If people don’t know what to say they shouldn’t say anything at all.
❖
Maybe I didn’t pray right. Maybe I didn’t pray long enough, soft enough, hard enough . . . maybe I said the wrong prayer, too many prayers, vague prayers . . . maybe my prayers were insincere, unconvincing, repetitive, boring . . .
Give me a second chance, please. Teach me how to pray the way You want and I’ll do it. I’ll do it every day, twice a day, all day. Please, just make this all a bad dream. Take all of this away, please, Lord. Please.
❖
What is the point of us being here on earth if everything’s all about heaven? If You don’t want to/don’t care to/can’t change anything here on earth, what’s the point really? If it’s all completely random and just about struggling through to the end that will eventually come, why do we bother?
If this is temporary, why can’t I just fast-forward to the inevitable and kill myself?
In fact, I will kill myself. You think I’m scared to? I’m not. I’m just too weak right now, but once my energy comes back, I’ll do it, I’ll kill myself. Just You wait and see.
❖
Will You really send me to hell if I kill myself? Even though I love You so much? Even though I’d be doing it to get closer to You?
❖
Being alive is the most dangerous thing in the world. Anything can happen at any time. It’s safer to be dead.
❖
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be for me. This was not the plan.
❖
I’m so sick of hearing about Job. Everybody wants to tell me about Job. The story of Job isn’t comforting. I don’t care if it has a happy ending. It doesn’t make me feel any better to know that he had everything replaced in the end. Some things just can’t be replaced.
❖
Ma asked if the voices are gone. What voices? What voices? She looks at me like she’s scared of me. I see her watching me as she hurries up and down the passage.
What voices, Lord?
She brings me the daily newspaper, then fruit, then rusks, then chips, then tea, then porridge, then bread, then peanuts. I can’t eat all this food, and the newspapers make me sad.
What voices?
❖
I’m bleeding again.
❖
Fix me.
Fix me.
Fix me.
Heal me.
Heal me.
Heal me.
Are You not the Great Physician? Or should we wait for somebody else?
❖
It’s been a while since I bled like this, since drops of serum and cells of hemoglobin have dripped past my thighs, day after day, so that all that’s left coming out is water. It’s been years since I’ve felt such rage for the dysfunctional flesh within my pelvis, years since I’ve wanted to stick my fist all the way up my vagina and yank the demon out.
❖
Will it always be like this?
❖
I pee slowly. Not fast like before, when I was somebody with things to do and people waiting for me. I pee slowly so it doesn’t burn. I pee slowly because my mind is idle and there’s nowhere else it needs to be.
❖
Sometimes when I’m forgetting, drifting into mindlessness, I’m jolted by a breath on the back of my neck, a breath like the one that breathed on me before grabbing me from behind and bringing my legs to the floor. I begin to cry out. Ma says it’s just a breeze, that the doors and burglar bars and gates are all locked, and nobody can hurt me in here. But that breath gets in somehow, under the door, through the burglar bars, over the gate. I feel it warm and moist on my neck. I tell Ma she must stop bringing me all these newspapers and use them to plug the windows, the doors, the holes in the walls. But she gets angry when I say these things. She says she won’t allow me to surrender my mind to madness.
❖
If I feel myself beginning to get anxious, if the thoughts in my head begin to move at an ever-increasing pace and there seem to be others threatening to start a conversation in my mind, I cover my head with my pillow and force sleep. Sleep works better than all the anxiolytics Dr. Phakama prescribed, because when I wake up I’ve forgotten and for minutes, sometimes even up to an hour, I exist lightly, like a being without a care in the world.
❖
Ma says that Philippians 4 says I mustn’t be anxious, but through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, I should present my requests to God.
I’m not sure what kind of petition You mean, Lord, but I henceforth pray with a thankful heart that You take my life.
Amen.
❖
Can You hear me? Do You even care?
Did You not say, “Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened”? Didn’t You say that? Can’t You hear me knocking? Can’t You see me seeking? Hello! I want to die!
❖
I don’t know why I bother.
❖
03:02 . . . 03:02 . . . 03:02
What is it about this time of night that drags me from sleep, pulls my eyelids open, shakes my mind awake? There were three men and they divided me in two? Or was it three times two?
03:02 . . . 03:02 . . . 03:02 . . . time after time.
Do they sleep, Lord? Do they dream of parties and balloons and picnics with smiling faces? Or are they tormented, like me? Do they have to fight off whispers, images, shadows that hide in the recesses of their minds?
❖
It’s probably not healthy to be up this late.
❖
Time moves slowly. Tshiamo’s old watch calls from my dressing table drawer.
“Chronos, kairos, chronos, kairos . . .”
I wore it until the strap withered, and then carried it in my pocket until the face fell and cracked. So now it sits in my drawer raising its voice from time to time.
❖
They said at Sunday school that You’re outside of time, so I’d pray sometimes on those calls at the hospital, when my feet were swollen, my eyes red and dry, my hands scratchy from repeated washes with alcohol-based soap, that You’d stretch the thirty minutes I had to rest
