Confessions of a libra

To the little girl who saw too much, thought too much and said very little. I love you.

[ Content warning: mentions of sexual assault and rape. This is raw and personal. I cried. You might too. But tears cleanse us, and for that we must be thankful ]

26.07.25

[ Soundtrack: Bite my tongue by Wilt looped ]

Communing with my ancestors has helped fill in so many gaps for me. About my place in the fabric of the cosmos. They have validated that much of how I have already interpreted the world to be accurate. That I have been following my instinct, even when I have been punished for it, in every area of life. There is a heavy secret that has plagued me since I was around 14/15. A secret I never asked to hold and one that has been at the back of every thought since the day I found out.

Some of you may have had a similar experience where growing up, you felt like you were being treated different. No one would ever agree, you probably felt unloved, you probably acted out because somewhere consciously (for me) or unconsciously you know people aren’t treating you the way they should. Well if you haven’t, that was me. I didn’t feel that I could express this inner knowing, so while many of you met me at a time in my life I was overcorrecting and in my ‘goody goody’ phase – before the age of 12 I was a very unruly child. Wild as can be. Making adult decisions, simply because I could.

Well the beauty of my metacognition is, I already was doing those behaviours and watching myself do them. I, at some level, understood there was a performance to my behaviour that I exhibited. I couldn’t quite explain it in words but, I had understanding that there was something wrong between me and my mother. Nothing anyone could see. Nothing overt, but an undercurrent. It hurt so much, because I admired her so much. I thought she was God’s honest truth, one of the most beautiful women God created. Like, who wouldn’t want to look like her. And it’s funny because I am the spit of her. Yet I felt like when she punished me, it was meaner that it was supposed to be. That maybe she avoided me in some cases, when she worked away from home or worked night shifts. I was always away from her and then seeing her on holidays.

Those holidays were a treasure to me. I idolised her and I thought her making money was really cool. When I lived with my grandma and my uncle (her little brother), I was left to my own devices and that meant my health was debatable. None of the adults present there cared enough to monitor. My mother was consistently complaining when she saw me on holidays, but no matter the houses we lived I remember mainly being at home  – waiting for her to come home. When I was sexually assaulted, I was too scared to tell her. She was always scary to me. Imagine living with someone you think is the smartest, coolest, earth sign drill Sergeant. That’s how it felt in my little body, living around her. So, I didn’t tell her. And the more it happened, the more I thought I was evil for drawing that attention to myself. Despite the fact that it was family friends. People I didn’t go out to seek in their homes.

I to some level also knew that she cared about what people thought. I was juggling holding the truth, and the fallout of that in my own body. Which is why I think the combined trauma, is why I blocked out those memories until I was assaulted again at 14. When memories resurfaced of past sexual abuse, I was experiencing very real flash backs. Of times alone with older men, in stolen moments with everyone distracted. My heart racing, my mind also racing and strategising. The fawning, and the freezing. The infantilising of myself to survive, which really just hurt my ego. And being confused why I was continuing to find myself in these situations. The times we had visitors, and I couldn’t sleep all night. Clutching my blankets in the dark, envisioning that someone at some point would steal another moment. And who would I be after that? How would I survive?

I’ve written versions of this story over the years. Being a writer was so baked into me, that when it all spilled over you could read it in the ink of little journals which no longer exist. Journals that perished under the weight of my scrutiny. I would constantly find them at points weeks, to years later and judge myself for writing down my trauma, can you imagine? Back to the timeline, once retraumatised I was in a silent pressure cooker. Around that time I had really bad hygiene which as we know, is a trauma response from abuse victims. I hated it, but seemingly couldn’t stop it. My room was as disorganised as my mind. My friends were so kind, because at some level they knew I had survived a lot. They let me organise sleepovers in my loungeroom because you couldn’t see the floor half the time. Anything would be on there. Clothes, books, half eaten food, broken glass from that one lamp I just walked around instead of sweeping.

In my mother’s mind, these were all just examples of my disobedience, disorganisation and laziness. In actuality, I was still trying to unpack the domestic  violence we had just escaped, plus now new and old abuse data just rattling around in my mind. So, I planned something in secret because I knew how my mum felt about therapy. My family went to the library on a regular basis. The library was one place my mum would willingly drive us if she wasn’t in the mood as well. She would go run errands or go back home. Our library sat right across from Headspace, a youth mental health organisation. They had spoken to us through school about a certain amount of free counselling sessions. I don’t think I got away with more than two sessions before my mother found out. She yelled at me that night. In that guttural way that ex-soldiers do when they’ve lost their cool.

She wanted to know what on earth I was going to Headspace for that she couldn’t know about. I obviously didn’t want to tell her, because she was yelling and because I thought I deserved privacy. Evidently not. So I told her that I had experienced some inappropriate touching by an older man we knew. Leading to memories returning of other inappropriate touching that happened with other men when I was even younger. I remember I was shaking because these were the exact circumstances I didn’t want this information to come out. My emotions were heightened and now that I am an adult, I don’t even conduct myself like that now! I got robbed of peace, I got robbed of pace, and I was unfortunately validated that my mother was emotionally unsafe for me. Yet it was about to get so much worse.

Instead of being comforted or whatever else is reasonable to respond with, she dramatically told me that if that’s all I had experienced she had a story for me. I won’t drag the story out theatrically for you because it would be insulting. She told me that I was the result of rape. My father raped her, impregnated her and then she had me. So essentially, she had been through worse. That worse was me, and I was making her life difficult by running around telling everyone our business. If you could hear my heart that day, it shattered loudly like thick glass smashed on concrete. The daggers were deep because until 9, I didn’t even know he existed. I thought someone else was my father. Then, when I finally tell my mother the secret that might explain some of my behaviours over the years, she tells me that man who was actively trying to have a relationship with me – and already failing – was an even worse person. And I was walking around with his DNA. And there’s more of him out there, that’s just life.

There’ll never be enough words to explain, what it was like to sit through that information and process it. Yet in a sick way it was a relief. Finally it made sense why I felt like the childhood Antichrist. She always made me feel that way, even though she would deny it verbally. She was holding onto resentment and likely grief for where her life could have gone. No wonder she spent my whole life priming me on stories of how everyone ostracised her, thought her to be fast and devalued her intelligence the moment she became pregnant. It’s because I was the living embodiment of her life being derailed. As an earth sign, she made making money her priority because earth signs are responsible. And women have a lot less leeway to be irresponsible with children they bear.

Mind you, in Zimbabwe abortion was illegal so while I’m sure she tried or wanted to, she couldn’t get rid of me. To go through that and then be made a pariah, I can understand why she turned out the way she did. I have made myself as trauma-informed as I can in my adulthood, and not just from lived experience. Some people get stuck at the age they experienced trauma, and it is not always a conscious decision. She always denies that she ever had resentment, and maybe to her that is true. In her heart of hearts. But unconsciously she did, because I felt it viscerally. Oh, I fucking felt it alright. My family will know, I am a typical Libra. I spent all my life screaming at the top of my lungs that me and my brother were not treated equally. I felt my injustice from my first breath. Years before he came along. I had known in my bones, in my blood and in my soul that something made me different.

The irony of it all is my growing more and more into my mother’s face with time. Spirit tells me that it’s not a coincidence that I arrived already having been refused by my father. Once my mother was pregnant he denied being the father. Until she demanded a DNA test upon my birth and he basically said, lol I knew I was the dad. Spirit tells me the fact that I look very much like my mother, is because in this life I was meant to transform the maternal lineage. I have come to learn from my mother (as every daughter from her mother) and fortify the foundations that she had or was unable to have.

My father is someone I do not have time for. Not today, not tomorrow and until the hour of my death. He may seek his penance in other ways, with his other children or not at all. My ancestors from his side of the family walk with me, they guide me and they are the fire in my prose. I wrestled so long with feeling worthy, once I knew what kind of monster was responsible for my arrival on this planet. But you know what helps me sleep at night? Before I had this knowledge thrust upon me – I, with my metacognition – had already made a pact with myself, to be a good person in this life. This is not hyperbole. I made the conscious decision at 12, because I didn’t want to be a destructive force. I wanted to be the point of harmony and balance. I wanted to achieve my North Node before I even understood what that was.

I write this because I am absolutely proud of who I am, despite everyone in this story’s opinions. I don’t hate my mother, by the way. I love her deeply. But I will no longer hide how much, I have forged myself into the person I am today. I have been parenting not only myself but other people for way too long. I no longer have the bandwidth to baby other people’s egos, as I have so lovingly and painstakingly done in the past. When I have let people close to me, the absolute besties, I have often told them that people don’t know how much grace I am giving because I haven’t taken it away. I am now at a stage in my life that no one is exempt from hearing the sword of truth. I have had to pretend for other people’s comfort, one too many times. I will no longer pretend not to read all of you and your patterns.

If people genuinely came to me, wanting help I could transform their life. The struggle I’m sure for many evolved Librans is, constantly playing therapist and life coach to people who pretend they will muster up the balls to take certain action in their lives. So many people overestimate their willingness to actually help themselves out of unhelpful scripts. It’s more fun to tell yourself that you are that mature. That if you really needed therapy you would go, you just don’t need it that badly. As a woman who was once a girl-child I am absolutely SICK TO DEATH of having to pretend to be less than because the world doesn’t like powerful women. You think I had to go through all this suffering in this life, so I can sit there nodding at some self-important man trying to teach me something I already know? You think my ancestors have protected me from a house I lived in at 19 with 2 rapists and a groomer because I was supposed to suffer?

I take every experience I have had in this life and I alchemise it. This too, I have chosen to alchemise, as it is my right. We have men complaining out there that women overestimate rape and sexual assault statistics because no men have ever known a rapist, apparently. Yet I am an example that even when you live on two different continents, with different races of men the biggest issue we have right now as women, is men. Men as our predators, and we need the good men to rouse other men to this knowing. It is the only way we will improve safety for ALL. I don’t hate men, as I’m sure you can see in my writing. I don’t hate sex, just because I have had these experiences. It doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have had them. It doesn’t change the fact that my mum should not have been violated. I’m sorry that happened to her. Just as I am sorry about what happened to me. And I am sorry to all victims of sexual assault everywhere. Not because you need my sympathy, but because someone just has to say ‘that was really fucked up’.

It’s crazy to me how being spiritual works. I have COVID-19 and I am just trying to survive that. And this visceral need to purge overcame me. I was in the middle of another post, writing a few lines every 6 hours – then this truth burned me because it was safe enough to come out. I asked my ancestors if it would be wrong to talk about it, because it is as much my story as it is my mothers. But they told me that we have held onto secrets too long. I was always born to be the mouthpiece. And it’s with this piece, that I release the part of me that EVER experienced even a smidge of shame. The part of me that ever felt misunderstood, for all the privileges I wasn’t born into. For the times I held space for people who mocked my depth. People who couldn’t hold their own truths let alone, my revelations. I am not any less than for anything you have read, but I am a weapon. A weapon by choice. Never to be underestimated ever again. Asé.