My heart hurt another So only one life can't be enough Can you give me another For the one who got away Lonely I, I'm so alone now There'll be no rest for the wicked There's no song for the choir There's no hope for the weary If you let them win without a fight If one heart can mend another Only then can we begin So won't you hold on a little longer Don't let them get away There'll be no rest for the wicked There's no song for the choir There's no hope for the weary If you let them win without a fight I let my good one down I let my true love die I had his heart but I broke it every time Lonely I, I'm so alone now
When she wakes up, she’s lying
in the middle of her bed.Arms stretched
out to feel no one and nothing but the empty space occupied by the duvet and
cool sheets.The sunshine outside not
yet penetrating through her white curtains, and it wouldn't, not today, it’s
miserable weather out. The wind whistles and there are white horses on the sea.
The kind of day to stay in bed.She gets
up. Spending most of the night trying so hard to fall asleep, with the help of
whatever pain pills she could get her hands on, she decides that it’s just
better to get up and face the weather.
Wood glue, staples, paint and paper coming together day by
day to create the creatures of the damned. It’s the build up to her favorite
occasion and she’s having a party.The
invites are out and the transformation of her parents Mauritian styled home has
begun.She’s not employed by anyone so
this is currently her everything. She’s putting her soul into creating these
decorations and the creativity of it is flowing. Being a creative soul, it
needs to be expressed and it’s been a while since she hosted a Halloween party,
the last one having become quite an iconic event in her high school career.
She’s now twenty-four and this party won't be as nearly as chaotic as the
last.She hoped for the sake of her parents’
house.This time it would be an
invitation only party. She'd learnt that much.
With all the preparation and dressing up, the night came
around quickly and now the punch was flowing and the people arriving.The veranda has been closed off with black
bin bags as draping curtains, the table decorated with jars of all things
disgusting sitting on blood stained cloth.Gravestones along the length of the table and an oversized spider
creeping up on the blinds behind it.Ribbons of orange, black and white flowing in the breeze above,
alongside a suspended ghost.Cages with
bones also hanging from the ceiling, a demon in the opposite corner.A coffin in the entrance hall and
specifically chosen music playing with lights flashing. The effort was appreciated and the party had
begun. Of all the people that came there was only one who stood out from the
crowd.Both barely invited and known, he arrived on the arm of a friend and although she was occupied with entertaining and
being the hostess she really was entertaining the idea that she'd get to know him better. Just with that thought her party became chaotic but not in the way
she had expected.The party was actually
soon to be her future life and there were only two guests, herself and this man
wearing a pink onesie with a fro.She didn't care much for serendipity or love at first sight or other magical things
like that, instead she was more in tune with zombies and mummies and the day of
the dead. But something changed, within her and all around her that night.She was captivated. After introductions and a
brief yet intense, to her at least, conversation with him the party
continued.She couldn’t do anything
about it, or him, she had to realize that he came with another girl and he would
leave with that girl.
Sitting on the veranda of her parents’
house, ships still beating against the wind and the waves, she tries to express
her soul with what she knows. Which happens to be quite minimal. She’s tired
from lack of sleep and the turmoil inside of her is worse than the
weather.Probably still feeling the
effects of taking nine painkillers which have not been fully slept off and now
the numbness is less and it’s only a matter of time before she takes nine more,
maybe twelve this time.Regardless of it
being day, it’s dark and cold and she doesn’t want to feel anything. She doesn't want to think or over-think about the time before she lay in the middle
of her bed to try and fall asleep. If she does begin to analyze a bit of her
spirit dies inside and she becomes someone she isn’t.The time is now and moments are gone except
from memory.
Call it fate, call it sneaky, call it exciting.And she was excited.It’s been almost a year since her Halloween
party and she’s recruited her best friend to drive forty-five minutes up the
coast with her.She’s always loved road
trips and going away with friends.She'll sing and move her shoulders up and down dancing to songs with
meanings and memories behind them, on the road to
excitement and intrigue.She says to her
friend, that she doesn't know why or how or when but she feels and knows then,
that she could marry this man.The
music is lowered as she explains to her friend.Of how this man dressed in the pink onesie with a fro seems to be both her
destination and destiny. She tells her friend of how although they didn't know each other that they both wanted to at the same time.She tells her friend that while he went off to date the other girl, she distantly
thought of him while living her own life and making her own mistakes in love
and life.She recollects on how they
bumped into each other outside of the local pub while his then girlfriend was
away and how she felt she could talk to him for hours, and of how they happened
to bump into each other again.After he
and his then girlfriend had broken up and how small talk and deep conversation
at a club turned into a night of spontaneity and mystery.To her it was still all a mystery and that
weekend away was to make a kind of discovery.
Nothing but innocence happens
that weekend.She can barely speak to
him she’s so nervous, she’s guarded yet so porous that he and his family manage
to soak right down to her heart. Mostly
just him though.What she learns that
weekend substantiates her feelings.
Why she couldn't sleep last
night, why she hasn't slept in months is her own fault.She’s become so dependent on substance, not
necessarily in pill or other narcotic or toxic forms, but just substance.That when she feels that it is lacking,
everything else suffers.Just how much she
can express her feelings is hindered and amounts to this morning of sitting
outside in the gloom grey weather while the world carries on around her. The
ships have come in closer to shore and the birds are taking shelter one by one
on the rafters above her. Her dog snoozes at her feet under the table, sensing
she doesn't want to or shouldn't be alone.She’s writing and listening to music.The one song with lyrics that make her really listen and ultimately feel
less; slowly drifting away, wave after wave, and it feels like I’m drowning,
pulling against the stream.
A whirlwind came next.Before she knew it she was his girlfriend, and his friend.She had met and fallen in love with his
family, her family had met and fallen in love with him.It wasn't a whirlwind of romance; it became a
companionship in an innocent, child like curiosity kind of way that would
slowly explode into comfort and convenience yet keeping the mystery and
infatuation as focus. Weekends were spent together, then weekdays, then almost
everyday.Nights were spent together,
slowly then surely. Never assertively but rather inquisitively.She had the feeling never to leave him, never
to not be around him, never to not love him. He would make her believe, he would let her
question, he would inspire her with himself and where they were going together.
She would fall asleep with him in her heart and on her mind, to wake up
enthusiastic and even more in love with him.Whether it was chilled days on the couch holding hands, sweetly touching
his skin with her thumb and playfully saying it was the thumb of love, or riveting
nights of banter, philosophies and dreams turning into realities, they were
together and happy. Whether it was moments of just them or moments shared with
other people, they were happy. She had fallen hard and fast, and he had
continued to captivate her.She tells
everyone how he’s her soul mate and that she loved him even before she had met
him, even if only officially at that Halloween party.
Time soon lapsed into months and
hours into highlights, they were creating a story. She is believing it to be a
love story of magnitude proportion that had and would continue to mean the
world to her.The love word was spoken and
felt by her and him.
It’s lunchtime yet she’s not
hungry.The wind has only got stronger
and even the dog has left her outside to seek warmth away from her coldness.
She’s trying to escape in her writing and gets brought back to reality by her
work phone ringing, continuously, wishing she could rather deal with silence than
any kind of problem. She answers and work is fixed. If only life was that
manageable she thinks. Despondent and shivering, repulsed at the thought of
food and her lack of control over herself she continues to write. Bearing in
mind that she’s alone.
Infatuated and infinite she would revel in the fact that she
had him next to her.She had him to talk
to, to hold and to spend the best hours of her days with. And they were the
best hours. He was her best and although
she had confided that she had never sincerely been in true love before and that
she had been a poor example of love before then, she never dreamed of ever
hurting him like the others before, as it was unimaginable that he would ever
hurt her.She felt intrinsically
connected to him and he to her.It didn't matter about ducks in a row, neither did it matter that their story had
many antagonists.They were the
protagonists and the future was only but theirs, together. How pretty a new
thing is. How enchantingly real it felt.She adored him.She respected him
and she esteemed his portrayal since that weekend away; sincere and thoughtful, funny
and manly, but most of all she couldn't take her eyes off him, and hadn't since
then.
All this time while yearning to grow from this man, who was
so much more aware, so much more, so much, she wasn’t.She was so smitten she became not hers, but
his.She would say naïve and silly
things later to be regretted.She would
handle situations and arguments not as herself but as someone so benighted to
the consequences.She was losing her
enthusiasm, her love for DIY creations in life and in love. And it began to
increase and expand the cracks in their relationship. These cracks originated
on either side, only to meet with force and destruction at the epitome and most
middle of their story. Her faults and
his faults, this natural progression to a disaster of epic proportion, were
soon to leave her a victim.
She hid it from the surface and
that was all she was portraying to him, to her friends and to her family.Momentarily erupting with confusion and
entanglement.Arguments ensued, feelings
were offended and she felt so far away from him it hurt.Yet she was there, she continued to spend the
best hours of her days and her nights with him; only they weren't the best anymore.Replaced with walking on
eggshells and upholding this perception that they were perfect for each other.Slowly she withdrew her embrace, slowly then
suddenly her thoughts were not of them as equal characters in their story, but
she saw him as he saw himself, the main and only character that mattered. Not
her, not who she was or who she had subsequently become.
Now out of cigarettes but worst
of all she’s completed all sources of tears.Used up and useless. She knows she has to get in her fathers car and
drive no more than five minutes down the road to soothe her addiction, however
any task to face the world right now is daunting and crippling to her.Perhaps she should've just stayed in bed all
this time. Shameful at her lack of
luster for life she gets up and goes to the pantry, where the medicines are
kept. Returning, four maybe seven pills
later.Losing grip on reality is what
she craves, not enough to overdose, just enough to not feel the cold.
Engrossed in the downward spiral, the beginning of the end
of their story had begun.She was made
submissive and thought as careless and unaffectionate. He was made insensible
and indifferent and deflected his own disability to be affectionate towards her
onto her instead. What was once happy
nights out together soon resulted in opinionated battles, albeit they were
fighting to save something, at least she hoped, she knew it wasn't the
way.Yet it kept happening, night after
night.Whether is was locally at a
Mexican restaurant, or a street party amongst strangers or even a hot and
adventurous night in Australia, the location didn't matter.What mattered was that it was re-occurring
and irreversible.She realized that the
trust was gone, the respect was gone but worst of all the love was
dwindling.Because what is love without
trust and respect? It becomes comfort based on what was once and to her it was
where she wished she hadn't lost grip of everything.
Birthdays are meant to be significant; she was unaware just
how significantly it would be the actual plot twist in her mysterious curious
story. She left him, after a night of
humiliation and hate.The complete
opposite to what she had loved, he'd ultimately hurt her first and now finally,
and she questioned everything from the very beginning.She left her heart, still connected to his by
mere strands; she left him to his own demise.
Silence, then a few words
written to each other but no solutions.They grew apart. Her heart came back, the strands were still there, but
his presence and hands were gone. Time heals all wounds and even if it doesn't wounded animals know it’s only a matter of time before they submit themselves for
the kill. Initially, she stood in line for her ticket to the rollercoaster ride
of feelings.First jolts of anger, then
swamped down by sadness, to lift in acceptance and accelerate in detachment
moving on. But then, she halted the rollercoaster and jumped, much like a wounded
animal, back into his arms should he have let her and he did every now and then.She thought he could rescue her from the
nauseating ride.Instead it was this
that would just put the rollercoaster on repeat.Her reality lost again, fleetingly seeing the
stillness of what life could look like had she only stepped off the coaster at
the end point and walked away from that disbanded amusement park. But it
blurred and dipped again.Lines were
never marked and the cracks although being covered were to resurface in
squiggles of suspense.
Needing a break, back to the pantry she goes. After ransacking her entire house only to find she’s depleted
all but four pain pills that she found in the depths and darkness of a bag
forgotten, she swallows them hastily. At least she was productive enough to
convince her mother to buy her cigarettes, the cheap kind, as she’s not just
broke on the inside.Sipping on a coke
light that ironically has the word love written on it, she continues now
shaking.
The tragedy of trying she brought on herself that rendered
her in a state of limbo, beyond the rollercoaster she’s now at the door of
hell. How much she enjoyed making those
Halloween decorations not knowing that they and all her efforts would personify
and creep into her mind as darkness and desperation.She’s damned if she does and she’s damned if
she doesn’t.
It’s a Friday afternoon and although windy, she’s
thirsty.She calls him, she messages
him, and she meets up with him.She’s
excited.She’s feeling somewhat pretty
but mostly spontaneous.Offering to buy
him and his friend a drink for nearly totaling them off this planet a few days
before in her own car, she’s consciously embarrassed and wants to redeem
herself.In the same breath she’s hoping
he can redeem himself and their relationship. Yet the cracks are showing and
there’s now sinking sand on either side pulling her towards a fall she knows
she’s not capable of surviving.Not
again.He gives her no reason to
stay.She leaves, her heart still
connected to his by strands but this time she realizes that it’s just her heart
that’s holding onto his. There is no reason to believe that he cares or wants
to reconnect to her heart.She pays her
bill and drives her fathers car home.She’s
now twenty-six and climbing into bed, the middle, she closes her eyes, but the
thoughts and feelings don’t stop. She gets up and goes to the pantry, where the
medicines are kept.
They say that if everyone were to put their problems on display in a pile, everyone would quickly choose their own pile over the others. We're so quick to turn our world into the worst it could possibly be without a second thought or a moment of existentialism in the greater scheme of things.
To cut and edit one's life as they wish, to fabricate their Hollywood version of themselves on display to the rest of the world. This is what happens on a daily basis all around me. What the fuck is real?
Well, I just watched a movie, albeit Hollywood made, that has hit me to my core and has opened my eyes above the popcorn and beyond the movie screen and has quenched my thirst to know and feel more than any overpriced soda ever would. To be honest I watched it from the comfort of my couch in my sheltered home but it being a movie I've gone with the popcorn and soda reference above. However this was not just your average escape to another realm for 2 hours in a zombified fashion movie, it became so real and intense it has lead me to write. While I write now, this movie is happening in real life. Over and over again. It's so distant to South Africans that we're so focused on our own pile of problems and not reality. How ghastly it would be should our problems be switched with say that of a Navy Seal in the heart of the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan.
The gravity of actual reality.
Yes South Africans are constantly worrying about getting hijacked or robbed, but it's not real until it starts happening closer and closer to your inner circle. Until then the majority of us worry about whether the traffic will be congested on our way to the gym or whether we'll be able to watch the rugby game on Dstv if it's raining outside, or whether we'll be able to clock off early and head to the pub to chat about gym and rugby with our friends. Circumstantial, sure. Reality, no. I'm so overwhelmed with trying to make a living while I know there are people worse off than me dying. I'm so overwhelmed with how little we all do, or more appropriately, how much we don't do on a daily basis to make this world a better place.
So sickening is conflict, that we close our eyes to it and encase it on our tv screens in the form of CNN and Sky News and then discuss it oh so liberally at drinks on a Friday evening. So sickening is the world, we choose to live in our own versions of it. NEWSFLASH, you can turn the tv off and you can change the topic of conversation but there are both soldiers and civilians praying to their God, whomever he may be, to let them live another day. Every day. Even if that day is just as harsh as the previous one. Why do they fight? What are they fighting for? These are questions that can only be answered by wholly understanding and experiencing, by being fully and totally educated in an objective manner and answers utterly unattainable to the common man. How insatiably I long for these answers but barely scrape the surface of just how deep it all goes. Almost everyone is anti-war, yet it happens. And it carries on happening with war fighting war. Feeding fuel to the fire. I can't rescue every soldier and I can't whisper words of encouragement and honour into their ear moments from death. I can't feed all of Africa and I can't stop the robber from breaking into my house.
What can I do?...
I'm tired now. Been running through my own mind far too franticly and too long and lonely. Holding onto this right gone wrong. Chasing nothing but nothing. Doing no chasing to be chased, nothing. I'm as big as I want to be. I'm repairable, re-evaluatable and redeemable. So here I am. Something.
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They say it's Spring. Yet the flowers are yet to bloom and the wind howls at the new buds growing as if to head warning it is not yet their time. Should they burst into something beautiful they may be swept up in a motion of chaos to be unseen by unappreciative eyes covered down. They say it's Spring. Coldness and crisp breaths are still, not giving life nor colour nor happy sunshine smiles. Forced and stuck in a time frame, seasonal and binded to the future. For what we wait, we think we may know. For what we wish and hope, we should explore. Buds of green daring the wind and the blindness and the inevitable Autumn. So buds breathe life, be colourful and smile. Most of all, explore more than you think you know.
_____________________________________
So here we are.
Here being so far from what I ever imagined, so raw and true it stings with startlement.
I don't want to ask you why
Underneath it goes, the reasons for whatever they be, buried.
