Over 43 Years

I spent over 43 years feeling and knowing I didn’t matter. Even by age six, I was hiding my physical pain. Till one night my parents caught me thrashing around the bed which eventually led to a colonoscopy when I was seven years old that apparently showed I had Crohn’s disease.

The high school deputy principal couldn’t know it. Couldn’t know that I and the younger Coloured girl who lay next to me on the single bed in the sick room had no ‘love’ to go home to. That we were- first time meeting though it was- the only comfort the other would find. I was feeling tiredness and pain and she was having terrible period pain.

We knew we’d have to take a long walk to the bus or taxi rank and then sit in there with a whole bunch of strangers and then go home to a quiet house because our mothers wouldn’t leave work just because we weren’t well. So we stayed in the dark, sometimes sleeping, sometimes talking about how horrible we felt till the deputy headmistress came in and scolded us, shouting as if we were committing a crime, telling us that if we weren’t going to go home, then we should go back to class.

I don’t think she ever thought that we would have wanted to go home..home had represented comfort and care.

And so, two years ago, my husband lectured my parents about how they not only didn’t love me, the only child who consistently cared for them, bought them food and electricity etc, but they had taught my younger sister to despise me too. And he had had enough of her rude demanding messages to me. And had had enough of how they didn’t care when I was sick or recovering from surgery.

Today, we took the children to Vredenheim Animal Farm. The farm part wasn’t much to write home about. Giraffe House is much better. BUT they have been saved by the big cats. All taken from places where they had been born and raised in captivity- no idea how to survive in the wild, and so kept safe there to live where they’d be fed instead of dying quickly through never having learnt how to hunt.

I’ll add way more photos and video and info about how autism also joined us, in my next ‘random’ YouTube video once I get time to do so. This is just a glimpse.

So, when someone remembers my invisible disease, it means a lot. Some days, even when my arm would be in a sling, it would be forgotten by those who were meant to love me. Today, it was our ‘regular blog commenting’ lady’s turn to remind me that she thinks of me in my entirety when she asked how in the world my back survived my daughter who insisted she was tired and needed to be carried. (Wearing a pillow case on her head as she was pretending to be Pharoah.)

I matter. My silence isn’t taken as a sign of a lack of suffering!🥹She’s so far that our cultures are very different- my dry humour doesn’t translate in her country. But her heart crosses all the borders between us.

She didn’t just see a mom carrying her daughter. She saw an AS patient straining herself even more than normal. I didn’t even tell her that the ride there was already unbearable for me. I didn’t need to. She would have guessed it had she known how far from home the place is.

Connection. It was through Facebook in 2008 I believe, that we connected. And that connection has stood the test of time. We have thanked God for giving us the forgiving, gentle hearts we have, willing to treat kindly those who have hurt us and lied to us. We have discussed our children, our husbands who are generally absent – hers working in a different country and going home once a month, and mine traveling a lot and running and resting a lot when home.

We have despaired, and we have thanked God. We have worried about mutual friends and prayed for our sisters. Maybe it’s because she too had a complex childhood with insults thrown at her. Maybe that’s why she’s a better person. I firmly believe maltreatment in your formative years either leaves you bitter and unable to be human and kind and gentle, or better. More empathetic, caring and concerned about others. She is the latter,

I’m thankful that shared suffering and lack of love has led to a love that transcends borders, time, and distance. I pray we both allow God to transform us so that we all spend time together in heaven where we won’t have any sick children to talk about, or lack of this or lack of that. Just an abundance of goodness.

And lots of love, from the One Who is love personified.