“I kept on thinking about what you said yesterday, about how Susan should just ‘get a job’.I think thats the worst thing she can do. Life is short and if you just get a job before you know it you just spend your whole life working for money. I don’t want that for her”
“Thats not what I’m saying at all. I just mean you have to be realistic. What would she have done without us?”
“But she has us, so thats not relevant”
“I guess...It’s just a lot of people chase this dream they have and end up with nothing. I don’t want that for her.”
“well that’s why you have to believe in her dream too.”
My parents have these conversations about my future constantly. usually in the kitchen while I’m smoking at the door and staring at the trees. I am use to it now but today I realized listening to them was like hearing my inner struggles manifested into to humans arguing with each other. It is soothing in a sense because I am the outsider. I can be still and listen to myself.
I am almost 27 years old and living with my parents. After ten years of gunning it on my own out there in the big wide world I am back in the suburban sanctuary that is Kay avenue 515,Menlo park Pretoria. It’s a strange feeling. Truth be utterly nakedly told I probably would ran away again by now-maybe to Tawian to teach english, or Australia for some big kaching mine money dolla bills if I hadn’t met the love of my life.
You see when you realize very late in life that you can’t handle it; this fucking system. It petrifies you. If most of university was spent in a drunken avoidance of this fact you only start to face these demon desires half way down the aisle. But you’re late. very late. Your indecisive. very indecisive.Time is what you need. Time is money. So you opt for less money and more time and move in with your parents to give you even more time to figure stuff out. I am so thankful to have a father that shares my sentiments. A father willing and able to let his hard work be my parachute in this much belated attempt at doing something I love.
My inner battles about my future are a lot more crude than my parents arguments . Some days I wake up and I feel like the biggest joke that has ever walked this earth.
‘who the fuck do you think you are Susan. you have to be kidding. You studied BSC human life sciences. You don’t know shit about shit. your 27 fucking years old and you think you can make it on your own? Why the fuck would you even try. you have debt you idiot. thousands of rands of debt and you seem to have forgotten that.’
These thoughts paralyse me for days. I then start feverishly scouring the internet for courses I can do, jobs that eat time but pay big, I start wondering if I maybe should just get that medical rep job....It couldn’t be that bad. I would still eat shit and fuck just the same --- in fact even better, I would do it out of my own pocket. I wouldn’t have to keep gnawing on the never ceasing flow of ideas and projects I want to pursue, only to shoot myself down and have to pick up the pieces of my broken confidence the next day to start with the beating all over again. I could just K.O and be part of the matrix.
The worst of it all is that I would be happy in any number of alternative settings. The only thing that matters to me is that what I do matters to me. That I don’t have a bullshit job. This of course is a complete luxury of a desire. A very selfish and uttelry #firstworldproblem : wanting to enjoy my job. Alas ‘enjoying your job’ means different things to different people: like we all know, everything is fucking relative. An event yesterday pushed me further outside of this destructive self deprecating loop of imposed struggles towards a clarity and a calamity that has always been the salt and earth of my world.
Whilst jogging with my dog around my little suburtopia I passed an elderly man standing still in the road. He was looking at piece of paper scratching his head. Just after he was out of my sight he called out to me “Excuse me Miss. But where am I now?’ He was lost and asked for directions to Doxa Deo church in Morreletta Park. I told him he was I long way off and that we were in MENLO park, a different part of town. This news seemed to drain the life out of him and he sat down on the curb. I sat down next to him to and asked him why he needs to be at that church. He told me he had been robbed in Maraba stad this morning around 10 AM. They took everything. Since then he has been walking around going from church to church to see if he could do some work for money to get back to his village close to Bela Bela (about a three hour journey away). Churches are closed on Tuesdays. He had traveled to Home affairs to ask for burial money. His father has been in the morgue the last 39 days.
If you’re South African, or live in any other country where poverty is the norm you are probably questioning the amount of truth behind Simon’s story. You also know that his situation is not exceptional. Pleading eyes and cupped hands are mundanities at every curb and stop street. Getting approached by desperation is a daily occurrence: and not all are as desperate as they claim to be. Not to forget that it is a horrible state none the less that would drive a person to try and seem more needy than he is. But I believed Simon. Sometimes you just can’t see yourself doing anything else.I told him to walked home with me so I could help him out with the taxi fare.
We talked as we walked, and he told me his story. He spoke Afrikaans very well and I enquired him as to where he learned to speak it. A black man speaking afrikaans fluently is not something you hear everyday. Came out his father was a colored ( using the term ‘colored’ in South African context of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured ) from Kimberly in the Northern Cape and that his surname was Lou. A black man called Simon Lou. He told me about the struggles he has getting a job with the surname Lou. Black Affirmative action puts a Simon Lou on the bottom of the list. I told him he should change his surname. He would never. He is an only child. Changing his name would mean him lying to get ahead in life and that’s not something a man of God does. I thought of the importance of pride in yourself and your identity when society sees you as a hand-out and a problem to fix. I thought of my own connection to my surname and how little I associate it with my own self worth.
In his hands he clutched his Bible and a few pieces of paper he used to scribble down destinations. He walked with difficulty, each step seemed to be harder than the next. We had to stop a few times for him to sit down and rest. He talked of how he doesn’t understand this world, why people do all these bad things, why we make this beautiful world such a hard place to live in. He said he felt a fool. A fool because he was helpless. He spoke affectionately of his home village, about how people had less than they do here in town but no one hurt each other. No one walked around with fear int their hearts. He thanked me ceaselessly. Saying how he prayed for help and that God had sent me as the answer.
When we get to my house he stands at the gate and waits for me to invite him inside. I wonder if he has ever been inside such a big house. I wonder how he sees me and my riches. In the kitchen my mother is busy cooking. I relay the story and I see her heart break for him too. I am my mothers child. We get in the car and I drive him to the taxi stop and give him the money he needs for the journey.
While driving back I feel that calamity rise up in me again, that old fury that never seems to be old enough to end. I despise the term blessed. However this is what I am and what defines me. How different Simon and Susan are. I could never comprehend his struggles. I have the luxury of dismissing Gods Mercy. I don’t need it like Simon does.
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