She made all my sunny mornings depressive ones, and even long after that time I used to think that I wasn't meant for happiness. Kelly whose name means church, was more like a "churning" of the soul than a sanctuary. I met her in her 15th or 16th year. The first flowering of her beauty. But it was her brown eyes that caught me off-guard, not a sun-filled or loving destiny.
I was the kid who loved Shakespeare and all things English. I was also low in confidence and never stood my ground and never said anything in my favor. In fact, the grunge thing exacerbated that. My confidence as at an all time low and I lived in a time of hope that always came against that inner urge to be decimated.
And decimated I was. I fell into the deepest Christ-complex anyone has fallen into for suburbs and cities around. I was the one who held the truth, and she just couldn't understand because she was misled. Or so I believed.
I want to write about all the grainy looking days where the sun didn't want to shine too. Those days, of which there were many, it seemed the whole world was against me. I was climbing off a minibus and there was a real idiot who was taunting me so I slammed a carton of juice on his back and then the juice went all over one of the camp leaders and he got upset because his threads were all-important to him. He was supposedly Christian but he worshiped the high life instead. The fierceness of his anger made me feel like I wasn't supposed to be there with them. Like even God had deserted me.
Anyway, so as I write this, I go back there, to that place because I've just asked another girl to be my girlfriend and she said she needs time to think about it. Well, normally that means no, doesn't it? But I say that more as a defense mechanism. Because that's exactly how you defend against another 5 years dragging by with nothing happening, which is actually the most soul-wrenching experience of all. I'll be glad to get rid of this present girl from Samui if she doesn't do something, say something or otherwise just leaves me hanging.
Think about the medieval torture chambers, how they used to wrap someone around wheel with spikes and twist them until their spine dislocated. Think how you'd pull the fingernails out of someone one-by one if you wanted an answer. Well that's what hope deferred is like. Except that it takes longer, and as your soul's plumage gets removed and you don't feel the spikes driven into you on that wheel; that is to say, it happens so slowly that you don't realize you've lost your spine and when you look back after the years, the world's moved on but you're still thinking about that one person and you're a naked husk too.
Kelly, after I hugged her at the Argus cycle tour was nothing more than a saint or an angel I wanted to have and hold with me in her beautiful light pink hoodie. But it didn't happen. It never happened again. And in fact women are quite cruel in these times. But men are even more useless than women are cruel; so is it any wonder?
"But men are even more useless than women are cruel; so is it any wonder?"
Just as I was back then, and still am to an extent. I want to purge from my life anything useless about me. Because there were at the time many people buzzing around me who who were useful at fixing surfboards for that Christian camp, or speaking in public, or just being a better human being. I on the other hand was a devotee of Kurt Cobain. I didn't want to hear about having a family or anything. So whatever Kelly had to say about me back then; it was true. Whatever this girl now has to say about me; it's true as well.
The only thing that doesn't make sense is that she was interested in men who took a lot of drugs and went to trance parties and acted like animals. Kelly, I mean. The blonde sunshine-haired Kelly. But that was the Fischoek thing. That is probably part of the reason South Africa fell so hard. People were off their rockers most times. Especially the youth. Now Kelly's in Croatia. She's a teacher of English like me. She never got back to me when I tried to call her during that Christian summer camp. It was hope deferred on the most miserable level. I lost all my hope and my potential just bled out of me, and still, to this day I doubt myself because of that time.
When the weather is good, I feel like I'm probably missing out on something. When it's bad, like it is today, I think about trying to talk to her on the phone and it not working out and that camp leader being more upset about his "threads" than the guy who was bullying me in a time when I was already drained spiritually.
Hence my need for independence and not wanting anyone to help me. These are tough things to talk about, but they're true. They're not the kinds of things I want to talk about much but they're in me and Christ alone can get them out. Christ alone has the power to let me walk on water again.
There was one sunny glimpse of life that happened during the time. A Mediterranean or South American fellow let me go on his catamaran. There are good people out there, and the paths we take weren't always blessed enough to have them. But as we grow older, let us not become bitter. Let us forgive them. There is a richness to life that Christ alone can salvage, whether here or the life hereafter. I choose to believe that.
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