At this exact moment in time, as I write, I have two options available to me. Option one: I pretend to be strong and that I am coping with this immense pain in my heart, in my soul, that is constantly clawing out of what is left of me. Option two: I admit that I hurt. Not defeat, but that I am broken, wounded. I admit that I am human and that I feel.

This is not the first time I’ve been confronted by these two options. I think that both can be beneficial and detrimental depending when chosen. Sometimes the right choice is to stay strong, keep up that fort, because of the unknown that may occur if you flounder. Yet sometimes, acceptance that there is pain and there is a wound brings the beginning of potential healing to that wound

Right now, my head says that I should put on the facade of strength. That people should not see what I’m going through. Yet my heart, struggling to beat with what feels like the weight of the world bearing down on it, pleads with me that it cannot take any more. I should admut that the pain is there, it is real.

There are many ways that people deal with death. The way I used to do it is by not dealing at all. I just tended to hold in and move one. But right now I can’t move, I’m bursting at the seams and I’m losing grasp on things. When someone whom you spent so much time and shared so many pleasant memories with is not there anymore, you tend to realise and understand that there is no easy way. The pain will be there whether you choose to acknowledge it today or two years later. Pain never leaves until fully felt.

I can’t offer cliches such as I’m taking oone day at a time. I’m just struggling to breath and I don’t know whether the sun will rise tomorrow. But I know that my friend, with all the wisdom that was bestowed in him will under no circumstances want me to waste my life. Mourn. Yes, mourn. Cry, be angry, scream; feel. For that is the way that you can realise that person’s immense mark that was made on your life. But never waste your life, because that person whom you so dearly love would not want that.

Now, I can say I’m hurting. I have a wound in my soul and a weight on my heart. I’m battling constant night. But for the love of my friend I will survive. For Kagiso, I may sum up all by saying that for strangers he was nothing, for superficial observers less than nothing. But for those who had known him all their lives in the intimacy of close relationship, he was genuinely good and truly great.