Lessons from Aunty Night-Light

''You never complain, you're always smiling,'' a lady told me on Christmas day 2019. She meant it as a compliment and I took it as such. The truth is I have a pretty great life, family who loves me despite my many faults, a mother who spoils me and friends that support me unflinchingly, often above and beyond. I have a roof over my head, food in my tummy and two dedicated carers who wash me and dress me come rain or shine.

I have a good life, a life I'm very thankful for and so most of the time, that smile that you see on my face it's genuine just as it was this past Christmas day. But, full disclosure,  there are also times, however, few and far between, when my smile is a way to hide and deflect. Times like these my smile is a way to say: "All's fine move along now, there's nothing to see here."

I learned, very, very early on that people are more willing to help you when you smile and say 'please' and 'thank you' and when your survival, quite literally, depends on the help of others you learn the rules, learn them quickly and stick to them. You do what works and if that means sometimes shutting your eyes and swallowing your pride, well that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Around about the same time I learned the rules of friendly politeness winning the day, I also learned that expressing any 'negative' emotion at all makes people nervous. During my school years, in the hostel and subsequent stints in care facilities, it was repeatedly brought home to me that any tears or shows of temper are a big 'no-no'.

Being a people- pleaser by nature as well as necessity, I dutifully internalized this lesson. It meant more than just the obligatory smile, the ever-polite demeanor. In time it meant holding my tongue, censoring myself, choosing my words carefully with all, but a select few. It also meant I became very passive-aggressive. (Not something I'm proud of, I'm merely keeping it real.)

Then a few months back I realized I was having trouble swallowing...literally. I always choked easily, but now it seemed food sticking in my throat was an almost daily occurrence no matter how carefully I chew. Strangely enough, this is where Auntie Night-Light comes in. Bare with me for just a second.

Auntie Night-Light has a phobia of being burgled and a few weeks ago she decided her peace of mind necessitated her security light burning all night, every night, right into my bedroom. Now I can do many things, but sleeping with the light on ain't one and a Freeda who isn't sleeping is a cranky Freeda.

I complained to my mom who in turn complained politely to Aunty, who decided she didn't give a damn about my disrupted sleeping patterns and the light just went on burning, making me eternally grateful every time Eskom decided to loasdshed at night.

Finally, I send her a polite WhatsApp suggesting a compromise (polite with passive-aggressive overtones and sarcastic undertones, hey I never claimed to be an angel.) My suggestion was ignored and suddenly I was angry, like really angry. The kind of explosive rage I sometimes felt creeping up on me out of nowhere, in the dead of night. A rage and frustration that has nowhere to go, nothing to do except to settle in my throat like some caged animal.

My next WhatsApp didn't even have a pretense of politeness, it was blunt to the point of being rude, mean, bratty. I'd like to claim it wasn't the 'real' me, but that would be a lie, that WhatsApp was, in a way, the most honest I've ever been with anyone who wasn't family or a close friend.

After I hit send on that WhatsApp I felt a vague sense of discomfort, but not for any reason you might expect. I found it wasn't so much the content or even the tone of the WhatsApp that bothered me as much as the fact that I dared to speak that way to a grown-up.

Wait, what? I'm 44 going on 45, did I really just classify myself as not a grown-up?

With somewhat of a shock I realized that, yes, somewhere deep down I was doing the very thing to myself that I hated others doing to me. I saw myself as a child, a child with no autonomy and no right to speak her mind. It was an eye-opener, to say the least.

I never got a response to that WhatsApp, nor did I ever really expect one.  The nightlight still burns brightly and Aunty still regularly finds holes in the fence where burglars crawl through to peep through her bedroom window at her (no, I'm not kidding or being sarcastic now, promise) in short, nothing has changed since that WhatsApp... except, and this is the darndest thing, would you believe I haven't choked in days...

Regards

Freeda Moon

Next Time: Feelings, nothing more than feelings...

Disclaimer: This is not meant to encourage being rude to your elders