Mothers and fathers wish that it wasn't this hard.
Mothers will let you hide between their long summer dresses and petticoats from that relative who gives sloppy kiss.
Fathers will smack the back of your head to build up your tolerance to the hard hits that you will experience later on in life.
It feels perverse that these scrapes, cries and f***-its are there to build you.
That ultimately you being broken, then moulded only to become just another brick in the wall of human advancement.
And that's only if you get it right.
And to do that you have to get it wrong.
A lot of times.
Your mother and your father will watch you as you grow.
And they'll fight with you because they think you are making it harder on yourself.
By falling in love with that boy from the parallel tracks.
By believing in the poetry of your time.
By having you heart broken so hard that you cry until you lose your breath and sound like a vacuum cleaner whose pipe gets stepped on again and again.
They will say, "Does she not know that she can get another one?"
"He was never good enough anyway"
In life, you will be asked a lot of questions.
That's what life is about- not experiences.
They come after the questions like,
"Have you smoked this before?"
"It's okay, if you promise to pull out "
The questions will become harder.
And mothers will ask why are you not like your sister.
Father will curse themselves for not smacking you harder.
It's hard.
And when something comes against something hard, it breaks.
Especially people.
You will find them in the next office.
At the till at Pick n Pay
On the other side of the bed.
People who find it so hard it hurts just thinking about it.
To steel themselves they will create things and hates.
And run to churches.
But when they talk about love, they talk about its rot.
When they talk of flowers it's at a graveyard.
When they talk about life, it's not.
At the bottom you will find those who never want it to be hard.
These people create nothing.
Love nothing. Achieve nothing.
And run away from everything.
In the middle are those who believe that the gods have it in for them.
They cry and then laugh.
Embrace them. Love these people.
They make great babysitters.
It's hard and it will break you.
Let it break you. Go on let it go on with it.
And one day people will come up to you and say, "We never knew you were this beautiful"
