How to #42: Be me

Task 1: a biography

Jana Reynolds – a written version, thus far.

Due to recent events, this biography may highlight aspects which may otherwise have been less prominent. While the instruction was for a biography, this is also an autobiography about a girl that has always been average.

My brother who is 2 years older than what I am was asked by his pre-school teacher what his name was on his first day of school; he did not answer. Later my mother asked him why he hadn’t told the teacher his name, because he obviously knows his own name.  He replied:  “Mamma, ek weet nie of my naam in Engels Martin of Mêrtin is nie.” We were sent to boarding school in grade 1, 2 hours away from the farm we grew up on in the Karoo. Being older, he could remember my little younger brother and bared more of an effect from the accident. I now only see the effect of it more vividly on my family. 16 years later.

Primary school is a blur of first crushes, lessons, disappointments and hostel mischief with friends. Being prefects was the highest mark we could aim for. We were seven close friends, but in 2005 four of us were to go away to better schools for our high school career. By matric only two of them matriculated at Union High school.

High school saw definition of individuals through friendships. Many teenage mistakes were made, hearts were broken and bathrooms were flooded.  Michelle became the embodiment of sisterly love for me. Christelle faught for and stood up for, cried with and laughed with. Not to look like a teenage song, but age friend out of our group of ten played their own part in providing drama, laughs, tears and life lessons.

And there were boys, so many boys. Those who we pointed and laughed at, those who we wanted to impress and those who swept us off our feet only to leave us on our backs to be picked up by our friends. But how can friends pick you up when they are hurt.

There are aspects of belief and hope and love form above. Love that my parents give my brother and I, love they give to what they do, and the people who help them, and love they give each other. My mother has had to be so tough and my father has been made so fragile.  They try to understand when advice is needed, and they try to lead my brother on his journey of choosing the turn on his road of the future, and they try to make sense of my drama, but they were raised in a different time.

The next step in this process is University where one has to find yourself. New friendships once again have to be built and the future is a constant itch in the back of your mind. But then love is found and all is sent in a lovely mess of uncertainty.

These people make me who I am.