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.

Gift from the Sun

Does it make you feel
powerful? This distancing
you do. Withdrawing from
the full brightness of the sun,
not to hide in shade - or rest -
but to enclose yourself in
a molehill of experience.

Don't you know that the sun's
sole purpose is to highlight the
vivid blue of the sea thrashing itself
against that one jagged cliff. Gifting
you with the luxury of watching it
from above - or immersing
yourself in it forever.

Letter to my (broken) beloved

I knew you, from before
the moment you tottered

taking your first steps

toward your mama. 

I followed you, a 

bird perched on your 

shoulder, chirping

as you picked up

the scissors to cut your

hair yourself. Little 
hands trembling. 

I held you. By the 
arms, stopping you
pulling brows from
your face, only moments 
after your first fight 
with sweet Adele. 

I never left your side when

you immersed yourself in the

joyous pleasures of young 

adulthood. Waiting for you

to return home so I could stroke 

your hair, and wipe the expired 
mascara from beneath your eyes. 

Then, when you stumbled over

your own feet into your first 
true love I drew arcs over 

your head with my toes,
making a halo for you.You 
never needed to look up,

but I was always there. 

And I’ll be there - I am 
here - now that that love 
has morphed into nothing 
more than the withered root 
of an orchard still attached to

beautiful but

already dead blooms.

The Opening

I have
never
felt
a
vulnerability
like
this
before.

A listless
ache
behind my
eyes
and a raw
opening of
every
door
inside me.

People
wandering
through
the corridors
of my soul
while I watch
from below.
Mute.

Emptiness
follows their
footsteps as
I float
ceaselessly
through
space.

The Rose Garden

I stood naked on the 

ground, feet sinking into

the sponge of the dewy

grass. He met me there

and sprinkled the seeds

around me, in a loose circle.

We agreed to water it

together

The sun set on that 

summer and the roots

that sprouted began to 

spread. with each sun

set and rise millimeters

of green veins were

added. We learned that 

for the roses to flourish 

they would need support

so we added a metallic 

arch over my head - naked 

body still enduring seasonal

shifts

With autumn came the first

buds, the bloom glorious.

Tiny blushing drops eventually 

spread open, filling my nostrils with 

the scent of molasses. My thighs 

and hips were covered in dustings 

of nectar as he pruned, watered

and tended to the new born

sprouts

It continued this way - and 

by the seventh cycle the archway

was laden with the weight of 

roses so dense that a single

flower

would weigh down 

the cup of your palm

As the garden flourished, I kept

looking up in awe of the beauty 

that we nurtured, only rarely ever

taking note of the large and heavy vines

that entwined around my waist 

and breasts, coiled around my feet -

cramping  my calves and aching my

back

It was a byproduct of the beauty, 

a cost at which the garden came. 

In the winter I even took solace in

the tight green shelter - it offered

welcome protection from the frosty cold. 

I was safe.

But all this time, I failed to see that

as the roses grew so too did the jagged,

thick and sturdy thorns. Blinded by the

velvet plush petals, it took me by surprise

how the thorns stealthily grew so large

that they barely noticeably pierced their way 

through my rib cage, puncturing my lungs.

Making it

              impossible 

                               for me 

                                          to breathe.

Dreams of ex lovers (Sex with yourself post breakup)

So it's been a whole month since the relationship ended and while it's not a long time in the larger scheme of life it somehow feels like it. With all the emptying out of my life I've been left with a lot of free time - to read, to see friends and to ummm get into some sexy self love time. 

The latter has been interesting. It's not the act of masturbating that has been tough but rather the process. After a break up you kind of feel horny but listless - like I would really like an orgasm right now but what am I going to think about, and who? It all seems like too much effort. 

In other words, being fresh out of a relationship there are no men appealing enough to me to be worth the effort of having imaginary sex with. And if it does happen it's more like the exception - for instance a sex dream could prompt it. At the same time more traditional channels like porn seem so vapid and like too much effort. So what's left then is all this time and these hormones and nothing to do about it. I mean I have my fair share of coming out of the shower, looking in the mirror and feeling myself, but this is really not an every day vibe. Real masturbation in single life is waking up super early in the morning, and with eyes still basically closed getting into some half-arsed clit play. 

Use those fingers honey. Get in there.       

This is where the memory bank of ex lovers comes in. Something I never thought I would be grateful for until now. In the process of being lazy and horny and heartbroken it's like there's a little chest in my head with a recorder that's there for me to push play whenever I want to make myself feel sexy. There are memories about dedicated lovers who would without prompting do almost all the work with so much fervor that it was like being a sex doll. Then there are the intense ones, the hot and heavy ones, the ones with special dick tricks, the ones who I almost wrote off because of their little packages but who I've actually had some of the best sex ever with because of their technique. There are the slow lovers, the quick and dirty ones and the kinky ones too. 

Obviously it is only the consensual respectable lovers who make it into the memory bank in the first place. No room for other trash. But yeah, in this lonely post break up phase who would have thought that all those old interactions would come back with so much life. The strangest part about it all, I suppose, is how real it all still feels even though some of the interactions were up to six years ago. I don't know if it's just me and the way I process things but it's like I've stored every little unique trait from each person and have dusted off the memories until they're as good as new. Each time. Even stranger is how I can be feeling myself and boom, something that someone did that seems almost impossible to remember pops into my head. Here's an example, the way one guy put the arch of my foot to his face and caressed it with his beard in the most sensual way during sex. Like I'm pretty fucking sure he doesn't remember it but somehow on the cusp of cumming, I do. 

Oh well. In any case I'm grateful for these experiences and never saw them coming in handy in this way. And I am pretty sure it is a really healthy way to process all my post-breakup post-regular-sex energy surplus. So hey if you're a single woman feeling herself on the regular, an ex lover or have made use of your ex lovers in the same way cheers to that. Here is to healthy lazy sex with yourself forever more. 

The Allure of Elusive Men

CN: cis-heteronormative language. 

I don’t know how many times in my life I have sat down with my friends to discuss why we find certain men attractive. You know the gut-wrenching, belly-flipping, holding eye-contact across the room type of attraction, where with every part of your being you feel like you want to devour this person - like lick their face a la chewing gum type of stuff. Okay maybe not that far, but you get it.  

At the same time we have kind of established that we don’t know whether men feel this way. Like I have never met a guy who has said to me that every time he thinks about me he gets butterflies, or that the mere thought of fucking gives him a semi.  Do men even get butterflies? Is that a thing? Are they even wired this way? If there are any cis-het men who can disclose the dynamics of how men experience chemistry and attraction please hit me up. 

This leads into what this post is about.  It is precisely because we don’t know how men work or what they are thinking that makes them so attractive to us in a lot of cases. It is the allure of the elusive man. You know the stereotypical trope about a dark and mysterious man, or a tortured writer, or a poet, or an artist, oh yes, who can forget the musician (bassist please, thanks). 

I am pretty fucking sure that a large part of what makes a man deeply attractive in the early stages of getting to know them is their elusiveness. For some women, the more obscure, alternative and different they are the deeper the attraction. For other women, the more unavailable they seem to the rest of the world, but available to the woman herself, the deeper the attraction.

No matter what the individual circumstances are these elusive men all fit the same basic profile. I would say that they are all poor communicators, a la the definition of elusive. They let on enough to know that they may be interested but not too much. They have an air of preoccupation, as if they are all about a purpose higher than themselves. Don’t be fooled though, this is not the case, the only purpose they have are themselves. There is an air of douche baggery around them, but then sometimes they seem so sincere that you can’t hold their offishness against them. Actually let me not romanticise it, they treat you like shit, but then don’t when they decide not to. A lot of them have a big ego, and at the core of it are hiding something, usually a large insecurity - perhaps some of their own childhood trauma. In any case it can all be really quite mind fucky and rationally it seems like a waste of effort, and it would be if we didn't have such a vested interest in it through this intense attraction. 

But this is the thing. I want to know why we find these elusive men so attractive. And I have been doing some research and reading, and the first thing that makes sense is projection. It is very intuitive, since we don’t know everything about these men, especially not their idiosyncrasies, we perceive them to be some way, a way that appeals to us, and we fill in the blanks with out own wishes and desires. And isn’t it oh so good…

Then there is this thing that Freud coined, called “repetition compulsion”, which means that basically we reenact (here in a sexual or romantic way) patterns of traumatic behavior from our childhood. So the hook that binds you to that man that doesn’t text back probably has some root to your childhood, for instance you may be a fixer.  This seems all too simplistic for me. But then again every elusive man who I have had a thing with, has had these strange dismissive tendencies, which I have overlooked all in quest for the thrill of the interaction. So maybe there is something to it, something like, oh if I just give this one more go it will be alright.  

The other thing it could be is an ego thing. This is the simplest version, and the one that resonates with projection a bit more. It goes like this, you meet an elusive man and you want to have some of that. You want to possess it. It’s natural selection and you want to win. And you don’t stop until you do, despite the costs, and there are costs.

To make it more interesting, I met a woman counsellor once casually, and we had a conversation about this type of eye locking attraction. I basically said that it is so bizarre that you have all these subconscious signals going off and that like in a split second you, with barely thinking, can pick out who in the crowd you would be interested in getting with. So we talked about whether this was purely physical, like, do women go for the strongest, tallest, toughest looking men, and it is actually not always the case. Then we talked about what it was. And it came down to some very Jungian type subconscious signaling going on. Basically there are stuff so deep down that we don’t even know that send out frequencies, and the person you’re attracted to emits the same frequencies, and then you connect. So this counsellor then says, wait for it… that this type of attraction is ALWAYS DANGEROUS. LIKE POISON. I kid you not. And I chuckled so hard. I was like, hold up, you go out to a club and have vibes with a person and those vibes are DANGEROUS. NO, NO, NO. NOPE. Sorry.

I mean I want to say I understand what she was saying, that given the fuckery that comes with elusive men these vibes can be dangerous. Or, perhaps it was that having vibes like that does not equate to love… But who said that they do? Or perhaps she was saying you can’t build something with someone based solely on those vibes, you need to get to know them first, so as to know that they’re not trash. I don’t know. What I do know is that there are hundreds of thousands of relationships that begin like this, people meet each other and fall into the most scandalous lust and then fall in love, and there are just as many interactions where the latter does not happen and that is okay. 

So then back to the question, what is it about the allure of elusive men? I really think it comes back to the projection thing, we are constantly on the look to validate ourselves. And this happens when we choose extremely attractive people upfront, since it says, hey, look at what I snagged - this Adonis, or really intellectual people, or really quirky, sexy, fun, edgy, alternative, people. You get it. But the key is that they need not just be this. They could actually be anything or anyone. The key is that we perceive their odd or hard to read qualities to be elusive. and this comes down to perception versus reality, in real life they may not be elusive at all. Think about how many times you have crushed and your best friend goes, “I just don’t see it, he’s so (fill in the blank)”.

So if I can conclude then, the allure of elusive men is not because they are truly elusive. It is that through the lens of our projections and desires for things intangible we perceive them to be that way.  And a take home nugget of wisdom would be to remember this when you feel bowled over and powerless by just how amazing you perceive them to be. No it is not “dangerous” but yes, it is an illusion. A delicious illusion. 

Heartbreak (Part I)

I wrote a little piece of prose on this the other day. At that time I thought the worst of it would be the gut wrenching feeling on the inside that something has been unfairly taken away from you. That you would just suffer with pangs of intense pain every now and then, and you would be more or less functional, and it would proceed like this for a few months until you calibrate to normal, slowly.

I was wrong.

Yesterday afternoon a wave of emotional exhaustion, so large that it drowned me, hit me. It's frustrating. I wish I could say I knew why it was so intense. I wish I understood the psyche more. It makes no sense in my rational mind that the removal of one person from my life could have such dire consequences. Especially because I am happy with the decision, especially because I was finding it hard to breathe in the relationship and this ending should be like a coming up for air. Nope. It's not.

Today, I literally can't move. Every part of my body feels like lead. I can't think. Haven't been able to for weeks now, since it happened. It's guilt inducing skipping work, but even basic tasks like making food or a cup of tea have become impossible. Today holding up a book is too heavy. Literally. I can't carry the book, and thank God for my computer, because all I need to do to use it is move my fingers to get it to work, which is about as much as I can do without collapsing. Not that there is anything to do on it. Social media sucks the life out of me. All I can ingest right now is poetry.

Everyone else looking in seems to realise that this is normal. It certainly doesn't fucking feel like it. It feels lonely and isolating. It feels like an extended purgatory. I can't watch stuff to distract because it is all too mind numbing, and there is inevitably some kind of romantic undercurrent. I am selective about music too. Fuck all these indie artists with their hopeful lyrics, and fuck Sufjan Stevens for romanticising heartbreak. No Sufjan, it doesn't work like thank. Praise the lord for Kendrick on Fear pleading with God to let him know why he has to suffer, then for the line that is the closest thing to any kind of  sad redemption one can expect in this shit show: "If I could smoke fear away, I'd roll that mothafucka up." Hallelujah bitch, I'll be rolling up as soon as I can.

This is heartbreak. It is debilitating and alienating, for no other reason than it is a lone road to travel. And it fucking sucks.

Lily

Her fingers
parted
the soft folds
of her
malleable molten maze

The warm
scent
of liquid
silk
radiated off her
finger
tips

She didn't know
at which point she
closed
her eyes
and felt

a thousand worlds collide
into a single
exaltation

all seven skies
compress
into
a pin prick of
splendour

a veil lift
from the
heavens

and a breeze
blow
over
her face

Spirals

So it ended. the relationship, that is. It's a tricky thing to write about without sounding self-indulgent and clichéd. It is a tumultuous space. One that liberates but confines equally. I found myself waking up to the prospect of a new life, a new-old life, that is boundless and infinite. I also found myself curling into a ball on the floor and wailing, expecting some kind of dramatic ending to the pain - a numbness - but none came. I can't write now. All the creative energy that was given birth to by the freshness of heartbreak has evaporated. Contaminated by the relationships I have tarnished. The men I've sought. The friends I've drained. It isn't beautiful. It isn't poetic - I'm sitting in my car during my lunch hour in a parking lot full of exuberant students, crying, then I'll go back to my desk and try to work pretending nothing happened. Nothing has happened. The clock is ticking, but time isn't passing. This is an infinity. There is circularity to the process. There is no catharsis. Only a returning to and a returning to the same point of departure. Forever.

Mumbi (or Misskim)

She sat across from
me, her moon-lit face
glowing in the faint light
of a winter's day

A goddess incarnate. Made
even more radiant by the
fullness of her belly and the
second heart that beat
inside her

One could not mistake
her for feeble at her worst.
Divinity, she told me tales
about fate and choppers,
about love and kinship

Like an apparition from
the heart of the mountains
of Kenya, born
of a hundred generations of
strong, unbendable women,
she came to me as my saviour
and graced me with the
light touch of her
chi

She is woman
She is what
I strive to be

I kissed her feet

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.

Love and Whiteness (Part II)

So the last time I wrote a post on this subject it was more directly lamenting the difficulties of loving a white person and the ways in which they fail to see you on a one-on-one level.

But as we get deeper into our relationship big things keep coming up. And this is why it has taken me so long to get around to writing part two of that post. Put simply, loving a white partner is not simply about the one on one relationship the two of you have. It is about much much more than that. See, there are the interpersonal dynamics between the two of you, then there are the larger societal power dynamics.

Basically, what I have been coming to realise over the increasing course of my relationship is that deciding to build something with a white person is complex, because the advantages they have of being in the world slowly crowd out the little space you have.

As a pansexual person in a heterosexual presenting relationship, this is because of the role patriarchy plays - a woman slowly is expected to conform to the culture of her partner, and her partner's family. That is, assimilation. But this is compounded because of the settler-colonist culture in South Africa, whiteness is seen as the highest bar of existence for all, and so with whiteness comes a sense of supremacy and entitlement, and if you don't fit the bar, you guessed it, you are less than worthy of being a part of the family.

There are a number of challenges that come up when I think about the costs that being in a relationship with a white cis-het male have had on my psyche. And to speak frankly I am tired. In fact all the women in me are tired. But because it is a release, and because it may help someone else out there I am going to dish them up right now. So sit back, and enjoy (if possible).

1 - Privilege and the associated lack of lived experience. This is perhaps the biggest stumbling block in our relationship. If you are a black woman (or person) dating a white male, there probably is a phase where it is all hunky dory. But sooner or later, one day you wake up and have the earth-shattering realisation that:

"There is no way in which my cis-het, upper class, able-bodied, christian, male partner, has ever been systemically discriminated against in his entire life."

And this shakes you up because all you've ever known was struggle. As a woman, as a person of colour, as a non-hetero person, as a poor person, for me - as a survivor. And for a second you can't reconcile how it is that the two of you are together. For a split second you feel lucky, like maybe you won the lottery. You remember how hard it used to be when you were young, how you struggled through abuse, through trauma, through the vicarious trauma of those in your community, and you think "Ah, how did I get here? That all feels like a long and distant dream." Then you wake the fuck up and realise that you are not lucky. That the boundaries of the prison have just changed, and now while you are able to live and love and exist a lot easier than you were able to before there are constraints facing you that you would never imagine existed and these come in the shape of your partner's privilege. 

Obviously different people are woke to different levels, but white partners in particular tend to suffer from the white liberal affliction. They think that because you agree on the basis of morality and ethics there is no need to do extra work to be a good ally. In fact they may not even know what allyship means. And the burden of educating them is then defaulted onto YOU, the partner. 

Because they are an entitled white male, they get offended when you say that it is not your duty to educate them. They don't understand that you don't owe it to them. If you choose to educate them it is because you love them and you have committed  to your relationship. Educating them is a god damn privilege, not your job.  

In any case, privilege fucks with the power dynamics, and unless your partner is willing to put in the active conscious work, reading, listening to podcasts, watching stuff, reading and reading, he is not going to wake up. Not now. Not ever. 

2- Compounded with class and privilege comes family. In the case of my partner, he is half foreign, and half South African. And I always find that the half foreign aspect is what has saved him. Of the micro-aggressions that I experience at the hands of his family, those from his dad - a white South African apartheid era male - are the worst. To him I am not an individual, I am other. Whenever he talks about black people or indians, or black colleagues, he makes eye contact with me. Needless to say he thinks I am the fucking spokesperson for every Indian person in South Africa. 

And while the microaggressions from him are regular and particularly bad, it is not much better from the rest of the family. While the mum is less problematic she is not unproblematic, and the sisters are so couched in their own privilege that it suffocates me. This is the thing, when you relate to them (the whole family) it is on their terms. You do what they want and expect you to do and you do it in their way. They speak upper-crust english, and because I speak my vernacular I become a fucking cute little joke to them, "Oh, Anne*, did you hear how she said that?". Ha. ha. ha. Big fucking deal. I am sorry I am not a colonist settler who stole land, preserved imperial culture and went to the most expensive private school owned to man. 

So, yeah, white families. And guess what, you tell your partner about it and they accuse you of hating their family? It has actively started causing me anxiety. I can't go there and not get a tummy ache or headache, and a sinking feeling (Queue get out) in my stomach. Worst part is - they don't know it. My partner thinks he is between a rock and a hard place, and to date has only had a discussion with them about how problematic they are on one occasion.  And in this process I am villainised. It becomes me against the family. Well it wouldn't be if they weren't such passively racist human beings. 

3- Friends. I'll keep it short. This post is becoming taxing. The microaggressions are terrible. One of the friends also did the thing all white people do by referring to me as curry! Racist pig. There was no backlash from my partner who then went on the defensive and like a week later forgot it happened. Well, I didn't forget. Then, there are the extremely racist and misogynist friends. He has a friend who had a road rage incident and drove past the woman, rolled down his window and flashed a wad of cash in her face. Then bragged to me and my partner about it, and proceeded to say that he 

was sure that she wanted to fuck him. My partner sees this as a once off isolated incident, and his family says boys will be boys. My partner also thinks he is between a rock and a hard place. 

Don't they understand that these are our fucking lives - oh wait, they don't!

2 - Society. South Africa, and particularly Cape Town is the most racially segregated racist place in the country. It is worse because white liberals who live here go to church and think they are doing their duty unto society. They live in big houses on the foot of the mountain and donate blankets and money to charity but have never paid retribution and will not give back the land. They see no link between the exploitation of black bodies under apartheid and their economic success. And because they are colonist-settlers, they think they belong here and also behave as Gods. They don't make eye contact with you if you are not white, and do not acknowledge your humanity. When they do it is in a patronising way. They don't see black people as people, forget as their inferiors. They are entitled trash. Period. Now think about having kids, black kids, and this is what they aspire to. Nope.

3 - The lack of a reprieve. So, I go to work. It is extremely white, I go to therapy, she is white, I go home my partner is white. My family is scattered. I am alone in this city. My black friends have moved on from this mini-apartheid state to places that will feed their souls. My white friends mostly have the liberalism affliction, and I am isolated. There are very few public spaces that have black bodies in them, and it becomes suffocating.

Loving a white person, then, is not about loving that individual. It is about being able to live with the toll that that love takes on your psyche and the price you pay for it. But I've basically decided that I am no longer willing to pay this price for our love. I demand respect from his parents, I will not associate with his friends, and he has to graft for it. I mean I could keep writing about this, the anger, the erasure, but I'll stop here.

I love my partner. I really do. When it is just the two of us hanging, I see his soul and I truly feel that he sees mine, and I don't wanna end what we've been building. I dig it. I dig him. I dig our life. But add to the equation the expectation of settling down (I don't want to) and where (Cape Town? City of spatial apartheid?), monogamy (contentious one)  and kids (I am strictly adopting when I decide I am ready - too many abandoned lil puudin' faces ouchea), it quickly becomes a lot. Look, I don't have the answers. Being in a relationship with a non-white male could easily have just as many challenges, there is always patriarchy and religion. In any case, we're investing in something here and I will try to make it work, but the bottom line is this guy is going to have to put in some serious work.

I guess if I could speak frankly to him I would say:

I know you've never had to work for anything in your life. I know you are hyper-intelligent, so why don't you put some of that intellect to work and research concepts such as wokeness, allyship, feminism, intersectionality?  Oh it bores you? Well listen up... this is the lifeline of our relationship, and it is ALL up to you at this stage. You think that what I have displayed up to now is rage? You have no idea of the leaps and bounds by which it will expand if you don't do something about it.

Gone, are the tears and the fear. This is a fight for survival, and you are either going to step up to the challenge or not.

If these walls could talk (Sex)

Let me start by saying that if you didn't get the Kendrick reference in the title to this blog post, then you shouldn't be here.

And yes, another sex blog. Leave now if you're not ready for this.

I was chatting to one of my besties the other day about what we would want from a sexual partner if we had full control over what we could choose. What is necessary, what is basic, and what is, frankly, just asking for too much.

Talking to her is always fun, because she has a plethora of wisdom in this field from her acute attention paying way of being in the world.

In any case, we basically came up with lists, of what we think are the most important sexual skills that a (cis) man (or any partner) can offer a woman in a relationship.

Okay so full disclosure: when we started out, I had it as a priority that a beautiful dick is what I want and I will settle for nothing less.  I know a lot of people don't feel this way, but really you get penises, and you get penises. And the latter are like a work of art. If you're tactilely sensitive, they feel good in your hands. If you're care about hygiene, they feel so good in your mouth that you will forget that you do. Upshot is, they're things to behold. She thinks it's shallow. Besides, getting to know what someone's dick looks like is a little like a box of chocolates...

So we chatted. And fine, a beautiful penis - not too large, a little on the wide side... I digress - is too much to ask for, especially since it is an endowment that people have no choice over.

So i rolled my eyes and we carried on chatting. And this is what it turns out is not too much to ask for in a sexual relationship:

1- A man (or partner) who loves to eat pussy. With the operative word being love. And you would be surprised at how rare this is. Like I don't know what porn vacuum cis-het men live in, but they don't realise that eating pussy is an integral part of the sexual experience for women. In a world where women take 20 minutes just to let their defenses down and get turned on, eating pussy is not a luxury. It's a necessity. Why do you think gay and bi- women have a almost 100% orgasm strike rate? I mean, you get reasonable men who intellectually understand that they can't expect you to suck them off without them doing the same, but they're doing it as if they're washing the fucking dishes. Like, hold up. Keep your tongue to yourself if that's what you're gonna do with it.  But hey, on the bright side, once you get the hang of it it will only get easier and better.

Take some tips from your homeboy Ryan Gosling -

Here he is eating Carey Muligan out in Blue Valentine

2- CLITERACY! I will say no more... Just read this.

3- And intricately linked to cliteracy is technique.  Okay, so you get men in their thirties who still fuck like teenagers and this is NOT okay. Like, I get it, some men have natural rhythm and others don't, and that's okay because there are positions that work depending what your skills set it. For instance, if you don't have the hip moves, stay away from being on top (missionary) and if you still insist on being on top, maybe try a waltz move (every second beat of the bar should be more intense - you're welcome), but try to do it from the side, or maybe behind (yes, with the waltz - you are not a jackhammer). Also, the last works well if you - let's not sugarcoat it - have a small dick. And if you have a big one, then see point 1 above - it's all about the warm-up.

Gosh, I could gush about technique forever, but from a sample of ample women, I can tell you that guys who do kachabali have the most satisfied sexual partners. It's not always about penetration, sometimes you just have to appreciate the architecture of a good pussy and play with it a little, it's actually about the anticipation of good dick that can have the effect of good dick. I'm not gonna say anymore but watch this and skip to 3:34 to see what you need to do.  Also, God damn the Kenyans, they had it right this whole fucking time. Also bonus points if you can make her squirt. What? You didn't know that all women could squirt?

4- Compromise in terms of who does the work - this is an obvious point, but in a long term relationship it is only fair to divide the effort. It doesn't have to be equal division but division is necessary. I suppose there are dynamics that come into play here, like if you're not adequately turned on as a woman it can be sore to do the work.... I guess it comes back to having that pussy eaten. haha.

5-  Attentiveness and attention to detail: This is where the real work comes in, in my opinion, and women who have lovers who are great in the attention department are the ones who win. It's about knowing your partner's body, and idiosyncrasies so that you can hotwire them. Basically, you can fuck like a professional porn-star (when off the goose - Boom! Kendrick reference) but it doesn't matter if you don't know what your partner wants, or likes, or most importantly prefers.

Some girls like some mild choking while fucking. 

Ain't nothing wrong with dat.

6 - Most importantly, and related to 5, be chilled and humble (Queue Kendrick - be humble).  Like minimise your ego, learn how to take direction. Especially about those subtle things that go a long way to making sex amazing (e.g.: pulling a handful of hair at the nape of the neck for some women). Taking direction in a humble non-personal way is something that comes up in heteronormative sexual relationships all the time, because men tend to feel invalidated by their inability to locate the clit. And you end up having these conversations that go like this:

Her: "To the left, no to the right, no to the left, ah you lost it"
Him: "I'm trying, maybe if you stopped being so BOSSY it would work"....

Like ... hold up, I'm not being bossy, this is my body, i'm not gonna take something and pretend it feels good to protect your ego. Try again, and maybe this time be less defensive.

7- And after all of this if you still can't locate the clit, and fuck right, actually even if you can - invest in some fucking sex toys. They make everyone's life better.

Aight so this turned into a lecture for cis-het males on how to be good lovers. Well lawd knows they fucking need it....

As kendrick would say:
Enjoy it when you're in it. She'll love it when you're in it.

Peace

Guilty as fuck? Crushes when you're in a long term relationship

So, this is not taboo at all. *cough cough*

At the risk of outing the person whose message I'm relaying (consent was obtained) I decided it was time someone spoke about what you do if you develop the feels for someone else while you're in a relationship. See I have this friend, she works in corporate and she has the hots for a barista who works in the building.... and she's freaking out about it.

I mean I get it... Crushes have this way of coming to you out of the blue. Life's good, your relationship is good, the sex with your partner is great and one day you're fucking and boom, the barista from the coffee shop's cute little face pop's into your head.

Creepy shit. It's bound to freak you out. You write it off as a once off thing - you were hormonal (maybe getting your period if you're a cis woman) and it happens. But then you go buy a coffee and your heart skips a beat, or you get butterflies when he's there and you look at his pretty hands or piercing eyes.... A couple of days later you go to get a coffee again, he's not there and your heart sinks. All the while life back at the ranch with your partner is great. There are no sinister undercurrents, and things are going fine...

One or two weeks pass and when you find yourself with idle time this beautiful barista's face pops into your head. It's getting annoying now... Like being in high-school all over again. You secretly fantasize about what your kids would look like, or what the barista looks like naked.... Your tummy turns, and you feel excited. That oxytocin is a killer. Maybe you think about him when you masturbate, or wonder if he thinks about you while he masturbates. You probably have a good (really quick) orgasm, then you feel...

Guilty as fuck. 

You think about your partner, what you built and where you are and feel pretty fucking awful and a little angry at your body for betraying you by giving you the feels for someone else.

Issa could have avoided fucking up what she had

with Lawrence if she just rubbed it out.

But... A crush - even an outrageous tummy-turning, sex-dream inducing, head spinning, stuttering crush - is natural, and normal, and this is why:

1. We are, at the best of times, animals. Just because we choose to rise above our base instincts and pledge monogamy to one person does not mean that we become asexual or out of tune with the world around us.  Any time after about two years in a relationship the hormones wear off and it is normal that your interest is piqued subsconsciously around a person who evolutionarily would make a good mate.

2. Attention is nice. We all long to be desired, and wanted, and part of this is validating ourselves by wanting the attention of someone whom we can't actually have.  The whole forbidden fruit thing is legitimate.

3. You gotta learn to trust yourself. Just because you have sexual thoughts about someone does not mean that you are going to act on them. Society teaches us to be ashamed of these kinds of feelings, even though they are involuntary and to a certain extent random  (there is nothing special about the barista at the coffee shop no matter how much your infatuated mind tells you there is, you could have a crush on anyone). However, because of this shame having a crush fucks with your mind because you keep the fear of infidelity alive. But you have to learn to trust yourself, a few benign feelings does not have to mean the end of any number of years you spent building something with someone you love. Your self-trust will trump the transience of these feelings.

So a crush is normal, what do you do about it then?

The answer is simple: nothing. 

You certainly do NOT tell your partner about it - it will hurt their feelings unnecessarily and create drama over nothing.

In my opinion I don't believe in fighting the crush to make it go away - harmless flirting and light entertaining of it doesn't equate to infedility to me. You can enjoy someone's conversation, be sexually attracted to them, and safely not act on the latter. It isn't a slippery slope, and is something that can be nipped in the bud. Besides, while these thing work two ways - you have complete agency.

Finally, just sit with the feelings and don't over-analyse them. They probably don't mean anything deep, and they will pass.

This is really simple advice, but I can see how in a culture of paranoia and mistrust in hetero-normative patriarchal relationships people view something as natural as having a crush in a relationship as something that must be hush-hushed. And this where the guilt stems from. I guess it depends on what your objective is - if your objective is to put your partner's feelings before your own at any cost then hush-hushing it may work for you. If your objective is to live a healthy balanced life, and one in which you may encounter numerous situations like this, then honest acknowledgment of where you are and mild entertaining of it can be truly harmless. Ultimately however, the risk comes from people not being self-aware enough to truly believe that their actions are harmless. In this situation it is not the crush that is the enemy but LYING TO YOURSELF - about your motives, agenda and your feelings.

Predicated on a healthy sense of self-awareness, trust and a palate for a little spice. A crush is healthy. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Black First, Human Last

This last Christmas my partner's parents had us over. I'm not Christian, and christmas was never a thing for me but it is important to his family so I went along.

In the spirit of more than just exchanging material presents we were asked to mention things about eachother that we love.

Without any hesitation his father said that he loved my curry...

I ignored this, as I have resolved to do when it comes to my partner's family saying racially insensitive things to or about me in my presence.

But this time I could not let it go, it's now been three weeks since Christmas and I still feel this sick hollow feeling when I think about what his father said, and how his father in specific sees me.

See, this is the thing. I have been a part of this family for a couple of years now and even if they don't love and accept me (which I honestly think they do) the least they could do is fork out something lovable about me THAT IS NOT RACE RELATED.

But this is the thing with white people, and I think this is what hit me hardest about that comment:

At the most spiritually significant and poignant holiday of their religion, this man could not see past my race when trying to fork out a quality that he supposedly loves about me. And to him I AM MY RACE. To him I AM CURRY.  And he loves THAT about me.

I lost my humanity in that moment. And that is why it has been eating away at me for three weeks now. It is also why I have to keep reminding myself to stop expecting more from white people. I love my partner, I even love his family, but to them I will always be an other first, and so I have to keep reminding myself that they are white and to not expect more from them. In fact expecting more is setting myself up for disaster.

At this point you may say, "Hold up, the man was just joking. Give him the benefit of the doubt". Well guess what? If the first thing he said he loved were say, my hair, then can you see  how this is the first thing he sees and can't see past. Or my nose, or my skin colour, or any defining feature that is intricately linked to my race. I am these things to him. Jest or no jest, irrespective of whether he loves the damn curry or not, I am the fucking curry to him.

The point is that this poor man does not even realise the extent of his own prejudice, and I sure as hell am not going to point it out to him, I just don't have the energy for that. I suppose my partner will explain it to him at some point. But until then, we will keep living in this world where "good christians" will attempt to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas and celebrate humanity without actually acknowledging the humanity of POC in their direct vicinity.

We will keep living this hypocrisy.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!