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I’ve started seeing a counsellor to help me work through this past year, as an immediate concern, and the other deeper issues with which I struggle, as the more recurring ones. It’s every Wednesday morning for an hour.
It was something of fate that I unpacked and unloaded the contents of my mind and heart of the past 2 weeks while my mother waited for me downstairs in the car. Why? Your mother? Yes…
Two weeks ago, I was involved in a near-fatal car accident. I was on the way back from Pretoria picking up equipment for the two Enflesh Film shoots that weekend. The car in front of me in the middle lane had slowed down suddenly. I had a long and tough day and contrary to my usual reaction of a quick yet safe brake, I swerved to the right instead at 120kmph. The car swerved, I lost control, and eyewitnesses confirmed – those cars driving behind me – afterwards that the car rolled twice and then smashed into the concrete barrier for the southbound carriageway on the N1.
This is the first time I talk about the accident in detail and at length; I mentioned it recently here. (opens in new window)
I was headed home that night to get changed and ready for a date at 8pm. That didn’t happen. I was also due to go to Melville to pick up my own equipment from a guy I hired for a gig earlier on Friday. That didn’t happen either. My phone was destroyed in the accident, but thankfully – and oddly -, the equipment was untouched.
I still can’t remember the period between the swerve and the point where the car stopped. The latter was also the moment I looked down and there was blood all over my shirt. Then, a string of very clear thoughts took hold of me:
get out of the car, it can explode, get out, get out get out get out!
My arms were in so much pain but I struggled to open the door as it seemed damaged. I paniced as I feared that I would go up in flames along with the car. I got out and then I staggered like a drunk into the middle lane of the highway. Cars had stopped at that point. I walked and I turned around, unaware where I was. At that point, a soft-spoken man appeared and told me to come with him. I sat in his car while the area was being cleared.
oh my god.. the equipment! the equipment, the equipment, oh my god, why, why…
I started calling out for Harry, the guy. I asked him to check for the equipment and bring it here, it’s expensive and I have to take care of it. I was half destroyed, half stressed, just barring the actual externalisations of those feelings. Harry went and made sure of the equipment, reporting back that they were safe. He had to comfort me and assure me that they were fine and that he would keep them safe in the car.
I started crying, sobbing, and shaking. I felt so alone and so crushed. When things go bad, they really go bad for me. On the day I wanted to get everything ready for a tumultous weekend, this has to happen. Why? Why…
I looked back once as that is all I could muster with the bruised body. My beloved car, Ruby, was a mess, a writeoff. The entire front was blackened like burnt steak, smoke still shooting from it. The wheels were gone and the sides were compacted.
I looked back and cried again. It was a lonely, sad, and debilitating space to be in.
my phone, i need my phone, i have to call the girl, i have to call her, shit, she thinks I’m standing her up, she must be waiting
I called for Harry again and told that I desperately need my phone. He scurried off to find it. It took a while. I started getting anxious and the crying continued. He came back and told me,”I can’t find it… I’m sorry.” I sank further in my hurt and pain and this situation that came out of nowhere. I finally asked him to call my mother as her number came immediately to mind. While he called her, the ambulance had arrived and they put me onto a bed, and I was on my way in a neck brace (fearing brain or spinal cord damage) to Sunninghill Hospital.
I was in and out of sleep and pained waking at the hospital while they undressed me, put in stitches for the head laceration, and moved me into a long period getting CT and X-rays. I remember as I almost fell while they moved me from the scanner back to the bed. I shrieked. I watched them as they got more help to shift me; I’m a big guy, especially when I don’t have energy to complement their efforts.
A strange thing occurred when my parents arrived. I started sobbing and crying again when I heard my mother’s voice. I didn’t understand why at the time. But it continued for a while until they managed to calm me down. I had a good male nurse take care of me that evening. God blesses him at what he does, which he does very well.
I cried, I think now, because I didn’t want my mother to see me in that destroyed and exposed state. I don’t trust my parents in those moments to be supportive and understanding. I feared that the moment would come soon after the initial shock and comfort of disapproval and the muted voicing of anger. What did you do to get yourself into this situation? Were you drunk? Why? Why are you doing this to yourself and to us? I try to find behind their every word of encouragement a deeper message of veiled disapproval and anger. I’m a product of the history between us.
The moment didn’t come then but later instead.
I was finally discharged from casualty at 2:30am and headed home to Midrand. I sat with my parents for a while and an argument, the one I predicted, ensued.
Lauren, the counsellor, asked me today where I got the clarity and strength to work the 2 shoots over the weekend right after the accident. I couldn’t answer her in the session, I kept on saying to her that I had no idea where it came from. But all I know is that I worked on my feet the entire weekend and that’s why the argument happened on early Saturday morning. My parents fumed over how I could stress my body right after the accident on film work. They didn’t understand the depth of the predicament I was in with the client and the amount of pre-production that was done for both shoots. Not to mention, the amount of history with the client.
As I was on my way to work today after the session, I started thinking about the assignment that Lauren had set for me: to figure out from where I got the clarity to work that weekend and why I got it. It’s a tough assignment by the way. She reflected that I had been playing it down and putting it down to an inscrutable force that came over me. Because I was all over the place today in my session, I didn’t have the usual clarity and thought organisation that usually empowers my speaking in those situations. Nevertheless, I thought about as my mom drove me to work. (I’m waiting on the insurance company to pay out for a new vehicle.)
It came to me that for quite a long time, perhaps since my time in England, I’ve developed an intense sense of calm and clarity during very traumatic and stressful situations. Many people in the past have commented on this in the past and wondered,how do you do it? I can think of a couple events and stories where this developed sense was full in force.
It was high school, 1999, and I was due to go see a bunch of friends. We were to meet up in Douglasdale at a guy’s house. My mom dropped me off and drove off. I rang the buzzer. No answer. I waited and rang again. The house was dark. I didn’t have a cellphone on me. I was on my own. I panicked. I looked around and nervously paced around the gate of the house. It was pitch dark. I was young, maybe still 17, just graduated from high school, going through stresses at home, and here I am, stranded outside a house in Fourways.
Then, it happened. My mind went dead calm. Walk. I did. Non-black people in Jo’burg don’t usually walk outside at night, but as much as the absurdity of the idea was obvious to me, it was a calm and sensical idea. What else could I do now? So I walked to where we were going to go anyway, Douglasdale Shopping Center for Mimmo’s. I walked, mind calm, although still emotionally a wreck. I walked to there. Found no one. Walked back to the house and then back to the centre. Mind still calm, but I don’t know what to do. Other than turn around and see my friend jump out of a car. “Dude, where did you go! Sorry we were late… you WALKED here… WHY? HAHHAHA dude you’re nuts.. this is fuckin’ South Africa!”
I’ll post the essay, when I find it in my Theory of Knowledge (TOK) notebook, I wrote after this incident. Not to digress, that was the first time my mind went clear in time of severe adversity.
More similar events happened when I lived on my own in England. I would lock myself out of my dorm room, I would run out of money and have to walk a couple of km’s home, I would forget my wallet at home. I once missed the last train home and had to sleep at the station.
The second major story was actually also in 1999 when I went on a mission trip in South Africa. We were visiting a AIDS patient’s house and the clergy, along with the deacon, left us in the car while they quickly went to visit. We were parked on a dirt road, cut into a hill, in Durban. It was a rather narrow road, so our parked combi took up half the road. A Toyota edged up, trying to pass us. I was part of the group, sitting in the combi. Our driver asked him to wait. The people in the car weren’t too happy with that, so I lowered the window to talk to them. I tried speaking to them, but they didn’t care; they wanted to pass.
Then, one of the girls in our group said innocently but a bit too loudly,”he seems drunk”. The driver heard this and went ape shit. He started screaming and swearing, and suddenly this foreign group were terrified. The driver stayed in the car, fearing for the group. I looked at the car and got out of the combi. I tried to calm him down, talking to him through his window. Then, I saw him reach for something in the side pouch of the door. My mind went calm and I said to him, boss, I’ll get you through, I promise. So, I talked him through the process of slowly edging the car forward while balancing his left wheels on the ledge of the dirt hill. He passed safely. He had calmed down at this stage. He then said to me, thanks boss, I’m sorry for being angry. I told him to forget about it. He then offered me a beer. I declined.
I got back into the combi as silently as I got out. The group sat transfixed for a while and then, someone said, How did you do that? Thank you… And this was before all my time in England.
It seems to me that I have this focus to get myself out of the situation, no matter how much larger it is than me, when I get that calm mind. I am able to focus and think and act accordingly. It’s intuitive and there is no halo descending from the 7th heaven nor spiritual light emanating from within. I just get into that zone and I get things done.
what am I going to do about tomorrow.. the two shoots.. what am i going to do when im like this…
That was the final thought in the string of clear thoughts that came to me on the night of the accident. And that zone I just mentioned seems to be the zone that I was in throughout weekend. I had no choice but to work. I could call no one else up and given recent events at Enflesh Films (opens new window), I didn’t trust anyone else enough to delegate. So, I relied on myself fully and I put my health and body at risk to get something done, against all odds. No one else can rob me of my strength nor will nor courage to get things done and that’s what I did 2 weekends ago, despite the amount of arguments I had with my parents and the things said to me. I’ve seen my life controlled and shaped by others for so long. I resent myself for not fighting for control and respecting myself enough to take ownership. And I resent those people for controlling me in the first place. And I resent myself for ceding that control. A cycle is born.
In those mind-calm situations, I am in control. I am strong. I am capable. I am able to do whatever it takes, against all odds. It’s in stark contrast of my life, where I let things happen to me and I bumble along. In mind-calm situations, I call the shots and I make things happen. They’re rare and they don’t happen everyday. And usually, because of how I conduct myself in those situations, it’s the moments that I get praise and affirmation from people. It feels good to get it because I struggle all the time with the feeling that I’m not important and that I’m expendable. I never put myself in those mind-calm situations purely to get that validation. But when it happens, it’s good. I need a lot of it in my life because it’s really hard being my own cheerleader. I’m constantly fighting against myself, to overcome procrastination, listlessness, and idleness. I try to motivate myself by setting goals and putting down plans, but then I listen to the deep cry inside me and I stop to try to make sense of it. Sometimes, I can spend whole evenings doing nothing. And then I get nothing done and another cycle is born.
Maybe in those mind-calm situations, I’m most me. Nothing else is able to bring me down or stop me until I’m done.
I wish I can be like that all the time…
Lauren asked me today if I could rate myself of how reliant I am on myself for everything, I told her I’m a 3. She said that our goal now is to get me to a 7.
Could the needed 4 be found in a mind-calm situation? Can I tap them without getting myself into another one and harness that power?
Maybe…
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