Who Am I?

Oddly enough, I've never really ever felt my age. At 14 I felt that time was moving too quickly, at 18 I never once felt 18, and now at 23 I am finding it hard to put all of the little parts of me together. My exterior apparently screams underage, my logic seemingly that of a 40 year old woman, and my emotional intelligence is still waiting for the jury to return the verdict on that one. When I put all of these pieces together I feel like such a mismatched freckle on the nose of my life's complexion.
I could just put it down as a unique mark of my own individuality, if I didn't feel that I needed to rotate the various pieces of me to suit the personality of whoever faces me at that particular moment.
Just when I think I can safely pack myself into a box labelled with some form of stereotype, the field to the left of my brain throws something into the game to prove me wrong. The thirty-something feminist in me is looking at real estate and applying for a mortgage, discussing strata fees and square metres whilst hanging out by the lockers at work. The single twenty-something year old will sit in a Kings Cross club with old school friends drinking cocktails poured from a teapot whilst wearing Chanel. The various characters in me can be clearly contradicted at a swift glance through my wardrobe; dresses with full tulle skirts, Spanish leather pumps, stockings and cardigans, blue sequined Converse sneakers and seasonal Sportsgirl jackets - and that's all before you get to the designer labels. Many of these items contradict one another, yet surprisingly they all play an integral part of finishing one of my soul-defining outfits. But even as I decode each one, it somehow manages to confuse me of the make up of my identity even further. I wonder if it will ever somehow make sense to me, and if not perhaps someone else who can rearrange the 'pick the face' enough for me to recognise enough of my own features to finally see it as an acceptable 'me'.

Happy 2011?

Apart from spending the turn of the millennium on Sydney Harbour, the only NYE worthy of noting was seeing out 2007. I spent the evening with a random assortment of friends from school and embraced 2 midnight count downs by drinking in a club right on the NSW/Qld border and monopolising the time difference. We had all stumbled back to a friends house who lived walking distance but up a massive hill, and I had managed to avoid sleeping on bare tiles by stealing a damp mattress one of the other boys had brought and passed out on it before he could argue me off it.
I had to open the store that I worked at the next morning and due to the magnitude of the previous night, I responsibly left my car and walked. My friend, Yass, walked with me. She claimed it was because she wanted to cure her hangover with a dose of Subway, but I think she was just being a loyal companion.
The road was wet as we walked. Neither of us could remember it raining but I put it down to the magic of the first day of the new year. It was too early for the heat of the day to have picked up, but I could feel a hangover headache niggling away. Despite this, I remember the morning feeling fresh, like the new beginning that it was.
Today is again the first day of yet another new year. I can't say however, that I felt the same magic that I did back in that first day of 2008. Aside from the unbearable heat despite climate control air-conditioning, the absence of work commitments and the over-stimulation of hosting a party the previous night, the first day of 2011 is officially my first depressed day of the year - 100% non-success rate so far. Ha.
Some would say that I'm being melodramatic. I've had my fair share of depressed days and still trying to recover from an emotional crisis, so why should one day be such a concern, simply because it falls on a notable public holiday? Perhaps because after so long, so much hard work and all the emotional energy invested, a day feeling as rock bottom as I am, I have grounds to be concerned.
I felt that I really had come leaps and bounds from where I found myself just a few months ago. The demons that I had then fought against for so long had finally brainwashed me into believing them, and because I was stupid enough to share this, I was forced into some 'asylum time'. So I suppose I'm not unfounded in saying that the return of these thoughts lingering in the shadows of my mind is grounds for concern. I've dealt with them before so I should be able to deal with them again, right? Not when I feel so cornered that the biggest evil of them all seems the most comforting in comparison. So, what to do? Check myself back in to Hotel Northside? Be the real drama queen that my mother has always teased me to be? One day isn't grounds for anything. All I have to do is cling onto the tomorrow in my future and hope that it is a little brighter than today, and hopefully bring enough brightness to burn a hole in my new year statistic.

Attempted suicide? Another attempt at life...

Final Hurrah

Perhaps I have finally lost the plot completely? All of my power is being diffused to the law and my head hurts from too many thoughts flying around at once and obviously colliding with each other. The silence surrounding me which should instead be filled with friends and chatter is as loud as ever; I can hear by heart pounding in my chest and my pulse krumping in my throat.
After several unsuccessful attempts at napping away the afternoon I lay in front of the television, unaware of what was on. I could feel my thoughts racing and was happy to be unaware of what they were. I believed that if I were to tune in they would only compound my unhappiness and challenge me to break a promise I had made earlier in the day.
At 7pm I trekked downstairs for dinner. Sitting at the table I felt like such a fraud as Gma checked my roster and rhetorically asked if I started night duty tomorrow. I couldn't lie - it was right there in black and white. I grunted something and went back to my dinner. It was at that point that the magnitude of the bomb I was going to have to drop on them hit me. Perhaps not the initial shock, but the aftermath is not something that I want to know about.
I potentially have one night left to be in control, yet I am seemingly unphased by the enormity that I know tomorrow will bring. Instead of clawing my face off or planning my runaway, I have been bizarrely methodical and organised. I wrapped baby presents for my boss, sewed a button onto my pants purely for fashion purposes, made lists of things as if I am going on school camp and spent God knows how long in front of the mirror examining my hair - the colour, style, brushing it obsessively and snipping away individual stands that have now split.
Now, as my exhaustion catches up with me I am considering going to bed. It is this proposition that reminds me of being a little girl on Christmas Eve and trying desperately to go to sleep so the darkened hours would fly by allowing Christmas morning to come faster. Tomorrow is far from Christmas, it's not something that I want but deep down know that I need, but I don't want to allow it to come before I'm ready. That is, if I ever will be?

I am trying desperately to stay afloat in what has become an ocean of hopelessness. In doing so I am becoming increasingly sure that my only life buoy in sight is one made of lead; designed to pull me under quicker than my energy takes to fade. I can see it in my future, and am now swimming towards it with my eyes on the prize; calm and feeling ironically, in control.

Soul Secrets

This may very well be my favourite Postsecret video by far. There were so many secrets that made my heart scream "MINE!" You can watch it here.

Under My Bed.

When I was little I spent a lot, perhaps a little too much time under my bed. I felt safe under there, as if it was as far away from reality as I could get and a place where no one could ever find me and drag me out again. I'm sure my parents knew where I was but they never pulled me out, but waited for me to appear on my own accord. It was a good place to hide, and only this evening I reminded myself of this.
Trying to win a now lost case, I burst into tears as soon as I was out of the line of sight of others and shut myself in my room preparing for the flood of tears that followed. I had forgotten what crying felt like; how the frames of my glasses filled with a mixture of tears and mascara, make-up dripped off my face like milk from dirty cereal bowls and my lungs forgot how to breathe leaving me gasping for breath.
Finally, it all subsided and I was left with burning eyes, a dripping nose and the taste of salty water in the back of my throat. I turned off the lights leaving only the fairy lights of my Eiffel Tower aglow and sprawled across the carpet in near darkness. After another series of tears and deciding the carpet smelt like the vacuum cleaner, I instinctively crawled into the space under my bed. There wasn't as much room as I remembered and the company of dolls houses had been replaced with a well-travelled suitcase, but it felt exactly how it used to; safe. I felt that if the world came crashing down or if the noise in my head got all too much, I had found my refuge. I will make a note of that.

Interesting Read.

Stop Minimising Mental Illness

True that.

I am possessed by a thought. Perhaps not even a thought; rather an awareness. It started as a spark as the light bulb inside my head flicked on one unidentifiable dark day. It couldn't be extinguished. The darker the days grew, the stronger it glowed so that now it has over powered anything else I have ever experienced and sits within my core, reminding me of its existence with every beat of my heart.
At first it terrified me, but with time was downgraded to a bother. I'm not sure when or where, but at some point I accepted and found peace with this new found awareness. I'm not happy about it, and never will be because it's a demon I would be better off without, but at least by accepting it it's one less thing to fight against.

Inception

Eventually, she tells me the truth that she was possessed by an idea, just one simple idea that changed everything, that our world wasn't real and in order to get back to the reality, we'll have to kill ourselves.

It starts with a thought, and if it lingers a second longer becomes an idea. It is this idea that burrows itself into the subconscious so that the light bulb remains on, even when the sparks from every other thought process disguises it. With perseverance, this idea can become an obsession, and obsessions always win.

The Song of Purple Summer

Number one, on today's list of three positives.

Facebook Validation.

My Facebook Feed informed me today that one of my friends 'liked' the group "Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is just a sign that we have been strong for too long." Not only do I think that it is the biggest load of bullshit but it doesn't even make any sense. Thank you Facebook for your failed attempt at validating my existence (sarcasm noted?).

Review

After hours spent bearing the depths of my soul, thousands of dollars changing hands and what has become a lifetime of evaporated thoughts, I still don't think anyone really knows me. What frustrates me more is that I don't either.

We have been trying to find one another for months a lifetime. Now we're finally getting close; I can feel it.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

Self-portrait.

In a rabbit-fear I may hurl myself under the wheels of the car because the lights terrify me, and under the dark blind death of wheels I will be safe. I am very tired, very banal, very confused. I do not know who I am tonight. I wanted to walk until I dropped and not complete the inevitable circle of coming home.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

Le sigh...

I have known in my own mind for months that things were bad, but it's only now when my exterior is failing that others are starting to believe it too. It is frightening when you have no control over your own being; the things that you think, say and do, the way you react to others and how much your eyes can give away during periods of particular vulnerability.
I don't believe I am losing hope, rather that I have already lost it. I am coming to terms with the idea that I will be young forever in the eyes of all who know me and am almost relieved that by letting myself lose I really will win in the end.
I technically haven't given up. I have kept my appointments, taken my meds despite my dissatisfaction and have asked for help when the only way out I could see was black.
I went to see A. as soon as she returned from overseas. Having been so ill while she was away and not feeling completely confident about my state of affairs, I thought perhaps the visit would ease my anxiety as she has an uncanny ability to make light of flaws within myself without making me feel dismissed.
Perhaps it only reiterated my worst fears. She noticed the things that no-one else had; the weight loss, my tired eyes and now noticeable hand tremor. I admitted my hatred for my medication and its menagerie of uncontrollable side-effects, my inability to focus and struggle to maintain a minimum standard at work and my almost overwhelming desire to give up completely. If I had been able I would have cried, but my tears have been stolen by my heart which is turning itself a more melancholy shade of blue with every howl of sorrow that only I can hear. She placed a call to Dr Slime who was unsurprisingly unavailable so promised to call before I started work at 1pm.
I received a call from Dr S's secretary asking me if I could come at 3pm.
"No, sorry I have to work."
"Ok, we'll see you at the end of the week then as planned."
Confused, I called A. She was furious. I let her rant for a minute before she relayed the initial conversation she had with Dr S. She was reluctant to mention the possibility of hospital as I demonstrated the exact reaction she had expected. Promising to get him to call me, the conversation ended. I was stunned, before feeling worried, and anxious and ultimately terrified. I was just about to lose my last ounce of control.
I went to work. I can't say that I actually did any work, but I was physically there. My tea break was greeted with a voicemail from Dr S. Amongst a whole message of superficial concern and generalised assumptions he suggested to reduce my medication if I "feel safe". I almost laughed. I found it amusing that someone with an occupation requiring such a high level of knowledge and responsibility could still come across like the next dumb ass. By reducing the dose it left me susceptible to not having a drug concentration in my blood to stop me (fingers crossed!) from dying, but on the other hand, the current therapeutic levels weren't stopping me from wanting to anyway - go work that one out wise guy.
So I thought, whatever? That morning I had run out of capsules and in my haze had forgotten to stop for more. After getting that voicemail I decided I didn't need to worry. I was sick of spending time and money and hope and belief in everything that had previously let me down.
I pushed everything from that day out of my head and focused on being the presentable and hospitable host at my birthday cocktail party. The benefit of hosting such an event is that you are excused from conforming to acceptable party behaviour with the excuse of preparing food and drinks, welcoming guests and controlling the sound and aesthetic environment. The added benefit of a birthday is that there is no such thing as too much to drink.
Knowing full well that my imminent hangover would not appreciate the continuous mixed drinks, I keep drinking anyway. Even when the party moved from venue to venue and my standards slipped enough for me for be unfazed by the cranberry juice streaked down my white skirt, I disregarded the proposition that anything was a bad idea. The possibility of taking risks was almost thrilling, because I had convinced myself that I had nothing left within me to lose. At 3am I decided the idea of walking home from the city was much more appealing than the convenience of a cab and would have done so despite my heels if it hadn't been for a friend pulling me into a taxi and letting it speed off before letting me go.
This morning I woke up still drunk and spent the day ignoring my hangover. It wasn't until dinnertime that I wondered how much of my current state was alcohol induced or withdrawl? Not that I cared really, because when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

Am I intolerable? Am I the person that everyone avoids until caught out and pleasantries take over that I, foolishly, mistake for genuine acceptance? Ironically, people are ignorant when they think that I don't notice when I am ignored. My mind is over-analytical; I know when you don't call me back or reply to messages. I see when you change direction in the hall or walk away when you see me coming. Should I be surprised? I'm not that unintelligent - surely I should be able to pre-warn myself that people are fake, misleading and give me false hope that perhaps I mean something to someone; anyone really.
Perhaps with the added year today brings I have made a revelation; I have a constant uphill battle with myself and have already lost to the world. Maybe now is the time to forfeit.

Happy Birthday to Me

A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!

It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.

Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed -- I do not mind if it is small.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,

The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million

Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine --

Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.

It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center

Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.

It has come to my attention that I have a tendency to surround myself with people who aren't emotionally available. Is this a subconscious choice I have made when deciding who I like and don't like? I reject the idea that it is my choice. Everything that I think and feel becomes so amplified in my own head so that I often find it impossible to escape. I crave being able to sit alongside someone and be distracted with things from their mind and the world around us and feel able to say I'm sad, I'm scared or simply I need to be held; to remind myself that this isolated place that I live in really is a part of something bigger and that as hard as it is for me to see sometimes, I still mean enough to someone for them to sit beside me in the first place. Now I just need to find that person.

Florence + The Machine

Don't ask me why, but this is my favourite song at the moment. I think there's something in it that brings me as close to happy as I have ever felt.

You've come this far. You may as well dedicate the next 8 minutes to watching this.

Hug me.

My last hug was a Friday morning, three and a half weeks ago. It came out of no where but was exactly what I needed without my even realising it. Since then I have left the country and returned, had a general anaesthetic, been a patient in 2 different hospitals, completed 2 courses of antibiotics, seen numerous doctors and am up to 7 sick days. So no, I haven't hugged someone today, but gosh it would be appreciated. Any takers?

ill.

Sometimes, no matter how much we will things to happen (or not happen), fate takes over and steers us towards wherever it is that we're going. After being the socially unacceptable form of ill for over 6 months now, I believed that perhaps I couldn't dive any deeper. Oddly enough, my immune system followed suit and recruited every system in my body to go down with it.
While sitting in the Emergency Department in dire need of some attention - from anyone really - the bright eyed intern taking my now extensive history in the too-public-for-my-liking area of the department was surprised when I kept remembering new things to add. A previously fit and well (physically) 22 year old had somehow managed to combine every kind of illness (minus Goat Flu) in the past 2 weeks and create a network of symptoms so diverse that there is no clue as to why and where each one is occurring from.
After some IV Holy Water, a series of tests and hiding from work colleagues I was released into the care of an angel in the form of Mrs Boss, results pending. Straight to bed in 2 day old clothes, followed by a night of well overdue but broken sleep, stomach cramps and crazy dreams.
Today was spent quietly. Feeling much better after being able to pee for the first time in 3 days, I sat around agonising on what to do next should my results come back how the young intern had predicted. At 1600 I called work and asked the In-Charge to check my pathology, to which she said she would when she had time and call me back. Over 6 hours later I'm still agonising and waiting for a phone call.
I have spent so much of my life as an independent. Perhaps even a loner in my thoughts and opinions and view of the world through my sensitive eyes. I have refused help when theoretically I needed it and done things I wouldn't ever have to just to prove to myself that I could. I have refused to open myself up to people in fear of alienation or rejection, and for these same reasons, prevented myself from getting too close even when deep down I wanted, or needed to. It is these choices that only give me myself to blame for stumbling through my life with closed doors and missing out on hugs and inside jokes and wanting to feel like I belong to someone; wanting to feel loved.
I can now safely say that tonight's not my night for my results; she must have forgotten. In my head, I can't understand how that happened because clearly it's something that I can't get off my mind. The reality is that it's not important to anyone else but me. I'm the only one who has to deal with the outcome - good or bad - so I'm essentially the only one affected. I can't shrug it off and say that I don't care, because if I don't care, there's no-one else who will.

J'adore Coco

Is it enough that I must live to see these shoes in my wardrobe?

Election 2010

All the money in the world won't stop people from wanting to kill themselves. Not too many people get it.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/election2010/7935525/277m-for-suicide-prevention-gillard

Sick Sunday

Just when it all seems too much, it is followed by a weekend of bed-rest, stomach cramps and not having eaten since Friday. Tomorrow's not looking much better.

Provisional Diagnosis

When you're already deemed as one kind of crazy, what's to stop you adding to it?
Provisional Diagnosis. What does that even mean? Provisional... serving for the time being only. Subject to change.
What's to stop you telling me one theory before changing your mind entirely? That's such a cop-out. No-one else can get away with it so why should they?
Yes I'll have cracked pepper on my salad. Oh hang on, I don't like pepper. Take it back please.

Everything is one big contradiction: it's chemical, it's biological, it's a defence mechanism, it's a learnt response. They say it's not my fault, it's something that just happens. Then why do I have to change everything to make it go away? Not just my outfit or hobbies or favourite food, but things from deep within myself that I didn't even know where there. How can I change something that I'm still not convinced exists?

Someone always manages to say it will get better, and then something somehow manages to make it all worse.

General Anaesthetic

After months of toiling over the perfect ending, I seemingly stumbled upon it in a small operating theatre with a cast of only 3. The gas smelt like illegal chemicals and I could feel my brain cells being shut down one by one. A few breaths later my memory died.
It would have been perfect if it could have been left at just that, but of course something pulled me back. The return of my memory taunted me with what a beautiful ending it could have been, if those people with the drugs and the gas would have just let me be.

IPS

For some completely unknown reason my boss decided today that I was just the right person to special a scheduled patient after an attempted suicide who remains in an almost catatonic form of depression. Seriously?
When she started to cry I asked the stupidest question, and as soon as I said it I wished I hadn't.
"What's wrong?"
What's wrong? What the fuck? What do you think is wrong? She is so unhappy that there's no way out? She's fought for too long and finally wanted to be beaten? We're preventing her from finding peace. And I asked what was wrong? Anyone would think I was too naive to understand. Oh I understand, I just want to pretend that I don't because maybe if I tell myself that for long enough I might start believing it.
She broke my heart. She asked me, rather, pleaded, for me to help her. She wanted me to end it. "Give me a big needle that will make it all go away."
I told her I couldn't. That I wouldn't.
"I want to die, and I even failed at that."

That is my fear.
After all the hell you go through, in your head, your heart and your soul, when you finally pluck the courage from a place inside you that you never thought you'd find, and you do the thing that is to be your final action... and fail.
It's not something you can practice. It's not even something that you can study up on or gather others opinions over a mid-week lunch. It's something you work through in the silent darkened hours of the morning when you're trying to fall asleep as bakers and garbage trucks begin their day. You grind over each possibility until it's smooth and flawless and almost praise yourself for being so ingenious. There is just one thing missing. The courage to jump.

And so she tells me again, with tears in her eyes and quivers in her voice, that she just wants to go. I couldn't say what I was thinking. What else was I to do? Under the eyes of a student nurse, a physio and an unknown doctor, I lied through my teeth and told her that it could only get better. She called me wise for someone so young. I called myself a liar because I didn't believe it and don't feel that I ever could. When people say that to me I get angry. Fury bubbles up inside me because how can anyone know? I have heard it too many times only to prove them wrong. Now I've become one of them.
Deep down I know the system will heal her; heal her to a satisfactory level to get the stamp on that bit of paper. I can almost see her future though. She will slip through the cracks in that same system by setting herself free and becoming just another medical record to file under 'deceased'. I know she won't be at peace with herself until she finally wins.

Elevator Conversations

Me:
That is so gay.

Mum:
Don't use that word.

Me:
I've been using that word since before any closets were opened.

Brother:
It's derogatory against my people.

Me:
Well what about my people?

Brother:
Evidently Mum and I are still trying to work out who your people are.

What makes someone worthwhile? What qualities form the basis of not necessarily likability, but a level of tolerance?
One would assume that sharing a gene pool would help, but it appears not. If I were to model myself into the smallest form of acceptability where would I start? Shorten my hem, lighten my hair and lower my standards?
Perhaps my level of acceptability is higher than others? Maybe that's why I feel so isolated. Why I find it hard to really fit in. Why boys don't ask me out and why there's always an extra inch of space between my friends and I that I can't work out how to fill?
My mother always said that if you have no expectations, then you won't get disappointed. Then why do I feel so disappointed not having the things that I don't even know that I want yet?
Maybe the feeling isn't really disappointment. Maybe it's worthlessness or anger or guilt or anxiety? But for now, it just feels sad.

Should I find it odd that I experience things that no one else talks about? How I can see things change colours or can watch something move when really it is sitting still? I smell things that no one else admits to, and see people that weren't really there in the first place. I feel things touch me; the weight and texture and sensations one would expect, but actually, there's nothing there. The only people who claim to have experienced these things are labelled. Some as Schizophrenic and others just plain insane. I wonder how long these things have been happening? Perhaps for years and I haven't noticed until now, when I'm feeling particularly vulnerable and looking for people and things to blame.

Sometimes I wonder how much of what I think I am is real? The things that I think and believe, see and experience.
While cruising the Atlantic I embraced in using my sea legs because it justified the vertigo that sometimes occurs when I'm on solid ground.
When in foreign ports my eyes tried to convince my brain that I have seen people I know. I have to look twice, sometimes even three times to prove to myself that they're just another stranger.
I have been trying to drag up moments and memories from my childhood; perhaps to explain why I am who I am? I recall one from being two or three in the butchers shop and looking at the red cheerios through the glass - but I can see my miniature figure too. I can see me as if I am a fly on the wall or a skeleton in the closet. The little girl is standing on tip-toes with her hands on the cabinet with a face so close that the glass is fogging up. I know it's me because my mother reminds me of going to the shop every week and the butcher giving me a cheerio if I'd been good that day. I have vague recollections of this, but as a third party and so disconnected that it could be just a dream instead.

There are times when I don't feel quite like myself. Granted, I don't really know myself yet. I tell myself I do. I paint out my dreams and aspirations, my fears and favourite colours and musicals and actors. Sometimes I wonder if it's all just a trick? As if these things that I think are pieces of me are really just a cover created by my soul to hide the truth of what I think I want to see but really don't have the courage or strength or maturity or maybe even the sanity to accept.
Perhaps I'm only aware of this when I have moments like now; when I don't feel like myself. As if I'm to know how I should feel anyway?

Opera Queensland

When I was in Year 10 I did a week long opera workshop. I loved it. It encompassed everything that I loved about the theatre and more. After our presentation performance on the last day I felt empty, almost like I had lost something or someone.
I went home and typed an email to Opera Queensland. I explained my satisfaction with the programme and documented my personal thoughts of each tutor. I'm not sure what I expected to come of doing this. Truthfully, I figured it would be read by a computer system and then appropriately discarded. Instead it was printed in the company's newsletter and sent to hundreds of theatres, schools, companys and prospective students.
They sent me some copies to show to my family and friends. I put them in a box in my room and never showed a soul.

Yet Another

No matter who's video I watch, I still see fragments of me within the pieces of the rest of the world.

I am lying to myself. I tell myself I am strong, and brave and independent, when secretly, I am weak and needy. If I were brave I would do all of things I don't have the courage to do. I would let go of everything.

False Start.

I have become socially unacceptable; I have built a wall between the world and myself. I can't knock it down, even for my closest friends, and every exchange stabs me a little more, because I don't want to be so far away. Every smile I don't return, and every time I turn my back makes me scream inside my head - but the parasitoid controls me. As much as I want to keep them close, they drift further and further away until I fear there will be no-one left willing to fight for me.

Sunset

It's raining. I knew it would hours ago as the sunset peeked through a canopy of black clouds. I couldn't help but notice how sad they looked, and instantly thought them to resemble my heart. Now the sky is crying, and I'm envious. I can't look away as the tears shower the city and blur everything beyond my window. I wish I knew how to join in.

After talking to Mrs Boss last week perhaps she convinced me that I am a little better than I was, even though I didn't really believe it. She must be right though; I have been going out more, haven't given in to myself in weeks and although I still think about dying, perhaps not in quite as longing a way as I have previously?
No. Today I feel like I've hit a wall. I couldn't get out of bed. I only showered because I felt suffocated in my own skin and hoped the running water would let it breathe again. Memories of my thoughts, desires and failures have plagued my mind and I have been re-visiting possibilities I have previously dismissed. The more I think, the clearer it all becomes. It is my truth, it is for me, and for once I don't care how it will affect anyone else. It's my life, not yours.

Good Friday

After today's Stations of the Cross, I went to confession.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been 2 years since my last confession.

He welcomed me back and listened to my sins, then told me to talk to my mum about my problems. It would have been cute if it weren't such an unrealisitic suggestion?
The only pennace he gave me was one Hail Mary. One? I got ten of them when I was mean to my brother when I was 7. Perhaps I'm not as bad a person as I used to be.

Happy Easter

I came home to an Easter egg on my bed with a note that read:

Happy Easter.
Sorry you are on your own.
Love you
Gma

Thanks for the thought. And reminding me.

Vent

I feel as if my insides have been painted blue, and the more time that passes the more the paint dries.

Revelation? Not really, but it's ironic that Mrs Boss healed me more than the therapy I paid for.

To Me, From My Heart

Today I wrote a letter to no-one that started with:

If I could write a letter bearing what is encrypted in my heart, I wonder what it would say?

Even after writing seven pages, I still don't think it made anything make sense or make any kind of point. Waste of time?

Postsecret Ponderings

We have already established my Postsecret addiction, so here is a one-liner from the archives:

The moment you feel like giving up, just remember why you held on for so long.

If only I knew.

Vogue

My past 48 hours have primarily been spent shopping. As the new winter collections have just been released into the stores, I was able to peruse and ponder this season's looks. Perhaps not such a good idea the day after payday.
So after 2 days, numerous blisters and hundreds of shops (and dollars - shh!), these are my observations of the must-haves this winter:

• Cropped jackets
• Long cardigans/knitwear
• Animal print
• Leggings
• The colour purple
• Fingerless biker gloves
• Studs
• Silk scarves
• Hounds tooth print (I am a little excited by this actually)

So I wait for the colder weather to set in so I can trial my new outfits on everyone else's judgemental eyes. Until then, I will admire the beauty of Yves Saint Laurent's new wallet. It is so Parisienne Chic:

Miracle

Even on a day like today, when I think I feel as bad as one can, I can still see the beauty in this secret. It makes my heart a little less heavy, even if only for a second.
www.postsecret.com

Diversion

There are things that people say they can't like without; perfume, movies, their dog or cat, coffee. And there are people that they couldn't live a life without too; their husband, girlfriend, mother or best friend.
It makes me wonder what it is that keeps me alive? There used to be token things that made me smile and lift my heart. When I had a bad day and Mr T would leave Ferrero Rochers in my locker, it somehow made all the shit worth it. When Miss Priss and I could relieve the weight of the world by singing loudly and out of tune in the car. When performing the words of Sylvia Plath won me gold medals and made my heart proud with truth.
So what is it now; namely today, that keeps my heart beating? Gone are my days of drama eisteddfods and best friends and chocolate. With years our lives morph into only fragments of our past, but I'm not sure what I have become.
I mask myself to everyone, creating a false me for all to see. But I think I've done it for so long that I've forgotten what's really inside, because it has been buried deep within the layers of years of lies and it's too deep to ever be found.
Is that why I can't find what makes me happy? Why people tolerate my existence but never chase me for company on the weekends? Why I distract myself in any way possible to avoid the loneliness and pain in my heart and boredom that I feel when I just stop? Why I can't stop thinking about dying and letting go of all that is pinning me down, and no matter what I try it seems the only rational escape?
So I ask again; what is it that I cannot live without? Distractions? Noise? The diversions I create for myself to put off any more bloodshed? There is no-one that I couldn't live without. Not because I don't love or care for anyone, but because I won't let myself become dependent on anyone; no matter how close a friend they may become. If I did, and were to lose them I would always blame myself. And I couldn't bear to love someone more than they could ever love me.


And just because it is relevant, here is a Postsecret post-script from www.postsecret.com :

Sunday Suicide

Everyone avoids the question. I avoid the answer. It doesn't make it go away.

Psychosis

I'm not sure that even I know how I am still sitting here. Last evening I became so removed from reality that I didn't think I'd survive the night. I couldn't feel anger or sorrow or frustration, or my own hands on my skin. Everything was numb.
I had to test myself. That, I felt. Perhaps the most alive I had felt in weeks. I had to keep proving to myself that I was real, but somehow managed to stop before resembling a Virginia Ham.
It really does frighten me. I am frightened that so many decisions have to be my own and that there's no-one who can help me make them. I'm frightened that despite my best efforts, my days are getting shorter, colder and darker than ever before. I'm terrified that my nights are black.

I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me. You live with the threat of my extinction... I live with it too.

Sunday Secrets

Today, being Sunday, is www.postsecret.com day. Here is a secret from today's post:

Today

I have run out of distractions. I forced myself out of bed at lunchtime, after watching the boats on the harbour for an hour and a half. I took my time showering, painting, moisturising, brushing and straightening and told myself that I could not put off tidying the apartment anymore. I did the washing, put away everything that was out of place and cleaned the already clean kitchen despite it not being used since Tuesday when the last meal was prepared, and the fact that the cleaner comes tomorrow at 9am to re-clean it anyway. I tidied my room, removed all hazards from the floor, folded my clean washing and took extra care to pack my Chanel 2.55 Chain Bag away as recommended by the company.
Now that everything is just as it should be, I don't know what to do next. I keep moving from room to room hoping to find a purpose. I sat in the Living Room analysing the weather, partly angry that Sydney is mocking me with what may be the last summer day when I had no energy or purpose to share in it. I sat on the floor of the Library hoping to find sudden inspiration from the spines staring down at me. I took out the rubbish, avoided the reem of photocopied textbook pages the Happy Lady had mailed me, lay on my bedroom floor then wrote a shopping list for when I can force myself to the supermarket (toothpaste, red pen, moisturiser).
What am I waiting for? I have done everything my apartment has expected of me. I am dressed with shoes ready to go out. But I have no appointments in my diary, no phone calls inviting me out, no spontaneous activities that my heart is begging me to do. The clock in the foyer reminds me in 15 minute intervals of the time I am wasting.
I have another 8 days until my family return home. If I wanted I could throw a party carrying on for days and nights to come. I could invite the middle-aged Porsche driving creeps from the elevator to dinner and drink too much and do Karaoke. I could lie dead for days with no-one noticing.
But none of these are things that I want to do. I still want my cup of tea. If I were on the Gold Coast I would arrive uninvited and drink tea and talk with M. for hours and distract her from her dying mother and let her distract me from myself. I would feel partly human again. Instead I have my clean apartment to keep me company.

From My Perspective

It stands at my window, big as the sky.

I am so sick of listening to the inside of my own head. I am warping reality with my dreams, so that I don't know what really happened and what didn't. I stop for charity workers on the street just so they can ask me how my day is with feigned interest, and I can lie about how great it has been. I am sick of my own four walls. I opened a window despite the air-conditioning just to hear the traffic on the bridge; to remind myself that I am not alone and there are lives to be lived.
I need some company. I want to sit alongside someone and talk and think and feel and analyse and gossip and imagine, just for an afternoon, to break the chill and hollowness that has eaten my soul. But I'm not sure if there's anyone who would want to.

Someone found a way to say it.

www.postsecret.com

Tick, Tick, Tick

I am exhausted. Every inch of me aches as though I have run for a lifetime. I find it hard to do the mundane, everyday tasks; brush my hair, clean my teeth, go to work. Everything is an effort. Everyone intimidates me. Every second I want to cry.
I try to work hard. If I can distract myself from the increasing heaviness within, perhaps I may just make it to the end. But it always finds a way to creep back. The few minutes of searching through the storeroom, the break of silence between morning tea chatter, the solitude of making fresh sheets into a bed. It never really goes away, and I'm frightened it never will. How can anyone live like this?
And if there's anything I hate as much as this feeling, it's the silence when I just stop. It reminds me how alone I have become. Perhaps more lonely than anything, and I wish I could break it with a hug, a cry and a cup of tea like I used to. But things are different now, the void is deeper and more mature than before. I want to fill it up with people and parties to cover the silence, but no amount of champagne or entertainment will ever be enough. I don't know what will?

Out

I forced myself out of the apartment all weekend to break the cycle of monotony and frustration. I walked the city streets at midnight in the rain. I sat alone in a restaurant in the small hours of the morning hoping the NYC image would make me feel closer to the world. I stood in the rain on purpose. I got stuck in mud and didn't take my shoes off at the door. I showered with my shoes on. I ignored phone calls, didn't reply to messages and asked for apologies.
Does this sound like me? Not to anyone who really knows me, but I tried it on for size. I tried it on hoping, praying that I had discovered the answer to breaking free. Did it work? I didn't find an answer. If anything I discovered death within my shadow; creeping up on me as I run out of places to hide.

Today, I danced in the rain. Just that phrase sounds like freedom. Before today I would have said so. But having done just this, I don't feel any more liberated, or refreshed, or happy. The sadness imprinted within me can't be washed away. I can't dance the feeling out of me or scream it from my lungs. It sits in the bottom of my heart, poisoning my blood. To extinguish it would mean bleeding myself dry.

RIP

People die everyday. The hospital where I work is full of them. Some will go quietly, others in glorified religious ceremonies. Some unexpectedly, and others with scandal.
Celebrities endure the glamour of press releases and public memorials. The world tunes in and becomes an accessory to the final farewell, with every detail imprinted for years to follow. Last year it was Michael Jackson, Christmas; Brittany Murphy, today; Alexander McQueen. Who's life is on tomorrow's line?
Google is hot. Twitter is trending 'RIP'. I wonder if I'll even make the obituaries.

No matter how much Chanel, layers of make-up or sleep I accumulate, I can't lose the intensity building inside. I may be real today, but perhaps not tomorrow? I can lose myself at any hour of the day, and am gambling against myself as to how soon it will win. If only I knew what 'it' was. Is it failure? A sentence of unhappiness to plague the rest of my life, however long or short it may be? Perhaps death?

If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, it's timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

I do not have answers. I'm not even sure I'm aware of the questions I am asking. All I know is that I cannot continue to deteriorate as I am, and there is nothing more that I can do to stop myself. I need a miracle.

The Fig Tree

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

We succeed to make up for our failures. We love to cover the hate. We lie to hide from the truth. We create to destroy and smile to disguise the tears. We ultimately live to die.

Thursday Night

Having returned to my hometown for a single night, I have already returned to my since forgotten mentality. My room has remnants of the me I left behind splattered on my daffodil walls and now that it's confronting me, I am finding it hard to fight back.
I have already had my mother's expectations forced down my throat despite my diplomatic and rational protests. I have failed in maintaining my stance. I have gone to my room to hide from the troubles I can leave at the door. I still have the bags that I carry within. I can't wait to go home.

A Change in the Weather

If I asked myself a week ago, I never would have believed I would, but today I visited the Happy Lady. And I surprised myself. Nothing like others of her breed, I appreciated the overall visit. The antique plum walls, the suede couch, the tissue box on the coffee table as an unavoidable centrepiece, and of course the expected conversation. But for once nothing I said made me feel absurd. She understood my justification of living within society's conforms, she challenged me giving up what I believe in, and accepted my inability to explain what I felt because everything inside is a swirl.

Imagine torrents of thoughts confined in the tiny mind that you contain. Each one is presented through a sentence, some long and descriptive, others brief and pointless. Each sentence spirals, following the one before it, until they spin so fast it’s all a blur; but in an attempt of desperation you reach out, trying to grasp a hold of something with an answer, even if it’s simply a clue. But what is it that you receive? A word, and then another; random words from random thoughts, and in a frantic attempt for clarity you put them together - simply to get nothing more than what you started with, except now, you truly are mystified.

By the end, I felt an honesty within me that I had forgotten I had. I had pushed it away for so long and created a mask dictated my social acceptance and the parameters set by society. I had denied myself any opportunity to survive, because I'm not sure I could go on living without finding my truth within. I'm not saying I've found it, I'm not even saying I'm close. But I know it is there, somewhere beneath the layers of cover-ups and floods of un-shead tears. I will get to it. I just need to do some spring-cleaning first.

Hubble, Bubble. Toil and Trouble.

As I become increasingly aware of myself, I have become less in control. Having felt void of emotion for so long, I can now feel it within me. Once simmering, it has begun to boil and will soon take over unless I can find a way to stop it. I'm just not sure if I'm strong enough.

I Miss...

I miss feeling real. Like a real person with real thoughts, opinions and interests.
I miss dreaming. Dreaming of things we know are impossible but still fantasise about them coming true.
I miss having something to look forward to. I love the feeling of excitement that I cling to throughout the days and nights. It is the one thing I have to hold onto.
I miss the weekends. Where there are endless combinations of events and the days disappear as quickly as they came.
I miss going out. The anticipation, the wardrobe malfunctions and make-up disasters that never really matter when you get there, because the chaos and music and alcohol wash it all away.
I miss talking to people. Having a regular conversation about regular things without feeling like you owe them something you can't give.
I miss being invited. I don't care where. I just wish someone would ask.
I miss having real friends. Like the one you tell everything to and never once think you're being judged.
I miss feeling in control. By thinking logically and analytically, so that everything has a possibility of making sense.
I miss feeling loved. By someone; anyone. Because sometimes I just need a hug.

Dreams

I have complained of being tired for weeks now. So many nights I lay watching the clock, counting down the hours until daybreak, until eventually I dropped off only to wake to a screaming alarm a few short hours later. Recently, with thanks to a pharmaceutical company I can now get to sleep without a second thought. Waking up is harder though, as my body struggles to function and my eyes rebel against the daylight.
It has to be a positive that I can sleep a full night away though? Then why can't I operate as efficiently as I did when I lay awake throughout the night? It is as if my increasing hours of sleep are directly proportional to my escalating exhaustion.
I go to bed tired, wake up tired, and am living every breath of my life tired. Last night I excitedly went to bed early, eagerly awaiting the Saturday morning sleep-in. Well, that I got. I slept for over 13 hours but couldn't bring myself to get up. Perhaps just one more hour?
So as I lay contemplating my options, I had a sudden flashback of my mid-sleep thoughts. The more I think about it now, the more I can remember from the nights over the past week and the dreams that have possessed me.
They are so vivid and intense that I think maybe they are the excuse for my weariness. Last night I was chased by friends possessed by the enemy. I have dreamt of the people around me turning into witches and deceiving me in the depths of the night. I have been held hostage in a haunted house despite my tearful pleads to be set free. I have re-lived events from the past with others filling in for the missing characters. I have run, flown, screamed and cried my way through the darkened hours and it makes me wonder if perhaps that is why I feel so haggard?
Perhaps things weren't as bad as I had thought they were? It is the nights that are worse.

A Step Away from the Wrong Direction

What do we do? What do we do in this life to make it worthwhile? Or to even just pass the time?
For the first time in weeks my head finally feels screwed on, perhaps not correctly adjusted, but it's on. I can manage a smile, the thought of potential curry puffs for dinner excites me, and I don't feel like I want to die. Not that I think I ever really wanted to die in the conventional sense, but perhaps more literally as death suggests a termination of ones thoughts and processes.
It made me wonder how one seemingly regular Friday could bring about such a change? I woke beyond exhausted, snoozed a few too many times and prevented being late for work by about 3 seconds. I felt sick to my core for the better part of the morning, became frustrated when my colleagues made pointless comments about my mood as if they really gave a shit anyway, and sat through morning tea listening to some random carry on about how she thought psych patients were worse than them all put together and that you can still be crazy beneath a seemingly 'normal' exterior. Seriously, shut the fuck up. So at lunchtime, which I was actually ready for today, I dragged my feet and my massive water bottle outside to avoid the mind-numbing superficial chatter of the tea room.
Mrs Boss said she thought I seemed better. I wasn't sure how she could tell. Could she see inside my head? I wasn't sure if she was right or if I'm just getting better at living it. Perhaps sometimes I am better? When Mr T called last night I felt my heart lift, and it remained suspended for a full half hour. That's got to count for something, right?
But lunchtime today, it made me feel a little lighter. Confessing my love for Chanel and all things classic made me smile inside and thoughts of tomorrow's potential sleep-in reminded me what I have to look forward to. How is it that I suddenly became aware of myself, and not this pseudo-me that I have become?
I have always thought of myself as an introvert, because I could pass the time with the words of Plath or my blog, but lunchtime suggested otherwise. I don't think I am extroverted as people have come to know the term, but I think I rely on the thoughts and opinions of others to confirm what I see in myself. I think the social exchanges of day-to-day life keep me grounded and make me forget about the universe of insanity swimming around in my head. Even if it is only for an afternoon.
I left work feeling closer to normal than previous days, and keep telling myself that I will have curry puffs for dinner and everything will be okay. So in the time between then and now I have paced. I don't feel the need to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty, I don't have to shut my door to avoid the lives of others or make up events to be excused to the local park in an attempt to avoid eating dinner. I can just be. But what is it that we do in those hours of just existing? I can't remember. So I'm back to being bored.

Raindrops

It is raining. Not heavily, and barely even noticeable, except for the drops that have grazed my window or spotted their glaze onto the tiles of my balcony. I can hear the echo of thunder in the distance and I hope that the storm will continue my way.
I like the rain. I like the smell of the earth and the sound the drops make colliding with the ground and themselves. I think it brings a sense of change and new beginnings. It makes me want to sit under it and not come in until it has cleansed my soul, no matter how many days it will take.

I am losing myself and I don't know how to stop myself from letting go. Every facet of my existence has shifted, so much so that I have no idea who I am, what I think or how to feel.
Today I survived, even if only just. I woke to swollen eyes and dark circles, which I would expect from crying all of the previous night, except that I didn't. I have a heaviness within me as if my eyes have so much they have to say, but have forgotten how. I believe that my core has finally emptied itself so that I have nothing left to feel. I don't care that I rely on drugs to sleep, or that I'm exhausted all of the time despite them. Who would notice that 5kg have evaporated or that I keep to myself to avoid a public outburst of anxiety? Should I care that my phone doesn't ring, or be bothered by the fact that someone thinks I belong in a psychiatric institution?
I should care, and I probably do beneath the layers of numbness and emptiness that encase my soul. But for now I cannot see it, I cannot believe or even accept it. I cannot feel anything.
Can I bleed it out like some 19th Century disease? Can I cut it away like the malignancy it has become? Can I fill the emptiness with a cocktail of drugs to make me better?
I don't have the answer, and maybe never will. I just have to trust in tomorrow being a little easier, a little better and perhaps a little more like I used to be. Until then I have the hours, the hours between now and then, and within those hours who knows what I will find.

Thought

I have come to realise that everything we do, think, feel, speak or imagine is dictated by the conforms of society. Since when did we stop listening to our own hearts and following everyone elses? Then maybe I wouldn't have to censor myself quite so much to fit in.

Today

What can I say? I survived today, as much as my anxiety didn't think that I would, and that's what it's coming down to: I am surviving one day at a time. I just wish it didn't have to be so much of an effort. Or perhaps quite so lonely.

Step One

I would talk and unrust the words and thoughts which stagnate in me from lack of verbal expression.

Your Secret

I saved this image from www.postsecret.com a few years ago. At the time I had felt inspired by this person's secret. Now I am trying to believe it.

#

My heart is full. It is full of lead; or at least that's what it feels like, compressing every inch of my fighting spirit so that I feel buried beneath reality. It controls every aspect of my being, so much so that there is no remedy. No music loud enough to cover the screaming of my heart, no poetry or prose, no 'right' time of day, and as much as I want to, I can't pick up the phone. I have re-read my memoirs from over 4 years ago and they frighten me. This is the re-birth of something big and I don't want to go any further, but I don't think I can stop myself. My mind is already moving towards the blackness and my soul is aching. All that is holding me back is the tiny piece of logic and fear I have left inside. I wish I could convince myself that everything will be okay, but I honestly couldn't believe it. I feel so isolated. My fingers are starting to slip and I just don't know what to do.

Lonely

An extract from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath:

Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self -- like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion... I'll stay here and try to pin that loneliness down.

PostSecret

I may be slightly obsessed, but whether I understand them or not, these secrets are all pieces of humanity that creates the world we live in, and the world that I'm a part of. So I suppose in a weird way, they are pieces of me.

St Valentines

Forget the Hallmark holiday, the wilted flowers and millions of dollars spent worldwide on a previously insignificant day until a greeting card company deceided that profits were down.
Love should be as Postsecret is - real.

Fear

Of all of the things that I am frightened of, I think the biggest is myself. I may not be able to justify this as I can with snakes, ghosts or the dark, but there's something within me that I am constantly fighting against, and I'm terrified it will win. I could never speak it out loud, even if in the safety of my room with only my ears listening, because once it becomes vocal, it is real.
Expecting a phone call from my doctor I planned to explain the intense feeling of claustrophobia and suffocation that has woken me every night since my visit. I would wake with the belief that something was trying to eat its way into my soul and ultimately killing the last flickers of hope and belief in my heart. When she called, I said I was fine. I told her that the anxiety from my days was dissolving, but when I began to explain my midnight terrors, I stopped myself. As the words formed on the tip of my tongue, I had a fleeting thought of how insane they made me sound. I was worried what she would think of me.
I hung up and thought. Perhaps my omissions are really part of a bigger picture; of the network of demons plaguing any chance of happiness? But I couldn't tell. Those unspoken words were pieces of myself that should never be spoken, because what others don't know, can't hurt them.
I know a burden shared is a burden halved, and that's just the point. Why would I want to inflict any of my pain on someone who is kind enough to listen? I will protect everyone from myself.

Boredom

Boredom is no excuse. Lazing on my bed staring at the imperfections of the ceiling, justifying my immobility with boredom. It's not that there isn't anything that needs to be done; no trivial tasks that have been put off for weeks due to my lack of motivation. Today adds to the list; my hair needs straightening, my legs need moisturising, my brain needs stimulation. But what if I choose to go back to sleep; to bank up a few more hours in addition to the long awaited ten I got last night? I was making up for the countless sleepless nights I spent imagining the ceiling through the darkness.
The city skyline never sleeps. Even the suburbs that appear on the horizon flicker as if the sleeping sun is sparkling on the gentle tidal movement of families snoring lightly in their slumber.
So what consequence would I pay by sleeping away this textbook summer's day? It's my day to do as I please. The only person it will ultimately affect is me. By avoiding life for just one day will that really matter in ten years time? Will I even remember? Perhaps not. But what if this is how I chose to live, and now is the catalyst for something deeper? Can I find peace by avoiding life?

Appointment Number [insert number]

Despite the events of today being pre-booked, conversations mentally prepared the night before and sufficient time between each event, it did not go the way I had expected it to.
I rose this morning feeling surprisingly serene (perhaps that extra hour of sleep was required), I showered and dressed in a pre-chosen outfit, complete with Chanel accessories. Upon leaving the threshold of the apartment I entered the churn of anxiety and dread. The day had begun.
Appointment Number One was the most pressing matter on my mind, so I was both nervous and pleased it would be over and done with quickly. Quickly, is not a word I can now use to describe it. My bottled nerves multiplied in the waiting room, and filled my arms and legs with a hot needley sensation, so much so that I feared weight bearing at the risk of my legs forgetting how to walk. My heart pounded in my chest and my respirations struggled to keep up the pace.
Kick-off. Small talk firstly. Not a fan really considering my undelightful personality and anxiety to get some fresh air. Floor opened for my awkward and disjointed chatter, thankfully rescued by some intelligence on her behalf. Hot potato successfully thrown back.
Questions. Many I had expected, but the requirement of numerical answers made them sit like peas in my mashed potato brain. Vague and sometimes guessed answers given and typing occurred.
History. Subtle at first and then more aggressive as the questions fed off my admissions. Perhaps some omissions, but I'm living for today. I'm not sure I could endure the recollection of past experiences as well.
Solution. Well, we'll soon see.
Appointment Number Two. Thankfully early, even with time to browse at the sale in Oroton along the way. No waiting this time. Straight in and success achieved with no questions asked (A nice contrast to Appointment Number One). No payment required for services rendered. I'm a regular. Thankful, as I will be recovering until next pay day for my former engagement.
Some aimless wandering and procrastination, then impulse driving to insignificant destinations, just to satisfy my restlessness.
A phone call and some further indecisiveness, a pit stop all-day-dreaded, then home again. Brush through my hair, re-spritz of fragrance and back in the car. Driving the longer way to allow my brain a few extra minutes of mental preparation before arrival at Appointment Number Three.
Inability to comprehend street numbers made a retarded start. Further small talk and Poppy-therapy. Chilled water and LED technology. More small talk. I didn't have the courage to divulge the events of the day.
Coffee with foam. A tasting plate provided. My stomach churned.
More questions. Thankful really. My mind could find the answers, but was unable to establish any form of directive, adult human chatter. Ice broken, guard slipped and my ears had filled with the sound of my honest, unbroken voice, apparently saying more than I realised at the time. Smiles exchanged, analysis of mutual colleagues, circle completed and back to the start, this time with a male perspective.
Wine time. Avoidance activated.
A glance at the clock and it was dinner time. Time to bail.
Home again. Safely in my room with the doors closed, dividing me from the outside world. I think it's been enough for one day.

My Wonderland

Kitty and the looking glass;
squints into the glare of the darkness.
A girl sits within, a darkening shade of grey.
Her eyes are overcast and chilling
as she looks up from her shuffling steps.
Her soul’s window flickers
as if a blaze is crackling within –
yet no smoke.
Just the ashes tomorrow leaves behind.

Missing Pages

Do you ever get the feeling like something's missing? Not in the way of misplaced car keys or one's virginity but something from deep inside that self destructs into its own hole of nothingness, trying to fill that spot where the missing piece belongs.
How to describe it? Tell the girl at the lost property office or God on your knees in church. No, best to bury it further as an ostrich does in the sand. Afterall, how is anyone else to comprehend if it's nothing more than an inkling, a suggestion of poison to yourself?
As I grow older I learn more about myself that I have always known, just never had the sense or the maturity to realise or accept. My acting experience has blessed me with the ability to change masks, personas, often on command as though playing all 6 parts of the Commedia Dell'Arte. I can be a well-adjusted socialite, just one of the gang, a shoulder to cry on and prop you up when you fall. I become all of these things in fear of my own inadequacies. Because I've never been good with change, never popular or had a copious amount of friends and never felt as I could truly be saved if I fell (again).
But those metaphorical masks, they seem to reduce the force. The weight swinging from my heart, pulling myself down lessens, until I let down my guard.
I become so affected by things. By what people say, this season's clothes and what happens to characters on my favourite TV shows. I let these things in so they bother my nights, eating themselves into my subconscious.
There is everything wrong with the dark. It is the most revealing thing I know. You cannot hide from your mind, yet the terrors hide themselves. I believe in the supernatural and the living dead. I believe people can come back as ghosts, or as babies. Some people have been here before. These are the deep thinkers, the worldly and cultural people who don't have a passport. Sometimes they know, sometimes not, that they have walked the planet before this life.
Me? I always felt so naive and empty that I couldn't possibly lived earlier than 1987. All of those holes of nothingness within my soul are waiting to be imprinted in this life. It is up to me if I have the strength or the courage to inscribe on my heart.
But today, an ordinary midweek working day I felt (not even thought) that perhaps I have lived another life. I have mistaken those empty pages as a lack of history. Rather they represent what has been stolen. My troubled existence is spelt out clearly in invisible ink, for it is those weakened links and lost fragments that show just that - they are lost. The missing pieces of me have disintegrated into the past, each time stealing a part of my 21st century well being. And the biggest space of all is vacated by the catalyst for the hurt. What mothers and fathers all over the world break up their marriages and live a life of misery for. And I don't know if I can ever be able to replace it.

Mid flight ponderings

There are odd moments. Not every day and barely every week, that you remember things from the past and the feeling that joins it is so vivid you transport yourself there. To that time and location.
I can hear my mother's voice correcting my "yep" as she drove my brother and I to primary school; the both of us in the backseat of the car.
As I listen to Missy Higgins songs I remember sitting as a senior in the school library struggling to devise a drama performance. My journal was full of clippings, pictures, lyrics and poems. As I listen to her sing them I remember the page as I glue it in, reading them back to myself.
Flying makes me nervous; not because of the journey but anxiety about the destination. Often the initial departure is bound for somewhere far from home, but after a near 1000 kilometre move flying home, and I mean really home, brings on the usual feelings based on pure habit rather than actual worry.
I makes me think that we don't change at all. Not really. We are born as a tiny version of our present minds, and if we're lucky will add some cognitive degeneration before we die to soothe the life long pressure we have built upon.
Leopards can't change their spots. Nor Kitty her freckles.

Without the Human Community, One Single Human Being Cannot Survive

I honestly don't know how people can exist without friendship. People share their secrets, hopes and dreams. Also people who will share humiliation, shame and loss.
People who will laugh with us over nothing, sing the same songs, read the same books or tell us what the rest of the world will not tell: that the new hair colour was a sad, sad mistake.
How do they live - the people who are happy and proud to be so independent that they claim they don't need a friend? Is it an act, and something born of necessity because they have found themselves friendless? Is it a fear of confiding, of opening up? A fear of being unashamedly natural in a world that seems to insist on role playing and acting as if it all was going well even when it obviously is far from well? Is there any dignity at all in being able to manage alone, in trying to be an island that doesn't touch anything or anyone else?

Maeve Binchy

What a Sorry Lot of Rot

The following article What a Sorry Lot of Rot, written by Robyn Wuth was in the Weekend Edition of the Gold Coast Bulletin.
I have an opinion - what's yours?

$orry, but I’m not $orry.
I don’t want anyone to apologise on my behalf, or for my relatives for that matter.
Crown me queen of the politically incorrect, but I have nothing to apologise for.
I’m with Wilson Tuckey.
Old Ironbar walked out of Parliament before the apology, saying it would do little for the Aborigines.
“Tomorrow there’ll be no petrol sniffing, tomorrow little girls can sleep in their beds without any concern – it’s all fixed, the Rudd spin will fix it all,” Tuckey quipped.
He’s right. It’s insincere, it solves nothing but it was a lovely photo opportunity.
We said it to make you feel better… did it work?
As P.G. Wodehouse said: “It is a good rule in this life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”
To be honest, I’m sick of all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about bloody saying sorry.
How much of this is hype and how much of it actually happened? Perception and reality have blurred.
For every Aboriginal child who was stolen, another was saved, some were given a chance to change their lives.
It’s a shame they refused to take it.
How many terrified white teenagers paid the price for their sins with babies ripped from their arms in the name of religion and political correctness?
But I have to say sorry.
Sorry for giving you free medical care, for giving you money, for building you homes which you vandalised and destroyed and treated with contempt and we paid to fix.
Sorry for developing large farms and properties, which today feed your people.
Sorry for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.
Sorry for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.
The fact is, we won.
All right?
We came in and we killed lots of them and we took their land and we’re not giving it back, unless the High Court makes us and then, frankly, the High Court will have to go.
They weren’t using the land for much. They’re still not, to tell the truth. This is what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did and he’s not going around saying, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.’ The history of the world isn’t about people making friends, it’s about cultures conquering other cultures, usually by force of arms. We had better weapons – end of story.
We built cities, roads, we made our homes here and we created a nation.
Can we move on now please?
This stance is not proving popular and led to a huge argument with my brother. This in itself is not unusual, because he’s wrong a lot of the time and as his brilliant, talented younger sister, I consider it my right, nay my duty, to enlighten him.
El Crazy, as I have come to call him, is what we might call one of this diehard political fanatics who prefers it when all people think the way he does.
I’m much more of your ‘what’s in it for me’ kind of girl – and there’s nothing for me in saying sorry except a giant payout my taxes will fund.
He’s all in favour of saying sorry for the wrongs of the past if it helps our nation move forward. I say why stop there? If we’re going to have this pointless political posturing of a National $orry Day, then let’s widen it – let’s take it international.
The British can say sorry to the Irish for that pesky ‘invasion’ and the IRA can apologise for blowing people up and shooting them in the kneecaps.
While we’re at it, the Brits should have stayed home instead of colonising the globe.
And the Romans – who did they think they were? Someone find me a Roman descendent and get him to apologise to someone.
The Americans – they’d better get started, there’s a lot to apologise for – for that whole revolution? That was just rude. Poor form, chaps.
The Boston Tea Party, a complete waste of perfectly good tea.
The treatment of Native Americans and slavery? Sorry about that.
The wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
South Africa. The whole apartheid thing was probably just a misunderstanding.
The French should apologise for just being French.
The Russians? They should apologise for the pointless exercise of communism.
Check under every rock, there’s something to apologise for everywhere you look.
The tribal war in Rwanda, the atrocities in Cambodia, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan.
The Middle East. Uh-oh. For all we know, Mohammed and Jesus played together as kids.
But Jesus would have been the cool kid. Well, it’s true.
If we decide to keep up this grovelling, honestly, where does it end?
How far back do you want to go?
Harden up people and let’s just get on with it.

The end of a 10 year dream

Anyone who remembers me as a child will remember my obsession with the Spice Girls. Not only did I manage to learn all the words to every song, plaster just about every millimetre of my own four walls with their posters and get their cassette (that's just how old I was!) banned from the Tarago, but I had hysterics over their official T-Shirt I was wearing on a school camp.
Our sailing instructor told us that we were not allowed to participate unless we all wore our T-Shirts and lucky me happened to be wearing my prized Spice Girls splashed across my chest. W., my childhood best friend, convinced me that we would be great sailers and I didn't have to worry about getting my shirt wet so off we went... Until we capsized and - shock horror! - I got my shirt wet! Well did I scream and carry on... seriously, I wailed for the whole afternoon because I was convinced the Ti-Tree lake had stained my idols.
I loved those girls beyond words. I would watch their live concert in Istanbul and be so jealous of the audience and I told myself that one day I would be one of them. To me, the Spice Girls would be together forever and continue to rule the world.
When they broke up I was devastated, but 10 years later, they announced a Reunion World Tour. Naturally, I was estatic, and I told myself that I would pay as much as they were asking, because I owed it to the tiny version of me that lives in my memory.
Tickets were looking at being AU$750, and of course at that money, no-one was willing to accompany me. I was not phased - I was going to get there. The official website continued to state that the Sydney concert was yet to be confirmed into the last days of the tour, so I began checking daily for confirmation as I was paranoid that I would not get a ticket.
Yesterday, the girls announced that they were no longer including Australia in their tour. I don't know if I'm more upset or angry. As a child those girls made me believe that there was nothing in the world that could destroy girl power and that anyone could achieve anything. After the years of money, tears and support that I have given them I feel like a violated, insignificant piece of society.
Thanks shattering my dream... you pack of bitches.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful

So I am continuing to plod along with my not so spectacular life, thus no exciting tales of adventures and discoveries. I have however, made a new friend.
Arriving at work early the other morning I found myself in a deep and meaningful conversation with my manager, to whom I revealed a whole lot more of myself than I think I normally would - oops - but in concluding the conversation we came to an unspoken agreement of friendship.
It was actually timed quite well as it restricted her from giving me a big kick up the bum at the end of the day, which is exactly what I deserved for taking so long to do everything and doing it with an I-don't-give-a-shit attitude.
So I went to church with my tail between my legs and admittedly felt a sense of detoxification from the stresses of the day. The sermon was in relation to the Gospel reading of John the Baptist and was unbelievably thought-provoking, as was the article in the newsletter. The extract that really made me think was:

The Church invites us to be like the people who flocked to John in the desert to hear the word of God. We are invited to go into the desert of our hearts in order to hear God's message. The desert of our hearts may be an uncomfortable place to be, but it is the place where we will hear the love, voice and call of God.

So yesterday after work I joined my 2nd family for dinner. After the meal I remained at the table and watched as E. jumped on the trampoline just through the window. After a few minutes she stopped and lay just as Snow White did after she had eaten the poisoned apple and awaited the prince's kiss. There was a look of intense concentration on her face and I asked her sister A. what she was doing.
"Praying."
Well, it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's only 10 years old and she knows how to talk to God, and has no shame in doing so as her family watched from the dinner table.
I suppose I was jealous. I may appear to be a good Catholic - I go to church, I try to follow the Catholic laws and I pray for others - but in all honestly, I don't feel close to God. I don't know how to talk to Him, and when I do I don't feel as though He is listening. I have not got the ability to empty my mind of the literal and open my heart enough to feel God's presence.
And in church when they talk about Hell and an eternity without God I fear that I will be there. I thought Hell was now, but there is much worse to come I believe.
Pray for me - because I can't.