How do you make words bend to fill the empty spaces?
It’s a Friday night, I’m lying on my double bed with the mattress that is too big for the bed frame. Listening to Numinous which is the closest thing to some kind of “ritual” that I have for these creative endeavours. Thinking about how I’ve been on the other side of the world for 6 months now. Thinking about how I wanted to tell you so much more than I have.
I lived by myself for two months, almost went insane from all that quiet. I’d go to bed at 7pm because when you finish work at 4.30pm there’s only so long you can stretch out making and eating dinner, and I’d read all the books that I brought with me twice over already. On New Years Eve I tried to make it a happy occasion by making sangria and dressing up fancy and dancing my little heart out in my little apartment. But my sangria was undrinkable because I didn’t use any of the right ingredients, and I fell asleep at 9pm because everyone who meant a lot to me had already texted to say “happy new year!” at lunchtime.
I surprised myself with how well I did in those two months though. There have been dark days by myself before, but I refused to let myself slip back to that.
In January I moved to a shared house and since then I’ve lived with 25 different people. German, Belgian, Danish, English, American, Irish, Italian, Nigerian, Malawian, and a few who flitted in and out without me even learning their names. Sometimes that’s exhausting and sometimes it’s invigorating. Sometimes it makes me feel less alone and sometimes it makes me feel more alone.
I’m growing used to meeting someone and then going places with them. Almost strangers, navigating these experiences together. I went up to the lake a month or so ago, on the way home we caught a ride on the back of a ute along with 23 other people and a bicycle, I spent the entire three hours thinking about how I’d protect my hands if we crashed. But also loving the wind in my face and the sun on my back and how it didn’t smell of sweat. What a way to see the world. When the ute stopped we were supposed to get onto another minibus but we were accosted by these two bus drivers who both wanted us on their bus. They pulled us in either direction and if we made a move to either bus they would scream and pull us to their own. I screamed back and pushed them away, they were drunk anyway. We jumped back on the back of the ute and it sped off, with this mob of drunk mini bus drivers chasing us down the road and yelling. We found another mini bus that wasn’t driven by a mad man and got on that instead.
The almost strangers are my friends now.
Sometimes, in the evening golden light, I walk down the middle of the road in absolute awe of all this. That I’m here, living this life. There are beautiful faces all around me and no one is afraid to say hello. Delightful chatter that I don’t understand. Women sitting behind mountains of fruit and vegetables, all delicately stacked into mini pyramids. Children running down the road in little gangs. So much I don’t understand. But I can see how beautiful it is, I don’t have to understand everything. I smile at everyone and feel it all. Really feel it all.
I didn’t want to come and ‘save’ Africa, because I don’t believe that’s how it works. But sometimes I feel like that’s all anyone expects of me when they see my white skin. I feel like a bitch when I look into the street kid’s eyes and say “no, I’m sorry” as he begs me for money. As he follows me almost all the way home, begging me for money.
Sometimes, I just go home with my head down and then lock myself in my bedroom and watch Mad Men. Escapism. I’m well aware that I’m fooling around with coping mechanisms. I’m not sure how to face all of this head on though, all of the time, all by myself.
When I signed up for this, I expected to learn about compassion and poverty, different beliefs and cultural customs. I wasn’t prepared for all I’d have to learn about myself as well. In a weird little way (and it feels a bit narcissistic to say it, but..) some of the most profound lessons have been almost outside of the “Africa” experience. But it all connects, doesn’t it.
Something I’ve had a hard time with is my relationships with the people that mean the most to me back home. I have a tendency to fill all the silences (which of course are bound to happen) with meaning and hidden messages. Usually lies. At home, all of the interactions with people are enough to keep those monsters at bay, but on the other side of the world it’s much easier to let the lies win. I’ve been aware of this pattern in the past, but it’s something that still jumps out at me any chance it gets. Last week it really dug it’s teeth in and I spent the week in a constant state of anxiety. I was always going to be alone. No one would stay. And maybe, on a certain level, those thoughts have some truth in them.
But there is One who stays. In the chaos of my mind, sometimes that doesn’t feel like enough, but when I let those thoughts settle into my heart, the other loneliness I feel fades to the background. And then I’m free to love people without needing them to love me back.
A few months ago I decided that since I was uncomfortable anyway I might as well go all out and try to get good at running while I’m here. The logistics of this can be challenging (i.e. I don’t feel very safe running the streets, 3 of the five treadmills at the gym are broken, people love to spend 30 minutes walking on them at a snails pace (srsly why????), and there is an hour window of time between when I finish work and when I have to be home because it’s dark, and it’s like 100 degrees celsius) but I haven’t stopped running and it feels damn good now. Uncomfortable, and damn good. On the hard days, every pound of my feet and beat of my heart and drop of my sweat reminds me that hard things don’t last forever, that I can do more than I think I can, that the sacrificing of my comfort now will make me stronger.
When we were kids Mum used to pin up all these motivational quotes on the back of our toilet door. Probably to discourage us from taking our books in there to read, which looking back on it is gross but it was basically the only place in our house where there was an element of peace and quiet so fair enough I say. Anyway, I basically memorised every single thing that was ever on the back of the toilet door. I kid you not. Even the address of some couple who owned a business is Levin, whose calendar was also a staple on the back of the toilet door. I still know it. Not very useful to my life, but here’s one from Elton Trueblood that is: “We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would like to be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and by abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously and to live abstemiously denies him the freedom to go over the bar at the desired height, or to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life with the dictum: Discipline is the price of freedom.”
There is no real conclusion to this, but maybe that is a metaphor for something else I’ve been figuring out, which can be summed up in these excellent words from Gilda Radner: “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
