I have no desire to be known as a strong woman .Heck. I do not even want to be known as a strong person. When you think of me please think soft. Soft as wool.
Do not even use my ability to handle pain as one of my positive attributes. It is an insult.
When you think of me do not think of compromise and adaptability. Do not even dream of inviting me to experience inconvenience with you.
I have no attraction to the smell of suffering and sweat. The air that reeks of compromise and isphithiphithi. Do not force me to endure hardness and roughness. I do not want. Do not even start on me about what won’t kill me making me stronger. Stop. Allow me to experience my softness in its entirety.
I like convenience. I like free shopping aisles. I have no desire to shop in places where I have to hold my bag a little tighter and also deal with being searched at the door. I do not have the patience for it. I despise dinginess. The dust and the darkness where the struggles of the proletariat reside and feed off the stickiness of the unwiped floors. The places where the fridge smells like feet and the toiletries aisle smells like food. I hate to hear people breathing. Why are you breathing so close to me? Why can I smell you, stranger? Why are we so close to each other? Are we about to kiss?
Do these feelings make me qualify as some sort of snob? Maybe they do. Who cares?
What we have to understand about life is that it is dished to us differently. Struggle should not be romanticized and packaged as some initiation that one has to go through for success. Do not even call it character building. Do not shame those who did not struggle like you for not relating to your suffering.
Moreover, even if a person struggled before but they are successful now does not mean that whenever they express their love for what is nice, expensive and lovely you should shame them for it and remind them of the dust they came from. Leave me alone Petronella I am aware of the dust and that is why I hate it so much. It used to choke me when I was forced to endure it and I do not have to now. The situation has changed let me be.
The other struggle ambassadors that irritate me are those who think that because they suffered when going through something it is compulsory for others to relive their experience for character building.
The worst struggle ambassadors are those who show that they hate themselves through thinking that people who have it easier in life hate them.
It is in the slander of products of private schooled education. The mockery of someone who accessed more opportunities than you. The disses at their great articulation, the assumption that they think they are better than you .All rooted in passive aggression and misplaced bitterness. How can you hate that someone is articulate? Of course Sbu, my communication skills are impeccable because the education I received provided for that. Leave me alone! Yes, I can speak indigenous languages because it is common sense that we learn languages for the purposes of communicating.
Do not volunteer me for manual labor as well. Don’t. I am not your friend.
Do not even shame me into liking manual labor my ears have this thing where they start to tingle when I am listening to nonsense. They literally start to itch and it feels like I have got throat pain in my ears. Do not even try me.
An even bigger cringe is if you try to talk about manual labor as some way to flirt. Up on some,” oh you should cook for me”. No.
Do you know which grandchild I am when in the rural areas? I am the one who brings people some water when the sun has grilled them after a long day of tilling the ground. I am a great entertainer though. I will be carrying water bottles with a smile on my face and lots of stories to tell as people get on with the business of breaking their backs.
Do you know that the softness of my hands amazes my grandmother as it is evidence of my consistency in the hatred of manual labor?
Do not even market me to people as domesticated. I will embarrass you.
When you think of me. Think of me as the cousin who says eulogies while the other carry chairs and chop cabbages. When you look at sacks of mealie meal and me in the same breath. Think, heavy and traumatic for Rori she might break.
The best way to think about me is to think about me as breakable. When you talk about your strong mothers and grandmothers who were scorched by fire and rained on and became strong. Do not expect me to walk in their footsteps. I don’t want. Do not expect me to volunteer myself for pain.
When you think of me think of treating me like an egg. Think of me as breakable. In handling me always think that you are handling glass. Bonus. I am quite easy on the eyes!
