Tag Archives: growing up

November 25, 2011 · 3:41 pm

My First Time Travelling Abroad

At 22 you are meant to be in the prime of your youth. You are meant to be very happy like a modern-day Mary Poppins, fun is meant to ooze out from your back pocket, people are meant to smile at you while you skip down the street to a tune you made up in your mind like they do in commercials, all things perky are meant to stay perky for at least another good 8 years. So when I felt at 22 that none of that was happening (except for the last bit) and the stars were rudely wiped from my eyes by the reality of life and for believing in dreaming so much, I was really confused.

I wasn’t sure if I was in a mid-life crisis or in my case a quarter-life crisis or maybe I was just demanding too much out of life too soon. Thinking back right now, I couldn’t possible tell you, but all I know is that back then I wasn’t happy and I wanted more from life than what I was reaping at that very moment. All the things I wanted to achieve for that time in my life, I wasn’t even dangerously close to achieving and that deeply concerned me.

I was 22 working for a great company with great staff and a lovely manager who later became a very valued friend in my life, I was helping out like an adult at home, my responsibilities had become neck high but I enjoyed it. I had great friends and a supportive family structure it looked like things could go on forever on this pace and it would all be ok.

Some how, for some reason it all just started seeming very mundane to me. All I remember thinking before I took action was that I finished high school at 17, I went to varsity and know I’m working, and then I will work some more, finish studying, then buy a car and do my bit for society and my family, buy a house, study some more, then work some more, then start a family then work a little bit more, go on a few holidays then retire and work a little more ( because lets face it your pension is a joke unless you’re Irene Rosenfeld). Then dutifully daisies will start smelling so much clearer during those years, then I would probably start having dreams of tunnels with bright lights then trumpets will sound and my good Lord will whisk me away to a real first class, five-star V.I.P. party.

You see? I’m hoping you agree that the way that last paragraph looks is not slightly appetizing and I definitely didn’t sign up for it (though truthfully I don’t remember ever being given an option and the sequence of events doesn’t really go the way I described it but you get the point ok!). However I sat at home and weighed my options and thankfully there had come an opportunity for me to travel through a friend of mine, and though it wasn’t how I envisioned I would travel I just literally went for it without even thinking about it.

And there ladies and sort of gentlemen (times have changed no one opens doors these days) My First Time travelling alone abroad came.

Taking the step to move to England was not even a concern, I was so excited, I hadn’t planned much besides the necessities of what I was really going to do there and everything seemed to have been organized for me already by the family I was going to stay with. It took a matter of months or weeks really to plan and notify people who I was going to be m.i.a in the motherland for a bit and some people couldn’t even believe it was happening until I landed at Heathrow (my mother included).

And boy did I feel grown up, I won’t bore you by mentioning the itty bitty details of boarding the flight but I can tell you something, although it was almost half a day travelling, it was the most memorable time of my life. Not the actual flight but the possibility and hope that was attached to it. I know understand why some people think it’s best to leave a place. Whether it be from a broken heart, some embarrassing situation you found yourself in if your life is public to others or merely just to travel and see Gods beautiful playground, it’s not so much the place you are going to, although that counts for 80% of the reason as to why your African posterior is being flattened for 11 hours by a supposedly luxuriously cushioned seat but it’s that feeling of renewal and new hope.

It’s almost like being baptized again, you have that chance to redo, to explore. The stars are definitely in your eyes again, you definitely are a little girl in a big world with a suitcase and a teddy looking googly-eyed and hoping to conquer in your own way. And all the rough rides and knocks you were scarred with while growing up are somehow dismantled because at that moment you are your own Christopher Columbus. The thought of a new place, new people, new scenery and finding your own way in that little society and making your own life even if it means eating canned water (if there is such a thing) for the rest of your days is a MasterCard moment. It’s so priceless and rewarding it sends butterflies in your tummy that metamorphose into dancing fairies.

That was me in August 2009 sitting on Virgin airways just thinking and thinking and thanking and thanking God.

I look back now almost 2 years later back in South Africa. And although things didn’t go according to plan as they never always do with a life that we don’t control, I’m back where I was in an office desk, 9 to 5 scenario, composing this. And you know what? it’s ok because I couldn’t have it any other way. My life is at a place where it’s meant to be, I’m planning my work schedule for the next week and researching courses to study some more and I’m not entirely happy but that’s somewhat a bit overrated sometimes. (The truth is, my little kiddies, is there are bills to pay that don’t even make sence on your pay slip, for all you know under the UIF fee that you pay and may not fully utilize is your bosses golfing lessons named special deductions or skill development fee that you’re too scared to ask about hence why you’ll never be fully happy) I have lived although not fully, I have loved although not wholly I have seen although not clearly, I have conquered although not entirely but I have experienced and that’s been the best moment of my life not the travel or the work or the money or the status but the experience and every fulfilling decision and mistake I have made have been worth it because they are apart of that experience which makes me know as I am and will continue to make my many first times to come.

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February 10, 2011 · 12:17 pm

The first time I separated love and sex

Sex is everywhere. Books. TV. Movies. Magazines. We’re surrounded by it even before we really become aware of what it is. It seems like our lives are meant to revolve around this act: anticipating it, pursuing it, engaging in it. After all, sex is tied up with our idea of the much sought-after Fairy Tale True Love. How many hours are spent contemplating “that someone” and what you would do to them if left alone in a room together? Why wouldn’t I want those things? Doesn’t everyone?

I had a wonderful, if uneventful, childhood. My parents were conservative, but not overbearingly so. My mom would frown but say nothing to the perpetual chaos of scattered toys.  She allowed us to be children. When afternoons at the playground transitioned to weekends at the mall, she broached the topic of sex. My mom sat me down and gave me a book explaining the mechanics of things. She counseled me to wait until marriage, and I had no problem with that. I was only twelve or so. Boys were alien creatures as far as I was concerned.

By the time I entered high school, men and relationships had become a favorite topic of discussion among my friends. I didn’t have much to contribute there. I occasionally crushed on someone who I found especially handsome or intriguing, but for the most part I remained uninterested. By senior year, I still had never dated anyone, but since I was happy by myself, this didn’t particularly disturb me.

In college, I had a great deal more exposure to the opposite sex. In bars, at frat parties, at Pictionary night and church socials, they made moves, which I deflected with ninja-like skill. When I brushed off the inferior males, I told myself that I was just picky. I was waiting for THE one.  He would be wonderful. Something would click. I would feel that “burning passion” or “electric spark.” I would be drawn to him “like the tide to the moon,” like every overdrawn metaphor you’ve ever heard.  I would want to give myself to him.

Except he never showed up. No one even tempted me. Other girls detailed their random hookups and make-out sessions. I never understood their interest. I told myself I was just a bit prudish.

After I graduated, I took a hard look at myself. By 23 I had still never gone on a single date. I was still waiting for my first kiss. I began to get anxious. I was supposed to have accomplished these things much earlier. My friends were getting married and having babies already. I was so behind I felt almost freakish. What was wrong with me?

Then he showed up.

He was everything I could have ever asked for. I felt so comfortable with him that I lowered my defenses and set nervousness aside. We shared similar experiences, and a similar love of mysteries, exploring, and baked goods. We both wanted a family and a house with a tower. Our favorite method of flirting was texting each other the most challenging riddles we could dig up. He lived two hours away from me, so we could only get together occasionally, but after every single one of our dates, I would head home grinning like an idiot. I couldn’t get him off my mind. This was serious.

While he was entirely respectful, and I never felt pressured, after a few dates I realized that we had come to the part of our relationship where we were supposed to be kissing (at least). I considered this in a detached, academic way. I had no objections. I liked him very much.  A romantic relationship was supposed to progress from handholding to kissing and, ultimately, to sex.

Our next date, it happened. I could tell the mood had shifted. There was something insistent about the way he searched out my hand, the looks he cast my way. My stomach churned, more with discomfort than anticipation. That’s only natural, I told myself. This is my first everything. I tried to believe it. When we said our good-byes, I knew this was it. He leaned in. I steeled myself and moved towards him.

It was not what I expected.

I felt nothing. Not a thing. Where was the passion, this spark I had heard so much about? He obviously did not share my lack of enthusiasm. His arms wrapped around me. He nuzzled my neck. I cast a glance over his shoulder at the clock, wondering how long I had to wait before I could politely excuse myself. I was miserable.

I tried not to cry the whole bus ride home. I really cared for this guy.  Even though our relationship was new, I could see myself growing old with someone like him. He had made me so happy… until that night. Why, if I cared so much for him, had I not felt the slightest urge to kiss him? Why had I felt nothing when it happened? Instead of cementing our relationship, I felt like he’d driven a stake into it. I doubted myself. I doubted everything.

Back at my apartment, I took recourse to the Internet. I wanted to know what was wrong with me. What I found was asexuality.org. I had never really heard of an asexual before. It had never even occurred to me to question my sexuality. I mean, I knew I had options.  I was acquainted with all the different letters in LGBT, and while I had never been boy-crazy, I certainly had never felt anything for girls.

I didn’t know it was possible for a person not to be sexually attracted to anyone at all. In our sex-permeated culture, where a high libido seems the norm, and where love often equals sex, I struggled to fathom that many people do not ever feel the inclination. Not that they deprive themselves, as someone who chooses celibacy. Like myself, they are wired to never feel the urge. And it’s normal.

A weight lifted. Suddenly my whole life made a lot more sense. All the excuses I had presented for my lack of interest (a conservative upbringing, high standards, nervousness, being prudish) kept me from examining the underlying cause. I tried to think of a single time I had felt the slightest inclination to do something sexual with anyone and came up with nothing.

Perhaps most importantly, for the first time I realized that there is a clear distinction between love and sex. While the latter may never appeal to me, the first is still absolutely a possibility.

He texted me the next day. Without hormones clouding his judgment, he’d started to question our good-bye. He said that in retrospect something felt off and asked me if he had “done wrong by me.” He said he had a hard time reading me, and he understood if I wanted to just be friends. I replied that I was definitely interested in a romantic relationship, but that I couldn’t promise I would ever want to express that physically in the way that he would like. I couldn’t quite bring myself to use the A-word then, (It was still a fairly new concept after all.) but I did ask him if the lack of a physical relationship was a deal-breaker.

He said it was not.

I’m not sure he’ll always feel that way. As I understand it, most people have some need for sex. He desires me in a way that I can never reciprocate, and one day, in spite of our best attempts to compromise, that realization may be too much for him. (Was I selfish in that decisive moment by asking him to be more than a friend?) For now, fueled with hope and a willingness to communicate, we’re trying to make it work.

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