We know what I lost. We won’t get into that, and for those that don’t know, stick around. I am incapable of mystery or a private thought; it’s going to come up eventually. Hang in there, kid.
I try to keep this a positive space. I hope whoever runs into this blog finds some sort of safety, comfort, and camaraderie. I try. But once or twice a year, I allow myself the grace of being messy. I tend to give myself permission to break, speak brokenly or act the same way. I like to think I have earned my stripes. We’re going to step into the dark side a little, I promise I won’t make it a habit.
I get reflective around the anniversary of my dad’s passing. I think a lot about how old he would be and how old he isn’t, and as we get closer in age every year, I feel more comfortable saying certain things to him that I otherwise wouldn’t. It’s unorthodox, it’s weird, I know, but angila mzali guys , let me be!
Anyway, this year, as I was reflecting on the many things I won’t get to have because he isn’t here, I decided to add myself to the list. There is a me that I won’t get back. A me that was lost when he was, and I don’t think I have ever taken the time to grieve that me. See, I hate what grief did to me, and I only realised it this past week.
I woke up one day, and I realised I didn’t die. I lost the person who raised me, whose values I built my life around, whose voice echoes in my head, even on days when I don’t want it to…and still I didn’t die. Surviving that showed me I don’t really need much to survive. That is a realisation that I don’t wish on anyone. Because once you live in that realisation, a lot of things that mattered stop mattering. A few things that didn’t matter do start to take up space in your mind. I wish I could go back to the person I was.
I wish certain things could still be catastrophic to me. I wish others mattered even when they don’t. I wish I could still believe that people are not dispensable. I wish I could sit with discomfort without the urge to name it every time. Because I promise you, I did not go through what I went through just to end up uncomfortable in my own life! I wish a lot of interactions didn’t feel like an insulting waste of time.
Sometimes I wish I could give a disclaimer to the people that I met after. The ones who didn’t know me before. I sometimes want to say that I wasn’t always as cynical, or I once had more to give, or if you had met me earlier, I swear you would have loved me. But death takes something from you, other than the person you lost, of course.
It takes away a part of you. It changes the way you see the world. For some, it’s towards, “life is precious, seize every moment”. For others like myself, it’s “very little actually matters, vanity of vanities” njengoba watsho umtshumayeli. I find the list of things I genuinely care about getting shorter and shorter every day. It’s not necessarily apathy, but it’s just realising that these things eventually won’t count for anything. Very little actually matters.
I don’t mean to alarm you. I am okay. I have been for the past seven years. I will continue to be. I am just letting myself grieve the me I am unlikely to ever be again. I grieve the relationships that don’t feel important enough to sustain. I grieve the things that I can’t be excited about because he is not here to see them. I grieve the fact that I don’t have an answer for my nephew when he asks where my father is, because he wants to compare dads.
I thought about posting this a billion times. I almost didn’t, for reasons, but momma may have raised an occasional fool, but she did not raise a quitter!
