Emancipate Yourself

Emancipate yourself. Black lives matter, all lives matter, pink lives matter, blue lives matter….. Non of this matters if you don’t realize that you matter…. You are so much more…this unequivocal plethora of potential energy that deserves to be free that deserves to be used that deserves its rightful place amongst the stars…. Our stories never start the same, our stories never follow the same paths, but then why do so many of our stories end the same? Why is it so common to say… Wow what happened to him/her? He/she was so talented…. I really thought they were going to make it, shame. Shame in the idea that the plethora of potential energy once again come to absolutely nothing…7 billion billion billion atoms constitute who we are, make us different, make us special, make us human, make us unique, should make us appreciate who we are, even at the deepest crevasses of disappear and feelings of being unappreciated and loathing our own existence. My friend you mean so much just by being able to breathe. My friend you mean so much by just being able to exist. You received the all mighty’s nod to be able to be here….why don’t you use your potential? Why don’t you try to be more, try to become more? Emancipate yourself.

Will the shackles of apartheid forever be used as an excuse? If a child from a middle income home still refers to white people as if they are aliens from another planet does this not point to a lack of effort in educating…. And in this case parental education. Has the need to be our kids friends now started to out-weigh the fact that a parent is there to teach, to discipline and to be proud. Emancipate yourself. A massive curve from me as a writer, I know… But our youth is constantly comparing itself to something… To someone… To some ideal… To some understanding that I am not enough…my parents were not enough…and those before them were not enough… Emancipate yourself!

The father that never was but must’ve been, that is to me a conglomeration of years of not understanding why he never wanted to be there, why he never cared, why so much as even the slightest whiff of the truth behind who is your father is so poisonous that he would go out of way to not be known, to not take responsibility, to not have to do anything other then smile when serious questions about me are thrown at him….Emancipate yourself! Never underestimate a baby’s understanding that something isn’t right, a 3 year old’s vision that the family portrait is incomplete, a 5 year old’s first day at crèche accompanied by, what he thought was normal, but was actually only one half of the puzzle, only his mother, his keeper, his protector and forcibly/unequivocally his father….emancipate yourself. Suddenly he starts to make sense of it all…. But all my friends have two parents, two peas in their pod, so what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with our house? What’s wrong with the way I am being raised? That feeling of self-loathing and not understanding why me? Why us? Standing alone in the line in front of the almighty, the same almighty that we pray for day after day after day….. Why us? Why me? Can’t we just be normal? Emancipate yourself! Suddenly the line is no longer just us but goodness hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of families without answers, shy smiles and hating being in situations that are less than explicable because that’s what you were born in to…. Emancipate yourself! These shackles are difficult to shake difficult to remove difficult to emancipate yourself from…. So the majority just… Follow the rest of the sheep… Follow the herd…emancipate yourself!

My gift to you… Don’t give up… Don’t allow these shackles to hold you down… A father that doesn’t care about you should be nothing more than a shadow… Emancipate yourself! A society, a street, a household that allows these types of shackles to hold you down shouldn’t be who you are… emancipate yourself! This is not an uncommon path this is not a unique and undocumented story… This is life where we come from this is the microcosm of what makes us South Africans. That’s why I teach, that’s why I am to enlighten…. Albeit in secret, I can because I have been there. I’ve had the shy smile, I grew up wondering, not understanding why, not knowing that it’s not normal… That him not being there is not normal,that you allowing your circumstances to chop you down and stop you from growing, even before you started to grow, is not fair. Life is not fair but you have been gifted one… 7 billion billion billion atoms of perfection that got the nod from the almighty to make a difference… You are worth it. Emancipate yourself!