Period Pain Quotes

“Being alive is the most dangerous thing in the world. Anything can happen at any time. It's safer to be dead.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Of course I'm ashamed. But it's not our fault. It's the white people's fault, Lord. Everything is. They taught us to hate ourselves. They made us like this. We weren't like this before they came. This is not the way we would have been if they hadn't come and messed everything up for everyone.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“She had shouted at me to be quiet. But I think after I fainted into Rakgadi Tebogo's pool at Dineo's traditional wedding, Ma stopped caring about the life I'd never be able to bring into the world and started worrying more about the life she'd brought into it.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Όταν..είμαι μόνο εγώ και τα νυχτερινά φώτα στον άδειο αυτοκινητόδρομο, αφήνω για μια στιγμή από τα χέρια μου το τιμόνι, πατάω δυνατά το γκάζι και σκέφτομαι - αν έτρεχα πάρα πολύ, θα σηκώνουν άραγε ψηλά στον ουρανό και θα πετούσαν αεροπλάνο; Θα χανόμουν μες στο σκοτάδι της νύχτας;”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“I tell her how appalling it is that we've become the very thing we fought so long and hard to destroy.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“¿Cómo esperan que no pierda la cabeza? Te desgarran una y otra vez, te penetran una y otra vez. Te transmiten enfermedades, verrugas, lombrices, granos, dolor, sangre y podredumbre que te sale del cuerpo. ¡De mi cuerpo! ¿Por qué? Por las minas de oro, te dicen, por los holandeses, porque en algún momento alguien les robó, porque no tuvieron padre, por Zimbabue y Shaka y el gobierno, por la xenofobia, el desempleo, el apartheid, el colonialismo, por la historia, por la serpiente, por Adán y Eva. Por todo y por nada. Porque pueden.
Porque sí.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Qué espesa tiene que ser nuestra sangre. ¡Contiene tantas cosas! Las historias recorren nuestras venas y suben a nuestro corazón infinidad de veces al día.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“«Me violaron».
La doctora Phakama quiere que lo diga. Dice que me ayudará. Dice que si lo pongo en pasado podré superarlo.
Pero cuando se trata de nuestra propia vida y la estamos viviendo, la distinción nunca es tan clara. Me siguen violando incluso ahora, aunque no me estén violando. No sé cuándo se detuvo una y empezó la otra. Me violan.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“¿Es posible quererlos [a los pacientes] y dejarlos allí?? ¿Es posible quererlos sin que nos manchen el corazón? ¿Tiene sitio el corazón para todo su dolor (y el nuestro), para sus huesos rotos (y nuestra alma partida) para su malestar (y nuestra vergüenza)?”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“A altas horas de la noche aprendes muchas cosas: que si lloras mientras orinas con la cabeza entre las piernas las lágrimas se acumulan en las pestañas, de modo que cuando vuelves a urgencias no tienes surcos en las mejillas, sino estrellas ante los ojos.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“What is the point of us being here on earth if everything's all about heaven? If You don't want to/don't care/can't change anything here on earth, what's the point really? If it's all completely random and just about struggling through to the end that will eventually come, why do we bother?”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“If anything, it's taught me humility. I think I had a big head. I thought I was special, immune, exceptional. That these sorts of things wouldn't happen to me. But I'm not. I'm just another South African rape statistic. There's nothing extraordinary about my story, it happens everywhere, every day. It doesn't matter that I'm highly educated, a doctor, that I started a petition that made the newspapers.

I have a vagina. That's all that matters.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Sometimes I forget. I get lost in the bassline of a song or the smell of lemongrass. At those times I'm just like everyone else. Then my mind asks, 'Why are you so happy? Isn't there something you're forgetting?' And then I search and search and search, and I remember, oh yes, I was raped.”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Is it because I worked on Sundays and didn't keep the Sabbath holy? Broke one of Your ten commandments? I had no choice. The call roster was drawn, the calls had to be done. Who was I not to work on a Sunday when everyone else does? Jesus' disciples picked wheat on the Sabbath, and He defended them. Why didn't He defend me? Is it because I'm not good enough? You say You love us all the same, but You don't, You love others differently, You love others more. Why didn't You defend me, Jesus?”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“How viscous our blood must be. It carries so much in it. Stories are swirling round and round our veins, up into our hearts at least a zillion times a day. Stories of men going into cities, men in men, men in women, women in men, children in women, men in children. Strangers living in each other's arteries, sharing intimacies, sharing pain, sharing anger, sharing hatred, sharing resentment, sharing loss.

Who are these terrorists that have invaded my blood, taken over my body?”
― Kopano Matlwa, Period Pain

“Who said we had to enjoy caring for the ill? I mean one ought to do it, it's morally right to do it, but do you have an obligation to enjoy it? Would it make you a bad person if you said you detested it? Hated every minute o fit? Did it, but deplored it?”
― Kopano Matlwa , Period Pain