Coming Out

I wore red

I was bold

It was brave

It was Dauntless

I had been hiding

For sixty years

In beige

In baggy cardigans

The cloak of shame

Had stained my life

At the age of 29

I had wanted to end it all

Driving weekend after weekend

Along Chapman’s Peak Drive

Wanting to drown my shame

In the cauldron of foam below

That frothed and eddied

Like a crazed dance

Against the ebony rocks below

The dance of words

The dance of shame

I had disappointed thousands of workers

The workers across the sprawling expanse

That had become my family.

The family I had never had before

Because in the Western Cape

Of my pale predictable neighbourhood

I felt like I never belonged

I thought perhaps I had been delivered

To the wrong address

Why was I so different?

Quiet, reserved, un-sporty.

Painfully shy

Plump, spotty, embarrassingly different

In the Cape Flats, I felt

Accepted, loved, unjudged

Invisible, but to the visibility of love.

The waves crashed widely below

Beckoning me to join the

Crazed dance of foam

I used to think I had never had

The courage to turn the steering wheel

But now I know I had the courage,

Not to leave

But to stay.

And last week I wore red.

To finally tell my story

Because I know that words saved me.

Writing healed me

Words danced on a page

No longer crazed by clarifying

Making sense of it all

I became a different person

It took me 30 years to un-hide

It took me 30 years to step into the light.

Belonging: Finding Tribes Of Meaning book launch in Johannesburg South Africa