I’m kind of a big deal

Before the heading of this post makes you vomit, please keep on reading.

After various interventions, a change in my mindset has finally occurred.

You see, the thing is: I don’t really ever make myself off as being important, always raising others above me and making some people and their needs more important than mine. It’s not something intentional, but just the way I have been wired. Helping and supporting others makes me happy and I feel more on top of the world when I’m able to sit down and help a friend in need.

Having always had a superhero complex, this is the only reason why I do what I do. Not for seeking attention or making myself off to be a martyr or a philanthropist of sorts. I do it ’cause it’s what makes me happy and my life worth living.

Unfortunately, as human beings are, this has been taking advantage of countless times by many people. Sometimes, I willingly sat back out of intense love for this person, other times I didn’t know what was happening and I was being blindsided.

But, the thing is just, when you give too much to the world and everyone else, you seldom spare a thought to yourself.

After a recent discussion this weekend with my two of my best friends (Mienke & Ancomien) and my best friend’s mother, who is like a second mother to me, I have had the cogs and gears in my head grinding overtime and re-evaluating this. The first thing for them was that I needed to stop sparing thoughts for others while skipping myself, secondly I needed to stop defending people who were robbing me dry of my good warmheartedness and thirdly I needed to start valuing myself MUCH more.

With a shocked expression, I sat back and didn’t reply at first. I then continued to tell them that this is in my DNA and that I really don’t see myself changing it. I will always help people and never spare a second thought to myself. But, I was reprimanded that I could achieve a well enough balance between the two. Valuing myself enough and caring for others.

Recently, a lot of teen suicides and 20-somethings giving up on life have graced the front pages of our local newspapers here in South Africa. I suspect this is not just a local occurrence and that it’s like this throughout the world at the moment. Suicide, being a thing close to me, is something I have come to condone, judge and understand all at once.

Looking at the overall moral among youngsters, we have all seemingly succumbed to the demons of this world in some way or another. With their fingers lingering up our spines and whispering sweet nothings into our ears, there is a general stigma these days that we are worthless and at most nothing special. The world has broken most of us, while some survivors barely cling on and other just make the final decision that their lives aren’t something special at all.

Two weeks ago, I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, for a drink or two. Halfway into the discussion I had to hear that he was recently in a clinic after trying to commit suicide. It was a shock to me. Anger welled up and I was soon interrogating him to try and find out what made him do and why he would try and hurt so much people around him.

It was soon clear that he believed he had no value here at all and that he felt like he couldn’t help anyone anymore, if he couldn’t even help himself.

Nonetheless, we continued talking about everything. As I divulged about how hectic my life was and that I also felt like I was letting a lot of people down, and maybe most importantly myself, he lost his cool. “Pot calling the kettle black, much? You preach to me that I need to value myself more, but you don’t even remotely do the same? Really now – you of all people who has so much going and a lot of people at your feet, and people who would give the world to you should raise you self worth a lot.”

All in all… After much deliberation and thinking, I’ve decided to sit back and up my own ante. It’s time that I need to take things up a notch and start knowing that I am kind of a big deal – without becoming egotistical and a douche bag.

And I think it’s time that this becomes a movement I can reciprocate to others out there who are in doubt about their worth.

Just know, that even if it doesn’t seem that way, you are worth a lot more than you’re making yourself off to be. Your value is what drives you and you just hanging in there makes you a superstar in your own way.

Serve as a waking inspiration and inspire others by being a big deal and never stop fighting against the world.

Just always remember: You’re kind of a big deal. So roll with it.

*365 days later*

Denial. Bargaining. Anger. Depression.

The four friends I have come to known in the span of year’s time. Sucking the life out of me at times, infuriating me beyond compare, driving me beyond the edge of sanity and letting me dwell in the darkness…

It was the four friends I have now come to say goodbye to. I no longer need their company. They have become strangers – isolated from my life.

These “friends” are also four of the five stages of Grief.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross created a model for grief years ago. We all know the story – she was surrounded by patients in a hospice who were terminally ill and she noticed how everyone had these four “friends” by their side. These stages were also noted in people touched by death.

Now, a few hours shy of the anniversary or my former boyfriend’s suicide, I have come to terms with four of the five stages of grief. After a troublesome, tumultuous and sorrow ridden year, I am now at a space in time where calamity seems to be surrounding me more and more.

If you ask me if I knew this day would arrive… I will blankly stare at you and say: Nope. I gave up on that hope the day I stood beside his casket.

Life has since passed and time has not stood still for me. Time seems to be the only constant that has moved on with me for now – other things are still to come. Change is on the horizon. Peace is knocking at my door. A new me is dawning and acceptance seems to be introducing himself to me.

Confession: I have been afraid of this day for some time now.

Would I be ready? Would I be equipped to face acceptance and feel strong enough to pursue it? Was it worth all the tears, pain and broken pieces of my heart to come to this point and not leave this chapter of my life satisfied?

Well. Guess what. Not ready. Far from ready.

I still hate him with a fiery passion. People seldom try to understand it all, but they rarely understand why I am so quick to hate him while all his other loved ones still scrape together love for him.

I hate him for calling quits on his life, friends, future, loved ones, family, soul mate and…me. No one ever expected anything from him, but only to live and share his sorrow with other’s. He never did. He kept it hidden, like many other secret lives he led. The secrets upon secrets that tore him apart has tore me apart. And not just me… Everyone else who gave a damn about him.

I’ve fallen out of love with him and this hatred has grown to become an overpowering emotion to help me through each day.

Where I thought it wouldn’t be possible to even remotely survive, hatred has powered me through a day with the constant reminded that I can’t give up hope or call it quits, even if I wanted to. I wanted to prove to him that it’s possible to go above and beyond pain, without giving up.

You might stop me in my tracks and reprimand me that I’m far from acceptance. Right so. I won’t fight you on that.

I am however going to challenge you on the points that I am ready to step into the dawn of a new light.

As this sullen day passes, I’m no more the boy who’s boyfriend killed himself. I’m no more the widow. I’m no more the grieving son, the friend with a bag of sorrow on his shoulders. I am a new person to take on the world by storm. A new dawn is waiting for me and as far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to embrace that.

I might not have come to terms with most of R’s death, but I have come to terms that we are not longer an “us”. It’s only me now.

Me.

Only I can move on now and make my world a fantastic place to live in. In this lies the acceptance I speak of. I have accepted the pieces of my broken heart, the lies that tore me apart, the hole and huge gap left in my life with R’s passing and the sadness that has taught me how to live closer to my own fractured pieces of my heart.

Acceptance. It comes in different forms and as grief has different stages, I’m ready to close this chapter in my life.

Stepping into the light of this new dawn, I’m ready to say goodbye to him and hopefully, soon enough, drop the hatred and keep him in a special place within my heart.

Put yourself in his shoes…

It was a week since I was back in South Africa, from my rather life changing trip to Namibia. My head was still reeling and I was in desperate need of finding some

familiar ground to just feel like I was back home. But my mind was in another place and it was not the best situation for me and hectic work situation.

Tracing the culprit as to my mind being on his own wondrous path, I realised it all started with me opening Pandora’s Box in Namibia. In this case, it was all the feelings on R I had closed the lid on to cope with his passing. A good idea at the time I did it, but whilst spending vast amounts of time on the wide stretches of the African Savannah, re-opening these feelings, I knew it was a bad idea. Rushing in, causing havoc and making a ruckus, my mind almost exploded and I knew that this would have to be dealt with. ‘Cause you never get to put a lid back on Pandora’s Box… Or so the myth goes.

For the first day or two, I just sat and let every small and possible feeling rush over me. Have it be a flicker of hope that he might still be alive, a inch of courage that I might finally be okay, sadness for the fact that he is not here anymore or depression for the timely death he chose to do unto himself… These feelings became my new best friends as I continued along the stretches of road ahead of me. As I discovered Namibia, I discovered new facets to my grief.

After the dust settled, I started dissecting everything. Okay… Maybe over-analyzing it. But I faced the cold hard fact that these emotions needed to be dealt with.

Some emotions lead to realisations of his death. Things, that at the time of his death, I was not able to see clearly. It hit me square in the gut, to be honest.
While thinking I could not be shocked even more by the situation surrounding his suicide, it hit hard to realise that he for instance dropped more than just once that he was thinking of suicide and that he was getting to a point where he was making sure we were looked after and equipped to remotely deal with him not being around anymore. I would say this worsened my guilt about him dying and I had to stop at the side of the road and get out at some point to breathe.

As I stood by the side of the road, I stared over the mountains and the sky. Trying to calm myself. It was a stretch of gravel roads between farms, in the middle of nowhere and I just stood soaking up the silence. Whilst standing like that, a wild fox came out the bushes on the side of the road and sniffed around. When he saw me panting at the car, he stood still. I stood still. We stood still. I caught his eyes and he caught mine. For a good minute we stared at each other. One stressing over the sight of a predator and survival, the other craving survival over a wave of grief.

What happened next might sound crazy. At the risk of sounding crazy, please don’t judge me.

It was as if the dark, storm clouds in my head disappeared and made space for one single thought. Stop wasting energy on trivial matters and put yourself in his shoes…

The thought reverberated through my head. Hard. I saw the fox still staring at me. Maybe it was some act of God or gods? Maybe it was just a force of nature. But I had a silent guide to show me what to do with these feelings and emotions. The fox, after a while, just swept his head to the side again and went on with his merry way.

As I got back into the car, I felt a lot more collected and calm. I started to think on all the energy I had wasted the past months fretting over the people and factors leading to his death, all the negatives that came out after he passed and the bad that was around while he was still alive. How I was clinging onto that and making sure I never forget that, was astounding to me…

It wasn’t till I got back to South Africa, that I was reminded about putting myself in his shoes. Driving home one afternoon, listening to one of R’s all time favourite artists, Tracy Chapman, a song of her came onto my Ipod. Fast Car. In that moment, I felt a lot of R through her lyrics and suddenly found me putting myself in his shoes.

Thinking how the depression must have crept onto him and how it must have remotely felt to start thinking suicide would hurt less than living on this earth.

What it might mean to lose sight of who you are, what you are doing on Earth and the ridiculous standards people hold you to at certain times.

When making a small mistake snowballs into one huge escalated spiral of mishaps and wrongdoings, and when you have a moment of sanity and clarity you realise what you were doing and the guilt wracks you.

Then deciding that rather cutting out your heart metaphorically would be better, rather to be tortured every waking moment with feelings you can’t deal with.

I suddenly understood him a bit better. The questions I still had, seemed to be irrelevant now. The anger and hatred for him, slipping through cracks of light. More understanding and compassion making its way into the dusky room.

So, 11 months down the path of grief, I have somehow come to a point where I can sit down at a poker table with death, depression, loss, understanding as well as the almighty zen and face the three of them all at once, knowing I have enough strength to do this. If you asked me 11 months ago if I EVER saw myself at this point, a teary eyed shell of a man would have said the chance of dying of a broken heart would’ve been more of a reality than this. Yet, here I am.

At some point, unloading baggage from your shoulders to clear space is not such a bad thing. It should be a time in a moment where you can reflect on life for a tiny bit, and grow from what it is trying to teach you.

It’s easier to hate, than to love (right now)

[29 weeks]

I hate him.

With every inch of me I hate him. He left me, he chose to do what he did and leave and hurt everyone around him. He spared no memory for one single moment as to how much we love him and would do for him.

He hurt me. He ripped every inch of me and walked away with a huge chunk of me. Without my consent. How was it not possible for me to not hate him? I mean, seriously.

It was easier for me to hate R, than to love him.

Let’s call a spade a spade and say that I might have finally moved into the “anger” stage of this grief process I’m moving through.

Crossing off Denial and Bargaining off the list, I guess Anger was my new friend.

I’ve hated a lot of people in my life and used much energy to hold a grudge, but never before have I hated someone like I’ve been hating on R lately. This was a new, surreal type of anger that filled every gaping void of pain within me and surged out at any given moment when I would hear of someone talking about R or mention him. The look I would get in my eye once ago when someone mentioned him, was now something of the past. This anger was here to stay for now.

Although I knew this was coming my way, I really didn’t anticipate how severe this hatred would be. Surely, we all know how powerful hate is above love and longing, but one can never be too certain of the power it will hold in your life once you’ve gone through something traumatic and serious as I have.

The dreams I have been getting of R, has not stopped altogether. In actual fact, it’s become worse and resembling psychological torture at best. My anger and hatred has spilled over to the dreams as well and I would often wake up in pain, finding myself punching the wall or throwing my pillow over the room. In a way, the dreams were a blessing in disguise. I could vent the anger towards him, even if it was a memory of him.

Looking at my life as well, it seemed that the hatred had started consuming me on another level as well. A portion of me still had love for everything and everyone I chose to keep close to me, but this virus was making me burst out more and attack people often. Under a careful guise of “standing up for myself” , I’m starting to fear that this hate-virus would start to take unnecessary and uncalled victims pretty soon.

I’m just glad of one back door this hatred and anger has thrown wide open: an open mind.

This has allowed me to still keep track of what I’m doing and foreseeing that this might become a problem. Luckily I can now call myself out on this problem before it consumes me.

Also, it’s easier to hate, than to love (right now).

Love required me to feel every painful reminder of what he’d done to me and that he’s not here anymore. That I miss him and everything he’s done for me and that I won’t ever get to see him again.

Hate allowed me to make room for something less painful – one emotion that could shut the door on all the others. It was in actual fact way more easier to hate than to love.

In grief, there is no easy way to follow suit.

This was a battle that I would survive, with a few more life lessons in tact.

I have to survive, right? I just have to.

Dream a little dream of me…

[26 weeks]

There was an intense stare. The words reverberated through me. My heart was racing and my fists were clenching tighter. It was a fight that had started for some absurd reason, but it seemed like it had a purpose. Like it was happening for the right reason and that whatever was being said, needed to be said. His eyes hit mine again, trying to stare me down. I remember them, the same way as they stared me down the last time we had an intense fight.

I shook violently awake. It was a dream. A nightmare? It was a dream. I tried calming myself, but it was 03:00 in the morning and the darkness, tears rolling down my cheeks and the emotions flooding over me that was far more overpowering than me seeking refuge from calamity.

This was not the first dream I had of R. But it was the first dream in which we violently fought over everything that had happened. It seemed so real to me that even as I sat in the dark room, breath racing, crying, I felt like he was there beside me. Waiting for me to retort and him to dish out the next argument.

I laid my head back down. It didn’t help to lull myself to sleep. The damage had been done. I stared at the ceiling. I suddenly longed back to the glow in the dark stars I had stuck to it when I was younger. They always calmed me down…

The next morning I hopped onto the train. I could feel the dream still rattling on my cage. I couldn’t remember what we were fighting about. It was like I knew we fought, but my brain was somehow cocooning me against the already painful experience of a ‘fight’. As I sat down in the seat, and I looked out of the window, my tired brain lost it’s grip and I got a flashback from the dream.

I wasn’t fighting at full strength. The hatred was there. Anger was plenty and the resent was flowing over the cup. But, somehow I knew it still wasn’t the full capacity at which I wanted to fight with against R’s decision to end his life. Something was keeping me back. I also saw how I let him march over me and try and pilot my feelings and arguments. I shook my head as to physically try and force the flashback to dream out of my head.

An entire day was spent on the dream. Analyzing it. Analyzing it some more. Trying to put it out of my mind. Trying to remember some more.

That night, I got home and felt like I had just ran a marathon. Plopping myself down on my bed, I started once again at the ceiling.

Before I closed my eyes I took in a deep breath, jumbled the words I wanted to say around in my head and summoned the courage to talk to R.

Surely enough, I was choking the words out.

It was like a steam engine. At some point, I was gasping for air and I felt a bit stupid that I was talking to the walls and expecting my dead boyfriend to listen and hear me. But, I powered on.

When I was done, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

This time, I dreamt I was walking along the V&A Waterfront and browsing the stores. Soon enough I spotted R in the dream. He was sitting on the docks looking over the water. I was hesitant to go talk to him. I didn’t go talk to him. I left him on the docks…

I still feel guilty to a great extent for not being there enough for R before everything went down. That he might have been throwing so much signs my way and been crying for help and I just chose to turn a blind eye. In a way, this guilt wracks me and I don’t know how to cope with it.

I just wish I could turn back time and make more of an effort.