At 22, you will go through the biggest change in your life, causing fallouts with the most important people in your life. That was when you were faced with the lie of “unconditional love” because if they unconditionally loved you, wouldn’t they support what makes you happy?

There’s no Unconditional Love for an Orphan like you

Growing up, you did not like the word “Orphan” because the people around you told you that orphans don’t look the way you look, they don’t speak the way you do, don’t dress the way you do and certainly did not belong to the families you “belonged” to. You didn’t quite understand this because it contradicted how you felt on the inside, isolated, strange and grieving the unconditional love their kids received without working for it, like you did and even then, the goalposts were always moved further.

There were always expectations set for you, from the simple ones that if you didn’t meet these expectations, “you will leave my house” to the big ones tied with your identity, career and beliefs because if you didn’t conform, then you won’t have a place in that house. With this threat you shrunk yourself, hardly spoke about how you felt because the last time you tried to do that on the morning of your matric (prom) dance, you were met with “what do you want me to do?”. Any signs of grieving the mother you felt was the only person who truly loved you were labelled as “moody”. So you plastered a happy face and went on, little did you know that it will all eventually catch up with you.

When it finally did, you then fell into the trap of “creating your own family”, fostering relationships with people you considered friends whom you can be there for and vice versa, you saw it working for others whose friends unconditionally loved them. So you waited, you opened up and wore your heart on your sleeve and were met with “I’m sorry that happened to you” but you noticed something with the “friends” you had.

Speaking Up Kills the Fun, Die in Silence Please

Mental heal issues are only acceptable if you are talking about them in retrospect, talking about them when you are going through it, you will inconvenience your friends, what are you doing? Shut up. You then understand how it was meant to be, you are brave for speaking about your tumultuous upbringing but when you expressed loneliness, what did you want them to do? Don’t burden the ones trying to love you.

Now you sit in your empty apartment, where you are supposed to be the happiest because this is the independence you were longing for but you can’t internalise this space as your home, for 11 years you didn’t have a home, so where do you begin?

Maybe certain people were meant to be alone. Maybe you should finally accept that the only unconditional love you deserved died with your parents when you were 12. You got this babe!