Seasons of Beauty - Sharing the Poetry of a Neurodivergent Life

Delile at a book reading in South Africa for 'Raw Feelings', 2022

Life is all about choices. Life is a decision.

Life is what you think. Life is life because of your routes.

In 2008, I was in my final few weeks of high school and I had started ‘cross-nighting’ with my friends several evenings a week.

The routine was always the same: I met Thabo and Mpholo at school at 8 o’clock, stayed in the building with them until around 5 am, and then went back home for a bath and breakfast before starting the school day as normal with the rest of our classmates in the morning.

It might be tempting to think that four unsupervised seventeen-year-old boys in an empty school would be up to no good, but that wasn’t the case.

In previous years, I’d heard my three older brothers sneaking home from their cross-nighting sessions, and as the youngest, I wanted to be as successful as them. I was going to become a civil engineer and leave the poverty of our childhood behind.

However, for the class of 2008, passing our exams wasn’t as straightforward as studying hard. That year, the South African government changed the national curriculum from the Senior Certificate to the National Senior Certificate and the transition was so chaotic that none of the teachers knew how to prepare us. Cross-nighting became more than just cramming in the extra study; it was our only chance to be sure we wouldn’t flunk our exams. Night after night, while the rest of our classmates slept, we studied sums, chemical equations, and historical timelines, preparing ourselves to face any question under the sun.

Life has a direction.

Life is what you and I need,

Life has too many things

Life is you.

We took a study break at around 1 am. I usually went outside with my friends but that evening something made me stay behind and soon I heard their laughter ringing through the empty playground. As I sat alone at my table, looking through the window at the night sky an intense wave of feeling rippled through my body without warning. I suddenly became aware of myself sitting in the empty classroom, a boy of 17 about to make his way in the world. The events of his past played like a movie reel in my mind, of the struggles he had been through, and how they had shaped him into who he was. My heart expanded and my hopes and desires for the future flooded in. 

Life was talking and I understood what it was saying; the past makes us who we are but our decisions shape who we become.

I was hardly aware of picking up my pen before a flow of words flew across the pages of my notebook in diagonal lines. I had never felt the exhilaration of pure expression before. Unfiltered thoughts and feelings tumbled out so fast my hand could barely keep up.

Eventually, I came to a natural stop and gazed with warm satisfaction at the pages of scribbled words. I didn’t know I had written poetry. 

My friends swung the door open and I closed my book. 

‘Hey, what’s wrong with you?’ said Thabo.

‘Why are you sitting all by yourself?’

‘Man, I needed a break from you guys’ I said.

We laughed and stuck our heads straight back in the books. 

I’ve been to too many places in life,

I’ve been through malice, viciousness, and abhorrence.

I ought to be in life, because, in life, there are precarious deeds,In life, there are assimilations. Life is virulent and erroneous,And at the same time, prestigious, special…

But obnoxious sometimes.

On the outside, my life in Bophelong, Vanderbijlpark, was like everyone else’s; I went to school, studied, played soccer and marbles with the kids in our area, but home life was different.

Mum had bipolar, her medication helped her cope well, and although it wasn’t easy juggling four boys and her job as a car guard, she was always loving and caring. 

As for our Dad, his affections were divided between us and his love for Black Label. By the time I reached high school, he had turned from the man I played marbles with and who made wire toy cars from scratch to someone whose patterns of rage intensified year after year and carved deep wounds with his physical and verbal attacks. Of course, as the drink wore off and the dust settled on his anger, the old Dad always returned, and I forgave him at first because it’s hard to reject your Father, but slowly, it wore me down, my forgiveness turned to resentment and I told myself I was done. 

∞

After school, I went home that evening and opened my notebook. I rearranged some of the thoughts and put ‘the meat onto the skeleton’ with a few more words. 

When I finished, I had my first-ever poem, entitled ‘Life’.

Life is perilous but tranquil,

Unscrupulous and auspicious life is, 

In it, there are intellectual directions,

But for those who need not get hurt.

When I started at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) in February 2009, I turned up the gas on my studies. Despite the troubles with my Father I still wanted to make him proud and earn enough money to give my parents a good life. I spent my evenings cross-nighting before every exam.

A few months in, I received a call from my brother. 

‘Hey, man, you have to come back home, right?’

I laughed at him. Was he crazy?

‘No way, man! I can’t come home. You know how important my exams are.’

‘You have to come home’ insisted my brother.

‘Dad died.’

I laughed again. I knew my father had been suffering from tuberculosis but I never thought it would kill him.

‘That’s not true. You’re lying to me. I’m not coming home.’

‘I’m at home right now, and your brothers are here too. You have to come home.’

At that moment I knew it wasn’t a lie. My brothers were the busiest men I knew; to have all three of them together in one place was impossible. I packed my things.

∞

We buried him, and I put it behind me.

Okay, well, he is dead. So what? 

People die every day, you know? 

Why should I even grieve for a guy like that? 

He made my mum suffer so much my brothers had to beat him up.

I’m done.

I buried myself in my studies and passed my first year of uni.

∞

It is time that controls life.

It is time for us to look into good prospects.

It is time to face our challenges because life is short for our goals.

At that point in my life, I believed firmly that all problems had their solutions, and when challenges came my way I never backed down. Now, in my second year of uni, I faced the biggest challenge of my life; how to change the past. 

How could I make him not die?

I could have done things differently.

I could have figured out how to help him and stopped everyone’s suffering. 

I wouldn’t have minded if he had died after I had finished school. 

Couldn't you just have hung on for like, four more years, man!? 

The more I wrestled with the problem the angrier I became. The man was an inconvenience even in death.

In the middle of this turmoil and my relentless study schedule, I began to blackout in exams; enough times that I went to the university doctor. A quick test revealed irregular eye movement so they gave me extra time to complete the papers, three hours instead of four.

But it didn’t help. the words blurred on the pages, the answers were on the tip of my tongue but impossible to grasp.

I know this, I KNOW this.

I started to fail.

Then came the migraines; an interminable pounding in my head. I baffled the psychology department, full of inexperienced fourth-year students and eventually, the manager told me I needed to go to a bigger city for help.

I was in too much pain to even look at a book and my only option was to quit. I went back home to my Mother. 

Doctor after doctor gave me test after test; the pain in my head had a grip on my whole body but the CT scans told me I was healthy. They couldn’t figure it out. 

Eventually, a psychiatrist revealed I was presenting symptoms of bipolar disorder but they couldn’t say for sure. It was so hard to detect that symptoms were often misdiagnosed as depression or mania, and only one in 10,000 sufferers were diagnosed with any certainty. When I told him my Mother had bipolar I received my official diagnosis.

Life is love,

Love is patient,

Patience is determined by satiation,

Satiation is success and,

Success is contentment.

For months I lay in bed at my Mother’s house, half dead and lifeless.

One day, my brother came home to see me and sat on the edge of my bed.

‘You know your problem, Delilie, is that you're a problem solver. You always want to find a fast solution but you fail to realize that you cannot solve this.’

I turned away. It hurt me to listen to him.

‘You cannot solve this because you have to go through it. Why are you trying to stop death? You are stuck figuring out what could have happened – what you could have done. You couldn’t have done anything to change this man. It’s not your fault.’

‘Just let it go, Delile.’

And he left.

I don’t think I ever told him but my brother’s words were a gentle spark that began to dissolve the huge burden I had been carrying. I realised for the first time that I couldn’t solve every problem in life. I had to choose my battles and focus on what I could do now, instead of what I could have done back then.

For the first time in a year, my guilt around my Father’s death changed to sadness. 

I finally began to grieve. 

But the next three years were hard. 

The medication did not work. We started with lithium, the wonder drug for bipolar sufferers, but it sent me to sleep for 10-12 hours a night. 

I need a life! 

My bipolar worked in seasons. for seven months of the year, from September to April, I had hypomania, I was in my ‘summer’. I was creative, high-energy, and all over the place. I went without sleep for two or three days and didn’t feel tired. For the other five months, I was in my ‘winter’. I was worn out and depressed and these seasonal fluctuations continued no matter what combination of meds we tried. 

It was three years of trial and error; sleeping too much or not at all, hyper-creative or numb and mute, weight gain, weight loss…

My family looked on, unable to help and grieving my loss as if I had died. My mother said to lose me that much but for me to still be alive, was too much to bear.

Finally, we found the combination of meds that stabilised me and I was able to live a normal life once again.

I couldn’t go back to school so civil engineering was out of reach, but I picked my battle and started a ‘learnership’; a government initiative to encourage private companies to take disadvantaged people into the workplace and learn on the job.

Through success, we become opulent

And opulence gives forth solutions

With optimistic purposes

That gives exhilaration,

My medication continues to help me lead a balanced life. I still create in seasons, and since my diagnosis, I have written poetry as a way to make sense of all I have been through and everything my bipolar has given me.

Thanks to my neurodivergent brain I have access to a different perspective on life’s infinite potential and I am constantly amazed. The meds don't allow me to spin off into another plane anymore like I used to, and I’m grateful for that as it is too lonely out there, alone with my thoughts, no matter how spectacular they are, but ideas still flow into my brain that shock me with their brilliance and sometimes I feel like I have the power to change the world. I channel those feelings into my poetry along with my sorrow and pain because the bad days of bipolar are sometimes more awful than I feel I deserve.  

Writing is my safe place, where I can ponder questions and receive answers,  or put words into the world without fear of hurting those I love. Neurotypicals struggle to understand the neurodivergent brain and it’s exhausting for both of us. In a heated moment, the right words are often out of my reach and people jump on what I say instead of what I am trying to say and attack me for that, or at worst, dismiss me. 

It’s normal for people to snap, they have their cut-off point but I long for people to stretch their patience a little further for the breakthroughs in relationships to pay off in the long run. I am grateful for my wife who has worked hard to understand me; she has taken the time to research my condition and I am proud of how much we have learned about each other and the strength of us as a team.

I would say to neurotypical people to get curious about the different ways your neurodivergent friends express themselves, and always ask us before you assume you understand. Ask, ask, ask, because I can guarantee that you would have misunderstood! 

By publishing my first book of poetry, Raw Feelings', during COVID-19 at the end of 2020, I started my mission to help all South African men who are struggling with their mental health, not just bipolar sufferers. In our culture, there are still those who think that mental health sufferers are bewitched and that brings such shame on families, that even parents are afraid to say their children are struggling.

The recent spate of South African male celebrities who have died by suicide shows us we have a long way to go. In 2018, the rapper Hip Hop Pantsula took his life aged 38, and in 2022 we lost the rapper and singer Riky Rick aged 34, as well as the actor and director Patrick Molefe Shai, aged 65. 

Giving away as many copies of my ebook and audiobook as I can for free is the beginning of my contribution towards a solution to this problem.

∞

Everyone deserves to have someone to hear their voice. During my book readings, people often ask me what I mean by this and that but I don’t like to explain or question my words, I just want the freedom to express myself, and hopefully it inspires you to do the same.

Exhilaration is joy.

Joy is a smile.

I may not be omniscient,

But I know what life is.

Life, life, life.

‘Life’ by Delile Isaac Ndumo

Puchase 'Raw Feelings' in paperback, Kindle, and ebook.

For free ebook and audiobook copies, contact Delile: ndumoisaac@gmail.com 

Follow Delile for more updates on his poetry on Instagram or Facebook.

© Heidi Pyper 2024: All Rights Reserved