Piranhas

Just as the actual fish are actually herbivores, the stats still aren’t in favour of 0% in as far as them eating flesh is concerned. 

I’ve been up for two hours thinking about the human psyche. How we have people we lean on and friends we use as sound boards. And sometimes, those friends end up using your strain as a way in to ruining your life at your most vulnerable. It’s not to say that you’re exactly guilty free of presenting yourself as a meal in front of them. But they’re just as, if not more twisted for even entertaining the thought of seeing you as someone they can change their palate without giving you the courtesy of warning you. Anyway why would those blood-thirsty wolves in sheep’s skin warm you?

Hindsight truly is 20/20 and my bad eyesight makes me appreciate hindsight even more because I’ve been in situations that have led me to being prey to palates that I didn’t think were “me-vorous”. Call it naivety, whatever. I have just had a history of trusting people I shouldn’t have and  ended up deep sea diving in the dog-box. These so-called friends who circle around you and cause unnecessary drama when you reach out to them for a shoulder to cry on are the reason why I’ve turned to being more reserved. You wouldn’t  think that your “help me” cry would lead to them helping themselves and working their way into your system. And why would you think that? Why should you even have to consider that people don’t have your back? That people are innately selfish and really don’t give a rat’s ass about you and your problems. You’d think that that would make me write a little more, but I’ve also been a victim of privacy invasion via pages of diary being shown to my dad, so I am not that great at trusting pages (nor screens) either. This is a story for another post when I can figure out a metaphor for it.

Anyway, this now feels like an open letter to bore myself because I can’t sleep and it’s almost 5AM and I’m thinking of piranha-friends and this upsets me.

Pockets of Air

In the second episode of Season 15 of Grey's Anatomy, Meredith talks about why it is scary AF to find yourself attracted to someone. She described the feeling as being akin to being introduced to air (for the first time) and you being afraid it will get taken away. I actually felt my breath leave me for a few seconds when she said that because WHOAH...I have felt all of that.

Falling for someone is scary. You may lay all your cards on the table and try to have control over the whole thing but you never truly know if this person will catch your fall. Rejection is such a hard pill to swallow and as much as it's lovely to have someone take your breath away, it's not so ideal when it is like you can't function without the pockets of air that their presence in your life brings.

I'll naturally always think of music when I need a way to make things make sense. Two songs came to mind as I watched that episode: "Jordin Sparks featuring Chris Brown - No Air" and "Ottis Redding - Try A Little Tenderness".  I'm not entirely sure that "losing you is like living in a world with no air" is anyway to live but it seems to almost always happen. I'm not sure why it is that when we attach ourselves to another person, we want to give up on our individuality so much that we need them to breathe...live...exist. That without them, nothing makes sense.

I like how Ottis seems to think that if you try to just love someone with a little tenderness; love them softly, flaws and all that you may just get this love thing right. Understand someone and allow them to understand you. That with a little tenderness, we may just be open to the notion that we can be ourselves and not the version of ourselves we think we should be, judging by our dating history and what we think an ideal realtionship should be like and how we should mould ourselves into the roles that give us that ideal. The weariness and fear to fall again comes from having had more errors in the trials of love than anyone deserves. We become so vulnerable and sometimes guarded because of the hurt we've experienced in the past. But then you meet someone and you feel the lightheadedness again and you have to battle with yourself once again with thoughts of whether this is worth the troubles of it ending with you struggling for air should it fall apart. Unlike the other three elements, you can't see air. This is probably what makes it difficult to process when the person that once romantically took your breath away is also the person that looks likely to have caused our brains to go without oxygen for too long and we start being irrational.

It is vital that we keep as much of our individuality as possible when entering into a relationship. I believe that that is where the most important pockets of air reside. The ones that will help you realise that people we get romantic with should be life partners and not life support machines.

Of Cuts And Stitches (part 3)

FUN. - SOME NIGHTS ALBUM COVER

I received this album whose cover appears above as a birthday present in June 2012 from one of my closest friends when I was deep in the throes of a depressive state. My everyday thoughts were of not wanting to live anymore and trying not to cry again and trying to fight to keep myself from killing myself. Every. Day. I don't think I have ever fought for my life as hard as I did in the first 6 months of that year. I've never not wanted to live more than I did then. It was so tiring and painful.

I felt alone and I just couldn't bring myself to talking to anyone who didn't understand the pain; hurt; regret; anger; shame and horror that was my PTSD. You know, sometimes you need to sit with people whose demons are just as monstrous and scary as the ones that cohabit with you...to feel like kindred spirits of sorts. Nobody understood that until I was presented with Nate Ruess and subsequently, fun.. I had never up until the moment I finished listening to "Some Nights" from beginning to end, felt more understood.

Three boys came together to save my life with songs that when you choose to just read their lyrics, would have you feeling all kinds of heartache in magnitudes you never thought were possible to feel. This album opened with a song that collided with my thought patterns, as though I had somehow managed to write an album while I was passed out (I didn't sleep - I passed out). "Some nights I say 'fuck it all!'/stare at the calendar/waiting for catastrophes, imagining they'd scare me/into changing whatever it is I am changing into.../and you have every right to be scared." And later in the intro: "There are some nights I wait for someone to save us/But I never look inward, try not to look upward/And some nights I pray a sign is gonna come to me/But usually, I'm just trying to get some sleep". *sigh* I found so much joy in the songs on "Some Nights", more so "Carry On":

“If you’re lost and alone

Or you’re sinking like a stone

Carry on

May your past be the sound

Of your feet upon the ground and

Carry on”

These lyrics are accompanied by the boisterous sounds of an electric guitar and drums with hints of an Irish harmonica and faint trumpets towards the end of the song, as though to further spur you on to get out of bed and just take it one day at a time. This was the most perfect gift. Almost like being gifted with a second chance at your own life.

I thought about this album today because I have been battling with the resurgence of the series of events that led up to my great depression of 2012: Another friend of mine (after having not hung out with him in almost two years), just suddenly brought up the topic last year, in a way of saying “you are one tough cookie” (he actually used these words LOL!)…for having gone through the trenches and come out barely showing scars. I however, have internal scars. Everything came back to me like an avalanche in that moment and I silently suffered from random panic attacks for weeks on end and I depended on him like a crutch (again) as I did when the fresh wounds of 2012 threatened to fester. I know for sure that it was not his intention to make me re-live those months but my mind just went ahead and took me there as though I was a body being dragged by a truck over a tar road like those “Newly Wed” tins.

It took me until today, when I listened to this album again after a very long time, to remember to let my past be the sound of my feet upon the ground and carry on. Maybe I’m giving too much power to the music but without it, I’m not sure that I’d have been here today.

I love this album and I am grateful for it and the person who gifted me with it. It was a gift for her too because she is the only one I allowed myself to unravel around. I sometimes tried to hold much of what was happening in me because I could see it was too much for her to handle. This album saved us. It continues to save me.

#MusicIsTheGemInI

*my thoughts have been all over the place because I haven't blogged in a very long time. I have since edited this post.

Kryptonite

There are people you will come across in your life that'll make it damn near impossible to forget or let them go. There's this chemistry that you have where eventually, when you do try to move from them (for whatever reason), they become your weak spot. So if life worked like it does in Mafia movies...and you got locked in a room with two big guys staring you down with the boss' skivvy blowing smoke into your face...and you get this "I got nothing to lose" look because well, you figure life's been shit anyway and has never given you a break...and then the damn skivvy mentions that they know where your Kryptonite is and they know what s/he's been up to...? Look, everything you thought you knew about yourself and where you stand, would fall like a house of cards. Everything.

Kryptonite is terrible. Don't believe me? Ask Superman. The strongest man on make-believe earth is crippled by the mere presence of Kryptonite. In the real world, we've experienced Kryptonite in the form of: "is there anyone who believes that this man and this woman should not wed? Speak now or forever hold your peace." And then someone just walks in and you see that "oh fuck!" look on the bride's face because her Kryptonite, the man she thought she was over but had never left her mind over the years, is finally ready to want to build a life with her. She'd been happy all this time, don't even try to doubt that...but that wasn't the kind of happiness - the Kryptonite happiness - that feels as plain and simple as there is only one way for a jig-saw puzzle to be put together...the kind of happiness that feels effortless and without weight. The kind you'd probabaly need to go to rehab for if you really wanted to get it out of your system.

The situation is tricky. Where you can't even run in any which direction because everything you go through, you want it to be with said Kryptonite. It could take decades for ya'll to meet again and it will feel like just yesterday that y'all were last together. All those feelings enshroud you and whatever it is you thought you were focusing on in your life, becomes but a blur because the one thing that was able to flip your world upside down, waltzed back into a life you were content with living for however long forever was promised by God.

There. Is. No. Cure. For. Kryptonite.

Forever and Ever

We cannot go through life with the notion that just because our parents failed, then we’re genetically disposed to that very failure. I refuse to believe this about marriage.

I don’t believe in divorce. I’ve said this for as long as I can remember and each time I say it, I truly believe that one cannot stand before a priest and make a promise to God and go back on it some years later just because the going got elephant-skin tough while your skin wrinkled. I also believe that we are inclined to sway in the direction of that which is familiar to us because it’s a safer route. The unknown when coupled with self-doubt is too daunting a task for the average lost soul to want to wander into. So of course we're more likely to surrender our futures to a past that's more familiar.
 

Personally, I have only two examples of happy marriages. Two. I have lived for 30 years and can only yield two relationships that still fuel the spark of belief within me, of a beautiful institute that I want to one day be a part of. There could’ve been none and I’d probably still believe that two insane human beings can decide to build a life together, supporting each other, and still remain individuals. It’s so important to me that I remain my own person outside of the union. I want someone crazy enough to want to sit with me on a stoep when we’re in our 70s and 80s and still have conversations about music; politics; our annoyingly precious grandkids and our ungrateful children before we go and see which sex positions we could attempt without having to call for help to get out of them.

A lot gets in the way of achieving these happily ever afters and I’m not sure that a death threat to my beau will be sufficient to keep him from straying and betraying me. I’m not entirely sure that the same threat can keep ME from straying and betraying him either but I’d like to think that we can try to dumb down the noise enough to always hear our hearts as they beat for each other.

I cannot go through any more of this life not believing that I can have a happily ever after. I deserve it. I hope I’m with the man who believes this too.

Moving Forward

I've moved to a new home

:-)

First Borns

My cousin insists that over 80% of the guys that are suitable for us to date, have kids. I can't agree with this, but I understand the frustration in her exaggerations.
Our grandmother was one who fell short of insisting that we give her great-grandkids before she passed away...none of us did. Doesn't help that she thought one of my boyfriends was a gangster cos every time he'd come pick me up, he'd be driving one of four cars (one was his, the other three belonged to his parents and sister. He didn't wanna come in the same car cos he didn't want people to "mark" him RE: hijacks. I didn't explain this to my gran.)

Which brings me to my mom. Now, I've only ever brought two guys home. The first doesn't really count cos well, he lives two seconds from my gran's house and everybody at home knew him; we dated for five years. The second, was a guy I was with long enough for my mom to put a face to because she had had to make several calls to when she couldn't get hold of me [if I was not home, chances were that I was with him]. We had made plans to think about having kids this year, actually. That relationship ended a year ago, unfortunately.

My lifestyle doesn't allow me to even think of entertaining having kids right now. I don't like "hooking up" with guys. I'm a relationship kinda girl. I fall too easily and too hard when I'm with a guy so in order to avert a potential disaster, I spend all my time on the road or on my phone (dodging guys who seem to wanna hookup to pass the time). So you see, babies are not really a part of my short-term plans because of this. However, I DO tend to get broody and have on many occasions mapped out a way I would balance motherhood with my love for the open road and impromptu crazy YOLO (You Only Live Once) moments. The latter happen quite often, and I like that cos I kinda [read: really] hate routines. That I haven't been in a relationship for over a year may also be the reason why I've been yo-yo'ing on this having kids thing. I mean, I have no one to have this talk with...so I have all the current time in the world to free-style the fuck outta this crazy life that I'm living.

About 5 years ago, I dated a guy who had a 6-month old baby. He and the baby-mama fell out before the baby was born cos he felt she was trapping him (pause! Only just realized that I got given "the line" :-(...*sigh*). Long story short, I got annoyed by his whining about the baby-mama and having to run off to see the kid every two seconds (slight exaggeration here) which kinda lead to me mistakenly sending a text about my annoyance, to him. I was upset and frustrated and venting all that in a text that was meant for a friend of mine. I can't remember what I said but knowing me, I couldn't have used euphemisms; unkind words tumble outta my mouth and thumbs when I'm upset. So that's how that relationship ended. I wasn't about to apologize for any of that and neither did I want to patch things up cos my three weeks of step-motherhood became the bane of my existence.

I've since known that I didn't want to be in a relationship with a dad cos essentially, there are four people in that relationship (additional kids obviously add on to the count). For someone who has attachment and sentimental issues, it just doesn't make sense for me to find comfort in having My time with My man, shared with his past and future that have me playing a supporting cast member in his life's story. I've fooled myself into thinking that I could be that girl: The one whose understanding knows no bounds, but I'm not. Not even having fallen for a dad recently has changed my mind. It's a beautiful thing, seeing how he loves his kids...but I want to be with someone who'll be a first-time parent, like me. I want to be with someone who I'll experience THAT first with. It's not to say that guys who've fallen out with their girls become some kind of Kryptonite, no. It's just that that's not what I want for me. It's also a nightmare assuming (from fear) that the baby mama(s) would probably make life a living hell for me as a baby-less woman who is now with the father of her/their kids. I mean, in addition to having had a fall-out with someone you created a child with, you now have to trust some girl who know nothing about motherhood (let alone YOUR child) to co-raise the child with you and his/her dad. That's gotta take some kind of special, non-vindictive person to trust. I don't want to be a part of that equation. There's also the fear that the kid(s) may reject me *sigh*.

I cannot accept the 80% shot in the dark that my cousin fired. Cannot because I happen to know a lot of guys who have no kids (99% of which are having beers in the zone I've sectioned out for them in my friendship circle). I especially know of one who doesn't look set on having kids anytime soon...which makes him someone I should be hanging out with a little more often than I have been. It's not like I'ma catch babies if he sneezes, if anything...it just may be a flu that'll keep us bed-ridden for a while, having a few practice runs for when we DO decide to create a living testament of our love for each other