The Importance of Being Single

If there’s one thing my mother has taught me it’s that single does not mean lonely and that being in a relationship does not mean happy. In this age of social media, people can often pity you for being single, but what they need to realise is that being single is more than just a status. Sometimes “I’m single” really means, “I refuse to settle for less”, or “I’m working on me right now”. We look at couples on social media and forget that we’re seeing a highlights reel, and are not privy to the behind the scenes footage. This often makes us feel undue pressure to get into a relationship we’re not ready for. Don’t let friends, family or societal pressure rush you into a relationship. And especially don’t let feelings of loneliness rush you into a relationship. The worst thing in life is not being alone; it’s being with someone who makes you feel alone.

Every romantic movie and song on the radio says you need somebody to complete you, but only self-love will complete you. Everyone wants to find “the one” but what if YOU are the one. Don’t wait for somebody to come along and make you happy – this is a guaranteed way to end up sad. If you’re unhappy, a relationship isn’t going to change this – in fact, it will amplify it. You have to make you happy.

When you’re single is the best time to become the sort of person that you want to attract: someone to grow with, someone you can be yourself around, someone you can have fun doing nothing with, someone who can be your best friend. Because it’s not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy relationships. But first, you have to be a friend to yourself.

However, this does not mean that while you are on your journey you are unworthy of love. Someone can still love you while you are learning to love yourself and in fact help you on your path. Don’t think that just because you are not skipping and jumping, the hills are alive with the sound of music happy that you are undeserving of love. Just as long as you feel whole and are not relying on that other person for validation, you are ready to love and be loved.

So the next time someone tries to console you and your singleness, shoulders back, head high, and wear it with honour and pride.

A Failing Education System

It’s not often I’ll post on consecutive days, except for when world events get me riled and I need to rant. The 2018 matric results were released today. Usually these aren’t of much interest to me. Yes, I am one of your typical “It was much harder to pass in my day”, “Can you believe how easy these exams are?”, “The pass mark is disgracefully low!” people, but beyond that I don’t interact much with that demographic and so it doesn’t really affect my life. However, for the past five years I have been sponsoring my domestic worker’s son’s education and this year he wrote matric, so today, the results were of huge significance to me. Treading as lightly as I can on my white privilege, we have a very uncharacteristic relationship with our domestic worker. I’m about to say a whole bunch of stuff you’ve heard white people say about their domestic workers before, only I genuinely mean them. I love Betty like another mother. I love her son Bongani like a little brother. Our home is their home. Betty has been to our wedding, we have been to her home and met most of her extended family. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.

Bongani went to a school in the township that he lives in. I tried to move him to a better school closer to where we live but his English wasn’t good enough to do English as his home language. I sent him to Saturday school for extra English, Maths Literacy, Geography and Computer lessons. I sent him books to read and movies to watch to try and improve his English. It did improve markedly, but not to a point where he could transition to studying English as his home language. His education at school was sporadic. Teachers would come and go. He would be taught in isiZulu but tested in English. He would run out of stationery and out-grow his uniform but be too proud to ask me for a new supply – I had to learn to pre-empt him. His marks were erratic. He would get 60% for a subject one term and fail the next, with no explanation. This continued throughout his schooling. On paper, he failed grade 11, yet in January 2018 he was starting matric.

At the beginning of matric he told me he could no longer go to Saturday school because he had to attend his regular school on Saturdays to get through the syllabus. He couldn’t come to me for extra help during the school holidays because he would be attending classes then too. My heart ached for this poor boy whose childhood it seemed was over. The first term report card arrived and he had failed again. He just scraped through terms two and three. In grade 8 he had spoken excitedly about becoming a teacher, which required university entrance. In more recent years he had tailored his ambitions to possibly pursuing a trade – something where he could start at the bottom and work his way up, perhaps attending a Technikon while he worked. But now we were staring down the barrel of a matric rewrite.

So, imagine my utter astonishment this morning when I typed his examination number into the system and flashing back at me it said “Bachelor Degree Pass”.

Can someone please explain to me how someone went from failing, scraping through, to a Bachelor. Degree. Pass? To get a Bachelor Degree Pass you must:

• Obtain at least 40% for your Home Language.
• Obtain at least 50% for four other High Credit subjects.
• Obtain at least 30% for two other subjects.

I know Bongani worked extremely hard, I have no doubt about this. I am quite confident he achieved points one and three. But the marks he would have needed to achieve point two seemed almost unobtainable.

I know this is the point at which I make enemies but it needs to be said: a university education is not a right, it is a privilege and leading young people to believe it is a right does them a disservice and sets them up for failure. I was lucky enough, privileged enough to go to university, and I know how difficult it is. I know that Bongani would not cope. His level of English is not good enough to cope with lectures. If he were studying a BEd he would struggle to handle the workload and the course content. Inevitably he would fail and be forced to drop out. He would lose years of his life and take a massive blow to his self-esteem. None of this is Bongani’s fault. He has been failed by an education system that did not adequately prepare him for tertiary education and a school system that has somehow made him eligible for something he will not be able to cope with.

I can already hear the cries of racism ringing through the air, but this has nothing to do with race. This useless, corrupt system is colour blind. I have no doubt it is failing children of all colours, creeds and languages the country over. Sending them to university with dreams in their hearts and stars in their eyes to fail at courses that they are not equipped for because their high school education did not prepare them for it. It is a lovely notion that everyone is entitled to tertiary education, but tertiary need not necessitate university. It can include colleges, trade schools and Technikons. So please, if you got your results today and you got that Bachelor Degree Pass out of nowhere. By all means go bonkers and celebrate. But then please take a moment before deciding on your next move. Become a statistic for the right reasons.

A Valentine’s Day Post for the Ages

I’ve never been one for Valentine’s Day. Regardless of whether or not I was in a relationship. My feelings on the day are basically summed up in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired in 1998, where a fringe character asks Buffy what her plans for the day are and she responds with “Valentine’s Day is just a cheap gimmick to sell cards and chocolate”. I even stole this line once to win a greetings card competition in my eighth grade English class. On the front of the card I wrote “Valentine’s Day is just a commercial gimmick used to sell cards and roses…” and on the inside I wrote, “…but for you I’ll make an exception”. Genius, right? Well it won me a mug and a box of chocolates.

I honestly don’t understand the appeal of the day. Can anyone explain it to me? Because everyone I know has very similar complaints, yet restaurants are booked out and the shops are stocked with their commercial crap, so evidently the masses are still buying into it. It was my birthday last week and my flawless Hubby bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers that the florist told him outright would be going for two and a half times the price today. Apart from my argument above, there are also the arguments about why you would only spend one day a year celebrating your love for someone, when you should be showing them all year round. And what about the single people? This must really feel like a day deliberately set aside to make them feel like shit. Especially in high school, an extremely sensitive time in a young person’s development, when it is widely used as a fund-raising initiative but more so as a popularity contest to see who can collect the most roses. And to point out, most cruelly, who received nothing at all.

And so, it is on this idea of singleness that I have decided to focus my Valentine’s Day post. (Because let’s face it, they’re probably the only ones who will have time to read it tonight (*first punch to the gut!). Although I might be married now, I have been single before. I have been single for long periods of time and I have been single for short periods of time. I have been the “wallowing in self-pity, I’m going to be alone forever, no one will ever love me, I’ll just have to be every kid’s favourite aunt” kind of single. I have been the “I am a strong and independent woman, I don’t need a man by my side” kind of single. I have been the “No one will love me until I love myself, I need to get my shit together” kind of single. I guess being single is like grief – there are many different stages and we float through them, often bouncing back and forth depending on circumstances.

First of all, I would like to tackle this myth that no one will love you until you love yourself. It is a lie and it is damaging and hurtful. And I secretly believe the only people who perpetuate it are people in unhappy relationships who are trying to convince themselves that they are happy with who they are. The fact of life is that we are a constant work in progress. There are days you are going to be your own hero and days you are going to want to crawl under your duvet and die. This does not make you unworthy of love. So, stop believing that you need to achieve some unattainable degree of happiness and self-acceptance before you are deemed fit to join your life with another’s. In fact, often you will find the best partnership is with someone who teaches you how to better love yourself. How to be kinder to yourself, how to see the best in yourself and points out that all those “flaws” you knit pick at are actually quite endearing.

Secondly, I would like to make the point that you don’t need a Valentine. I’m pretty sure most single people are totally sick of hearing this, but just in case you’ve recently been cornered by an aunt or your mom had an extra glass of wine at lunch on Sunday and let slip that she’s worried she might never have grandchildren… I want to make sure you know you are already complete. You are not a fraction of a whole, you are not a freaking puzzle piece waiting to see where you fit, you are an absolute work of art as you are, and you don’t need someone else to come along to validate your existence (regardless of what auntie Mildred says). If you had a timeline worked out in high school that requires you to have been engaged six months ago to someone you haven’t met yet, please rip it up and move on immediately. Life doesn’t work according to timelines. Some people meet, get married and have kids within months. And some people have cats and are every kids’ favourite aunt or uncle. The point is, you determine your worth, and you have full permission to be happy all by yourself.

As you might expect, Hubby and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. But it has always had special significance for me. If you had asked me last year what the 14^th of February meant to me I would have said the same thing I had been saying since the year 2000: “It is my best friend’s birthday”. But this year if you asked me what the 14^th of February means to me I would have to say “It was my best friend’s birthday”. I’m still getting used to that. The transition from is to was. He would have been 31 today. Traditionally I used to send him a soppy Valentine’s Day message and finish it with a “Oh yeah, and happy birthday”. And I would always send him a sound clip of Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me” in honour of the time he dumped me on Valentine’s Day in 2002. Yup, our friendship survived a lot.

Michael consumed a lot of my thoughts today, as well as our shared love of music. But I also thought about other relationships and what brought me to where I am now. I made some shocking choices regarding my love life in the past. So many sad songs have been written about “the one that got away”. Adele’s “Someone Like You” immediately comes to mind, a song I absolutely adore. But when I think back on my own life, as much as I love that song, I would rather sum up my own love life as “Never mind, I’ll find someone ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE YOU!!!!!!!” Which is exactly what I did. And so maybe on Valentine’s Day we should celebrate the ones we are so relieved got away! And what better way to do it than through music. And if Adele can’t help, I suggest we turn to Beyonce and the break up anthem “Best Thing I Never Had”… “THANK GOD YOU BLEW IT, THANK GOD I DODGED A BULLET… CAUSE HONESTLY YOU TURNED OUT TO BE THE BEST THING I NEVER HAD”.

If you’re looking for a little more angry chick music this Valentine’s Day, look no further than Kelly Clarkson’s “Never Again”, “NEVER AGAIN WILL I KISS YOU, NEVER AGAIN WILL I WANT TO, NEVER AGAIN WILL I LOVE YOU, NEVER!”. And although they’re happily back together now (good for them, right?! Bleh!) I will always love the image of P!nk riding a lawn mower down a main road singing “SO, SO WHAT I’M STILL A ROCK STAR, I GOT MY ROCK MOVES, AND I DON’T NEED YOU, AND GUESS WHAT, I’M HAVING MORE FUN, AND NOW THAT WE’RE DONE, I’M GONNA SHOW YOU TONIGHT!” It’s a cliché in itself, but clichés are clichés because they’re true: It’s better to be alone than with the wrong person. So, if you find yourself alone this Valentine’s Day or even if you’re not alone but the idea of celebrating seems lame, why not celebrate by rejoicing in the bad decisions you DIDN’T get stuck with. As Beyonce says: “THANK GOD I FOUND THE GOOD IN GOODYBYE! I WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST THING YOU NEVER HAD!”

 

When the Heartache of Fandom Becomes Too Much to Bear

I’m no stranger to sports fandom heartache. I was there in 2012, in my dad’s living room, watching on his fancy big screen TV in high definition as Sergio Aguero scored the goal that put Manchester City 3-2 up over QPR, securing them the Premier League title over Manchester United in literally the final moments of the season. I’ll be dead honest, I hadn’t been expecting us to win the league that year, but it still hurt.

I was in the beautiful Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit for the 2010 World Cup, proudly hosted by my home country, where Italy needed a dodgy penalty to draw against New Zealand. New Zealand. They failed to secure a single win in the group stages and didn’t proceed to the knockout round. They didn’t fare much better four years later in Brazil.

And I was there for Super Bowl XLIX, watching live at some ungodly hour, all on my own, when the Seahawks went into the fourth quarter with a ten-point lead over the New England Patriots. I was still awake when the high and mighty Tom Brady brought the Patriots back to overtake the Seahawks and give his team a four-point lead, with the score at 28-24 with just 2:02 left in the game. But when quarterback Russell Wilson marched us down the field to the one-yard line with 26 seconds to spare, with arguably the best running back in the league in Marshawn Lynch in the back field, I was feeling

pretty confident I’d be riding on a high for the rest of the night. So, when Wilson chose to throw a slant pass that was neatly intercepted by Patriots’ defender Malcolm Butler, I swiftly entered a cycle of the seven stages of grief that I’m still not entirely sure I’m out of.

 

Heartache. Real, true and pure heartache. Pain that honestly hurt worse than the end of some relationships, and I don’t say that lightly.

Obviously there have been the highs too. You could say I am a United fan by sheer chance, luck or fate. It certainly isn’t choice. I was raised to be a United fan. Just as your parents pass along good morals and principles, hopefully some money for a good education, and a second or third-hand car to get you from A to B, so too do they pass along your allegiance to a team. And if it weren’t for my dad being from Northern Ireland, and the greatest footballer ever to have lived also being from Northern

Ireland, who just so happened to play for Manchester United; who knows, I may have ended up a City fan. And that day in 2012 would have been one of the greatest days of my life. But fortunately for me, Manchester is red, and I’ve lived to see a whole lot more success, and experience the euphoria of watching a trophy being lifted more times than I can count.

The Italy thing is a bit more weird. I have no ties to Italy, beyond my love for pizza and spaghetti bolognaise. But I have always loved football; and boy did I love Roberto Baggio. And one of my earliest memories of intensely watching competitive professional football was seeing him miss the penalty in the 1994 World Cup, handing the title to Brazil. Since then, I have been a die-hard Italy fan. I watched the 2006 World Cup final in a packed pub. When Fabio Grosso scored the winning penalty, I cried like a baby. In public. Which, for someone with social anxiety, I will tell you, is quite a feat.

To be an American Football fan in South Africa takes dedication. And money. First of all, you need a Game Pass, there’s just no way around it. You can watch the Red Zone live, but with the time difference, there’s just no way around those Thursday night, Monday night and late Sunday night kick-offs. Then, you need to sacrifice social media time on the days after games you’ve missed if you’re only going to be able to watch them when you get home from work, which is most Mondays for me – try doing that when part of your job description is “social media manager”. So why the Seahawks? More like why anyone else? The Seahawks embody what it is to be a team. They play for one another. They are a brotherhood. Their players are passionate, courageous, generous, talented and they care about their fans. Oh yeah… and my brother supports them.

So, I was also there for Super Bowl XLVIII when the Seahawks absolutely annihilated the Denver Broncos, winning 43 – 8, in a game where the Seahawks were largely viewed as the underdog going in. The score tied for the third largest score differential in Super Bowl history. This was the first ever Super Bowl victory for the Seahawks and my fandom arrived just in time for me to be a part of it.

So, do the good times outweigh the bad? Normally I would say yes, without a doubt, but in these last two weeks my heart has become so weighed down with fandom pain that I don’t know how much more I can take. It all started on the 9^th of November, week 10 of the NFL season, Thursday Night Football, the Seattle Seahawks versus the Arizona Cardinals. Now if you want to know everything that is wrong with Thursday Night Football, all you have to do is click here: https://www.theplayerstribune.com/richard-sherman-seahawks-thursday-night-football/ It’s a night when players’ seasons end. Players who haven’t had time to recover from Sunday’s game, forced to play three days too soon. And on the 9^th of November, that is exactly what happened to the very man who wrote that article.

On a seemingly innocuous play, Richard Sherman, All Pro Cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks went down with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Fine, it had been bothering him for weeks and he had been playing on it hurt. But that’s the type of guy Richard is; will never let him team mates down, will never let the fans down. Plus, I don’t think there are many who would deny that Richard Sherman at 60% is still better than most Cornerbacks at 100%. But Sherman is more than just a player on a team. He is the heart and soul of his football team. Even though he could barely walk, he was hobbling up and down the side lines, shouting instructions and encouragement to his team mates. He is a bigger loss than just a Defensive Back, his immense presence on that field will be sorely missed. When he gave a short press conference after the match, he was fighting back tears the whole way through, until he could hold them back no longer, and broke down. Me, on the other hand, I cried the whole way through.

Now I take you to Monday the 13^th of November. Italy vs Sweden; the second leg of their World Cup Qualifier. They lost the first leg 1-0. As time wore on, they became more and more desperate, but the ball would not hit the back of the net. The final whistle blew. For the first time in sixty years, there will be no Italy in the World Cup. But that’s not the part that hurts. Gigi Buffon made his debut for Italy in October 1997 at the age of 19. He had decided to retire after the World Cup, now that decision had been made for him. What a cruel and unfair way for a career of such brilliance and dynamism to end. He gave an interview on Italian TV, openly crying, I have no idea what he was saying, but I cried along with him. Absolutely heart-breaking.

And now I move on to the paragraph that will take all the strength in the world to type. It also began on the 9^th of November, Thursday Night Football, although I didn’t know it at the time. My favourite player, “Bam Bam” Kam Chancellor went off injured near the end of the game with something called a “stinger”. It wasn’t a term I was familiar with. I went to bed thinking it was maybe the American version of a dead leg. I didn’t think about it again until Pete Carroll’s Tuesday press conference when I found out a stinger was in fact “a common nerve injury resulting from trauma to the neck and shoulder, often resulting in burning pain accompanied by numbness and weakness”. Not quite a dead leg. Carroll’s reluctance to provide much of an update on Kam’s status had me worried. And worried I was right to be. Yesterday it was announced that Kam’s season is over, due to a neck injury, with a chance he might never play again. This time I cried for about an hour. And every time I think about it I have to fight back tears.

I can’t post a picture of Kam looking any other way, because I can’t imagine him any other way. I don’t want to.

Every week these athletes put their bodies on the line, and for what? For our entertainment? I know they love to play, but at what cost? And do they know the potential cost before they get suited up each week? I was talking to my brother earlier today and he said it’s genuinely becoming a moral dilemma over whether or not we tune in to watch on a Sunday, when we are literally watching guys’ lives fall apart on screen. The number of elite players to have suffered season ending injuries this season is staggering. I honestly don’t know how much more my heart can take.

They say things happen in threes. Sherman, Gigi, Kam. Let that be the end of it. I have always firmly believed in regression to the mean. This has been a period of extreme heartache for my sports fandom. Surely things will return to some kind of normal now. And please may the next extreme be a positive.

Invisible Disabilities and Having a Go at Cancer Lady

Hubby and I started ballroom dancing last February in preparation for our wedding and enjoyed it so much we just kept going, except for the three weeks I was in the psychiatric clinic. Returning after an absence brings about a perfect paradox in the life of someone who suffers from both depression and social anxiety. The depression side of you hopes that people have at least noticed that you haven’t been around for a few weeks, but the social anxiety side doesn’t want a fuss or any attention drawn to you whatsoever. Turns out, I needn’t have worried…

We arrived at the same time as another couple who, unbeknown to us, had also missed a few classes. The wife half of the couple had the unmistakable shaven head of someone undergoing chemotherapy. Hubby and I got the “oh shame, hope she’s ok, wonder what kind she has” out the way. I smiled my socially anxious smile and we entered the ballroom; where sympathy descended upon chemo lady.

Now I am taking nothing away from chemo lady. Cancer is a horrible beast. Hubby had leukaemia as a child and so I am all too familiar with his stories of how cruel the disease, as well as its treatment can be. However, I had just been in hospital too. For three weeks. For a life-threatening condition in the sense that I wanted to end my own. I have temporal lobe epilepsy that was giving me two seizures a day at the time. And a dreadful chemical imbalance that I didn’t ask for, any more than she had asked for her tumours.

The difference here is obvious. My diseases are invisible. You can’t see epilepsy. Or anxiety, or depression. You may see its symptoms if you know what to look for, but for the most part, I am fighting an invisible battle, while chemo lady’s is very much out in the open. Now this isn’t about attention, this is about support. This is about knowing that people are in your corner. Our entire dancing class is in chemo lady’s corner. No one knows I need them in my corner too. And I think the thing that possibly makes me the saddest is that even if I told them about my invisible illnesses, about what I struggle with each day, I feel quite certain I wouldn’t get as enthusiastic a response as her bald head did.

There is something terribly wrong with our society. Something that seems to think that mental illness is a choice. A weakness; something we should be able to just snap out of if we were strong enough. You don’t expect people to snap out of cancer, or diabetes, or hypertension; but when it comes to ailments of the brain – well then, just think yourself better. Maybe it’s because doctors can’t yet prove with scientific tests exactly what’s chemically going on in your brain to cause depression, so it must be “all in your head”. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing. If I could “think myself better”. Lord knows I’ve tried.

If mental illnesses presented as physical then even if someone wasn’t brave enough to seek help, or didn’t know where to turn, if they were in so much pain that they would rather be dead than alive, at least someone would freaking notice! Hell, it would probably present as a gaping wound on their forehead! Blood and puss would be gushing out of their ears. It would be nasty. The kind of thing that people would stop to stare at, that people would gather round. The kind of thing that people call an ambulance for. But mental illness is invisible. And so you go unnoticed; unhelped; unrescued.

In fact, if anything, mental illnesses are worse than invisible. If people do notice a sign or a symptom, they usually feel so awkward about it, they’ll pretend they didn’t see it. Crying in the bathroom stall at work? What a weirdo! Can’t she get her shit together like the rest of us? Personally, I think getting your shit together is overrated. I think it’s a myth. Perpetuated by people so boring they have no shit to get together. When you’re made to feel like it’s an attainable goal, yet it feels like your world is crumbling around you, crying in a bathroom stall should be perfectly acceptable behaviour.

Everyone deserves their privacy and the invisibility of mental illness could sometimes be seen as a blessing, I guess. But I fear most people are using its anonymity as a shield against shame. The fear of rejection and the stigma of mental health issues within society are enough to make anyone hide their symptoms. And it is this secrecy, this tendency to hide in the invisibility that is perpetuating the problem. Mental illness is not something that can be overcome without a strong support system and you can’t have a strong support system if people don’t know what is going on in your life. It is only by talking about these issues, and other invisible illnesses, that we can begin to break down barriers and heal each other as a true community.

In truth, I am part of the problem. I felt sorry for myself because my dance class wasn’t there for me, but I denied them the chance to be. I could have come back to class and explained my absence. I could even have blamed the epilepsy entirely and left out the mental health aspects – something I am prone to doing – but instead I said nothing, and internally berated a poor woman with cancer. I feared their judgement, but it was me who judged them first.

There is a risk that people won’t understand. That they’ll tell you have so many reasons to be happy and that you just need to think positive thoughts. But there is also a chance that someone will give you a hug and tell you that they understand and your support system will become that much stronger. Isn’t it worth the risk?

Incident in the BHSV!!!

Husby and I are extremely fortunate to live where we live; spoilt in fact, spoilt rotten. My parents bought a lovely little family home in Beacon Hills (name changed to protect my neighbours from lynching once you have finished reading this post) in the early 80s, back when property was affordable. Over the course of my childhood they gradually expanded on it as finances would allow, turning it into a really luxurious living space. Beacon Hills also grew, turning into one of the most sought after suburbs in the area. My mom chose to rent it out rather than sell when she moved overseas seven years ago. Best decision ever (in my humble, spoilt rotten opinion). But after the tenants from hell, our beautiful home was in desperate need of a little TLC and a little family to love it. Enter me and Husby!

Mom gave us the opportunity of a lifetime: fix up the place, and you can live in it. We jumped at the chance – no other arrangement would enable us to live in a neighbourhood even half as awesome as Beacon Hills. And so the year of trials and tribulations took hold, as we argued with builders, agonised over bathroom tiles and Excel spreadsheeted the crap out of our budget. At last it was ready to live in. We were residents of the BHSV (Beacon Hills Security Village) and had the stickers on our cars to prove it. Only one thing left to do: Join the BHSV Community Facebook Page. Worst. Decision. Ever.

Growing up in this neighbourhood I knew many of the ins and outs. I also knew many of the people – those who had bought when my parents had bought and watched me and my brother grow up, playing one hand one bounce, tip and run, over the wall six and out cricket until well after the sun had gone down. There were a lot of people I didn’t know though. The Range Rover drivers, the tennis club members, the “pay someone else to walk your dogs” crowd. But I was about to meet them.

“Keep all posts relative to issues regarding the BHSV” warned the Community Facebook Page intro. The absence of the word “please” should have told me all I needed to know. This was not a place to build friendships and initiate community upliftment. No, this was the place where people with too many fucks to give came to spew forth their cruel, harsh, judgemental vitriol. If folks cared about poverty or world hunger even half as much as they care about how close you’re parked to a white line, a quarter of a mile away from a school on a public holiday, maybe the world wouldn’t be in such dire straits.

But the bone I have to pick today is about semantics; it’s about white privilege, selfishness and a complete lack of self-awareness. I know we live in a country with an astonishingly and alarmingly high violent crime rate. Our legitimate fears keep security companies in business and ensure Australia has adequate skilled labour. But our fears and concerns can never legitimise the victimisation of innocent civilians just because of the colour of their skin, the slight tear in their jeans or the way they walk.

“These people”. Two words to get my blood boiling. Who are “these people”? I’ll tell you who they are; they are the people responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened in your life or anyone else’s. They hijack, they murder, they steal, they loiter, they litter, they bring down the tone of the neighbourhood. They are the devil incarnate. And just as they perpetrate these offences indiscriminately, we identify them in broad and general terms, casting a net wide enough to include 75% of the population.

“Why are these people allowed to walk our streets, using the suburb as a thoroughfare?” one poster asks. “Access should be controlled!” demands another. “Domestic workers and gardeners should be issued passes,” someone suggests, “That way we can keep these people out”. Restricted movement. Passes. Sounds vaguely familiar no?

Before anyone gets too defensive, I am not accusing everyone of using language that advocates for the reinstatement of some apartheid laws. But isn’t it bad enough that these few people are; completely oblivious to the fact that they’re even doing it. I am also not belittling crime statistics.  Awful, awful things happen every single day. But they don’t happen in Beacon Hills. Can’t we just be grateful for that?

Despite lifelong struggles against depression and anxiety, I do consider myself a silver lining, glass half full type of person. I would rather enjoy the beautiful weather, the friendly people, the quality restaurants and the spacious home in a security village than bemoan the noisy school children, the douchebags who don’t stop at stop streets and these people, who may very well be ‘casing the joint’, but could more than likely just be shaving 30 minutes off their daily commute by walking through the suburb instead of around it.

Maybe I’m naïve, maybe my apparent ambivalence is part of the problem. But I sure as heck seem a whole lot happier for it.

So far, “incidents in the BHSV” have included an escaped bunny, parents double parking for the five seconds it takes to drop off their kids at the local school and the alleged theft of a pot plant. Watch. This. Space.

Like a mist it descends…

It descends on you like a cloud; or that killer mist from Mount Weather in The 100. You don’t even see it coming. It creeps up on you so slowly, you’re completely unaware it’s even on its way at first; but eventually it arrives. And suddenly you’re drowning in it, gasping for air, but too exhausted to wave your arms about in the hope that someone can rescue you. And then you’re wondering if you even want to catch your breath. Maybe it would just be easier to drown.

Depression. Statistics say it’s more prevalent than obesity. But it’s an invisible killer. You can see fat people; but it’s hard to pick out the truly sad ones, those who are one wave crash away from drowning. We hide it well you see, because that’s what you do. If I was bald from chemo or had a gimpy leg we could discuss it. If it was diabetes or epilepsy, I could at least bring it up. But not the “D” word, no. That doesn’t even make it to the tip of your tongue.

And why, if it’s so goddamn prevalent? Maybe if we all talked to each other about it, it wouldn’t be so bad. But instead we’re all so busy pretending to be ok that it’s eating away at our souls, one conveniently packaged treat-sized bite at a time.

This morning started well. A lazy Sunday was in store. The weather was a bit bleak but Joburg winters generally call for snuggling under the covers. I had TV shows to watch, wedding invitations to assemble, scarves to knit, blog posts to write; I never saw it coming. But two invitations in, watching the very show that inspired our entire wedding theme; and I felt my hand hovering over the self-destruct button. I swiftly retreated to the safety of my bunker (laptop, in bed) and disappeared into Scandal. But I felt it weighing more heavily by the second.

Husby came in to check if I was ok. I could only shake my head in answer. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Nothing”, I replied. Because that’s the brutal truth of it: nothing is wrong. I have countless reasons to be happy. I’m getting married in four months for fuck sake. I live in a beautiful house in a beautiful country and I have beautiful friends. I have TV to watch, scarves to knit, blog posts to type; and yet I want to kill myself. If there was a button on the table that could end it all, I would have pushed it long ago. And the worst part is, I have no idea why.

The brain is a complicated organ (or is it a muscle?) It has been studied from every vantage point imaginable; but still so much about it is unknown. At the moment I am going for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), a therapy designed to enable the brain to heal itself by reprogramming how you react to certain stimuli. A progress report will follow, but so far all it’s done is make me cry a lot, and remember things I worked very hard to forget.

Among friends and family (and increasingly, work colleagues), I have a reputation for being over-sensitive, for over-analysing and for caring too much. Is this just a way of saying that it’s my fault? If I could learn to care less, “live in the moment” instead of the past or future, then I wouldn’t be depressed. But… feeling things deeply is who I am. Getting invested in my emotions, heart and soul, for better or worse, is who I am. So is depression who I am?

All I know for sure is, the next person who tells me to “snap out of it” or “think of all the things I have to be happy about”, is coming with me when I push that button!

Why is Nkandla Still Standing?

“After all is said and done, more is said than done”

-Aesop

South Africans have a lot to complain about. As winter approaches, it is the lingering threat of Eskom’s load-shedding; for us Gautengers it is the haunting prospect that one day SANRAL’s e-tolls will catch up with us and we’ll all be sent to prison; and for anyone with a nature loving bone in their body, it is the tragic impending extinction of rhinos. And that’s not to mention the truly sombre state of affairs when it comes to violent crime rates, government corruption and the ever widening gap between rich and poor. And yet, that seems to be all we South Africans do: complain.

We love to “like” activist groups on Facebook and to “share” their pictures to show our solidarity with the cause. We love to post angry comments on news24 and to phone in to 702 with our 2 cents worth. We love to “dialogue” and to boldly claim what we would do if we were in charge. But talk is easy. It makes us feel as though we have achieved something, when in actual fact everything is exactly as it was before the conversation started. Now, I am not saying that discussion cannot be productive, but it would seem that standing on the side-lines saying, “Someone should do something about that”, has become a destructive South African past-time.

The question plaguing me the most right now is, why is Nkandla still standing? Why haven’t we burnt it to the ground yet? We pulled down statues of Rhodes, and destroyed paintings that reminded us of the bad old days, yet the living embodiment and reminder of the corrupt leadership that is running our country into the ground still stands?! And don’t even get me started on how we’re still allowing a man who grossly violated the Constitution he was sworn to protect to maintain his position of leadership. Oh, sorry, my bad, he didn’t grossly violate it (even though the mere thought makes me sick) he only violated it a little bit. You know, like how you only robbed a house a little bit because you left the toaster. Since when did violations become excusable based on degree??

Revolutionaries marched on Versailles in 1789, while the Bolsheviks gunned downed and slaughtered the entire Russian royal family in 1918. In more recent times, over 100 Ukrainians sacrificed their lives in the revolution of February 2014, when peaceful demonstrations against a corrupt government turned violent. Yet torching Nkandla just feels like too much hard work? Are the roads too bumpy for our suburban SUVs to get us there? No one wants to bear witness to the destruction of public property, nor look at monuments that remind us of a fractured past. We’re very vocal about it, but when it comes to actually doing anything about it, we’re happy to sit back and watch it unfold in the press; as long as we can leave our angry comments at the foot of the page.

Now I don’t just want to pick on South Africans. Apathy seems to be a human condition. This is most clearly reflected in the phenomenon of New Year’s Resolutions. The most popular of these tend to revolve around self-improvement: “This year I will be more fit, more healthy, more outgoing, more assertive.” You start off well. You join a gym, stock the fridge with fresh fruit and vegetables and buy a book called “Personality Power” or “10 Steps to a Better You”. But somehow the fruit and vegetables get past their best before you’ve had a chance to eat them, you never make it past chapter 2 and you find yourself slipping into the gym just to use the bathroom so that you don’t fall short of your Vitality quota. You’ve liked all the right pages on Facebook, you’re following all of the health gurus on Twitter, yet somehow it’s May and you still weigh the same and still feel breathless after the short walk from the basement parking garage to your office.

Once again we are all talk and no action. We want the outcome but aren’t willing to put in meaningful effort. We want to talk about what is broken, but we want someone else to actually fix it. We won’t leave our comfy spot on the couch to go for a walk around the block because Game of Thrones is coming on and we won’t stop buying donuts because they’re trendy and they taste so damn good. We won’t sacrifice a day of leave to participate in a protest and we will moan about the government yet won’t even take the time to attend a local council meeting. How many of you even know who your ward councillor is?

Since the end of 2010 rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Ukraine; while civil uprisings continue across many African and Middle Eastern states. Yet JZ still has the seat at the head of the table and not a chicken coop in his kingdom has been so much as vandalised?

The part that makes my soul the most sore in all of this is the man standing next to our glorious president grinning ear to ear, making all sorts of promises that he has no intention of keeping. The man who worked tirelessly and broke down barriers to write the very Constitution that saved this country, is next in line to run it through the mud. Maybe that’s why he’s always looking so cheerful.

And so I ask again, why the fuck is Nkandla still standing? And why the fuck is that pugnacious douche bag still our president? Yes, I said pugnacious.

Perhaps it’s time we closed the laptop screens, started using our cellphones simply to make calls and rather than complaining, used our energy to initiate change, rather than just talk about it. Because as Dr Seuss says: