Losing you...

What is this dread I feel?

Deep, dark, consuming,

So consuming, it envelopes me. Like a heavy cloak I can't shrug off.

Is this what this feels like, losing you?

It's the strangest thing...

Fear clutches at my heart, grips me with the urgent desperation of one falling from a cliff, clutching on to that final rock within grasp, hanging on for dear life

Hanging on, but in futility, as the rock shifts, treacherous rock breaks loose,

and I fall, freefall into the deep dark abyss that awaits me with open arms

The pain is palpable, the sense of loss, abject...

What is this pain? What is this sense of overwhelming despair?

I writhe, I grunt, I moan, I wail, in futile desperation, like a woman in miscarriage, birthing her dead foetus, labouring...

A hard labour of the worst kind, because through it all, she knows it's in vain,

all that is coming out at the other side of this pain is dashed hope,

a lifetime of possibilities savagely cut short before it even began

Myriad emotions bubble within; anger, betrayal, hurt, a consuming sorrow,

but most of all, a bewildering shock, jolting forcefully through me with a vengeful ferocity, knocking the very breath out of me...

A restless stirring besets my sleep. I am plagued with troubled dreams, bitter sweet memories, of you and I, laughing, planning, loving...The future looks possible, we can make it, we will make it...

Then reality comes crashing, your persistent flakiness, your capriciousness, rears it's ugly head, and you dart out again, as you do, in, and out, and back in, and back out, as you have done, and as I have been loathe to let you, but somehow have done.

I hurl empty words across an empty room, a reverberating echo, as you are not there, no one is. I awake with a start, bathed in a cold sweat.

Fear is a terrible thing, and even now, it suffocates me...

But love, love it seems is something of an altogether more malignant nature.

What is this love? This stubborn love that will not let me go?

This love is worse than fear. It is excruciating, exacting actual physical pain.

Surely I did the right thing in finally walking away from you. Shutting the door and locking it firmly behind? Surely the eventual triumph of head over heart was a good thing?

I saw through your shallow pleas; it is in the nature of man, I find, to desire absolution after having inflicted unbearable pain. It helps him live better with himself, sleep better at night. It is in the nature of woman however, to deny him that self gratification, to refuse to allow him 'eat his cake and have it'. So no, you don't get to leave me, again, and yet remain a 'good guy' in your own head. To hope to do so is arrogant, and presumptuous, and obscene...

And so the die is cast, the line is drawn in the sand. Surely I am better off without you. My head knows this, with an absolute certainty, but why does my treacherous heart refuse to follow suit?

Why does it feel like my guts have been wrenched out of me? Why hasn't time healed this wound? Why does it feel like I'm losing you afresh, having already lost you before, possibly never even had you? Why does the knowledge of the finality of your departure leave me so bereft of hope?

Where is my bright and sparkly optimism, that which has been my faithful buffer?

Where is my 'can-do' spirit? My happy-go-lucky nature? My life-goes-on attitude? My no-one is indispensable ideology?

Why have these my faithful allies deserted me at this hour when I need them the most?

Above all, where is my cynicism? Why have I crumbled into this pile of moping sentimentality? Where is my practical, spunky self?

Who is this reflection I see staring back at me? I don't recognise her at all, and she disgusts me...

What have I let you do to me? Why is letting you go, the hardest thing I have ever had to do? What is this inexplicable hold you have over me? We are as different as night and day, you and I? Me with my love of the arts, and nature, and pets, and greenery, and classical music, you with your tolerance, or aspirational appreciation at best, but mostly disdain for all these things...

You were not from the beginning the man I had dreamed of, so why is it so hard to let you go now? Why do I pine like so? What exactly is it that I pine after? Is it truly you, or is it the image of you I have created in my mind, a composite of carefully selected memories, creating a version of you that may in fact differ from the reality of who you are?

There are so many questions, and not enough answers. But one thing is certain. I have to get up and leave this place. I have wallowed here for too long. I have to go over to the other side of the road. There are too many reasons why it is urgent for me to get a move on. There is a life after you, waiting out there for me, and I have to get up, freshen up, and go and meet it. And live it.

If I do it right, I know I will find rapture, and love, and wonder.

To you I say thank you, for the memories, the good and the bad. They are all part of what makes me who I am, and I know that in all, I will be a better person for having had them, and for having loved you in the unreserved way that I did.

But now, the rest of my life awaits. I will myself to jump into it with both feet.

I sincerley hope you have found what you were looking for.

Really, I do...

Now I step out into the sunshine. It's going to be a good day. HE assures me of this fact, and I believe HIM.

So long...

Mr Nobody

I saw him from afar.

He just sat there; in camouflage and army boots. There on the pavement, lost in conversation with some unseen voice on the other side.

There was something about him sitting on the floor in the middle of a busy street in the heart of the city, that intrigued me. I drew closer, He didnt sense my approach, he never turned.

Who is he? He has no face, no identity, just a man, sitting there, in camouflage and army boots.

And just as quickly as I had approached, I did my business and went my way. Looking back to catch a view of his face would have ruined the mystique of the moment, so I pressed on without so much as a backward glance, like one afraid of turning into a pillar of salt.

He never did turn, I never did get to see his face.

To Ma, with Love….

Published in 'Outflow' March 2007

From a handful, to a mother that was ‘up to the task’…

I never realised how much my mother meant to me until she was gone. Yes, I knew I loved her, no doubt about that. There were several occasions though, actually, many occasions, when I was a younger girl, when that love was more to do with the fact that she was my mother and I had to love her, and less to do with how I actually felt about her at that point in time.

My mother was, to use the literal translation of a metaphor in my native language, ‘not a soft piece of meat’. This basically means she was a tough woman. Oh yes, mummy-O was ‘tough love’ personified.

Never one to back down in an argument (not like one should be arguing with one’s mother really, but this is a reflection of the type of upbringing she had given us…) I grew up in a ‘don’t be afraid to speak your mind’ kind of home. Sure, speaking my mind got me into lots of trouble lots of times, and even though ‘the rents’ as my sister and I used to call our parents, encouraged speaking freely, they also let you know in no uncertain terms the consequences of failing to find the right balance between ‘free speech’ and the ‘first commandment with a promise’. And mummy-O was the disciplinarian of the pair, no doubt.

I remember on a particular occasion, I was probably all of 15 years old. A neighbour of ours, a Moslem lady, had visited us and presented our family with a big bowl of stewed fried meat – a customary gesture by Moslems in our corner of the world towards their non Moslem neighbours and friends after the Eid-El Fitri festivities. Now I happen to be particularly fond of stewed fried meat, and the way I saw it, this bowl was destined for the snack tray - I mean, I couldn’t very well snack on the meat in mummy-O’s soup pot, (trust me, I had tried in the past, and her reaction?, what can I tell you? it wasn’t pretty…)

But I digress, back to neighbour lady and her bowl of stewed fried meat. This neighbour’s gift bowl as I said before, presented the unique opportunity for me to have a continuous pipeline of munchies well into the following Thursday at the very least. I could already savour the flavour. Mummy Warbucks however had other plans. She effusively thanked the neighbour, and after the kindly lady had taken her leave, mummy-O proceeded to wrap up the meat and promptly deposited the bowl with the cold cuts she had kept for our family dog, Lucky.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Mummy what are you doing??!! I exclaimed, or more specifically, why are you wasting such a lovely bowl of meat on this mutt??! It’s just not fair!! She proceeded to explain to me that while she appreciated neighbour lady’s well intentioned gesture, she did not feel comfortable eating meat that according to her had been consecrated to a faith she did not believe in, and to a god she did not know. Her Christian conscience, she said would not allow it. ‘Well let me at it then’, I ranted, as I rummaged through the freezer trying to salvage the meat before it mingled too closely with Lucky’s dinner, my Christian conscience has no quarrel whatsoever with this stewed fried meat. Of course, she wasn’t having it.

I was miffed to say the least. I had to set her straight, so in my 15 year old wisdom, I declared, Mummy, you’re just paranoid! Oooh, did I hear it that day. The first thing she did was to bring out her cherished Chambers English dictionary, her ready accomplice in my frequent scrabble trouncings. She proceeded to make me read out the meaning of paranoid. The very existence of the two words ‘mental disorder’ in the chambers definition spelt the tone of my punishment that day. She didn’t lay a finger on me - huh! I should be so lucky. Rather, I immediately attained the status of the 15 year old who had declared her own mother mentally unstable. Over and over again she restated it until the implication of what I had said registered fully with me, and then some. Do we have to be quite so literal about this, I whined in a tiny contrite voice, as I squirmed uncomfortably at this mental torture.

Lessons learnt you ask?

1: there are phrases that are good to use on your friends, but not quite so good to use on your parents,

2: your mother is not always a good bouncing board for your vast command of the English language.

There was nothing especially significant about that story; it was just one of many stories. Memories of my mother that punctuate the landscape of my life. I remember the years I think of now as my turbulent teenage uprising. I wasn’t a particularly bad child, but I wasn’t one of the Huxtable kids either. I remember my apparent determination to be an ‘in’ chick. It was rather inconvenient though, that I had a mum who was just as determined that I would be ‘out’ of the loop as far as that ‘cool crowd’ was concerned. Inevitably, a game of cat and mouse resulted.

I remember one of those days when I'd be receiving an earful amidst well evened out thwacking, she would say to me with such resolution in her voice, I will not let you run riot, never! If you’ve been a teenage girl, you know how it goes, the kind of things you do that are sure to irk your mother, when you leave the house dressed in a set of clothes, looking quite like the Amish, but knowing full well that the set of clothes you really intend to wear is in your back pack…or… you don’t know how it goes…ok… maybe that’s just me then… sorry…

Very aggravating though, mummy-o seemed to have eyes everywhere. So I would return home in my Little Bo Beep ensemble, feeling quite slick about having pulled off this little feat of parental deception, only to be confronted with a very precise description of my real wardrobe that day. How on earth does she do it? I would wonder.

Then there were the late nights I would keep sometimes, and how she would wait at the gate till my return at midnight or sometimes later. I was a little older by now, so I had grown a bit too big to be whipped for such irresponsible behaviour, but the verbal telling off I got was no less severe.

Of course, as I grew older, and more mature, our relationship lost its cat and mouse character - I was no longer reckless, and had developed into quite a responsible young lady, even if I say so myself. She on her part had attained a less ‘Thatcheresque’ posture. Sure, we still had our quibbles, as mothers and daughters always will, but they were fewer and farther between now.

I remember her today as I write; I remember her laughter, her encouragement, her resourcefulness, her strength, but beyond all, her unflinching and unwavering love. It’s funny how easy it is to assume our mothers will always be around. Even when mine developed the medical condition that led to her passing, she bore it for many years with faith and dignity, and it never once occurred to any of us that she would be called home as a result of it.

I knew back then, that she was all the things that I so fondly remember her for now, but oh for a chance to say it to her more. I thank her for the woman I have become. I thank her for not letting me run riot. I thank her for loving still, when love should have run its course.

What do you want to thank your mother for? As you read this, appreciate your mother. If she lives faraway, give her a call. If she’s near, give her a hug, a squeeze, a kiss. If you’re a husband, your wife is a mother to you in a sense. She is mother to your children, and the upholder of your line. Our mothers deserve our love, they deserve our appreciation. They are women of valour, mothers in Israel. As you read this, purpose to do something special for your mother. The Lord knows she deserves it.

Hope for the Journey

Published in 'Outflow': November 2008

I don’t mind telling you; last year was a tough one for me. A year marked with perennially bad decision making, an unprecedented level of restlessness, faith-shaking trials, and most significantly, stagnation. Spiritual stagnation, financial stagnation, even emotional stagnation. It seemed whatever I did, I just couldn’t get it together. I couldn’t move beyond a certain level. So when this year broke with a message of hope, I, more than anyone else, I suspect, needed that fresh burst of vigour to launch me into the New Year. I clung to that Hope message like a lifeline. And it was a lifeline that ultimately saved me from myself.

Not that I was in any actual physical danger, no, nothing of the sort.

You see, I’ve been a born again Christian for most of my adult life, and I love God with all my heart, but having a crutch-free dependence on God has always been a struggle for me. It’s not that I don’t believe that God is all powerful, and can do anything and everything, I think its more to do with the fact that I’d never really had to practice a 100% dependence on God, free of all other alternatives. Of course I, like everyone else had my needs that I prayed God to meet, daily, and continuously in my life, and He did faithfully meet those needs, but apart from Him keeping me alive each day, and keeping me healthy, I’d never really seen myself, as being in a situation where if he didn’t come through, that would be it for me. No, not really…

Its not that I was born into extraordinary privilege; far from it. I come from a definitively middle class background, and even though my family was comfortable, we were not wealthy by any stretch of the term. While, I’m considered by many, including myself, to be extremely capable, even very good at a lot of things, you’d be hard pressed to describe me as a genius in any area. I also consider myself to be possessed of reasonably good looks, and those around me seem to affirm this to be true, but I don’t believe I’d win any pageants per se. I’m blessed with very good health as far as I know. My genotype is AA, by blood group is O-, I have no chronic medical conditions, and save for the odd flu or malaria now and again, I rarely have need of medical attention. I’ve never failed an examination in my life; I graduated school with excellent grades and got the job I wanted, with the firm I wanted practically straight out of school, both on the graduate and post graduate level. Basically, I’ve succeeded at most things that I’ve tried, and those endeavours that have proved elusive, have been relatively easy for me to let go of. I have a loving and protective nuclear family, with parents who loved their kids as fervently as they loved each other, and they brought us up in a sheltered university community. I became a born again Christian in my first year of university, and while I like anyone slip up now and again, I have served God faithfully without looking back since then.

So it has been that up until very recently, you could say, I’ve led a relatively charmed life.

But in the last couple of years, I started to awaken to some of the harsher realities of life – I consider it my coming of age, so to speak. Almost exactly 3 years ago, my perfect little world started to unravel around me. Principal among them was a tragic loss in my family, and following that, nothing seemed to come as easy as it used to anymore. Where before, all I had to do was pretty much wish for something and it would just come my way, literally, all of a sudden, achieving even the most basic results felt akin to riding up a ‘down’ escalator. It would be understating it greatly to say that I wasn’t prepared for this ‘new phase’ in my existence, and my response to it? Picture a child throwing its toys out of the pram? Yes, exactly like that…

I was bitter at God, and I felt that He had dealt me a raw hand. My love-life with God deteriorated, and what used to be joyous relationship became something more similar to ritual or guilt. In this new level, I learnt something very useful about myself, and the brand of Christianity I had practiced up until this point. Even though I had been a Christian for so long, I was in a lot of ways, still a baby, a Christian spoilt brat. With this realisation came a protracted period of mortification, and so began my journey to ‘smooth things over’ with God. I threw myself at his mercy and begged him to help me get back to that place where serving him, and following him was a joy and not a chore, and he did largely that. My life regained some of its prior shine, and I was happy again. I had been out of a paying job for some time, but miraculously, he sorted me out in a way that could only have been him, not my brilliance, or my effort. Just Him. All was good with the world again, I had what I needed, and God had me back, I thought, where he wanted.

There was just one problem though, one I see so clearly now. I hadn’t actually rid myself of the problem that was really ailing my Christian walk. I still had this perfection based faith. I wasn’t particularly the sort to declare with unmoving faith that the things I desired of God would come to pass at such and such a time, but as long as things were working out reasonably well for me, and in the manner in which I wanted them, I was fine. I didn’t despair if God didn’t move mountains on my behalf; I just didn’t want him to ‘rock the boat’. I needed a minimum level of order, and I needed to be able to exert some level of control over my own future, and how my life would proceed from one point in time to the other. It was this peculiar brand of neuroses that was the source of most of my discontent and frustration last year. I couldn’t just release myself to the machinations of my maker. I wanted to be able to determine what and what next would happen in my life. Of course, this is a futile effort for anyone to embark on, and the more elusive it was, the more frustrated and disillusioned I became. Yes, last year was a tough year.

And then in the cusp of the New Year, I heard the aforementioned lifesaving message of hope and I do believe I needed it more than anyone else to be able to make it through 2008. And so, I latched onto the message, but still without addressing the fundamental flaw in my mindset - that the hope is not a hope that God will work out the perfect plan as designed by my own imagination, and my anal retentive attention to detail, it was a hope against hope, rooted in the belief that God would work things out for my good according to His own purpose and timetable, and that even if our delivery schedules weren’t identical, he had the bigger picture, and he was sorting out solutions not just to my declared issues, but also to problems I hadn’t even envisaged that I would have.

As I was floating in my ‘hope fuelled’ high though, I didn’t see things this way, and predictably, that ‘high’ didn’t last very long at all. Instead, I found that as the year wore on and one month merged into the other, things started to happen around me that were not part of my diligently appointed life-plan, and again, I felt my self slipping into that familiar dark hole that I inhabited for a good part of last year, so much so that it got to a point a few months ago, I convinced myself that it had been a mistake to hope at all. I felt that by hoping, I had set myself up for a major let down, and I wondered how I could have been so foolish. I came to the rationalisation that the only thing God actually promises us in the bible is the salvation of our souls and the promise of eternity with him in heaven. All the other promises we like to lay claim to, I told myself, were the product of man’s theology - faulty interpretation and blanket generalisation of situation-specific details in the bible. I crafted out for myself my own personal theology, where God promises little, gives arbitrarily, and guarantees nothing. I told myself that the only thing I could count on was what I defined as the ‘Sovereignty of God’ in which he does whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and in which my hopes and desires played no role whatsoever. I came to terms with this version of reality and trudged on like I was being victimised by God, even fortifying my new found doctrine with the words of Job, ‘Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him’

And then in the midst of my ‘God’s victim’ role-play, something else started to happen. Bigger fish started to emerge that needed frying. The financial crisis was the first thing that really brought the message home. For someone who is almost obsessive about controlling her own destiny, I came to realise how little control I really have over the things that are most important to me. As friends and colleagues fell casualty to the crisis to my left and my right, it humbled me how God still kept me firm, in spite of my sometimes belligerent, sometimes falsely-long-suffering attitude.

It struck me how my inexplicable decline of a job offer from a prestigious firm a few months before its unexpected and unanticipated total collapse could only have been the hand of God staying me from taking what would have no doubt been a disastrous decision. I marvelled at how God had used a crisis that was proving the undoing of seasoned investors and reputable firms to usher me into my first home, at a bargain price, with a bargain mortgage deal to boot. I still can’t understand how it is that working as I do, in the sector at the heart of the storm, for one of the major firms at the centre of the storm, my job is still preserved, and looks as though it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. And not only these things, but in so many other ways, I am humbled at how God has orchestrated events in my life to bring me to this point, and how so many other personal disappointments I had suffered earlier on, are now being revealed as part of his grand plan to keep me safe and to preserve my faith.

And now I see it clearly, what I believe God had been trying to show me all this time. That there is no way I can control my own future. There is no way I can direct what happens to me from one moment to the next. For the first time in my life, I feel so vulnerable, and so exposed, and so powerless to help myself, but remarkably, and wonderfully, for the first time in my life, this is not the scary and daunting prospect it used to be. I finally see that I am not by any stretch of imagination a good custodian of my own future, neither now, do I wish to be. I have come to the point now where I know, as sure as I know my own name, that my hope can only ever be in God, not myself, not my employer, not my savvy, nor connections, nor beauty, nor brains. Nothing other than the God who has seen the entire script of my life played out, and knows what exactly the next line should be, and what the next plot holds, and what the climax will be.

And now, I’m confident to say that that hope, the hope that does not bring shame is sufficient for me, even in the most perilous of times. I am chucking out the script I have written out for myself, and I am hanging on to my hope in the One who has promised. I am no longer concerned with the gritty details of the script of my life, and I no longer try to second guess God, or pre-empt my life’s next move. And why should I have to. Its so much easier to just put my hope in the one that marked out the journey…