I don’t expect that it’s the room. I mean the heating system is still very new and Mbali complained the other time that this house is overheated. I don’t get it though. I am very sure that it’s cold. Well the weather app says it’s been pretty hot today but I mean it’s a gadget right? I’m the human, so I must be right. I have to be! Or else the cold is in my head. Is it? I don’t know. So many things have been on my head lately and I low key do agree that maybe there is a tiny bit of a chance that I might be losing it. Not my mind obviously…can’t lose that…YET!!!
I have always been in control of myself, my feelings, my actions and my environment. I am not ordinarily the type that allows external energy to form the basis of my mood and convictions. I am what you would call, a strong person. Well, not anymore. I kind of think that maybe I never really was strong. I just never had the space to be seen breaking. I don’t even know what breaking looks like because half the time I was that one person that everyone looked at and felt, “Oh wow, you are strong!” Or the, “You’ll get through this. You always have.” I used to cringe every time that someone would say that because it made me feel super robotty…is that a word? I don’t know. It is here. I constantly had to appear as the world preferred me to be. I guess I didn’t really mind the act, or the hard work that I had to put into showing up strong when I was in fact breaking. I did it for so long I almost forgot that it was an act. I had perfected it as an art. Until recently, and I don’t think I will ever know that strong Lorato again. I feel that I’ve lost her, and someone would think this is a good thing and I don’t really disagree. It’s good that the mask fell off as I was running away from my truth, but the problem is, I have not seen the girl in the mirror for such a long time the sight of her in my mind has given me the worst form of chills. It’s cold. It’s cold in my head and in my heart I can just about feel it against my skin. It’s really cold.
I kind of think that maybe I never really was strong. I just never had the space to be seen breaking. I don’t even know what breaking looks like because half the time I was that one person that everyone looks at and feels, “Oh wow, you are strong!” Or the, “You’ll get through this. You always have.”
I never really wanted therapy. I know now that I need it. It’s these weekly hourly sessions that give me a glimpse into whatever remains of my sanity. Three months into it and hard as it is to admit, I think I feel better. Apart from this lingering sense of being cold, the pain has subsided. I don’t scream into the pillows so much anymore. I don’t scorch myself in the shower in the middle of the night when the pictures start to feel too real. The scars on my wrists no longer give me goose bumps and I am hoping that one day they will fade. Maybe that’s part of the evidence of healing that still keeps me trying a little bit harder. I want to do it for my daughter, or my son, the ones I will never have. The ones the world chose to prosecute me for. Sometimes the world is so insensitive, uncaring and selfish. People say whatever and move on, even forgetting that they left hearts bleeding.
My experience was worse, I guess that how we all feel about our painful encounters. The very fact that I reference that phase of my life in past tense is such a comfort to me because it’s just how far I have come in accepting that the world doesn’t owe me kindness, and I need to live, again. I want to. What remains the saddest thing is that women like me don’t seem to have a place in leadership. These notions of women who are accused of failing to sustain a relationship or take care of a family not having a place in the decision making tables. Its women like me who are scorned for their barrenness after the man we once loved decided that they would tell the world that we were the type of trees that no matter how much we are watered, we don’t bear fruit. I have forgiven him. I guess that you need to have been a victim to understand that cancer is something we don’t get to choose if we want it or not. That survival itself is a miracle and the idea that in the process of surviving we had to lose a part of ourselves that society says makes us woman enough to be loved. Woman enough to sit in places where people decide on the course of the lives of families. I have forgiven him. For never having the balls to think that I am human, and I hurt too. But, I haven’t forgotten, and might never really do.
Its women like me who are scorned for their barrenness after the man we once loved decided that they would tell the world that we were the type of trees that no matter how much we are watered, we don’t bear fruit.
When I start to slack on my healing, to question why surviving cancer came with the condition of never holding my own child in my hands one day, I remind myself that I need to live for me. That my inability to biologically mother a child is not an expression of my inadequacy. So yeah, it’s cold. It’s cold in my head and in my heart, but it won’t always be.
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