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.

A glimpse behind the designer shades..

I am not really the crying, wailing, damsel- in- distress type of girl, as such being vulnerable is something i leave for the kind of people that sit on Oprah's couch. 
But while i may not have developed tear ducts yet (working on it) i thought id do something a little different this time, so here you have it: a tiny glimpse behind the wry smile.

"Words pulling heartstrings while hands grab fabric,

As breathless whispers shout words with meaningless meanings

And the layers peeled off are both fabric and infinitely more.

Hands convulate with hopes while hearts coerce bodies

As souls and history fight a bloodless war

And the fight is both won and lost and misunderstood.

Heartstrings dragging feelings while eager hands intertwine

As bodies say what mouths have silently screamt

And the sound heard is both words and exponentially more.

There is something about chemistry, something about electricity that goes beyond logic,

Something that goes beyond knowing better and being better:

There is something about the reckless abandonment of reason and rationale that speaks to the part of us that lies hidden behind propriety and social codes,

There is something that shouts and cajoles us into euphoria, into love and lust and last.

Lust lugging love crushing logic harbouring truth

As the mind concedes what the heart unknowingly knows

And the answer is incessantly more complex than the simplicity of not knowing.

That is the trick of light,

The trick of a smile and a touch and a forehead kiss,

That is the trick of life:

As simple and complicated as knowing that you do not know."

The madness that it is men

"Nice guys finish last". That is, or  at least should be, the bad boy motto. Why? Its true. The truth is, at one or other point in a girls life we all fall for that asshole who all but actually said he was an asshole (mine actually said that) while there was a perfectly nice guy who just wanted to make us happy. But thats boring right?

That i understand, sometimes you want to play on the edge, laugh a little, flirt a little, whatever. What i don't understand is why somewhere between laughing and flirting we want something more and just like that we forget who we're dealing with.

He is going to hurt you. Why? Because he's done that to every single girl before, and soon to be, including you. He will cheat on you, then after three weeks, three months or five years you will dump him and two days later he will start seeing someone better looking than you. Yes, he might not do exactly that or in that order but your dipshit is not so different from mine or any other person's so i'm willing to bet he's going to hurt you and for someone who "knew what they were doing" you'll be just a little bit too hurt, just a tad too surprised.

So what's this blog about? Men and stupidity and for once just being the one person who just says "no". Who just smiles and turns on their designer shoe and tells him just where to shove it (anywhere but in you!). If not, take a number, because thats what you are now. Welcome to "I should have known better", you live here now.