Its almost birthday time again

It’s almost birthday time AGAIN

Its 4 weeks until my birthday and thinking back to my birthday last year gave me a cold chill.

I still have the diary entry I wrote while kneeling on the on the floor of my bedroom, writing through the tears. I haven’t thought back at that day for a while but now that I do I remember it so vividly.

Two weeks prior My brother (and ill talk more about him later) had just doused my dad with acid in an attempt to kill him and fled. My mom who had moved from Polokwane to Johannesburg to help me with my first baby had to rush back to Polokwane to look after her husband as well as the family business.

My job, the one I had fasted and prayed for, the one that I had gotten a clear directive from God to go for had become my greatest burden and I just couldn't make out a single blue sky in my situation. I had hospital bills to pay as a result to an emergency C-Section, I had a car to pay for, a household to run, a half day job which had actually turned into an all day job with no turning off, I had to find the time to be a full time mother to my 4 month old child and look I wasn’t coping.

I thought If only I had not left my previous job with my benefits, free car, medical aid and 6 months paid maternity leave. If only my brother wasn’t such a psychopath, if only my dad hadn’t dismissed my other brother he would have been there to run the business leaving my life relatively unaffected.

At that moment on the floor at something past 8pm while daddy and baby slept I realised that I couldn’t be angry because the world wasn’t in my control. Life was happening (Not necessarily happening to but happening in spite of me) and that moment was one of few I had to be sad before life had to carry on again.

I wrote that things sucked and I didn’t want to be there anymore.

I wrote that i wasn’t coping with the child during the day

I wrote that i hated my job, i hated working for the people i worked for and I hated that it was what I had chosen and what the weight of my decision was doing to me

I wrote that I had prayed and I had moved on Gods instruction and I intended for him to make a way like he was always said to do where there was no way.

I wrote that He who had the key of David would not only make a door but open it for me because He is the Great I AM and i needed him to move NOW, cause I was tiered, Lord I was so tiered.

I wrote what I wanted to do in my new job that he wasn’t going to make for me if need be, how much i needed to be earning and what my benefits needed to be

I wrote that my marriage was to stay healthy

My son was to be happy and healthy and looked after by a mother that was mentally and physically present

I wrote that my mom would be ok

I wrote that I was happy to learn deep and meaningful things about this space in my life but FIRST God had to save me... and he did.

I am in a much better space now, my situation did in fact change, a door was built, opened and a way created.

I am turning 28 this year and I am not sulky or distraught, In fact I’m just getting on with things because I am as responsible for things as God is.

I made a decision, I can’t be reliving the same scary roller coaster in life – I just can’t, I Must Grow, I Must Learn and I must Move through this thing called life. 

the view from here

I am doing well, I'm in the right place here  - but I must admit that the entrepreneurial spirit is raising up strong and fierce from the depths of my soul. Unlike some colleagues who are happy to sit in a job and hope to be ok, it has never become more urgent for me to start to put money away for my son, put money away for the enjoyment and finish registering my company so i can establish a second stream of income.

I see opportunities all around me, great golden threads between countries and brands and networks yet to be built, I don't have all the answers but my vision is becoming clearer and I am assured that God is ordering my steps.

My husband says the weak get frustrated and leave their jobs, while the strong get comfortable. He encourages me daily to pursue my interests and if there is one thing having my child has done for me is to allow me to enjoy the now, just be in the moment take time to find the lesson and actively effect the growth.

Making a decision every day to give to my job - give to my family and give to myself - the last part is by far the most challenging.

After our routine debates about the state of the nation with Papabear - that is what my boss likes to be called, he is 60+ has way to many children and I just allow - now as I was saying we have media engagement meetings and on the way to these meetings we argue about everything we can possible openly discuss in the office. Today in particular I was telling him how the idea of active citizenship is lost on South Africans and used the basis of entitlement, not only the black entitlement to be compensated but that of white people to continue to preserve their ways, And how only adopting a Cubanesq reality of existence could effect the change we want to see. The fact that I used Cuba as an example as a pose to Zimbabwe was because I know what shuts down the minds of many (a post for another day) Papabear reckons I should write an article about my argument and have it published - and you know what, maybe I will do just that! 

I don't know what scares me most - distributing my rantings to an open media or people out there knowing how I, me, Mokibelo think without me be able to offer a disclaimer or at least a hug.  *wipes sweat*

I think leaving Audi is the best decision I ever made, I don't think I would have been half the person I am now had I stayed, I don't know how long a person can allow a place or a situation to poison them until you don't recognize yourself or your joy anymore. Looking back I would never blame any one person for how I felt about myself and the lack of self esteem. I learnt that my problem was with authority, Iv  known that for a while but it is only now that I am learning to allow myself to be more malleable, this doesn't make me a sellout in fact a teachable heart is a sign of maturity.

I'm really good at writing lists...

...About shit I never get around to doing. 

In my own personal psychological analysis of myself (and there is alot) I like to plan a perfect life for myself where I'm multitasking, fusing tea and writing plays as an anti feminist at the same time as i am cruising up a corporate ladder to the starts while carrying my baby back. GREAT at writing lists.

I once started a list about why I write lists and what great fear I have that is clearly standing in the way of me doing all the wonderful things I am predestined to do(which I subsequently listed). Needless to say I dont know where either list is. I have these mechanisms in place to manage myself  away from being upset with myself for not actually just getting up and doing this stuff.

I don't exercise enough

Or pray enough

Or meditate enough

Or write enough

And there is no list or excuse or mechanism that I can create to take away this fact that by natural disposition i would make a wonderful senior manager of my own life but gees its being the low level (actual worker) employee of company ME that is the most difficult task - so challenging is this that i am close to tagging it the purpose of life itself. 

I seem to be the only person crying int he shower about it though which makes me wonder if it should mater this much to me at all?

There are many things I'd like to do, for myself, many of which I may never get around to doing. many more that when i get the opportunity may just mess up, but there are also things in my life that are achievable, very very attainable and don't (to contrary belief) require lists.

Those are the things I'm going to focus on for now.

*Disclaimer: I had no conscious part to play in the above mentioned list,

If it isnt in colour its in black and white

I used to stay home with my child and after my mom had to go home the reality of being a working stay at home mom fast became stark cold reality.

It was hard, kids are hard and I'm pretty sure I cried - ALOT. 

I couldn't wait for the saving grace of my husband walking through the door to take the kid I'd use those precious moment to shower, brush my teeth, eat - the little luxuries.

So I understand what my helper has to deal with and as the kid grows and becomes more of a force my reasoning has turned to plain amazement and curious wonder as to how she manages anything at all over an above feeding, bathing, clothing the kid and keeping him stay alive till we get home - I pay her well as a result. well above minimum wage, I do it because I know she would much rather be home raising her own children then my own. her having a living wage is important, she is looking after our most prized possession after all right? (This would be a great place to speak about the striking mine workers and their wages but I digress)

Today a colleague turned to me for advise because her helper (lets call her helper Maria) Maria stays with her grandchild during the week. Now she tells me that she doesn't mind, but she also tells me that the whole situation has become too much for her and her family to manage.

You see the grand daughter is the same age as her eldest son (she has two kids) and when they get home its just chaos! She says she feels for Maria because Maria clearly isn't coping with taking care of all three kids, she doesnt mind(there is is again) the kids playing together but when she arrives to find cokie pen marks on the tile she knows that the nanny is no longer able to look after all three especially given that she is paid to look after her kids alone. The conversation carried on in that tone as i ate my chicken and tried to keep a nonjudgmental face. The colleague had asked the helper to pack a lunch for her grandchild but these kids just don't stop eating and she cant be footing the bill for meals as well as the additional bath water used. The kids play and when she wants to take her son for swimming lessons and Maria's grand child wants to come too its hard to say no because she doesn't always want to take her with. Its the infringement of the personal time she was going to be having with her child and this additional child just takes away from it. My colleagues tells me that the child who previously was not at home on weekends has been spending weekends with Maria which effectively means the child is spending weekends with her son / her (pick whichever you would prefer to use) the conversation degenerated to the point of her saying she told Maria she must make a plan with the child after school because this just could not go on.

Ijob ijob and Maria will need to tell her daughter that she cant look after her grandchild after school anymore. the daughter will need to find a solution for her child since the school doesn't offer after care. Maria's grandchild will want to know why she cant come home to grannies house and play anymore and why she has to be taken to an aftercare somewhere or be forced to go to her mothers work and wait there sitting still and being quiet until her mother gets off work taking a taxi in the late afternoon to only get home after dark. Or she will be forced to come home and sit in her grannies room looking out the window at her friends playing. It is then for the first time in her life she will understand that she is different from them, she might not know why but she will know if for sure and that memory will stay with her forever.

I told my colleague about the terms of employment and the importance of honesty with her helper - i only did this because it was easier that explaining a concept so foreign so bazaar as ubuntu - she would never understand.

This poor girl would learn a lesson so many of us have had to learn along the way, be it at school or varsity or in the trenches of CorpSA. 

The lesson I had to learn when I couldn't let my white friends come sleep over at my house because well we didn't have a house. the same lessons that are learnt when you look at your pay slip and that of your white less educated BFF, when you don't go away for June holidays to places where you can ski, when you get told you speak English so well, when you get congratulated for being able to speak more than two languages, when you MUST move to a suburb because you need to get your child into that model C school. when you are taken to a meeting with a black client to set their mind at ease...

We Are Not The Same

2 years

Two years since i wrote - and what a two years it has been because i can barely remember a thing from it.

what i can say is that I fell out and back in love with my husband - chose the box over the money and had a kid.

iv been at the top of my game - the bottom of my game and had to even reinvent the game when the plot was forgotten

i have been a super hero and anti hero and then just someone begging to be saved from themselves. i wonder if i actually take too much credit for my own life and i imagine this could very well be the case. the one time i cried to God and asked him to help me that's what he did - reached down from heaven and pulled me out of the hole that I'm sure the enemy started digging but i unashamedly took the shovel over and continued to dig for myself. until i couldn't see the light. until i was suffocating from myself and the clostrephibic reluctance of actually validating who i am because to much.

I was successful in doing nothing the past 2 years except for becoming a mother and believing that all things work together for good, and that's enough. Then well i did what I have done so many time before ,just started again.

Cut my hair, took up jogging, dedicated myself indefinitely to breastfeeding and embarked of the eternal quest of rediscovering my awesomeness.

As I cut my hair I promised myself that this was the last time I do this, the last time i start over.

I wont look back and dwell on what was not achieved (lest I talk myself into depression) I can only take this place where God has left me - on this new plain and pick up my cross and carry on.

I look at things differently now, being a mom does that - sleep is a luxury and when that alarm hits and you clear your eyes - the fuzzy picture you see is just how it is. that's what you get so do with it what you can.

I love my husband more purely, being a broken person is a tiring existence, but being the person who lives with and constantly reassembles said broken person must be absolutely devastating.

Needless to say I have reduced my goal list for this year to two things, only two, even though my pen shook while i wrote them down, (I also scratched out the third) - so its just two this year! Because I want to remember this year. I want to be present in this year, not just a casualty of it.

Eat better | move more | take more pictures