The woman on Bloubergstrand.

Whenever I meet people who, like me, have lived in both New York and Los Angeles I always ask them which city they prefer. The answer seems to tell me so much about the personality of the person i’m talking too.

I had heard so much about Cape Town for many years, it’s stunning location, Table Mountain, the beaches, the penguins, the white sand and oceans. Cape Town seemed to have everything. So, why, as I walked across the City Centre did my heart seem to sink? I guess for me it was a matter of energy, chemistry and Cape Town didn’t have any of them.

I kept thinking back to Johannesburg, how people had warned me never to walk in downtown alone and how in the end I had gone against their advice and in doing so discovered Johannesburg as exciting, gritty, raw, edgy in the same way Manhattan can be. Quite simply Johannesburg had been fabulous. After a few hours walking around Cape Town I felt the city and it’s lack of energy stifling, too European, too claustrophobic, too neat and pretty. This is a city I decided where people exist but don’t live. I took one look at the Waterfront, the new development around the harbour and promised myself never to walk there again. After my seperation my soul felt vulnerable, I didn’t need pointless materialism and glass and chrome buildings to crush it further.

As for landscapes, Cape Town really does have them in abundance, probably one of the most beautifully located cities in the world matching Rio de Janeiro for sure. As I stood on Table Mountain and looked down on Cape Town I realised it could never be as visually stunning as say Hong Kong from Victoria Peak. I had planned to stay in Cape Town for a week and after the first day realised it was going to be a struggle to get through it. I wondered if it was me and if I may be just another jaded traveller.

Days were spent visiting various beaches all the while searching for penguins and seals. One day I had made my way down to Cape Point by helicopter, the coastline marvellous. Another place I truly loved was Kirstenbosch, the cities Botanical Garden nestled into the side of Table Mountain. Kirstenbosch was for me the most beautiful Botanical Garden I have ever walked through and a real pleasure to explore.

I did manage to find real meaning in Cape Town though, life changing meaning. It happened one morning as I walked along Bloubergstrand, a beach on the Atlantic with sweeping views towards Table Mountain. It was here on this beach that my life took on a new course.

Flying down the coast of Africa.

Since May 2015 you could say I had, I guess, existed mentally in some sort of parrallel life to my own. Not quite a part of my own self. I was still me ofcourse, still Grace, but I was living in denial, denial that my relationship was over, denial that I had lost the love of my life. It was on Bloubergstrand that morning that this denial stage of my lost relationship ended.

It had something to do with the ocean, the feeling of sand between my toes, the noise of sea gulls, the crashing sound of breakers hitting rocks, the Atlantic itself with it’s hints of endless possibility, the laughter of children and in the distance Table Mountain looming under a perfect blue sky. It dawned on me that the life I was living, that part of me that wasn’t in denial, was living a pretty darn incredible life, and that in that moment I was looking at Table Mountain, the iconic horizon recognised the world over.  A few months earlier I had lunch somewhere across that ocean on Corcovado, and before that had hitchhiked further out alone across the High Andes. The day before on a whim I had chartered my own helicopter to take me to where a continent ended and two oceans met. I reminded myself that I loved human beings in all their forms and they seemed to love me too, that life was incredible, that our planet was beautiful.

I took a photo of Table Mountain that morning seen from Bloubergstrand.  When I got home I framed it. It hangs on the wall of my kitchen to remind me that life goes on, to remind me that I’m lucky to live the life I lead, that in ways our planet with it’s most famous vistas have been handed to me on a silver platter. It was in South Africa that I found the ability to let the past go, to reach a turning point in my life.

That very moment on Bloubergstrand!

I had decided on that morning that, while I was incapable of falling in love again, at least for right now anyway,I would try to go on dates again and to be open to the idea of having a relationship, atleast in theory. It had been 16 months since my relationship had ended, girlfriends had reminded me that I was good looking, they had even set up blind dates in the hope I would move on with my life. It’s not you I had confessed, it’s me. In the haze of denial I had been aware that men had asked me on dates but I had been closed, they had just been holograms and nothing more.

Now I would live, things would be very different from now on. I would completely transform my appearance, I would wear dresses and dye my hair blond, I would wear the strongest red lipstick I could find, I would never wear denim again. As a broken human I promised myself that I would try to be attractive again. I promised myself that on Bloubergstrand that day, a morning when I had hardly looked in the mirror getting ready, that my hair had uncaringly been put into a pony tail, a morning when I had wore jeans and sneakers. The woman I was on Bloubergstrand would never be allowed to exist again, she would fade forever. I promised myself that.

 

They say you can never live, to truly understand what life means until you experience pain or heartbreak. I believe this to be true. If you ever find yourself going through a tough patch then do not try and rush your emotions or sweep them away but embrace them and the life lesson they carry. It may take a day, a week, years but your life will go on, you will become strong again.

 

 

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Life’s lessons in Johannesburg.

 

As the final call was being made for the flight to South Africa I still had to show my boarding pass. I was in tears talking to my friend Sonja on the phone who was demanding that I must, no matter what, get on that flight, that I must get away from Amsterdam and everything familiar for a while and most important I must break away from the emotions that had been consuming me for the past months.

 

A photo of me at the top of the Carlton Center, Johannesburg.

Johannesburg, the city of what could have been

Being on long haul flights are a time when I normally reflect on my life, my actions. I had thought about my trip to Romania, how I had loved it there and of Peru and the beauty of the Andes. I realised that on those trips and the months between I had just existed but was not living. The problem was that my emotions and the fact I was unable to let them go, that these emotions were preventing me from loving life. I needed to be my old self again, the person who is endlessly sweet, so polite that your grandparents would adore me, who genuinely likes everyone when meeting them.

 

Although the drive into Johannesburg was a bit scary and downtown felt sinister at night I still knew I was going to like this city. Johannesburg was the city of what-could-have-been as in my early twenties I had been offered a job in South Africa but in the end had rejected it. Now I was seeing Jo’burg for the first time and wondered if I too, in this city, would have suffered during a painful seperation or if this city would have been kinder to me than what Amsterdam had been.

watching the sunset from the hotel lounge

The high point of Johannesburg had been the sunsets, sitting in the rooftop lounge of my hotel watching the red skies reflect in the skyscrapers. Although some men had tried to strike up conversations with me I had, as always, declined, opting to watch the birds fly in formation across downtown, just to stare out towards the city. In a way to be honest that was all I was capable of at that moment in my life.

Afternoons I would walk around downtown. The reception of my hotel had  pleaded with me to go everywhere by car and that the streets were dangerous. Now when you say that to me I will make a point of walking everywhere. Johannesburg dangerous? Actually along with the Lili Elbe movie, the sunsets from the hotel it was the people of Johannesburg who made something inside me click. Their energy, friendliness, their vulnerability gave me the first ideas of trying to live again, not to exist anymore, but to live, really live!