What being born into my family means

Being born into the families that we are born into does influence how one lives their lives. This is in terms of many things but this post mainly has to do with the emotional side of it.

Allow me to digress a bit, today (the 12^th of August) is my favourite brother’s birthday, okay, my only bother…Happy birthday skhokho. Sorry I do not have the time to get all schmaltzy…istory yiso.

But whilst we are at that, being my brother and sister’s little sister has meant a lot of things. That also goes to being my dad’s daughter. Also, if you’re thinking oh who does this girl think she is, jeki, this is my blog – so, yea, I’m kinda all that at this moment, I am the gurl. So as I was saying, being both a sister and a daughter to my family has come with pressure.

For the greater part of my life I always thought being born into my family meant I had to be great like they are on their personal levels. I thought wrong. I am inspired by them, definitely, shout out to you guys but I shouldn’t give myself unnecessary pressure.

My father, whom I call Mr Father for whatever reason is a man who has made a name for himself in his field. I won’t get into detail about what he does because this is not what this post is about. But long story short, Mr father is a skhokho, the real makoya, HE IS THE SHIT. But not everyone thinks that.

I have had to accept negative criticism. Talk shit or say whatever about me, I can handle that, but not my family member. Well, that is how I used to be, not anymore. People have said a lot of what I felt was mean about his (father) works in front of me. His works are public and that was stupid of me to expect everyone to just accept it. Like the one time (I have forgotten the year) at a book fair in Bulawayo. I was manning the stand with Father’s books when someone came over and blabbed nonsense… but we move.

It didn’t make it any easier that my brother, also did so well for himself and he is sorta, kinda in the public eye. Being born into this family, means I have to grow a thick skin. People are always going to talk and I shouldn’t expect it to be always the good stuff because that’s not how life works. I should know that because I also haven’t always had nice things to say.

It means I have to be strong. Excuse me, but I think I am one strong mother****r. When they talk about people who are able to face their problems and still able to get things going and not show the world that they are going through the most…I am that people. Like your family, we also have our fair share of downs that we go through, but our problems do not define me. This is one thing I have learnt from the family I was born into.

Being born into my family means I have had to constantly remind myself that I am also human and I do actually have a life to live alone outside of my family – sometimes even publicly. I know, I know, I know, that what one does; represents the people around him or her but come on! They shouldn’t be looked at differently when they are seen twerking (or at least trying to in public) hehehe! Allow a girl to make her own mistakes.

Also, what it means being born into this family is that in as much I have my own life to live however I want, the reality of it is I actually don’t because I have a family to represent and I am sure that goes for you as well. We come from people and we live with people so it is our duty to do right by them. It means I have to be careful about how I say things, to whom I say them and how I do things and this is what I had to do with this particular post. I had to select words because if I wanted to say how I wanted to say it, I am sure by now ngabe sutshiseka and you would probably be screenshotting and referring people to this blog. In as much as that is going to be good for my blog traffic LOL, I can’t do it because that is what being born into my family means.