On water

There is nothing I find quite as soothing, quite as terrifying, as water.

This is a knowing I have found my thoughts wandering towards each time I have come to this place to tend to my heart. It has become a ritual of sorts; to take the solitary drive, always with my favourite music blaring in the car, only to sit silently and stare at the ocean. Many a time I have become so enthralled with the simple rhythm of the waves crashing along the shore, that I have forgotten to look up into the waving sunrises.

And yet that has been my favourite part. That the waves will continue to move, to climb one over the other, each with its own unique level of fervour, whether I am here to listen, to witness, to stand in awe of their magnitude, or not.

I liken this to my ancestors, to my spirit guides and light bearers. For all the ways that they have brought me back to this place, time and time again, to remember and revere their power. To remember and revere my own.

Today, it was the ocean that beckoned when I set the intention to cleanse my crystals. I watched as a single seagull landed beside me and went on to hop along close by. The sky was getting grey, threatening with the possibility of a heavy release, but it was here that my spirit felt most at home. Because even as a child, I always stood by a window as soon as the rain started to fall. I still open my windows and sit quietly to listen each time a shower comes to visit. It is my favourite thing in the world. I have never been able to really put into words why I love the rain, the ocean, water, so much – I may never be able to. But perhaps it is the silent breaks within my spirit that contain the answer to this curious love.

I only recently learned how to swim. I did not go for lessons with a professional instructor, only that one day just over a year ago, I put on my partner’s flippers and followed her in until I no longer felt the ground at a resevoir we liked to walk and picnic along. Within days, I was following her in deeper and deeper, until weeks later her father taught me the technicalities of the various strokes. I cannot say I have perfected my strokes, and that is far beyond the point of it all.

Because more than training to do a swimming race and snorkelling to my heart’s content has been the gift of silent spread-eagle floats to watch the stars. It is here that I have said my quiet prayers, Where I have listened, and felt the presence of those spirits I thought would only ever visit me in my dreams. It is in the stillness that comes with being carried by infinite bodies of water that those things that often bring healing can be just as dangerous if they are not respected. Which is not to say they should be feared. Only that I can never truly know my own power and that of the elements surrounding me, until I have honoured them as they should be.

I know I will continue to come to this place. Not only for the silence but for all that it has come to mean. It is where I began writing again. It is where I began healing again.

It is where I began to come home again.

Learning to breathe again

A beautiful life lies within me.

It is words that have remained my closest companion. The whispered prayer that echoes in my mind when I am alone and the negative thoughts come knocking. They do not come around, unannounced, for lounging visits as often anymore. But knock they do.

It is words that remind me to slow down. To stop some of the moving parts, to take a breath, and to allow the mind clutter to go. Which is to say; my healing need not happen right now nor does the process have to be “fixed.” Perhaps the point is that it doesn’t need to be fixed at all. Because ultimately, even when my black girl magic grows weary, having it all neatly lined up is not the point.

And just as I have always channelled my pain to create a beautiful life, I am doing it again. Because I will always have it in me to learn, to shed, to hold my story with kindness. Except today, the channelling is simply in breathing again. It is in holding no requirement for a specific pace. Not unless it is packed alongside those intentions and truths where my black girl magic rests her head when she grows weary.

Love (ly)

To be love(d), and love(d) well💚💜

Musing Bumbles

It is queer
but when we fight
I see the frequently missed beauty
It lies in the unspoken;
The way you sleep
The fleeting eye contact
Watching you make our bed
The endless effort with our family
Your awkward, uncertainty amongst people
Glistening eyes and wrinkled cheeks as you chuckle
The zest, veracity and gumption in every step
Your adamant boundary setting
Mostly your faint, inviolable, character filled snores

It is queer
but queer is
pure
it is the unspoken truths

Such is love (ly)

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Unfinished Pieces: Untitled

We never talk about the houses.

About these  houses in Gardens, Woodstock, Observatory and Rondebosch that we have turned into homes.

One Christmas Eve morning when my fiancée and I had our families over from Centurion and Durban, our oven packed up. So in the midst of all the happy chaos, I ended up on a friend’s couch, stoned, with the aroma of lamb roast wafting through her home. It was here that I realized; the space was beautiful, but not entirely personal. On a gut level, I got that. In my own silent effort to cushion the blow of a body displaced, I have always filled my spaces with personal, sentimental paraphernalia when I have moved to unfamiliar places. Yet even that does not mean that beyond the door will be comfort, safety, love, from those closest to us.

“Another one (who looks like me) was killed today.” – Koleka Putuma

And for most who are not, home is no longer the place we grew up in.

Unfinished Pieces

Those words again; Change. Moving on. Adaptation. It struck me today how hard it is to personify these realities. To be within the throes of uncertainty and anticipation and above all, nervous excitement. To travel along the South African coast with my best friend and Fiancee (eek! a whole other post) after packing up the lives we built individually and then together in Cape Town, fill the backseat of our little car with all the luggage we could fit into all the nooks and corners, and to then drive  our asses to Durban. It has been an incredible journey to share with the love of my life. But it has also been hard.

I have struggled to simply rest. It struck me as I was attempting to make pancakes at 05:40 this morning that perhaps this was precisely the thing I have been struggling with over the past few weeks. We designed our trip specifically so we would pause along the beach for a few days at a time in order to rest and to care for ourselves. Instead I have battled to truly quieten the noise and to pause in a way that would allow me to even begin to be restored.

Yet the incredibly wholesome -to-my-core thing about being a woman who runs with the wolves AND having the moon show up as she has chosen to is the ocean of twilight insights that will still knock on your door specifically when you now stand with arms wide open to receive the affirmation that has been having patience with my mind and my body.

Once again, I was called to remember that it’s okay to not be okay, that it’s okay to be restless about not having “anything” to do within a specific time frame or deadline. That it’s okay to make the decision to break from it all; the academic obligations and patient care . That it’s okay to simply sit for a whole day and read a book in a sunroom.

To say struggling with the guilt and frustration behind this would be grossly and understated. And so I let go. For the first time in a while, I surrounded myself with those affirmations and intentions I would set alongside a patient I care for.  It is difficult to reconcile these  two experiences which I do not yet have the emotional capacity to make sense of.

Because ultimately, this is all to say; slowly, I am coming back to myself. To do what I can – sure, but to also hold myself accountable for enhancing the self-love  I know my very soul deserves. This has started to mean accepting those parts of myself that are not always able to show up to life. Because that’s the thing with mental illness and health too, that you at times strive only for a day at a time. And now that I am able to show up in this way again, I want to also celebrate my bad-assery – for  still being here and shit.

Which is also to say; I want to share those attempted blog posts I never quite finished, the ones I could not sit long enough to write til the end. Because they – those parts of me too – they are worth being given the honour they deserve for simply being there throughout my journey even when it was hardest. This is the hope even though I have battled to write for over a year now. For the ones that matter more for all the ways that they speak to the scariest bits of this twenties thing too.

For now, I look only to walk the path while celebrating the unfinished pieces I merely thought were mistakes.

04:10

How often we say we’re “tired” when this is what we really mean to say;

“I’m sad”

“I’m broken”

“I’ve grown numb”

Perhaps it’s in the silence that the darkness comes to clutch our souls just as we do cloaks in the winter

23:59

“I want to feel your heartbeat,” she said as her fingers slid across his chest

“First you have to find my heart”

She realised, too late, that it had grown hollow where his heart once was. 

She realised, too late, that he didn’t want his heart to be found.