RECOVERY
My “Thing” is Still Working
Apparently I’m not broken after all…
I have this thing I do.
It’s some kind of intuition.
It enables me to see people, and kinda know a lot about them, within a really short space of time.
I talk to people. A lot.
When I’m standing in queues at supermarkets. When I’m (now) waiting for buses at rarely serviced bus routes. When I’m actually on said buses. Whenever. I’m curious and I make eye contact. I smile a lot. Even when shit is not so good, I smile, because what I often see, when I’m out and about, is a lot of pretty scared and lonely people who generally avoid eye contact because only weird people smile at strangers.
The world has gotten more connected, but we seem to have become less of that.
For a while I avoided eye contact too.
For the last good bit, in fact. I was traumatized, and I was also frightened as hell. I’d lost faith in the inherent goodness of people. I felt inordinately ashamed of my personal circumstances.
Shame is a primary symptom of trauma. Huh. Who knew?
I’ve been focusing on healing the PTSD, from the events in my life that ran me almost into the ground between 2019 … until yesterday.
It was only yesterday, six weeks on of being out of a very high conflict environment, that I finally escaped from in full so that I could begin to focus on healing from this in earnest, that I realised that I’m ready…
This all happened a lot faster than I would’ve thought possible. But — I’ve intentionally been focusing on rebuilding my nervous system, physically, for some time now. It seems that this has actually paid off.
This “thing” that I have.
People tell me things. Personal things. Very quickly.
I‘ve heard the same thing, time and time again… “I’m not sure why I am telling you this… but…” and their story comes tumbling out.
Thing is… I kinda already know what their story is, and I’m entirely aware that I am offering them the space to share it.
What follows, is usually an exchange of experiences in the areas that we have in common, and a sharing of the information that I found and used, on my own journey, that got me where I am today.
Also… just real, honest connection.
I think this exchange is what keeps me doing this. For someone to see and feel they are not alone. For me to be able to offer some hope and remember how far I have come. It’s a mutual and fair exchange. We both gain from it. It’s no something admirably altruistic.
We both, inevitably, learn from our honest conversation. And it’s in these rare moments, for me, that the existential angst of the experience of being human and alive abates… just for a brief moment.
This and music. And art.
Yesterday I met more humans.
I walked passed one, sitting by. himself in a corner of the parking lot. I made eye contact, of course, and he said a brief, “Hello, M’am.” (*It still stuns me that I’m now old enough to be called this)
I nodded a hello in return, and continued to walk by. But then, I turned back to offer him a cigarette.
We began to chat.
He looked a bit like Chris. Obviously, especially now, I could not just walk on by… I generally don’t anyway. I did for a bit. I had to. It seems that I don’t again. At last.
Within a few minutes, Joe (let’s call him “Joe” for anonymity’s sake) had asked if I was hungry and offered me a sandwich from the plastic bag at his feet.
Joe is currently living on the street.
This still makes me go, “Hmmmm.”
The countless times, during this massive rock bottom (not drug related, love related/never-was-love as it turned out), that people with little to nothing have given me some of what they have, while the people I thought were my people, in large mansions in expensive suburbs, told me they couldn’t afford to help when I was, literally, starving at one point.
Hmmmmmm…
Life is all about perspective. Now experientially learned.
I declined his kind offer. I was hungry in 2019, I told him. Mercifully, although I may not be eating my favourite foods, I no longer have to endure this.
It’s hard to sleep when you are hungry, by the way.
It’s also hard to stay warm.
A few minutes more and there it was…
“I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, but I’m just gonna be honest…”
and out it came.
I’ve been avoiding working with people who may need my experience in the recovery arena for some time. I thought that I’d completely lost this ability to empathise, to see and to connect this fast. I thought that I’d no longer be able to create this kind of space anymore, purely because I was so shut down myself. I kinda let the idea go, of ever using my certification or pursuing further study.
I was back looking for web clients. This, at least, I knew I could do.
I finally caught an Uber home from a place where I could afford one, when it began to get dark and cold and I had bussed, “black” taxied and walked around 30km in between.
The Uber driver found it hilarious that I had taken a “black” taxi — I use this term as an old school reference to the racial inequality here… they’re now called mini-bus taxis, by the way. In case you travel to South Africa and decide to take one.
Let me say this about this mode of transport…
It runs on honesty and it‘s a really cool way to travel. The passengers are often the ticket collectors and money gets handed around as people make change for each other until a final amount, at last, gets handed to the driver as he reaches out… one hand still on the wheel.
Its fucking awesome and it makes me smile every time.
I haven’t used a “black taxi” since I was in my twenties and my car was stolen.
It was great fun back then as well. In those days, and sadly still, there is a massive racial divide in South Africa. I was busy learning Xhosa at the time, taken in stead of my new husband who was supposed to be studying it for his Clinical Masters in Psychology, but who didn’t want to go to classes.
It’s a really difficult language to learn, and I never did get it right. But… I did try to practice, as I traveled around waiting for my car insurance to pay out.
People were delighted. They’d smile with appreciation and then launch into fast paced conversation, that would leave me grinning stupidly back at them. It didn’t matter. It was the fact that a white person was even trying… or even in for the ride.
It still is. People looked at me really strangely when I climbed in yesterday. Nothing much has changed around here…
One night, back then in my misspent youth, I met two hip black chicks on their way somewhere.
Beautiful young women full of fire and attitude. Talking shit, causing chaos and laughing out loud at the driver’s response. I had no idea what they were saying, but who could resist?
We got to chatting and I ended up at some club, somewhere, with them partying until god knows what wee hour of the morning. I can’t remember how I got home. I was the only white face in there. It was loud and smoky and hot. They shared their perspectives with me on love , boys and family. Same same. There wasn’t any difference between us at all…
But we know that, don’t we? Come now…
Yesterday, the Uber driver and I got to talking about South Africa, and the ongoing racial divide, after I shared this story with him. I had to when he asked, with raised eyebrows, if I had actually taken a minibus taxi and began to laugh.
I moved on to being a teenager in Apartheid South Africa. My first real boyfriend, a colored boy, met on the way to a beach I wasn’t allowed to go to on my own… and at which I never arrived.
I fell in love in a short conversation and we spent the day running around the city gardens and museum together. The driver was a Cape Coloured gentleman and used the term “us coloured people”, so I figured it was okay for me to do it too.
Forty years on and I still, as a “whitey” am not sure how to address my fellow South Africans of colour.
Isn’t that strange?
I shared my “white people are stupid” theory with him, and how I generally prefer people of colour. Is that racist? I no longer really care… I do.
The drive ended with him sitting, engine turned off, sharing his current situation in full. For some time we sat and talked. A woman walking her dog passed us twice, trying not to stare with curiosity. (*I’ve had the good fortune of landing in a rental space in an affluent area)
I shared what I’ve learned during this horrific family court experience with the Uber driver and made some suggestions. He thanked me. His guard now dropped, the smile wiped from his eyes, tears having replaced it some time before. He’s in for a hard journey. I hope that he seeks out the help I suggested and avoids the fuckups I made, due my total naivety, when I entered those halls of “justice”.
It was after this conversation, that I realised I’m “healed”. Healed from these last two years.
He’s in the same boat. Just a man instead of me, a woman.
I wonder how our archaic and badly trained system’s gender bias will play out and be used against him? It will. It will be, with the kind of personality he’s up against. Willful ignorance is fucking dangerous for victims. It matters not what gender they are.
As I walked away, I realised that I was not even remotely “triggered” after sharing bits of the horror that unfolded in the courts of my government. It seems I have recovered. At last.
But I will never forget…
Today it happened again…
A young man. A random ride offered. A story shared.
Shared, because I saw his eyes when I got into the car and I knew.
I listened to what little bit he said, and mostly what he avoided saying.
So I shared a bit about my story. Honestly. He nodded his head and opened up and told me what I already knew…again. I left him with a phone number and told him that he is far from alone, and that recovery is possible.
Even if he never calls to find out more, about how he can find some peace and stability and get well, he saw, at that moment, that it is possible. I saw it on his face as he smiled and nodded when we waved goodbye.
If that’s all that I could give him in the 15 minute ride home, I now believe that it is enough.
There are humans on this platform that have read me. That have sat with some hard stuff, some angry stuff, some sad stuff, some fucking frustrated stuff and who haven’t turned away.
You’ve clapped and said hello.
You’ve been instrumental in getting me back on my feet and giving me back my voice. You’ve been instrumental in me not giving up, in helping me to remember who I am and in helping me find my way back from an incredibly lonely and frightening place.
You’ve allowed me… to be me.
Some times… all we need… is for someone to say, “There is nothing ‘wrong’ with you.”
and
“You’re not alone.”
and
“It’s gonna be okay.”
Thanks for your reading time!
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