2019 Realization post...

I think this was the first Christmas in my entire life that I spent without any family member. The thing about family is that you are never sure if you miss them, only when they call. And you only realise how much you enjoy spending time with them when they are around. I thought Christmas was going to be just a normal day, I was going to watch a cheesy Christmas movie, cook a nice meal and sleep. Then, my dad, my mom and my grandmother called…and tears kept coming. Face timing them and seeing all my family together in different parts of the world, was nostalgic. And I was just in my room looking at them and thinking to myself - I am blessed.

My mom and my sister finally arrived, my mom made sure she spent at least New Year’s Eve with me. She is always like that, no matter how much I try to run away, she follows me everywhere. So yesterday we were talking, they were updating me about the family shenanigans and telling me my grandma’s endless jokes and my dad weird ways, when suddenly my sister tells me that her friend passed away early this year. She starts crying, it was instantly, I haven’t seen tears pouring out so fast. My little sister used to have this big crush on her close friend, she constantly told me how she couldn’t wait to see him one day, since they were staying in different countries. Her friend passed way in March and I wondered where I was, and why I didn’t notice that my sister was going through so much.

You always hear complaints, here and there, “your sister is acting crazy”, and of course! Death is not easy, especially for someone so young. I remember earlier this year someone told me that I should be closer to my sister or pay more attention to her, and I shrugged him off. You know you always think that no matter how distant you are when your family is going through something they will somehow contact you. But I guess I became so distant that she couldn’t even seek comfort from me. We concentrate so much on our own lives that we miss the lives of the ones that are most important to us. I started distancing from my family long ago, being with them was facing the person I once was. I felt like for me to fully grow up I had to be away from them.

Every time I am around my sister I can tell she has been longing for this. I constantly have the feeling that she wants to talk but doesn’t know how to open up. I can also see how much she is growing up and I know death has a lot to do with it. Death forces people to grow and it is no doubt the worst wake up call. It’s like an invisible force is pulling you and you have no control. You are naïve to think you have any control of this life! No matter how determined you are in school, how your business is going well and how healthy you are, you can just vanish. Losing my friend Bubas was like Thanos snapped his fingers and he was gone. Why? What was the purpose?

 I was appalled by his death… I became angry with life, with God, with everything. A friend was giving me support and told me that there is always a reason behind someone’s passing, he also said that my crying was making his spirit weak and that Bubas was going to bring people closer in a way. It took me time to digest the lesson and I am still not sure if I finally understand it but I made peace with it.

Do you know what really hurt? Knowing that I missed my friends’ last year of his life. Knowing that we were not close anymore, that we only saw each other once in a year and we wouldn’t talk much. And why? You know when you are growing up you go through things, and you blame everyone around you, except yourself. You constantly hear you have fake friends so you decide to cut everyone off.

I remember a few years ago he had a birthday and a friend was like “let’s go”. I was like “no way” and she convincingly told me “Come on Lunga, it’s Bubas” meaning “It’s our Bubas”. For me, it didn’t matter anymore because I became so frigid that I wanted a ‘formal invitation’ to my childhood friend’s party, someone who was in my life since I was eleven, someone who knew me before anyone who assumes they know me. That’s how life fucks you up, you become so defensive and cautious that you can’t trust anyone.

So many things have changed, so many people I used to talk to we don’t even greet anymore. And it does kill me, that wasn’t how I envisioned my life; that was definitely not the plan. Funny enough, months ago my middle school teacher called me asking for another classmate’s number and I didn’t have it, he was so surprised. He was probably wondering “what are those kids mad about?”  “Why are they like this”. The thing is, we are not kids anymore, we are troubled adults full of hatred and grudges. What made us like that? Society? Our experiences? Self-centeredness? I feel that we are losing so much because of this.

 A few days ago I read about a guy that went to his best friend ex’s wedding, read that again…the girl that used to date his best friend was marrying another guy. He wrote about how the plans changed, how he thought they would end up together and they didn’t, how he saw the same girl planning a future with his best friend and now she was marrying another guy. And you ask yourself ‘where is this life leading me, what am I doing?’. It made me think about another episode years ago… a girl I used to be best friends in 5^th grade, I saw her in a night club when we were like twenty and I told her “my mom still asks about you” and she dismissed me saying “I don’t even remember your mom”. It was cold but I was too drunk to take it personal. She couldn’t stand me, God knows why. I never did anything to her but I guess she heard an overdose of all the slander I find my stupid self in.

I gave up on things that make me sick long ago. I got tired of being a victim of life…but whatever I went through, it made me understand my purpose here and definitely made me a better person. I realised that sometimes your break downs are your breakthroughs…

I remember going through a heartbreak two years ago and a friend told me ‘you need to really humiliate yourself in public, be miserable so then you will find healing’. My pride didn’t understand it at first because I was committed to suffering in silence. Later, I read a quote saying “Dear God, please break me, make me again” and I finally got it.  I related it to everything I went through in life, all the humiliations were the path for the healing I needed. I thought about another advice I was once given “why you never cry everything?”, a friend used to say I would cry politely and quietly, now I understand she wanted me to be shameless, remorseless, and to fully embrace pain.

It’s funny how the definition of humiliation is the absence of pride and ego…And lately I keep thinking about ego, it keeps popping out in my head. I always create links between relationships with partners and relationships with myself, for instance, you know how man kill their women because they cheat and they claim it was love, it wasn’t love, it was ego. The shame of being laughed about in public makes you act like that. That conclusion made me realise that the reason we get so upset about unfortunate situations is the ego. In arguments, when you are not able to fight back, you feel humiliated. Realising that I got constantly angry because of my ego was the biggest lesson in 2019.

Losing my friend after years of being too proud to call and say “hey I miss you” and distancing myself from other friends and my family because I couldn’t fathom being constantly reminded of my old ways was genuine ego. Seeing people I used to be close to getting married, having a baby and not being able to send a message “congrats” breaks my heart. We need to understand that whatever barrier we create is pointless and nothing is worse than scrolling your social media and finding out that the person is no longer in this earth.

To be honest, I felt alive in a way, like his death made me want to live even more and harder. And I know that no matter how close I wanted to be with him, even if I was fortunate to see him every day, I wouldn’t be able to tell him ‘don’t leave the house’, ‘don’t eat this (he died from food poison)’ or grab him, nothing would make him stay. Bubas was a sacrifice from God, for us to use the pain to learn, grow and change. The only thing that’s constant is change; it is a major index to show we are living. We truly can’t run away from change, because it is an integral part of our lives. So keep changing and keep getting better; that’s the best way to live.

Happy new year!

2^nd January 2020