DOUBTING THOMASINA

My parents' hopes and aspirations that I would settle down and start a family devolved -- out of necessity, of course -- to the point where I would marry a communist and resolve to live life on the edge. There is a humorous side to everything, even the darkest nights.  I hadn't gone through all this pain and torment for no reason. Now that the end of all that was in reach, I had resolved to what advantages were coming to me, and actually enjoy my life.

Mike and I have a common sentiment that we simply love to share. It's that "communism is good."

"Hey, did you look at my essay and check my grammar?" I shout out from the other room.

"Yes. All done."

"And are you sure you weren't tempted to add anything extra?"

"I added one thing only -- that communism is good," he answers.

"Thanks."

It has been difficult for me, encountering the ideology that says I must adapt to cultures and attitudes that I don't feel. Everything that pressures me, that pushes me in one way or another, saying "hurry, and adapt!" has had its peculiar and complex effect on me.

I lost my health for many years, but it is back again. I think I nearly killed my father once -- or perhaps he did it himself, by trying to force me to become  without a mind of my own. It made for an impossible situation -- where survival was possible for one of us or the other, within the limitations of his ideological view of women, so the more he told me that I couldn't speak, or even think properly, the more I told him to go and die. Then he became manic and nearly drowned in the ocean  and an ambulance had to take him to the hospital.   I was numb to social relations by this time.   I repeated my mantra for survival: "Either me, or him."

Hate gets to the bottom of your soul eventually, and when you know that you are hated, you become ruthless eventually. The struggle for survival seems to sharpen on all sides in harsh relief, when you are surrounded by hate. You make absolutist ultimatums to preserve yourself -- and it comes down in the end to "Either me, or him."

My father had lost everything in losing his place in Rhodesia. His work place could no longer fund him, and his pay was diminishing with inflation, monthly. Perhaps his way of adaptation was to preserve in me a little retrogressive flavour -- a little island of Rhodesia. Survival said I didn't have the option to offer him that. "Either him or me."

Hatred has its way of going deep -- his constant attacks did that.  On morning I was sleeping in late, due to a virus.  9.30 am -- and he threw my bed over.  I scrambled to cover myself with a sheet, naked.   Right-wing and left-wing attacks on my identity now strike me with all the psychological force that sends my blood cold. This has gone on for so long.  The ideological onslaughts that command me to change because I'm evil are based on Western needs to label and combat evil identities in their midst.

Whites who come from Zimbabwe (or "Rhodesia", as it was known) are not, however, evil -- as Western liberals hold. And, Communism is not inevitably "good" either! Get to know our sense of humor, our interests and nuances, because conforming to your cultural norms (rather than being out of step and in a time-warp) isn't morally pure or all that intelligent either and adaptation is not the only meaning left in life after everything else in life has lost its meaning.