Chapter 2 – School years

It was 1995, and school had become a battlefield.

I’d climb into the car after another long day at Primary School, blinking back tears as I left one kind of hell, only to return to another. At school, the girls teased me relentlessly. I didn’t look like them, didn’t talk like them, and definitely didn’t like the same things they did. I didn’t care about dolls or crushes or clothes. I smelled like horses, not Impulse body spray. I was a tomboy through and through, and unless you were part of the stable yard crowd, that made you a bit of an alien.

But the moment I stepped into the stable yard, I came alive.

The air smelled like hay, dust, manure, and magic. That earthy mix still makes my heart ache with nostalgia. My best friends, Tehri, Kim, and Erin, and I would ride through Hout Bay like wild cowgirls, laughing, joking, jumping logs, and sometimes just letting our ponies pick the pace. We’d listen to the rhythmic clop of hooves on the trail, the river gurgling nearby, birds calling to each other across the trees. Occasionally a dog would leap from behind a fence and startle us, sending our ponies skittering sideways – but even that was part of the fun.

When Tehri moved her pony to Lane Stables in Constantia, I followed. We had stables at home, but I think my mom and Ossi needed a break from all the horse chaos. Lane Stables became my second home. I spent every afternoon there, riding in the arena, grooming horses, having silly jump-offs with friends, mixing feed, setting up stables, chatting in the rider’s room, and occasionally swimming our ponies across dams during pony camps. Some of the happiest days of my life were soaked in the smell of horse sweat and saddle leather.

Melody was my pony, my soulmate, my partner in crime. We worked, played, and grew together – eventually even winning showjumping competitions. I still smile (and wince) remembering the wild jump-off turns I asked of her. I’d pivot just meters before a jump, and she’d somehow sail over it, no questions asked. She always jumped. My brave, sassy Melody.

I think my mom loved that I was a “winning” showjumper. She pushed me to try out for the Western Province Eventing Team. For years, We dedicated every weekend to early mornings, polishing tack, plaiting manes and tails, and hauling ourselves to venues across the Cape. I should have felt proud. But the joy started to drain out. Even Melody seemed tired, less enthusiastic about training, more resistant when I tightened the girth.

I had pushed her too hard. What had once been pure joy became pressure and perfectionism. My biggest regret, and deepest shame, was how I sometimes punished her with a crop when she was “naughty.” Melody was feisty and full of spirit. She wasn’t mine to dominate. She was a living, breathing creature with a mind of her own. She taught me what real partnership means.

Horses are not ours to tame or control or use for our own benefit. They are wild and beautiful and majestic. They have spirit and that spirit should be respected and loved.

One rainy afternoon, on our way to a riding lesson, Melody decided she’d had enough. As we turned into the stable yard driveway, she balked, twisted around, and tried to head home. We struggled for control, slipping on the wet concrete, and then she fell. Her full weight landed on my foot. I heard the crunch before I felt it.

I managed to get back on her, holding onto her mane with tears streaming down my face. She led us home gently, as if she understood. X-rays confirmed a break. I was out for six weeks, and I missed the Western Province selection. It felt like everything we’d worked for vanished in an instant.

I never got the joy back. Melody retired to a farm in Hermanus, and I was lost without her.

She lived the rest of her days in huge grass paddocks having foals.

She had been my grounding force, the one creature who understood me without needing words. Losing her felt like losing a part of myself. The silence after her was loud.

And that’s when I noticed the rest of me slipping.

I missed Melody with a pain that felt physical. I missed the trails, the feel of her body under mine as we flew over jumps. I missed the girl I was with her.

Without Melody, everything unravelled. I’d defined myself by the rhythm of her hooves, the early morning show nerves, the smell of saddle soap. And now there was just silence. An aching, muffled kind. I stopped going to the yard. I stopped laughing with the girls. I didn’t know who I was without a bridle in my hand and shavings in my boots.

I’d become harder to manage – moody, withdrawn, irritable. I lost interest in school. My grades slipped. I started sleeping more. I’d sleep for hours on weekends, and during the school week, I’d escape to the sick room during class and just sleep.

I remember sitting at the kitchen counter, talking to my mother about how I was feeling. She was sympathetic but basically waved away my tide of emotions.

There was no talk of therapy. No one asked why I was hurting, or what the world felt like from inside my skin.  I drifted more. I remember sitting in class one day, staring at my hand like it wasn’t mine. I became quiet, too quiet. Detached. I moved through the world like a ghost of myself.

But the truth was, I was learning something far more dangerous than sadness.
I was learning to disappear.

In those quiet, aching moments of my childhood, I used to talk to God.

Not in the structured way the grownups did, no folded hands or memorised verses. Just whispered prayers, sent out like paper boats onto a vast, silent sea. I asked Him to help me not feel so sad. To stop feeling confused. But no answers came. Just silence. And over time, I stopped expecting replies.

It’s devastating, in its own quiet way, to believe the universe is indifferent to your pain.

By the time high school crept closer, my mother decided it was time for a makeover. I suppose she wanted to give me a head start, to make sure I didn’t carry the awkwardness of primary school into the next chapter. I was booked in for braces. Two full years of wires, coloured elastics, and even headgear. My “Dumbo” ears were pinned back in a surgery that left me looking like a tiny alien for a few days. Highlights were added to my hair, my legs were waxed, and the final step was tackling the acne that had taken hold of my face.

That’s when she suggested I go on the pill.

The thing is, I hadn’t even gotten my period yet. I’d lied about it earlier to impress her, pretending I’d joined the ranks of the other girls who were becoming women. Now I had to admit I’d made it up. I was mortified. But once my first period finally arrived, the pill was prescribed, and a heavy-duty course of Roaccutane followed. It worked. And it left its mark, not just on my skin, but on how I started to view myself – without trying to constantly hide away my face.

High school was a massive shift. We were all thrown into a big, new environment, and in the beginning, we stuck together. The teasing from primary school girls faded. Ryan, my older brother, had moved to Abbotts College, thank God, which gave me space to grow without feeling overshadowed.

I found new friends, most of them from Hout Bay, just like me. Some even had horses of their own. Everything shifted. It felt incredible to walk to their houses after school, talk about ponies and boys, and to feel like I actually belonged. The house on the corner of my road was home to two of the cutest boys in school. We spent hours together, laughing and hanging out. I was secretly infatuated with one of them, but he started dating my friend. To him, I was just one of the guys.

Still, things were looking up.

My relationship with my mom was… complicated. She loved me, but her words often landed with sharp edges. She’d compare me to my brother’s beautiful girlfriends; thin, tanned, confident. I, on the other hand, was pale, breakout-prone, makeup-free, and permanently attached to a computer when not out with school friends.

“You should go tan outside for one hour on different sides,” she’d say, shaking her head at my legs. “Then you’ll have a lovely tan all over!”

But I preferred being indoors, where I could disappear into the glowing world of the screen. MIRC became like a lifeline at home – Internet Relay Chat.

My brother introduced me to it, and I was hooked. It was like Facebook before Facebook existed: live chat rooms, direct messages, endless online friendships.

I joined the #hack group and met people from all over South Africa. A few happened to be my brother’s best friends, but that didn’t matter. These people felt like family, my chosen digital tribe.

We were computer nerds, and I was proud of it. At 11 years old, I could take apart and rebuild a Pentium from scratch. No YouTube tutorials. No plug-and-play. Just me, floppy disks, wires and a lot of determination.

Back at home, Ossi was always working on his computer training businesses, Digitron, then ITIQ, so we had the latest tech, the fastest internet lines, and a garage full of boys hosting LAN games every weekend. I secretly loved being bossed around by the nerd crew. I could speak their language.

Ryan and I mostly avoided each other. He lived for computers and LANs. We were siblings in orbit, crossing paths only when we had to.

Then Nicholas was born.

When my mom and Ossi announced they were having a baby, I prayed desperately for a little sister. The idea of another brother was unbearable. Worse still, the due date was right on my birthday.

But when he arrived in November 1998, just before I turned 14, I fell head over heels for him. I gave him the second name Tristan – after Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, of course. I loved holding him. His tiny body in my arms. I cried when he cried. I helped where I could. But eventually, I’d retreat to my room, music turned up to drown out his wails. He cried so much. All the time.

And I felt so helpless.

Around this time, I had my first kiss.

It was just after my 14th birthday, and I floated on that memory for weeks. After that came a series of flings, brief, confusing connections that didn’t mean much. Until him. My first real heartbreak.

He was older, 18, had a car, and made me feel special. He was funny, charming, and exciting. We’d spend hours kissing and touching in my bed. Looking back, I don’t know how it was even allowed. I was 14. He slept over. And no one seemed to question it.

But eventually, he grew bored. Wanted more than I was ready to give. When I didn’t, we broke up and he made a move on one of my friends.

I was shattered. I cried for months, locked in my room, the saddest songs in my ears on repeat. I laugh at it now. All that drama for one boy. But at the time, it felt like the end of the world.

The first heartbreak cuts deep not because of what’s lost – but because it exposes how fragile we really are when we let someone in. And sometimes, it reveals confusion we’re not yet old enough to name.

I couldn’t explain the anxiety I felt every time a boy liked me. A gnawing discomfort that rose even in the middle of a kiss. I didn’t have words for it yet. I just thought I was broken. Or maybe too sensitive.

In December 1999, we had a dream holiday in Mauritius. Ryan and I each brought a friend to stop us from fighting, and my grandparents came too. For once, it was peace. Laughter. Sunshine. A whole week of being somewhere warm and weightless. We promised we’d return the next year. If we made it past the year 2000.

February 2000 brought something else entirely.

A new horse.

Ossi bought her for me. Sassy, a beautiful chestnut thoroughbred, straight off the track. She was utterly gorgeous.

That first weekend after she arrived at my house, a friend and I took her for an outride to the beach. Feeling brave, we decided to race. She was a racehorse, after all.

We took off at full speed, me pulling ahead, laughing, and then, just meters from the finish, she tripped. Stumbled. Somersaulted. Landed on her back.

With me still on her.

I blacked out. In and out of consciousness for two days. I had no memory. My back was injured. My date for the school Valentine’s Ball never got a call. I was in hospital.

Sian rode after Sassy, who had bolted in panic toward home. Ossi had seen the whole thing and called an ambulance.

Recovery was slow for both me and Sassy. We started physiotherapy together.

By this stage, my dad and I were almost completely estranged. I’d stopped going to his house on weekends after Melody. Ryan had his LANs. I had my horses and online friends. And somehow, the spaces between us all had stretched wider and wider, until they were too far to cross.

In adolescence, we build so many versions of ourselves – online, in love, in survival. But eventually, they all collapse under the weight of who we truly are. And when that collapse comes, it’s not quiet.