Shebee tagged me to write a timeline of the last 10 years of me. What a cool tag. I thought I was a slug inching across time, but I was surprised. Stuff did happen. Be warned. HUGE overshare to follow.
1998 Matric, highschool, Durban. I was a penniless boff whose only ticket out of an unhappy home life was a full scholarship to the University of Cape Town, and the only way to get it was to do well in final exams. I had been nowhere, done nothing, seen nothing. All that was going to change. About bloody time.
1999 UCT first year! Everything happened. It was the best. It was the year I stopped harbouring an eating disorder, and I discovered a million types of food I had never tried before. I fell pathetically in love with a boy; he was in love with my new best friend. She was in love with him too. He dumped his girlfriend for her. She chose her boyfriend over him. I loved him so much I thought if I waited forever he would discover he loved me too.
2000 Boy I was still in love with found himself his future wife. I thought that I would die. I ended up on a climbing roadtrip with a stranger with whom I am still in a relationship to this day. I was 19. G wooed me at the bottom of Kloof gorge. I will never forget it. This year I had sex for the first time. I can't believe I ended up fulfilling my high school's endless indoctrination: only have sex with one person (it was supposed to be in wedlock but that is a technicality). It was most certainly not my intention.
2001 What a dark year. Terrible things happened. Do you really want to know? If not, skip to next year. Fuck it. Shebee was honest. My brother shot himself in the head and died. Well. That was not easy to write. And AND G left me to go to Antarctica for 15 months. AND he had training for 4 months in Potchefstroom first. People told me to forget about him. No way in hell! We spoke on the phone a lot. A LOT. Oh and I flew in a plane. Cape Town to Durban. That was a first.
2002 I did my Honours. It was intense. I became a hermit. At the end of the year I got a job at Kirstenbosch which ruled. My family had all moved to the UK over the previous few years.
2003 G came home! I was offered a masters at Kirstenbosch. But G was at the age limit for getting a UK 2 year work holiday visa so if we didn't go then, we could never go. Adventure won. My grandfather faked me some kind of trust fund so I could pretend I had enough money to qualify for the visa. When we arrived we did some crazy ass jobs picking apples and working in factories. And travelled all over the UK.
2004 G left to work in Dubai for 3 months. I was sad. Did lots of random mind numbing work. When G came back we picked some blueberries and ended up working in a coffee shop in Cambridge. We travelled a bit in Europe.
2005 G got a real job and a work permit. We decided to stay a bit longer in the UK. I was set to renew my UK visa when G broke up with me. I was devastated. We managed to resolve things. I spent ages looking for a job that required my Biology skills. To keep myself busy I started studying UNISA English and Philosophy. This made me insanely homesick, which I have been ever since.
2006 New job doing microbiology. I am afraid to blog about work in case of homing pigeons and stuff. I will say that in the 2 years I was at this job I was taken to the edge of sanity many times. That edge gave me the heebies. Us employees stuck together like glue, it was the only way to cope. G and I went to Thailand. It was awesome. I went to a dentist for the first time since I was 11.
2007 I was very happy. We visited Switzerland. I was climbing like a demon and was into capoeira. Then lots of bad stuff happened to many of my loved ones, especially one person who I care very much about. She knows who. Then I got a shoulder injury. No climbing. Then I got a back injury. No capoiera. Cue the wonder that is:
2008 KAK. We planned to come home but could not find work. I left my job because it was time. My plan: to travel and get a job afterwards. But. I was bedridden for weeks due to back problems. I had an operation on my shoulder. Turns out I was misdiagnosed and spent months recovering from an operation I did not need. My Schengen visa for Europe got refused so I had to cancel everything and lost lots of money. I was sad. I sat around for months looking for work. I questioned my very existence. I eventually found work. I start in a month. Oh yeah, and I started this blog. Thank God one good thing came out of this non-event of a year!
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Shoowee, talk about overshare. From the above I have discovered: I am dull. I like being dull. I let events steer me rather than me steer events. I tend to waste time, like this entire year.
I want to read everyone's timeline because I think they will be as revealing as mine and Shebee's. The entire channel-crossing blogroll. Do it. But I tag Tamara, Kitty cat, Being Brazen, Lopz, Redsaid and Miss T.
If you hate tags, I won't be offended if you don't do it. No worries.
