I’ve just written to my Pen Pal Jodie Groener, who has in fact somehow felt like a kindred soul the moment we were e-introduced by a mutual friend.
In my letter to her, I told her of a grief I’m experiencing- multiple griefs, actually- and then I revisited some of her short prose on Paulet House Stories. In one of her posts, “I feel an odyssey of note coming” she speaks rather candidly about her “break-down”. Among other things, it made me realize that I could possibly help someone else by sharing my ‘stuff’.
This is probably true, but I’m not quite yet at the place where I can do that. Not in detail anyway. The most I can do now is to tell you, the reader, that I am not at all okay- that it feels like I’m still breaking down. But, I can also say to you: please hold on. I do not know who you are, and why I feel compelled to write this now, and what the circumstances of your own breakdown are. But I beg you, do not touch your own life, and do not do the drastic thing.
For when all is lost, you are not.
You are not!
Zama Moyo lives in Johannesburg. He completed his honours in international relations at Wits University. While busy with his honours, Zama was selected as an intern at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). He completed his MA in ideology and discourse analysis at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Zama has always loved words and penned a number of reflective essays on his personal blog Thought Box. He has also written on a broad range of issues related to current affairs. In 2013 he was selected as a finalist in the Global Human Rights Essay Contest which focused on ‘Human Rights Cities’. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis – On the intersection of ethics and public policy – at the University of Pretoria.
