The job description lacked detail. We were born into it not knowing, and we progress blindly – not knowing.
I watched in a trance induced by trauma of the current happenings in my life as some of my family got ready to lay my uncle to rest outside of town.
In the numbness, I started to process how life was truly happening. The way they said it would. This is what they tried to protect us from.
I looked at the different chitenges wrapped around the waists of my aunts and cousins, all representing a time we laughed in celebration and doubled over in pain caused by us wailing. Asking for the mercy of the Lord to be upon us. Leaving our understanding to the one that knows all, because at that point, we knew nothing.
It then slowly began to dawn on me, that this is growth. This is my life. In between the talks of marriage, I am the one to pick up the pieces, create and lead the reconciliation-meetings, represent my parents in rooms where generational change was discussed. Help pick out the coffin, ensure everyone is fed, keep the handed down operations running, source the exorbitant amounts of money needed to solve problems with no profit… make calls, know the proper way to do things even when youre not taught, sit uncomfortably at foreign dinner tables, make heartbreaking calls, receive backlash and clench my teeth when being yelled at for things I “should” have had control over.
I then need to sit down to ensure I’m fed, hydrated, housed, clothed and healthy enough to do it all again the next day. Even when you can’t you have to. Even when no one forces you to, you force yourself. You’re born with the instinct to over-do, to win, to work, the attempts you make to lessen the load take too long, so you ensure your capacity is stretched. The 24 hours the day has all melt into one blob of “What is going on?”.
In the words of most of the people I know, ‘They didn’t tell us nicely.’ And I understand why, it is because they didn’t want it either.
But God doesn’t make mistakes, He knows we can do it, so onwards, guys 🤗.
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