Umbutho

Twenty-three

Twenty-three

NOT EDITED*******

Inhlungu zidalwa ngabantu esbathandayo. (Pain is caused by the ones we love.)

All was done and dusted and now reality kicks in for most. I am sure losing a mother is not the easiest thing to live by. This though does not mean that you now have the right to treat people like they mean nothing all of a sudden. I for one didn't grow up with one but I know the pain of her absence in my life. I understand that it feels like your heart has grown without proper nurturement but I don't go around treating everyone else that cared for me like irritating spoilt brats.

His different now, more possessive but far away from me. He is here one minute and gone the next. He utters the three words then all of a sudden it just feels like they never escaped his beautiful crafted lips. I am in constant battle with myself due to the lingering but far love that I would love to recieve. He makes me feel like I am nothing somethings which hurt. Loving someone who seems like his feelings are made out of chargeable wires and you feel like sometimes he is one and other times he is nor. Other times being these couple days since I've been back home.

The feeling of loneliness when there is a room filled with people who are overjoyed that you are here and that you're back yet your heart only longs for one person to be as happy and excited as they are. He isn't though. He barely calls, he hardly answers and when he does you can detect the irritation that comes with it. He doesn't care that I want him to be ok. He doesn't care that I love him so much that him acting the way he does hurts me. All he would care about though is seeing me with a guy, beating him up and threatening to hit me if I ever did it again.

All he cares about at this very moment as i stand as a witness to attempted murder is him punching an unconscious man while I stand by the side of the scene crying and begging him to stop. He didn't care to check the 20 missed calls that I left for him. He didn't care to send me a text that he was ok and that he just needed space because I would've understood and I would validate his feelings and emotions after the week he has had. All he cares about is pushing me away from him not caring that I feel hard on the floor with tears running down my face.

Finally he is pulled off of Bongani, my classmate. I asked him for help with an assignment not knowing that I would be the cause of his injury and probable death. I asked him for assistance because I was struggling with balancing out the man I love avoiding me and giving me the cold shoulder with my life. I battled with all of that and all he cared about was beating him up because we hugged. He beat up a man because he saw his arms wrapped around my waist as I was on the verge of tears after realization hit me that I was probably going to fail this semester. Realization of disappointing my father yet again.

The disappointment and shame my mother would try to conceal but would fail miserably because of my lack of focus on the most crucial year of my life. My brother, what would he say? How would he look at me again? As I feel the burning touch of his hand tightened into a death grip pulling me to him and eventually throwing me into his car before speeding off while shouting the words "you're mine Buhle. No one else's but mine." He didn't care for my tears neither did he care that I now had a bruise from falling after he pushed me away and the bruise that rests on top of my arm, purplish in colour.

When we got to his apartment, he did not care for my screams and pleading with him that I was sorry. I apologized for something that I didn't even know off. I could not atone to what I was apologizing for and yet I screamed, I pleaded and I cried for forgiveness as he pulled a chunk full of my hair towards him and dragged me into his bedroom. He threw me on his bed slapped me because I couldn't keep quiet the started tearing of my clothing one by one. I pleaded with him to stop. I kept revisiting the thoughts and the screaming voice inside my head that told me what i needed to hear and what I should've done in the beginning of it all.