Lamentations of a (semi)reformed bad girl

We start out at 18 and we think we know it all; how to give bat to cute guys, how to make our arms look thin in pictures and we think we know the important stuff too like how to walk away or how to pass our exams. I was like that too, i was pretty fucking sure that i knew everything about pretty much everything.

Life, as it does, went on to break down every single one of the things I thought I knew about people, about friendship, about love and even about myself. I’ve chronicled most of these things on this blog- These things I lost in the fire- but now at the end of my third year, waiting on my results, I find myself looking back at all of that and wondering about the person who came out on the other side.

I think a lot about the friends I loved and lost. I wonder if I made the right decisions and cringe at the times I know I didn’t and then I remember that I am young. I have the luxury of mistakes because I still have the luxury of time. I can afford to get my heart broken and to flirt with cute assholes but what I cannot afford is to fail at life.

So while I am young in so many ways, I am also old. Old enough to expect more, old enough to accept when I have failed, to learn the lessons and fight to make sure I never have to learn them again. Growing up is a pain in the ass.

But there is something beautiful about looking back at that sassy, opinionated, headstrong 18 year old that walked into university and the person who types this today. A little more confused, a little more wary but a little wiser too.

As for the lessons, as for the bad friends, as for *strohrum, *tequila, *jaggermeister and whoever the fuck else, in the words of a visionary “AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!!!”

So fuck it, I’m happy. That’s enough.

I’ll see you guys on the other side.

Incisors and molars

Lately it feels as though i carry poetry between my teeth,
Like there are stanza's nestled between molars and pain,
Like the silver of my filling is filled with the scarlet of my naivety.

Lately it feels as though i carry poetry between my teeth.

I am not of those who are grammatically correct, how can I be when when the words seem to outrun the speed of my pen?
No, my pain does not rhyme; it does not fit neatly into stanza's and punctuation marks,
It does not wait for comma's and oxymoron's,
My pain is inelegant.. but it is mine.

It comes wrapped in an indian girls hair and squeezed into an asian sweat shop workers anguish,
It is borrowed, but it is mine.

They teach us to pretend, they do.
They teach us to smile, and bitch and laugh loudly.
When will they teach us the honour of tears?
When will they teach us the sanctity of honesty?
No. We are taught to smile.
So my pain runs to my room and hides.

Lately, without consent, it is as though my body offers sacrifices to my soul,
As though "they" have abandoned me and this faulty heart must choose.
As though I need not smile unless I am happy.
As though they will not judge.

Lately it feels as though my pain is running towards honesty.

So i know i am not poet; because these words seem to write themselves.

I write because I cannot scream.
I write because you cannot listen.

Buttercup naivety

There is something about not quite being in love,
Something about a rosying of the cheeks and giggling like your heart will never break again,
There is something about not yet having fought for your love;
An easiness, an innocence, a naivety about simply enjoying someone who is enjoying you.

Perhaps hard love is truer, deeper,
But there is something complex about that old, creased, made it through the fire kind of love,
Something perhaps reserved for those stupid enough or smart enough or strong enough,
But there is something painful about that hard fought, hard won, kind of love,
But then- the beauty of love is so often wrapped in the pain of love.

But me? I want me some buttercup naivety.
I want me some easy, throw my head back and laugh kind of love!!
So that when pain settles in the wrinkles on my heart and our love is soaked in hardship i will remember that i once laughed.

So i laugh, i smile and i giggle.
Be it for a day or a lifetime, i throw my head back and I laugh,
I laugh and the gods dance.
I laugh until tomorrow when laughter fades.

I never thought i would be the blogging type (whatever that even means) but im not really the diary type, or the random DMC type (except when im sipped and shaming my family) but it turns out that i am. It also turns out that its a little harder than i thought, because writing, truly writing, requires baring parts of yourself that make you vulnerable.

So the other day i wrote, truly wrote. From a place partly of experience, partly of hurt and partly of other people's pain. It turns out that those who cannot scream, write.

Lace Curtains

Listening to the sounds of memories lost in the diaspora of hating you,
Hating the thought of unravelled hopes and dishevelled futures as you forge your future with her,
Her cries and anguish only a confirmation that my laughter must too have been hollow,
Yet these hallowed halls of our love and lust and lie haunt my happiness.

Happily hampering the illusion of progress,
Progressively, agressively i concede that yes: i am only as much yours as you allow me, and you are as much mine as i deprive you.

Listening to the sounds of laughter smothered by a torrent of confusion,
Confused by the thought of the love laced with hate, or hate laced with love..
Or perhaps light little lulling's of a lust that is neither hate nor love.

Perhaps we are lace;
White but not pure- pierced intricately enough to be not quite blemish but not quite whole.
Too beautiful to wear, too beautiful not to.

Adorning my heart with the distant sounds of memories laced in love and lust and hate,
I must finally concede and rescind every forehead kiss, every stroke of the cheek, every moment of bliss,
Sublime in our complexity- Perhaps we are lace.

The things they don't tell u in matric

Ive done, REALLY DONE the whole varsity thing. I have had one too many- one too many times- i have pulled countless all nighters, spent long nights laughing with friends and been there when the club lights came on. I have found "love" (for lack of a suitable diminutive) here, lost love here and laughed and cried so hard i thought whichever excruciatingly beautiful top i was wearing would split in half -but more than anything i have grown.

So the other day, between chapters, i decided to write a little checklist of my stepping stones.

p.s. The beauty is in the subtext...

THINGS I LEARNT IN VARISTY

1. You will be tested, you will not have the material to study, so you will fail.
2. You will be tested, you will have the material but you will not stusy, so you will fail.
3. You will be tested again, but this time you will study, you will know the questions, you will have the answers. Then just as you think you will pass they will change the questions and you will fail.
4. Finally you will realise that the test was not about the questions or the answers, it was about how much you really knew, only then will you pass.

1. Friends will fail you when they meant to fail, when they didnt and when they didnt realise they had.
2. When you can't tell your enemies from your friends stop trying to see them, they will show you.
3. When you finally know the difference, ask God to let them go: you will not be strong enough.

1. People will speak badly of you. They will lie about you, they will tell the truth about you and it will hurt.
2.These people are usually badly dressed, overweight or unnattractive, it will piss you off.
3.The best you can do is be honest with yourself and those that matter.

1. When you feel lost, truly lost, that is when God will find you and redeem you.
2. Your past, your mistakes, they can either strengthen your character or swallow it whole.

Above all, when you have passed the test, when you have learnt the lessons; don't go back and re-take the test, you will fail.

17 August 2012- A little grown, a little wiser but not all the way there.

Charcoal is closer to black

 I feel lied to. I feel lied to by cliches and movies and Adele and especially by this sense of complacency that seems to have taken root in everything. By that i mean the notion that the context of a situation should make the bottomline better.

Let me elaborate; You're a side-chick but you love him, so that makes it more ok than someone who is just doing it for the.. lets call it 'colouring'.

Personally i hate shades of grey, what i hate even more is that somewhere between my high school blazer and studying for my third year exams, i became ok with them. I hate shades of grey because they make you weak, they make excuses and compromises and the next thing you know, you dont even know where you started.

Its all shits and giggles when you get a free drink from the bartender, or get a compliment on your new weave but in the greater scheme of things what does it really matter if your weave isnt synthetic when you're a shit person.

A friends BBM status read "Don't let your reputation come at the cost of your character". I'll let you marinade in  that one for a bit and add, the "friend" has incredibly broad shoulders- naturally, we believe him.

But really though, it doesnt matter what it looks like to the outside world, who you look like. At the end of the day when you have your doek on and your make-up off, just for a moment, you know whether its black or white and if you're screwing up.

So i'm trying something new. I am calling myself to a higher standard and hopefully somewhere between all of the trying to be better, i will simply be better.

One of the boys

Women dont have brotherhood. we dont have loyalty, and even when we do, one flirtatious sms too many and we are willing to swop that for.. well whatever it is that people gain from these things.

So i suppose it should make sense to me when some girls say that they are primarily friends with men because they "dont need the drama", but i dont. I feel that- like the token black guy, in a crew of white boys- you're trying too hard to be something you're not.

In fact, let me take it further than that, i think you're trying too hard to act like you dont care that your peers (in this case girls) either dont like you, or dont notice you or whetever damage it is thats making you hide between kegs  and  being "one of the boys".

I think every girl needs a group of girlfriends. To laugh with, drink wine with and swop girly stories with. if you're lucky, like i have been, you will even find the kind you can really share yourself with, who will be both well dressed and tell you when you're not. Friends who are there for everything, good, bad and obscene.

If you would rather swop that for belching hansa pilsner then no, i dont trust you.

Process

They say that conviction is not tested in the promised land but in the furnace, the equivalent of this being that you won't be tested when you're feeling strong and happy and you're wearing your favourite pair of heels; you will be tested when you're feeling weak, when you're listening to a song that reminds you of him, or you're drunk and your phone just happens to be in your hand. It is then, at the moment when you should know better, when you do, that u might lose.

Yes, you'll regret it in the morning and you will know for certain that you are a loser. I'm sorry, but yes, you are a loser. And that's ok. But my own second degree burns don't just scream "another idiotic girl" they also say that i'm trying.

It's ok to be in the process, it's ok not to know better yet, but its also not ok to wallow in a place that can only bring you hurt and pain and fuck with your dignity.

That's the thing little grasshoper; wax on, wax off- process.

Obey your thirst....

In my little ass crack of the world we have a term for girls that are a long way passed demure and a short way from whore. These lovely specimens of daddy issues and too much free alcohol are called "thirsties". Yes, yes, its not fair that a guy can do something and at most receive a slight shake of the head, yet when a girl does it we all but burn her at the stake but unfortunately the rules of the game dictate that decorum is gender based.


I'm not gonna bore you guys with the semantics of gender inequality, but rather i wanna burn girls at the stake (metaphorically speaking... at least in most cases! lol). My argument is that, yes we live in a very sexually charged society so to an extent the "why do girls keep doing this?" can kind of be understood. What i don't understand is when people start living their lives according to beverage slogans "Sprite; obey your thirst" and think they won't be judged.


And that really is my point; as girls we don't do ourselves any favours. So yeah, Y.O.L.O. and all that crap, but don't be too surprised when you "fuck up the only life you've got".

Ode to honesty

So today I was reminded of simple times in my high school English class, reading literature on things I had never experienced and scarcely thought about. That first kiss, the plucking of ones cherry, believing a lie, living a lie and finally pretending to know better.

In high school Shakespeare tried to show me how a man should love a woman, and tonight, reading through the lens of life’s many douchebags and tequila shots, I finally both learnt and understood about love and lies and truth.

 “My mistress’ eyes” speaks of flaws, it speaks of a love that is not distorted by illusions or naivety, a love that both knows and accepts that the other person isn’t perfect and loves them anyway.

When I read it I began to think about all the times we pretend to ourselves that people are something they’re not. We convince ourselves that our asshole boyfriends are just “complicated” or “misunderstood”, we allow ourselves to be convinced that it really is just a title and well a whole lot of other crap.

Courting in the 21^st century is all about the illusion of something more, something better. Its all about selling this dream, and we buy it (and yes, that mostly to girls and pathetic men), and its humiliating, and just foolish.

That is not love. That is a lie; and we allow it. I think the reason I like this poem is that its honest.  In a way that hurts a little bit, but its honest. No bullshit, no embellishment, no selling of dreams.

I want a guy that sees the marks left from when I had bad skin, that acknowledges the five stretch marks on my ass and can hear that I laugh like I was bred in the back of a tavern and loves me anyway.  I don’t need silly compliments or lies about the depth of a man’s feelings.

It’s sad that Shakespeare understood in the 16^th century what we are still failing to grasp: its ok to be honest with yourself, its ok not to be stupid.

And that’s what I wish every guy macking on a girl would understand (by girl, I mean smart girl without daddy issues); that it’s ok to be honest. You might get bat or a punch in the throat, but what u won’t get is problems from a one night stand that’s now doodling your name on her exam pad.

Doing You

So its been a little while since my last blog post, but when you're in a country that reminds you why it is they   call it the third world, internet like a boyfriend who doesn't cheat is hard to come by. So i took this time to drink with friends, to laugh and to renew all the things i appreciate about my character then i flung myself back  into the thick of things.

And its during that flinging phase that all our little resolutions and promises of doing better are tested. But this year i didn't make any resolutions, primarily because i suck at them. But i did make a promise, not just for this year or for when my ex boyfriend comes around selling his dreams, but for life: Never cheapen the brand.

That means never compromise, never buckle under pressure, don't make decisions that take away from who you are: in other words just do right by you. So that's the plan, do you and do it in the shortest skirt you own.

And often that means that people no longer get to be part of your story, be ok with that. We all have friends we lost in the war (a friend i lost in the war taught me that one). So ce la vie to bad men, bad decisions and bad friends. And hello to better clothes, better memories and yes, better marks (that's what varsity is about afterall) and when it comes down to it, whatever happens, just make sure your character survives it.