band aid covers the bullet hole

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

I remember the day my world came crushing down like it was yesterday. It wasn't, but I'm quite certain I will carry that burden for the rest of my life. That day, someone I thought I trusted with my very life let me down. A person I had elevated on the highest pedestal you can possibly elevate another proved themselves a mere mortal. They erred, and in so doing they made me think them less deserving of my reverence. It's been a long climb back up, but in that time I have seen in my life the veracity of time's healing nature. It hasn't ever gotten easier, and the burden hasn't gotten lighter, but I have gotten used to living with it.

I don't know if we ever really forgive people. I think one of the unique things about human beings is we were made able to spot patterns in the things around us. And that traits in behaviour are as strong a pattern as any. Let's say someone took your heart and stomped on it, broke it into a thousand pieces. And then came and picked them all up and put it back together. You might forgive them, and you might even let them back in, but is it ever the same again? Is it ever as pure as it was the first time? Are they ever the god they were before they betrayed your trust? The body recovers. Physical fractures and cuts heal. But does the heart? I don't know that the first cut is really the deepest. I think it's just the deepest till the next one. You never get used to it. Every time you get cut, it hurts just as bad as the other times.

So anyway, what to do when that person strikes again and sinks even lower?

The first time I felt like I was the one violated. I felt like I was forced to make a sacrifice that someone in my station shouldn't be made to make. I did it for what I thought was a noble reason, so I don't regret that, but I resented the fact that I was cornered. And now I just got through listening to how the same person devoured another's spirit. It's not really unique to us this occurrence. It's not an original story; it just hasn't ever been close to me before. Like how we all know death exists but don't feel it until it touches us personally. I'm scared to be alone because of the things I think about. I don't want to fall into that trap of dissociating everything amazing someone has done for you because of that one bad thing they did that hurt you - no matter how bad it was. Even when they do it again, that's still just two times, right?

I'm watching a show called Betrayal. I know, everyone says it's only TV, but I think that's rhetoric people say because they have subconsciously been conditioned to say it by pop culture; like making fun of that Kardashian show or extolling the purity of Android because of its openness. To me, it has always been uncanny how much TV can cut across to real life. How you can see in the cast things you are going through or have been through. They say on that show that if you spend time wishing for someone to go through fire for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

I need time to come quickly and cover this hole that I'm falling into. I need to stop here and move on to happier thoughts.

END

remember to call at my grave

"Being black is not a matter of skin pigmentation. Being black is a reflection of a mental attitude." Steve Biko

A lot of things changed for me when I moved here. Two things, however, stood out more than anything else: how rooted in their culture the black people here are, and how sensitive the issue of race is. 

The latter I totally didn't understand. I looked around and saw people in their 20's, people who don't have the same story Mandela has, or even Raymond Suttner, decry apartheid and how the white person ruined their lives, and I belittled in my mind these people, because from where I stood, they were just using past injustices as an excuse to be mediocre. They weren't old enough to see the worst of what apartheid did. By 1990 they were maybe 3 or 4. They shouldn't know about apartheid. Yes it happened, but it happened a hundred years ago and it happened to different people. I heard black people complain about how the ANC (the "black" party) was no longer doing anything for them, but come elections, they still automatically vote ANC. And I stupidly thought, if you know the DA (a "white" party) would do do a better job, why not vote them in? This interracial animosity I sensed everywhere was totally unfounded, I thought.

I've seen enough now to know the error of my ways. How naive I was. I couldn't possibly have been wrong on more levels.

As I've looked at the history, through a combination of stories from the older ones amongst us, visits to the Apartheid Museum, and countless documentaries on TV, I've started to find that the fundamental mistake I made was to judge a situation I had no insight into, and to judge it through my very narrow scope. I have started to realise that there isn't a limit to how much damage mentally oppression can cause someone. When you grow up and everyone around you tells you you won't amount to much, that you'll never be any better than you currently are, that you can't rise above a certain level, that you're systemically inferior and not worthy of a good life, I guess you believe it. Those limitations become the fabric of your thought. Your glass ceiling becomes a granite wall. You stop dreaming. There's not many things in the world more damaging than seeing your life stolen from under you and being completely powerless to do anything about it. 

One of the pictures I saw at the Apartheid Museum that killed me was of a train station, with I think a train waiting, and there was a whole bunch of black people standing on the one side crowding, obviously looking for transport, but because the station was marked "FOR WHITES ONLY" there was nothing they could do but stand out in the cold. And the caption read something like, despite the fact that there weren't any fences or police presence enforcing segregation at the station, those black people could not even conceive of crossing over to go into the train waiting. That's how strongly imbued into their minds the apartheid system was. The fences were now in the minds of the black people, there didn't need to be any physical ones.

And this is the thing that made me least qualified to judge - I've never had that feeling of being trapped within my own mind. Being shackled by invisible chains. The kind you can't break not because you really can't, but because you don't know that you can. I grew up believing I could have it all. I grew up with that sense of entitlement. My parents made sure they were there every step of the way, supporting me, making me feel like I was superman. To some measure I've seen people's hard work pay off for them. I've even seen a determined people change their government just because they came together. The black people of South Africa, they didn't have that for a very long time. Steve Biko said the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

When I was growing up, I read about Rosa Parks refusing to stand up for a white person on a bus. And to me that was literally all she did. It sounded simple enough. I didn't get what all the hoo-hah was about. But I realise now that to the people that know, there aren't enough words to describe the symbolism, the empowerment, that came from such a basic act. And from a natural act like Nelson Mandela unconditionally forgiving his former oppressors after 27 years in jail. I am beginning to understand now why he is such a legend. Not just because he forgave, but because of WHO he forgave. There's a phrase that plays in a loop at the Apartheid Museum, a recording from the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial, at which Mandela and his cohorts were to be found guilty of treason and possibly sentenced to death. I have not been able to get this line out of my mind since I heard it.

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

And so I don't judge anymore. I don't judge because I cannot possibly understand. I don't judge because I've never been through what the people in SA went through. On the contrary, I marvel sometimes at how grounded it's made them. At how fiercely strong they've grown to be in the face of such adversity. At how being black has to them become something much more than just the skin color it is to me. If I can learn that from the, I will leave here having become a much better person than I came in.

Sarah Britten is a modern-day writer of note, and she wrote a story recently that covers just this subject. She said, "...we seem incapable of resolving conflict without resorting to racist generalisations. Somehow, if we see bad behaviour, we immediately attribute it to race rather than a failure of character; every time somebody behaves like a total doos [dumbass], the entire premise of post-apartheid South Africa goes on trial..." The first time I read it I agreed completely. I felt as though she had read my mind. But when I think about it, I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe race keeps coming up, and will continue to keep coming up, because it's just that big a deal. Maybe it keeps coming up because those wounds just run that deep.

END

harder than the first time

I can't lay claim to being the most civically responsible of citizens. But every once in a while something usually happens that makes even a Guy Like Me wake up and start asking questions. The proposed draft constitution is just such a thing (the other, of course, being a general election). In the midst of all this white noise, I decided I'd read for myself this time and I wouldn't get all my stories from (blind, emotionally charged) outside quarters. And I just don't see it. So the Kadhi's courts are mentioned, so what?? Their jurisdiction is SO limited! First both parties need to openly profess the muslim religion, and then only in matters of personal identity, inheritance, marriage and divorce. Right there, Christians, and everyone else really, are by definition excluded from these provisions. And it says so right at the top of the draft: State and religion shall be separate. There shall be no state religion. The constitution shall treat all religions equally. I really don't see how the mention of muslim in the sentence "...The jurisdiction of a Kadhi’s court shall extend to the determination of questions of Muslim law relating to personal status, marriage, divorce or inheritance in proceedings in which all the parties profess the Muslim religion." somehow elevates Islam above every other religion. This guy I know puts it very eloquently: your own light does not shine brighter through you extinguishing that of your neighbor's.

Anyway, I'm thinking everyone should just read and evaluate the draft on its own merit individually, and vote with their own conscience. And vote on the issues - none of that orange-banana nonsense. Those who can't read should find someone they trust (probably not their MP) to explain stuff to them - otherwise if we keep treating the country like it's full of illiterates, it's gonna stay that way. For each his own vote, that's just how I see it.

So the job I'd applied for, they called me for one of those aptitude tests. End of last week. Man, was that some test! I left saying whoever passes that exam is gonna deserve that job (of course by faith it's gonna be me so.) Now I'm completely unable to think about anything else. I can't concentrate on my work. I can't shore up enough faculties to do anything start to finish without having to start over at some point. I know, I've already done the test. I can't change my answers now. If something is somehow wrong it's gonna stay wrong. But that letting go, this time it doesn't seem to be in my fabric. Which explains why I'm watching baseball - I'm seeking inspiration. It's not very interesting, in fact it's downright boring (see number 3) in every way but one: you know that guy that hits the ball, (called, not shockingly, the hitter!) at that moment, when he's standing there watching the pitcher (again, not shockingly, that's the guy who pitches the ball); waiting for him to pitch it, there's nothing else on his mind, except that ball. He looks at exactly one place, and focuses on exactly one thing. That's how home-runs are scored. By locking out every distraction, by forgetting all of the unrelated trivialities, by concentrating on the ball and only the ball, the hitter hits his way into the baseball hall of fame. I need to find my hitting moment and just clear my head until those results come out.

END