That Avo Guy's last story

Howzit. If I’ve tagged you below, it’s because you and I had an interaction earlier this year that meant something to me, as a result of you reading one of my stories. I’ve decided to stop telling stories, but I want to tell you why, and to share the final chapter with you.

If you just want to read the story, but you don’t want all the bullshit that comes before the recipe, scroll down. I’ve made the title fat bold, you can’t miss it.

I’m posting the final story here rather than submitting it for publication because this is where it started, so it seems right to me that this is where it ends. But before I hit you with the final story, I just want to be real with you for a second, OK?

I have this thing called CPTSD. It’s basically like PTSD on steroids. It’s the fun kind that isn’t the result of a single traumatic event, but rather of sustained trauma that rolls on until it becomes normal. It’s kind of like how you tune out the sound of the freeway you live too close to, only with trauma instead of cars.

I’m mostly fine now, but some days, I can be hard to be around, or I can be so fucked up I can’t even function. Only some days, though. It gets worse, but it also gets better.

I worked a whole bunch of that shit out by telling you stories.

When you and I first met, I was probably angry about something, and holy shit am I funny when I’m angry. I do it because, while I like making up jokes, humour is how I control my insane levels of anxiety and rage.

So I told you a story, and then you wrote me something about it, and we had a chat. It was fucken lekker, and I lived for that shit. Because you see, you were driving the conversation. I didn’t know anyone wanted to talk about that kak before, it was amazing and exciting.

I met so many people, from so many backgrounds. Maybe I even still speak to you IRL sometimes, cos you tracked me down and you weren’t an asshole. Maybe this isn’t even the first time I’m telling you this; it doesn’t really matter, because you are so fucking cool.

How do I know you’re cool? Because even though I told you lots of snarky jokes (and let’s be fair, some of them were kak, I’m not like a professional ok?), I talked about hard shit too, and you were there for it. You didn’t bat an eyelid. You were down to talk about it.

Now, partly as a result of the bullshit that went down here, but also because I was trying to write a funny story about something that was so horrific I couldn't find a punchline, I had a full blown nervous breakdown.

There were other contributing factors, too. Somewhere between the time I was angry about avos, and the time I got kicked out of /r/southafrica, I tripped over something that had teeth.

Someone breached my home network and got into my cameras. Someone also accessed my google docs account; I was at my fucking hairdresser and I thought I’d work on a scifi kids story I’m writing. Popped open Google Docs and watched in horror as the most recently accessed documents kept changing. Someone wanted to know what I was writing about.

Along with the banning, those were the triggers that sent me over the edge. Ouens, it was so bad I broke 3 therapists, no shit.

I’m stopping telling stories because I can’t write about this shit anymore. It’s too hard, and too dangerous for me. Too many people need me to have my shit together this year, this was bad enough.

I’m not even writing for M&G anymore because when I went there, I stopped being able to talk to you, and I realised that the conversations we were having were part of what kept me going, even when the chats were short. The conversations made reddit a safe place for me to be. Until it wasn’t.

The story you’re going to read below isn’t funny. You don’t have to read this one. I wrote it nearly blind with terror while having a full blown breakdown. It’s kind of the reason I can’t keep doing this. I can’t risk falling apart again, you’ll remember this year is a kak one.

So listen, I’m not going to respond to comments on this. I’m basically abandoning this account now, and I won’t log in again because my mental health can’t take it. I’m here for closure, not attention.

I deleted my stories because I was ashamed, because I was afraid that what was being written about me was true. I know now that it wasn’t true, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell these stories anymore because I will fucking melt down if I do.

I can’t undelete the old stories, sorry, you’ll just have to remember them and the laughs they gave you, but I’m leaving this one up, if only so that I didn’t write it for nothing. If you choose to read it, thank you.

I love you, you lekker South Africans. Cheers hey.

db

Why I am so terrified of the blacks

And other things I say that make people upset.

I guess a trigger warning is in order. I’m going to talk about trauma. Maybe that’ll be hard for you to read about. I don’t think it’ll mess you up worse than you already are, and you’re basically functional, so, come along.

I’ve been trying to have particular kinds of conversations for a while now, but every time I attempt it, people get uncomfortable. Sometimes it even gets dangerous, and something’s telling me I get one shot at this, so, strap in.

You might have encountered me telling dangerous stories online before, and if so, howzit. If we're meeting for the first time, all you really need to know is that between 1987 and 1992, my white family lived in the black township of Atteridgeville, where my father was the local Anglican priest.

I want the South Africa I dreamed was possible after they finally let Nelson Mandela out. When freedom was so near we could taste it; change was coming. When my black friends at my privileged multiracial school were going crazy for the same reason I was. When I could finally stop feeling so afraid all the time.

That South Africa won't come to be while I'm alive, I know that. But trauma that remains unaddressed is passed on in some form, generation to generation, until distance makes the remembering numb, and old scars ache only on cold nights.

I have this idea that if we normalise talking about hard things, if it becomes publicly acceptable simply just to talk about them, then maybe we skip a few generations and get to the good bit sooner. Maybe my grandkids get to live in the South Africa I dream of. I said this stupid stuff in public for you guys, future grandkids. I hope it was worth it.

My children are as stubborn as I am, but I’ve been telling them to pick their battles; to choose which hills they’re truly prepared to die on. I’m tired, and this hill is green, and still has water. It’ll do.

I suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. For most of my life I assumed that it was because of the sexual abuse I survived when I was 14. But I've come to learn that it is from much earlier, and is because of things that happened at the hands of white guys in brown uniforms.

I was fully aware that I generally had nothing to fear from white people. Many of the whites I had met by that point, I judged to be good people - the nuns who clothed me, the women who taught me, the children I played with at school.

And yet I knew that when white people wore this brown uniform, and drove this brown vehicle, it meant my life was in mortal danger.

How, in 1987, does an 11 year old white child know that?

Interesting question. It’s because before Atteridgeville, I lived on a Mission Station in a little valley so remote that it had no power or potable water, and it was Eden.

But sometimes people came there who were running from something. We took them in, and hid them, until they were strong enough to go back. I don’t remember what I heard through my bedroom door at night, but it was enough that when the SADF came, I understood immediately what it meant.

My elder sister also understood, because she said, very quietly, “Stay calm.”

My little sister understood it too, but that story is not mine to tell. Trauma cannot be quantified in a way that makes comparison meaningful, but she was five, and I think that wound will never fully heal.

I can’t relate to you the sequence of events, because I don’t remember most of it. I remember only feelings, and disconnected images.

I don’t, for example, remember the buffel bearing down on us, or the soldiers deploying from it, though I know this happened. I remember only how big it was, and the rumbling sound it made.

I remember my darling slightly-racist hound, ratcheting herself into her best approximation of an attack posture, and barking with genuine lethal intent for perhaps the first time in her long, gentle life; she was magnificent. I am told it was my sister who grabbed her collar when directed to control that fucken dog!

I don’t remember how many came into the house. I don’t remember how many secured the area. I don’t remember them taking my Dad.

But I remember looking up at one of them. He was muscled, and I thought that he looked just like one of the older seuns who had ridden the farm bus with us, back in Kwazulu, to the schools in Vryheid. He smelled like white people do, and he had acne.

My terror at his presence was tempered with a strange fascination at seeing such a big gun up close for the first time. It was so much cooler than anything I’d seen on the A-Team.

"Is it real?" I asked him.

He looked down at me, and saw that I was afraid, but also that I genuinely thought his gun was awesome.

"Ja," he said. "You wanna see?"

I very much did, and so he knelt down and showed me where the safety was, and how you must always point the gun down if you’re not firing it, come on ouens. And he showed me how the clip comes out, and how the spare clip is taped to the first so that you can reload quickly. It was kickass.

And then suddenly he was embarrassed.

When they were gone, my sister told me that it was going to be fine, not to worry, they only wanted to talk to my Dad, they'd bring him back just now. And I knew she had absolutely no way of knowing that.

For context, my mom was away. The SADF came fully armed into our home, took my Dad away in a buffel, and left three terrified kids all alone. So that was a bad day.

My CPTSD around this issue presents in many hilarious ways, but the kicker is definitely anxiety. Even as I type, I’m terrified that I’ll be killed for writing this, and every random bot trying to reset my Gmail password is a personally targeted attack. I feel this way because for you, Apartheid-era state surveillance is a depressing thing to read about on Wikipedia, but for me, it was just part of my home environment.

You see, they came back. Sometimes they came just to talk, you know, because they’re passing, and they’re friendly, and how are you? Maybe they needed the toilet and may they come in and use yours please? Sometimes they didn’t have nametags, or even wear uniforms. Still carried guns, though.

Apartheid is no longer law, and the regime that built it is gone, but I am still afraid. Let me explain why.

When Nelson Mandela was finally released, the Comrades came dancing down the street, in that way that black people dance when they are excited. My mother and I came out to the gate to wave and participate, because we were feeling the same thing: it was happening at last, it was finally happening.

And as the Comrades passed, someone near the back shouted, in English, "Let's kill the boere!"

In that moment, I first understood what the coming South Africa was going to be like for me, and my mother took us back inside, because truly, the celebration was no longer for us. Someone later told us with great sorrow that it would be as though we were going into exile.

I am white, and although I was not raised among them, I have lived with whites for the last three decades. I am guilty of the same sins that all whites are, because I enjoy the benefits that come with the default white package. Ngiyaxolisa, tshwarelo, I am sorry.

Even worse, I am now literally a boer, and so I also commit many of those sins of which the boere are guilty: I pay my people too little, and ask too much of them, and complain about their laziness, o a kwafa! Ek vra omverskoning, ku tisola, forgive me.

And yet I am full of rage because of what was done to my family, my neighbours, and my friends. To my fellow South Africans. This rage has no outlet, and sometimes when small things brush against it, only a smoking crater remains.

And that is why I’m so fucking terrified of black people now. Because holy shit, how are they not as angry as I am?

Here’s the thing. I have legit child abuse issues around sex; it gets into every part of your life in ways I can’t even describe. I used to feel really ashamed about what happened to me, but I’m not anymore, in large part because I continue to address this trauma.

I talk about it to expensive therapists. I see how it’s damaged me, and how I’ve healed. What I can’t heal, I am learning to work around in ways that let me live like a person, and love unconditionally, in spite of the hurt I carry.

But that took years, and a great many rands. In my life, I have been given more than you could possibly imagine. I am well aware of the resources that it took to get where I am, and I am by no means healed yet.

Now, the way in which the majority of people grew up in this country was fucking traumatic. It was so fucking traumatic that some very smart people thought that it might be a good idea to normalise talking about trauma, because as anyone with any kind of PTSD can tell you, it only begins to let you breathe when you can acknowledge it exists. And so the TRC became a thing.

It was taken from us too soon, for reasons I will never understand. The work was visionary, but it is not complete. It dealt only with some of the worst torture; it never got round to addressing what it was like for the rest of us. As a society, I think we need to continue.

Here’s where I differ from most people: I don’t care who was to blame. Maybe that’s my white privilege talking, and it’s super convenient for me to give my white skin a pass for what went down here, but I don’t think so.

I was raised in poverty, and I suffered under those more powerful than I was, who tried to dehumanise me and reduce me to being a thing. I don’t have to justify myself to you. I am from here. I carry the same trauma that everyone here carries.

You’ll forgive me, but this is the part my anxiety says they’ll kill me for. I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller.

The difficult and dangerous idea I want to share with you today is that when one person hurts another person, both are harmed. Maybe you’re hearing me say that white people should be given a pass for Apartheid. I’m saying something else entirely. Listen carefully please, the risk I’m taking is only worth it if you understand this.

When one person hurts another, both are harmed. The trauma is shared. Damage is done to the inner beings of both people.

Trauma will not heal without being safely addressed. We, all of the people of this country, have experienced shared trauma. We are in pain.

I am a husband to a wife, and a father to sons. It is my responsibility to address my trauma, so that I do not pass my hurt to them.

In the same way, I am a human being, and a citizen of this country. It is my responsibility to address this shared trauma, so that we do not pass our hurt on to the next generation. I know it’s impossible, and it's too late, but when has that ever been a reason not to start?

Some people still insist that my message is political. It is not. If it were, I would be writing about who did these things, and who should apologise, and for what. I would be condemning those who choose to enrich themselves while pretending to serve the poor. I would be calling out those who fan racist fury to cement their own power. I would be asking why healing seems to be a politically dangerous message.

I have no interest in these things; it's work for others to do, and not what I am for. I am interested only in addressing shared trauma.

My anxiety says they’re still coming for me, that they’ll kill me when they get here. So if this is what I’m dying for, because right now they’re moments away, what is this stupid message I want you to hear?

Fine. Let me say some dangerous, disruptive shit.

I wish all of you could understand, as I do, the capacity for love that exists within all human beings. How we flourish when we are kind. How easily we are hurt. How few things are truly unforgivable, given respect, time, and an honest desire.

I am so, so terrified that it might genuinely be too late, but nothing in my experience tells me that that can be true. I have done things I consider unforgivable. I have been forgiven. I know how far over the edge you can be brought back from. No matter what they have done, literally no matter what, the prodigal child may always return, and be greeted with great joy.

Maybe they were tyrants who tortured and murdered and crushed. Maybe their poverty overwhelmed them and they ate greedily while others starved, feeling justified because they had suffered. Maybe they just lived on a street somewhere, and sometimes felt uneasy. No matter how great or small the sin, they can always come home.

But they must come. If we have to go and find them, and make them come, they will be traumatised by that, and they will not understand, and that ignorance will pass on too, and with it victimhood. They must come because they want to, because they understand how heavy the thing they are carrying is, and their desire now is to put it down and rest. I believe that if the prodigal child comes home, they will be welcomed.

But I understand the fear that they won't be. I look just like some of them, that would be a bad day for me. Already people are calling me a racist for feeling as I do, and saying I am an Apartheid apologist. I didn't even say anything particularly difficult yet.

Maybe they’re hesitating. Maybe I have a few more seconds.

White people, you have to stop being so scared of black people. I didn’t help by telling you I’m scared of them too, but you need to understand the depths to which their culture is capable of forgiveness. Look at how graciously you’ve already been treated. Some of your leaders told you there’d be a bloodbath; there hasn’t been. I grant you it looked dicey for a second when Chris Hani got shot, though.

Black people born free, go google Chris Hani. What are they even teaching you these days? I tried to talk to one of you about June 16th the other day and they had no idea what I was on about. Do you know why people used to burn things in the old days? Ask them, they are still alive. Ask the people telling you to burn now why it used to be done. Ask them how they choose what to burn now.

I cannot tell that story, I'm white, and I'm in enough trouble already.

White people, I get that it’s scary being called a racist by angry people. I’m a racist myself; two weeks ago the stupid Google Maps lady routed me through Alex at night, and I just about shat myself.

I love you guys. I love how articulately you complain about injustice. I love that you care about cool stuff like global warming and sustainable agriculture, and that you're so well fed that you even have food allergies. Everything you are is because the bottom level of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs is met by default for most of you.

I’ve watched my kids grow up in your culture, and there are aspects of it that are so beautiful I even sometimes wish I’d had those things as a child. I like your core values of family, and of supporting a local ou, and of sorting your own kak out.

But listen guys, I know that 68.73% of you voted to end Apartheid in 1992. That means that the guys who wanted Apartheid were in the minority. That means the rest of you did the right thing. Guys, the next step is addressing shared trauma.

We need to talk about difficult things. We need to tell our stories, and we need to listen when others tell theirs. We don’t need government money to do a grassroots TRC, we just have to be willing to have it happen, and find a place to do it.

I think social media might be the wrong environment. The rules that prevent you from saying racist things can also be used to prevent you from having real discussions about racism.

And black people, I know I have no right to ask this, but if some whites, over the next few days or months or years, ever come up to you and try to have a real conversation about anything, please be receptive. I know you don’t have to be. Seriously, I know. But they have not had your experience, and yet they are trying to understand. If we continue to address our shared trauma, those that come after us will not have to do our work for us.

If we normalise the act of addressing things that are hard, honestly, and we respond to those stories by listening, then maybe it won’t take so long. And the time will pass anyway.

That’s all I wanted to say. Be lekker to each other, always, you beautiful people.

The tags, not in order of anything. You are all cool.

/u/Anibug /u/Bitchy_Barracuda /u/phenompbg /u/hankthehunter /u/zalinuxguy /u/_centaur_of_att /u/ironyandgum /u/eafrika /u/Original-Reference57 /u/eenbal /u/moderato_burrito /u/FollowTheBlueBunny /u/WARR10RP0ET /u/SepticThinkTank /u/HanZ044 /u/TreuJourney /u/VernonKoekemoerH20 /u/thatwasagoodyear /u/redditorisa /u/DecentConcentrate470 /u/Henbane_ /u/4Tenacious_Dee4 /u/Holsous /u/MajesticJanSwag /u/Infamous-Republic656 /u/cerebrallandscapes /u/Bohrapar /u/yawnatahn /u/iamdimpho /u/101ACE101 /u/sooibot /u/Faerie42 /u/devrohitsharma /u/Stormbaxx /u/TheTempleChef /u/keegz007 /u/uduwar /u/True_Gameplay_RSA /u/meerkatjie87 /u/Beneficial-Citron-56 /u/Naughtyculturist /u/Iambecomelumens /u/Gaiaimmortal /u/bad-wokester /u/alistair1537 /u/ozzurfer /u/DecentConcentrate470 /u/Consistent_Mirror /u/Open_Persimmon_399 /u/equanimitee /u/Peachpuddle87 /u/keegz007 /u/Rasimione /u/verdantsf /u/AnonSA52 /u/Vassago223 /u/Goli_K /u/StefanRSA /u/Muffinator1504 /u/dedfrog /u/CaptnFuzz87 /u/Vassago223 /u/Robbstrange /u/Flying_feline_2 /u/R3volv360 /u/hampsonsean1 /u/Zealousideal_Loss898 /u/CircularRobert /u/sesameskies /u/the_kingsguard /u/Alert-Mixture /u/FantaGraape /u/brightlights55 /u/IWantAnAffliction /u/WasabiFarts /u/Greengum155 /u/vekko /u/Alternative_Ad7354 /u/ZZ3xhZz /u/Annerkind /u/za_jx /u/SimbaSixThree /u/RagingPilot94 /u/almostrainman /u/InfiniteWisdom69 /u/abrireddit /u/quintinza /u/10tpeg /u/JaBe68 /u/Scryer_of_knowledge /u/ChefDJH /u/Bloody_Insane /u/MittonMan

Submitted August 22, 2022 at 09:06AM by bedsuavekid https://ift.tt/4LRlgON