An+assault+on+ones+sense+of+self,+John+Matshikiza,+Weekender



=An assault on one’s sense of self=


 * John Matshikiza, Weekender, 2 February 2008**

As they say: “If the surgery itself doesn’t kill you, you stand a good chance of recovery.” In this case, as is usual, the decision to go for surgery was taken above my head, and without my consent. I was simply expected to sign once the consequences had become irreversibly clarified.

Bear with me. My brain is not yet completely clear, due to the surgery I am talking about. I am feeling my way through, day by day. It was head surgery and, even though they have been experimenting with this kind of pseudo-medicine since the apes got hip and decided to become sapiens, homo or not, it is still the most imprecise and undefined of sciences. Getting into and out of your head is still more complicated than getting into a spaceship and flying to Jupiter and back.

Let me explain. I was mugged. I was thugged and hijacked in the privacy of my own yard, dragged out of my car and robbed of all that is meaningful in this capitalist existence (cellphone, wallet, watch, whatever), beaten on the head with a beer bottle several times in the clear night air, blacked out, saw stars that people are not supposed to see (except in cartoons or in the movies), stayed on my feet, as far as I can recall, clung to the edges of reality (meaning my blood-splattered stoep — my blood, not theirs) as I watched my car being reversed out of the driveway by three Joburg tsotsis wearing floppy hats and baseball caps, and then tried to bring myself back to my senses.

So that’s what I’m trying to talk about. Surgery. Head surgery that you haven’t asked for, haven’t been consulted about, but are being asked to take responsibility for. Head surgery that will also, hopefully, not have been too traumatic, delicate, and decisive to recover from. But we shall see.

The forehead itself was successfully stitched up by a caring young surgeon in a hospital that happened to be open at the time. (It wasn’t cheap. My medical insurance had expired, but by some fluke the thugs who beat and robbed me hadn’t found some cash that I had stashed away in a secret pocket for another purpose. So at least I could pay for my medical attention, there in the small hours of the morning, with cash. Sometimes the dark gods are with you.)

One of the slash wounds had gone clear through to the skull, but the surgeon assured me, while she made delicate stitches in the small hours of the morning, as I lay there, holding my terrified companion’s hand, that it would all heal up nicely. Which it has.

The fear, and the anger, on the other hand, have not healed. Perhaps they never will.

The fear is personal, and no one can really help you with that. It was a personal experience, even though it has happened to many people before, and will happen to many others again in this violent country we live in.

The strange thing about the fear of the moment is that you find yourself outside of yourself, and fear more for others near and dear to you: particularly my lover, who was in the house. When they dragged me out of the car and said: “Okay, now we are going to shoot you, then we’re going to get that woman inside,” I felt nothing for myself. I thought about my two daughters, who thankfully were not there. I thought about what was going to happen to the companion I had brought into my house, who was being exposed to this horror.

I think I thought vaguely about what it would be like to be shot, but it was an abstract thought. The personal fear was, as I said, outside of myself.

The anger is a different story.

I was cleaning up myself, my thoughts, my life the day after. Friends had taken me in after the hospital. I was shaking and clingy. But I had to go back, at least to try to find myself, and some of the stuff that is my being. We got in, stolen keys notwithstanding.

I was brushing my teeth and others were trying to get my life back into shape on my behalf.

There were voices in the front room. I came through, to find my companion standing calmly in the front room, with two black persons, one male, one female. I recoiled immediately, and wanted to shout, to react, to flee, to attack. They had merely come to change the locks. It took me a while to figure that out and accept their credentials. And it’s been like that ever since: from that day, I had an instinctive fear of black people in my intimate space. But not just black people. More later.

As I say: I was mugged. I was thugged and hijacked. I’m still trying to get back into my own head.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/weekender/article.aspx?ID=BD4A697162**

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