Unf*ck Yourself, Unf*ck the World. Kagiso Msimango

      To my Koko.

      Aus’ Billy, I am because you are.

       There is nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.

      – Bob Ross, artist and US TV personality

      This is my confession

      Tomorrow I’m headed for an Airbnb I’ve checked myself into, with the hope that I can get this book out of me. I committed to writing it a disturbingly long time ago and to describe my progress as snail-paced would be generous. I’ve been meaning to start writing “tomorrow” for months now. Procrastination is a result of fear, I know that. What has me stumped is that I wrote my Goddess Bootcamp books with almost offensive ease. So why all the trepidation with this one?

      As I write this confession, my deadline is so uncomfortably close I can feel its rancid breath warming my neck. So I am forced to look at what it is about writing this particular book that scares me so much. Obviously, it’s something I do not want to do, because, as Piglet once wisely said to his friend Winnie the Pooh, “I don’t want to face my fears, Pooh. I am scared of them.” Like Piglet, I remain unmotivated because my fears may well be as scary as I imagine. I often remind my kids that brave people are not fearless, they simply don’t let fear stop them from doing whatever needs to be done. “So,” I told Piglet, “I am going to face my fear and get on this damn book.” Off I went to get my laptop, but still I did not write. Instead I booked a week’s stay at an Airbnb where, I convinced myself, I would write for hours on end … tomorrow.

      Ah, procrastination, you cunning fiend.

      Piglet pointed and laughed at me. As I was having this imaginary intervention with Pooh and Piglet, I came across a meme with a quote from one of my favourite ancestors, Dr Maya Angelou, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practise any other virtue consistently. You can practise any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” With that little nudge from the ancestral realm, I said a Change Me prayer – I’ll tell you more about those at the end of our journey – asking to change into someone who can get past this fear. The response was swift.

      I have a daughter who is nearly 12 years old and another half her age. Lebone is going through puberty and has freshly budding breasts, which Naima is terribly envious of. As a result, Naima and I spend a shocking amount of time talking about breasts in general, and her future breasts specifically. During our most recent breast conversation, after I had said the Change Me prayer, a distant memory came flooding back into my awareness. When I was just a few years older than Lebone is now, I was hanging out at home with two girlfriends. We were lazily flipping through the pages of a copy of National Geographic. This was in the nineties, before National Geographic knew to temper its penchant for half-naked “natives”. We arrived at a page with a photo spread of bare-breasted, brown-skinned maidens from various cultures. One image was of Swati girls at a reed dance. One of the girls in the entourage had inverted nipples. My friend Hope pointed them out in horror, exclaiming that they were deformed. But I had one inverted nipple, which my mother had assured me was quite normal. Indignant, I asserted that there was nothing wrong with her nipples, parroting what my mother had said to me, “There is more than one kind of normal.” Hope insisted that there was no such thing, that these nipples were weird and if she had such freaky breasts she wouldn’t bare them in public like this clueless girl. Our friend agreed. In that moment I discovered that (a) I am a freak, (b) I didn’t like that feeling, and (c) being a freak is something you do not parade around.

      So, what does my inverted nipple have to do with my fear of writing this book? There is no way that I can write the book I agreed to write without coming out of the closet as a freak. I am a weirdo and not because I have an inverted nipple. In fact, I no longer have an inverted nipple. Breastfeeding for a total of eight years appears to have vacuumed it out permanently. (Breastfeeding two kids for that amount of time sounds infinitely weirder than having an inverted nipple, now that I think about it, but I digress …) I’d been a weirdo long before Hope inadvertently branded me as one. For instance, as a child, I could communicate with trees. I spoke to them, and they spoke back. Yes, you read that right – I talked to trees. In fact, I enjoyed the company of my tree friends a lot more than that of my human friends. As a result, I spent most of my afternoons appearing to be playing alone, rather than with other children, when in fact I was having playdates with my tree friends. My cousin Tiny used to hate walking from school with me, because we had to make several stops so I could catch up with my tree pals along our route.

      In my youth I was also able to heal people’s minor aches by placing my right hand on the ailing spot. This skill was mostly taken advantage of by my aunt in her attempt to shake her hangovers. As I got older, I unlocked new levels of weirdness, but I learned not to parade them. During my last foray into the respectable, normal realm of corporate employment, I acquired a subordinate who, after working with me for a few months, confessed, “You know, you are very disconcerting, because you are weird but you don’t wear the uniform.”

      “What uniform?”

      “You know, most weird people dress funny or have weird hairstyles or face tattoos. That at least warns you about what’s coming. You look all corporate until someone gets to know you and they are, like, ‘Wooaaah, did she just say that?’”

      So, this book is me coming out of the closet in full freak regalia, and I am terrified. I haven’t been too successful at passing as normal, but I have managed to appear less weird than I really am. I tend to give off an Erykah Badu level of weirdness, just cool enough to attract people rather than repel them. As I write this, Erykah had just launched a premium brand of incense that smells like her vagina, and it sold out within hours. As bizarre as that is, that is the level of weird that I am happy to own. Alas, unlike Erykah, I am neither rich nor famous enough for my weirdness to be reframed as profitable eccentricity. The problem is that a significant majority of what has enabled me to unfuck myself falls firmly in the “WTF?” realm.

      I have found and even created safe spaces where freaks gather in peace without fearing that normal people – or muggles, as us magical folk refer to them – will point and laugh or, even worse, eject us from the human tribe.

      Did you know that rejection literally hurts?

      Early in 2010, various research studies found that our brain registers and processes rejection just as it does physical pain. When we are rejected we experience that as life-threatening. This is not an overreaction, but a survival hangover from childhood. When you are a child, your survival literally depends on other people. You cannot feed, clothe or protect yourself. If a child is rejected by her tribe, she will die. As we get older and more independent, we seldom outgrow the association between acceptance and survival. The first rule of tribal acceptance is conformity. Tribes, both big and small, require rules and norms to function. We make tacit and explicit agreements about how to behave as members of any tribe – be they based on gender, race, status, nationality, profession, religion, identity or ideology. Even tribes of rebels conform to rules on what acceptable rebellion looks like. When you stray from the norm you risk excommunication. Every single tribe you belong to has its unique definition of normal, and that normal is what keeps you safe.

      A relative was looking forward to being accepted into a new tribe, that of potential in-laws. They were coming over to meet our family. She called me in advance and politely asked that I act normal, fearing that my unconventional ways may cast her in a bad light with her new tribe. We are warm in the approving arms of a tribe, but the price is that the true, natural, unique self is suppressed and an artificial, constructed self emerges. In the game of tribal survival, how you behave is more valuable than who you are. It doesn’t seem to matter whether your actions make you happy or do you harm. Conformity is everything.

      So, yes, this is a big deal for me, yet I am driven to do it because I believe that there is value in sharing the fuckery I’ve been through and how I continue to unfuck myself. This book reveals some of my darkest, weirdest and even shameful experiences, and the idea that they may now be in the hands of a stranger