Even relationships have milestones. How often did you think the friends you have in high school would be your best friends forever, I mean let’s go even earlier back, those young days, those young friends you grew up with; at that age you certainly believed that you couldn’t live without them. There are certainly some of us who are able to keep the friends we had when we were young, however unless both of you shared identical interest and ended pursuing similar education interest it’s likely you are no longer the same together.
I probably have written this so many times inside different post but whenever I go home I always feel that my friends and I no longer share the same interests, beside the fact that most times they end up placing on this pedestal in terms of life; I feel that our interest are never aligned, their life’s are totally based on the lifestyle of the hood while I have seen what the world has to offer and as Dave Chappelle once said “I know the game now”
So our relationships have milestones, and believe me I won’t only be referring to the bad stuff but also the good we can have in these milestones. In honesty the milestones prove something about us social beings, that we are forever changing beings, that what once made you feel a certain way can progressively make you feel nothing later. In this blog I will intertwine so many events that highlight such, perhaps you will relate and argue if I am telling the truth or not, I could be pushing air out my ass really but we’ll see.
In 1997, I just moved into the hood, Willowfontain, due to some events that happened in my childhood, link below
https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-witness/20181001/281496457219347
We had to relocate. I was the new guy in the location, did not help that I was a shy kid, but it helped that I was adventurous. I made my first friend Bongani he was quite older than me, but I remember we were best pals. In that time that guy made moving into the new location not bad at all, I certainly felt like I was forgetting the old town I was at. He lived quite a few houses from me, so naturally I believed we’d last like a soapie, but life doesn’t work like that does it. He was older as I mentioned, as we grew his mentality on what to do as a social being + male was ahead of me; he began to explore, I had other interests. What probably changed the dynamics of our relationship was that he introduced me to some of his friends and lord behold, I was more best-friends with them than him.
So we moved apart in life. Unfortunately, or rather very fortunately, the friends he introduced me too became my besties and are still in my life today, Bongani on the other hand has seen a lot of terrors in life. He certainly grew up quickly, looking at how his life turned out we clearly were destined for different lifes; now and then I see him, greet him and wonder if he remembers that we once were best-friends
A friend of a friend of mine.
In the earlier 2000s I made a couple of friends, stolen in my previous friendship relationship Thulasizwe “Engine” because when he was young when he walked he use to make an engine sound all the time, I mean all the time, and Sipho “Bones” because he was very skinny, it took me til my late 20s to figure out that name, I swear I never knew what it meant. These guys are still the only people around the location I grew up with I consider friends, we did everything together from smoking teabags, playing local baseball, soccer, karate clubs and fights, a lot of fights. However, life did create a huge gap between us; we never went to the same schools, I was, as I still am an education nerd, I saw something in life, I believed I could dig something out of it than what it was offering me, so slowly we were drifting away from each other without realising it. I will come back to them later.
Primary school
It’s possible to meet someone in such a young life who will become so close to you that you consider him a brother, and oddly enough our relationship didn’t begin very strong, it was rather here and there. In this life time I met Mduduzi ‘Ray” the name Ray came later in life; This man means a lot to me, if I consider one man a brother from another mother it is this man. Together we have experienced a lot, even when times changed and life took us in different directions calling this man when I was in need of something or calling this man to just say ‘hey’ makes me breathe easily. We’ve had our fair share of fights. There was a long gap in our relationship from secondary primary school to high school, a very long gap, but somehow life pulled us back together. Ray is a unique man, it hurt me quite a lot that at the end of our high school I left him behind; however, like I said we are all meant to take different journeys and most of those journeys make us who we are today.
High school
Stats say a lot of things; statistics say some of the relationships we create in this milestone lasts quite long. It is not for everyone however, but it is for some. Stats say some of the intimate relationships we make in this milestone last a lifetime, I was unfortunately not amongst those either, I am rather happy about that, as I am happy for those who found the love of their lifes in this time. I had a friends who got married in this life time and still married til this day, kudos to them.
Again that feeling grew in me, that the people I meeting here will be my friends forever, and for a long while it felt like that, for the who lifetime of high school it felt like the friends I was making in this era would be my friends forever, and I had crushes, being inlove for the second time felt foreign, I understood I was changing. I met Philani ‘Terry’ in 2005 the Mariah Carey years of We belong together, although that song is dedicated to the crush I had at that time Nondumiso. Terry and I were pigs in a pond, we vibed, we had the same interests, we loved books and we dreamt of making it big in Hollywood, a wish years later I wish I never had, I realised early on how hypocritical Hollywood really is.
We got separated the next year as our learning interest didn’t align but our friendship survived as it would survive til 2008 (the end of high school). As I said in high school a lot of us create relationships, I had a lot that lasted and l a lot that I thought would transcend time but again life has different paths. In high school I met Nkosinathi ‘Mazzi’ a man of honour. Our relationship did not have a great start, rather it was a confusing start but it grew to be a fruitful relationship that I appreciate til this day, and forever will appreciate holding on to it even after high school when things didn’t seem to go well for my brother; I was there for him and later he returned the favour by helping me back when I needed a place to stay in varsity. There is an old African saying, I know it to be African
“Isondo liyajika jika” which loosely translates to “The wheel always keeps turning, what was once on top, will be at the bottom someday”
There is a quite a lot people I could mention in this milestone of my life, but most of them just faded away. It is only I who now and then reaches out to see if life is still within them, I remember there is a gentleman Thamsanqa ‘Dollar’ that when I was in high school I promised myself that the day I get a dance school I was call him to come teach at it, that dream is still within me, it is with hope that he is still alive, life was never kind to him.
University and Work
Then perhaps there is this milestone, the one I consider to have made the most impact in my life, perhaps the one that has created a foundation to who I am today. When I was young I constantly would tell my location friends that life is bigger than the hood, we watched so many movies that clearly showed that there is more to life, that there is a whole world, last year we had this conversation, I was telling them I am going to China, they were not that surprised Bones said “I remember you use to tell us that you’ll travel the world someday, back then we laughed but you never laughed at yourself’
University taught me a lot of things, if not how to enjoy being myself, as it does for all those who went to it, and are still experiencing it. Again, I created relationships that I firmly believed would last forever, some never did and some today, I don’t know what I would do without them. The first friend I ever made in varsity was Vukani ‘mavuka’ this man was an artist in nature, a revolutionist that came from the hood. Vukan was basically the opposite of me, while I was still cooked up in a shy shell, Vukani was the expressive wild card, man loved women, and some didn’t’ shy from loving him back, we made work together, he disappeared for year at one time, I brought him back because he had something I wanted, he was a performer and I wanted him in one of my works. I still talk to Vuks til this day, he was the one who dubbed me “The joker” no one even me knows why, but I reckon if not from the crazy things I do, its clearly from the fact that joker has J in it like my name. I grew up a lot in varsity, the beginning years were a struggle as with most of us, no money, so you wonder how you will survive but the lady who gave birth to me, my mother always somehow came through for me.
I met a bunch of people here, perhaps the one significant place to me in varsity was the drama department, for a long while I never wanted to leave that place, it felt like home, like I would be there forever, a decade certainly is forever, I watch friends come and go, lovers come and go
In varsity a lot of life milestones get achieved really; it’s in varsity that I had my first “girlfriend” Roopen, I heard she’s about to embark on her new milestone. It is in varsity that I first experience what heartbreak was, from the above of course, worse I didn’t even realize I was heartbroken til a lady friend Fallon, who I recently tried reaching to, sat me in the sport field and made me realize I was actually crying inside. She, Fallon was quite a special lady, I’m not sure if she knew it, I hope she did. At one point we sat on the roof at drama thinking about what life might have planned for people like us. Yeah, it’s just a memory now.
There is quite a lot that happens in varsity, and as much as you make a lot of relationships, you lose a lot of them too. I met lecturers who dressed me in confidence Paul, and those that inspired me Mr. X, a man who’d later indirectly teach me that you can be close to perfect as you can but you’re still human. I consider a lot of people friends in this milestone, again some I thought I’d never lose but life has this idea about how our paths don’t really tread the same way.
I met TQ and Mpilo in varsity, these fine gentlemen, I’d see them right in front of my eyes become national superstars. It is with honesty that i can admit that we drifted a part, but everytime i see them it’s like we are young again. I made fun academic rivals, people who knew how create life around them; Kline was one of the people who did that. This milestone is important for those that are able to get into it because it teaches you things that you should value and introduces you to this foreign environment, these people who you’d have never met if you lived in the location your whole life. The first friend outside my race I met here, Neesa.
I still question why I never fell in love with her; Well could be I was enjoying being her friend and being friends with girls is something I was use to. It’s in this milestone that you make such deep friendship relationships that you mostly never realize when you’re in love with someone, that happen to me, with a white girl named Lynn, but race, I wrote a book about it, link below.
https://www.inkitt.com/stories/romance/439522
As varsity years blew by I made long lasting friendships that changed my life, I met Sanele, the man dubbed suspect, a name that fits him like a glove, he can’t OJ out of it either, although if he could, he would. I met Letho ‘Army’ who has moved on to his new milestone of having a family, if one knew the road he took to get there, you’d be asking, how is he alive. Well in fact most of my friends from varsity you’d have that question. I met Sizwe here, a man who contributed to inspiring me to dance later who said, I inspire him, remember that wheel, it keeps turning.
Then there was Simphiwe “Fiddy” “Mfalme” there are more names, the man has more names that Jesus does, in fact with his beard he could pass as Jesus. I learnt a lot from Fiddy, and not all of it good things either, hence why he has made quite a contribution to my life. I’very lived with Fiddy as brother, a friend, a son, a father… in each other we’very played quite different roles.
We have had a fair share of fights, I directly learnt that giving up on something you love is not an option, but like I said, he’s human. He has flaws, from his errors I have learnt too, those that he can manly admit and those that he is afraid to admit. Sometimes if not most times I want to klap him in the head for the worse decisions he has made, but he’s a brother at heart I forgive him.
In my varsity milestone I achieved a lot, I was a learner and transcended to become an educator, it is when I was in these milestones of work that I met lovers, again stats say that you meet the love of your life at workplaces, it doesn’t say in what manner. I met Londeka while I was a junior lecturer at a college, after that our relationship grew wings and flew. I was happy, I’ve been in flings throughout my varsity milestone before but I was never in a relationship, then I was in one. For the life of me, I had hope it would last beyond time, but life changes doesn’t, it diabolical like that. When I planned a new leap into my next milestone, life didn’t necessary allow us to transcend together, i hope she is happy whever she might be.
While I was in this working milestone at university I met Mlondi, who I consider my best friend. Some journeys only the people who have lived through them can tell the story. We’ve played a huge role in each other’s life, we’ve cried on each shoulders when life had knocked us down, we might have even shared a woman or two without realization at some point in life, well that’s no secret. If I were to share the actions and events we’ve been through, it would definitely need it’s own blog. To even think that our relationship began in a different milestone for me as his educator and transcended to what we are now.
We continue to learn from each other, we continue to make mistakes and guide each other through them. Together we are in a new similar milestone, working as foreign English teachers in China. When we talk he tells me stories of how different his life has become, how he is reinventing himself to better, like Ultron his body and mind keep evolving. That is what a new milestone makes you realize that you can keep things that matter and discard those that don’t add value to who you are becoming.
If you’re reading this and you know me, and you feel that some words come out harsh especially if we created a certain relationship, I’d advise you to not feel that way, but rather ask yourself in the life that I am in right now, what exactly do you know about it. Do you know that I was in a Chinese prison for 5hrs, lost in translation and afraid what would happen to me? You probably don’t, most probably you knew after months; the reason being, the people who could help me, even mentally/psychologically/spiritually were reached and I was able to get help. It’s not you, it’s me, okay maybe it’sthe way of life really.
In this new milestone I am still learning,you’d have thought at the age I am in, I would have figured life out by now.
I don’t, I fucking haven’t.
What I have figured, perhaps what I figured years ago is I know what I want for myself. I’ve worked hard to put myself in every possible milestone I could that I wanted; I won awards, I learned how to create poetry, I flirted with a lot of women. All of it matters cause without it, without learning from those relationships and the mistakes in between I would be a different person.
Perhaps without a doubt, the one milestone that will Always mean a lot to me was when I became a brother to a young sister; I sure love all my family members, my mom Busisiwe, my little brother Lindokuhle but the one person who means everything to me is my little sister Lockia, I never really know if she knows, probably doesn’t but being the first person in 1999 I ever said I love you too my sister holds a place in my heart that perhaps no one will ever have, Yeah she has problems and she’ll get married to some dude some day but she’still my sister.
You see what happens in life, in each milestone we go through, we break barriers. We discover that life has a lot to offer. Life has all these various things to offer to everyone, I mean it won’t the same, you won’t necessarily feel like it is making any difference but you’d surprised.
I can’t wait to reach a new milestone, become an owner of property ‘dance’, only work for my passion, that would be something, and having a family; that would really be something, however I am not in a rush.
What milestone has made an impact in your life so far? Do share and perhaps we might end up sharing reveal deeper ideas
Curious_copious 