Friday 24 October 2014

Trueeee friends!

  Aristotle said that "friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies." Deep stuff, huh? These first few weeks back at uni have been so so stressful but due to the stress, I've been reflecting a lot on what true friendship means to me and the different ways that I have seen it so far this term.

  True friends are the ones that will come to your room at 2am in the morning to keep you entertained and to let you know that you're not alone in your essay crisis. True friends are the ones that will buy KitKat Chunkies during their weekly shopping trips for you to have when you come to visit them in their rooms because they know that those are the chocolates that you love the most. True friends are the ones that will swap cleaning days with you so that you can get to have a lie in on your only day off. True friends are the ones that will bring oranges to you when you're not feeling well. True friends are the ones that will offer to help you with organising an event even though they're in an essay crisis. True friends are the ones that will offer to play Netball for you at the last minute when other people bail on you.

  I could go on and on but I'll draw to a close here, To all the friends that have been there for me these past few weeks, thank you. As Clarence Odbody said in 'It's A Wonderful Life', "No man is a failure who has friends."

Friday 17 October 2014

Grief.

  In the first term of my second year at university, two members of my family died. Grief can be defined as 'deep mental anguish.' It's one thing to know what it means but going through it is another kettle of fish.

  My aunt died when I was five and I lost an uncle at the age of nine but at those ages, I was too young to fully understand the meaning of death. When my Mum broke the news to me earlier this week about the deaths in the family, I tried not to think about them too much. Instead, I threw myself into work and my various responsibilities, overworking myself to an extent. This is denial, stage one of the five stages of grief. I realise now that I was trying to run away from dealing with the issues and my feelings. This was a really bad idea. At the end of the week, all the feelings that I'd been trying to suppress and ignore came crashing down on me on my day off and I was completely taken aback, unsure of how to react.

  I felt guilty, sad, and ashamed that I was having fun, when my family was going through so much. I ended up leaving the club alone and nearly hysterical, bawling on the phone to my sister on my way back to college. I now know that this was depression, the fourth stage in the five stages of grief. After lots of crying and Bible reading, I eventually reached stage five, which is acceptance.

  Dealing with grief is very difficult. Even though I've accepted the deaths now, the littlest things can set me off, from looking at a postcard to reading a book. (Simone de Beauvoir's 'Une mort très douce' is heartbreakingly poignant but perhaps not the best book to read when you're upset about a death...). Everyone deals with grief in different ways as we all cope in different ways. What keeps me going is the fact that God has a plan in everything and that my lost relatives are with Him. Rest in peace, uncles.
 

Thursday 9 October 2014

'Ghetto Princess'.

"Yeah, this is Kenny. She's the college's ghetto princess."

  There are so many reasons why this was not an okay thing to say to someone that is one of two black girls in a college. Especially as it was said by someone who is supposed to be my friend to a group of freshers that were meeting me for the first time! Sigh because this is the third time that something like this has happened. I confronted the 'friend' and she said the usual.."Oh, I'm not racist, this is just how me and my friends talk to each other back home." Sigh again. She was quite apologetic though and the good thing is that I don't think she'll ever say something like that again.

  The statement is a micro-aggression, a microinsult in fact, to be more specific. Microinsults are communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person's racial heritage or identity. They can take the form of subtle snubs and hidden insulting messages to the person of colour. It is still important to keep speaking out against comments like these because although racism is no longer as overt as it once was, it has now taken the form of snide remarks like the aforementioned, which can become quite harmful if allowed to grow and fester.

  I'm still learning and trying to speak out more as it is not always easy to be the one voice that calls out things like these. But things are looking up because the more I speak out, the more my friends are starting to notice and speak out as well against things that are not okay. So yay for wins!