Adversity never arrives alone. It travels with companions; doubt, exhaustion, and fear move beside it like loyal servants.
By the time Thabo reached his twenty-fifth year, the fragile balance he had constructed between responsibility and aspiration began to fracture once more. The small tutoring jobs that once sustained him disappeared gradually, replaced by long stretches of uncertainty. Employers preferred consistency, and Thabo's divided devotion made him unreliable in their eyes.
Writing did not yet feed him. Life did not wait for it to.
Each morning, he woke not with inspiration, but with calculation. How much money remained. How much food was left. How much longer survival could be negotiated before desperation took control.
His mother tried to conceal her suffering, but poverty exposes everything eventually. Her movements became slower, her voice thinner. She spoke less of her own needs and more of endurance, as if preparing him for a future she feared she might not witness fully.
One evening, while sitting at the small kitchen table, she spoke with quiet seriousness.
"Thabo," she said, her eyes fixed on the worn surface between them, "you carry too much alone."
He wanted to reassure her, but reassurance without evidence felt like dishonesty.
"I will fix it," he said.
But he did not know how.
That night, he walked to meet Thando, his mind heavy with thoughts he could not organize. They sat together on their usual bench near the library, where their love had first begun learning how to breathe.
She studied his face carefully.
"You are somewhere else," she said.
"I am everywhere," he replied softly.
He explained everything; the disappearing work, the unpaid bills, the growing pressure at home. Speaking the truth aloud made it feel heavier.
For the first time since she had known him, Thando looked afraid.
Not of him. Of his suffering.
"We will figure it out," she said.
But Thabo shook his head.
"No. I will figure it out. You have your own life."
She understood what he meant, even though he did not say it directly. Poverty had a way of convincing people they were burdens.
Days later, reality struck harder.
The electricity in his home was disconnected.
Darkness returned not as inconvenience, but as humiliation. His siblings tried to pretend it was temporary, but children recognize instability instinctively. The house grew quieter. Even laughter seemed inappropriate.
That night, Thabo sat outside alone, staring at the indifferent sky.
Writing suddenly felt selfish.
What right did he have to chase dreams while his family lived in deprivation?
The next morning, he made another dangerous decision.
He would stop writing again.
This time, not from doubt, but from obligation.
When he told Thando, her silence frightened him more than anger could have.
"For how long?" she asked.
"I do not know," he answered.
She nodded slowly, but he could see pain behind her acceptance.
"I understand," she said.
But understanding did not erase disappointment.
Days became mechanical. Thabo worked wherever work existed; construction sites, delivery errands, manual labour that exhausted his body completely. He returned home each night too tired to think, too tired to dream.
He avoided the notebook.
Avoided the library.
Avoided himself.
Mr. Dlamini noticed his absence.
One afternoon, the old man found him near a local shop, his clothes dust-covered, his eyes distant.
"You disappeared," Mr. Dlamini said calmly.
"I had to survive," Thabo replied.
Mr. Dlamini studied him carefully.
"And now that you are surviving, are you alive?"
The question lingered long after the man left.
Survival had saved his body, but it was starving his spirit.
Weeks passed.
One evening, Thando visited unexpectedly. She carried nothing except her presence, yet somehow that alone filled the empty room.
"You stopped writing," she said.
It was not a question.
"Yes."
She sat beside him.
"Then you stopped being yourself."
He did not respond.
She reached into her bag and placed something on the table.
His notebook.
"I kept it," she said. "Because I knew you would come back."
He stared at it as if confronting an old friend he had betrayed.
"You believe in me more than I do," he said quietly.
She smiled gently.
"Someone has to, until you remember how."
In that moment, Thabo understood something essential; love was not measured by convenience, but by endurance.
He picked up the notebook slowly.
Not to escape responsibility.
But to reclaim identity.
Outside, the world remained unchanged. Poverty still waited. Uncertainty still lingered.
But inside him, something fragile and stubborn refused extinction.
He would continue.
Not because it was easy.
But because it was necessary.
His story was still breathing.
And he was not finished becoming it.