Surviving life - as a survivor

Navigating life as a survivor of abuse is one of the hardest things any individual will have to live with. This TED talk for instance highlights how childhood trauma has knock on effects on the rest of one's life, with specific focus on the medical consequences thereof.  It also highlights how we box off abuse as a social or mental health issue where it is something that is truly all encompassing. I write from the perspective of someone who has lived through intense childhood trauma, but the same logic applies to survivors of any type of abuse - emotional, physical, sexual. 

Basically, with abuse, what happens is that a survivor is primed to exist in fight or flight mode. They are as a result of their experience, untrusting of the world and of people's motives, and this is compounded by a profound sense of internalised blame and a strong imposter syndrome. This means that they see their circumstances as if it is something they had a conscious choice in creating, and see their successes as flukes that are not attributable to their hard work.

With these as the backdrop of what it's like to live as survivor,  rising above the challenges of daily life requires so much more. For instance, daily tasks become fraught, since the base level of trust in other people that survivors have is much lower. There is an anxiety that surrounds interacting with people they do not know intimately,  in fact just meeting people on their level requires an extra degree of trust that takes a substantial amount of emotional energy to fork out. Emotional energy that survivors do not have, since positive emotional space is in short supply because of trauma.

The crux of the matter is that being a survivor never ends. In other words, no matter how you cut it, your conditioning in childhood and learnt behaviour that the world works through the absence of trust follows you throughout your life. This is not to say that you will never trust people. Instead, what it means is that to learn to trust takes longer, or can manifest by lapses in judgment. There are behavioural patterns learnt that basically keep manifesting themselves in  the life of a survivor over and over again.

The most common way that these patterns manifests can be illustrated by the trope of a woman who subconsciously chooses an abusive partner. I am not sure this is because of an inherent belief that she is unworthy of love and respect as much as it is because this is what she has been conditioned to understand love and respect to be.

Ponder on that for a second.

Can you imagine how hard it is to break the cycle of abuse when your internal reality is one in which being treated in a way that undermines your humanity is what you have been ingrained to understand as normal. This results in a threshold for triggers that is both lower and higher than that of the ordinary person. Lower in the sense that because an ordinary person would not have been exposed to abusive behaviour (especially emotional abuse) when they are confronted with it, it goes over their head and they are somewhat immune to it to a certain extent. The trigger threshold is also higher because of uncertainty surrounding when trauma is going to strike - there is a constant anxiety over being attacked and this makes interacting with ordinary people all the more harder. 

This complex existence is reality for survivors. Here are a list of spaces where they come out most strongly. In these spaces the abused person is at a disadvantage because the power structures of society do not recognise or even legitmise their internal struggle. 

1. The workplace. See this post. 
2. The most intuitive - romantic relationships, this can be long term relationships or short term flings. In the former it can be the case that the abused person settles for a narcissist or a person that either explicitly or subtly undermines them, and in the latter it is a series of associations with partners who undervalue the person and lack respect for them. 
3. Friendships - learning who to trust, and how much to open up to friends can be challenging for a survivor. You never know whether they will truly accept you once they come to learn of your history, and while you should not care, it is almost inevitable that you do. 
4. Social situations with acquaintances - social anxiety is a common response of survivors. 
5. Authority - Survivors, of abuse, and especially emotional abuse and neglect, struggle with authority since it was an abuse of power in the first place that led to them being victimised.

With almost every part of interacting in daily life jaded by the shadow that is being a survivor, the hardest part about all of this is that it is a lonely process. South Africa is a nation of serially abused people, in particular black people, women, and children. It is almost debilitating realising that after a life time of letting people treat you a certain way, that there is something not right about it, and that the power lies with you to make them stop or to walk away. How can you walk away when at the base of what you rationally know is the right way to be treated, you have a belief that abuse in its complex forms is almost normal? It's not like you are choosing it in the first place, you didn't ask for the trauma, you didn't ask to be inflicted with the harm that caused you these patterns. It then becomes even more debilitating realising that there are patterns in your life perpetuating the cycle of abuse - and at this point it turns into self-loathing. You hate yourself for allowing this but again, you don't know any different. 

All the while the rest of the world is oblivious to this. The person inflicting you with the pain is probably unaware of it too, and there is almost a guarantee that their behaviour is not going to change. Your friends and family can probably see the pattern perpetuation, and are only too quick to tell you that you need to leave or change but don't care to acknowledge that no matter if you do leave, the propensity for you to keep manifesting it in different ways will carry on throughout your life. 

This is where therapists and cognitive behavioural therapy come in. But not everyone can afford this, so what are those who are without resources supposed to do to cope? And for those who do manage to afford it, it is often the case that therapists can be harsh and "hold up the mirror" without any true understanding of how all encompassing this existence is. 

In the end the only true remedy for it is self-love and self-care, but as a survivor living with a heart that is perpetually tightened in your chest, it is impossible to know how, when or where to start with this. And the cycle turns inward. You become both the perpetrator and the victim. And this is the hardest part to live with. I wonder, how do I survive knowing that this is what I am creating for myself? Even if I see a pattern, it makes me feel helpless, resigned to a fate that will keep me in emotional turmoil? For me, as a survivor I will say that there has been no catharsis - there's been denialism and judgment by friends, spending of large amounts of money on therapy and only a slow improvement over time, but always a coming back to the same repetition over the course of a life, mired by periodic slips into depression and a hope - blind faith (ironic as an atheist) - that things will get better eventually.

Settler

What does it feel like
   to be so good at
   everything
   you do?
Paint, create, imagine, invent,
write, construct, calculate,
assess, read, understand,
analyse, synthesise, communicate,
articulate, and even gesticulate.

Success comes so easy
     to you.
You breathe it.
That wild hair, and those
     steel
     eyes don't hurt.
You were born
    for
    this.
You were born
    with
    this
    in your mouth.

This
cost
a hundred-thousand slaves
     lashed
and worked to
     the
     bone,
entire families
     displaced,
forced to
     wander and
     trek,
women - no girls,
barely fifteen -
     raped
and with child
    beaten,
families
    ripped
    apart,
men
    imprisoned,
children,
     left fatherless,
communities
     dispossessed.

You're so good at it all,
     that even you know
     this.

But tell me,
   does it feel good?

Love and Whiteness (Part III)

When the choice
  to live
  - in this world -
  becomes
     an ultimatum
 between
    love
    and
    dignity

It takes
 only
\ a split second \
to realise
that
   love
is but
   a luxury.

Will you be my ... SLAVE? Women as marital objects and reflections on Haritha's story.

Lastnight I read a post on Humans of Amsterdam, about Haritha, an Indian woman, who had to do outrageous and dangerous things to escape an arranged marriage because her agency was taken away from her (Link Here). It was a highly triggering and brought up some intense, traumatic and non-trivial emotions surrounding the way women are treated in conservative, religious and patriarchal societies -be it Hindu, Muslim, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Indian, Coloured or African.

There was something about this post that is deeply real for me and so many women who have to live under the confines of extreme conservatism and patriarchy. It transported me back to a time when I myself was a young woman under the confines of a (still) extremely religious and patriarchal society. 

I remembered being about fourteen and feeling an intense frustration at the fact that it was expected of me to be flattered that men more than double my age were interested in marrying me then and there. I was angry at the women in my life that tried to convince my father - a single parent - that the best thing that could happen to me and the best way for me to secure a good future would be to marry the best suitor. I felt angry, trapped, afraid, unheard and more than anything disempowered.

For instance there was a point where an aunt via marriage arranged for her daughter to marry some relative, but when her daughter met a more eligible bachelor he was shoved my way. I had no say in this. 

Then at the age of fourteen I found myself at a marriage proposal - where I was the bride to be, and I was transported there under the pretense of having dinner with a friend of my father and uncle. The potential groom was in his mid thirties. And he looked at me like I was prey. When I left his mother slipped a R50 note into my hand... As if that would change my mind.   I didn't even know it was a marriage proposal until I realised that the focus was on me and I was being interrogated about my values and what I want out of life. 

I was angry at my father for entertaining this. While he never explicitly forced me into any kind of arrangement, from the time I started menstruating he began mentioning marriage. I don't know what he expected. If he expected me to just get married? To drop out of school? To have a child? He mentioned marrying cousins and the sons of strange men, rich men abroad or poor men who had a strong link to "our culture".

The situation was so precarious that I had to keep my plans to go to university secret for months for fear that they would be jeopardized. People in these communities are not there to help you succeed. They are there to ensure that you abide by the rules that define your worth as a woman. Which is - if you haven't gotten the gist - as a glorified slave , serving, cooking, sexing, in submission to some man, all in the name of god. Ugh.

Like Haritha I had no voice. Every womxn in my family would ask when I am going to get married from the time I hit puberty too.

You see in these communities you are worth nothing if you're not married. You are the property of your parents when before marriage and the property of your husband and his family after marriage. From the moment you're born your whole life is positioned to turn you into a commodity that can be sold off to the highest bidder. I.e: the best suitor, the  most prestigious man or the most esteemed (economically and politically) man. 

Women in these patriarchal and religious communities are the property of men.  All men. Any man. BEFORE you are your own property. Other women are complicit in this and buy into it too. If this is not slavery that lives and breathes then I don't know what it is.

It's easy to discount how far I've come because the success and independence have become second nature. What I don't realise is how lucky I am - I literally mean that I had good fortune - in all of this.  That every step was mammoth and held together by a string which at any point could have snapped. 

I realised what a close call I had. Just how much of the trauma coming from a community that strips you of your dignity and agency to be your own person stays with you. I could not sleep after reading Haritha's story. When I did I dreamt about trying to rescue her from her family in India and trying to find her a job in the Netherlands. Her story was so personal because I myself lived in the Netherlands... I got the opportunity to study there through a scholarship and felt the same sense of liberation that she speaks of when she got there. It was there that I dropped my heavy indoctrination and had the space to start the journey towards becoming the person I am today. 

What Haritha's story did was remind me that there is a whole community of people out to ensure that we don't live a liberated life just like this woman's direct family and her in-laws. For me it was a lack of support in believing I could study, an active discouragement from pursuing an education and earlier than that it was as if I would amount to nothing if I was not some man's wife. I was born and raised in South Africa and still this is what I faced. 

Like the author Ama Ata Aidoo shows so clearly in her book Changes: For women things like marital rape are par for the course and if a woman wants to leave a relationship just because it is not working for her she is "not allowed to" and will be met with resistance from those she loves the most. Men and women alike. Men will call her a whore and women will call her a failure. She will be shunned. Acid might be thrown in her face. She may be killed. 

Often being explicitly beat and battered means there is an excuse to leave. But more often this is also overlooked. And for most women in the world, in 2016, this is still their basic reality...

When will women have basic human rights? 

When will we shout from the rooftops unanimously:  

#PATRIARCHYMUSTFALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear White Friends

Dear White Friends.

Congratulations. You have made it to the inner circle. The inner circle of white people that I have decided I love enough to keep in my life despite the problems that come along with whiteness.

Being in the life of a black person is no small responsibility, dear white friend, and is one that you must take very seriously.

Having chosen to keep you in my life, there are a few things that I want you to know, and it is best that you know it now. This letter is likely to be a heavy read, so I am going to urge you to please, read it to the end.

First, our relationship is unequal. It has always been and will always be unequal. It is imperative that you understand this. No matter how hard your personal trials and tribulations have been, or how easy my life may have been, your people have persecuted my people for time immemorial, and that has resulted in a point in our existence where all the tables are balanced in your favour. This means that a level playing field has never, and will never, exist for the two of us. You will always have a head start in the matters of life, be it in getting a job, or social capital and networks, or something as simple as walking down the road. The world, speaks your language - the language of white western heteronormative patriarchy, and in order for me to make something of myself, I have to learn to speak that language as fluently as possible, but as hard as I work at it I will never be a native speaker and the world will never forgive me for that.

Second, in the course of our relationship it is important that you understand very clearly that it is not the responsibility of me or any POC to educate you.  Educate you about what, you ask? Well, educate you about all matters of race, class and the associated lived experiences of people of colour. There are times when I will discuss lived experiences that you will not be able to relate to, or have an inkling about. Because you do not understand my experience as a person of colour does not invalidate it. Think about this carefully. You are so used to the world being your way that in your mind it probably can be no other way. But if you are a womxn, then you must have had some experience of sexism in your life, so try to extrapolate from that to my lived experience and empathise. If you are a man, you have no systemic discrimination against you, so appeal to your humanness and brain and try to empathise. White male friends you love to appeal to academic arguments and logic in all matters of race (if white people can be racist to blacks, so too can blacks be racist to whites, fact. anyone can discriminate against anyone), so use that logic to talk yourself into understanding that you are in a position of so much privilege that taking away the experience of those who have been stripped of their dignity by your people for hundreds of years is in itself a racist action.

White friends, it is at this point that I want to address YOU specially. Your ego, and your opinion are not more important than the feelings of black people. You have to realise that it is ingrained in you to believe that the world is designed to be yours, that is inherently supremacist thinking. Once you acknowledge that this sense of entitlement you feel is inherently supremacist you then have the responsibility to realise that all white people are inherently racist. Racism is an institution, that you are a part of and the degree of your racism falls along a spectrum. Now, take a deep breath. Do not freak out. I am only going to say this once, being a racist does not mean you are a bad person. You have to take the shame out of it, and own up to it. By own up to it I don't mean pin it to your lapel and go around announcing that you know you are racist and there is nothing you can do about it. I mean take emotional responsibility for it. Own up to it, realise that you have to combat it daily. Make eye contact with the black person at your window. Call yourself out when a slur runs through your head when a black woman cuts you off in traffic. Start seeing the humanity in others. Stop being a dick.

There are many things that I am taking the time to say in this letter that I am only going to say once, because for a black person to repeatedly have to explain these issues to every white person in their lives quickly becomes exhausting. I may share this letter with you multiple times over our friendship, so do not despair. You can always come back to it if you find yourself falling off track.

Now I am going to address why comments such as #notallwhitepeople #notallmen or #alllivesmatter or "we are only one race, the human race" or even "I don't see race" or "race doesn't matter" are just completely ludicrous. First off, we KNOW that it is not all white people, or not all men, or that biologically race is not even a thing. THAT IS NOT THE POINT. The point is that white people, and whiteness (I'll come back to this) are systematically oppressing people of colour day in and day out. It is the very institutions that are designed to cater to white needs and favour white people above black people that are the problem. If a group of white people are extreme racists, that does not personally implicate you, but you are responsible and what I often hear from white people is that they feel "victimised". First, I want to say welcome to the club, what you are experiencing is only a small fraction of what we feel when we are "victimised", profiled as criminals and terrorists, but it is not even about getting you to feel the same way. Instead what it is about is "ownership".

Hear me out. You have to own the fact that you are white and a part of this institution that is built to oppress people. Just how religious people have a responsibility to acknowledge the ills of malpracticed religion. What it means to own it, is to call out racists. To realise that racism is not over. You may choose not to associate with people who want to exterminate black people and establish their own supremacist state. That's great, but more than that you have to realise that the white people you associate with every day are milder versions of those extremists. And, you are a milder version of it too. It can't be another way. It has been entrenched in you to be that way. It is the way of the world. Racism is like air. You were born into it, and it is inside you. While you may reject parts of racist behaviour you can not reject that it is inside you, that you share in its cause and in its perpetuation - only by virtue of being white. I know it seems unfair. But we get to share in the tragedy of being black in a white world only by being born black, and these are two sides of the same coin.  So until you and other white people can recognise this and start calling each other out on it, racism is going nowhere.

And by this point in the letter I may have you feeling angry. Angry at the state of the world and how unfair it all is. Angry that you are actually inherently racist by the way of the world despite your personal sentiments and beliefs. And then I have something else to say, which may seem strange. But aren't you lucky that you get to feel angry and express that anger? When you rant on social media, or express anger at the state of the world, at things not running the way they ought to so that your life can be made easier, or even anger at basic needs being met and basic human rights fulfilled, you are not seen as a threat to the rest of the world. And being able to express anger in that way is a luxury. When we express anger we are seen as threats, as violent, and as disruptive. How are we supposed to breathe in a world where all the air is usurped by white tears?

Speaking about white tears. You have to realise that in this relationship, you can not center experiences around you all the time. There are times where my experience is mine, and a space needs to be created for me to be able to express my experiences. If you are uncomfortable with it, then that is par for the course. Throughout our friendship there have been many times where I have been uncomfortable and sat with the feeling without you even being remotely aware of it. Now it is time that you do the same. When you offer your opinion and I say I do not want it, you have to respect me. THIS is how we respect our diversity in this relationship.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, for our relationship to work you're going to have to be proactive. You live in a country that is mostly black, yet you care to know nothing of lived black experiences except for what you see on the news. You need to take responsibility for educating yourself. If you see something online that does not sit well with you, and you feel the need to whitesplain, before you get shut down perhaps you should READ. There is so much material out there. Show a little interest in the country and lives of the people that your forefathers ruined, and read. Don't read so that we can debate about it. Read so that you can start seeing the world from the perspective of the lives of those whose lives were compromised by whiteness.

Ah whiteness. Yes. It will help you going forward to keep this word: W H I T E N E S S in your mind. The institution of what being white means. It is the cissexual heteronormative way of looking at the world, where all things male, light skinned and western are preferred, and located in a system designed to disregard the feminine, dark skin, and eastern. Next time you feel personally persecuted remember WHITENESS. Whiteness is what is being attacked. Not you personally. But because you are white whiteness will have infected parts of your life and this is where that responsibility I talked about earlier comes in. 

There is also something that you need to know, that I am reluctant to say, but will say it because it needs to be said: White friend, despite my opinions and statuses I do not hate you. I hate whiteness. And the sooner you learn that it is not personal the smoother our relationship will become. You might even begin to laugh at whiteness, and see the ways in which it has oppressed you. 

Dear white friend, I look forward to a life where you become increasingly conscious, respectful and woke. A life where I have the space to be black that is not crowded out by your need to be white. And a life where you begin the cycle of eradicating racism.

A luta Continua.

Conversations about home (at a deportation centre) - Warsan Shire

In response to this morning's resignation of David Cameron and the news that Brexit has become  reality with the inward looking nationalist government coming to power in October, the only thing on my mind, and on the minds of many in the U.K - is the plight of immigrants. Both, those who have found a safe place in the U.K and those who are yet to arrive. 

This is a piece by poet - Warsan Shire. It speaks for itself:

Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. I've been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that there’s no space for another song, another tongue or another language. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I’m bloated with language I can't afford to forget. 

They ask me how did you get here? Can’t you see it on my body? The Libyan desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket. I hope the journey meant more than miles because all of my children are in the water. I thought the sea was safer than the land. I want to make love but my hair smells of war and running and running. I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders, foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate. I’m the colour of hot sun on my face, my mother’s remains were never buried. I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck, I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body. 

I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officer, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. But Alhamdulilah all of this is better than the scent of a woman completely on fire, or a truckload of men who look like my father, pulling out my teeth and nails, or fourteen men between my legs, or a gun, or a promise, or a lie, or his name, or his manhood in my mouth.

I hear them say, go home, I hear them say, fucking immigrants, fucking refugees. Are they really this arrogant? Do they not know that stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second and the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return. All I can say is, I was once like you, the apathy, the pity, the ungrateful placement and now my home is the mouth of a shark, now my home is the barrel of a gun. I'll see you on the other side. "

*Originally published in TEACHING MY MOTHER HOW TO GIVE BIRTH (2011).

Thoughts on the Orlando Pulse massacre by a queer South African muslim

The mass shooting of defenceless LGBTQIA members of our society Orlando marks a collective stain on our humanity, make no mistake - where those already vulnerable in society are gunned down by a man with an automatic war machine and picked off like vermin in a space supposed to be safe. It is not just a problem for the US, but one for all of us at large. Thirteen years ago in South Africa 9 men were executed in a gay safe space in one of our country's own hate massacres. We are quick to forget about the Sizzlers massacre and the hatred of the two men who perpetrated it. We are not exceptional, we are not immune. Section 9 of South Africa's democratic constitution guarantees that nobody, including the state, should be allowed to unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. Yet daily we hear stories of violence against members of our LGBTQIA brothers and sisters- corrective rape, stigmatisation, assault, abuse. It goes on. We allow those around us to foster casual discrimination, to say things that denigrate the LGBTQIA community and dehumanise the love between people. And the worst of it- just when the LGBTQIA community finds a safe space we have individuals and groups who are determined to destroy them. This is not us. This is no religion or faith. This is no teaching of love or spirituality. It is not Islam now or ever. It is not heroism or grandiose masculinity. It is the deepest and darkest of evils perpetrated by the worst of our society, designed to further divide us. We cannot allow people to claim their hateful causes in the name of us all. And we should certainly not judge a whole group by the actions of a hateful few. Perpetrators of violence are in no way unique to those who incorrectly profess Islam. They are found in all corners of society- in Sandy Hook, in Columbine, in Virginia Tech, in Norway. We cannot deflect from our failings to stop hatred, to stop access to war machines, to protect our most vulnerable. We are jointly and collectively responsible. And we bleed for it.

Say their names. Remember their faces. 

But we will not be divided. As Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, gay, straight, bisexual, black, white, coloured, Asian, Indian, woman, man, trans, and all the other shades of these. We are together against hatred and violence. We stand with Orlando, we stand on the side of love that knows no label. And our struggle will continue.

*Published with permission of the author - Ziyaad Bhorat.