arggh

Today is a shit day. Not ashamed to admit it. Today I'm full of feeling sorry for myself and hurting and wanting to scream into the wind. If it wasn't so stupid cold, I'd take myself down to the beachfront, stand in front of the crashing waves and just shout and scream and be wild. I might even make it into the local newspaper.

Today I feel so alone. I think I just want a hug and that's been bugging me for a few days now. I realised that no one has given me a hug - besides my family. Banana did the week before Nhandi went when I had taken a call from my second mother who had said we needed a miracle and it sunk in that maybe she wasn't going to make it. No one has held me while I've cried bar my mother - I laid on her lap and sobbed over the loss of Nhandi on the day she passed away. So in two months, not one of my friends has given me physical contact. Am I stinky? Do I give a vibe out that says 'no hugs allowed'? Am I unapproachable? Is it because Nhandi was 'just' my best friend? Well I can say now, that I've never felt so distraught, so consumed by grief in all my life. And I think to my mother who has lost two best friends and wonder how she coped? At the time, I didn't understand her grief, thought she was over doing it a bit. Unfortunately, now I get it. Now I understand why she was hysterical and totally out of it at their funerals.

Then I think back to 1990, when I had been in Port Elizabeth for about two months and wrote to Nhands and said "No one has hugged me" (we were all about the hugging in Cape Town) and the very next day someone did. And will I trot along to my reunion in 6 months time and will people think I've changed into a 'don't hug me' kind of person? Will they reckon I've changed for the worst?

I've pretty much always been a happy, social person. This has changed. I haven't been. I've secluded myself and locked up my zoominess - be that through fear of rejection, lack of opportunity or can't be arsed-ness, I'm just not sure. But I have lost my zing - I know that. I sit here and as I'm typing, I know that the minute I hit South Africa, I'll get it back. I'll be zingy and zany and be like that person I was.

So why am I not like it now? Hopefully, August will help me reclaim who I want to be.

The picture below is of a night myself, Nhands and Mouse laughed until we cried, spoke the hind leg of many donkeys and consumed more food and wine that was healthy. We shrieked like a gaggle of girls only can. It was a night I wish I could have more of. Strange to believe that was taken November 2001. Looks like it could have been taken yesterday.