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Maybe I’m depressed. I don’t know. Regardless, I’m not going onto Prozac. The last thing I need is to put on weight. Then I’ll be even more depressed.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what defines me. I feel like a failure. I’m not a saint, I’m not like Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, Albertina Sisulu. I’m not like those people. I don’t know how to be like them. I don’t know how to wake up every day and have patients cough MDR-TB into my face, and not mind. I mind. I want to be some kind of hero, but I don’t have it in me. I’m not that, I don’t know how to be that. I wish I was. I wish I could hold their shit in my hands and love them. But I can’t.
I hate them.
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Why am I so bad? Why did You make me this way? I want to be different, better, kinder, but I don’t know how.
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Jesus? Do You see me?
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I wish You wouldn’t hide Yourself from me.
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On the way to work this morning, I asked Nyasha if she ever wishes certain people would die. Yes, she said, she often hopes many of these politicians would die, all these old men ruining our continent. She doesn’t understand why they’ve lived so long. She doubts they lead healthy lives. They can’t possibly be compliant with their diabetic medications and their antihypertensives. She’s hoping they’ll die soon. By 2025 most of them will be dead, she estimates, and then we can take over the continent and right all their wrongs. Fix the mess. Take Africa to its rightful place on the world stage. She started going off on a tangent about why it’s so important for young people to start preparing for that future, to stop wasting time on Twitter and Facebook and start preparing to rebuild the continent. She quoted someone famous, saying it would be a shame if our moment to act arrived and we were caught unprepared.
You know mos Nyasha, Lord.
I asked her if she ever wished certain patients would die.
She looked at me funny and said no. She said nothing more all the rest of the way to work.
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I know this is no way for a human being, a good human being, to think, Lord. I would never say these things out loud, and I swear not to write this kind of thing anymore. But you know Noluthando, that stage-four lady with cervical cancer, who’s bed bound and has fistulas coming out of everywhere? Well, wouldn’t it be better if You took her, Lord? Wouldn’t it be better if she died? I have to put up a drip in her daily, Lord.
She’s so confused now, she takes her drip out every day. She’s not eating, doesn’t speak much, and we can’t get hold of her family. What’s the point, really? Aren’t we just causing her even more pain and distress than she needs? And Betty. To be honest, I’m surprised she’s still alive. And that Njongo kid in Ward 16. Her mom is MIA and she’s so weak she can’t even keep her head up anymore. I could write you a whole list of names.
I should probably tear up this page. What would people think of me if they ever read this? It’s the truth, though. Sometimes I wish some of them would die. It would be better for them and for me. I’m stretched so thin, Lord, if only there were fewer of them, then I could do more for the ones who have a chance.
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I can’t be the worst doctor in history, surely? What about those doctors that lied about Steve Biko’s death? What about that apartheid cardiologist who poisoned black people? I’m not like them. They are evil. I don’t make mistakes on purpose. I’m just tired.
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Why don’t I feel anything? Surely I should? All I feel is guilt for not caring, and fear of being caught out. They bore me, Lord, Your people bore me. I know it’s wrong to say it, but they do. Their pain, their problems, their hopelessness, it all bores me. It’s a constant reminder that the problems are vast, multiple, deep-rooted, and that there’s nothing I can do to fix any of it. I don’t deserve to call myself a Christian, because I don’t behave like one. I lie to myself over and over again that I can do some good, but I can’t. I can’t change anything. It’s all hopeless. They die no matter what I do.
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Someone once told me about this gas that’s released from under the earth. Someone started a fire where it gathers, and it’s never stopped burning to this day. It rages continuously, constantly, consuming everything around it, like the pits of hell.
That’s how I feel inside. Like I’ve got a raging fire burning within me. It’s too dangerous to go in there, and I don’t know how to stop it from out here. It’s a kind of hell inside. It’s consuming me.
Maybe I’m just PMS-ing.
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I can’t find peace. Not in my head, not in my heart, not in my soul, not anywhere.
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I used to like the Lord’s Prayer. It’s the only bit of the Bible I know off by heart, and as a child I would often say it over and over again when I began to feel scared. At times I
