Barak and Michelle Obama.
I entered the reality TV show The Cut which aired on SABC 1 in 2005. You know, all the time I was participating in that competition, I thought I was going to win. I was convinced I was going to win.
On the day they announced the winner – and that winner wasn’t me – I felt like I had lost; like I had really failed. I felt like I had disappointed myself, my family and every dream they could have had for me. I felt this overwhelming sense of being rejected. Because it was a reality TV show, I felt as though the entire country had, in essence, rejected me. When you’re in this thing that is so removed from reality; this thing that you have convinced yourself you are going to win, the next day – after the winner is announced and that winner is not you – it is a hard pill to swallow. You have to walk down the streets, after having your face plastered all over television, feeling this immense sense of failure.
But it was forcing myself to rise above it that really changed my life. I learnt that coming second is, in fact, an opportunity because you don’t have to bear the weight the person who came first has to carry. I thought about how, my brother being the first-born, had all these expectations placed on him. And I kind of remembered how I enjoyed being in that space: his shadow. I remembered how in that shadow I could actually discover myself. I found that not being number one is a really nice place to be. It’s like being the Michelle to Barack [Obama]. Not winning that competition taught me that coming second is not the end.
Odysseus von Bizmark, 35, as told to Carl Collison, the Other Foundation’s Rainbow Fellow at the Mail&Guardian