A letter to 13 year old MsMozi

I've been inspired by the work of Lordwiggly, Sweetass and Living Bridget, so here goes...

First of all, you need to tell your mom that it’s time for her to stop cutting your hair and go to a real hairdresser. The skew curtain of a fringe isn’t working and this may be the reason you haven’t managed to kiss, sorry I mean ‘grab’ a boy yet.

You’ve just arrived at your uptight all-girls’ school and you’re worried about not fitting in. The strange goth girls have befriended you and all the other girls are telling you to stay away from them. Although you’re probably going to listen to them, you’d be much better off if you didn’t because you end up befriending this bunch again in Std 9. You’re still hanging onto your two primary school friends and think that they’ll be your best friends for ever and ever. Well, here’s some news for you – by the time you’re 21 you’re not friends with either of them anymore. They’re both really bad for you and the sooner you get them out of your life the better.

You’re probably going to completely ignore Kay throughout your entire high school experience but she ends up being one of the greatest people in your life as you get older, so maybe you should start spending some more time with her now.

I know you’re spending hours in your room, longingly starting at your posters of Take That (actually, perhaps you should take those off the walls) dreaming about meeting a wonderful boy and wondering what’s wrong with you – but you’re wasting your time. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you and you are going to be pursued by many wonderful boys later on, so just enjoy being young!

Now I’m going to tell you something a little scary – but try and remember that your 26 year old self is still around to write this so it doesn’t turn out too badly. In two years time a doctor is going to discover that you’re really really sick. Now don’t panic…. But what’s going to follow is months of surgery, radiation and hospital time. Your parents are going to completely fall apart and you’re going to feel like you have to put on a brave face for them – but don’t. This is half the reason you got sick in the first place – you need to start talking about your problems instead of just pretending everything is okay all the time. Your friends and family will love you anyway and it’ll be much better if you learn this before you turn 21 and have to write off an entire year to learn how you should really be living your life.

After you get out of hospital – boys are finally going to start taking notice of you. You’re going to meet your first boyfriend and you are a complete bitch to him. This behaviour is completely unnecessary - I know this dating thing is all new to you, but you should really try and treat him with a bit more kindness during the course of your epic three week relationship. Before the end of Std 8 you’re going to have your first kiss in a movie theatre while watching Independence Day and you’re going to hate it (the kiss, not the movie). Don’t worry – it really does get much better than that.

At the end of Std 9 you’re going to fall in love for the first time. You’re going to date this boy for two years and a year of this will be long distance. You’re going to experience highs and lows like never before and even 13 years later you’ll still look back on the relationship and smile. He’s going to be your first for a lot of things and he’s just the right candidate. Enjoy it!

After you finish matric, you start being a real pain in the ass and drive our parents crazy. Try and be a little more considerate to mom and dad. They’re the best parents in the world and you know it… and besides, for the rest of your life they bring up this ‘problem year’ and make you feel guilty about it – so rather save us the complaining and just be nicer to them – okay?

And also try and put a little more work in when it comes to your relationship with your brother. By the time’s you’re 26 you have almost no relationship with him at all. Perhaps if you put more effort in earlier on it won’t get to this point.

You’re going to go on to travel, study and eventually work – and you have a pretty good attitude when it comes to balancing all of these elements. Don’t ever feel like you’re not doing enough – your priorities are just different to everyone else’s and you don’t need to make excuses for this. In fact, stop comparing yourself with others and don’t ever feel like you need to live up to someone else’s expectations. You’ll eventually learn that people’s motives aren’t always good, and although it’s a hard lesson, you’ll find it very liberating.

Stop worrying - you turn out pretty good later on – healthy, happy with strong relationships, mostly with people you don’t even know exist right now. You’re going to get intense joy out of life and walk around smiling most of the time. Don’t sweat the small stuff – things tend to always go your way at the end of the day.

What's your flavour?

Italian Ex-Boyfriend has changed his status on Facebook to ‘in a relationship’. Being curious, I decided I needed to take a look at his new chickita, so I clicked on one of the photos. I was quite astounded to see that his new squeeze looks almost exactly like me.

And this got me thinking… as I’ve noticed that many of my ex-boyfriends go on to date women with features very similar to mine. I’d like to believe that this is because they are so wracked with remorse and regret that they realise that if they can’t have me, that they’ll just have to just settle for someone who looks a lot like me – but I know this is not the case. I think men are just much more likely to have a ‘type’ than women are.

For example, The Ron’s type is completely set in stone. I’ve only seen him with tall blonde girls, with straight hair and broad-ish shoulders. (The broad shoulders are a bit weird, but he openly admits this is his thing).

If I were to line all my ex-boyfriends up against a wall, it would be hard to believe that one women dated such a variety of boys. Some tall, some short, some blonde, some dark, some skinny, some a little bit chubba… a total mix. Only FD and the Dairy Farmer look a little alike, which leads me to believe that my type is not the tall and dark sort, but rather the blonde, quirky, surfer type.

Do you have a type – and what would they look like?

A 7-point catch up

I’ve been neglecting my blog. But I’m back! And in the past few weeks the following has happened:

1. I met FD’s mom last Sunday. It all went pretty well and apparently he had lunch with her yesterday and she kept asking questions about me, clapping her hands in enthusiasm and kissing him on his cheeks. She’s Italian – so I think this is a good sign.

2. FD met my parents last Sunday. I had been putting this off, with both sides nagging to be introduced and trying to sneakily orchestrate methods of meeting. It all went extremely well with both my mom, and my *gasp* dad giving him the thumbs up.

3. I’ve starting to really enjoy this whole rock climbing thing. Been on real rock twice now and back to the climbing wall several times. FD has even bought me a chalk bag in my favourite colour (green).

4. Met one of FD’s ex-girlfriends and had a mini-internal freak out. She’s prettier than I would like and she’s this wild and crazy free-spirited type who climbs without ropes, rides horses without saddles and thinks nothing of running around in skimpy bikinis and throwing herself against FD. Not so keen on her. Have super casually dug for more information and FD reassuringly pointed out that she’s one of the most arrogant, high-maintenance people he knows and feels sorry for any boy involved with her. This made me feel better. She has since, most annoyingly, found and added me as a friend on Facebook. I’m pretending she doesn’t exist.

5. I’ve celebrated two months of not smoking – going very well, aside from the hubbly which has been smoked on occasion, but I don’t think that really counts. Don’t really miss it at all. In just 3 weeks time my heart attack risk will start to drop and my lung function and circulation will improve (according to the chart next to my desk).

6. I had a rather hilarious evening at The Colon which involved FD, Mr S and the Plumber/Lawyer all being in the same room. What are the chances – too funny.

7. I have jumped and fallen extremely hard for FD. I love every second we spend together, whether we’re doing something silly like drinking Konyagi and ginger ale on deck chairs on my balcony while listening to Jack Johnson at midnight, doing something crazy like dangling off rock faces in Hartebeespoort, doing something mundane like reading the newspaper over a greasy Saturday morning Wimpy breakfast, or doing something completely unromantic like sharing flu medication (both of us were sick this past weekend). I would even go so far as to say that I haven’t ever felt so strongly for someone in such a short space of time.

And I think that’s it in a nutshell. I will definitely be more diligent about posting in the future!

In these arms.... tonight.

There are two types of people in the world: Cuddlers and Non-Cuddlers.

I learnt during the course of my relationship with Italian Ex-Boyfriend that I’m a Non-Cuddler. Basically, what this meant was that I couldn’t fall asleep if any part of his body was touching mine. When I sleep, I need space to move around, I need to be able to scratch my nose if it’s itchy, I need to be able to sit up and take a sip of water. Italian Ex-Boyfriend was a Cuddler – but he eventually understood that he was allowed a maximum of 10 minutes of cuddle-time before I rolled over and went to sleep.

Since the demise of that relationship I’ve had a full year of my big queen-size bed all to myself. I’ve been able to toss and turn and kick off blankets with free abandon. It’s been fabulous.

But FD and I have recently entered the ‘sleep-over’ stage of our relationship and the bed is no longer solely my domain. And I’ve discovered that FD is a serious Cuddler. In past relationships I’ve noticed that most guys fall asleep with their girl in their arms, but during the course of the night gradually move over to the other side of the bed. Not FD – he hangs on for dear life the entire night.

The first night I stared at the ceiling for a solid couple of hours before eventually managing to drift off. The second night had been a bit of a bender and I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow and woke up in the morning in the exact same position with FD’s arms, once again, still securely fastened around me. This morning I woke up at about 5am dying of heat with FD pressed up against me, peacefully breathing away (thankgod not snoring). I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t even try move away as I had about 1 inch of mattress left to work with. I decided that he might be mildly offended if I climbed out and ran around to the other side of the bed so I just had to lie there and pray for sleep which thankfully eventually came.

I’m not planning to re-institute the 10 minute cuddling rule, so I’m hoping if I just hang in there a little longer I’ll be converted into a Cuddler.

Say what?

Strange experience last night…

Went to a gallery and then out for a sushi dinner with FD and a lady from his office. The woman seemed nice enough – middle-aged and quite stereotypically conservative Afrikaans South African. She had just come back from a trip around Europe and she was telling us about some of her holiday experiences.

Towards the end of dinner, she turned to us and said: “It was quite shocking, because I noticed a lot of interracial couples in Europe.”

I looked back at her a little surprised at her statement.

But this just spurred her on even further.

“There were a lot of white men with African women… which I’m completely fine with – but then they have children which is just completely wrong.”

I continued to look back at her stunned.

“I mean if you want to get married to a black person, that’s fine, but getting kids involved is just selfish and cruel.”

I blinked in incredulity – is this woman for real??

“Like the one kid had normal hair and was lighter, and the other kid was darker, with the other hair.”

Whaaaat???

I continued to just sit there completely shocked that this woman, who I’ve known for a grand total of about three hours, has decided it’s appropriate to discuss her antiquated beliefs, assuming that as a white South Africa, I would be nodding furiously in agreement.

I got home, a little angry at myself for not responding to her ridiculous statements. Although my silence probably indicated that I wasn’t on the same page as her – is it really enough? As she spoke there were a million things I wanted to say, but instead held my tongue, aware of the fact that this was someone who was important to FD and I didn’t want to get her back up.

What do you think…. Should you always argue vehemently for your beliefs – or is there a context where it’s better just to shut up?

Ups and downs

I’m discovering that there are pros and cons when it comes to dating the adventurous type.

 

Yesterday afternoon FD called asking if I wanted to meet up last night. I enthusiastically agreed and said – “Let’s do something different”. I suppose I should have explained that by ‘different’ I meant eat at a restaurant that isn’t Espressos, or go for drinks somewhere outside of Sandton.

 

I wasn’t suggesting for a minute that we spend Tuesday night hanging from a climbing wall in Kya Sand.

 

Now don’t get me wrong… I believe exercise is important, but for me this is usually restricted to the confines of my local Virgin Active gym. But I also understand that this whole ‘relationship’ thing is about sharing each others interests. So I mustered the energy to get an enthusiastic smile on my face, donned a tracksuit and headed off westwards to Wonderwall.

 

The place was teeming with people hanging upside down suspended by their big toes and pinky fingers... I was intimidated.

 

And then I was handed my harness. Man oh man – how much I hate those things - there is just no way of looking cool in a harness.

 

Then it was onto the climbing wall. I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was much easier than I expected and FD did a super job of shouting out words of encouragement. After about two hours my forearms had completely seized up, my fingers were aching, my legs were shaking and I decided it was time to call it a night.

 

Before we left I got to watch FD ‘bouldering’ – which is essentially low climbing without a rope and using the walls and ceiling as support… every muscle in those perfectly chiseled arms of his was flexed and I couldn’t wipe the goofy grin off my face. And I was right back to loving the pros of dating the adventurous type.

Beginnings

So I’ve been both putting off this post and looking forward to writing it for the past week.

 

It appears that I’ve found myself a boyfriend. And I’m now able to say the word ‘boyfriend’ without flinching. (But I haven’t quite reached the point of changing my relationship status on Facebook).

On Saturday last week I finally reached the decision to drop Mr S and make a go of things with FD. And since then things have just been quite simply spectacular. I’m scared to say all of this, even as I type, I’m terrified of jinxing the fabulousness of the past few days. I suppose I’m still struggling to believe that I met someone like FD at The Colony of all places.

 

There’s already this complete feeling of ease and comfort between the two of us – coupled with the crazy butterflies and infatuation that accompanies the beginning of an exciting relationship. Loads of laughter, goose bump inducing kisses as we try to learn as much about each other as possible while avoiding looking at the clock ticking over to the early hours of the next morning.

 

But it still feels a little like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, with one foot dangling over the void, deciding whether to jump or not. FD, being the gorgeously alive and spontaneous soul he is has already happily leapt down and is waiting for me to join him there. It’s because I really really like him, and along with that comes the possibility of really really getting my heart broken.  

 

But for now I’m waking up each morning with a giant grin on my face.