African Renaissance

I went to a Model C school in post-apartheid South Africa and only survived for a year

Published

3 years ago

October 1, 2019

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.

Related Topics:Mental health South Africa

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Abigail George

Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated shortlisted and longlisted poet Abigail George is a recipient of four writing grants from the National Arts Council, the Centre for Book and ECPACC. She briefly studied film, writes for The Poet, is an editor at MMAP and Contributing Writer at African Writer. She is a blogger, essayist, writer of several short stories, novellas and has ventured out to write for film with two projects in development . She was recently interviewed for Sentinel, and the BBC.

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African Renaissance

What Happened To The Rainbow Dream?

Published

2 months ago

February 8, 2023

Abigail George

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant, I was a beast before you. Psalm 73: 21-22

South African has a long history of the liberatory struggle. Many theories were forwarded by leaders of various political parties. What followed in the years to come was the postulation of many different political ideologies. In order to obtain the support of the majority of the people these theories were distributed far and wide and resulted in many publications. Students of social dynamics had to acquaint themselves with political theoretics of the day in order to understand the political dynamics. One of the gravest errors made by many theorists was that it lacked dynamic pragmatism, which made it difficult for the people on the ground to carry out the expounded theories. This resulted in a big gap between the political theorists and the people on the ground. In the South African context many theorists did not take into account the practical needs of the people on the ground (the working classes and military operatives of this country).

We now enter a global scenario in which corruption will be the downfall of the governments of the world. However, in our present circumstances we find that we are facing a number of problems in Africa and South Africa. Many vital functions have become obsolete. There is no longer electrical power, unemployment is rife, acts of violence is prominent, there is a grave shortage of clean running water and in the last two weeks we have seen a total collapse of law and order where armed thugs create havoc in many areas in Africa. Many innocent people have been killed, wounded or maimed. The total number of people killed this week runs into the thousands.

Where are our leaders and who will hold them accountable for their sins? The majority, the neo-liberal capitalist imperialists or the entitled, priviledged minority? No fear. No favour. Life is seed and what is the harvest that is forthcoming from following a structured approach in the falling hierachies that abound? Our leaders have adopted the discipline of silence amidst the outward decline of communities in the rural area and lack of spirituality abounds. Poverty exists in every corner and thwarts the disadvantaged and marginalised. The days ahead of us are going to be hard and we will need to find our own resources instead of looking to the West to save Africa and to the church. We must reach out to our allies in Africa, build and rebuild bridges, mend fences, build and rebuild relationships, mend the broken, the maladjusted personality within ourselves.

We must end literary apartheid (#endliteraryapartheid). The pen is truly mightier than the sword and with that been said it is knowledge and our poets, educationalists, arts and cultural practitioners that will save Africa from the quagmire, from downfall, from the aftermath from a term Don Beukes, a preeminent South African poet and educationalist termed as “literary apartheid”.

History was made in South Africa on 20-21 March 2021 when the National Writers’ Association of South Africa (NWASA) was inaugurated. The conference coincided with the Human Rights commemoration month whereby writers in South Africa stamped a historic moment in the literary calendar of the continent and the diaspora.

We must invest our time productively in the causes that we wish to adopt, our perspectives must become our strongholds, we must be principled, patient, prepared thought leaders and apply jurisprudence, circumspection and reflection when it comes to handling the collateral damage of the neo-apartheid. The personal freedom that we bought democracy with has come at a terrible price and it must be accounted for, its glorified leaders must be tabled, recognition must be given to them and the tough questions must be asked and not whispered about. Was the Rainbow Nation a dream, is it now shattered, was it just a biased psychological framework conjured up in innocence?

We see the pains, ills and birth pangs of our beloved country that was forged at CODESA playing itself out in a global landscape. It is a scenario that is teetering on the brink of financial ruin and collapse that is being mirrored in other countries in the West. We are in South Africa in a mess with education and an energy crisis looming. The haves, the priviledge few seem not to want to share. The ifs are literally being left in the dark. In my opinion this is what will save deepest, darkest Africa. In plain language it will be the continent’s leaders who lead with integrity standing in solidarity with think tanks, intellectualism, self-actualization, self-esteem, belonging and values, who will understand what is meant by the needs, wants and desires of the psysiological. We crave safety, the beacon of hope that Madiba was, and we’re looking for the kind of “point of light” that he was as a reference. The solution can be found in our history books, in the archives, in the textbook knowledge, in our libraries, in mother tongue, the literary material coming out of contemporary Africa. We can see the divisions that exist among the races in South Africa staring back at us on the page, in the “literary apartheid” that exists to a large extent in the literary establishment in South Africa, in the publishing companies in South Africa who publish stories about the majority from writers who make up the priviledged and entitled minority. Lest we forget, there is a minority whose lives were endangered during apartheid by their “white writing”. Their writing today could even be said and accounted for in so many words as being black consciousness writing, leading to the enlightenment, the coining of and the conscientisement of the African Renaissance.

These leaders will be educated men and women who have the vision to think past hate crimes, police action and police brutality, class and the struggles of discrimination, racism, ageism, sexism, fear amd gender based violence. I believe that the voices, the purpose, the agreements of these leaders will lead Africa to the world stage, the United Nations, new beginnings for every inhabitant and citizen on the face of this continent. The question is Africa where art thou or are we just feeding the beasts or waiting for our poets to write about poetry against depression? Africa is growing rapidly. We are the beacon of hope for the working class.

It isn’t going to be the breakout of civil war that we will have to contend with. It is going to be our mindset and how we view the world that we will have to contend with. It is going to be our perspective that is going to set us forward on the road and trajectory of negotiation. It is going to be an education for all citizens and netizens for that matter. We must as a continent, as a nation guard against civil war by all and any means necessary. Instead it will be the textbook knowledge of negotation that will set us free. We must look to our cultural, social and poetry practitioners, our historians, the purveyors of truth who stand up for human rights, those stalwarts in education who will mentor the young. Personal freedom was never “free” and we must acquaint ourselves with this as if it were a kind pf scientific knowledge that we have to get to grips with. Patriotic integrity should be more than a buzzword for appointed leaders and the cornerstones of office and administration in Africa and the diaspora. Yes, I believe we can adopt this ideology. Transparency equals fair governance. It can also help us to cope with the junction that we find ourselves and our modern world in today.

African Renaissance

Advice From A Mother, Missive To A Writer Father and Excerpt From A Book Forthcoming

Published

4 months ago

November 21, 2022

Abigail George

E-V-E-R-L-A-S-T-I-N-G. It could be a poem/or testimony/or the start of a new beginning. Or an extract from the introduction to “The Overcomers”. All I had was a wristwatch and a page in a diary. I remember the time when no one would speak to me. Now I speak to all the sassy particles and powerfully good dimensions of the world. Now I am flicker. Now I am spark. This I guess is my inheritance. And when I look back now to the time when I saw no beauty or imagination in the issues I was having, when all I had on my mind was body shaming’s dysmorphia and how much I was eating. When I considered a lettuce salad and yogurt a substitute for all the lack in my life. When I didn’t see one ounce of enchantment in my struggle or the battlefield of my mind. My inheritance includes a gold that is indestructible as God. So, I guess this is a full circle moment for me but for me everything starts and ends in movements ordained By God. And the lesson is that even though you don’t know what your inheritance will be, God knows. He knows exactly how cool you are.

Excerpt from the chapter “10 Things I Love About You”, a book I am writing about “Overcoming”.

1. “The fullness of your destiny awaits.”

2. “You realise everything moves in seasons.”

3. “I want you to accomplish all your dreams.”

4. “Every characteristic of your soul is built for and constantly being reinvented for success.”

5. “You have the response of competency in every situation.”

6. “You are the evidence of God’s blessing, promotion and inheritance in his life.”

7. “You know and understand what your inheritance is.”

8. “You believe in God’s unconditional trust”.

9. “You understand that the vision God has for your life He planted the seed in the past, is watering it in the present so that it can manifest itself in the future.

10. “When you know and understand the totality of failure and overcoming and winning over both adversity and adversary.”

Excerpt from the chapter “Advice From My Mother”. Give a man space. Give a man his space, daughter. Give a man room for his intuition to become like the frontiers of space, the boundaries of space, the territories of space. Give a man room for him to release and manifest this intuition and his potential. Daughter, understand that this is the fundamental reasoning behind making him happy. It will allow him to become the best version of himself. His faith in himself will increase and he will inspire the magnitude of greatness in others, and all the qualities of greatness in himself. You will then see the daydreamer in his soul, the childlike wonder he possesses when he is at work, atonement and forgiveness in his enduring love. Be the reading light in his world in daylight, and the innocent in his nightfall. Teach him to be an Elijah waiting for the abundance of rain.

Excerpt from the chapter “Positive Reports Of Abundance In Your Life”. This is something about the introduction of abundance in my own life. It is a story about transformative love, enduring love, redemptive love and a return to love and what I heard in my spirit today about setting up miracles into power, into redemption, into salvation in my life. Believing in miracles, in abundance means to stay encouraged in the face of absolute negativity, to be boldly confident like Captain Kirk, to think with unlimited power (knowledge is power, God is power, being authentic is powerful) like Zimbabwean-born Mufti Menk, and when your thinking is unlimited you begin to manifest love, see love, envision love and this is a love that is not subject to laws or principles or change as Mother Teresa portrayed in life. It is one of a kind and when you love like this you become one of a kind too. One of a kind people walk through life with grace and abundance. To love is the singular most important assignment we can have in this world.

Excerpt from the chapter “The Daydreamer Chronicles”. This is one of the pages from my diary that I journaled this morning. I was hurting this morning so this is what I wrote to counteract feeling wounded. One of a kind people walk through life with grace and abundance. They realise when failure and dismissal by others come to you it is only an abundance of rain teaching you how to be an Elijah, a force of good in the world, a force to be reckoned with, a force of bold confidence, leadership ability and greatness. To be great. Where do I begin? With the years that I have lost. I have notched up twenty odd years of lost. What you have lost can never be measured. The only person who can measure that is God in all of his supersonic dimensions. I have realised that the word “lost” means it is only a season that becomes your reckoning for a divine harvest.

How will we exist without illusion in all the dimensions of the non-reality that we are living in now. It is the space, the inter-connectedness, how we relate to each other across the widening spaces of humanity’s birthplace, earth’s almost sovereign rank in the universe, that will either count as the final frontier. There is the catastrophe of wildflowers at the back of my hand. My grandmother’s porcelain teacups are as delicate and fragile as her consciousness. Nobody loves a warrior at first. Then they’re called epic or legendary. So they gather reputation, praise and adoration to themselves like Rilke did with his Orpheus’ sonnets. Rilke danced around the sun, embraced the moonlight found in nightfall. Hemingway was a captain. Salinger a tuning point. In Updike’s features a vulnerability showed itself there in the pages of every domestic scenario that he ever wrote about. Last year, we ate ice cream and cake on my brother’s birthday and like a comet around the sun, I felt him slip away into an impatient man from my reach. I let him go. Saw in his eyes the empires he would build in flight. Away from the world he had known as a child I called them red furious beasts, my brother called them flying-monsters. He wanted a family. Truthfully, I wanted a family too. God had a family. He called it humanity at large. This was amazing to me. His complex sensibility at work. Here we go. Here we go. Into the aqua-coloured veins and texture of platelets of the virtual world where sea meets sky and azure is really blue.

Sorry about this. I keep apologising. I am writing a love language unto myself to exit out from the realisation that I am losing the singular most important person in my life, my dad. So, I am writing love letters to myself today, all day long. Dear dad, you exist for me like the sun, two suns, moonlight, the stars, all the planets in alignment that our atomic God created. I am because of you elderly statesman, articulate and expressive orator, defender and giant of all who you knew once an autumn ago. I thought when I was a child that you only lived to exist for me as I exist for you. You have survived the volcano, and deserve all the thoughtful support and positive praise that I can give you now in this autumn. I adore you dad. I always will. You teach me daily to master the pain.

African Renaissance

Tears: The Water Diary, How To Live Alone And Be Inspired By Murakami

Published

4 months ago

November 17, 2022

Abigail George

I hated learning how to drive. It didn’t mean the gateway of indepence for me. The driving lesson filled me with anxiety and impending doom. What it meant was that I had to leave childhood behind. There is ‘us’ for every breadwinner after an unsettling homesickness. Friendships fell away after my

mania in this neighbourhood. Girls as old as me had babies after quietly graduating from university. Everybody had the varsity blues. They settled down with their families dividing their daily hours within the workplace, their households, the framework of career.

I drive. I drive past my high school. Pass houses, pretty leafy suburbs, Muslim schoolchildren. I can smell fast food in the air. It’s a mix of rotisserie chicken, Chinese food, Cape Malay, mystic pizza, and strays. Open fields where children played soccer. Bipolar is a gift of fire. In the middle of the night those same children would wake to the syndrome of gunfire and now we come ‘to walking’ away. The lessons we learn from it. I tell myself to breathe.

I do know what it is to miss a thing of beauty. All I know is I am tired. I am tired of lying down, sleeping a lot and taking deep breaths. I try not to think about abortion. The memory of fingerprints, the mysterious invisible, Joshua and Moses. Of course, I know that Lazarus is just sleeping. God was looking for disciples. He found them in fishermen. Not women. Not girls. Certainly not feminists. I try not to think about it. The song I just heard playing on the radio. Where the American girl goes to have an abortion at a clinic.

The people in the WhatsApp Mental Wellness Group that Ashley added me to was for single men and women living with bipolar mood disorder. The other people in the ‘tribe’ complained about me. They said I was sending too many messages and keeping them up at night. Ashley shouted at me. I didn’t say a word. My brother captured a bullfrog in the garden and put him in a bucket in the kitchen. We covered the bucket with a pane of glass so we could watch Leonardo’s movements. We named him, fed him and gave him water. Then one day he died. The circumstances seemed mysterious to me. I phoned Ashley with tears streaming down my face and amidst sobs I told him my sister and I were fighting. He told me in no uncertain terms was he going to feel sorry for me and to stop my psychotic behaviour. That did not shut me up. It just made me cry harder. He said he had things to do and that we’d talk later. I felt as if I was undeserving of this kind of suffering at this point.

Leonardo had become my friend. Our mind is powerful. It can elevate us to success or help us pursue happiness. If only Ashley had listened to me and felt sad because I felt sadness in that moment. That the condition of the world changed even when an animal passed away was not lost on me. I left the group soon after. I would start the day with an affirmation and full of enthusiasm and wish everyone well and to be the best version of themselves. So much for positive reinforcement to carry you through a stressful morning. I felt that I was not acknowledged in the group and then felt ignored. There was a gay filmmaker. She was a lesbian but she also had affairs with men. I thought if you were gay that you were gay. I didn’t know that you could switch sides. There must have been about eight of us in the Whatsapp group. Four remained quiet, not saying a word but witnessing my gaiety and whenever Ashley took it upon himself to take me to task for my errant behavior. I would be publicly humiliated. He would say pointedly, ‘you’re not special Abigail’, or ‘there are others here just like you with their own story and problems’, and then the cliffhanger, ‘some here have a family, a child, children and I’m sorry but you’ll just never know what that feels like’. He meant to have a child and a spouse and to live his life and be happy on top of all of that. Ashley never allowed me to feel the way that I was feeling.

In the years to come we saw each other on and off again. He would come and visit me, talk about himself and chainsmoke in my parents’ sitting room. He’s living in another country now teaching videography and media studies to kids. He’s met a girl. She’s not Michelle Brown. Michelle Brown was aggressive, stubborn, and headstrong. Michelle Brown was a principled intellectual teaching English to Chinese businessmen who struggled with the language. The girl he’s met is the polar opposite of Michelle Brown. She’s a girl that Ashley has never introduced me to. They like taking selfies together that appear all over his social media platforms. I miss him and I don’t miss him. I miss his dark head, the smell of his cigarettes, his sunglasses, his smile but these are the same things I don’t miss about him. He did a documentary on his father that I feel he stole from me. Let me explain. I tend to overthink. He asked for funding from ECPACC which was the exact place that I was going to ask for funding from for my film on my dad’s life. I went on and on about this to everyone in my vicinity. But he had achieved what I could not achieve in that moment. He’s not your friend, my mother says. My sister advised me to stay away from him because he was not good for my mental health. He sent me his father’s documentary from the country he lives in now. I miss him asking me for an ashtray.

The group gave me an identity. I began to miss it. Nearly a year later or perhaps it was a few months I asked if I could be added back into the group. Ashley said so many people had left he was no longer running the group. He had also become too busy to run the group. I missed the group even though I had only really spoken in depth to two people. I had only spoken to someone whose name escapes me now and Ashley. I have great and fond and deep memories of our times together and of our friendship. He was and is very forgiving and is a gentle soul. He was always there for me and I think of the times I could have just called him up in a heartbeat when he lived in the same country as me.

There’s a shadow in my face that only the man could see. I have to look after my father. The Johannesburg producer is asking me to come for a Christmas holiday but he’s not willing to pay me for my content, my intellectual property. It’s driving me insane. Trying to land proper paying writing gigs. I don’t know what to do. I’m frightened but this is the way the world works and I am only learning this now. I can’t. I tell myself and slowly type the words. I have to look after my father. My father has mentored me all my life. I can’t abandon him now that he needs me the most. The Scriptures say to honour my father and my mother and my days will be long. Sister Joel, a very good friend of the family, tells me Allah will reward me with paradise one day for what I am doing for my father. This gives me hope when I feel hopeless. The light that was dimmed is awakened once again. Sometimes the door is closed because Allah wants to protect you. I saw that in a post on Facebook yesterday late last night while I was scrolling. No matter how much my present circumstances hurt, wounded me, drove me to distraction or made me feel emotionally damaged on a daily basis I must understand that there’s a bigger picture in the frame and it’s having a spiritual outlook on one’s life.

I am angry at the world today. Dr Jordan B. Peterson is right. There’s suffering. There’s worship of that suffering (I’m guilty of worshipping my own suffering). There’s malevolence in the world and unspeakable horror. I’m suffering because I’m tired, overworked and underpaid and I am watching my father die in front of me, withering away. He is alive but he doesn’t want to be and in my tears there is a water diary. It feels as if I am drowning everyday but then I make dua. (what the Muslims call prayer). That’s the difference. Prayer and meditation on all the good in this world and in my life does wonders for the soul. The universe and the soul is somewhat renewed. You begin to see the truth and beauty that Keats spoke about. I listen to Sam Harris on the Waking Up app. He is talking to a poet.

Dear Virgil, I am so sorry I didn’t know how to love, how to love you back and I was always so frightened of what the future might bring and the separation from my mentally ill parents. I hope you can forgive me one day.

I turn to the world and say, I am ready for what will come. Life is short. Time is precious. The future is now. I tell myself not to give in, not to give up. I say to the world. Let us once again believe in hope and reconciliation and social cohesion. Let us bow our heads and go down on our knees and pray for peace.