Confessions of a libra

Weaponised Tears | Credit: Here

11.07.25

Having a victim complex is incredibly convenient for you. Allowing you to feel like you have the moral high ground while you ignore the consequences of your own actions. Many people want to posture being a progressive person, reading self-help books or their investments into self development – but when push comes to shove, they don’t want to do the heavy lifting. Yes, change is extremely uncomfortable. Yes, it looks and feels like absolute shit when people see you lose publicly or when they watch make the wrong decisions. Yet, the only way out is through. I absolutely refute and detest when people tell me that what I have achieved is because ‘I’m built different’.

That is actually just a copout because its easier to hear and believe than to think that I had more courage than you. And the thing is, it’s not even a competition – but when you are insecure or running away from accountability my words sound cutting. I once had an ex-friend say to me, “Thando you are so strong. I have watched you go through things that I wouldn’t have survived. I would have just killed myself. But you just keep getting up.” In retrospect – due to my sometimes delayed intuition – I realised how that actually wasn’t a compliment and let me break it down. While she said I was strong, she was devaluing the sincere back-breaking work I did to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I am not superhuman and I am sensitive to language like this because this has racial connotations, for those who do not know.

Black people are often either dehumanised or something called The Superhumanisation Bias is placed upon us. This is where people make us sound superhuman, in order to further dehumanise us. These are things like; stating black people are less sensitive to pain, more physically powerful, have advanced resilience and spiritually gifted without being emotionally complex. When you suggest that I am better at handling something than you, especially if you are not Black, you are absolving yourself of personal responsibility at my expense. You are insulting me. You are insulting my intelligence and personhood. Lastly in her comments to me, the mention that ‘I just keep getting up’, sounds like envy. Or that she secretly hoped one of those things I went through would crush me. Instead, she watched me rise again and again from the ashes like a Phoenix.

If you are anything like me, do not let people use these seemingly well-meaning phrases to inflate your ego when it is an insult. People are using is as a spiritual bypass tool, to avoid accountability for their action or inaction and to reframe your progress as destiny (when you have to step into destiny through free will). If being self aware, having integrity, having meta-awareness was easy – everyone would be like this. It erases the millions of micro-decisions I have made when no one was watching to grit my teeth and bare the hard thing. Every night I spent sobbing, feeling isolated and actively trying to be a better human. Every time I’ve known more than I let on, and turned the other cheek.

My meta-awareness has actually been there for as long as I can remember. I have constantly been watching myself live life while living it and using that data to make decisions. That is likely my one advantage in this life. It doesn’t erase the pain nor does it make it easier. I was living out trauma and witnessing it outside of myself like a voyeur. I was tracking discrepancies between speech and actions from before I could speak fluently – even if I didn’t always know what to do with that information. Every betrayal I have experienced hurt ever-the-more because I could see the structure and system of it. I have had to parent myself before many of you were truly ever wondering what on earth you were doing on this planet.

One thing about me is I can talk about my strengths and my weaknesses. While this gift of meta-awareness, helped me with decision making, my trauma started incredibly young. I have experienced everything from; physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, homelessness or threats of homelessness and slander. I have experienced this in my family, at schools, at workplaces and in relationships. I would consider myself to be someone who was never at a financial advantage, though I was sufficiently provided for. Moving to this country actually gave my family a financial hit because of the cost of moving to this country. Only to end up fleeing domestic violence within the first 6 months. Then there was also the cost of being Black. My mother (a single mother) couldn’t get the same positions, aligned with her years of experience in her field clearly because she was a Black migrant.

While things are marginally better now, my own Blackness has affected my ability to be taken seriously especially when I start to rise the ranks. The amount of sabotage people have orchestrated against me – especially women – you would be shocked yourself. I’m never surprised when I start rising, but end up hit a ceiling. It is why I have always been honest about my want to work for myself. Why beg a system that wasn’t built with you in mind, to work for you? I don’t care for your sympathy, in fact I refuse it. What I want and would genuinely enjoy in this world. is a little more empathy. Your jealousy, your refusal to face the facts, your addiction to performance over presence is the reason you are upset when I shine. It is the reason you feel like making under-handed comments, dressed as goodwill. You might not even realise you are doing it, but the joy of my perception and intuition is I can.

I would love it if people could stop speaking to me like this. but I would love it even more if people just did the work they are avoiding. This matters not to you, but I find it emotionally painful to watch other people make a song and dance about wanting to grow while clearly refusing to. It is glaringly obvious to me, and it hurts if I have to engage you in advice I know you won’t take, because it would be against your self-righteous script. Real growth comes from ego death and that shit is just not fucking fun, I won’t even lie. It feels like death in your chest. Yet this too shall pass. The seasons come, the seasons go. Sometimes you are on your A game, other times you aren’t. The problem is in the pretending. I find it exhausting to watch, I don’t know how anyone could find it empowering out of the available options.

When you choose your victim mentality over the power that comes from making the hard decisions and admitting your faults – you stay in a lesson loop. You get sympathy from people for all the roadblocks in your way. It gives you temporary comfort, while delaying the inevitable. But you know spirit knows. Just because you are emotionally overwhelmed, doesn’t mean you are having a deep experience. You might be overwhelmed and using all these scripts like blaming other people’s advantages for your failures. Choosing to believe the comfortable lie over the naked raw truth. Life is hard both ways. When you are constantly having to keep up with lies, and the rising anxiety of your inaction – that is hard too. Your self-esteem is shot, you feel more and more worthless (which is simply not true) and you manifest a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even temporarily.

In the end the truth is this, you can choose to acknowledge my pace, and it doesn’t invalidate yours. You can genuinely ask me for help and advice. I will help you not because I am better, but because I remember that phase of development. I remember how hard it was to get over the hurdle, so why would I make it harder? Choose your hard. Most of the good decisions you make won’t have you rewarded externally, but you will see the fruits of your labour. I know that for a FACT. I have always loved the saying God helps those who help themselves. So while you sit there trying to send a signal for someone to save you, I will be helping myself to show the universe I am worthy of help. That I am willing to meet the universe/God halfway. May you one day realise that the Gods don’t play favourite, they reward those brave enough to do the work.