Excerpts…

So I am a few pages away from completing my first novel and I am both anxious and excited. I decided to share an excerpt from the book and get your thoughts on what you think about it. Enjoy…

I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I couldn’t even cry, instead I found myself in an all too familiar scene, gasping for air, my left hand on my chest trying to ease the pain and my right hand reaching out for the white and blue box which like my soul had always been a part of me for as long as I could remember anything about my existence in this world. I was hardly ever aware of what I was doing until the feeling in my chest had eased after having shifted my pain to my wrist or my thighs. I never wanted to kill myself; at least that’s what I thought. The unvarnished truth is that the pain I felt inside each time I got an anxiety attack was so intense that I thought it would kill me. It was not just physical, but it was also mental pain which further broke my mind as memories of the past cascaded through it. One, two, three…. eight; the pain on my wrists was like being awoken from a deep slumber I had been failing to wake up from. I lay sprawled on the floor and watched as the white porcelain tiles turned sanguine. Tears started to fall, but they were not accompanied by any audible sound, yet the sound of the voices in my head was deafening.

Mrs. Sibanda, my psychologist; had truly been a Godsend. I was skeptical about going to her for help at first. My demons had overtaken me whilst I was busy trying to outrun them and this time around they hadn’t just come for me but for the only person who had been willing to put on his boots and go to war by my side against them, my boyfriend. Our session started and it was intense from the beginning but when we got to talk about the real reasons that had landed me in her office I felt so exhausted:

“And where exactly is here?” She asked.

“Here is now, where my past is making me push him away because of fear, pretending to be okay when I’m not and he can clearly see that I am not, here is me getting angry at him for mistakes which are not his.”

“So what term befits all these issues that you have bottled up inside of you?”

“Baggage, that’s what it is.”

“Let’s unpack that baggage, shall we?”

“Okay”.

So not to ruin it let me stop there but don’t worry, I’ll give you another piece from the book below.

All along I had repressed the memories and went on living my life as if I had never been violated. In my second year at university, I dated a guy who was my trigger and that’s when the self-harm started. Bongani was funny, mature, sweet and loving; well at least that is the side he showed me in the first three months of our relationship. He was five years my senior and lived in Bulawayo so I mainly got to see him during vacation and on the weekends he got me to visit him. I knew he was jealous, but I never knew that he could become a monster until that fateful day when he had seen me giving a former classmate who was of the opposite sex a hug. When we got home he questioned me about it, I rolled my eyes at him and started to walk away, he grabbed me by my braids and pulled me back, he pinned me up against the wall and gave me three hot slaps. I laughed, took off my shoe and started to hit him with it, but it wasn’t helping me release all the rage I felt inside, I folded my fists and went at him, he looked at me in disbelief and as I punched him in the nose the beast within him awakened.

He folded his fists and before I knew it, I was in a fist fight with him. We were at his home in Nkulumane. We were now in the kitchen, with no indication that the fight would end soon. I was nose bleeding. I pulled a chair and folded myself underneath the kitchen table and started screaming like a mad person, that’s when, Busisa; his brother intervened. Auntie (maid) reached out for me and took me to the bathroom where she helped me get myself cleaned up. My left eye was half shut and my nose was still bleeding. We went and sat down in the dining area, I had relatives who lived in Nkulumane, not too far from the house but I could not go there looking like I had just participated in a smack down with the “Undertaker”. I fell asleep on the chair and he ordered me to the bedroom so I went to bed instead.

He walked into the bedroom and I saw darkness in his eyes, the kind that I recalled; it had tormented me in my dreams for a long time. My body became numb before he even started, funny how something we had done for fun on so many occasions would lead to the re-birth of my depression and anxiety once again. He removed his belt and folded it in two, the first whip was on my thighs, it burned, he continued whipping me on my thighs and on my buttocks while he groaned with satisfaction with each lash he gave me.

When he told me to lie on the bed, face down, I shook my head and told him NO, he chuckled. He moved to his dressing table and switched on the music player and put it on full blast and then he made his way to me; Rich gang’s tap out was playing. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and pushed me onto the bed and then he removed all of his clothes. I used to joke about his weight and how he would be a teddy bear if he stopped going to the gym; that night I felt his full weight and it suffocated me. He spread my legs apart and with one thrust he filled me up, I instantly had an anxiety attack but that did not stop him, my heavy breathing seemingly excited him and had him exclaiming, “Breathe baby, breathe”, over and over again. Faces of past devils began to flash before my eyes and it felt like I had six hands all over my body, all tearing at a part of not only my body but my soul too. I passed out. When I came to; he was still not done, he was grabbing my braids like his life depended on it whilst my life was being ruined by it. He groaned loudly and found his release, but he did not pull out, instead he put his weight on me as he lay on top of me for a while. I had been violated in more ways than one, but that night, he broke me, not just physically but mentally too and the sound of his laughter afterwards, similar to the cries of a hyena still haunts me to this day.

Well I’m still looking for a title for it but I’d love to get feedback from you about the parts I’ve shared with you.