Most Beautiful Thing

By Amantle Gabolekwe

You hate me.

Which is tragic, because Gladys and your mother already decided you’re my therapist. Not officially, that would be a boring man named Dr. Matsheka, who runs group sessions at my university where the posters read Wellness is a Journey. Never mind that you’re only an undergraduate student in sociology and happened to take the Introduction to Psychology module one time. To Batswana parents, that makes you more than qualified – especially since you were Love’s older sibling.

Conflict of interest, sure, but better than conflicts with your mother. So here you are, stuck with me.

I find perverse pleasure in this. You sigh. It’s your third sigh in thirty minutes. I keep count. Usually in our one-hour meetings you total six sighs. But one eventful Friday, after I was discharged from the hospital, having flirted with an overdose, you sighed 10 times. A record I still aspire to break. 

The curtains in your Block 8 living room are half drawn. The fan clicks as it turns. You balance a mug of Five Roses tea on your knee, stirring slowly, and I wonder how you can carry the same blood as Love and be so different.

No offense, I have eaten pap more exciting than you.

You ask me if I was listening despite knowing I wasn’t, so I lie, throwing in a sheepish smile. Merely an attempt to elicit a reaction. Your response, an eyeroll, and a clink of your mug on your table, sets the tone for our session. 

“I was asking if you did any of the exercises I recommended?”

It’s late afternoon. I’m the disheveled counterpart to your composed, bespectacled phenomenon. You’re dressed well, as always. I couldn’t be bothered. Sweatpants. Hoodie, unwashed. I’m slouched on the couch, my hands buried in my pockets. I woke up at three pm today, vaguely remembering I had a morning test (though I know a guy who can provide a sick note). I navigated across the sea of beer bottles littered on the floor and  eventually vomited in the dorm hallway. Had a blunt for lunch and made my way here. Fifteen minutes late but I wouldn’t miss our mandatory thrice-a-week useless checkup for the world. 

So no, I haven’t followed your trifecta of activities. My hygiene, academics, and sleep. It defeated the whole plan. Dying. 

You sigh again (making it four!) and you launch into a lecture: I am the agent of my recovery or whatever. You bring up Gladys, my mother, like I care, and list my virtues: smart, funny… passionate? You always lacked the poetic flair of Love’s articulation. I called her Love, one syllable that took up space. You don’t let me. You use her real name, Lerato. That’s how I know we are not on the same side.

You spend the next 15 minutes being serious and I spend the next 15 minutes making your job harder. Being unresponsive, changing the subject, and making lighthearted jokes. Not my fault you didn’t find it funny when I said that if God loved me so much, maybe I should go to him ASAP. When  I get up and tell you I want to go back to campus, I expect to get my fifth sigh. Instead, you stare at me. My lazy smirk falls. I hate when you do that. Looking at me over your glasses – God, you remind me so much of Love. 

“This isn’t funny, you know?” you assert.

I shrug. “Seems hilarious to me.”

Leaning back, you take off your glasses. Placing your pen and notepad on your coffee table, you continue. “You’re 23 now. Your grades are hanging by a thread and your RA has had enough of you. And I can’t keep saving you. It’s time you heal. What happened with Lerato was…tragic. We were all affected but we all coped. My mother didn’t turn into an alcoholic, and I didn’t try to kill myself. My sister… didn’t deserve to go out that way. But she wouldn’t want you to turn into this.”

***

“What is the most beautiful thing?” I asked Love.

We were twelve, sitting in a puddle of streetlight. Winter. I remember that because you don’t forget the day you almost froze to death at 10pm, dressed in nothing but flimsy pyjamas. That was what Love was wearing. I was in shorts and a t-shirt. We huddled close to each other, trying to share warmth. Back then we shared everything. It beat going home. Gladys, Mama,  had kicked me out again, this time because I broke her favourite vase. It was an accident, but Mama said in the real world, accidents have deadly consequences. Love’s parents were at war again and you had abandoned her to go seek sanctuary with a friend for the night. 

We were looking up at the spill of stars when I asked Love that question, sparking a long-time game of ours. It always distracted her and put a smile back on her face. 

Like clockwork, her brows furrowed. Each time we played, it got harder for her because at 12, I fancied myself Shakespearean and didn’t accept simple answers such as the trees or the sunset. I wanted Love to be creative with it. Ingenious, as my pretentious younger self would say. Beauty, I had believed, was meant to be complex.

She pointed to the sky, “The galaxies.” Her teeth were chattering but she pushed on. “They’re deep and really, really big! And so colourful.”

I mulled over the answer, then nodded sagely.

Her face lit up. “Okay, your turn. What’s the most beautiful thing?”

I shrugged. “Collision.”

“Collision?”

“Collision.”

She laughed, sniffling. “You’re weird.”

I couldn’t fully articulate my point back then. But now, I can. 

Collision is the clash of divergent worlds, a celestial alternation that births new galaxies. Stars sacrifice themselves to forge constellations, leaving trails of cosmic dust as testimony to their volatile union. 

Cells collide, dividing and multiplying in a sacred ballet that heralds existence. It’s in the tiny collisions that the song of life conducts its big start, intertwining the complex melody of a human into the story of time. Everything starts in a collision.

Zoom in to Monday morning on campus, the collision of my body against yours. You hiss as your coffee spills onto your pink shirt. It’s your favourite. I think that because you wear it a lot. Or maybe you’re just broke. I smile. I like that theory more.

“Therapist,” I tease as you helplessly dab at your shirt with your free hand. In your other hand, you hold stacks of paper.

“You,” you say back coldly. Outside the confines of your prison, you drop the caring older sibling act. Had it not been illegal, I swear you would have drop kicked me. “At least you’re up before noon today.”

“I never slept.” 

You stop and watch me. I can see the gears turning in your head. Then you sigh. I don’t count it because we’re not in your office. 

“We’ll discuss that later.”

We would, but productivity remains elusive. You pose questions and I respond with my usual challenging demeanor, deflecting deeper truths beneath layers of humour. How can I tell you I was thinking of Love all weekend? Of how collision was the most beautiful thing to me because the collision of your parent’s car against my dad’s car is how I met Love? When your mother came by my hospital bed to see the damage she had done, Love was holding her hand. There was no need for introductions: our eyes exchanged fragments of understanding. Love stood on the outskirts of a different kind of collision. Her daddy was alive. And that was the problem.

When we first played together, a week later, when your mother had come to apologize and promise to pay for the damages and contribute to the funeral, it was the first time I laughed genuinely. Unlike the other children, Love didn’t ask about the bruises and cuts on me. She had seen them on your mother. She knew I needed a friend.

***

University students are crazy. Every time, I come for Group, I’m reminded of this. You make me attend Group with my real therapist, Dr Matsheka and his other patients every Wednesday. You believe in patient-oriented recovery. In short, we’re responsible for our recovery rather than just being prescribed pills and being sent on our way.

But honestly, some of these kids need to be thrown in the psych hospital. Kids with extreme psychosis, kids who didn’t have a single body part left uncut or unburned, kids who were scared of eating even an apple in case it got them featured on 100-pound Life, kids who cried and cried and please, shut up and kids who needed weed more than oxygen. Yet in every group, you still acted like I was the crazy one. All because of a few suicidal thoughts and attempts, which, being honest, was the norm in Group.

 Dr Matsheka always starts Group the same way, deep breaths and then achievements. That optimist fucker even insists that the achievements don’t need to be grand. The little things count,  like brushing your teeth or not having an intrusive thought. To maintain order, they introduced the Achievement bear, a stuffed bear that grants the person holding it the exclusive right to talk. It feels like we’re five but ironically, we adhere to the Achievement bear. Sure, we can skip our meds, keep drinking and do other stuff but the bear is protocol. 

The Achievement bear is passed around and the achievements are things that “normal” people don’t even think about: 

Today, I took a shower and brushed my teeth.

Last week, I attended all my lectures.

I had fun during the weekend. Without having to get drunk!

Finally, the soft bear is in my hands. My heart races. Outside I may look collected, bored even, but I hate the Achievement bear. It reminds me that since Love’s death a year ago, I haven’t achieved much.

Perhaps because I have a different definition of achievements. Like my perspective on beauty, achievements have to be big. My mother taught me that. 

I pass the bear. 

Gladys was church services and hours of prayer in tongues. She was  gossip with the neighbours over the fence and complaints of men and boastful talks of high-achieving children. Gladys’s favourite wine was a cabernet. Mama’s least favourite person was me. 

A mother’s unkindness, an exile from love, imprints itself on the heart. Like all pain, it traces back to wounded beginnings. My father. He was the worst of men and the worst of husbands. A selfish man who vanished into work, then into alcohol and then into the grave. But he could never disappear from my mother’s memory. The scars and bruises on her body would not let her forget. The memories kept her up most nights, even haunting her during the day. And when they became too much, she redirected her pain outward. At me.

I was the living, breathing manifestation of a failed relationship. Every time I see her, it feels like she is trying to stitch her wounds shut with bitter words. 

I forced myself to be the perfect child. She still didn’t love me.

***

“Maybe you should talk to your mom,” you suggest at our next meeting. “Reconcile.”

I leave.

***

Gladys is now a drunk. Inherited wealth from my father spared her from working, but the shame of the discovery of my half siblings during the funeral drove her to liquor. Most nights, I would arrive home and be greeted by a familiar scene – Mama , unconscious. The scent of wine lingered like a bitter memory in the room. Without a word, I would step into a role I knew too well.

With gentle hands, I would guide her fragile frame to the haven of an unmade bed, tucking her in as if shielding her from the harshness of the world. The empty bottles would be cleared away, the dishes washed, and the floors cleaned. The perfect child. Gladys would not thank me in the morning, but she would not shout at me, and I always considered that a victory.

We haven’t spoken in a year.

“Nobody has called me a useless waste of space in a year,” I answer at the next Group.

The other students arch their eyebrows. I shrug and pass the bear.

***

Friday again and I had to take the test I missed two weeks ago. My contact did write me a sick note. You frown when I tell you and make me promise to never to do it again. I almost want to break that promise but today I am feeling nice. The test was fine. I won’t get an A (I don’t even know my lecturer’s name) but I won’t fail it, either.

I thought of Love today. Not in the usual depressing way. I laughed at a stray memory. Then sadness crept in and all I could do was sit down and stare at nothing as my mind played a marathon of memories. 

Beneath the jacaranda tree in my yard, her laughter lifted my spirit. In the company of another’s pain, our burdens felt a shade lighter. We became kindred shadows. In the quiet spaces between her sentences, a bond blossomed. The night became our sanctum, where unspoken words resonated louder than the cacophony of chaos that reverberated from our distant homes.

The next morning, life, as it always does, went on. My mother continued drinking. The sun rose in the east. Your father continued using your mom as a punching bag. The sun set in the west. 

But one thing had changed. We had each other.

Monday, I tell you about this. Your face lights up in surprise. You had just asked me if I had any suicidal thoughts. I used this to deflect, but the answer: No, I haven’t. Without giving you a chance to respond, I unleash a torrent of memories. I reveal details about your little sister you might not have known: the butterfly tattoo on her hip she got in middle school; her preference for Savanna over whiskey and the nightly assistance I provided her to sneak back into her room.

“Imagine if we were just stardust, caught in a cosmic dance,” Love had pondered once, tracing the constellations with her finger. “Maybe our atoms have known each other for eons.” 

“We are stardust, destined to shine,” I said to her.

And so, beneath the celestial theater, we promised to never just be observers. Never again would we be victims. 

You look thoughtful as I finish. You write something down. That’s a bad sign. It’s always a bad sign.

“And how do those memories make you feel?”

“Happy. And sad. Both, I guess.” I wish I could have said something more poetic, more jarring, but that was all I had. Some things defied summaries.

“I don’t go on social media a lot,” you say, and that shocks me a bit. The only thing I know besides you being Love’s older sibling is that you are a broke therapist in a pink, coffee-stained shirt. “It breeds depression and comparison. But I came across a quote once.”

“Oh? And what did it say?” 

You smile genuinely at me. Well, that’s new. “What is grief, but love persevering?”

***

There were interludes beneath the jacaranda tree. We discovered a language beyond the conventional syntax of friendship. We become an undulating river of feelings that flowed beneath the surface of ordinary words. Our eyes spoke volumes, jokes shared with a simple tilt of the head. 

I was so much happier.

My mother hated Love. Her hatred hung like a heavy curtain.

“Jacarandas are fleeting beauty,” she once spat, her scorn for the blooms palpable, as she raked up the flowers.

Despite my mother’s disapproval, Love thrived, blossoming like a forbidden flower in our yard every morning, refusing to wilt under her disdainful gaze. 

It was in the silent rebellion of choosing Love that I found the authenticity of my own desires.

***

At Group, Dr Matsheka asks us to make a list of things we love. He  shadows me like an archangel as I write. In the end, I manage only five items.

I tell you about it when we meet. You nod. “Next time,” you say, “I hope you add yourself.”

***

In the symphony of monotonous school hallways and clandestine rendezvous, Love was the ink in the diary of my adolescence. We were conspirators. Bunking class was our cliché. We were fugitive self-proclaimed philosophers questioning the confines of structured learning. Truancy became an anthem of liberation.

We tasted the forbidden fruit of rebellion – intoxication. The first night we got drunk together, we were at a party while your parents thought Love was staying over at a cousin’s house. My mother didn’t care where I was. Everyone at the party was young, and we drank with the boldness of youth. The liquid courage melted inhibitions, unveiling the vulnerability beneath our bravado. We danced with abandon, intoxicated not just by the spirits but by each other. Dancing dissolved into chaos, and we stumbled over each other. Guided by an invisible force, our lips collided. Our lips spoke a new language. The world blurred around us, and for that suspended moment, I was in heaven. 

After nursing our hangovers, we officially declared ourselves a couple. 

Our love story unfolded in the margins of textbooks, scribbled notes passed discreetly in class. We filled journals with each other’s names, writing poetry that danced on the delicate line between love and obsession. The local KFC witnessed our first awkward attempt at a date like the ones we see in the movies, filled with nervous laughter and spilled drinks. I braided jacaranda into her hair.

Love and I, bound by the gravity of laughter and the gravity of growing up.

Soon we stood on the cusp of adulthood, dreaming of futures intertwined. We filled our application forms side by side.

We both wanted medicine.

The most beautiful thing is collision. It’s the shattering of expectations. The abrupt intersection of fate and free will. What has been set in stone and what has yet to be painted. In that moment of impact, disparate elements converge, creating a medley of pandemonium that is both destructive and transformative.

Our acceptance responses came in. 

She got into med school. Immediately, she jumped into my arms, screaming. I hugged her, smiled, congratulated her.

The collision of dreams against the harsh terrain of reality, where fragments of hope scatter like stardust in the cosmic void. 

I did not.

The collision of her joy with my loss. Even as she comforted me, the smile could not leave her eyes. Every congratulatory word I said tasted like ashes on my tongue. The congratulations felt like condolences, a patronizing nod to a dream now worn by her.

Each day she asked me if I was okay.

“I’m fine,” I said, because it was the right thing to say. How could I tell Love that I hated her now? That upon hearing the news from your yapping mother, Gladys had called me?

“I told you not to get ahead of yourself.” I could hear the smirk in her words.

Anger stormed in me. Sadness drowned me. Rejection swelled in me. All these emotions were eating me alive. They wanted out. But the stone in my throat would not move. 

So, I cut them out.

Pain emerges in the aftermath, but the pain dulls the pain in my heart. I liked it that way.

I settled for med lab. 

“That’s great, my love,” Love said, wrapping her arm around my neck and kissing me. I remember the warmth of her embrace like a familiar song, but now I wanted to push her away. “Remember, we’re in this together.”

 The disappointment cut through the fabric of my being, leaving wounds that festered into the abyss of depression and alcoholism. Each sip was a silent pact, a communion between despair and the burning solace of alcohol. The liquor, a sepia antidote to the grayscale of my desolate emotions, painted my world in warm hues. I was my parents’ son.

I left Love. I remember her tears and her begging when I told her my decision. It felt so right.

I was fine.

Public transport to class becomes a confessional, tears drying in my eyes. I scrolled through old messages, I questioned my worth a little, made art of my wrists with a knife and told myself I was happy. Yet I had restless and fragmented thoughts at midnight. 

I wasn’t fine. 

***

On Friday your WhatsApp message comes in with a deafening bing.

“Where are you. You missed today,” it reads.

No one texts me anymore. Just you. I stare at it, and then at the rope in my hands. I’ve prepared everything: the chair, the rope. Hopefully you will find my letter if you come looking for me. When you come looking for me.

I put the rope down. And cry.

Your mom was the one who called me back then. Six months after I left Love. I had long blocked Gladys and you and I were never really friends. 

“Hello,” I slurred. My head throbbed from a hangover. It was 11:34 am.

“Are you in a good place?” your mother asked me.

The most beautiful thing is collision. I was in the back seat when your mother’s car collided with my father’s. I survived. He didn’t. The ugliest thing is collision. Love was walking around campus when a drunk student’s car collided with her. He survived. She didn’t. 

At first, I didn’t believe it.

But soon photos started to circulate on social media. Unedited. The scene was brutal. Love had died on the spot. My phone fell from my hands. It wasn’t supposed to end that way, so abrupt and violent. Yet wasn’t this what collision truly meant – the clash of forces powerful enough to obliterate anything in their path? 

Love’s funeral was held that Sunday. Closed casket. I didn’t show. And when I missed several classes, the administration called my mother, and my mother called you. It wasn’t that she cared, no, not really, but god forbid she was called the lady with the crazy son on top of the lady with a cheating husband.

You never did verbalize your hatred of me. But you did show reluctance, a thousand excuses and a lot of negotiations, and that spoke to a part of me. The part of me with abusive parents who never wanted me. It took my first suicide attempt for you to accept me.

“You missed a session.” You’re not mad.

I close the door. “I was busy.”

“I was worried.”

“About?”

“You, of course.”

Sometimes I wonder whether my depression is genuine. The void left by Love is undeniable, but I love your attention, too. It is a thought I have had for a while, but it felt so sinful. Sometimes I felt like all of this, the suicide attempts, the attitude, and the behaviour were intentional. Without Love, nobody cared about me. Cared how I felt or even showed concern when I wasn’t okay.

I was alone.

But then there was you. Even in your anger and your frustration, there was feeling. Attention. I confess this the following week.

“I’m sorry,” I finish. My eyes sting. 

I prepared myself for your hatred. Your disgust. Your eyes reflect none of that.

“Don’t be,” you say, before you do something you have never done. You place your hand on mine. “It’s essential to recognize that emotions, even conflicting ones, are valid. Your acknowledgment of the depth within your experiences is a significant step. Your soul is crying for help. I’m here for you.”

In the same session, tears flow and embraces follow. For the first time in months, that night brings peaceful sleep.

***

Loss, you tell me the next time we meet, is only the final scene if you overlook the countless plot twists awaiting. I am still stardust, and I can still shine. I wear mismatched socks. I rearrange furniture at two am. I laugh at my own jokes. I talk to the moon when it’s full. I try to live again.

“What’s the game you and Lerato used to play?” You and I are sitting in the university cafeteria, you with a cup of coffee and me with a cream donut and a cappuccino. The meal was on you. You grin. It’s becoming the norm. “Ah, yes. Tell me what the most beautiful thing in the universe is?”

Later that night, as I take my dose of Prozac, a quiet revelation surfaces – the most beautiful thing is me. But more specifically, existence. It isn’t a declaration born out of arrogance or conceit, but a tender acknowledgment of the individual resilience that has weathered storms and emerged stronger. I begin to stitch the fragments of my identity, cultivating a garden of self-love in the barren spaces left by departed affections. When I tell you this over the phone, I can hear the smile in your voice. I like your smiles more than your sighs.

The realization that I am the most beautiful doesn’t erase the scars, nor does it silence the echoes of past pain. It is not a simple declaration of happiness; it is an acknowledgment that healing is a process. 

There were days when the weight of loneliness pressed against my chest like a leaden blanket. The echoes of Love’s departure lingered in the air, and the dialogue with myself became a battleground. “Did she die upset with me?” The question hung in silence.

As I navigated the corridors of my mind, the dialogue extended beyond affirmations. It became a negotiation, a plea for understanding between the fractured parts of my soul. “You are enough,” I repeated, not to drown out the questions but to confront them head-on.

The nights were the most treacherous, as the solitude amplified the whispers of self-doubt. Those nights, I cried myself to sleep.

***

“Pink shirt again?” I ask you. I’m standing by your fridge, helping myself to whatever is inside. We’re having movie night. Your kitchen is proving my theory wrong. You are, in fact, not poor. But you’re not rich. You’re… you.

And you have a stacked fridge that from now on I will take from when uni life gets hectic.

I can see the grief, the love persevering, when you say, “Lerato bought me this shirt.”

It is not a sudden revelation, but a gradual acceptance that the wounds are part of my narrative. The scars are not blemishes to be hidden; they are symbols of battles fought and resilience discovered. The dialogue ceases to be a battlefield; instead, it becomes a forum for self-compassion.

“I bleed, but I also heal,” becomes the mantra. The wounds, once feared, are now embraced as part of the journey, a reminder that healing is a continuous dialogue between past pain and present strength.

Love’s grave – no – Lerato’s grave is under a jacaranda tree. Just Lerato, not stardust, not Love. Just that three syllable name that takes up space. Your mother paid the undertaker extra for her to be laid there. You tell me you visit her grave every month and this time, on her death anniversary, I come along with you. You tell me, initially, her grave was surrounded by its own canvas-topped fence, but somebody stole it a long time ago. There is no sadness when you say that, just plain fact.

Life is like that.

This feels weird. This was the worst day of my life, but the sun is out, the birds are chirping, people are going about their day and there’s a sad realization that even I have moved on.  

We sit in front of her grave in silence. Suddenly, you speak. 

“Your friend is happier now, Lerato.” When you see my shocked expression, you can’t help but beam. “She always wanted to heal the wounds life left on you.”

***

“Lerato wanted you to have this.” I’m at your house again. It is a ritual now. I sit at your dining table, working on an assignment, when you walk in, holding a box. Love had no will, you tell me, but some things don’t need wills to know where they should go. 

In the box, I find dried jacaranda flowers. Time feels like honey dripping off a spoon.

She never hated me.

The last week of the semester, we have a final Group.

I hold the Achievement bear, tears welling. “I’m still alive.”

---

Amantle Gabolekwe is a nursing student, research fellow, and both a nonfiction and fiction
writer although stories of magical princess fighting villains will forever be her first love. She
began writing as a child, writing stories during class, where stories became both refuge and
rebellion, and today she balances research with creative exploration. Guided by the quote from
the musical Hamilton that says, “legacy is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see,”
Amantle seeks to write stories that outlive her and inspire others.