‘I promised to keep on going but maybe keep on going means coming back first’
Patrick Ness
Firstly, I would like to say HAPPY NEW YEAR and a big welcome to 2024.
Secondly, my most humble apologies for the disappearance act. Life got busy, hectic, complicated, and joyful at some point and dipped again. I am here to tell you all about it.
From raising my little Miracle baby to how the endometriosis journey has been going since then and another miscarriage.
Starting with baby Miracle is a big girl now. A whole 3-year-old in fact and oh what a sweetheart. What a blessing. I have learnt so much from this little human of mine. She is soft-spoken and soft-hearted. I grew up not being exposed to or experiencing as much affection as she expresses. So, I have learnt to be gentler with how I communicate, to be reassuring, to accept the hugs and kisses she gives and how she wants to be friendly with everyone. It is quite scary because we live in a world where it is not safe for a child to be friendly and loving towards strangers, therefore navigating that and trying to teach her without offending her has been a learning curve, and we will get there. She tells me randomly how she loves me and always compliments me on the smallest of things, I have learnt to then do the same as this actually builds her confidence. It is most definitely not roses all the time, but we are learning. If you all want any specifics on my experience in motherhood, let me know in the comments. e.g potty training, feeding, how I got her off breastmilk, how we manage her eczema and so forth.
I know I promised to post about the pregnancy journey and therefore I will take you through it from beginning to delivery.
For now, I just want to say I am baaaack and I can’t wait to share the journey with you all.
Thank you for the support and let’s keep it growing.
Has someone ever asked you ‘how are you today?’ and you have no answer for them? You cannot tell them whether you are fantastic, coping or sad because you have no clue as well. And so you just say ‘I am okay, thank you’ and move on…
You see over the past year I have come to find myself searching for the real meaning of ‘I am okay’. Dictionary wise, okay means satisfactory but not especially good. Not elaborative enough for one to fully comprehend, I asked two of my closest friends to define their understanding of what one means when they say that they are ‘okay’. The first friend said it to be ‘I am not hundred, nor am I zero. I am not happy, nor am I sad. I am just thankful to be alive and that is all’, that is an intense yet comprehendable definition, is it not? I then asked my second friend, who herself suffers from her own chronic illness known as Fibromyalgia, she said “To some people they would just not understand it… If I asked you how you were feeling and you said ‘okay’, to me in means ‘well I could possibly have a better day. It doesn’t hurt so much but I still want to pull out my uterus, yet I am coping better than other days”, she described to me how her roommate who suffers from endometriosis would paint out her okay as being alive, able to pee properly with bearable pain, fatigued yet able to do some house chores -and to her that is the okay she can relate to despite the fact of having a different condition.
So what has my ‘okay’ come to be? I mean from the responses I have gathered; the most common thing is that you are just scrapping by. You have accepted where life is, you have accepted what you cannot change. You are wishing for some light at the end of the tunnel yet you are ‘okay’ with it never shining through… actually being okay sounds like one has given up. It sounds like one has accepted the fact that they are still breathing without so much a desire to be doing so. Being okay is the same as being numb. You feel nothing. You have accepted defeat.
Therefore, here I am asking myself this question again, why is it that I keep saying I am okay whenever I am asked how I feel? I am numb. I am angry. I am fatigued. I am stressed. I smile while being seconds from crying. I feel myself crumbling under the pressure. The pressure of school, the pressure of succeeding, the pressure of being happy when I am not, the pressure of keeping it together when it is falling apart, the constant pressure I put on myself to be perfect. I feel the lump in my throat when I think about my future. I feel the ache in my heart when I think about my health and the infertility. I feel the disappointment within me whenever I have failed. I feel the weight on my chest when no one around me is happy and I know I played a role in it. The constant pressure of life… I FEEL IT- I feel it all. I notice how I am triggered by the smallest of things. I cry to Disney movies more often than before, I am angered easily, I get emotional over things that make me happy, I am isolating myself even within a crowd. I feel everything and all those things that I feel keep pointing out to the fact that I am not okay… I am not okay because I do not feel okay. Hence the next time you ask me how I am, just be prepared for the answer…
“The kind of letters I write are the ones you read in your bed, curled up under the sheets with tears running down your face” – Mbali Ngwenya
(not own property)
Endo. What a beautiful name you have. It sounds like a young-lady’s nickname, one who is filled with nothing but joy and happiness. But that’s not the case is it? She is filled with nothing. That’s it. Nothing. Is it because you aren’t happy with yourself and so you choose to victimize 1 in 10 women just so they can feel what you going through? 1 in 10! That is a lot, don’t you think? But I guess it’s true when they say “hurt people, hurt people”. The agony and shame that you put them through, that’s what gives your life and keeps you thriving. You refuse to be cured, you refuse to let go of your puppets and so you slowly pull them down into a comforting emptiness. ‘It’s okay not to be okay. I am your new normal’ ,and that’s true it is okay to not be okay but that should not be ones everyday normal life and I guess that’s where the problem is, you want lifelong misery to be ‘normal’ .
You’re really sneaky at first though, not as loud and treacherous as you are now. I mean pain during menstruation is unquestioned. Nausea, headaches, mood swings, fatigue and some, they are all acknowledged and so just because you share these qualities with what is the norm you go on unnoticed. Yet this angers you, does is not? You want to be heard, you seek to be known and so you take the ordinary and use it to aggrandize your presence. I know those who are hankering to know your story don’t know you at all but still consider themselves doctors and yet I as a patient can tell your fairy-tale story from beginning to… Well there is no end.
My dear friend, you remember how you snuck up on me when I was still only in my childhood. No? Well I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 11 years ago though, I was just 10 years old when you came to pay me a visit which I never knew would turn into a permanent stay. I was in the kitchen helping my grandmother cook and suddenly my vision went blurry, my temperature shot up and I couldn’t even think clearly no more. Thought I was just dizzy and went to the bathroom and there it was, that little drop of blood on my underwear that said “You are now a woman”- oh how exciting! You were quiet at first, a little sleeping beauty who had nothing much but a little baby kick to her. The years went by and you grew and so did I but I guess you wanted us to grow as one and how dare I not notice that. You grew anxious and irritable and so you began to demand attention. Considering that your time to be noticed was only once a month, you used everything in your power to dim my light so that you may shine with every cycle that I had. When I tried to ignore you, you would stab me in the guts until I was curled up on the floor. You didn’t like the idea of me trying to silent you with painkillers and so you would go from poking me with a toothpick to motor-racing around my whole pelvic floor with cars that had hacksaws for wheels.
I presume you must have gotten lonely and because you knew what was going on at home, you used that as an opportunity to introduce me to one of your many friends, Depression. Or should I say Depro? That is what you called her to make her sound so cheerful, I thought that was cute. I recall how sad she was but not the kind of sadness that washes away after having chocolate and a good cry. No. She was the kind that was compassionate. It was aggravating yet freeing at the same time- somewhat silent but sure-as-hell deadly. I wanted to help her, save her from drowning but instead she convinced me to jump in and said that if I can’t teach her how to swim then we will comfortably float. I craved for the shore (joy) yet whenever I tried to swim towards it she would softly whisper “Breathe. Keep your head above the water and let the waves pull you back to nothing”. Did I mention that they want to take her away from me by making me see a doctor who is going to tell me how she’s not ‘good’ for me. Can you imagine trying to take the element to one’s personality? The lump in my throat gives me a voice to speak up, the ache in heart taught me how to love others so hard that they never feel the same aching numbness and the flood of thoughts in my mind are the birth of my art, so what am I without the pain? Yes maybe she hurt me by allowing me to take a razor to my skin in hope that the dysphoria would ooze out those cuts, but Endo is that not what you wanted? You wanted me to see what is it you were doing to me internally and so I did. But how is it that when those self-inflicted wounds healed you chose not to heal with them?
I know this is a lot to take in and so I will leave it here for now. You did say you were chronic so that means you are ceaseless, right? You are so deeply-rooted within me that I will not be in a hurry to write to you again but just know that I will not cry on your next flare-up as I now have ink for tears.
“It never occured to me that one day Iwould wake up sick and never get better again” – thoughts of anyone living with a chronic illness
I remember the first time I started experiencing excruciating
pains. I was told it was normal and that I should ‘woman-up’ because this is
what normal women go through. As the years went by, I got older and the pain
got worse. In high school I had a boyfriend who knew my cycle and would always
bring me painkillers and comfort food (at this time I was banned from having
pills at home as they thought I was an addict). Every single month was just
extreme torture but hey I had to push through it, I am a ‘woman’ after all,
right? Wrong! I knew something was not right when I started having migraines,
backaches and joint pains a week before my cycle, why must I have so much pain
before, during and after? Why am I sleeping so much? Why am I crying so much?
Why is it that I have to be picked up from school because the pain is too much?
Why do I have to get to the counter and ask for the strongest pill they have
because all the ones I have tried are not helping? Why me?!?
The first time I found myself in the ER was when I had to
stop my netball game because I was dizzy and had a migraine, it got so bad
later that night that I was rushed off to hospital. But ‘nothing’ was wrong,
just a migraine. Next I found myself in the doctors’ room because my back and
pelvic muscles were inflamed and I was finding it hard to even get out of bed,
but once again, nothing a little injection and pain meds can’t fix, right?
Finally the year after completion of my Matric, I found myself once again in
the ER because of pain after my periods that made it impossible for me to move.
I never cry but that night it was all I could do (and trust me it hurt so so
much that breathing was a nightmare as every inch in me ached). I stayed in
hospital for a week, saw every doctor I could while there only to be discharged
with a mere ‘WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT WAS WRONG’. How do doctors let you go without
knowing the cause of your pain and just pump you with painkillers? How?
In 2016, after being in and out of countless doctors offices, after popping pills like it is Astros, after being in pain and being told ‘it is nothing’ for almost 6 years did I hear a decent explanation from a gynae, ” sounds like you have endometriosis” …Okay whatever that means sis, as long as I am not dying then I am good. Lol little did I know that this was just the beginning of my journey to feeling like a living corpse.
“I am a sufferer of endometriosis. I didn’t want any young women to go through what I went through. I thought that people should know about it.” – Padma Lakshmi
Hi all,
My name is Mbali Ngwenya, I come with a lot of nicknames but all involove “Golden” something. My blog will be centered around my lifestyle, thoughts and battle with the cruel Endometriosis. Honestly one has a lot on their mind and what better way than to write about it. This being my first post, I am basically introducing myself, nothing professional. Just an informal intro.
I am 22 this year, currently working full-time and studying part-time. I love books, I enjoy writing and basically tapping into my creative side. I am a proud owner of Golden Melanin Beauty, a cosmetic and beauty supplier as well as a self-taught makeup artist. I love relaxing and watching movies with family or friends, I enjoy horror movies the most… Anyway I am currently fighting a chronic illness known as Endometriosis and this blog will basically outline my journey with this BEAST in my belly.
A Golden Womb 