Another Five Minute Friday.
Prompt: Light
When we first decided to move to Cape Town, people warned me about the weather. About how cold and wet and dank and miserable winter in the Mother City can be. So of course we decided to move just in time for winter. Well, it’s not quite winter yet. More like autumn. But the wet weather has certainly started.
In fact, there have been quite a few days of wet, wintry, windy (ye Gods, the wind!) weather. Dark mornings saturated with cold and drizzle.
And yet all I feel is light. It’s like bright, beautiful, yellow, early-morning sun shining into my consciousness.
Light. Weightless. Like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders.
Light, lit from within, a fire and passion for life – for love – rekindled.
Because for the first time in many years, I feel safe. And welcome. And like I am a part of something greater than myself – a community.
No matter that it hasn’t been easy to make a move of this magnitude. No matter that I miss my friends and family every day. No matter that I’m realising how much I loved the house I left behind, and how hard it is to rent.
Because even though this is hard – so hard – and should threaten to drop me into the subterranean darkness of all-too-familiar depression, I still feel so much lighter than I did in Joburg. In every possible way. And I can feel a change in our family. Somehow, we have more time. For each other, for ourselves, for those around us.
I would hate to be one of the naysayers to leave a city and then spout negativity about it, especially since I think that Joburg still has something going for it.
So all I will say is this: I think they call it the Mother City for a reason, because I already feel nurtured here. It’s like the soft beach soil that clings to my son’s feet holds some nutrient that I didn’t know that we needed or were missing until we got here. So as I find the strength to slough off the skin of jadedness, insularity and distrust that I managed to acquire in almost 15 years in the City of Gold, I welcome the new (old) me.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Glad you’re so happy there!