"Momma Says" by guest blogger Hunter Nhlapo

Lovelies!! Finally it's here, the first guest writer on New Lesbian!

This powerful and thoughtful piece is by Hunter Nhlapo, who writes at deathbyhoney.wordpress.com and is on Twitter at @h_nhlapo. Read more about  her in her bio at the end of this post. 

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MOMMA SAYS...

 

My mom said something to me yesterday. This was in light of a topic that had suddenly illuminated my twitter timeline and initially broken my heart. You see unawares to myself, another black lesbian had been murdered in South Africa and I knew nothing about it. I, who had made it a habit to keep abreast of all things lesbian, light or heavy, celebratory or painful that occurred in this country in the small hope that my immersion into the culture would somehow help me in my transition. I was never ready for the embarrassment I felt from my lack of knowledge that yet another Lioness had fallen. Too caught up in my life of heavy rain and small fires . I'm ashamed that it took a trending topic to lure me back into my world and give me a wet slap of a wake up call. I'm ashamed still that I haven't gone to my usual sources to find out what actually occurred to snuff out the life of a woman who chose to live real and unfortunately died young. I am ashamed but thankful that the #homophobia hashtag started by Sly found me.

My mom has only experienced me as a lesbian for 4 months. Yes, prior to that my girlfriend and I had been visiting her monthly over weekends and even then, I suspect that for her it was merely a my-daughter-has-a-friend-over situation. I'm not saying that I hadn't come out to my mother, no. She knew that I had fallen in love and subsequently moved in with a woman almost two years ago. My visits to her with my girlfriend were not under false pretence. It was important to me that I showed my mom that I loved my girlfriend and that we were in a normal relationship. It was important to me that we remained authentic in relation to each other because if my mom was going to acclimatise herself to something, it would need to be the purest truth. But she still didn't see it that way, until I moved back home and was gay. The devil is in the detail I often hear and boy did satan make his rounds. A necessary evil that I am grateful for though because today my mother can say that she loves and accepts me for who I am, as is.

What she is struggling with is the having to deal with having a lesbian daughter on HER level. She says "I go to church to heal. Church makes me happy. Just the other day I asked the congregation to pray for me, and they did, although I did not tell them why". Apparently, although she has reached the point of being able to accept my being gay on my level, she has feelings of resentment and sadness with having to deal with it on her level. Her face is that of a woman who deeply loves but is strongly resentful when she tells me of being an outcast in groups that she so seamlessly fit into before. Her friends, family and peers have begun to show signs of change in their treatment of her whether it be subtle or outlandish. Her exhaustion she says comes from guarding her back and being defensive. "I am always thinking of comebacks, readying myself emotionally and mentally for hurled words. This is no way to live. Why is your lesbianism my problem? How do I feature into it?"

I've stopped myself from trying to  advise her on how to deal with it. I've wanted so many times to tell her that her peers will largely learn from her how to treat her with regards to this. Empty words really because I'm still having issues with walking hand in hand with my girlfriend at a mall without soft utterances or blatant stares. And me throwing mini tantrums over it. Sandton...Vaal Mall, anywhere. I guess it becomes better when I start not to care. I'm hoping the same lesson is revealing itself to my mom.

In the meantime, I'm grateful that my mother does not judge me for being who I am, even though it makes her life difficult.

 

Being a mom is tough.

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Hi! I’m Hunter Nhlapo. I’m a singing entrepreneur from Johannesburg, South Africa.  I am also writing my first novel. I like to blog about my life experiences in first person and other people’s experiences from my own point of view.  My readers like to read about my encounters as a new lesbian, my struggles as a 30 year old starting over and articles from blogs I visit that Ifind interesting. I generally have a lot to say about everything. I think, I write.

Breakdown

It's 1 am on Saturday night. I'm alone in my apartment. And I just had a bit of an emotional breakdown. Just for a few minutes. But it happened. And I think I needed it.

There's a lot going on right now.  Most pressing is that in the next 14 days I have to either let my current landlord know I'll be leaving here for at least another year, or that I'm peace-ing out by October 31. Most stressful is that I have the biggest paper of my life due in less than 3 months.  Most sad is that as I write this my mother is in Connecticut, sitting at the bedside of her older sister, who is dying.

I went and looked at an apartment today, seeing what my options are in my quest to move out of my current neighborhood, which is....loud. Too loud for me, at least.  I unexpectedly have a chance to move, which I thought I wouldn't have until at least a year from now, and so I set out to see if maybe I actually can.  The apartment that I saw today was...okay.  I think it's maybe a little bigger than my current place. Maybe. But it's definitely not as nice.  It would be quieter (probably) than my current place. But it's not as nice of an apartment.  This didn't really hit me until I was back here and realized---I have a NICE apartment. It's small, and this building is kind of dirty, and I really do hate this street, but.... My actual apartment? These 4 walls and huge bathroom that I get to call my own? Really. Fucking. Nice.  This was never so clear to me as it was after seeing that other apartment today.

Huh.

So I'm sitting here, dazedly realizing that I probably am going to stay here for another year, as much as I bemoan my neighbors, and this street, and this neighborhood, and even though I just sold my car today so that I would have the money to move (also so that I would no longer have the headache of paying to have a car in New York)...and I start wandering around my little space, thinking about the things that I can do that I've been putting off, that I should really just DO if I'm gonna be here awhile. I looked at empty shelf space that could be filled with clutter-turned-thing-in-its-proper-place, and absent-mindedly went through one such pile.  I found a photo envelope with pictures in it that I'd forgotten I'd had printed before I moved in.  Pictures of my parents and my brother.  I had never taken them out of the envelope, had let them get buried in a pile of office supplies.  I looked at each of them for a long time, and felt...suddenly, and strongly, and all at once, sad, lost, alone, regretful.

I realized that I miss them. That I would like to see them, as much as I often feel that I don’t, really.  I marveled at how happy my parents look in that picture from their trip to New York a few years ago. How much my brother and I look alike--how that is still true, despite the years and years of pain and misunderstanding between us.  I cried for how far away from them I feel, how far away from them I am, how that’s exactly what I intended, and how it turns out it actually hurts a bit, to get what you want.  I felt a deep and sharp loss that startled me, and made me think of my mother, spending the weekend with her older sister, her sister who is slowly, yet quickly, dying of cancer.  How this is the…fifth (?) loss like this that she has endured. And how I can only guess at the pain she is in, and how I might never really know what she is going through, and how sad I am for her.  And I cried for my mother, and the fact that it took this long for me to realize how sad I am for her, losing another person she loves.  And I cried that she won’t let me in to her real life, her emotional life...and how I learned from her.

And then my tears were about all of my own fears and doubts and worries, that I apparently don’t let myself really feel as often as I think I do. Because it all came slamming through tonight.  And it hurts.  Life hurts.

I imagine you know what I mean.

A month of texts with my mother

The following is approximately a months worth of texts from my mother. I'm clearing out my phone and need to get rid of this loooooooong conversation chain, but as I went to delete them, I couldn't bear to not record the absurdity of the way we communicate for posterity. [Feel free to skip this one, dear readers!]