Alternative title: Never beating the allegations

This is a friendship love letter unlike any other: Its bittersweet, apologetic and kind; reflective. It’s also a 2024 retrospective, a photo dump (of my thoughts) x journal entry (by way of archived WhatsApp chats). But mostly: This one is addressed  to me.

I’ve been away. Short of my travel journal, I haven’t journaled ALL year. Morning pages stopped (for context: this time last year I panic bought 4 notebooks hoping they’d last at least 6 months). Effectively, recreationally and formally: I’d stopped writing. Writing is how I process my world and not doing so has been painful.

Midway through the year I realised that I was accidentally journaling through my whatsapp statuses so I started sending them to myself. They’ve served to catalogue moments; a kind of Conversation with myself. Despite the hiatus the writing persisted. Even wounded, the art bled through: “never beating the allegations” is my favourite thing someone I love said to me this year.

Art

I subscribe to the Muse theory of creativity: that ideas exist and the Muse’s visit represent being called to be the vessel. But the idea is coming and if you don’t answer the call it will find another vessel to come into existence. In 2024, I was  visited by many tiny delightful ideas that knocked so gently (and sometimes persistently) before moving on. For the first few, I asked them to wait for me (because I truly thought I would like to get back to them). By the 3rd or 4th one, I knew I wouldn’t be able to answer the call. I watched them leave And it broke my heart. And this heartbreak told me one thing: living without the creative half of me has been a little death. But also: there will be many more visits from the Muse. And the art will exit me whether I am a willing participant or not: it kept pouring out unexpectedly in moving wedding speeches, in clever turns of phrase that made me chuckle alone. In rants at the end of the day. I am a writer. I’m never beating the allegations.

A-typical
Earlier this year I learned something painful: that people sometimes ask questions to shut you up. It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t try my hardest to answer (explain my thinking, long division, “show your work” etc). Because by my logic, even if I’ve reached thr wrong answer, If I show the king division, we can find where I went wrong and can fix it forever. I though people asked questions to teach, to probe, to understand. I’m devastated that I still can’t tell when it’s not.

During an ADHD tutorial, not my first (Neurodevelopment is a tenet of Paediatric training), something new hit me like a ton of bricks: the presentation fidgeting. “I don’t stim or fidget ” I’ve always thought. We all knows girls mask “differently” because “society” yadayada, no new ground uncovered there. But when the lecturer mentioned that the restlessness sometimes presents as incorporated movement, I saw a vivid montage of all the different times I was explicitly told to “Stop Dancing” :
Grade 11 prefects camp where the teachers already knew I was to be the next head girl but not exactly the ladiest lady (and Girls High was basically a finishing school, manufacturing fine young ladies since 1905). “I’ve noticed you randomly dance around when you’re idle, it’s not ladylike”.

As an adult, in a particularly damaging weaponised “feedback” session where the goal was destruction: I was informed that I “dance in ward rounds” and “sing with the babies” and it’s a “unprofessional”.
I was less shocked by the feedback and more concerned  by the fact that I hadn’t even noticed. I had no recollection of dancing.

Fast forward to 2024 and I wrote this:
“it kinda made me realise how much of myself I’m blunting to get through the the reg program”. Please understand: Ritalin changed my life. But the dancing stopped.

Last Tuesday I was told I have a “very expressive face particularly when you’re excited about new information” and “while I don’t mind, it’s something I should work on”. You know what, I should probably take up dancing again.

Baby Specialist
I’m a member of the unicorn squad, and Paediatrics has many stereotypes attached but even I know that we’re never beating the allegations. It’s also been A LOT. Exhibits A-G:

Love
My last breakup was insane. It also felt like the last one. I knew in my bones that I didn’t have any more of those left in me. I also realised that I had to re-enter the dating pool (at some distant point in the future of course). And was that made me spin out. Please note the dates:

2 days later, one of my favourite people came to to my house to disabuse me of the notion that there were any more first dates in my future. He wanted me to know that someone already thought the world of me. So I went on my last first date a week later.

It’s been cute:

Recently,
I asked him if he thought I was a hippy. He looked at me (barefoot, walking on the grass because “grounding helps with jetlag”) bemused from the seat he’d taken (shoes and socks on) to join me outside as if to say “look at yourself right now”. But what he actually said was: “I’ll just say, you’re never beating the allegations”. I couldn’t stop laughing, I felt so seen warmed by both the sun and his gaze.

I’m walking outside again. I feel closer to God when I’m outside or touching the earth. It’s why I climb mountains when my heart or head hurts. Why waterfalls and the sea calm my spirit. We are elemental. “you are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and stars, you have a right to be here”. He’s right I’m never beating the allegations.

A month ago, to the day: I was rear-ended on the N1 and spun 180 degrees into oncoming freeway traffic at rush hour. I knew in my marrow that if just ONE of the cars travelling at 120km/h towards me were unable to swerve or stop for any reason, that I would die instantly in a high-speed head-on collision. Evidently God still wants me around.

Moments of Happiness

There was happiness to be found. I mentored. I met my niece, held my friend from engagement to matrimony, healed, loved, cried, reunited with an old friend setenduoitiusly on a plane to Heathrow, nearly froze at a festival, caught more live music than I remember, became a frozen margarita girlie, went on my last first date, restarted reading, almost finished my protocol, grew up, had a magical vacation where I visited the most beautiful hot pool network on earth IMHO. And I got to watch Cynthia Erivo bring her enormous talents to the big screen. I survived and didn’t die. CHEERS TO THAT!

This year has felt a little bit like a slow car accident. The sky was ALWAYS falling, the vehicles were all coming at me at full speed (or at least it felt that way).  I can’t believe it’s mid-December, I’m bruised, but still alive. In tougher moments I wondered if it would’ve been easier, less admin, if I had been flattened on the N1 instead.
I’m grateful that I have these snippets. I’m glad that who I am is who I am even when I don’t feel like I’ve had the time or energy to be me. And although 2024 has been incredibly painful year to live through, this personal archive has reminded me that there was also so much beauty too. I am reminded that I wouldn’t want to be anybody else.

Love you girl,
Ntoetse.