Tietie and Boeta
“Tietie and Boeta” are words we grew up with, got assigned to us and learnt to embody beyond it being descriptions of sister and brother. Its dictionary meaning should include parent, caregiver, guardian, breadwinner, emotional support system, and so much more.
To be a tietie and boeta involves sacrifice, compromise and an institutionalised set of rules no one speaks about or cares to confront. The realities are lost dreams and ambitions, half-living and a guilt-ridden sense of duty to pursue yourself. It is also so ambiguous because it is also fulfilling. Calling it for what it is also means placing it within multiple truths. There is no better way to even think about it without using examples. The lived experiences that describe the totality of fear you feel by not being a “good” tietie and boeta. It also means calling out our parents and guardians in how they dropped the ball …one so big it included all their responsibility. Not just materially but with things like their wellness and thinking ahead, and not just day to day. This is not blame throwing thought process. But also to take into account their upbringing, oppressive structures they grew up with and had to endure. Not having access to the tools to work on their emotional intelligence.
I think of people around me alot. My friends and those in my life and those not anymore. I am talking about the people in the “middle”, the ones that feel like their lives have never really started. The ones that have been adults since childhood. The boeta that picks up the slack left by the partners of his sister’s that couldn’t care less. The boeta that has no personal life because he is busy supporting in more ways than one everyone else’s. The one sorting out the nieces and nephews. The one that can be called at anytime because they know he set aside his needs and wants as long as everyone around him can be content.
The tietie stands in as a parent usually as a child herself. It seeps into her bones as a child, and by the time she is an adult she has raised her siblings. In between trying to study, hold down a job and make sure the lights stay on. Or the grown up not of this generation that was actually a child labourer by force and systems of racism. To the point where their adulthood is riddled with a less than childhood. One filled with no memories of building sandcastles or climbing trees. But being a child raising children. The reality never escapes their daily lives. They can’t have regrets for things they couldn’t control. But they are stuck in-between years taken from them with no way to get it back.
I am talking about the queer uncle, the steady one that can hold a job and the household down. The one surrounded by bigotry and hate up until it quells because he provides now. How attitudes change to keep the “money-maker” around. The one that also takes this shallow acceptance as understanding when it is really to keep him at bay but also close enough to never leave with his “provider” status. The one who lies about being at a work function, but just to get some respite away from the pretense that he is accepted. He knows , he has always known the love given to him is conditional. The one doing this for two decades and is in an endless loop of duty and sacrifice. The one who knows what they think of him but takes what he can get as the person he is to his family. The one who goes from being called “moffie” to money with the quickness.
I am talking about the aunt that had a proposal in hand, a life of her own …the one who turned it down. The one that pours over the life of the one she walked away from to feel something other than self-hatred. The one that calms herself into thinking her choices were for the greater good. The trust she didn’t bestow on her family to transition into a space and life of her own, while still having a strong bond with her family. The one who conditioned herself into thinking “they can’t make it without me”. That part cowardice, part fear persona and now everything has cracks in it. The one who can’t describe herself beyond what she does for others and nothing for herself. That one who is always on the edge of photos. You know the one. Looking at everyone having a life she built for them. The one who prefers no fanfare and ceremony. The one that is actually exhausted but can’t stop being everything to everyone, forever.
The tietie and the boeta with such insurmountable love, care, kindness, with no courage to be. I am sure across cultures and places there are countless Boeta’s and Tietie’s not stagnant, but stick in an in-between of not knowing how to describe their lives outside of being people to other people.