I feel like I'm just treading water

Not Waving but Drowning
BY STEVIE SMITH 1902–1971

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Do the hard times come to a screeching halt at some point? Do things start making sense and all of a sudden you know, you just know, what it is you are doing?

These are restless nights, man. And not just for me. I am not restless in isolation. All around me there is fear mongering towards a generation so unsure of ourselves that we are deer in the headlights, unable to move in any direction even when we know the fucking 18-wheeler is barreling down the highway at top speed and won't stop to spare us. From all sides come the nagging questions about what our plans are, what we intend on doing with our lives, whilst at the same time being told that there are no jobs, that by the time we retire the retirement fund will be empty, global warming will have killed off all the polar bears, China will take over and disasters upon disasters upon disasters will happen. And this is not even considering the small catastrophes that happen at 4 PM on an ordinary Wednesday, the ones where the unthinkable occurs to the ones we love. 

So I am in a constant state of panic about not being able to manage it all, about unsuccessfully multitasking, about where to come 2016. For now there is a plan, for the next 6 months there are barely hours left to breathe. But come 2016, the Fates are reinventing my wheel for what feels like the umpteenth time. 

Logic and experience tell me it will be ok. Everything will be ok. You can't plan this, you have to leave some things in the hands of whatever comes next. Logic and experience tell me I can handle all of it. But still. At times I wish I was made of lesser stuff, that I needed someone besides myself to tell me it will all be ok, that I could remain in one place for the sake of one person, that life within boundaries would be my choice. Instead, an anxiety about wanting more than walls and 9-to-5s and a daily dullness challenges the fear I have of being much too far out all my life and not waving but drowning.

6 minutes

I am in my room, watching an episode of Pretty Little Liars when I hear a terrible bang coming from the kitchen. I go to check, wondering what our cleaning lady has broken now, a bit irritated that I have to get up now. I hear male voices but figure the garden service has arrived and is outside. Then I see them through the cut-out arch-shape in the wall : four black men, my age. We are separated by bricks and yet not. One of them was huge, towering above the others, with a red streak in his one eye. They were coming from the front door, I was standing on the steps, I see my dogs wandering around looking confused. I thought: “Why is the gardening team in the house?” But that red in his eye made me afraid, and something clicked, I knew something was not right. So I started shouting, telling them to “Get the fuck out of my house”, wasting time when instead I could have closed the slam-lock gate where I was standing. They start shouting at each other, the one comes running towards me. I realise this too late and I am too slow, one of them forces his arm between the gate.  I am not stronger than him, I give up trying to force it shut. I cannot remember his face, he is shorter than I am, wearing a white shirt and cargo pants. He does not look like a robber, but then again, what does a robber look like. Maybe the group are quite successful at it, judging from their wardrobe.

He tells me to go lie on the bed. Not to worry. They won’t rape me. I thought, “What a weird thing to say. Of course you won’t rape me. Why would you. No one does that. That’s not normal.” I keep asking where Rosina, our cleaning lady, is. If she is ok. And then I inform him I’ll lie on my own bed, in my room, further down the hallway, remembering that my cellphone is under my cushions. I just walk towards my room. He tells me to lie down and put the blanket over my head, but he keeps asking me where things are and I have to take it off to answer. They rummage around in the rooms but they aren’t very thorough. I try to keep them away from my mother’s room and from the safe. I am afraid that then they’d want the key and I am not willing to give it. But how well do I lie. While they are away I try to dial something on my phone. I cannot think of who to call. 911? This is not America. 10111? They won’t come. I hear the robbers coming back.

They keep asking for jewellery. I point mine out, but he only sees beads and no worth. He shouts at me, asking for the real jewellery. Tss. Little man.  I give him my box, but it does not contain anything of more worth. Someone already grabbed my laptop, ipod, external hard drive and handbag with my wallet in. He starts going towards my cupboards. The alpha is there. They cannot take the camera. No. So I get up and give him the laptop bag, shifting the camera bag behind my clothes.

He leaves. I hide the camera more, afraid he’ll come back. But I hear the front door slam shut, I see a whitish sedan drive away through a hole in the wall. They tell me later it was a BMW. Stealing in style.  I start looking for Rosina. She is at the back of the house, getting ready to leave. She did not notice a thing. Later I wonder how she could not have noticed four men breaking in?! I ignore her and radio the robbery in. Then I push the panic button. Then I phone my mother.

Louis and the garden team arrive. I lose composure, start crying. But I am inside, I am separated by the bars of the front gate. I am in prison at home. Everyone arrives at the same time. The garden team go about mowing the lawn, as if nothing had happened. It is weird. The police arrive. The security company arrives. I have to retell the story over and over and over and over and over, becoming numb to it. The police officer is a moron. I am apologetic in describing the robbers. Black. Young. My age. Well-dressed. Ag shame. Surely they did not expect anyone to be home. It was my fault: I should not have been home as it was a week of holidays, normally I would have been at the university at that time.

Everyone leaves, I take Rosina to the taxi rank. In the car I cannot stop crying. My face feels as though it is not part of me, as if I am watching myself feel.  It is the violation that affects me, not so much the things that were taken. Sure, I will miss my laptop. Sure my iPod was a week old. Sure, my grandmother’s jewellery is now gone. But it is the intrusion into your home that I cannot accept. We have laser beams and security gates and alarm systems, we live in our own little concentration camps, but here people want to get in, not out, and they manage it. Easily. In six minutes they destroyed all sense of safety. People are pitying. Shame. Poor you. But nothing happened really, hey?! They didn’t hurt you.

I have to replace my ID document, get a new driver’s licence, cancel by bank cards, get a new student card and all those little club cards that stores offer for free. The Monday at the university the security refuses to let me park in the student parking because I don’t have a student card, even though she knows me and I drive the only left-hand drive Mercedes around. I get so frustrated and inform her that she is a fucking dumb bitch, and waiting at the robot I again cry uncontrollably. The car guard nearby wanted to harass me, but I see him turning around quickly.

In my English class I am astounded that the entire row I am sitting in has been affected by crime. Literally everyone has been somehow shook by crime. But I am ok. And not. It is this duality of knowing everything is fine, that I have life, and that it could have been worse, opposed to thinking: how was it my fault? What could I have done? How could I not have fought more?

After a while I start moving on, thinking I will not live here forever. Strange how one’s country can become so despised. I am desperate for things to get better. I assume that they had to rob to feed their families. That they come from a place of poverty. As a result I want to impose education on every car guard and beggar. I want to hand out magazines and newspapers and say : “Read! Learn! Make your life better than this!”

I wrote that on October 1, 2010. Today, someone again tried to break into our house. Luckily they only got past the garage and my mom could press the panic button and radio it in. People in Europe and the States do not realise the extent of fear, the contradicting halves of living here. South Africa is a beautiful country, and every time we drive down to the coast I marvel again at the grandeur of creation, at what a privilege it is to be surrounded by this. But human nature defeats nature here. Power has corrupted our population and many still feel entitled to something, feel like the government now owes them for having suffered at the hands of apartheid. It is understandable to want to profit for having been denied freedom and dignity.

But to me it is also incomprehensible how my generation, a supposedly post-racist generation, does not have the drive to advance society and rather sits, palms cupped, demanding what they have not earned. By talking to older people it is clear that the youth of today do not know what it is to work and what our parents and grandparents had to fight for. We ignore education and human rights in favour of owning the newest gadgets and being able to spend the most.  I feel like there needs to be a fundamental change in the way we acknowledge the existence and the rights of humans, animals and nature. We must come to realise that a decent life, a life without fear, a protected life, is what everyone is entitled to, not gluttony avarice and wrath.

The death of the gentleman and other notions

I can paint my own walls, check my own car's tire pressure and oil, hang up my own paintings, drill my own holes... Basically, I think I can do everything a man can do (except pee while standing. And even that can be arranged, somehow). If I do not know how, I will ask. I do not want to be some damsel in distress, afraid of chipping a nail. I want to be able to build a fire ( hah! That one can be checked off the list), fix the car, make a bookshelf and rewire a lighting fixture. I want to know these traditionally male things, because until now, I have done it on my own. I have learnt to fix what is broken by myself. Why would I want to learn these things? Because when you are a woman, car sales men tell you where you can put your lipstick and not about the fuel consumption, the engine strength, etc. When you are in Builder's Warehouse, the employees assume you are there waiting for your husband/boyfriend/father and do not help you. When you want to fill up your tank, you are expected to stay seated and not check everything yourself. Tss. I know these are generalisations, but one must admit that quite often, there are subtle discriminations in the everyday.

However, there does come a point where I think the loss of traditional gender roles is lamentable, and that is the way of being treated like a lady. No one opens doors any more. No one goes for a traditional date of dinner and a movie and is satisfied with a kiss at the doorstep. No one sends flowers. I think the art of being a gentleman has been eradicated by the insistence on instant sexual gratification of my generation.

It can be argued that this is perhaps our own fault: female emancipation and the notion of gender equality has relegated men as quite useless. With enough sperm, we could eradicate men completely. Perhaps women are "doing it for themselves" too much and men feel threatened by this intrusion into "their" world. I don't really know what it is. But I think most women still want to fulfil the role of mother and wife ( or partner or whatever you want to call the person you are committed to). Most women still want to make the salad and rice for the Sunday braai. Most women still want to stay at home and pack lunch boxes.  But I think many women also want to feel a sense of personal achievement : no one applauds the wife for an excellent dinner party, children see only their father as "working" and one gets kitchen utensils for one's birthday. When one has a job that is not housewife, there is competition, reward and aspiration. Is there also a sense of pride in one's work that one does not feel when one is "only" at home? I know raising children and keeping up with the household is a full-time job, but sometimes one needs to be able to talk about more than one's husband and children.

I believe our society has been conditioned too much by materialism: all that matters is what car one drives and where one buys the groceries.  Even days of appreciation like mother's day, father's day and Valentine's day are a consumerist festival.

I say forget all those "tokens". Opening the doors, randomly bringing flowers or just cooking dinner once will already make a girl feel like a lady, like she is worth the effort. Maybe that is the crux of it: one wants to feel like the other does value one's existence, that one is important somehow, that one is more than a pair of breasts.

Nowadays one can organize a quick hook-up over sms or BBM, one can go home with a random person and do the walk of shame the next morning. I say if that is what you want at that point in time, do it. But the next morning, the next week, the next year, one will probably think: "Hmm, maybe that was not the wisest decision." It cheapens one's own self-worth, it makes one feel like all that is desirable about oneself is the body and not the brains.

Maybe this way of thinking is outdated in a high-speed world. Maybe internet dating and apps designed for booty calls are the future. But somehow, I am still a lady. I might not always talk like one or look like one, but in essence, I am still a woman (maybe not yet?!) of worth and need to be treated accordingly.




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