Chapter 3 – Adolescence

My memory of this time is fuzzy – possibly because of the riding accident. The timeline of certain events doesn’t make complete sense to me now. I might be confusing or combining stories from different years. But what I do remember, I remember in feelings. Pain. Panic. Emptiness.

I had developed severe depression. My back pain was constant – agonising. I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time, and weekly physiotherapy wasn’t helping. Even horse riding, which had always been my therapy, was making me anxious. Sassy had started to trip frequently, and every time she did, it gave me a mini heart attack. Riding no longer felt like freedom. It felt like fear. But her presence? Always felt like peace.

After the accident, I wasn’t the same. I felt anxious, empty, lifeless, and unloved. I started cutting my arms with knives. At first, it was a way to escape the ache I felt inside. The pain on my skin distracted me from the pain in my chest.

But the cutting got worse over time. I became obsessed with the idea of ending my life. I was desperate to slit my wrists, but I couldn’t bear the pain of cutting deep enough. I was furious with myself for not being able to find the vein.

Eventually, I decided to overdose on Myprodol the day my mom and Ossi left for a weekend holiday. It was a terrible idea. The memory of what followed is seared into my body – the grogginess, the confusion, the fear that I had permanently damaged my brain. I woke up the next day in a panic, feeling trapped in my own body. I confessed what I had done to our au pair.

My mom and Ossi came home immediately. In my groggy state, I blurted out something like, “I was sexually abused.” I’m not sure why I said it. I had shut down those memories for years. I don’t remember flashbacks at that point, just a feeling. A vague, unspeakable knowing.

My mom assumed I meant my father had done something to me as a child. I let her believe that. I think I honestly believed I had made it up. That it was a lie for attention. So I allowed her to conclude it must have happened during a childhood infection I’d had.

Next thing I knew, my bags were packed and I was on my way to Kenilworth Clinic for a month-long admission.

The clinic was awful. They treated me like an attention seeker. An alcoholic. Just because I drank on weekends, like every other teenager I knew. I didn’t belong there. I didn’t feel seen. While others had horrific life stories of abuse, poverty, and trauma – I felt like the spoiled rich girl with no right to be sad. I had my own horse, went to a snobby school, lived in a big house with two maids and a gardener, and had my food served to me three times a day.

I ran away constantly in the beginning. (I still giggle sometimes at how many times I escaped and how creative I was) Eventually, they made me an outpatient so I could be with Sassy in the evenings. She was the only thing that brought me peace.

Ossi used to drive slowly behind me as I rode Sassy home in the dark, worried someone might crash into us. At the time, I was embarrassed and angry. Now, I cry when I think about it. He must have been exhausted after work, but he did it anyway. I didn’t understand his love then. But I do now. Decades later.

They put me on antidepressants, and life returned to a kind of normal. My mom and I decided to embark on a “fitness mission” together. She’d had cosmetic surgery after having Nicholas and was on a beauty journey of her own. We each got personal trainers. I hated the exercising part, but we laughed a lot. It helped. My mood lifted.

I was spending more time with my best friend Claudia. She was confident, quirky, and full of life. She pulled me out of my shell and reminded me what joy felt like. The antidepressants helped too. I became more spontaneous. More daring. I didn’t care what people thought. I rode horses without a helmet. I streaked across Newlands stadium during a cricket game. I bunked school. It was reckless and thrilling and weirdly healing.

For a short time, I felt alive.

But as my confidence grew, things with my mom changed. I started noticing what felt like jealousy. It was subtle, but I could feel it. She’d tell me how proud she was of how popular I was, but somehow, I always ended up feeling guilty about it. Like I had taken something from her.

I started hanging out with the trainers outside gym, even kissing one of them. He was renting a room at Claudia’s house, so I saw him all the time. Then came the Bali holiday in June 2000 with Claudia, Justine, and Becci. It was magic – days of shopping and beach massages, nights of dancing at the Sari Club. We became locals at a restaurant called Gland. We swam with dolphins at Sol Lavina. I fell in love with travel, with the Hindu rituals and spiritual offerings, with the vastness of the world outside my pain.

Back home, things with my mom stayed confusing. Sometimes we were close. She’d call me from the beach during school and ask if I wanted to bunk. Of course I did – my friends were jealous. She was the MILF all the boys drooled over. But inside, I didn’t want a cool mom. I just wanted a mom. Someone safe. Someone who wasn’t always competing with me over hair length, weight, or attention.

We once took a weekend trip to Gouritz River for bridge swinging and stayed in Groot Brak Rivier. My trainer came along. Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t see it then – my mom and my trainer must have slept together that night. I walked in the next morning and he was in her bed. She in a gown. At the time, I brushed it off. Now it makes me sick.

After that, we swapped trainers. I got close to the new one too. We trained at the beach, kayaked at Clifton. My mom didn’t like it. She started showing up at his parties. She once joined us mid-movie and sat between us on the couch. Later, she told me she’d fallen in love with him. It was mortifying. The dynamic became toxic. Confusing. Painful.

Then came 9/11. I remember my brother shouting from his room to come watch the news. We stood around the TV in disbelief, not fully comprehending the scale of what we were witnessing. Up until then, the only bombings I’d known were the PAGAD attacks in Camps Bay.

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Reflections

Looking back now, so much of that year feels like a tangle of blurred lines between truth and invention, love and attention, trauma and drama. I didn’t have the language to name what was happening inside me. I just knew I felt broken. Lost. Like I was living someone else’s life, in someone else’s body.

I was a girl in a beautiful house, riding horses by the sea – and quietly planning how to die.

The world didn’t make sense to me. My feelings didn’t make sense. And my mother, my beautiful, complicated mother, seemed to dance between being my best friend and my biggest rival.

Somehow, even with all the noise – the holidays, the gym sessions, the parties – I was still just a teenage girl quietly wondering:

Why do I feel so empty when I’m supposed to be happy?

This was the beginning of the unraveling.
And the beginning of trying to put myself back together – one jagged piece at a time.

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Psychological Reflection:

“When children grow up in environments where emotional safety is inconsistent or conditional, they learn to disconnect from their inner truth. Trauma doesn’t always come in the form of overt violence. Sometimes, it’s the slow, daily erosion of self-worth. It shows up later in misdiagnosed depression, people-pleasing, reckless behaviour, and the aching confusion of not knowing why you feel so empty. Healing begins not with blame – but with bearing witness to your own pain.“