I have felt absent from the world of late. Been on cruise control for a while.
I used to want to make a difference. Be a voice for those that couldn’t speak for themselves. Save the environment. Make propaganda art and a stand for what I believed in. Loved so fiercely that it could change a war-torn world. I used to have an unquenchable drive for all these things and I followed through on doing most of them.
For five years I dedicated my time and energy to an NGO that specialises in free cleft lip and palate surgery across Africa. I was part of a photographic team that documented patients frailty for research purposes and cleft lips and palates were not the only things we saw. Dehydration due to contaminated water sources took lives that have not yet begun, limp babies in sobbing moms’ arms. Cancer eating away at a young mans face, a remnant of what he used to be. A cleft skull, where the growth of the bones in a child in the womb stops short at the forehead and leaves a gap, malnourishment. There were victories as well. A woman who had undergone cleft lip surgery couldn’t wait to blow the fire into flame and cook and for the first time at fifty something properly kiss her husband. The crude juxtaposition of life and her ways. To date, five of the most transformative years of my life. It changed me, for better and for worse. I came home grateful for what simplicities I could find joy in in my life, for my health and my circumstances. Over time my heart couldn’t compartmentalize both realities, it didn’t understand how suffering and privilege could co-exist. I deeply desired to know what it felt like to walk a lifetime in someone else’s shoes. I wanted the motives behind my actions to be clear, truly helping someone can only happen from a place of authenticity. I feel angrily frustrated by the limitations of one lifetime and one human vessel I get to experience it in. As a white woman, I will never really know what it’s like to embody any other ethnicity. Or ever really know what a sea horse goes through when a storm surges through otherwise calm waters and its’ young need to be kept alive. Or what plants experience when bugs come to visit, do they have cute conversations. It pains me. I will never understand what it’s like to be anything other than who I came here to be, that in itself a current mystery. The depth of understanding I demand from life has exhausted me to the bone. And maybe I have only truly been running from myself.
We haven’t had cell reception on the farm for a few days now. My nervous system rejoices. Adjusts. And my mind clears. No demands pinging in the palm of my hand or urgent blue ticked questions I don’t know how to answer. When the demands of the mundane subside, the sunbird can be heard, the Cape mongoose is spotted doing it’s rounds and the Cape genet visits. The scorpions are right on time and I’m waiting to find the puffadder peacefully sleeping in the afternoon sun. I feel at home here and wildly restless at the same time. I don’t know how to merge the worlds that rage on the outside and within.
Conversations with a dear friend who happens to be one of the only people that grasps the language of my heart without me having to curate them, was a welcome relief from trying to find the misplaced map and compass to navigating big emotions today. I’ve been chasing the things I want relentlessly, not leaving a moment up to chance and change instead creating chances and making the changes myself. Playing God. Making all the decisions. Leaving nothing up to the unknown, making sure she doesn’t steal the joy I have tirelessly cultivated. Always one step ahead. It’s clear as day that I don’t trust the world I have come to live in and when I wake at 2am, the silence of night reveals the truth and I know that the chase in me has tired and I don’t know how to carry on. I can no longer fight for things to change. Whoever God is, can you please come take the reins? I’m literally waiting for someone to save me. From myself in fact.
I’ve built boats. Organized events. Worked checkout in UK based supermarkets. Mountain biked through France. Got a university degree. Lived in a van in Spain. I wrote for an adventure based surf magazine. Owned my own shop. Did flowers for weddings. Solo exhibitions as an artist. Had a shot at going pro in sport. Solo adventuring for the past ten years to remote corners of our country. And then some. Read all the books in my bookshelf. Climbed almost all the mountains in my area. I know how to hold space. Laugh. Make any house a home. Things around me are beautiful, I’ve made them so. This is my attempt at reminding myself of all the things I’ve done but also a way of sharing with you why I am good enough to be seen and heard and loved. Well that’s not the purpose of life now is it, I hear you say with a frown between your eyes. It has been mine. I am so damn good at doing good. I be great at doing but clearly not so good at just existing. And in the words of earlier mentioned dear friend, we are human BEINGS and although I obviously rolled my eyes at this, she has a point.
I’ve been really busy doing cool shit, but let’s be real for a moment and share a less cool thing about myself. I hate doing dishes, I have some sensory discomfort when it comes to having to do them. I struggle. Especially first thing in the morning. Water on my skin while still emotionally waking up disrupts the flow of unfolding in my morning routine. Like a shock to the system. So, the dishes often get neatly stacked to make the kitchen seem tidy and when my sensory overload subsides I pep talk myself into doing them. My bedroom, on the other hand, is immaculate and shelves of colour coded clothes line the walls. The kitchen represents the hearth (the heart, warmth and love) of the house, the bedroom represents the refuge. Symbolism is a powerful way of getting to the bottom of ones own behavioral convictions or limits. A beautiful nudge into uncovering what is in dire need of tender love and care.
I think my heart is broken. For the world. For my family. For myself. And just like in the kitchen, all the things too painful to deal with, neatly stacked in the recesses of my heart and I have created an immaculate refuge where only I exist. The question lingers, has it gifted me with a desirable outcome?
I guess it’s time to do the dishes, tend to matters of the heart.
I lean over, flip the switch. Cruise control, off.