A Good Goodbye

I desperately want to close this chapter of my life. As a matter of fact I have to. In doing so I am required to make a couple of changes.

I am saying goodbye to my blog.

Before anything else, THANK YOU.

My readers, friends, supporters, and yes the judgy Judy’s too; thank you for allowing me to share my heart. That you for allowing me to split open and spill generously. My personal life, work, lifestyle, thoughts, ideals and so much more has been splattered all over this WordPress medium and I have found much pleasure in discovering that like you I am simply human.

I’d like to create a more professional blog for my personal brand and my lifestyle blog. This will become available with the next http://www.mathunzi.com website update. I also wished to be booked for more professional writing work in various spaces, so rather that be my resume of all things “vocab”. The opportunity to study further has me taking advantage of the chance to better my technical writing technique. Allow me to grow and prepare to do better by my audience in future.

I will spend what is left of 2018 catching up. I have promised you so much and I will deliver as far as my being and time permits. I will then only manage comments and communication on this page and leave it open simple as a reminder of where I have come from.

The book

Turns out it isn’t as simple as one would assume or prefer. As much as “best selling author” is seemingly a popular title of late, putting actual pen to paper is not as breezy as a Sunday morning.

This how ever is a story that I must tell and I will tell it. On my own terms! This is where I will shift the pieces of both the making and the breaking of my heart to. I pray that someday someone picks up a copy and says “God must be real”.

Please do not categorise my work amongst the memoirs of victims. I am not here for that. I have ingested enough pity, mostly from self, to drown me for decades. Take me as I am. She who loved even after loves wrote her multiple goodbyes. She who said yes, again.

2018

Less than 90 days of this indescribably turbulent year. Stay with me if you dare as we say goodbye to that which was and can no longer be.

DM me for lunch dates. Email me for collaborations. Invite me to talks, campaigns, NGO’s and events. Let’s have those conversations

Mathunzi MacDonald

The pain and shame

The pain and shame of showing up alone

You can’t understand it until your body and soul was meshed into one with another in the name of love

The pain and shame

Weddings and funerals, parties and lunch dates

The pain and shame of showing up alone

Doctors appointments and surgery, recovery and holidays

The pain and shame

Of lying while smiling, protecting while crying, burning in the pit of your stomach because your value, time and efforts together cannot be matched to that of a stray dog.

The pain and shame

Of phone calls and texts that go unaswered and put on affection only when in want

The pain and shame

When a stranger decides if you get a yes or a no then laughs about it with your friends

The pain and the shame of showing up alone both at the dawn and dusk of your birthday

And now you look like pain and shame and somebody else must show up? For broken old you?

What soap does one use to scrub of the pain and the shame of showing up alone

Image Nigel Sibisi

On my mind 30/03

22:12

The pockets of my universe are spilling all at once.

The peices of my heart are dropping all at once.

The gaps in the passage ways of my mind are widening all at once.

My laughter invited my tears to travel on the path that runs through my lips all at once.

The spoils in my bank account have depleted all at once.

Weeds of resentment and restoration grow all at once.

Oh how I wish you could have loved me all at once and not in pockets that broke the stitches that held my happiness bound

Glass

“Your lip is bleeding..”

So are your ears. I took a bite of your lobes in retaliation.

My pallet has acquired the taste of blood; how is your face dealing with the sensation?

Drip!

Your bastard hands fed me glass in the place of the croissant I asked for when you offered breakfast in bed. I sat soaked in the sheets now leaking in the aftermath of your poisonous passion. Your eyes travelling up and down the ridge of my nose as the tray shook.

Nervous?

The bottle of orange juice she asked you to give me was heavier than expected. The sacs were not birthed from fruit but from trees. I reached out to grab it in wanting thirst but that curtain interrupted your step and you dropped it.

“Ignore the spill, I don’t want your breakfast to get cold”.

But windows shiver with cold dew and here you carried pieces of the one that cracked when you saw my car lights as you dropped your keys after walking through our kitchen door at an unmentionable hour.

If only tongues bent like spoons off a hot stove I would still have the half that was brave enough to say you are breaking me.

Swallow…

Your bastard hands fed me glass.

Why are you pretending to be unfamiliar with the smell of my blood? On depletion you drank from my heart’s flood and still asked for more beyond the rainbow coloured by my exhaustion. The words you hear are the products of the excess waste your hands delivered to my mouth. How then is the sting of my bite unbearable when you designed this menu?

Ask me where the napkins are…

If you are kind to me for just a day I may show you in gestures how to wipe the blood just enough for cameras not to see it. If the smell begins to choke you, like me, tell yourself you signed up for this.

Don’t spit into your hands. You need them to replace her bottle of orange juice and refill it with your own sweet tea.

She like me will become accustomed to the taste of cold broken glass; If the smell of my blood doesn’t repel her first.

The sharpest piece just purchased a one way ticket to my heart.

And scene (2017).

I peeled off my legendary  ‘mask of composure’ for all of two seconds but the tears continued dropping for roughly an hour. I had my Samsung in hand, plotting via Whatsapp text, the moves and manoeuvres I have prepared to carry into January 2018. Most of the faces on the other end of the line will not be able to tell that on some days my heart still shatters. On some days, I really don’t have it all together.

The year 2017 has been far more gracious than the two years that preceed it.  Thank God! So much so, I finally caught a glimpse of my not so familiar “happy weight” and I remember to eat at least twice a day. Again, there are earthly angels who have held my hand through even these things, that seem small, like chewing and swallowing more than one spoonful.

My Montessori practicals brought about routine, which was necessary.  I had forgotten that my best days are Mondays, just before sunrise. Should I tell you about Mondays? The promise they carry? Maybe another time.  I am so beautifully privileged to live, learn, grow and love amongst children in the Montessori environment.  These humans cleanse my spirit. They are God’s tangible reminder that He can make anything new. And that when He creates He does this with great delicacy coupled only with the agape kind of love. That even through challenged speech, crooked walks and difficult tantrums there is so much beauty and potential. So so much.

I laid my favourite uncle Stephan to rest on my birthday, 06-04-2017.  I walked into my parent’s living room and my father held me as if he would never let go again. My mother tried to break the news as gently as possible; This birthday like a few others would be heavy.  I smiled, genuinely on that Thursday afternoon.  Every mother who raised me, remembered that their little girl was growing up, painfully yes, but growing still. One mother sang quietly whilst holding me in the warmest embrace at the gravesite. Oh the joy.  My cousin sister Phumzile loved to sing. She had a stunning contra alto and was so humerous. She has 3 young children who with us bid her farewell about a month before. Death snatched her before her very own birthday.  The Wednesday after her passing, my mother would lose her cousin, my maternal uncle. I could continue with this morbid list but rather not. I will share this however; Never have I anticipated and yearned for a text from the being who became a stranger as I did during that time. If not for my comfort, just to know that they are still breathing.

I got rid of those dreadlocks that most of you had come to appreciate. And they will not make a return in the new year, or ever. There were a few lessons locked in those loose curl locs though, such as patience. Could we learn to be just a bit more patient with ourselves? Allow ourselves to break down so we can build bigger canvases for the masterpieces we were born to become. We are made of so much, to be so much, so why the rush? Who are you pitted against except you, that you must hurry sometimes with no plan or pleasure in the moments pocketed in your journey?

I am realising that if I attempt to breakdown every pivotal piece in 2017, I may lose you half way through this blog. We can’t risk this in case I have some epic one liner to share right at the end. So please stay with me, almost there.

Music. We are still an “old married couple”. We bicker quite a bit but the love? Endless. I placed The Verse on a partial hiatus for many reasons, including seriously not having enough time to be as dedicated to the music and management affairs as I should be. Also because I am exhausted of coming home with only enough to cover petrol for a night and squeeze in those horrid burgers from that place which is closely matched to my surname. I have the pleasure however of working with the most talented artists, who constantly feed my soul and mind with their art. I am grateful for this. Theatre fits into the neat bag of goodies carrying the better part of my year. What a beautiful medium. Stories that break your heart and mend it all at the same time. Have you seen Masasa Mbangeni on stage? You should.

“You need to own the fact that you are an actress” said the director after the acting workshop. “You are magic” said my gorgeous Tess after the shooting of a pilot with our mutual friend Kabomo. I had completely forgotten this. I became so familiar with appreciating what was around me, what was inside me was brutally silenced. I reach into the bag of better things and scream chants of gratitude to the angels that walk in dust as humans do because I am now AWAKE.

I can not call you all by name but know that the God who sees me, sees you.

I’ve stopped crying, for now. I have things to giggle about. I have things to sit in praise about. I have stuff to pray for and pray about.  Because I want laugh as I did in this year; tenfold at the break of a new season. I want to blush and bite my lip while my eyelashes fall in a dry(tearless) curl. I want to make you laugh too. I want to be strong for you. So I cry when life asks me to, so that I better understand your tears and gently drag you to a place of quiet.  You can then choose to burrow and break so that you can begin to rebuild but if you need a bit more time for it to make sense, that is okay too. I have been here.

Mondays are full of promise. So is a new year. The 1st of January is just another day, if you choose to see it that way. I thankfully have OCD, hahaha, so the first of anything is brilliant really. Ask me personally about this

Happy New Year

@Mluart

The UNposted Post

There are roughly 30 (thirty) posts uncomfortably sitting in the drafts folder of Mathunzi Macdonald’s personal blog account. Ridiculous?

There are things I have been unable to speak openly about for fear of ridicule and possible public shame. There are topics I realized I had very little interest in and would be posting, well for the sake of posting. There are things I could have shared that had the potential to label me a complete “sham” as they would simply be depicting my “social media appropriate life”.

The launch of my website http://www.mathunzi.com came with a promise of regular blog posts about everything Mathunzi. I assured friends and family that I was ready to wear my scars proudly and share in my “Johannesburg City Life” and all the various things that I do work wise and in my leisure time. What I did not anticipate was yet another dramatic twist in my lifes story that would leave me seriously wounded. That wound would be left gaping for cups of salt to be splattered inside throwing me into blissful constant agony.

The launch of my site in itself was, to put it mildly, a MIRACLE.

It would surprise even the developer himself to know that the means to compile content and afford his services, literally streamed from heavens windows. Poor health sent my photoshoots soaring into black holes leaving me indebted and without a single pretty picture to continue the public display of “I am fine, but not if you look close enough”. Dazed by my circumstance, I fell into habits of mismanagement of funds, neglect of studies and business development (let us not speak of the neglegence of self, we will need a bit more time on that), disregard of good health, grooming or/and an ordered environment (OCD took leave on most days). The short of it; Things were a mess, I was a mess.

Two therapists have shared common opinion regarding my failure to grieve and process traumatic events, having suffered quite a few in a short space of time. Knowing that this process is necessary, I still have barely begun. So how could I possibly write about something I have not yet experienced? Instead I would continue recycling pep talks which are constructed around what I assume my readers may want to hear, may sympathise with or what may blind them to how devastating certain realities really are. What is the point then? Why am I the “conversationalist” having this conversation if I am not willing to HAVE the conversation?

For instance, the cutting of my hair and re-design of my first tattoo (yes brethren, I am inked).               These were not fashion statements, neither was it testiment to my Malawian genealogy which allows for rapid hair growth in a preferred texture or the seemingly new found “liberal rebellion” exercised within the church by openly flaunting ink and piercings. I simply wasn’t and probably still am not ready, to discuss in a meaningful and purposeful manner, what carrying the lifeless body of your baby until it is surgically removed really feels like and spells out for the rest of your life. Or the symbolic meaning behind the removal of the product of the hair journey you started only because he said he preffered it on you. How you trusted it would be part of a new beginning that never came and how life not so politely shoved your nose in the dust and said “Start again, and please leave that mess on your head behind. I doubt you can afford to maintain it anyway with that odd textured curly hair without the support of a suitor”.

Call me a liar however if I deny that I remain blessed and well set up, and that I should have less excuses around the commitment to these conversations.

I have lived a relatively charmed life in the greater scheme of things. I am surrounded by beautiful beings who indulge me in genuine support, love and memorable shared experiences. I am blessed with talents, intent and a know how in multiple fields. “Broke” remains relative as I still enjoy certain luxuries and perks. (Necessary)Opportunities have been made available to me by both man and the universe. I am able to better discern as far as who is FOR me and who is simply there to add colour to my already colourful life. And I have learnt to have a very different kind of conversation with God.

I have spent a lot of time asking God to fix IT and not to fix ME. I have asked Him to help me forgive him or her and forgot to mention how I need to forgive myself. I prayed (or rather recited the popular petition text) for my daily bread and failed to simply ask for assistance in meeting my blog deadlines.(We only talk to God about serious business huh? In our best English?)                                      God had become some mystical figure and not my father and friend. I had to reintroduce my self and allow Him to do the same. My conversations with Him now make for better conversations with YOU.

May I kindly not make any promises at this point but assure you that I want to be in constant, honest, purposeful conversation with you.

My site http://www.mathunzi.com, developed by Sibisi Media Group, will be updated as regularly as possible to keep you up to date with what is happening in my life and the work that I will be doing and progress I hope to make. It will open a window of communication to explore what can be achieved in collaboration in the various fields of work and play.

Thembekile Tsoari, with the assistance of other artists, will help document the interesting and exciting moments in my life through photography and videography. Most of these engagements may be found on my Instagram accounts, my personal account being @thunzy_

I will be healing, learning, living, laughing and loving. I will be going through this life thing understanding that I only get to do it ONCE. I will be having conversations with YOU.

Here, 29 August 2017 at 03:30 – POSTED.

Exhale (Poetry)

​I need to exhale. 

The time has seen me turn black and blue from the poison infiltrating my lungs that I refuse to spit out. I can not breathe. 

I am ashamed of failures I did not instigate or carry through. I am a victim who over time has learned to victimise. I now know how to suffocate you.

I am built to withstand the stakes darted at the lungs of my core being, but perhaps my manufacturer forgot the final piece.

I no longer feel but see the air oozing out. Left empty, there is nothing left to pick up the bicycle patch that could extend my survival. 

I have been ridden. A bicycle has seen more care. Like a horse and then like a dog used to fight for small change. I have been tossed aside and flicked out of my own space and reality to gather the pieces of me with the hands that were bitten and chewed by those who said that they love me.

I can’t blame those who take pride in the multiple punctures they have inflicted. Two punctures left a hole big enough for human life to seep through me. I partly blame myself. I saw the sharp edge. I felt it carress me. I remember the first time it grazed me. Of course it would crave depth.

I am not yellow. My color is off putting. So why not deflate what you have come to fear simply at a glance. 

Peirce me.

Poke me.

Plunge into me.
Slit my throat and quicken the torment. Maybe when my blood flows my color will turn to red. Even if it is for but a moment.
I want to breathe. I want to be the time keeper to an open heart that craves only me and not my death. 

I have been holding this evil in… inside my being. 
Where is the pen and paper? Where is bag of change? 
I need to exhale. 

Mathunzi Macdonald 

If not me then who?

I asked why me and the answer was swift…If not you then who? 

My wounds are deep but my heart still beats
If not you then who? 

Am I losing the last few strands of sanity my feeble hands have desperately been holding on to?

If not me then who?

What happened to gratitude? Food on my plate, clothes on my back, a ceiling for shelter… I think I crave the light of blazing stars. A light that generates a glimpse of hope at the end of the dark tunnel called life…

If not me then who?

I am bitter,sore and cold. Stripped of my pride by the unintentional deadly grip of even colder hands… 

If not me then who? 

The child that was molested, or the mouth that has never tasted bread? The woman beaten, the man tormented for what he has no power to change? The race that continues to be oppressed, the womb that is cursed? 

Wait… Pain chooses not its intensity. It hurts, it hurts deeply. But if not I then who? 

God, I believe in you, but never have I felt so far away from you. The chills feel as though evil found a small crack in the partitions of your hand, found me, grabbed me, rooted its claws of sorrow and now won’t let go of my bleeding throat. I cant breathe Lord…
If not me then who? 

I cried till my tear asked me to stop. They had seen enough of the ground. And after a long while, I managed lifted my eyes to a once familiar place. 
I asked once more,why me? The answer was swift; 

If not you then who? 

Who would know the hurt of her people so that kindness could be made manifest in her?                      Who is yet to realize the enormity of her strength?                                         Who will carry a new generation and deliver a breed with a difference…    See, you are allowed to hurt, but never wallow for too long. You are allowed to feel as humans do. 

That question may never leave you, and neither will the scars be invisible to you, but let the answer be clear;

How can you be a better you if not you…