Andrew’s death eleven months ago took everyone by surprise.

At 30, he had always been a healthy eater, consistent fitness enthusiast and had established a solid career in software engineering. As a father of two, his love for his family had always been expressed loudly. They were on course to move into a bigger house in a year, had scheduled an anniversary trip to the Maldives, and were completing the renovations of their vacation home so both sides of the family could join them for Christmas. In the standards of today’s world, theirs was a perfect life. Well, it seemed to be until three months after the birth of their second born, Dawn, when Jolene received a call from the police with the news that Andrew had jumped from the 15^th floor of his company’s building and died on the spot. 

Jolene met Andrew in high school, and they had dated for 10 years before they tied the knot. Their first child, Nathan (4) was born ten months later. Nathan’s pregnancy was a breeze, and the home birth just as easy. The second pregnancy however was not very kind. Jolene had ballooned, was frequently sick, and had to be transferred to a hospital for an emergency c-section when the midwife facilitating the homebirth told them the baby was at risk and could only be saved through surgery.

The couple had not hesitated. The pregnancy had already been draining. But what they had not prepared themselves for was the baby being born with several congenital heart defects. They called it the “complete transposition of the great arteries”, a rare defect in which the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed (transposed). The list of complications they recited to her felt like a death sentence. Like all they said was that her baby was born to die. It broke her.

The list of complications they recited to her felt like a death sentence. Like all they said was that her baby was born to die. It broke her.

 Andrew took it differently. Unlike Jolene he showed more positivity and faith that the baby would fight her way through life. The family had never been religious, and faith was something she could not attach to the reality that her child would always be at risk of dying prematurely. Jolene slid into postnatal depression, and the anticipatory grief made her tremble every time she tried to hold the baby in her hands. She felt guilty for having death as the easy stop for where daughter’s life could go. It drove her crazy, and she progressively avoided the baby altogether.

In her head, she had failed that baby, and the fear of her dying in her hands terrorized her. She was angry at Andrew, for smiling at the baby. For finding it easy to pick her up and rock her in his arms until she fell asleep. She hated that his faith in the possibility of Dawn leading a decent life was something she could not bring herself to have. She was afraid. Felt responsible. She could not eat, sleep, and never really smiled. It was almost like the only thing she could do was wait. To say goodbye to the child she had convinced herself she had lost at birth. 

She felt guilty for having death as the easy stop for where daughter’s life could go.

After multiple protests, she started seeing a therapist, and while she hated it at first, she eased into it. Started seeing the fog clear as she articulated the complex emotions and feeling she had towards everything that had been giving her nightmares. This was a Friday, and the therapist had challenged her to go into the baby’s room. Something she had not done for weeks. She only had to go into the room and sit next to the baby for as long as she could keep herself in there. She would practice this until she could touch the baby, and eventually, carry her into her arms. It was a scary feeling and took a lot from her. But right when she had mastered the courage to face her fears, she got the call from the police. Andrew was gone.

Death had won twice!

To read about grief as well as stories of people experiencing it: click

The post The face of grief appeared first on Radites.

In giving of myself, I was left looking for pieces of me that give me ground to stand on.

I noticed lately that there is an emptiness to my giving that makes me feel somewhat robbed. I always thought that there’s like a fountain of replenishment for people like me. You know, givers. That our hearts and minds must focus on giving, because naturally the universe reciprocates by filling us. I was obviously wrong, maybe a little bit naive. I wanted to give, myself, to someone that needed me. Someone that would have been in a better place if they had received a gift from me. Not money, nothing material. Just someone that needed to be loved and affirmed at their lowest point. And that is the wild part. If it was money, or anything material I could easily have made that available to them.

They wanted something simpler. Something I ordinarily would make a decision to offer but couldn’t. Because I didn’t feel that I had anything to give. Looking at where they were emotionally, I find it crazy. That in that moment I didn’t think I was placed to tell them anything that would change how broken they were. I couldn’t bring myself to hold them, even when their hands clearly said they needed it. I just stood over that hospital bed and just looked away. The tears escaping before I could hide them, keep them shut behind my eyelids. As a giver, I feel the most pained when I can’t give. Because I may have given all of myself to people that didn’t give me back pieces of myself I need to keep giving.

The worst is that I still looked like someone who can give. And it gave the impression that I just chose not to. That’s what broke me.

Now I sit in retrospect and blame myself. For leaving pieces of myself everywhere that I have been. Never being selfish enough to reserve myself. For when I genuinely need myself to be present for people that mean the world to me. These flowers, they are the only beautiful thing left that I can give. What else can one give to someone buried six feet underground. My daughter says that forgiving myself would be a better gift to her father. But how do I pardon myself when I am not whole. When pieces of myself are scattered all over, and I can’t get them back. What if that’s all I remain to be. An empty vessel that can’t pour life to those that need it most. I don’t know. Maybe I am too much of a giver, and shouldn’t be. It’s all just messed up!!!

The post PIECES OF MYSELF appeared first on Radites.

My drawing may not have had the cliche red to violet spectrum of colours of a rainbow that everyone is comfortable seeing but the different shades of black and grey I chose had a life of their own. Dark maybe, but it certainly had character. I hate how the world prefers to view the brighter version of existence that anyone who confronts the contrast is regarded a divergent. The arrogant type, not the ones you want to have in society. For that I have always felt that I have no place in the world and my work doesn’t seek to find relevance in a world that doesn’t accommodate me.

I am 19. No girlfriend, no children and pretty much no family. My mum overdosed when I was 10 and my dad jumped in-front of a speeding train when I was 13. She had got pregnant with me at a very young age and in fear of my mum’s intolerant pastor parents, eloped and started a new life in the big city. With no education or vocational skills, city life was a slap in the face for my parents. My dad started drinking and sleeping out, and bashing my mother for asking him too many questions when he came back. She had no right apparently, to question where he went to distract himself from the unnecessary strain of raising a family on his own at the age of 19. Although too young to comprehend, the transition from a young couple drowning in unreserved love to a cold, hanging on straws relationship was apparent to a four-year-old me.

My father taught me to hate my mother. For denying him and myself a dignified life by spreading her legs too early in her life. I didn’t understand what that meant but that’s what I I sang to everyone who bothered to listen to a child spit hate on the woman who fought tooth and nail to get him school fees when my drunkard of a father spent his wages in alcohol and women. Unfortunately for me, that grew with me. Hate is something I dish to anyone that does me good, almost like I don’t need their help, love, or presence. Might explain why I have no friends or family. I never was taught how to keep them.

I lost my train of thought, where was I?

I started drawing at a very young age. A lot of my drawings were representations of my home. The hate, hurt, pain, poverty, physical abuse and intolerance that defined our lives. My dad’s voice was authority and my mum, her opinion was even more inferior to mine. My dad stepped over her and that was just the normal I grew up in. When I turned 10 my mother got pregnant. I have never seen someone get beaten as much as she was bashed the day she told my father the news. According to my dad, she was a reckless, good for nothing tramp who could not use her common sense to see that we could not afford another baby. I have never cried as much as I did that day. When my dad found me crouched under the kitchen table, he beat me too. For sympathising with my reckless mother. What happened two hours later remains a point of darkness for me. My father came home in a good mood, almost like nothing had happened. Cooked dinner for the first time since they had moved into the city and had my mum and I eat and dance with him, in our pains. Before bed, he told me to take a special drink to my mother as an apology from him for acting like a nuisance. I was so happy to hear him want to fix things that I ran to my mother and told her everything was fine. The fear in her eyes when my father stood in the door watching her drink confused me. Even more his aggressive ‘NO’ when she tried to give me a sip.

The one week she had spent recovering from the poison that my dad had forced her to drink and the reality of an aborted child had reduced her weight by half. She was a skeleton. I had drawn a picture of my baby brother for her, and couldn’t wait to go home with her so she could see it. I had planned to undo the hate I had served her, and the lifeless woman that left the hospital in handcuffs is the only memory of my mother that remains in my scarred mind. Abortion was a big crime in my country, and my father set my mother up knowing fully well that no-one would listen to her, or me. Her suicide in custody three days later cleansed my father even further. My mother went down as a selfish woman who couldn’t think of anyone but herself. My dark rainbow was the life and character of my mother. A beautiful, colourful woman who never was seen for what she was. My drawings are a burnt offering to my mother. A plea for forgiveness. I distort all the beautiful things about me and the life around me as I don’t deserve to be seen as beautiful, when my mother never got the chance to be seen for her authentic beauty.

Right now, I am drawing my suicide. A picture of how I will look when I cross over to join my mother.

The post drawing my suicide appeared first on Radites.

“Natasha. Babe come here. Come dance with daddy……….don’t be a bore, loosen up girl life is too short to live it with that serious face you are pulling. One more shot I promise, and we are out of here. I’ll drive you home and then take myself home. And we’ll both have a beautiful night my darling. Come here.”

At this point I feel myself expand in fury, and if I don’t get that boy moving, I’ll burst and regret what I do or say to him. So I storm to the bar and grab him, literally! Being a masculine girl comes pretty handy in moments like this. His bony ass isn’t much of a strain to shove through the crowd dancing away the morning and through that door to the parking lot. Super glad that I parked right outside the exit so I open the back of my car, help a protesting Josh with his seatbelt, and then go round to the driver’s seat. It sounds so orderly when I say it, but the staggering I am on makes me hesitate for a second. Driving in this form may not be a good idea, actually it isn’t. BUT…I’d rather wasted any day than give Josh’s mum another moment to caress her hatred for me. She won’t let this pass. I know her……….I just need to get there and get it over with. Finally I have my seatbelt on and manoeuvre my way out of the underground parking into Julius Nyerere.

“Tash babe, I feel sick…..I am gonna throw up. What’s that thing we ate? I think it messed up my tummy. I need to puke, Tash. Stop the car.”

I swear I am going to kill this boy if he vomits in this car. It’s one thing to explain to my dad how his “well-mannered” first born princess got wasted and showed up in the most disrespectful hours of the morning, but to explain that there was someone in his car, who threw up everywhere, and that the someone is Josh, that I don’t think I am ready to tell my dad. I am spassing a loosely opened bottle of water towards Josh, hoping my eyes look pissed off enough for him to keep that shit inside till I get to his place, but this boy, this boy just doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. He literally throws up all over my stretched hand. I am here trying to help this boy save his irresponsible ass and he pukes on me, ungrateful brat! I’ll deal with him when he’s sober. Right now, I need to focus on this last block of flats before I turn into his road. Driving like a maniac, I should have known that a party would be waiting to give us a grand entry. Flash lights and all! I seriously underestimated how screwed I am!!!

“Hayi bo Natasha, what are you doing here eat this time of the morning? And why haven’t you been picking our calls? Your sister is in a fret and we can’t get hold of Joshua. He went to collect his suit late in the afternoon, but the tailor says he didn’t show up so we are all here waiting for the police to update us ngoba something could have happened to him for all we know. After that mental breakdown a month ago, we are all really uneasy about what he might do. When last did you speak to him? Do you know where he is?”

I didn’t expect this. I didn’t plan for this. I don’t think I can handle this. A part of me wants to say no, I don’t know where Josh is but that clueless boy just coughed in my car, and everybody is looking at me with all sorts of questions so I point them there, and whisper “Josh is in the car. I found him wasted in a club in town and thought it wise to drop him home.” You’d think that they’d be relieved. Grateful! Like any normal people should be when someone brings their son home safe, safe from all the messy things he could have gotten himself into. But, there is something, about the way that they are looking at me that almost sobers me. it’s my sister Trish’s bloodshot eyes that get me self-conscious, like I am being seen in a way that I can’t see myself. But what are they looking at, why are they staring at me like I just killed somebody?

“Why do you have my wasted fiancé and a love bite on your neck on the morning of my wedding Natasha? Why the freaking hell….?”

The post Love Bite appeared first on Radites.

I feel like you are both a stranger and my best friend. The stranger part being that I left you seated in a dark corner of your pain and moved on without you. I see the surprise in your eyes when I mention that you remind me of pain. That is not entirely true: you also remind me of purity. You remind me of unconditional love. You remind me of unscathed laughter. 

Sit with me for a while and tell me about yourself. Re-introduce yourself again and again and again until I am filled with your essence. Darling, what does is it feel like to be held by your mother? Does she smell like all things warm and bright? I am jealous of you. Jealous that you get to call my mother yours. That you can look at her and remember how her eyes warm up at the sight of you and my brother. You get to crawl into her bed late at night and snuggle with her and she chases away your nightmares. Can we talk about your monopoly of my brother? Of how he is your best friend? Of how you take for granted his friendship and unwavering protectiveness? Can we also reminisce about how he is so selfless when it comes to you? Hillary, but you call him Larry. I am sorry that I verbalise his name with tears in my eyes. To you, he is alive and full of life; yet to me his name is synonymous to broken promises of just the two of us against the world.

I see the confusion in your eyes again. Forgive me. This letter is not meant to change your view of your world. I am speaking to you like a friend I just met and yet I know you so intimately. I know your deepest, darkest moments that you have ever experienced. I know that when you crawl into bed with my mother, you want her to tell you that the violation done to your body is not your fault. At the same time, you are wondering why she doesn’t see your pain. I know that when you think of safety, your brother,  young as he is, is it for you.

Baby, oh that endearment! Cherish it with all it’s purest meaning, because you will never be a baby again. Even at this age, that word and it’s meaning was stripped from you. I did not write this letter to remind you of the darkness you hide behind this need to be loved fiercely by your mother. Or for you to lose the awe in your eyes when you look at your mother. Speaking of unconditional love, baby where is your father? There I go again speaking out of turn the first time I speak with you.

If you forget the point of this letter, I hope you never forget what it feels like to be the center of someone’s universe. I hope the seemingly small acts of love shown by your family unit of 3; like your mother combing your kinky 4c hair with so much care as though if too scared to break you. I hope the fact that your brother is not ashamed to go wherever he is with you because as much as you are his irritating baby sister, you are also his world. Regardless of the two worlds; so much excruciating pain and the deepest, wildest joy and love that you feel right now, hope you choose to hold on to the latter, because I can tell you this pain will cripple you beyond measure. You will need those moments of joy to keep floating above the water.

Sweetheart, if I can give you anything at this point, I would sit with you in this dark place you are in and cover you like a fort until the pain passes.

P.S: You did not turn out bad at all!

                       Love,

                         30-something year old Phoeby

The post Dear 5-year-old Phoeby, appeared first on Radites.

“Hey babe which shoes should I wear? I am caught between the Air Jordan Retro and Doc Martens you gifted me last month. The weather Is really just perfect for either it’s making it very difficult to choose. I love them both, and I love you. I can’t wait to see you. To think it’s been a whole year…It’s wild! Oh and, has Aisha confirmed my pick up? you’d said since you are working tomorrow she’d volunteered to fetch me from the airport. Super nice of her, right? Please let me know, and sleep tight. I’ll decide on the shoes tomorrow morning, let me wrap up the packing. KISSES!!!”

This should be like the sixteenth time I have replayed this audio and I don’t know where I keep getting lost in it. It’s been three years yet it feels like yesterday. I should have taken a day off from work, and met Josh at the airport. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in that marketing pitch, I could have hugged him, kissed him, told him how he’d missed out on just so much it was going to be hard catching up. He’d have loved to know that Thelma got engaged; Brian turned vegan and that there’s now a bakery by the corner of our apartment block with his favourite cookies sold at a discount on Tuesdays. It would have been really nice and sweet to spoil him to a couple of Belgian spicy cookies. They are my current favourite. And he had always loved my favourite things. He joked about how eating my favourite treats reminded him of his favourite person in the whole world. That I was his centre. Gosh I loved him, with all my heart I loved and cherished every moment we spent together. And I remember the Saturday he left for that internship in Italy. I was so scared that someone else better would come into the picture and he’d fall in love with her. That one year apart would change things between us, strain our relationship even lead to a breakup. The universe was kind to us. Absence did make the heart grow fonder and my heart and body hurt at the thought that the goodbye I gave to the man of my dreams in March 2020 was the last I would hug him. I should have made it last longer. I should have gone with him. Visited him. But I was ever so obsessed with the promotion at work I just kept working and working. Despite his patience, I just kept making excuses and I regret that. Tremendously.

I need to pull myself together. I haven’t seen Aisha since the day Josh landed in Bulawayo and I just have never known how to handle all of these emotions. I still can’t come to terms with the loss. Can’t believe that my Josh is gone from me and that my best friend will always be a reminder of his last words to me. I was angry at everyone and everything. At Josh, for never giving me another chance and moment to show him how much I loved him, for not staying long enough to see that my love for him had grown. At Aisha for not convincing me enough that I needed to just miss one day of work so I could pick up my man at the airport. Take him safely home, where he belonged. She knows that I can be so difficult to pull out of work commitments, but she should have at least tried….right? That’s what best friends do? Remind and teach you to have a life outside your job. To be present and accessible to your man. She didn’t do that for me and I was angry. I am angry. And if I don’t pull myself together I might actually explode and choke her for not being best friend enough to me. Oh snap I am late. I’m never late. What’s wrong with me? Well, technically speaking, EVERYTHING!!!

I should just as well have taken my time. I have sat here fifty minutes and Aisha is still not here. No text, no call, nothing. I should probably have just left this. It just opens too many wounds. I am not ready to face my demons. Well she is somewhat my demon. The kind you handpick for yourself and live your whole life with and tell everyone that’s your best friend. Except a best friend wouldn’t elope with your man the very day he comes back from a year-long internship you financed and send you an, “it’s not that deep” text so you know she expects that you will move on. It’s the audacity to disrespect a 10 year old relationship and think that I will appreciate that life goes on, and I need to too. Three years and later I am still gulping for air. Just not too sure how long I can keep fighting to hit the surface. I am just drowning in these emotions and honestly, I don’t know whats keeping me alive! It’s deep and I can’t exactly swim.

The post It’s not that deep appeared first on Radites.

Hey. I thought because you went through my phone and chats you’d have an answer to that question. Unless you were looking for something more specific? Incriminating. Something to satisfy this gut feeling you have that I might be cheating on you. Even if that’s what you’d been looking for, what makes you think there’s something above what you saw, what you read? Are you so desperate to prove me a cheat that you can’t accept the evident fact that I’m not. Even though I could be, but no, I’m not that person and I’m shocked six months later you still don’t see it. But since you asked,

“Gilbert is the guy that advises me to not jump the gun when you spend a weekend away from home and claim that you’d gone to see your mum except, the first thing your mum says when she calls me is that I should remind you to visit her because she hasn’t seen you in over a year. You see I don’t normally ask you, even though it almost feels like a monthly lie that I should have already calendared but, I guess I’m still so naive I tell myself that it’s a phase…that you’ll snap out of it. It turns out it really is a phase. But not the type that ends and chaos recedes. It’s a phase in a cycle of multiple phases, each one a reminder of how we are both so different even the seriousness with which we hold our marriage vows differs.”

If truly today is about questions then you’d agree with me that you aren’t exactly the best person to be asking questions in this relationship. In fact, if only you tried to be as transparent as I try to be, maybe you’d notice that the same way that my actions are in themselves answers to questions you never have to ask, yours could be too. Except no, you give me more questions than answers it almost feels like I don’t know you anymore. And maybe if you answer these questions honestly I might get a sense of who you’ve become, lover!

Who is Shantel? The cute little girl on your profile picture that you told me is your distant cousin’s baby. You know, cousin Ellaine who has lived her entire in France which is why I never got to meet her. It always struck me as odd how your niece could resemble you so much but hey, I figured because your entire family looks so much like somebody in the family then Shantel could just easily have taken after the same grandparent or great aunt you took after. Well, turns out Shantel is my step daughter. I could ask you if it’s true but your face says I don’t have to ask.

Babe, I love you. More than I have loved anyone else, and I can tell you that I never thought I’d love anyone else, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe one day I will. When I am done healing from all the hurt that you’ve caused me. So before you ask me who the therapist that’s kept me in this marriage, brief as it has been, is, help me understand just how I could allow you to violate my emotions so much. I guess this is where it stops. This is where I stop. I hope you have a good life, and find someone that’ll love you as unreservedly as I have. I know that someone will love me the way I should be loved. Something you will never get to know.

Goodbye…..babe!

The post Goodbye…BABE! appeared first on Radites.

I had an early shift that morning, and despite our unwritten rule that none leaves the other in a club unless they are sure there’s someone safe to ensure they get home intact, you told me to go and that Joe, the cashier, would walk you home because you stayed in the same flat. Girl I’d known you ten years and you hated Joe! But I left you, because really I was tired, and sleepy. To get a comical narration of your fight with a girl that’s at least five years younger than you was both hilarious and maddening. We were banned from the club for a whole three months Angela, a whole three months restricted from the only cool spot in our neighbourhood that actually played music from home. Girl you got me mad for days. While I’d purposed to stay angry at you for long, you knew I’d fall for your blackmail and by the third day you’d won me over and we’d improvised. How you got Trey from the other club to think you’d really loved him ever since we moved in to Amsterdam remains a mystery to me..

I knew when you couldn’t pull through the hideous illustration of how his eyes popped out in pure bliss at the thought of a gorgeous Zimbabwean girl being in love with a guy like him that you’d convinced him to let you select his Friday playlist for the club. Our club till we were allowed back into Club Jam.

Even though you always said he was…lol how did you phrase it by the way? You said a guy with ‘nothing more than the keys to a club that a desperate but beautiful girl would need to survive the three months ban imposed on her by a club she loved.” Your savagery and manipulation was at the time genuinely hilarious. I’d have wanted to never get on the wrong side of you but that wasn’t up to me really. Your explosive temper almost always got touchier with me. You’d get mad at me for not laughing at your endless tales or insults directed at people that I honestly thought were nice people but pretended to agree with you that they were ugly with no sense of self-dignity just so you wouldn’t feel too lowly for being less a good person than they were. Being your best friend and a regular recipient of your outbursts was a lot of things overwhelming sweetheart. Yet I loved you, and somehow that love made me believe that God had deliberately placed me in your life to help you heal, from whatever trauma of your childhood you were experiencing. I would have known except you never wanted to talk about your adoptive father, the abuse, and I thought you deserved to be respected for your choice to handpick what you wanted or preferred not to discuss.

I probably should have been as arrogant as you were in forcing you to tell me your thoughts, things could have gone differently for both of us if we’d loved each other equally. As it turned out you never had known what to love was, even ten years into our friendship you still treated me as if you wouldn’t be bothered if I left.

You met Sheldon right at the end of our three months ban from Club Jam. Funny thing is you met him right at trey’s club. Girl, you are badass! trey’s been fuming ever since. For a girl that changed guys almost as often as you blinked, I was honestly shocked to hear you say you had found the one, MR RIGHT! Curious to know what about this Sheldon guy made you think him the man that you’d tame your wild ass for, I asked you a lot of questions, and for the first time in ‘it never happens’, you din’t get annoyed at me for flooding you with questions. You just went on and on about how smart, handsome, funny and grounded he was. How he calmed your emotional storms (I don’t know which storms he’d calmed in the three days you’d known him but well), and how he made you want to be a different person- less selfish, more honest and intentional in your relationships. I can’t say that I wasn’t awe-struck. I was. I’d known you so long and never would have thought a man would change you, for better. You always said that men had made you the bag of trash you felt like you were sometimes. That you hated men and saw them as instruments that a pretty girl like you could easily access whenever you needed gratification. Now to hear you say that you’d found in a man a sense of purpose and direction, that was honestly a first and I was waiting to see how long it’ll last. Well, it’s three years today.

Three years since you ran into my arms in tears and told that you were wrong. Wrong in thinking that a guy you’d met in a club and allowed to take you to his home was the one. Wrong in giving men the power to shape your view of your childhood, you present and your future. You had lived your whole life trying hard to prove yourself worthless that’s you were made to think you were. Sheldon was great you said, except for those moments, which were pretty frequent, when he seemed to trivialise your trauma. You told me that you were wrong about a lot of things, but not what the thing with Trey made you realise about me as your friend. That I had known for as long as you’d known your adult life. That even you treated me like I was disposable, you actually were just running away from everything you felt about me. Didn’t trust yourself to not mess up what we had because that’s what you’d always been good at- breaking things. When you said all this with tears in your eyes I knew that you were finally letting me in to that part of you that you were also too scared to visit.

I knew at that moment that I wanted to spend everyday of my life with you, and your yes when in that moment I went down on my knees and asked you if you would be mine forever brought me so much more joy than I had ever experienced in my life.

I’d never have thought that there exists a greater joy than that, but as was beginning to be your habit, you surprised me again. You chose to marry me on your birthday even though you’d always hated it. You said that your birthday was a reminder of the identity you’d never have of who you are and where you come from. The very thought that it’s just a day that was given to you by health personnel so you could be documented, because your mother didn’t think you good enough to live and dumped you in a rubbish pile a few days after birth. You surviving the cold and hunger for God knows how many days before you were discovered remains a miracle for many people at the clinic you were taken to, but you’ve always thought it a curse. You’d rather have died than grown to experience every abuse you dealt with in the hands of men that were given the responsibility to raise you.

Seeing you love with no doubt or reservation, and being able to give that love back to you made me realise the two years into our dating had done to you what I never would have done for you in the ten years of our mere friendship. Allowing me in as a lover also allowed me into a place where I could walk the journey to healing with you. When I asked you which day you wanted for your wedding you didn’t hesitate to pick your birthday. You said “you had broken free and wanted to honour the gift of your birth, because it had given you the gift of resilience.” I knew on that day that you had found your healing, by let go of those walls that kept me out of your heart’s darkest and most scared of places. I know that this is a little too long, and a little bit too off the conventional grooms speeches, but there is nothing I celebrate more today than to see my girlfriend becoming my wife. I celebrate the very experience of your healing, and your rebirth on the day that you’ve accepted as the day of your birth, and now the birth of a beautiful marriage.

I love you, and I must confess, You were right about MR RIGHT!!! Mr Right is the one person that knows you, inside out.

The post You were right about Mr right. appeared first on Radites.

I am sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t assure you of my love from the word go. I’m sorry that I was so timid it scaled down the dream. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the confidence and I silenced your voice. My fear of God knows what limited you and I let myself hate you for it. I should have told you from the onset not to strive for perfection but to pursue things that set your soul on fire. I allowed you to be so afraid of failure that you didn’t even try. There is so much I wish you could have done different, or just attempted.

While I Look back with pain at what I never let you go for, I am also proud that you made these mistakes when you were younger. That as a result you’ve learnt a greater lesson and will never stop at anything to discover yourself.

I have learnt now that we are made of star dust and all things magic. I have learnt that we can become anything we want as long as we set our heart on it.

Dear 14 year old me: I am going to make you a proud black woman. Maybe not today, but I know that I will. Just keep pushing, because that day depends on how you choose to correct your mistakes and make up for all the time and things you chose not to do just so you could stay safe. Safe from error and judgement.

I love you Cupcake, and I’ll love you forever.

Love,
24 year old you

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The hilarious truth is that every one of them always find their father, because that’s what the Mdluli men seem best at….REPLENISHING the earth!

Since my wedding, I have given all sorts of excuses for not having any one of my family members visit me, as well as limiting my visits to their homes. It’s either been the fact that Nkosi and I are still settling into the new house and neighbourhood and have to hold off visitors; or it’s the Covid-19 scare that has us grounded in our home and unable to make visits. So far these excuses have held. BUT just as the devil would have it, my rebellious, or is it promiscuous stepsister Anele decides to show up at our door unexpected. This girl didn’t pitch up at my wedding even though she knew that I specifically asked her to be my best girl because she’s the only one of the six stepsisters that I had some form of an attachment with. And as a loner I could not exactly get a friend to play best girl. She was my only option and she just was a no show. The disrespect was enormous but even as she stands chewing gum on my front door, there is nothing in her countenance that screams remorse and possibly, “hey, I am here to apologise about six months ago I got mixed up in the usual drunken stupors and totally forgot that the only sister that doesn’t call me names was getting married and I was best girl!”

Even with all the anger that I felt boiling inside me, an apology could still have made me allow her into my home despite my earlier reservations around visitors during a pandemic. What came out of her mouth crippled my sense of composure. My fists went flying everywhere, my feet landing on any and every part of her body that I could reach. I was like a mad woman. I believe that for a brief moment I did actually lose it. It’s only when she lifted the bag she’d been holding tight onto that I noticed the baby bump. Even in my madness I knew not to hit her further. She deserved more than the few punches and kicks she had received from me, but that baby, whoever’s baby it was, deserved to be protected.

I hate this about me. The fact I still care when everyone around me doesn’t seem to give a dime about how they treat me. Especially when I have only shown them kindness and generosity.

To stand in front of me in my house, and tell me that I don’t deserve my marriage is an insult to my dignity. I, more than anyone in that Mdluli clan, deserve the escape out of the hullabaloo of that family. For a good 28 years I lived in that chaos and worked to be a better person, not for anyone but myself. When they made jokes about how I was “keeping myself for a men that’s probably out there gallivanting”, I stayed true to my principles. I knew from the get go that I did not want to end up like my mother, or my step sisters. That I wanted to be a mother to children whose father would take responsibility and raise them with me. My engagement didn’t move or flatter them. They had something else to say and this time it was the occasional sarcastic reference of how marriages in our family don’t last a year. I appeared strong but I lived my entire adult life in fear of slipping just once and ending up like the rest of them. Content in the mediocrity of fatherless children and single motherhood. Now listening to my youngest stepsister disrespect the one thing I have worked my whole life for is something I just would not have. She will either sleep outside or return wherever she is coming from. She has always been trouble and my marriage can do without trouble.

Just like they say, “it never rains but it pours!” My husband’s car flickers into view right before I shut the door in this devil’s of a stepsister’s face. I smile and wave at Nkosi as he drives in but for some reason his eyes glare dangerously at me. It doesn’t take a second for me to figure out the connect between this foreign facial expression and the woman that now sits bundled in my veranda. In my mind I had rehearsed my narration of the situation, and I already concluded in my head that he would take my side and we send Anele packing. What I had not profiled in my mental rehearsal was the possibility of my husband being angry at me for dealing as I saw fit with a woman that he too was angry at for almost ruining our wedding. Before I entangle my mind in confusion, I snap back into the moment and what I see and hear throws me off balance. Nkosi is on the floor helping Anele up (a little too cosily) and points her to the open door that I am standing next to. In my mind I need to stop him and bring him up to speed with how deserving she is of sleeping outside but alas! Nkosi burst out an,

I was going to tell you babe. I just didn’t know how to.”

That’s the last thing I remember. The next thing I am in a hospital bed and the doctor says I have been knocked out three days straight. I feel myself fade, into another of these dark holes. The Mdluli holes. I guess I was too stupid to think I could be any more different than what my blood predetermined I’d be. Another divorcee. The one that lost the husband, and the baby too!!!

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