Broken Porcelain

Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika

Description

Broken Porcelain is not just a book of essays describing one Black woman’s experience of mental illness, but rather a memoir-in-essays that shatters the walls of our hearts and guides us towards empathy – all while providing social commentary that demystifies stigmas of mental illness.In her singular lyrical prose, Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika covers topics such as social media’s role in how we view depression, generational trauma, what self-care really is, taking anti-depressant medication, and finding love when you are mentally ill. The author writes with poignant honesty about the darkness of her mental illness and breaks down what mental illness is (and is not).Broken Porcelain is an urgent invitation to open our hearts and minds to learning, listening, and daring to face our own hidden pain. Rirhandzu eAfrika provides us with the perspective of what it means to survive a brain that is trying to sabotage you and stand as a strong reminder that those who suffer with mental illness are not alone.

Sujets

• Littérature Sud-Africaine
• Littérature sud-africaine
• Réflexion
• Essai
• Reflection
• Pattern coin
• Reflexion (band)
• South Africa
• Reflexion

Informations

• Publié par: Blackbird Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781990907067
• Langue: English

Extrait

Broken Porcelain



First published by Blackbird Books, 2022
593 Zone 4
Seshego
Polokwane 0742
South Africa
www.blackbirdbooks.africa
© Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika, 2022
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-990907-06-7
Also available in print.
Cover design by Nsuku L. Sithole
Editing by Norma Young
Proofreading by Mamsidoll Media
See a complete list of Blackbird Books titles
at www.blackbirdbooks.africa



Broken Porcelain
Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika







For Omphile


Contents
Prologue
Every morning’s war
PART One: Slaughtering sacred cows
Family dysfunction is basically a tradition around here
Raising myself, raising my sister
Dear Mama,
Dear Deddy,
Part Two: In my feelings
Who the f@$% switched
on my feelings?
TBH, I wish I was the strong friend
The house that Black women built
Sad girls can’t get no love
Hello Death, my old friend
PART THREE: My mind’s broken
There are voices in my head – one of them is God’s, I think
You know the pills won't fix you completely, right?
A walk into the night
Soy luchadora
PART FOUR: Doing the work
Everybody’s depressed; but like, in an Instagrammable way
Self-care is ugly
Losing weight and other wars
The world doesn’t stop for our traumas
A Black Girl goes to therapy
PART FIVE: The goodbye letters
Dear Fear,
Dear Shame,
Dear Victimhood,
Dear Control,
Dear Death,
Epilogue
Today’s victory
Acknowledgments
References



Prologue



“ Death attacks the dying and the ones they leave behind. ”
– Vuyelwa Maluleke, Lebadi 1: Gone


“ come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed. ”
– Lucille Clifton, won’t you celebrate with me




Every morning’s war
‘The saddest part about this is that I didn’t die.’
It is the first thought that comes to mind when our car stops spinning and skids to a screeching halt. What no one knows is that I have imagined this scenario a million times before, and now that it is actually happening, I welcome it.
I am not afraid of dying. I already know the details to my funeral, because I have mulled over them many times before: strictly – a cremation, followed by a memorial with lots of green plants and peace lilies to make the room breathe, sunflowers, a small choir, a small service, and a long time for people to eat and reminisce. My people must be fed in their sorrow. At the end of it all, I want my ashes to be scattered amongst forest trees that grow so tall they touch the sky.
‘What are you afraid of, then?’ you may be thinking. Suffering. An existence marked by it.
I do not know how the car comes to veer out of control the way it does. I had dozed off and only wake when I hear and feel the car has hit something.
“Jesus!” I scream.
As the car turns and turns; my mind is narrating every moment as though in a movie. Everything moves so, very, slowly.
‘Oh look, the car is spinning out of control.’ I tell myself. ‘We’re going to hit the fence!’
My eyes are open all the while.
‘No, we did not hit the fence. We’re spinning out of control again.’
Until, stop.
Calmly, I turn to look at my friend. Her eyes are wide, and her breathing is fast. “Are you okay?” I ask. She nods. I am not convinced that she is not in a panic, so I brush her arm to reassure her.
I am annoyed that I am still alive. And yet I knew that we would not die. That I would not die.
I wanted death! This was my chance, and God wouldn’t let it happen.
I step out of the car. My inspection reveals that the car has hit a sign a few metres up the road. That sign has now fallen over. The door handle on my side has come off, while the door has bent into itself. The rim of one of the wheels on my side has come off. The mirror too, is on the ground. I see the skid marks; I see the sign warning us that this is a high accident zone; I see the cars passing by mere seconds after my friend managed to bring the car under control and off the road. I see that we could have died in this high-probability-of-death zone, that it is a wonder that no car crashed into us when we were spiralling. I see this miracle, but still I think, ‘Tsk! That wasn’t even enough impact to do any real damage.’
I am weighing the evidence against my despair.
In the days that follow, my friend and I process the accident together in dribs and drabs. We talk about how we were feeling in the moment, the thoughts that flooded our minds. I tell her that it was as though I was experiencing it all outside of my body, an observer to the event, and that in the moment, it barely shook me. I tell her that it took seconds to recognise what was happening, but it felt like a lifetime. I tell her everything except my silent desire. I promise myself to be completely honest when I am ready.
When I finally do reveal it, she is shocked at how dark my thoughts are. How casually macabre. I ask her if she thinks about death constantly, too. Not more than the regular person, she responds.
And funerals? I ask. Was she dragged along to many funerals, too, especially as a child?
No, she responds. She is a writer like I am, so my reasoning – that death occupies my mental space so immensely because I am a writer – does not hold. It’s true: artists tend to think at length about death, because we think at length about life, and for this reason I thought that death was more logical to all my kind: that to die is the only reasonable response to life. We don’t consent to our birth or the life we must now build; but we can consent to ending the powerlessness of our existence. I start to think that just maybe, maybe there is something wrong with the way that I think.
Death has been a companion for all of my life. From the time I could remember, I was being dragged to funerals. The impression that I got was that it is more important to grieve than to celebrate life.
And after each one, I was not debriefed. I had to be content with the ritual aspects of the funeral, which were supposedly enough to signal to my soul that a great loss had occurred. Rituals may be how adults make sense of the things that feel bigger than a single life can carry, but children don’t know how to process these things; so instead of believing that ‘Death is a part of life’, which is the understanding which funerals are meant to beckon, I came to believe that ‘Death is life.’
I say ‘from the time I could remember’, but I ought to use another word, really. ‘Remember’ is taking liberties, because the truth is that I have forgotten those early events.
I am too unreliable to even remember the first death that knocked the wind out of me.
Omphile Radiance Olebogeng Myambo passed away on the 21st of December in our Deddy’s arms. I was three years old. She was the one who came after me. She was my toy, my baby doll. I have always loved my baby sisters fiercely! And yet that love was not strong enough to prevent the memory of her, and of her death, from being completely wiped from my mind.
I know this story, the story of her death – her life was too short – only because it has been relayed to me, and because I have seen photographs of her taken at her first and only birthday party, with close family friends, and finally, at her funeral. She was 21 months old when she left this earth.
Mama says she, Deddy, Omphile and me were on our way to my Deddy’s childhood home when they noticed that something was wrong with Omphile. A newly qualified doctor on the bus noticed that there was a struggle and came over to try to help. He advised that my parents get to a hospital immediately. The bus dropped them off in Pretoria at Muelmed hospital and Mama says that there was, in her own words, “no frenzy from the medical staff coz the child was dead already.”
Deddy says, “Upon arrival they put her on the operating table. They looked at us and told us that when we came in she was already dead.”
The loss of a child is the loss of an infinite future of possibilities. The hospital staff recognised Omphile as a case, a body declared dead on arrival; but for my parents, there was still time. Surely, there was still time?
My mother did not cry at the hospital. She says that she was “just numb”. She doesn’t remember how they eventually got to Johannesburg. But when they did, it finally dawned on them that it was finished, Omphile was gone, and Mama wept hysterically.
Mama has a hard time talking about that day. I have tried often to have the conversation with her. To get details, to build images, to feel the emotions, to see Omphile’s face again (or Mama’s or Deddy’s), to regain the memories. In both her and Deddy’s retellings, I am nowhere to be found.
Where was I?
With us, they respond.
But my sense is that I was not really there. Mama and Deddy, too swept up in the tragedy of the moment, could not see beyond the loss of their new baby to care for their first one. I do not blame them. Omphile was a rainbow baby, experienced after so much loss and pain that by the time she died, there was no more strength left to grieve.
My brain has taught itself to forget its traumas, and sometimes, the ordinary and happy moments too. It has been playing this cruel trick on me for over two decades. I have been fundamentally changed by death. Omphile’s passing taught me that I could lose anyone at any second. I, myself, could die at any time. How is someone so alive one moment, and not breathing the next? What happens when breath dissipates and meets stillness? Does the soul wrestle, or does it accept this passage quietly?
Her death hit me so hard as a child that when