Gemoedsbekakking

This lockdown is brutal for all of us. My register is becoming a lot higher pitched and strident. I watch my friends on Zoom and listen to their narrative on social media. We’re all putting a brave face on things but the cracks are showing. You look shattered. I’m shattered. I don’t know how to help you. There are people who can help … just reach out and ask for help, and they’ll appear for you.

Here’s what’s happening to me. Your journey may be similar. I think I may be feeling depressed. Come to think of it, I wish I felt depressed because it would mean that I’m actually feeling something. This is something more insidious … it’s like a no-feeling detachment. It’s a severing of a cord that has kept me slightly grounded. It’s a soulless feeling, something you’d expect from the Vulcan, Spock.

Before we move on ... don't ask me about my weight. I'm going to roll out of this lockdown.

Gemoedsbekakking

Afrikaans has a good word for it: Gemoedsbekakking. Your soul has been shat on. You’ve shat your soul out. Your soul is fractured. Pick a meaning. Whichever way you slice it, it’s bad. It’s a fucking desolate and hopeless space to be in.

I find myself more abrupt with people. I’m picking fights on Facebook (that’s really a pointless exercise). I’m becoming more isolated (like a bear licking its wounds in a cave). If I can focus for two hours a day, it’s a bonus. How I’ve even written this far is a miracle. I don’t eat. Then I binge. If I look at another webinar I’m going to stab myself with the corner of my iPad until I pass out. Worst of all, I’ve lost my curiosity and that is the death knell for a writer.

I’m not sure why I feel like this? It can’t be the isolation … on the path I’m on, I’ve been isolated for longer than this. This is a doddle as far as time is concerned. For those that know me well, you know that my life has always been a perfect mess and as a result I have been blessed with more than I could ever have wanted for myself. My grammar should be full of gratitude, but it isn’t.

I’ve been doing a lot of introspection (if half an hour a day is a lot) and peeling off layers of the onion. My life has been pretty humdrum and shouldn’t give rise to gemoedsbekakking. Yes, like for all of us, my life has a few unexpected kinks and some wrong turns in it, but they’re hardly worth mentioning: the levitation incident and haunting when I was two years old, that when I was six years old I lay in bed for three months praying to God to kill me (that one worried my parents a little bit), I nearly made a Faustian bargain with a demon, the near-fatal ambush (which had it succeeded, would have sent me straight to an asylum) and a confused sexual encounter (women aren’t supposed to have Adam’s Apples and five 'o clock shadows, are they?) Boring stuff and nothing to write home about.

Father Issues

One thing, however, has become apparent to me. In the last newsletter I said that I had grandfather issues (Old Spice) and not father issues. I think I was wrong … definitely father issues. Big ones.

I had two fathers, one was absent and one was abusive. What a balls up. Not only am I gemoedsbekak, now I have to contend with abandonment issues and the fear of getting fucked up.

It makes for an interesting dynamic in my relationships, that’s for sure. I’m afraid of being abandoned but when someone gets too close to me I shudder in fear and push them away. As I said, what a balls up.

This is my experience. Would I have it any other way? Probably not … it has made me into this fractured, quirky, messy, glass half empty, ray of doom who can make people laugh, make them cry, make them think and most important, make them feel.

If this verkakte story made you feel anything (anger, irritation, sadness, gratefulness … whatever) then you don’t have vermoedsbekakking. Your centre is fine and you are going to get through this isolation come hell or high water. Keep connecting to your friends and family.

When he's not gemoedsbekak, Jacques writes.