CG is 15

You are 15

You are on the verge of manhood

You are delightfully funny

Gorgeous and caring

A joy to behold

You are my angel, my life

My taller than tall

Boy

You have so much to give

So much to offer

So much to show

So much to grow (not height please)

I wish for you;

Love

Life

Laughter

Joy

Memories

Happiness

All the things you deserve

You have my heart, my love

My unconditional support

To make the best life you can

Be true to yourself and to others around you

Be good to yourself and the rest will follow

Respect yourself and be true to who you are and what you want.

You are 15 today.

Please remain amazing.

ESP

AJG – 27.02.13

Birthday

Tomorrow... tomorrow I become the mother of a 15 year old. A 15 year old, who if he lets me give him a hug and a kiss, I will have to stand on my tip toes to do.
A 15 year old who is still as funny as he was the minute he was born. Not strictly true... no he waited until he was at least 12 hours old to be amusing. A 15 year old (nearly) who is gorgeous, caring and generous. A nearly 15 year who strops around and acts like a teenager should - yet in a flash is still my little boy who bounced his way through a Beyoncé song.
My CG, the recipe to what life should be.
May this year of being 15, be a year he makes great memories and is able to look back when he is triple this age and remember it with great fondness (as I do of my 15th year).
Happy (nearly) birthday CG. ESP Prune. xx

24 Feb

Today is the 24 February 2013. A day when on any other year, I'd write a text or an email (and, in years long ago, a phone call or a snail mail letter) or post on a facebook wall the numbers 1313 and I'd receive the same back.
Every year since 1989 this has been the case. This year, I don't have a number to text or phone, an email address to write to, nor a wall to post a comment on. This year, I can say "Happy 1313" until I'm blue in the face but the person who it's directed to, will not hear it, will not respond, will not say it back.

The funny (not really) thing is: I kind of knew it was going to be a pretty crap day but didn't anticipate the hurt bowling over and punching me in the gut like it has. I thought I'd gotten used the gut busting freight train of grief that sucker punches me. But no, I'm coming to terms that just when I think I'm dealing with my emotions, I get a new wave of sadness that hurts in a different way. I appear to be moving between the 5 stages of grief from 5 to 1 to 2 back to 1.

24 years of best friendship - it should be something to really celebrate, to recognise, to be joyful about. Yet, I'm crying again. Because she's not here. I'm sad because we never got to say goodbye, to seriously celebrate together, how far we'd come in our lives yet STILL had the most epic and amazing friendship. I'm sobbing because I miss her so much and because this was the one date of the year where we harked back to our teenage years and cried with embarrassment over how amazingly silly we were. This is the one day of the year which was ours.

This day in 1989 didn't start off in any special way. It was a school day but also a Friday and Nhandi was sleeping over. She arrived on the train, again nothing different to any other weekend. We bunked Youth Club -  we were 14 and had other plans. So we got onto another train and went to Plumstead to a friend's house. To watch a video (VHS - it was 1989), The Lost Boys. I had seen it before but we had both agreed it wasn't terribly great. However, on this night it just captured us and we were loving it. Other stuff happened, like dancing in the lounge to Now That's What I call Music whatever - it was on vinyl and our boyfriends were there (special ones) and we danced with them. Again, nothing out of the ordinary really. Just two teenage girls, bunking off youth for boys. We ran like bats out of hell to get the train back to Youth. And we made it, giggling and asthmatic, falling onto the train at the last second. We were so full of life and laughter. I remember we pulled the window down and stuck our heads out of it (madness now I'm an adult) and at exactly 10.05pm on 24.02.89, we both started singing one of the songs from The Lost Boys. It was just such a connection. We didn't even say as you did back then, 'Shall we be best friends?'. We just were.

And we ran to Youth and then ran to my house and I don't think we stopped laughing and giggling and shrieking in the way of 14 year old girls. We made toasted cheese under the grill and whispered long into the morning hours. That's when we proclaimed the 1313 - It looks like 2 B's - Best Buddies. Yes, you can say 'oh wow, how childish' but we were only 14. And it just stuck. Year after year, we would celebrate together. No matter where we were in the world. We would make a point of connecting on this day.

But not today. Today I try to celebrate alone. And it's proving difficult (understatement). And most of all, I don't want to celebrate alone! I want to check facebook and see there's a wall post from her. I want to look at my phone and see her name come up. I want to make a call and hear her voice. But I'm just not going to have any of those things today, or tomorrow, or for the rest of my life and that's just not flipping fair!!

I miss you so much, my Nhandi, the most beautiful girl in the world. You were the best friend I always had. You were family, my "sister". You were unfailingly proud and honest. And probably the only person I could say 'Oooooh you're being so annoying', whereupon you'd smile and just carry on and I'd laugh. And vice versa. And now I laugh remembering how we'd do that. I'd do something weird, you'd tell me off, I'd stick my tongue out and we'd crack up laughing. How we could whatsapp each other with whatever was bugging us about our lives, and the other would answer with not what we wanted to hear but the God honest truth which hurts when it comes from someone you don't know as well.

Happy 1313 Angel, I will never forget the 24 February.

Approach with caution?

On a day when I'm missing my 'girl' so much, to read the shit that some people put on the internet just makes me want to scream in her name. To remember what she wrote to me in her last days with us, and then to hear her voice in my head like I do every day - makes me wish I could shout to the rooftops how she has been wronged.

And am I being over dramatic? Oh more that likely...after all that is what I do. However, I believe very strongly that she is with me and therefore I must believe that she has been wronged.

Why don't I scream it from the rooftops? Well unlike others, I'm so conscious of how her parents are feeling so why would I want to cause them more pain and suffering. I don't want to do that. I'm so far away that I can say what I want and it not affect my life - but that's not the same for her parents. I'm associated with them and the petty minded idiot(s) that affect their life are looking for every excuse to hurt them.

My angel is remembered by her friends - we remember and we love her as dearly as we did when she was on earth. That will not stop. We remember the girl that she was, the woman she became. We remember her good nature...her ability to love the people that didn't deserve her love. The second chances she gave to people who were not worthy to lick her shoes. Was she a saint.... oh was she hell! She was headstrong (not a bad fault), she was softhearted, she was my best friend. We have not moved on. I for one, know in my heart that I will never find another friend like her. That's not to say the friends I have aren't lovely and special and totally amazing but they won't get that part of me that she did.

And 24 years ago in 1989, we were busy cementing that friendship - via a bottle of two of wine and about 100 litres of Esprit and a ton of laughs. I remember this weekend, 24 years ago, so very clearly. Helping LBW into a bath and nearly falling into it ourselves. This weekend 24 years ago, shaped the 3 of us. It was without a doubt, a life changing weekend. I've blogged before on the specialness of the last week in February and this year remembering it, is especially poignant.

So no, I will not forget Nhandi. I will not replace her as easily as some have. I will not proclaim that the friends I have now are the best friends I ever could have - that our friendship is 'one in a million'.

I thought writing this would make me feel better but no, I still want to shout and rage: 'you suck' at the person who's made me so angry. I want them to hurt as much as I do. For making me angry when I'm not a person who is filled with rage, for not letting me grieve my best friend. For replacing her pretty much before she took her last breath.

A good day

Today was a good day. It was nothing special, nothing great, nothing changed that was earth-shattering. But today it was a good day.
I learnt how to follow another blog (copy and paste the url - it's THAT easy). I also learnt that I can censor my tongue. That was a lesson that was the whole day in the making.
Let me elaborate. There is a person I don't agree with. This person just riles me. I find this person, for their age, spiteful, vindictive and annoying (not sure which trait p*sses me off the most). S/he is also not the brightest crayon in the box, but I've never held that against a person. Anyway, today I let all the sarky and snidey comments pass over me like the proverbial duck and water on it's back. And it proved to be valuable. I found I was able to do my job - which after all is what I'm paid for. I'm not paid to get on with everyone, all the time.
My second taste of censoring myself came over in a chat group. As it's been well documented *rolleyes*, I'm off to my school reunion this year and a chat group has been set up. We are having some fantastic laughs in there but obviously chat of school days is rearing it's head every now and again. To put it mildly, some things shouldn't be aired over social media, especially from those days. And yes, I know that it's in our past and time has moved on but I appreciate that there will be spouses who might not enjoy that you got up to some shenanigans with their beloved. Some things are best remembered at our actual reunion when we've had a few drinks and more giggles. And today was a day when we remembered the 'olden' days and I managed to censor myself - which to be fair does not happen often. Oh I'm brilliant at keeping other people's secrets - but I consider myself a pretty open book. I often forget that my past is inter-twined with others. So when I burst out with "Oh Gee, do you remember when?', I forget that the person I'm remembering when with, might not really want that part of them known. People reinvent themselves all the time and maybe they don't wish for their old school mates or their spouses or anyone really to know, how sweet they were, or how they wrote love notes on your legs during class. Would I? Well we've established I'm no holds barred so yes, if ever I was sweet, I wouldn't mind the world knowing.

Anyhoo, I'm a little proud of myself for today (clap on back, add and repeat). For not crying in the car - for laughing, for censorship of my brain/mouth. And I'm grateful I've had a good day. I did grab my phone to text Nhandi, some news that only she would have cackled with me over. And I got as far as tapping onto her name in Whatsapp before I realised. But instead of wailing at the sky and demanding her return - I spoke to her instead. So small steps... maybe tomorrow will be a wailing kind of day. Maybe not.


Just as an aside before I drag my bones to bed:  and it's a question for whoever reads this.  My memory is pretty darn good. I'm finding I remember so much about those school days (that chat group is bringing it out). And a long term memory is a good thing... but I remember more than most appear to. Tonight, I remembered making *a boy* (haven't thought of an alias) blush, but not only that, I remembered the song, that a girl did a thumbs up behind him, even where we were in the school hall, the whole episode like it was yesterday and not December 1991. Someone said to me in Thailand, it's a photographic memory. But the way they explained it, it was like associations. For example the person who said that, I know their birthday and I'll know it until the end of time... because it's the day before the Titanic sunk (not the actual day but some years later) and that's the birthday of my very first school friend (Honeybee). So what made me remember the above event? I don't associate it with anything consciously.

It is what it is

I said something to my friend G the other day, that has kind of stuck in my head and refused to budge.

I said to him "It's a shame that as teenagers, we wanted what was bigger, better, brighter and didn't realise how good we actually had it".

Maybe that's just how I was. But I can admit that I did feel that way. I felt (especially in the PE) years that I just wanted to get out and away. That the grass was greener, the world was wider and the opportunities for EXCITEMENT so much greater than in the little world of Port Elizabeth. And as an adult, I know that not to be the case.

In fact, can I just put it out there that I'm not even sure why I thought that way because fast forward some 18 years later and where am I? In a town FAR smaller than the city of Port Elizabeth, where excitement hasn't been seen since 1066. Where admittedly, the grass IS greener - but only because it rains so flipping much and the only wide-ness of the world I've seen, is a size 22 woman stuffing her body into leggings and her face full of McD's. Harsh? Possibly. (and not even true, I've been places dammit!) :o)

So tonight, I went to my diaries - the oracle of how I was feeling 'back in the day' and it turns out, I knew myself better then, than I do now! I WAS happy and content but I think the expectation of my generation was to do things differently to our parents, who married young and stayed put. My parents bucked the trend and I think that's what I thought I wanted to do. But my diaries show a girl who was happy being the big fish in the little pond, the girl who was so happy to be in love with life and boys and social life.

Very tellingly (I think) in March of 1992 I write "I am so lucky to have what I have, I am so blessed to be where I am, I am so grateful for my life, my family, my friends and *the boy*. And I hope this stays like this forever". Why did I think that wasn't enough? Granted, I was 18 and thought I knew better!

And as I write this, I am so conscious of doing the same thing to CG as my parents did to me:
"Go see the world, forge new experiences, live the life". To be fair though, I was always meant to only do that for a year. My head did imagine: a year of travelling and going wild, then going home, getting a job, marrying.... circumstances dictated that my gap year lasted oh ever so slightly longer (until now) and as a result, I've never gone home or got married (is that my subconscious at work?). Thankfully I did get a job! ;)

Reading the diaries, I kind of want to shake my 18yr old self and say 'oh you silly girl, stop letting everyone else interfere in how you think/feel/live'. But then I wouldn't be here, and here is where CG was created and my life would not have been worth a single thing if I hadn't have had him.

Fate - she's a crafty little old thing.