I have decided to start a kind of series, but in writing. It will basically be a book, but I will publish daily, or whenever I can, which can be read on my blog as I go along, which will almost be like watching a television series, except it will be read. I have called the series "Because I Was Never Mine". It is based on a girl with a very disturbing background, following her past, her relationships and her life, and how her experiences makes her who she is in her day-to-day life.
I do hope that you enjoy, and please feel free to leave comments.
- Yentl. T. De Luna
I feel as if I was born watching; observing.
My entire life is made up of this. I watch, and I feel.
It’s kind of peculiar, in my opinion, the way I am
labelled ‘cold’ and ‘detached’, ‘emotionless’, considering the way I do
everything based solely on emotion. I act in passion. I act out of care. I act
out of feeling.
In the very beginning – when I was a little girl – I used
to hear the people around me, talk about me. They said that I was born mature,
an ‘old soul’; they said my eyes told stories of the life I had been exposed
to, even before birth, which resulted in my inability to feel.
They never knew how their words hurt me. They never knew
anything about me, because I never told.
Every Friday evening, I go to the merchant (drug dealer),
in the middle of the scummiest part of Woodstock, Cape Town.
He expects me. He knows my single, loud knock. He never
opens the door himself; instead, he sends his ‘runner’, Kadir. Kadir thinks
we’re friends, which is quite fine with me – whatever makes him feel a bit
better about the life that he has chosen to live, whatever makes him feel some
sort of warmth, it’s ok – just so long I know that I don’t have friends. I
don’t trust a soul, and friendship means trust.
Every week they will offer me a hit of crystal meth, and
I always say no; just like I always say no to the heroin they offer, or the
marijuana they’ve laced. I say no because I was born high, and my life feels
like one long, confusing see-saw of being just that, with consistent downers.
I don’t need drugs.
The house is small, and I hate how much it looks like
what it is – a drug den – painted a vomit-green that is darker in some areas
and lighter in others, one of the front windows broken and covered with a black
refuse bag, dirty and dangerous.
Even worse is the smell- damp, fungal, nauseating and
sickly, added to the unmistakable odours of the burning of a combination of
drugs.
I hate the house. I hate it, but I have to go.
She always looks happy to see me, even when her face is
contorted in the pain that is the result of years of drug use.
“Talia!” she’ll exclaim, each time, and she’ll smile as
best she can, exposing a mouth that seems to lose tooth after tooth; and I will
smile back at her.
She never lets me leave until I have spent at least two
hours with her. She misses me, she says. And even though it makes no sense in
some ways, it does in others, so I understand. In fact, I feel the same. I miss
her, and I want to spend time with her. It’s just the house. I just don’t like
the house.
When I leave, I have the stink of drugs and sickness on
me, and while it makes me sick, it’s also comforting. I sometimes wonder if I
go back more for her, or more for the comfort that that stink gives me.
I was young, but it’s familiar all the same.
I am now twenty-two years old, but when I was younger –
teenage years – I used to tell my parents (foster), that I was going to see a
movie, or to visit a ‘friend’, to go to that house.
My foster parents didn’t seem to care much about me
wanting to go anywhere; they never asked any questions, and on some level, it
made me feel worthless. On some level I wanted them to care, to enquire about
where I was going, who my ‘friend’ was- anything to indicate that they cared
about my life. Up until I was eighteen years old, I wondered if they would want
me beyond that age, or if they were just fulfilling their duties as foster
parents by providing for me. In all honesty, it hurt when I realized the latter
was true. But I never showed them. I don’t show my pain; it’s weak.
After Kadir opened the door back then, she would come
running to me with open arms, her eyes sparkling, and high as a kite.
She’d call me her baby, rock me back and forth after
making a scene about how my foster parents weren’t caring for me properly, and
tell me that I was brave, that she was proud of all the effort I made to see
her; squash my face between her hands and tell me that nobody loves me like she
does, asking me to tell her I know, over and over again, that nobody could love
me the way she does. I’d tell her what she wanted to hear, tears in my eyes,
unsure of whether or not it was true. Unsure, because if she did, why couldn’t
she get her act together and be to me what she should have been all along.
I got over it eventually, getting to a point where I
could tell her what she wanted to hear – make her feel better – without my eyes
welling up like a toddler’s would, because I was no longer a child, and so I
had to put away childish things, like the Sunday school teacher once read to
our class from the Bible.
Sometimes she would disgust me with her neediness.
Sometimes I was a mouthful of saliva away from spitting in her face. Sometimes
I hated her so much for being so selfish, always putting her needs before mine,
but those moments never lasted for very long, because I was born selfless. I
was born with this ‘knowing’ that I had to be there for myself or I would die
even more than I was already dying inside.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was fourteen-years
old, and on one visit, I went to stand in the backyard (a small square that was
only grey with sand and breaking concrete) to have a smoke. Kadir joined me,
and we stood there, taking long drags almost simultaneously, like we were
having a Who-can-blow-out-the-most-smoke contest, eventually getting
lightheaded from it.
“She talks about you all the time, you know?” he said to
me as we sat down in the middle of the ugliness.
“Yes, I know.”
“And she really loves you,” he continued; I could hear
that he felt awkward.
“Whatever Kadir, like this is way too much of an emotional trip for me to handle right now,
especially since it’s coming from you. Can we please just smoke and then go back inside?”
I think he sighed, presumably with relief.
I didn’t say goodbye to her after going back inside. I
just left.
I love deeply, yet ironically, every last one of my
relationships seems to have a certain ‘empty’ element.
I’m not sure what’s more weird- me loving deeply despite
not being loved back in the same way, or the way I am willing to accept that
less-than-perfect relationship just for the sake of getting even a single scrap
of compassion from another. The very dynamic of my relationships, in it, is
something that is very difficult to comprehend, even slightly.
I often wonder if I am the problem behind the emptiness
in my relationships; if I am the component that blocks out any kind of
emotional intensity- perhaps because it frightens me, due to the unfamiliarity.
Other times I tell myself that I am not worthy of love,
and while I may love another to a point of psychopathy, it will never be
reciprocated, because of my unworthiness.
And while the latter brings the most pain, it also brings
me a level of comfort. It feels more sensible because it would explain
everything from the very moment of birth, to the very last second of pondering;
there is nothing that I can do about it, because it is who I am- not good
enough.
The problem is that I want to be good enough. I strive to
be good enough. I’ll do practically anything
to be good enough.
I play games with people. It’s a rather hurtful game,
which I play unconsciously; I don’t even know that I am doing it, until the
game is finished.
My shyness would, upon meeting me, seem sweet and
endearing. I am naturally shy; I am tough, but I am shy.
Yes, upon meeting me, the person shaking my hand might
find me to be charming, peculiar in a
delightful way, maybe even fragile; the common denominator is that every person
that I have come into contact with, has wanted to get to know me better, become
close to me, care for me and have me care for them, they always want to
befriend me. But then they get to know me a little better, and the dynamics
somehow change. The thing is, though, that the dynamics will only change if I either
allow it to, or if I become sloppy and careless in our exchanges.
There is a reason behind everything that I do. Every one
of my three sets of foster parents has labelled me ‘manipulative’. Of course, I
would have to disagree. I disagree because while there might be a reason behind
my actions, they are very rarely calculated or well-thought out. As I have
said, I act upon feeling and emotion, and very often, on impulse.
I hate the game I play, but I have to play it. I loathe the game because I always lose control of
it, and the game ends up playing me.
I don’t know who loses the game - me or the person I am playing
with – because the other person always seems extremely hurt and distraught, but
then again, nobody knows the depth of my pain; and so the loser can never truly
be established.
I was nine-years old when I was placed into foster care.
They were family - my mother’s sister, her husband, and
their two sons (one of whom was my age, and the other, three years younger) –
by blood, but absolutely nothing in
terms of emotional connection.
I could tell that my aunt would rather have a cannibal in
her home than have me there, and that’s when I decided that she would never be
a friend to me, which in my mind, was her loss entirely.
She was always busy with cooking, baking (to impress her
turd of a husband), lazing about on the red L-shaped velvet couch in the lounge
reading love story after love story, eating all sorts of sugary deserts she
bought with her husband’s credit card, or trying to jog off the calories she
had ingested, so her dislike for me hardly got enough time to be expressed.
When I first moved in, I was filled with optimistic ideas
I now cringe recalling. I thought that I would get along fabulously with my
cousin, since we were the same age. I dreamed that she would welcome me into
her home and more so, into her life, as the daughter she had always dreamed of
having. I imagined helping her in the kitchen with phony smiles pasted onto our
corny faces, playing Happy Families, me singing along when she played the
piano, her brushing my hair each evening before going to bed. Alas, it was not
to be. It was not to be, from the very first night of my arrival into their
home that sat atop of a hill, nestled into a beautiful, leafy and wealthy
neighbourhood.
Her son, Kevin, was her favourite, and she believed
everything he said. She believed him, even when he lied, and she never gave me
a chance to speak.
“I’m going to tell my mother that your dirty feet made
marks on this wall,” Kevin hissed at me in the dim passage where we were
climbing the walls using our hands and feet one late Sunday afternoon.
“But I didn’t,” I whined. I didn’t want to get into
trouble, especially if I had done nothing wrong.
“She didn’t do it, Kevin,” Julian, his younger brother
mumbled, “you did.”
“Who asked you?” Kevin’s face contorted into an ugly
sneer as he made his way towards Julian, his arms outstretched.
I had him against the wall in seconds, my fingers tight
around his neck, squeezing, and squeezing, going tighter and tighter as his face
turned more and more red. Julian didn’t say a thing, didn’t move.
The door that led to the kitchen was closed, and I could
hear the sound of her opening and closing drawers and pots. Suddenly everything
went quiet and I heard her footsteps come closer, and closer.I released.
By the time the door opened, we were all pretending to climb up the walls of the passage, pretending as if nothing happened.
But what happened that day was that my cousins knew that I wasn’t a weak punching bag.
And I knew that I would do anything to be left alone. I knew that I would do anything for someone else who is in danger. I would do anything, even kill.
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