Growing up as an only child to my mother, I always had the longing for sibling companionship, attention and sometimes even, rivalry. When you grow up in a house on your own there is no one that you can blame if you were to, say, break a plate or your mother’s favourite vase. No one to tussle with or share the gossip at school with. It was you and your parents.

This was something that was dominant in my early years, although upon hitting the first double-digit era of my life, I came to find out that I was not an only child but the last of four. I mean wow; I was a baby sister to three other people. And for my very young mind, this was all peaches and roses, particularly when they moved in with my paternal grandmother, making them more accessible. They were nice enough, but our realities and thought processes were different. I have to admit though, one of them was and still is a rational and interesting person.

It never once occurred to me that these people may not want to have me around, or that I was some sort of threat to them. They were my older siblings. The daddy issues that they were having to deal with during their teenage years and later were non-existent to me because my father was there on a constant and daily basis.

When my father passed away, I, in my innocence, assumed that we would be sharing the same pain and sense of loss and direction. I immediately left for college thinking that I had left my mother in the best of hands and my father’s hard work protected by his seeds.

When I came home seven years later I came to find out that the reality was a very different story. I am here to tell you in the strongest and loudest of terms that blood is not thicker than water, and that the bonds of friendship are not in the least steadfast, but more than likely to break at the least of tribulations. Although I have known for some time now that life teaches harsh lessons. This was one that I never thought I would have to learn.

When times are good and everyone that is part of a community is living the life that they have built for themselves, with their neighbours and their families, all is well and the love is all around. This is often not the case when one member of a circle, whether that of family, work, or friendship, falls out of step from the rhythm that has been established. They are left behind in the long run.

This is not to say that those people around them would not take a moment or even a somewhat extended period of time to mourn the fate of one among them, but those very same people will not stand by them no matter what. This is often the mistake that is made by the fallen, those that have stepped out of tune; they think that those people will be their strengths and their pillars. They are often disappointed.

At the end of the day, the people that are there are that rare one per cent of the tonnes of people that you had around you in your glory days, and that is if you are lucky enough to be surrounded by such people. Most are not, and I have come to conclude that this is purely and simply because man is so weak and gullible in his nature that it is easier to live in malevolence and glory rather than benevolence and humility.

No matter what one may think, at the end of the day people end up disappointing you. That of course does not give one leave to mimic or reciprocate those people’s actions, but it is painful to have to hope time and time again and be disheartened each time.

Whatever the case, this reaffirms what I have been saying all along. This whole collective idea is what is leading us down into the lowest rungs of the gutter. Family, friends, society, your rulers, I mean no one lives for another, just as it is impossible for one man to breath or eat or think for another then it is impossible to think that the abstract would be any different.

So, we basically just have our own strengths and ourselves. Makes you kind of afraid because that would mean that you would have to be capable of doing anything and accomplishing any feat, being a superman. Only then is anything possible.