When I decided to jump head first into the dating pool no one cautioned me- a non swimmer of the dangers of my action, because I almost died. And I mean this in the most literal sense. I’ve heard stories about people who wake up mid surgery or where the anaesthesia stops working and you feel the pain throughout the whole procedure and I never thought it would be me going through open heart surgery non medicated. You know what sucks? the person who was performing the surgery was not even a doctor, he was a very good actor. So good, so talented that he could pass as anything and everything.

The first role he assumed was that of a lover. A man with a pure heart and intensions. The first conversation we had he affirmed me, called me beautiful and said he had found a wife in me. Funny enough, a few months prior to this mistake number twenty something said I should “cut the wife act”. This guy, not worthy of mention here said I acted like a wife instead of a girlfriend😂. I don’t even know what that meant, because it was a great evening, we were having my favourite glass of cab sav and he hit me with “you make me feel like I want to get married but I am not even about that life, so cut the wife act”. You know what F@ck mistake twenty something because from that conversation I had to act out of character so that I ease off the wifey act. Anyway I am derailing here, this is not about him but about who appeared as my knight in shining armour. You see, I like my men soft with a touch of sternness , intentional and straight to the point and he touched all of the bases. He called me all the time, spoiled me, called me beautiful you know everything I liked. I remember there was a point where I was not allowed to use my card with him around, ladies cry with me 😭😭 do you know how blessed I felt because I did not have to pay for all the nice things I like. But it was beyond this, he was my spiritual compass, I fell in love with the God I thought he had in him that submission came naturally and I almost worshipped him. Talk about blasphemy.

Before I met this god I made a celibacy pledge to my God, I didn’t want to stand before God and have Him smell another man on me, He is a jealous God anyway. If I was to ever go on my knees for anyone it would be for Him. I was on a spiritual journey and he met me and vibrated on the same wavelength, well at least that’s what I thought before he traded his armour for scrubs. I remember the day of the surgery, I lay there, my body rejecting this transplant. He claims his intention was to make me love him more, because this heart was not operating how he wanted so he had to do take matters into his own hands. When I was still confused about the whole thing, I sugar coated it, looked for fancy words to call it, to tone it down a bit. I said he forced himself onto me. I mean rape doesn’t sound nice. Its dirty, it makes you look filthy, weak and its derogatory. And that’s not a good look, especially not for me- a very sexually liberated person.

But when someone takes a part of you like that, you lose your mind. Before this incident I did not understand why people self harm, but there is a point where you get tired of feeling your heart bleed, having that much internalised pain and the tears just stop but the hurt doesn’t go away, you want to see it, feel it that so you cut yourself. You think maybe seeing the blood will make you feel better, luckily I never went ahead with it. When someone cuts you open like that, a part of you dies and its difficult to grieve the loss of self. You are physically there but you start to decompose, it starts internally and you can almost see your body change, you hate yourself, you blame yourself, you remember the red flags that you ignored and you finally liquify. Your whole being and self awareness fades. Perpetrators have this thing of making you question your sanity and the truth that your body and mind constantly remind you. And it is a constant battle between you and your brain. That is why there is need to seek psychological help.

I liken this abuse to physical assault, it makes sense why victims go back to their perpetrators; they make you believe they can “fix” what they broke. No one wants damaged goods anyway so you might as well stay right? But its crazy because you can never heal in the same place that broke you, most of us never know how to fix what we broke that’s why we pay people to help us fix. So if you are fortunate enough to snap out of the haze before your abuser does much damage, seek professional help. I am on a journey to healing, its been long and draining but me being able to share this is evident that therapy works, but you don’t have to wait for a traumatic experience for you to start. A few weeks ago I was still on victim mode but I am slowly moving towards survival. Turns out I dived into the deep end way too soon , I will stick to the shallow end until I can at least stay afloat.

This thought crossed my mind as I was reflecting on my career choice forty five minutes into what was supposed to be a 30 minutes study break. How was a 17 year old trusted to make a career decision. And when i look back 17 year old me was a delinquent, naughty,troublemaker. Me and bad decisions was synonymous but somehow I was entrusted with such.

I don’t think I am depressed( I know a lot of us throw the word around like a sprinkle of parsley for garnish, we are a generation that takes aesthetics too far anyway). Anyway I was wondering how life would have turned out if I had my life set out for me by my parents like it’s common in k-dramas(Korean equivalent of Hollywood to me). Would life have been better? I mean how do you tell a child it’s okay to follow their dreams? Are they even able to draw a line between dreams and fantasies? Is there even a difference? Is Hwan in Korea groomed and aligned for a career in medicine all their life not better off compared to me who had to figure it out on their own? Can he be unhappy when he knows nothing beyond going to school and being a doctor?Isn’t our problem a result of the choice to explore other avenues? Because Dora is always on an adventure, looking for something new and exciting. Now imagine this lack of clear cut and defined plans coupled with public school.

The same notion applies to their arranged marriages. You know family x is good or has business partnerships with yours so you groom your son to marry into that family to keep the relationships going. It’s a strategic decision for generational wealth and procreation, it is proven to work. Imagine not having to tell Max what your favorite color is and teach him your love language because he’s been there all your life. It sounds so much easier for me. Because trust me the dating pool is so dirty these days, figuratively and literally. There’s algae there and every step leads to an irky mess it’s really frustrating and sad.

Millennials and Gen Z wear being a sad generation with pride. We embrace it it’s almost painful to see. But that’s our reality, the world is so gloomy and sad. I liken life to call of duty, we are in war zone and people who have cheat sheets don’t give them for free. Self help books, podcasts, therapy are the cheat sheets we can use to manovre this battle ground. But what happens when you don’t have the resources for these cheat sheets? Do you ever think you’re okay then go to therapy and find out that you’re a walking disaster? Lol If you haven’t set up just one meeting and you will get an eye opener. My issue is, therapy is like gym, once you start you have to keep going to maintain the progress it’s almost crazy. But it’s just a matter of how bad you want to be okay, so my advice go for it.

I’m still reading up on the Korean culture and the effects of their upbringing on their mental health. I could use our parents because the concept of a more “controlled” upbringing is similar, they were told to become teachers and nurses etc this a career path set out for them. Others their marriages were arranged as well, but I strongly believe that their parenting styles are a trauma response so we have to break the chain of repeated cycles and bad parenting. Maybe there is something that our grandparents missed that we could learn from the Korean culture. So Annyeonghi gaseyo for now.

I used to take pride in being a ride or die. Well there is nothing wrong with sticking around through good and bad,ups and downs but a healthy mind and relationship allows you to draw the line between being a ride or die and being plain stupid and a pushover. I remember the first time this guy told me I wasn’t like other girls, I was special and “understanding”

Understanding is a nice way of being told you tolerate people’s bullshit. Before now I was a strong,independent woman 😂😂. I still am, but to a certain degree. I believed I could take care of a man, assume solely provision and emotional support. Ooh well I never really believed that until I met lets call him M. You know this “tell me about yourself and how you wanna be loved” is kinda flawed? Its a narcissist’s foolish mate. It’s three moves, s/he asks this question, acts the part and lastly uses your “love language” to manipulate you.

I remember part of my answer to M’s question was “I want a man who’s loyal and who’ll trust me with his emotions, be open” . So that’s who he became, was I not happy when my man poured his heart out!!!Then there was a point when I said I respect a man who isn’t too proud to apologize. So the apologies came, not your simple I’m sorry…but I’m sorry I did 1,2,3 because of 4,5,6 that you did and I told you 7,8,9 happened before that is why I’m like this. So him pouring his heart out was just a way to manipulate me everytime he did something wrong. Sort of you knew what you were getting yourself into because I told you all of my darkest secrets. So guess what I did, sucked it up and loved this person with all their demons. You ever thought you’d love the flaws out of someone? No? Okay I thought I would, I’d love M so much that his negatives will somehow disappear:

But you know what happens? You instead lose your own identity, you become a little bit like that person. When you drag your self worth in the mud like that you lose yourself, you normalize the abnormal. You settle, but why would you settle for bullshit like that? It turns out your self esteem is in the pits like that. You know what you deserve but for some reason you think you you’re not worthy, it’s not for you but for Patricia, good things like the idea of love that you have in your head it not for people like you. It’s deep,it’s psychological, the relationships, intimate or not are an extension of how you value yourself. Why would you keep certain friends,why would you fall in love with that wrong person? I believe it is an extension of self harm, some people slit their wrists, some of us just entertain the wrong people. You know how they hide the razor cuts? You hide the person you “love”. It doesn’t make sense,how many of us hide the things we love? I mean hiding, not being private. You know there is a thick line between privacy and secrecy? The biggest red flag is keeping what makes you happy a secret.

It’s an addiction, you are not proud of who and what you attract. Be accountable enough to know that you are the problem, your codependency makes you attract these narcissistic people. You believe you can “fix” people, you don’t want to give up on your M because at some point in your life someone gave up on you and don’t want to be person, you know how painful it is to be alone. You want to become who you didn’t have when you were younger so you attract all these wrong people. But what if you don’t give up on you? What if you start reparenting you. What if you try fixing you before you even think of fixing M? What if you admit that there’s something wrong with you? So let’s start this journey together, will do it like it is an AA meeting. I’ll start Hi, my name is Mickey and I have a problem.

I had to learn for lack of a better word to be “stupid” for the first time in my life when I was 18. I remember it was December when the results came out and I had failed the semester. I didn’t know how to react to this, mind you I’ve always been the smartest in the room so this was foreign, this me not being smart enough was alien to me. You see when I was younger I had no friends, my first friend was a boy named Jim that I met in a story book, my love for reading was cultivated at a young age, from 6 I could read and my parents bought me a set of Uncle Arthur’s bed time stories. If you know this book series you had a wonderful childhood. I remember we’d go to the library during school holidays with my sister and my cousins, I later learned the library was where they met boys when my young self went there for my love of reading. In my pre teens I went to the library for fun, that was one thing I enjoyed. I wrote and won most essay competitions as well. That was just me, the weirdo that went to the library after school. In the long list of how my bullies described me back in the day, smart always featured and honestly that’s the only thing that really made school bearable because that’s the only thing I could shut them up with. The fact that I was that intelligent. I loved this version of myself and no matter what life threw at me I knew I’d always have my brain fight for me. Now here I was a few years down the line and I had to come to terms with losing that identity.

Do you have that one friend you know would take your secrets to the grave? It was my father for me, I wasn’t counting the number of pills I was ingesting but all I know is that the suicide note was half way done, he walked in and for the first time in a while he called me “mme”(mom in Setswana) because he had stopped addressing me as such because I wore delinquency perfectly for a while until that time, he made me understand why I got away with it. He said the reason why he never locked me out when I snuck out the house was because he always thought one day criminals would chase me and I’d run home to find the door locked and they’d kill or rape me on the doorstep and he’d find me there and know and live all his life knowing that he was responsible for my calamity. For some reason he believed he almost killed his own mother when he was born, so he didn’t want to risk killing me as well. I never got a chance to ask what he meant by that. I don’t know how he induced the vomiting but I woke up at the doctor’s, went home a few hours later went back home and never spoke of this, we never told anyone. He literally took this to the grave.

I’ve read a lot of self help books that have suggested that I start writing my thoughts whenever I feel overwhelmed and too consumed so here I am. I think of this as a therapy session, minus a person sitting across of me asking questions when at times I just want them to simply listen. Have you ever had a set of eyes locked into yours and you are there yearning for a bit of compassion and it’s just not there? Have you ever been tired of not being okay? Before I go on about my sadness let me try introducing myself.

i say try because truth be told I’ve lost my identity. It’s not a first, have you ever had to know yourself all over? Does it make sense? Okay let me try to make it make sense. Have you ever been person a but then something happens and you inevitably become person b? I’ll give you an example, I’ve always been Motshabi, named after my grandmother, I believe I was given this name because I have always been my father’s favorite daughter and he loved his mother dearly so it only made sense that he give me the name. I remember first date questions like “So what do you look for in a man?” And I’d say I want a man who’d love me like my father loves me,unconditionally, a man who makes sure I never lack of anything, a man who’d never make me feel ugly or unwanted or not good enough. Remember how I said life strips you of your identity? Well that has always been me. Now that the only thing I’ve ever known, that I’m lovable is gone, who am I now? How am I supposed to know now? How am I supposed to be a Motshabi with a Letlhogile that loves her dearly? Who am I without the love that I have experienced before? Do I get to speak on love now that I’ve lost it? Who sets the tone now for how I should be treated? I’ll try again,after learning how to introduce this new me without him.

Show me the person who gave a child a bow and arrow

Entrusted a child with ability to conjugate souls,entertwine hearts

Show me the person to blame for this

Because you cant give a child something and expect him not to play with it

For I remember I was once a child  and everything I swa was a plaything

And I thought oops! Would correct the mistake if things went wrong

But iwas wrong as Cupid was

For his bow snapped and landed on me

And I thought for some twisted reason that I was in love

Lucky for me I made it through the wilderness of this fantasy

A playground of the mental mind

As a child I liked playing on monkey bars

Childhood memories rushed through ny mind as I bumped my head

I fell so hard for a moment I thought I was dead

My spirit lifted from my body

And I soared so high

Maybe I was actually high

And at times my spirit came back down

Confusion between reality and fantasies

Trying to sort it all out with a big bump on my head

A delusional state of mind I swera

Imaginary feelings of physical validation

Illusion of late night fears

Attempting to sort it all out

It all seemed so real

I felt the hot tears streaming down my face

The musical chords of my false emotions

I hated you Cupid

In the lands of reality it never existed

Like you it was all fantasy

Attempting to mix it with reality

But reality is God is love,love is God that’s the only love I know

So Cupid this was your Eulogy

Gone too soon for you are only a child

So Cupid am sorry

Im sorry I killed you

But they had to know,you are like what I felt for him a fantasy

In the beginning I was, standing in front of my king

As small as I am, I knew I could be whatever he wanted me to be

But he saw me as nothing but a pawn, so he pushed me in front of him

First two steps and I thought I was somewhat important to him

Little did I know he had a queen on the side

But remember that every piece can capture that queen

Remember you are the one who needs protection-King

Play your game carefully player

He said know your place, you a pawn

He up and left

Can’t blame him though, I knew he was a player

He is a player alright

But chess isn’t a game for the intellectually myopic

Wait, am I really a chess piece

I don’t know but all I feel in my chest is peace

He left but I feel at ease

You know it’s easy to do what you never thought you would do

For at a point in my life I thought I would never wear heels

I would rather climb a hill

Than fall in love, be someone’s girl for I was my boys’ boy

But that changed

I found him, a player

How I wish he played no other game but chess

But I took that chance

Little did I know he had a different kind of mate he was planning on

If he was a chess player he would have had the decency to say “check”

And I would have made a plan, to direct my steps

But I tripped

Fell flat on my face, dang these heels

Every step it hurt, but had to put up a fake smile on my face

Let’s face it, am a girl now, I can rock these heels

If you a chess player you would know how a foolish mate feels

Four moves of shame

Four moves, what a shame- meet the friends, meet the family, get flowers then the bedroom

I fell for the trap; I guess it’s called falling in love for this reason

You don’t know what hits you

But then it hit me, looking in front am four steps away

This pawn is about to be promoted

About to reign, though it didn’t rain but poured in my life

Like cloth am strongest when am damp

So let me just dump the trash from my past

Walk like the queen that I am

Yes, I can rock these heels

Yes I know how it feels

When the thought of you

No longer brings tears to my eyes

You are the one who is cold as ice

I’m warm, my smile says it all

So to life, I can’t be cold I   give my all

To my dreams, you have no expiry dates

All I have to do, like a good tailor is to alter my dress

For I must admit I lost a little

Different diet than what I was used to

But I can’t lose this dress

Just the stress

Its custom made anyway

But we made other customs

Those I can change

No more us for the only thing that goes well with u is s

That’s what you are

An arse