Johannesburg - I don’t usually pry, my colleague had mentioned her parents so I asked her what it was like having both parents as an adult.
She said her mother still reprimands her in her own house.
Perhaps I was merely curious, I never felt incomplete or hollow for growing up without a mother, until my father died too.
My sweet mother – I suppose she was – I have a picture of her but I still don’t recognise her face.
I have visited her grave once, in Limpopo. I was born there. I have little to no recollection of the first five or so years of my life. I could have been the catalyst, the last branch in the crack of my family dichotomy. I have never seen my parents in one place – your normal is not mine.
I have pondered duality; if distance makes the heart grow fonder it can equally make it grow colder. Compassion and empathy are factory settings that can easily be reduced to mere words with code errors. You don’t need a software developer to tell you that factory settings can be altered.
To change these settings is to step outside a cage.
Are we not biological machines?
Our belief in free will contains us in this cage shaped by the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of reality. Illusions care too little about space and time.
Is it all a collective dream? Do we wake when we die?
One of the many stories I tell myself to maintain my sanity is that humans are selfish; we cry when our loved ones die because of how losing them makes us feel. It is about us, it is the ultimate ego trip, we are the ones who have lost someone. We cry because we feel empty.
But of course, this is just a coping mechanism – a cold mental exterior to a soft and pulpy inside.
I am conscious of the darkness, both on my skin and within.
I know, I am a villain in others’ lives, but like a moth to light, it is the glimpse of heroism in those I have inspired that I gravitate and aspire to.
Humans, their hearts and families are synonymous with bones, they are fragile and susceptible to sticks and stones.
I was trained well as a child raised in a broken home.
I've built kites with sticks and drove cars made of bricks.
I have broken both, hearts and families.
I am the creator of the cracks in my family dichotomy. I suppose I am broken; I am one of those hurt people who hurt people.
But I never felt incomplete or hollow for growing up without a mother, until my father died too.
I suppose it’s not about who birthed you, but rather who you are close to.
Father and I communicated telepathically. We thrived in silence, sitting next to each other. We’d occasionally smile at the same thing that none of us had spoken. This is how we plastered the cracks on our walls. We knew our family was broken.