Enough

Zaa-neh-leh. Zanele. My name is a burden, a hunk of identity, packed heavily onto my shoulders. My knees buckle under the weight, my mind attempts to understand the ties to a family tree unfamiliar and a history incomprehensible. My mother says Zanele means “the girls are enough”, but they appear as words fixated on trampling the possibility of a simple existence. The tribe begins with Ayanda, my sister, meaning “the tribe is growing”. Though expansion quickly halts with the birth of another daughter, me. It's not difficult to feel undeserving of my definition. Names are meant to be simple, uncomplicated, and soft on the tongue of western, euro-centric norms. While Zanele becomes an emboldened call to my ancestors, serving as a reminder of the flesh and blood that will always be my borderland.

What scares me most about Zanele is the woman my grandparents, who named me, hopes she will become: A young woman who stands pridefully in her power to write the voices of my ancestors into the world, a woman who will be the survival of my people through language and narrative. My people are descendants of the Xhosa tribe and the Thembu people, but the tether to Africa does not pull at my waist as it does to my mother. Here is this distant land filled with people slathered in rich skin drenched in moonlight black and brown. A whole continent, often diminished, bears my true home. I yearn to connect and survive so that one day I might achieve for the ancestors who struggled to breathe my skin into land oceans away.

The pressure derives not from my mother, my grandparents, or my ancestors, but from isolation. Isolation from African culture, Black history, and a distinct isolation from my own Blackness. How do I define myself in the deepened skin I’m set in, in a culture built to subdue that which differs from the easily understood? Am I deserving of the resilience, the power, and freedom engraved in Black flesh? How could I be, sunken underneath the veil of insincerity and insecurity I douse myself in every time the thought of my people comes to life?

There is so much strength in my being, but I don’t feel as though I can ever be enough. Enough to fulfill the dreams my grandparents save for me or the hope of my parents every time I take a step off my mountain of dependency. Dreams of a young woman who knows her history and understands her worth. Dreams of a life for their children where happiness is no longer an afterthought. The survival of their struggle through me, the one to speak the souls of my people through my writing, creating a lasting history for my descendants. I want to be deserving of their dreams.

But, contrary to what a younger Zanele had once thought, my name is the constant reminder that even when I don’t feel as though I can live up to the definition my people sought to place within me, I already have. There is no work to be done in proving my worth to the people I descend from, they’ve always seen it in me. Now, I work to be enough for myself. Reclaiming Zanele and all that she defines is the first step towards molding an existence where the stories bound by skin is a bond cherished and loved, through my words I’ll celebrate the people I descend from. My name is my existence translated into words, soaked with potential, slipping off my tongue. I work to be sufficient for myself, knowing that I am enough for my people. My name is my Blackness reincarnated and it carries the history of a people I am still getting to know. It is the reason I am still here today. I am learning that I can be enough. Enough for myself and enough for you.