Who is Helen Prinsloo?

Chapter 1: Who is Helen Prinsloo

Let me start by saying this is going to be a mess in which I demonstrate (or maybe not, who knows?) the fact that I have no clue as to what I'm really doing, much like life I suppose. Anyway, here goes. Already I'm using too many cliches.

Just like I don't know what I'm doing with this book, so to I don't really know who I am. I can tell you with a good amount of certainty what I absolutely adore and decidedly detest, but as to who I am, well that's a little too fuzzy. Perhaps I should start with what I want to be.

The question 'who do you want to be' has been quite distinct in my mind lately. It cropped up in the course on ethics and pastoral care that I was studying in aid of my future Bachelor of Theology. It said something along the lines of 'ethics is not so much a question of what you should do as it is about who you want to be', or something along that line. Maybe it's because my dad taught me so thoroughly to value ethics that it has stayed with me. Whatever the reason, it has made me ponder the thought of what I want to be.
For a while now I have tried to be aware and conscious of my reactions to things or what people say, in an attempt to analyse where my subconscious values really lie. I've noticed that they've changed over the years, partially because I've 'gotten over myself' (at least some of the time), but also because the things that actually matter to me have actually changed. Or maybe not changed, maybe the order has just shuffled a bit.

I remember when I was in Std 2, just another face in the class, always getting low marks because I was neither clever nor neat in terms of handwriting (ironic, seeing as I always get chosen as 'the person with the neatest handwriting' in group projects). Then, one day, I got 100% for a maths exam. I hadn't been paying attention when the teacher called out my name, so when the oohing and aching started I naturally assumed it was for someone else. Doing well simply wasn't part of my narrative. And then after a while I noticed that no one was going to collect the sweets the teacher had put out for the winner of the highest maths mark, so I quietly asked one of the other students who this person was. I was told it was me. For the first time ever I had gained attention at school that was not based on ridicule, bullying, or downright nastiness.

In Std 3 I was moved to a farm school due to transport cost cutting in the family budget. Wow, it's amazing what happens when every kid in the class is seen, when nobody is just another face in the sea of faces. Suddenly I was the academic superstar. Yes, the bullying and gossip and nastiness continued, but there was something, something that everyone liked me for. I was still the last one to be picked for any type of group sport. I was still the slowest person when we had to run twice around the cricket field. But when it came to class quizzes, I was picked first. I mattered, in something.

So that became my identity. 'The Intelligent One'. Somehow everything pointed to that being where my value lay. I was useless at sport. My mommy and daddy weren't rich and/ or well known. Kindness isn't really a tribute specifically sought after in school (although it did keep me out of communal trouble once or twice). I mattered because I did well academically. I wasn't a total loser, because I did well academically.

Let me just note though that my parents never applied this transactional approval on me, which I think is a major contributing factor to my shift in values. My parents always made me felt like I was the best thing that had happened to them, just by virtue of having been born at all