Life is process

I am a big believer in most things that require one to, in situations of conflict and difficulty, most situations really, but mostly those two, look at oneself and ones behaviour as opposed to automatically looking to blame another. Things like process and introspection. I came across this passage in Americanah…

“They did not fight again until the relationship ended, but in the time of Blaine’s stoniness, when Ifemelu burrowed into herself and ate whole chocolate bars, her feelings for him changed. She still admired him, his moral fibre, his life of clean lines, but now it was admiration for a person separate from her, a person far away.”

…and it struck me because it speaks precisely to process and introspection. After their break-up Blaine will probably never realise that his choice of ‘punishment’ for Ifemelu’s wrongdoing played a part in the breakdown of their relationship. He will probably think of this particular fight and credit it with causing the beginning of the end but he will place the blame on her (she lied about why she did not attend a protest he had planned - she attended a friend of a friends farewell party instead) but never think about how his reaction to that mistake also contributed to the breakdown of their relationship. And I guess we have all been guilty of this, placing the blame on our partner and completely neglecting the part we played…we are doing ourselves such an injustice.

2014 has been one hell of a year for me…filled with things I never saw coming. Some beautiful…some tragic. I have often described it as the toughest year of my life, but in a recent post about it in my diary…a reflection post of sorts…I called it my most successful year and that was so refreshing for me. Yes it was tough, but it was also extremely successful because I did so much growing this year. Because growth and success doesn’t usually come from the happy and chilled bits of life. But I believe growth comes, not only when we go through trying times, but when we are able to extract the lessons from them. And no, just living through it does not automatically mean you see and absorb the lesson.

It is very easy to see our partners’ faults and where they can change and do things better. But it’s extremely difficult to see our own shortcomings. One of the biggest lessons I have learned in the last couple of years is to constantly be aware of how my thoughts, actions and reactions are contributing to the growth or breakdown of my relationships. This is especially hard to do in rough patches. But process is process, in good or bad times. When someone who loves us hurts us it is very difficult to take a step back and think about how our own behaviour has contributed, or how, how we behave is going to contribute to making up or breaking up. Because a relationship is never a one sided affair, there is always a push and pull and your actions matter and play a role even if you are not necessarily the one in the wrong.

So what do I mean by being aware of process and your role in it? Here are a few examples:

• Your partner lies to you and instead of immediately placing blame you think “is there a way in which I am behaving that makes her feel like she can’t be honest with me?”
• Your partner starts acting like a crazy person and starts with the excessive where-are-yous; who-are-you-talking-to's. You think “have I done something in the past to lead her to believe that this type of behaviour is acceptable?”

At first glance it seems like I am saying blame yourself for your partners’ wrongdoings, but that is not what I am saying at all. You can ask yourself all these questions and not find anything in your behaviour that contributed to what they did wrong, and note I said ‘contribute’ not ‘caused’. But automatically blaming and refusing to think beyond that assumes that our partners are cruel people who intentionally hurt us, and yes, sociopaths do exist, but more often than not they are not our partners. Like in the case of Blaine and Ifemelu, he could not see past the fact that she lied long enough to sit down and ask her why. The fact that she lied is in itself an awful thing, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, there was a long (or short) list of events that led up to it. And taking the time to map process does not acquit the other of wrong doing, it helps you to understand and then take appropriate action from there, whether that is to move forward together or apart. But either way you are going to move forward, not wallow in the past feeling bitter and holding grudges, because like some very wise person once said…As long as it’s always the other persons fault, u will always be disappointed. Life is process, process that u partake in. What's YOUR role? And ya vele…that someone was me J

Tomorrow will be different but today I don’t feel like sharing you.

Monogamy: One partner for one partner

Polygamy: One husband, all the wives he can count, sometimes afford

Polyamory: Without googling ‘polyamory’ I am finding it difficult to explain it from memory as easily as I explained monogamy and polygamy. Of course I know what it is but I want to explain it in a way where you won’t sit and think “Oh you mean an open relationship”. Because that isn’t what it is and that isn’t what I mean. But I guess the dynamics of a polyamorous relationship are similar to my difficulty in explaining, properly, what it means.

There has been research and chatter about whether or not human beings are naturally monogamous creatures. And the results of this research and these discussions has always been that no. We are not. And I guess this opinion is largely based on the high rates of infidelity, oh, everywhere in the world. In a recent discussion with a friend about polyamory she said something which I think about 99% of the world’s population might be able to relate to. She said “I don’t know if I could ever be in a polyamorous relationship. I would much rather be with one person and do my other dealings in secret. And I would rather my partner cheated on me and hid it than told me about their love/like/lust for someone else. That would be too painful”.

I have been in monogamous relationships all my life. But the ideas of relationship and our partners that monogamy demands we subscribe to are what put me off. And this is one of the reasons why I have stopped identifying as monogamous.

In my opinion monogamous relationships have their foundation solidly built on ideas of possession. And that is where the problem, for me anyway, starts…

But it’s romantic. God it’s so romantic to be someone’s one and only. To know that they love you and you alone and only you have the privilege of calling them your partner. And let’s face it. The world isn’t designed for polyamorous relationship. Families consist of one mom and one dad. Or in some parts of the world a dad and a dad or a mom and a mom. But many moms and many dads. That’s pretty much unheard of! Even in dating relationships. To try to explain that you and/or your partner have more than one partner and NO! No one is a side-chick. Or even better. You are polyamorous, you identify as polyamorous but neither you nor your partner are seeing anybody else at the moment. It’s maddening.

So for me. Polyamory is:

•          First and foremost, my partner is STILL a human being, regardless of the fact that I love them. They remain a human being who is prone to mistakes and faults.
•          Understanding that loving somebody does not automatically switch off yours, or their, ability to be attracted to someone else.
•         Being able to have a discussion when it happens that you do meet and want to get to know this someone else
•          Being able to understand that this does not mean that I love my partner any less or that they love me any less.
•          Being honest…all the time
•          NOT just going around dating and sleeping with whomever I please when I please
•          Not keeping secrets when you have fallen for someone else
•          Acknowledging that you were born in a heteronormative, patriarchal society, and that shit hides itself in places that you don’t automatically think of so sometimes you act in ways that represent this system. And it’s ok. But you need to constantly be aware and check yourself
•          Acknowledging your own humanness and human desires and good and bad and faults and awesomeness and sharing ALL of these with your person, with your peoples.
•          Accepting and understanding that I cannot, and should not wish to dictate, the ways in which my partner shows love, therefore…
•          Accepting that just because she does not necessarily show love in the ways that I would, it does not mean she does not love me

I recently had a discussion with my wonderful friend Lee-Anne. I was telling her about an incident with my father regarding my sexual orientation and life choices. And I told her something that rings more true to me every single day. I said to her “Lee Lee, reinventing the wheel is exhausting. The world is not only built for a specific kind of person, and a specific kind of relationship, it’s built against anyone and everyone who doesn’t conform”.

I am a very optimistic person, sometimes a bit naïve. I said to Debbie in therapy once that what concerned me most about my relationship, or possibility of a relationship, with Sky was not that she was a woman, but the fact that she was older than me. I had never dated someone that much older than me. Granted I had never dated a woman either, but maybe it seemed more PC to be worried about her age as opposed to her gender. And I was naïve!! So naïve!!! Naïve in believing my life wouldn’t really change. Naïve in believing I wouldn’t really change. Naïve in believing nobody would have a problem with my choice in partner. And again I was naïve in thinking being in a polyamorous relationship was not going to feel like I was literally having everything I thought I knew about love and relationships sliced out of me.

That’s the thing about consciousness, you can’t control which areas of your life it does or does not seep into. It gets into E.V.E.R.Y.thing, like a pair of black socks, mistakenly put in with the white laundry.

There are days when I am the person I aim to be. Where I am killing this polyamory thing (you can tell today is not one of those days because I have referred to it as ‘this polyamory thing’). Where I am confident, secure, where I love the fact that I have been able to shed the veil of heteronormativity and make my own decisions about love and relationships. And there are days where I am not. Days where I am filled with resentment. Where the indoctrination has given itself some sort of energy boost. And it’s hard, it’s extremely hard to fight off. And it feels like a ten ton elephant is sitting on my chest and what else is there to do but give in? Because, like I said to Lee-Anne, reinventing the wheel is exhausting. Unlearning everything you have learned…about pretty much everything is exhausting. Starting from scratch is exhausting. Developing your own strategies and opinions is exhausting. Being aware of when the opinions that you think are your own could very well belong to the heteronorms and patriarchs, is exhausting. Being this person, being in this relationship in a world that is designed, specifically, to extinguish people like you…is exhausting.

But nobody said it would be easy. And fact remains, I would never ever trade any of this life for ignorance and complacency.

Sorry...Not sorry...

"I don't walk into a situation wanting to disrespect anyone, so if people are offended, then they're offended by the values contained within the content of what I am saying. And if you're offended by my values...well then f*ck it! You're supposed to be! I don't want misogynists to like me, I don't want people who hate black people to like me, I don't want people who are fronting to like me. It's taken me a long time, but I'm learning to embrace it, and to realise also, that a negative reaction can also be a positive measure of your impact"

Lebo Mashile

I can remember the exact day I became a feminist. It was the same day I met the One in Nine Campaign, a feminist organisation that also works with survivors of gender-based violence. They had approached the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) to collaborate on a case. CALS approached us to work on this case with One in Nine and so off we went on a mini-road trip to Rustenburg.

It was a Thursday morning and I got into the taxi and headed straight for the back. We all introduced ourselves and it wasn’t long before there was a very interesting conversation going on. I can’t even remember what it was about but I remember being moved. I tweeted “Sometimes you meet people and just being in their presence shifts something”. I just remember thinking, wow, these women are so smart and conscious and interesting….they are so interesting. I too want to be smart and conscious and interesting. Of course this was the beginning of the end for most things heteronormative in my life. There is something about becoming a feminist that calls for a complete revamp of your life. The seed is planted and one day, nothing but the seed of feminism is growing. It’s like a weed…or rather a super plant that cannot fully grow if everything that breeds patriarchy is not destroyed.

I recently attended a 10 day feminist school organised by the One in Nine Campaign and at the end of the first couple of sessions we were encouraged to write down a question or 5 that emerged from the session. Someone’s question struck me. They wrote “why is feminism so painful”. And I was like YES!!! Why is it? And I thought about it for a while and boiled it down to a similar but more specific question…”Why is consciousness so painful”

My girlfriend and I liken feminism and becoming a feminist to the Matrix and taking the blue pill, or is it the red pill? Either way, becoming a feminist requires seeing the world through a completely different set of eyes. It’s like visiting a new world, except it’s the old world. And it’s pretty and liberating and exciting, but it’s ugly.

I can also imagine though, that becoming a feminist, is hard for everyone around you, everyone who knew you before you became Neyo. I say this because lately I have heard a lot of “I don’t even know who you are anymore”, “you’re just going through a phase, I know the real you”. And I would be lying if I said it didn’t annoy the shit out of me. In a very recent trivialising of the feminist I have become, I was a little more than annoyed, I was hurt. Hurt because I was tired of people demonizing the person I have become and glorifying someone that was a little more palatable and a little less abrasive. But I am a big big believer in process and things not happening in a vacuum, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” school of thought and I realised that as hard as the change has been for me sometimes, it must be equally as hard for those who knew me, or at least thought they did.

Before I became a feminist, I was a very avid “non-feminist”. Those girls, unknowingly, who believe feminists are angry man-bashers who take everything too seriously. I volunteered at the kiddies ministry at my church. I wanted to get married and have 3 little boys. I believed in husbands being the heads of the household and wives having to be submissive. I believed and wanted all these things. In what must feel like overnight, I have become a very proud and some would say radical promoter of feminism. I no longer volunteer at the kiddies church (which has nothing to do with the kids and me not wanting to volunteer, but more to do with how open the church is to having a openly feminist and queer female leading their kids) and I still want to get married, but my ideas about the marital roles of husbands and wives – or in my case wives and wives – are very different.  I can see how the people who knew me before this transformation might feel duped and perhaps invalidated, not only by the changes that have gone on in my life, but by the things that I write about these changes.

I don’t often take the time to think about how becoming a feminist has impacted those around me, those I have loved and who have loved me back and I think it would serve me well in the future to be aware of, and sensitive to this. But to reiterate…

“If you're offended by my values...well then f*ck it! You're supposed to be! I don't want misogynists to like me, I don't want people who hate black people to like me, I don't want people who are fronting to like me."

I have spent a really long time fighting change. I have gone to therapy because the ways in which I was changing were freaking even me out. It’s been difficult, it is still difficult. But this is my life now. If you are offended…fuck it, and depending on your level of outrage, fuck you!

Poems that move me

My beautiful friend Tlangi Ngwenya introduced me to Button Poetry. And it is through these poems that my feminism started to grow... Enjoy :)

1. Patriarchy - Vanessa Marco

2. The Other Black man - T. Miller

3. Fantastic breasts and where to find them - Brenna Towhy

The period poem - Dominique Christina 

Dear Straight People - Denice Frohman 

UN-BECOMING

“I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake you and recast you.” Bell Hooks

I have recently come out of a 10 year relationship. 10 years sounds very impressive, especially for a 25 year old. But if I am honest with you, and myself, it only lasted 10 years (with about 1001 break-ups along the way) because I was beating a dead horse. And while some of those 10 years were the happiest of my life, they were also the most painful, and unnecessary. What is it about finding love, and keeping it, that literally drives us insane causing us to compromise not only our standards and sanity, but ourselves as well?

We’re socialized to believe very specific and rigid ideas about love. We meet, get to know, fall in love with, get engaged to, marry, have kids with and eventually grow old with said lovers, in very specific ways. We have movies, music, magazines and the mothership of all the evils I have just mentioned, pop psychology books, dedicated to educating us about all things love and all things good and acceptable about love. But it would seem all this knowledge and socialization often cause us stay in relationships that are completely wrong for us, and cause us to walk away from relationships, or potential relationships that could bring us a lot of happiness purely because it didn’t happen in a way that is deemed appropriate by society.

Beating a dead horse. As I mentioned I did this for 10 flipping years. I am not sure if you know, but 10 years is a bloody long time. And it causes me to wonder, why would I put myself, and him, through that? Now, like I said it wasn’t all bad and yes I did genuinely love said ex-boyfriend and a part of me probably always will, but I, yes me because I was the one constantly pushing this so incredibly obviously divine union, dragged it out for much longer than I should have. And for what? Like most of us do, I believed that this was the best there was out there and if I gave up on him and left I was sure to be disappointed and lonely for the rest of my life, which is a very long time when you take my age into consideration. Legitimate fear? Not so much.

During the 10 years of this relationship my family would say that I was a different person when I was around him, and I brushed this off as them, as usual, not knowing what they were talking about. But if I was honest with myself, it was true. With my family and friends I was a more bossy, louder, more opinionated, witty, quick-lipped and slightly less polished and lady-like. But…of course…I loved him, and I was different with him because he made me (almost dies of embarrassment) a “better person”. And I believed this, whole-heartedly. I believed that with him I was my best possible self, with him I could be my best possible self. That he was there to bring light, and goodness, and at some stage, even God. He brought me back to church. How could he not be my real life knight in shining armor?

But why couldn't I be my best possible self by myself? Why was the person I was with everyone else, not good enough for him? Why did she have to be, not improved on, not polished, but changed! And of course I can play the blame game and say he wanted to change me, he thought I wasn't good enough as is, he he he. But that wouldn't be the truth. I believed all those things about myself and that’s what I showed him. So much so that when who I really was could no longer be silenced he thought I was becoming a different person. He didn't know that I was just unbecoming all the things I wasn't to become and grow into all the things I was, all the things I am.

Which brings me to a lovely piece by Warsan Shire titled “For Women who are Difficult to Love. Below are the most important points:

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you

compares you to an impossible highway

to a burning house

you dizzy him, you are unbearable

every woman before or after you

is doused in your name

but you are always too intense

frightening in the way you want him

unashamed and sacrificial

and you tried to change didn't you?

closed your mouth more

tried to be softer

prettier

less volatile, less awake

You can't make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

I stayed because I loved him. I stayed because I thought he was better than me. I stayed because I thought I had hit the jackpot. I should have realized that not once in 10 years was I not trying to change and apologize and mold myself into something, someone suited for the glorious being that he was. And not once, did he really make me feel like I never needed to do any augmenting. I didn't realize this until I found someone who thought me, as is, 100% authentic, was the most incredible thing I could be and was baffled that I could ever want to try to be anything else.

Women, like love, are socialized in very specific ways. We are socialized to want very specific things and I think “Women who are difficult to love” are women who are themselves, uniquely themselves even when every single thing in society is screaming at you not to be. And at first we listen, but never for too long because the voice in your head is far too strong and too loud to be muffled and silence by society.

Becoming, or rather unbecoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were really meant to be isn't a walk in the park. It’s beautiful and amazing in all the ways you can imagine and all the ways that you can’t, but it is excruciating. There are mornings when I wake up and I can feel the sadness and mourning of what was, in the depths of my soul and I want to go back. Not because it was bliss, not because I don’t love the way my life is now, but because amidst this chaos (and change very often seems chaotic) I crave the familiar. And then I am saddened that at those moments living a life of trying to be someone that I clearly wasn't is more familiar than living with the person that I really am.

I like being ‘difficult to love’. It makes me sound like a pain in the butt, but I’d rather that. I can be a pain in the butt if it means I am true to myself always, even if it annoys people. Because it will never annoy the people who genuinely love ME. 

"For women who are difficult to love"
The inspiration, well part of the inspiration, for my next blog post. Stay tuned ;)

#SOWETOPRIDE 2014

It was an awesome time at my very first Soweto Pride!!! 

More than heterosexual

                                     

As far as identity and sexual orientation go, I have identified as heterosexual for most of my life but I have always believed sexuality to be fluid, I have believed this about my own sexuality. The first physical attraction I felt towards a woman happened when I was in university. She was the friend of a friend and we were never formally introduced but I would feel my cheeks flush and my heart, instead of beating really fast, as I was accustomed when I felt a sexual attraction to a man, would almost come to, what felt like, an absolute stop. But like I mentioned, we were never introduced and so nothing came of that. You may have noticed that when I mentioned an attraction to a woman I used the word physical, but when I mentioned an attraction to a man I used the word sexual. And that was deliberate. My attraction to Camille never felt sexual to me at the time. My frames of reference were not yet expansive enough to comprehend what a sexual attraction to a woman could and would mean for the sexuality I had never questioned.

The second woman I loved came in the form of a character on the Netflix series ‘Orange is the New Black’. The character, Poussey Washington, was not a particularly prominent or multi-faceted character but I found myself drawn to her, paying particular attention to scenes that she was in. Poussey, like Camille, portrayed masculine, but very feminine features and characteristics as well. I liked that. It seems I had a type. The attraction then took on a more sexual nature. I didn’t just find her physically appealing, I imaged being with her, sexually, romantically, intimately. But I met her on TV. Our chances of living happily ever after are about as real as the character she plays.

And in walks Mpumi. A very real, very tangible, very lesbian, enigma of a woman who I met on a work trip to Rustenburg. I met Mpumi and came face to face with the heterosexuality that I had, until that day, embraced without question. The attraction, the soul connection, was almost immediate. I did not meet this woman and think, I want to bed her, perhaps date her for a little while. I met her and something in me shifted…permanently! In a space where I was already questioning so much in my life, she shattered the last thing that seemed unscathed by the quarter-life crisis that was tearing through my world.

I wanted so desperately to be noticed, and found intriguing by this woman. “Men find me enchanting don’t they, why wouldn’t she.” I cringed the moment that thought popped into my mind. I was one of those women…those women who believe that lesbians cannot and do not have a type. Their type is woman. I was those women who thought she was immediately attractive and desirable to any lesbian, to all lesbians, purely by virtue of being a woman. How had society, how had patriarchy sneaked into my subconscious in this way? My heterosexuality had failed me. No, my heterosexuality was not my heterosexuality. It too had slipped through a secret trap door and implanted itself in my subconscious and had tricked me into believing that it was natural, that it was the birthplace of all sexuality and anything otherwise was a deviance. Who died and made you King Heterosexuality? And what did you do to me that I have not thought before to ask you this question, to question your intentions and your motives and push back on the notion that you are the be all and end all, the alpha and omega. I had come face to face with heterosexuality, with my heterosexuality and not only did I not recognise him, I did not like him and I did not understand how he had oppressed me for all 25 years of my life unopposed.

I am fortunate enough to have very liberal parents. Race, age, sexual orientation, it didn’t matter. As long as you were happy and being treated well, my parents had no qualms. My peers, however, proved to be, surprisingly, more of a challenge. My friends have reacted in various ways. Although no one has come outright and said “you’re going to hell if you continue down this path of lesbianism” the reactions have not all been love and understanding. Supportive? Yes. Because I am still their friend after all. I am now “into girls” but I am still the same. Right? I don’t think the world to which I have grown accustomed agrees. This world, constant and unchanging in itself, remains itself, and shows me that I am the one who is no longer the same. I am the one who is now conscious of my surroundings before holding my girlfriend’s hand, before kissing her on the lips while walking to our favourite hangout. I am the one who is aware that people stare, whether in intrigue or disapproval. The world remains the same. But the way I experience it is so jarringly different.

As is my nature I am defiant. As is human nature I don’t like it when things change suddenly. I have never been publicly aware of my sexual orientation. It has never been at the fore front of my identity. I have never worried that people will disapprove of my partner’s gender. I have never considered my partners gender. I have never called anyone my ‘partner’. I was not going to play into everyone’s bullshit. I was going to hold her hand, I was going to kiss her mouth. I was going to emphasise the SHE when alluding to the fact that the person with which I am sharing my life is in fact not a he, as the world is accustomed, but a SHE. I haven’t changed. I am still me. I will do the things I have always done. What can the world do?

The world rapes and murders young, black, lesbian women. This is not new. True to its unchanging nature, the world has been doing this before I knew that I was just like the young, black, lesbian women it is killing. The world kills people like me.

In my attempt to be defiant and hold her hand and kiss her mouth, in my attempt to carry out my heteronormative privilege in a homosexual space, am I spitting in the face of scores of young, black, lesbian women, like the one I am dating, like the ones who have been killed for their sexual orientation? Am I invalidating their struggles? Their oppressions? Am I downplaying their fears? By being with a woman only at the age of 25. By having been with men, unquestioningly. By choosing, consciously, to only be with women from here on out. By essentially bypassing most struggles that black lesbian women face. By not indulging the world by identifying as any one particular sexual orientation. By feeling like I cannot claim lesbianism if I have not struggled for it. My lack of identification is a refusal to be boxed by a world that does not understand, or acknowledge (I can’t decide which) what those boxes even mean, but it is also out of fear and a general sense of unbelonging.

My sexuality, my sexual orientation is now at the forefront of my identity. It is at the forefront of how I think about who I am. Because before anything else about who I am can emerge, the world has to process that I am black, I am a woman, and I am a lesbian, or not lesbian. What emerges, if anything at all, about what else constitutes this being, is not dependent on my character, my strengths, my drive and ambition. It is dependent on whether the world, on that particular day, has decided to let me live, or let me die.