For twenty three years now, there has been a battle of who
inhabits this body. A battle between three different aspects: expectations,
aspirations, reality and a mixture of all three depending on what time of the
day you caught me. I have been at war with myself and today (well, technically
yesterday seeing that it is 3am) is the day that it stops.
This identity crisis of sorts began long before I could
fully conceptualize the idea of the self. Before I was born, my father wanted
to name me Onkgoposte (after a political struggle hero), but I turned out to be
a girl. He decided on the name Lesang. My mother, who had a surge of whatever
hormones one has after giving birth, forgot to put her name of choice on my
birth certificate. So I became Lesang Gumede. When my parents sealed the deal
and tied the knot, became Lesang Sebaeng.
Apparently, when I was younger, I went around telling people
that my name was ‘Hlihli’. I don’t know what existential crisis was going on in
that little head of mine, but that utterance did not resemble any of my names; official
or otherwise. But over and above that, it wasn’t even a word. In grade 6 or so, we had a project where we had to find out
what our names meant and why we had been given those names. With a peculiar Tswana
name like Lesang, I could not fake the project, so I asked my father. He was
not of any help; told me that he would only tell me when I turned 21. I, disappointed
and highly irritated, turned around to say, “Well, I will use that name when I’m
twenty one!” At the back of my mind, I was relying on my mother’s unofficial offering. I kept my word; when I got to high school and I was asked which name I
wanted to be addressed by, I simply said, Mbali.
As if this name crisis was not enough, seventeen year old
me, seeking acceptance from my paternal grandma, asked why I was the only one
of her grandchildren who had not received a name from her. My answer became
Baratamang. When the time came for me to
get an identity document, according to the South African Government, I was
Mbali Lesang Baratamang Sebaeng.
I have always struggled to 'describe myself'. I have wondered about people who have easily done this. Secretly I would judge their answer, wondering which version of themselves they were describing; their real 'when I am alone' selves, their aspirational selves or their expected selves. This is because I have been fighting with myselves and have been fought with about this very question.
Growing
up an only child and being an introvert of sorts (my friends are shaking their
heads at this. Noted), all I had for best friends were my books and the
television. I could get lost in those worlds. I would include myself in the storylines;
rewrite reality and in the process, rewrite myself. Somewhere along the road, I
lost the plot.
The added pressure of being constructed into being what I was
expected to be; the good Christian girl, the academic achiever, the writer, the
caring friend, the humble child and every mother’s desire got a bit too much and
it broke me. Ever since then, I have been roaming the streets of me, picking up
shatters of glass holding on tight to them as if they were the truest version of
me until I bled. I would then throw them down, pick up another pile and carry on
with the journey.
How awful.
However, I was meditating on a piece of scripture in James 1 recently
and it gave me a new perspective. I won’t
get into too much detail about it, but essentially what I got from it is that,
the Word of God points out how sinful we actually are. It is a mirror. On the other
hand, the Word (as we learn from John 1) is Jesus himself. When we look at the Word, we see ourselves and Jesus. The cool thing that we also know that when God the Father sees us, He sees
Jesus and all his righteousness. This is cause for rejoicing. In reality we
are both tattered and torn, needing healing through Jesus, but we are also
whole and healed because of Jesus. But the main point I want to drive home and
straight to my own heart, is that we cannot ever truly know who we really are
until we look at the mirror and keep our eyes focused on it. As we are focused on this Word Jesus, we see the transformation of broken pottery to Kintsugi.
This morning I had a choice between two pairs of shoes,
regular black leather boots or my blue Wellington boots. I chose the latter
even though there was not a rain cloud in sight or as someone pointed out, “it [wasn’t]
THAT cold”. This was a private and public declaration of my independence from
my own governance and other-centered governance on what is acceptable for me
to be.
From yesterday, I chose to embrace what I
see in the mirror, whether it is red hair and blue Wellingtons or a stiletto
and a black number. Whether it is the
woman who is a hot mess, afraid of her own potential or the girl who slaps her
thighs, almost out of breath, laughing at her own jokes. I chose to be who He
says I am and who He says I should be. I chose to be what I see in the mirror.
So world, this is me introducing me.
