On the curb, she is alone. In a scoldingly cold, familiar place.

Before this moment, she was  considered “risen”. People who had once looked down on her and compared her to the Messiah they demonised now looked at her in awe and venerated her. But, as with the Messiah, whose truth they had massacred, telling him he was insufficient and describing him as a pretentious, pompous sayer of all things unreal, she remembers how his end was marked by his body being battered and flooded with old and new wounds that paved his way to death. How he eventually hung on a perfectly symmetrical wooden cross, head bowed low and howling vultures hovering over his lifeless body. He died as he had lived. Those who believed in him felt every gash on his skin and as he closed his eyes for the last time; they felt the flatlining of his heart. He left as the son of a pauper and not that of a king. Noka’s mental theatre replayed scenes of Jesus’s death with dread and sadness. She wonders which side she would have been on: A nemesis or lover of the Messiah? She settles on the idea of being neither; she sees this moment in her life scripted in similarity to that of the Messiah’s death. She settles on the conviction of quoted scripture: “It is finished.” Noka seeks refuge in knowing that the story does not end here. So many people were heartened by the crucifixion of a man they failed to understand, but soon, they revoked their hate and instead called on him for their redemption. Noka always went back to Biblical stories when she felt amiss. It was not so much the stories in the Bible that gave them coherence; it was the memory of her grandmother’s gentle face and subtle wisdom that gave them truth. Heavy feelings of defeat return to her, replacing her minute sense of hope. Noka’s reality is harsh and embedded with memories of her grandmother’s funeral, an agonising loss. Shuffling her body with her hands wrapped around her knees, Noka remains seated on the hard curb floor. It is noon and the sunrays blister her skin, scorching her darkness into black hues. She has hardly moved since assuming this position and her legs refuse to see her rise. She is entrapped in a mind that has excommunicated her body and she cannot move. She does not understand if it is having a mental illness that makes her susceptible to overwhelming emotions and clouded judgement, but at the moment, it does not matter. Koko is still dead, and Noka still believes she is useless. These feelings are all-encompassing and consistent. She has never known how to be loved and fails to show herself the kindness she constantly demands from others. She thinks of Jesus again. Wanting to merge and bring a closeness to his life and hers; seeking common ground to reconcile her life with his so that she may be able to justify the futility of her twisted life. She wonders about his resurrection, remembering how the Messiah was killed by people who claimed to hate him and yet, the same people waited for his resurrection in haste. In the end, they understood how important the man they had dismantled was, and as shame and scorn entered their lives, so did a deafening fear. Noka wanted to be resurrected like the Messiah and wished she too could be seen in a positive light, but it was all too vain given her endless phases of causing harm to herself and others. Noka was known to be an addict of all things lethal; she was named and shamed in all circles and bore the brunt of human vulgarity, which marred her soul and made her believe that she was indeed cursed and worthless. She remembers giving in and giving life to her destruction. She silently recites words spoken by the Messiah, making them her own: “if it is not to be, let this cup pass from me” she murmurs, wanting for a sign from heaven that would erase her suicidal thoughts. This wasn’t the first time she finds herself engrossed in self-inflicted agony. Delving deeper into the frontiers of her hidden memories, hot flushes call upon panic as she remembers how she thought the cup would pass her in the past and yet, she’d sat on a flight of stairs, alone, knowing she was a willing recipient of death. Willing herself to return to that fateful day, she watches herself cutting away at the wrist, over and over again. In a time loop, stuck in that one moment, she hears the same words, this time deliberate. “This cup is mine; I live no more for this pain is mine too. I am alone and this is my fate, there is no way through the guilt of a life gone to waste”. That was one of many occasions Noka had attempted suicide; she never succeeded and always recovered and swelled with pride and presence for having overcome such hatred. But she had gone back, as though it were not enough to heal from such darkness, she had somehow returned to that place where light brings no comfort, and her mind is engrossed in self-pity. A default setting of a woman too scared to live.

Noka thought she had been resurrected when her life stopped spiraling out of control and she finally had something to show for her presence. She stopped indulging in substances that aggravated her mind and instead focused on her education and her son. As she blossomed, people stopped speaking ill of her and she allowed herself a chance to breathe. The former name-calling shifted, and carefully-crafted fake praise emerged from those who used to call her defeated. She was suddenly envied and shown appreciation, so she failed to see the masks of darkness that came with applause. She listened but did not hear the embedded words spoken behind her back. Had she stood still, she would have heard them say “this witch is hard to kill”. Had she listened, she may have kept her guard up even when there was no obvious danger in sight, maybe then she wouldn’t have risen only to fall again. Unlike the Messiah, Noka is not gifted with supernatural abilities but still exudes a presence that is difficult to replicate. When she was younger, she used her vagina to please men,  which she hoped would affirm her worth. That was the only magic she possessed; one marked by naked bodies, sweat and condoms. She tries to retrace all the men she has slept with; some faces are muddled with the memories she forced herself to hide. Now that she is older, she no longer has the same stamina she once had for sexual escapades. Her battered body could no longer be used to seek redemption, and her pride in the tool of trade faded.

She realises that she is nothing like the selfless Messiah she spent the day thinking of. She wishes that the naysayers understood her feelings of defeat, and wishes they had not noticed her in the room. Had all her enemies understood, they would not have assumed she was a threat. They would have known that she was broken and that, unlike the Messiah, she drank from the cup of death offered by the devil. Noka holds her face in her hands now, regretting the time wasted.

She goes back to a passage of scripture that spoke of a man who was exorcised  by the Messiah. Leaving this man’s body, the demon makes its way home, disgruntled and annoyed, but finds itself consumed with cleanliness and God’s grace. Disgusted, the demon flees in search of another dark place to dwell in, waiting for its next victim.As it does this, it comes across seven stronger, older and more wicked demons. The demon realises that it could launch another demonic attack on the same man  it was cast out of, with the assistance of the stronger demons.  It returns to the bedside of the man, entering him once more, this time  placing the poor man in a worse condition than the first time. The man, overcome with crueler darkness, becomes obsolete and confused. He is fated to be nothing in the realm of earth and lives his life in cold harnessed winds of hate. Noka finds resonance with the  possessed man. She festers over the spiritual attacks she continuously encounters, wanting to know why they happen to her. As she asks, a whispered response brings reason to her suffering: “Phenyo, Kaelo, Zehre, Araba”. She hears a distant calling of her dead children’s names, and with each, her heart beats faster. She merges her guilt and shame with the blood on her hands and accepts this to be why she feels condemned and cursed. With her lungs filling up with heat, the space she occupies seems to close in on her and she  struggles to breathe. She musters the energy to mutter, hardly audibly, these words of reinforcement: “this cup is mine, I don’t deserve to live”. Standing up in the hope of subduing suffocation, without notice she moves towards the street filled with fast-moving cars. Cars hoot and swerve, but she is blind to the danger of her present. She comes to a halt when she realises that she has walked into the middle of the road, a realisation that serves no purpose as she watches the long-hauled loading truck come towards her, hitting her from the front and ejecting her small body into the air. The breaking of her bones is a welcome relief, the pain not as unpleasant as what she feels inside. Landing flimsily on the hard-tarred road miles from where the truck stood, Noka closes her eyes as her bleeding body lays on the ground, battered and lifeless.

The paramedics are quick to stabilise her. In her silence, she is not conscious of the frantic efforts around her. The emergency room welcomes her as though she was an expected patient. She is not conscious when the doctors rush her to surgery, and does not know how many people are fighting to save her life. She has always been so consumed by her condition that she never thought of how many lives would be destroyed if she died. Blinking, she sees the bright flickering hospital lights. She is pushed into the operating  theatre with urgency and as she closes her eyes once more, she hears a distant voice saying “Amantle”. Someone whispers the name of her living son, the love of her life, the child she would leave broken and stranded because she put him last. As her body fades into darkness,  knives cutting through her bare skin, she is taken to a place of wanting life and returning to her child. The darkness that suffocates her now is more significant than any she has ever known. Swept into the sleeping hills of her mind, Noka wishes her body back to life but instead, a coma becomes her dwelling place. A dreamlike place of no escape, she fades into the memories of her life, tracing through pictures of the Amantle from birth, each image fading into the next. She is conflicted and scared. As quickly as they appeared, the images of Amantle  blur beyond comprehension.

Noka fights to keep his face in sight but instead, it is replaced by the faces of many others, all dead and waiting in places foreign to her. Her grandmother’s faces unfold in the place of her sons. She looks dismayed and overwhelmed, and gazes at Noka with a deep sadness. If her grandmother were still alive, Noka would insist on an audible expression of what her face told, but she knows the look her grandmother gave her expresses disappointment. The square frame of her grandfather’s face enters next; he is clothed in a thick coat of lion fur. “I told you to fight”, he says. His gentle eyes hold frustration and scolding as he looks at his granddaughter. His lips do not move, yet she hears the words  as though they were spoken aloud.

In the bed, Noka’s body convulses. The worried nurse remains close and soon the attending doctor also shadows Noka’s body as they both try to calm her down. The medical team attempts to delay Noka’s demise,  but they know the image of a dying body and silently reconcile that there is little else they can do. Unaware of the commotion in the room, Noka remains in the enclosure of her coma. Scolding and worried faces come and go as Noka continues in the realm of her mind. Overwhelmed, she trembles as she walks in and out of unfamiliar places occupied by her ancestors.

The land she walks through is green and plush; if she were willing to stay, it would welcome her in.She, however, doesn’t want to remain, and becomes anxious as her desire to die lifts and is replaced by an  urgent need to reunite with her only child.

The dead should never be disappointed. This is an African belief that she did not learn from the grandparents who raised her. Her curiosity about the world of the dead grew when her grandparents passed. In desperation to reunite with them, Noka had spent countless nights and days in search of ways to connect with the dead. Shouldn’t she be pleased to be in the world of the dead, finally able to be around those she loves and lost? Instead, she finds herself stifled by fear and desperately wanting to move away from this place of ending. Noka had pushed at doors that should not have been opened and was now trapped in a room without an exit. Here, she finds herself confronted by a failure to appease the endless faces glaring at her with rage. She wonders why she was a seeker of the dead in her waking life and finally understands that death is not a choice you should make, lest you be cast into the belly of endless regret.

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“I have bipolar disorder, so this must be a dream”, Noka thinks, continuing to bash her body against objects with no life. She passes through these objects and  then realises that this is real; she is trapped within her mind. She races through the evolving scenes that enclose her in this world, passing through mountainous streams and gently pulsing spring waters. She is frantically searching for a door, a route, a way of escape,as she did while she had life. With every sprint, new faces emerge but gradually become unrecognisable. Some faces are misshapen by age and she is unable to read their expressions. Others are full of rage, reaffirming that she is an intrusion they seek to sweep gone. Noka runs, stopping at the sound of a loud cry. She slows her pace to find the child who seems lost.Under a tree, she finds the child crying frantically. As she picks her up, the baby’s wailing fades into a cooing murmur and as she had done so often with her son, she rocks this child in her arms. Looking down at the baby, a reflection of her own face, intuition tells her she knows whose child this is. “Zehre?”, she says slowly, wanting confirmation from the mystical forest surrounding her. “Zehre?”, she asks again, her eyes filling with anguish and pain. If this is Zehre, then she is her child. Zehre closes her eyes. Comfort washes over Noka as she cuddles her daughter, giving her all the love she could not give before. Lost in time and emotions, she forgets for a moment that she is in the wrong place, but is brought to life by another cry. Startled, she rises and the sleeping Zehre begins to fade from her arms. Frantic, she screams, “No! Come back, Zehre!” The new cry demands that she looks for the next child, so she paces quickly to find the origin of the sound. She picks up the child and gazes at the little boy in her arms. “Phenyo!” she exclaims. As she brings him closer for comfort, Phenyo fades away too. Then, a new cry… Defeated, she knows what comes next. With tears streaming down her face, she moves to find her other children, Araba and Kaelo, under the same tree. Exhausted from the rush and loss, she holds her children in her arms and soon watches them fade away. This time, she doesn’t move.Positioned as a mother holding her child, but  with her arms empty, she continues to cry. She screams loudly, “I am sorry! I am sorry!” She continues to scream and falls to her knees, apologising and giving in to the pain. She is brought back to reality by a bright light, and another child comes toward her. As she raises her head,  her eyes swollen from endless anguish, she sees him! Amantle holds out his hand, and she rises with a desperate wanting. She races after him, yet she cannot reach his touch. As she runs, she is  pulled from her comatose state.  She opens her eyes and there he is, eyes welling with tears…Amantle. The bustling room of doctors remains crowded as she stirs her broken body to reach for her only living child. Coming in to kiss her through pipes and machines, she knows she is alive when she feels the warmth of his touch. Days pass and she regains her strength. It would take a few more months for her broken limbs to heal, but in all the pain she pledges that she will not give up on her life and her son ever again.

Keamogetswe Bopalamo (she, her, hers) holds a BA degree in Communication Science from the University of South Africa. She is currently studying towards Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies concurrently with a Micro-Master’s degree in Digital marketing through Curtin University in Western Australia. Kea is passionate about using literature and writing to narrate the trials that societies face throughout the world and lives to expose the truth about myths and negative connotations attached to mental illness in Africa. She believes that mental illness should have a shameless face and uses her story to support this belief. In 2016, she participated the leadership program birthed by former President Barack Obama called the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) wherein, she participated in a month-long intensive training with like-minded young African leaders passionate about social entrepreneurship and servant leadership. In the same year, she was awarded a grant by the Academic and Non-fiction Authors Association of South Africa, towards the completion of her memoir titled What I Wore. What I Wore was published in 2017. In her memoir, Kea gives a personal account of her experience with the psycho-social mental illness, BIPOLAR disorder. In 2019 she attended the Mandela Washington Fellowship at Drexel University in the United States of America for Leadership in Civic Engagement. She served as a trustee on the Disability Empowerments Concerns Trust of South Africa representing the South African Federation for Mental Health. Kea has over 12 years of professional experiences, 8 of which she has dedicated to working in Local Government.