because, well, that’s just how things are done.

You’d think it stops there, not so?Let me enlighten you. It. Does. Not. Motherhood is interconnected lies, woven in love and sacrifice. Motherhood is quietly losing your mind but somehow using it to perform the most extraordinary of feats. It’s catering to needs, sometimes before they even manifest. It’s hard, thankless work that nobody else will do. There’s a famous saying that paraphrased goes” a mother is someone who, when she sees that there’s not enough pie for everyone will instantly proclaim..I never did like pie anyway “…If that’s not a lie I don’t know what is .

Here’s a nod to mothers, fathers who play the mothering role, caregivers to children, aunties, grannies…we appreciate you,keep up the amazing work.

The war of the words

They came

Unbidden, undisciplined, untidily sprouting and reaching into dusty crevices.

They came from memory boxes long shut up, some evoking nuances of remembrance,some hesitantly gripping onto the slippery surface an enervated mind ,quietly seeping into its unutilised corners.

They came.

The words I mean.

While I stood at the kitchen sink, while I tidied up. As I plated dinner.During the most prosaic of incidents. The words unfurled, astonishing me with their perspicuity ,beaming brilliantly.

A soulful poem moving in its eloquence.

The beginning, the middle and the crescendo of a masterfully crafted narrative.Complex and layered and riveting.

The plot of a new play, juicy and meaty and funny.

But when I sit down to capture the magic swirling in my mind….the words dissolve into nothingness.

A wisp of smoke, the words scatter as if they never existed,leaving me empty and hollow and anti climactic, filled with impotence of unfulfilled potential and seething malcontention.

(Writer’s block is a very real and scary thing…)

Words, words, words….