When it comes to the issues of eating disorders, which is the topic I am addressing today. Topics such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
The question for me has always been (as a fellow sufferer), why aren’t we telling our daughters that to be perfectionists it is ok? It is perfectly fine for a man to understand that. I’m not here to talk about entitlement, social cohesion and good governance, and land reform in Africa and elsewhere in the world and good schools.
The rich send their children to good schools. The poor send their children to no schools. I was a product of a lot of schools, and I knew intrinsically that something was wrong. It had come to that time when you make career decision. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? I didn’t want to do anything. All I wanted was to stay at home, drink coffee, and read books. She, my mother, began to live vicariously through me. For all of my life.
I am the bone-thin sweetheart under my kitchen table, with the not so perfect hair. I listen to Karen Carpenter and get the blues. I love to die a succession of deaths in under an hour. I’m obsessed with the Bang Bang Club. I’ve become obsessed with Kevin Carter’s psyche before he killed himself. I listen to the Manic Street Preachers. They have a design for life. Always have since I did my O’ levels in Swaziland.
Life is beautiful when I write. I adore the writing life. Aren’t glaciers even beautiful, the rush of winter in the trees, birdsong in the clear of day, and the clarity of the sensibility of all of them but writing, the book stuff is something else. It’s all a part of life, my life. My mother lived her own life. When she didn’t feel satisfied or fulfilled, she put all of her sexual inadequacy, insecurities and doubts on me.
And the only things that I seem to have on my mind is that I don’t have enough time in the world during the day to write, to perfect the craft of writing, the art of it. So, wish-fulfilment has been on my mind, that and everything else that is happening to ‘the people of the south’, the people in South Africa, the vulnerable. Everything is fleeting, including your youth. At the heart of it all we’re all poets. But most of all I’m frightened of the wild, of the wilderness disappearing. I am mourning our mountains, and rivers. Topic for another discussion for another day. Body dysmorphic disorder must be realised for what it is. A poor self-image.
What are your answers on how to sell a book and save the world at the same time? And I’m frightened all the time. Frightened of being an invisible person, an invisible woman for all of my life, because I was a prodigy, or am I forgetting myself again. Fear and anxiety rise up in my throat. The voices say that I am mad, that I will never get a man, and he will never trust my judgement. The loneliness wells up inside of me. I think of the reality of my dreams, and nightmares. The men that I telephone, who accepted my friendship when I was in my early twenties, who do not return, who have stopped returning my calls. Shy away from me.
The voices worship, and adore me. They do, they do, they do. They’re fierce creatures when it comes to the burden, and care of loving me, heavenly when they play my love songs on repeat. Video did really kill the radio star. Fear is what I hold dear. Anxiety is what I cherish. I am volcano lover versus oil on my hands. I am devilish. I am exquisite. I am poet. I am lake. Sometimes I go where the mood takes me. Sometimes I am numb with cold, then freezing to death because of the air in my room, salt, and light, and energy on the forsaken summer breeze, and I think of my arms, and legs as I do branches.
I smell like a forest of trees. Ancient and cool, like driftwood spat out of the cold sea. The men I once loved are decades older, and I still long to be in their arms, to be in their bed. I search the internet for online literary journals in Scandinavia, because the voices tell me I am something of a poet. I have sorrows on my mind, the colour blue, fish fingers on my plate heavy with ketchup, chapped lips, a greasy egg breakfast. Vertigo goes to my head. I watch Pastor Joel Osteen on the television.
After the television evangelist Joseph Prince’s show, they give me the good news that I want to hear. And yes, yes, I mustn’t waste my pain.
Of course, everyone understands my situation now after watching Homeland. Poor girl, they all say, the father substitutes feel sorry for me. Their wives, my surrogate mothers every one, roll their eyes heavenward. I know exactly how they feel about me. I replaced my own father’s affections for my mother My life is fodder for everything that I write. I just want to be happy. To be happy to me is to live on a diet of coffee and yoghurt and lettuce. Rabbit food and salad and literally eating mayonnaise out of a jar. Licking the back of the spoon makes me feel all-powerful.
Why does it seem that prodigies never want to grow up, accept the responsibilities of a 9-to-5 job, make a positive contribution to society? If they are a daughter-child they think that they will never find a man or partner love them as much as their father. So, they find themselves in therapy (I was in therapy since I was before 8 years old, and 40 years old before I understood the intricacies of the mind, how every brain disorder worked on a rational, irrational, realistic, non-realistic, reality, non-reality level). There is a lot of thought-work being put into having the psychological traits today of both mother and father. Today we are studying aspects of the brain that have never been studied before.
Spending quality time with the mother-figure/figures in your life, if you were so unlucky never to have, or, rather have a lack of a mother-figure in your life. We only have to look at the building-bridges architype between the Duchess of Sussex and her mother. The Duchess of Sussex is an outstanding role model for children of mixed-race relationships. I follow her brand of diplomacy in my own inter-personal relationships in my public and private and personal lives. Both the Duchess and her mother are the epitome of class and elegance in public. Kudos to them for winning the hearts of the public.
Living your life in a bubble is unimaginable sometimes. The public (I have realised through singular trial and error) will never see you at your most human when you are a public figure. What will always be key in all of our lives, whether we are famous or not, is how we master diplomacy, negotiation and reconciliation in our own life. Master respect and master forgiveness. Watching Jeff Bezos, Prince William and Prince Harry, Albert Einstein, Jean Rhys, Rilke, Nikolas Tesla, Elon Musk, the late filmmaker and visionary-creative Anthony Minghella (Mr Wonderful. The Talented Mr Ripley based on a Patricia Highsmith novel.
and The English Patient).
I began to see that from inconsolable grief, isolation from your peer group, losing a loved one, or, not having the love you need in your life we can use the presence of deep and emotional pain, what hurt us in our past, every incident of trauma, and even been bullied can begin to rebuild our mindsets’. Yes, it can I believe. I can only speak from my own experience. I have empowered and uplifted myself. Now I must do this with millions. Millions of the displaced, marginalised, vulnerable, and jobless. I want everyone to have a seat at the table.
I am glad the topic of sexual violence has come up in the pages of Modern Diplomacy and child rapists.
You know, I thought to myself it was about time, and then I cried because I was so happy. Gender-based violence is another topic close to my heart. If you are a woman of colour, reach out to all woman of colour especially those who want to ask your advice. We are building a nation not of equality, but cohesion. The following step is of course rehabilitation for both parties involved. The victim being abused, and the perpetrator of abuse. My aunt was an alcoholic.
The stigma in the coloured community of a woman drowning her sorrows in addiction was so great she died of alcoholism. She will never know her granddaughters. Racism is also a form of mental cruelty. Every violence, domestic, sexual, mental is a form of cruelty of the worst kind. There was domestic violence in my family. Everybody knew what was happening in the family, but nobody did anything about it. I watched all of this from afar.
All I want you to do is to remember me. Remember that children are not in the habit of wanting a lover, that’s grown up married stuff. Rather all they for most of their lives is accepting that I just need a friend, like I need sobriety, like I need a man in my life. Women don’t want to be my friend. They rather treat me unkindly. Laugh at me behind my back. Destroy my reputation just because they can. I will always remember you, you, and you. How you said I was behaving, like I had been misbehaving, not taking my medication. How you spoke to me as if was unwell. That I needed to be treated for the depression again, or, something, or, something else this time around.
I have stopped loving you. I am not in love with you anymore. I would be a fool. I would be the insecure coward. You win traitor. You’ve got the girl now. You’ve got that woman on your arm. You made a fool out of me. Never replied to my emails. Perhaps I was lovesick, traitor.
You’re yesterday, traitor. You’re suffering, traitor. You are kismet, milk-fed, champagne snorting through your nose at the parties, and social gatherings that you go to with that girl on your arm. When you move on the dance floor at the nightclub, you move into her, grasp her in your arms as if you will never let her go. You let me go, go, go.
I really wish you would smoke. Light up that joint, fall asleep with marijuana in your bone season, but you won’t. You won’t think of snorting cocaine up your nose. You’ll drink sherry, but half-half-heartedly, just to join in with the rest of your in-crowd.
You’re still as popular as you ever were in high school. All the girls, no matter what their age, they all fall for you. They are all in love with you. I feel split right down the middle, because of you traitor, part of me calls you vulnerable, part of me remembers the intimacy of our conversations.
The prodigy is frightened of the world, does not understand how critical it is to be ‘people who need people, and that they are the luckiest people in the world’. And he grows up, she grows up so focused on achieve, achieve, achieve. Accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. Give me grandchildren. Marry. But all they hear are is that they are not children anymore. They have to marry now, have sexual relations, join the adult workforce, and they think their glory days are over. That they will never be truly loved again. Then when they are not loved, they consider everybody in their adult life as traitor.
How I long for a bowl of black olives. I long to spit the stone out, like you spat me out, traitor, as if I was the criminal in this narrative. I’ll write a book about you one day, see if I don’t. I swear on my father’s wheelchair, I swear on his life, I will, I will, I will. I won’t call you sweetheart. Just remember me, please. They don’t know anything about the longevity of a career, how time-consuming it is. They just want to remember that once they were a gifted child.
So, topics today concern children. I espouse family values. This is very important to me. Children must be protected at all times. We have discussed mental wellness. Suicide is on the increase. Children must play. I was always at a drama rehearsal at a very young age. I never wanted to go home to that hellhole. A dysfunctional family who could see that I was different, told me so, destroyed my self-esteem and identity. Even the person I loved most in the world. My brother turned on me as an adult.
Do I advocate free clinics around the world dealing with issues of mental wellness for men, and young men, women, and young women, people of every age, especially widows and orphans, the homeless (when I was homeless, I stayed at the Salvation Army and a shelter for abandoned women and children).
They call themselves places of safety. Yes, I do think people should be trained to deal with people who are mentally ill. Most of all have empathy for them. We must not fail to realise what is at stake here and all the stakeholders involved. Especially our sons and daughters.
They are of course the next generation. We must protect the most vulnerable stakeholders when it comes to mental wellness. Understand that where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise.
