Celebrating 15 Years
By NADINE BOTHA
I could find a million nuances for how to improve me and influence my life,
as though, if I could just identify that one—like The One, the love—
I would know, it would know and that would be that.
But considering how in almost 29 years I have not grasped one,
indeed come closer to wondering if it is The One,
I can safely deduce that the search itself is what has come to complete me.
After all, as another I says, one can mostly rely on being this happy
—no more or less—for the rest of adulthood.
We grow into stasis.
That’s why adulthood is so forgettable.
It’s the longest period of the same mood one has in my whole life.
And now one realises that during prep time, adolescence, I had no idea.
I still don’t always like to get my feet wet on the beach.
And sometimes I can handle leaky toilets better than other times.
It just gets as good as it can.
I can be grateful for that.
I can be grateful for getting more than I thought I might
have or could try for, and didn’t.
In that sense, I’ve failed to dream big enough.
In another sense I’ve surmounted just enough to get here.
So, where then?
Nadine Botha was born in 1979 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and holds an honours degree in theory of art from Rhodes University.
