Tag Archives: learning

December 13, 2011 · 1:00 pm

The first time I do it

The first time I do it… It will be right. It will be smooth and well crafted. It will not take a toll on me that hangs. Tugging down my shoulders keeping my chin from pushing my eyes up to see the layers of building tops touch the sky.

The first time I do it… finally to a man. Finally, to feel equal and stand up to him, to talk back, to call him out. To be assertive. The first time I do it… it will be authentic.

The first time will be quickly forgotten as it will be the first day that I step into that skin. The skin that I have been crafting in my mind. This skin will suit me, it has come from my mind, representing my heart, what I think and feel and especially what I know.  The first time will befinally; and then, yes, then forgotten.

It simply becomes the way that I am. Every day. Not that one significant time that I acted the way that I would love for every woman to act. Every day, for every woman to feel free to act out against any one, especially men. To act out without fear of ridicule because we have the right. Just as one knows they are innocent.. I know that I am powerful. I have the right to be, feel and act equal.

I have the greatest desire to, for the first time… not cow-toe in inferiority, not be afraid of disapproval, not feel dizzy with the conflict between mind and behavior. I won’t care if I hurt his feelings nor will I be concerned with the interpretations of others of me: abrasive, harsh, bitchy, extreme, angry, bitter, cold, childish, pushy, touchy. I will be proud of my authentic assertion, and not ony the first time.

I know that finally, and for the first time, I finally will have found so much of me that I have been searching to know.

The part that woke me up from slumber inside of a relationship where the part of me that makes people laugh had vanished. The part that stands up for the women I know and love. The part of me that loves and trusts her womanhood. That part of me that has come out fiercely and courageously in the company of women.

Only was I able to stand up and confront the pick pocketer and the crafty thief on the bus when it was a woman and her son. Only was I able to take charge that time we were lost out on a mountain and the headlights went out.. when I was with my best friend a beautiful and successful woman. I know I have a Sergeant inside. I know she is there and she is GOOD and she has come around in the presence of women, but she has been trained so well to take her subordinate place in the presence of men.

After the first time my behavior catches up with what I know, I will for the first time stand up courageously without regard to gender. After the first time, I will not ignore the man’s hand quickly groping me on the street (again). I will not be reluctant, worrying about embarrassing him or the woman he is with. That poor old creep who sees me as the parts of my body that he has a desire to abuse will not be ignored by me. Nor will I again be quiet and polite to the man following me, inappropriate with his words about MY body. I will not tell him that “Today, I just want to be alone,” or “Yes, it’s because I have a boyfriend, sorry”.

The first time I do it I will finally be saying goodbye to the path of least resistance.

About these ads

2 Comments

Filed under Inspirational Messages, Power

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

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.

2 Comments

Filed under Freedom, Growing Up

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 18, 2011 · 10:20 am

The first time I realised clearly I was asking my partner to absolve me from being white

So I’m a progressive whitie, right. I say all the right things, I’ve spent ages examining my whiteness, feeling guilty, feeling responsible, and at the bottom of that pit, like somehow whiteness is wrong because of everything that’s been accomplished in it’s name. So I’ve done the work right?

I’ve studied it, I’ve lived it, I’ve workshopped it, I stand up often and talk about how white people walk around ignorant of our privilege and how that plays out day by day in small interactions, and the ability to easily access all sorts of things, like constant employment, good service, easy bank loans, unsuspiscious shop clerks, great education, and lots and lots of other things big and small. I’ve examined my own responses to certain situations and realised how deeply ingrained my racism is in how I treat people, my expectations, my language, my practice.

I’ve publicly acknowledged how this shapes my life, how my privilege is only possible as a result of the oppression of black and coloured people. I’ve gotten over naming. I’ve spoken about how race is a social construction (i.e. a story we make up about who someone is based on an arbitrary genetic characteristic), and yet how it is real because of the ongoing impact on people’s lives. I’ve grappled with what to do with my privilege. Should I be ashamed (a la Samantha Vice)? Should I go lie on the beach and enjoy myself and hand over money for printing when asked (a la Andile Mngxitama)?

I rant against the kind of comments that people feel free posting online after articles that touch on race, the ones where white people get defensive, blame others, infer that white people are the only holders of culture and ‘civilisation’ (whatever that means). Who bemoan ‘the country going to the dogs’. I treat everyone with polite respect, and when there is space, with love and friendship doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. I judge, I examine why I get scared of black people walking down the road, and why I racially profile people based on name / colour / accent…

Hell, I even married a black man! I’m a good whitie, not like those other ones, and I’ll demonstrate it in many ways, taking my partner’s surname rather than keeping my own which gives me a childish thrill when people do double takes. About a year ago, it hit me like a plank over my head that I had assumed that now I was married, I thought my work of dismantling my racism was done. Of course it isn’t, it never is.

And then, in a conversation with my partner in bed one morning, I suddenly saw how what I was doing was asking him to validate my reconstructed ‘good’ whiteness, absolve me of my guilt, shame, grappling, privilege, taking of that privilege. And I have no idea what to do with that. That our relationship can’t just be about the usual man-woman stuff, working things out, the bigger work of being in a relationship, there is no way to escape that race plays a part in that. And I wonder did I marry him cause he’s black, not because of who he is to me? Did he ever have a similar thought? I have some defensive anger about it too, why can’t it just be about two people in love? And then I recognise those white narratives I rant against that try and deny the part that race plays in our lives on a very fundamental level. And then I buy into the race doesn’t matter for a couple of seconds, and then I’m back to of course it does. And then I’m left with but how DOES it matter?

I think perhaps it may be an unsolveable conundrum, another plank come to bash me over the head and demand some further examination, work & thinking. Because truth is, marrying him doesn’t change my skin colour or all the things it delivers and has delivered to me on a silver plate. Absolution doesn’t lie there, and I have no idea where it does, or even if it’s necessary…

4 Comments

Filed under Race, Relationships

Tagged as , , , , , ,