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by

The Long Journey Home

Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac at Brisbane airport, I’m hit with a wave of sticky humid heat, like a slap in the face with a warm wet towel. My hair immediately responds with vigour, springing out from my head like little snakes, unruly and untameable. I am reminded one should never wear jeans in Brisbane.

Here ends the first leg of my journey home. I have a headache – a persistent sickly thud in my temples that has been present since the car ride to Melbourne airport. I have cried already today several times. My eyes are sore and the salt behind my contacts is making my vision fuzzy. I think back to the day already half gone: my brother Karl’s phone call at 7.30am (“get on a plane, sis”), having a bath to soothe an anxiety attack, phone conversations with my father, my cousin, my mum, the trip to the airport, K and I playing ‘spot the lezzy’ as we wait for me to board the plane. I think I cried as much for leaving her as I did for anything else.

Brisbane smells like salt; a sea breeze. The air is thick but fresh – an odd combination. I trundle my suitcase to the Airtrain while on the phone to K. This is my first experience of a layover itinerary. I had connecting flight jitters and needed the sound of her voice in my ear. I’m already thinking about the future and how lacking it will be without Mum. I feel ashamed, as if I’ve failed her somehow.

I board the flight to Auckland, my eyes puffy and red. The attendants take pity on me, asking if I’m all right. I smile that defeated smile of one who isn’t all right, actually, but has to be. They stow my baggage for me. I’m grateful for someone else taking control of that one little thing. In the plane, gaining altitude, I have the unexpected pleasure of witnessing an achingly beautiful sunset reflecting vaguely off the darkening Tasman Sea. It seems fitting, somehow. A last hurrah.

I knew Mum was going to go since I heard about the heart attack. When my brother told me of the plan for open heart surgery I got that cold prickly sensation in my chest. That knowledge and the acceptance of her impending death made me feel callous and cold, like I had given up on her already. But I know that feeling. I seem to have a gift for predicting doom.

K kept saying to me right up to the moment I left that Mum could pull through. My beautiful wife with her unending optimism when it comes to me; I wanted to jump on board with her. But I knew. My brother knew. Mum knew.

I sit, uncomfortable in the airplane seat, screaming kids everywhere, it seems. Their high-pitched whining is boring into my skull, and their mother sitting behind me talks too loud because she’s wearing headphones. The kid kicks the back of my seat. I want to yell at them to fuck off but I don’t because it must be hard mustering three kids on an international flight. I spill wine on myself because I’m clumsy and that’s what I tend to do without fail on any plane trip, so now I smell like bad South Australian Sauvignon Blanc. I’m starving, but I didn’t book the ticket with food, so I miss out. I begin to feel resentful and shitty, my weariness turning me into a brat. I just want to be there already.

…Mum
I arrive in Auckland at silly-o’clock in the morning, met by one of my 50+ first cousins, Cleave. I’m already exhausted but I heave up my heart and am spirited away to the hospital. I am met at the hospital by a gaggle of my mother’s sisters. All these women, all eight of them, are alpha females. I can only imagine what that must have been like to contend with in a family of 13 kids, but at this moment I am glad of their staunchness. They prepare me as best as they can, but the sight of my mother hits me hard in the chest and my breath is knocked out of me. This woman, this strong, intimidating woman is now as fragile as a butterfly, her wings paper thin. She has been waiting for me. She cries as I take her hand. I cry. When will I ever stop crying? I sit with her as the aunties rally. They have stepped up to heights unimaginable. Their support and their love is as thick as syrup and I am enveloped by it. My mother has been safe in their care.

My brother, my poor, wrecked eldest brother walks into Mum’s room after catching a few hours’ sleep. He’s been here since yesterday, a constant presence. He looks like I feel: wasted, drained exhausted. Yeah, that is a word that will live with us for the next 24 hours. It will define us from here on in. Exhausted.

I hold Mum’s hand as my brother fills me in. My mother, weak but present, interjects.

“Missey, where are you?”

“I’m here, Mum.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s okay, Mum,” my brother says. “I’m filling Kristina in on what you’ve been up to.”

My mother smiles benignly. “Misbehaving,” she whispers.

My mother is a crack up.

…

I sleep badly for two hours that night, curled up in an armchair in Mum’s room. My mother has restless leg syndrome, so my Auntie Doreen stretches her legs and massages them. Mum talks to her all night. I catch snippets of the conversation but I tune most of it out, my body needing my mind to rest. I know Mum is achieving catharsis in talking to her sister; I don’t need to know what is said. My eyes open at the sound of the nursing shift change and immediately they fly to Mum’s heart monitor. She’s been having VT episodes – Ventricular Tachycardia – which is when her heart rate spikes to upwards of 208 bpm, so I’m making sure she’s sitting nicely at 74 bpm. She’s alert, perky and engaged. My aunt is exhausted. I wake Karl and we go to breakfast and there’s that faint hope again that she maybe might come out of this. We discuss our dad, how many hours we’ve slept since Mum went into hospital, the outrageousness of hospital cafes not automatically serving real butter with their eggs and toast, a little about politics and a lot about my wife. We go back up to Mum’s room and she’s sitting up chatting to more of her sisters who have arrived to see her. The rallying of the family has amazed us. Their presence has kept her heart rate stable and the love in the room has made her cheeks rosy again. Karl and I decide after a few hours that we’re going to go home for a shower and a nap because we’re wrecked, despite the few hours of sleep we’ve had.

Ten minutes after leaving the hospital we get a phone call. Mum’s had another major spike and she had to be shocked twice with the defibrillator to bring her back. Karl and I look at each other and that inkling of hope we had earlier in the day has gone. Neither of us say it, but we both know this is not going to end with Mum walking out of hospital. I ring K and my other brother Hiran. Come now. You need to come now. Hiran is still in Kuala Lumpur, waiting for a flight. K is reticent because she’s a stresser. I’m tired and I just want them here.

I shower and go back to the hospital. Mum is quiet and faint again, her colour faded. More family turn up. My nana comes to see her daughter, another strained filial relationship that is now being resolved. I can only imagine how my 95-year-old grandmother feels about knowing her second born child is going to die. Everyone thought Nana would go before her children. No one expected this.

My mother’s heart rate suddenly spikes to 198 and she gasps. Nana is pulled out of the room as the nursing team rush in and I watch my mother lose consciousness. I yell for my brother. The nurses call all clear amidst the chaos of people running and machines screaming and Mum is shocked back to life.

I am shocked. And terrified. I can’t describe how it feels watching that for the first time. Karl has seen it before so he rushes me out of the room and I sob and keen like a child. Less than half an hour later it happens again, and this time I watch my mother die and be brought back. I see that heart monitor go to 0 and it’s clear my mother is not going to last the two days until Hiran arrives. The nurses are calling her name, coaxing her out of the darkness. “Cathy! Catherine!”

My mother’s eyes open. “What? Stop yelling at me.”

The laughter breaks the tension enough for us all to take a breath.

Mum insists that she must be kept alive until Hiran is here. Karl and I are asked to make a decision. Strangely, it’s not hard to make. Mum is feeling no pain during these spikes, but the damage these electrical bursts are doing to her heart and her body mean that it’s going to happen again and again and more frequently and none of us can do it. Despite Mum’s burning desire to see her middle child, it’s destroying us to see her die over and over again. The cardiologist has a chat to Karl and me, and then he has a chat to Mum.

The decision is made. No more resuscitation. The next spike that happens may well be her last and we just have to let her go. We can do that. We know we can. Mum’s been in pain for so long, emotionally and physically tortured by the circumstance of her life that her death will be a blessed relief. She has struggled and fought and been knocked down so many times, and although she’s gotten back up every time it has taken its toll. Her soul is tired. She misses her father, 50 years gone. She wants to go home.

We get Hiran on Skype; he’s still in KL. They say their goodbyes. My heart is breaking.

…

I am exhausted. Debilitated. Sapped, shot, wasted. I have walked from the cardiac unit to the car back to the cardiac unit time and again. I know the journey down that corridor like the steps to my own house. Everything is surreal, coloured in stark light like an over-exposed photo. I’m running on autopilot: have a cigarette, wash hands, watch Mum, talk to cousins, make huge decisions, be responsible. I feel like a child lost at the supermarket.

I sit next to Mum as they take the wires and catheters and IV tubes off her. I tell her I love her. She tells me she blesses my marriage, that she wishes she could be there to see me be married legally. She says she can go, confident to leave me in K’s hands. She says to tell K she loves her and she will be looking out for us both from above. She tells Karl to find someone who makes him happy. She wishes she could touch her son Hiran just one more time. We all fall silent, waiting for her to go. We sing Pokarekare Ana, one of Mum’s favourite songs. The aunties sing a waiata, we sing Amazing Grace, for my mum is a Grace and she’s amazing.

What feels like hours pass, but in reality it’s probably only 20 minutes. Mum stirs.

“Oh,” she murmurs. “I seem to be still here.” She breathes. “You must be so bored.”

Again, laughter. We disperse, Mum’s not going yet. Karl and I have a discussion, how are we feeling? Wrecked, tired, drained, sad. Karl says he needs a drink and some food. Cleave and I go on a fish and chips and wine run. We smuggle booze back into the hospital. The nurses don’t care. They’ve been so excellent, the care they’ve provided has been extraordinary.

I eat, sigh because the food is awful. I sit by myself as I need the space. I’m so tired. I announce to my cousin that I’m going to take a nap.

“Kristina.” There’s an urgency to the voice calling my name. “You need to come in now.”

Mum has a look about her, like she’s not quite behind her own eyes. There’s no longer the beep of the monitor to let us know the state of her heart. There’s just that look.

I sit next to her again and take her hand in mine. She’s still holding the rose quartz crystal I gave her when I arrived at the hospital. It gives her comfort. I tell her I love her. I can’t seem to say it enough. She whispers to me, “you have no idea how much I love you, my precious baby girl.”

Karl is standing on the other side of the bed, holding her other hand, stroking her forehead. The aunties, uncles and cousins are crowded around us, but all I can see is my mother. My strong, independent, imposing mother who taught me how to survive in a man’s world; who hit me as a child but loved me fiercely; who accepted every decision I made because she knew it was my life to live; who spent the last decade making up for bad mistakes; who tried her best, and despite the circumstances raised three good kids; who gave up dreams of owning her own home so that we could have music lessons; who did it all on her own.

My mum’s face changes – she’s going. My auntie Doreen says very quietly, “her pulse is threading.” Suddenly, Mum opens her eyes, queerly blue after a lifetime of hazel. She gazes directly at me, long enough to register my sad smile, then her eyes shift to just behind my shoulder. She has a look of wonder on her face and I know that she’s seeing her beloved dad. She closes her eyes again, her mouth slackens (oh shit, this is it). Her breathing becomes laboured and shallow, more time lapses between each gasp. It is disturbing to watch, but this is apparently a peaceful death. Doreen quietly informs us that Mum’s heart is fibrillating and then she stops breathing.

My mother is dead.

Something in me cracks and I sob like I’ve never sobbed before. A list of facts races through my mind: she’ll never see me marry legally she won’t see me on the big screen she’ll never get her house she’ll never meet my babies oh god what do I do when I’m pregnant I took it for granted that she’d be there I need her to be there what am I going to do what am I going to do? I’m panicking so I don’t realise I’ve said the last part aloud. Karl looks at me. “Karl, what are we going to do?” My big brother, who stepped into the role of my father when he was only 8 years old rushes around the bed and wraps me in his arms.

“It’ll be okay,” he murmurs. “We’re going to be okay. We’re all going to be okay.”

We may be. But we’re changed.

A few of the aunties and I wash Mum down and then the wonderful nurses help us get her into the shroud. We form a guard of honour as the orderlies wheel her to the elevator to take her downstairs to the morgue. One of the nurses comes out and stands with us. We sing again and then we escort her down. Mum’s gone. We say goodbye.

The next few days until her funeral are blurred into hours awake and hours asleep. I sleep simply because I can’t stay awake. I’m awake because things need to be done. K arrives just over 24 hours after Mum’s gone. Hiran arrives a few hours after that. Arrangements are made, people are informed. My father is coming over for the funeral. The boys (my brothers) and I prepare for the event. Mum wanted music so we have to rehearse. We play together like it hasn’t been 20 years since the last time. We sleep little, we eat little. I cry a lot. K is a rock, she sheds tears privately with me. She is trying so hard to be strong.

The funeral is beautiful and brutal. I can’t sing the beginning of our second song, but then I do because it’s Mum and all she wanted was to hear us kids play together again. My father breaks down and into applause simultaneously, leading the charge for the Benton kids. I don’t know how we did it, but we did. Karl and I cry. Hiran is as stoic as ever, but I know my brother. His heart is breaking as much as mine. Our fractured little far-flung family.

The next week flies by as quickly as the last. K and I get New Zealand married; a legal, happy celebration with a few of our aunties from both sides of my family in the midst of such sadness. Three days later, my grandmother dies. Mum’s 95-year-old mum. We reel in shock again. It was expected, but not yet. I can’t do another funeral. I know now what I can and can’t take, so K and I decide to fly home. The extended family step up again and my auntie Liz and uncle Pat offer to cover me financially so I can stay. The offer is considered simply because of its generosity, but I have to go home. I can’t escape my every day life – now without Mum – any longer.

I fly home with K with money given to me by another wonderful aunt Carolyn who has now taken a responsibility of sorts for my welfare. Our rent is paid because of that money. I can’t thank her enough. On the plane I finish this piece of writing because I need to. I am no longer what I once was. My mother is gone. I, ever the empath, the sensitive, can’t feel her. I get messages from her. I get information, but I can’t feel her. This scares me because now I feel so very alone, even though I know I’m not. But I’m too young to not have a mum. I know she’s happy. She’s no longer in pain. She has her garden and her house and her dad.

But I don’t have a Mum.

Catherine Mary Grace (Benton until she reverted to her maiden name by deed poll), born on 26 May 1943, died on 22 November 2014 at the age of 71 from Ventricular Tachycardia. She also had cancer in her uterus and liver. She is survived by her three children: Karl 42, musician, Hiran 39, musician, and Kristina 37, actor/composer. She is also survived by her sisters and brothers Anne, Bill, Rita, Mary, Elizabeth, John, Doreen, Marie, Patrick, Robert, Carolyn and Valerie. Cathy’s years of sacrifice enabled her children to follow their dreams and their art. She left behind a legacy of music, responsibility and accountability, which I will uphold to my dying day.

Her last word was my brother’s name. “Hiran.”

Young MumI love you, Mum.

Aside by

I’m sitting at the Rosstown in Carnegie listening to my friend Meg sing her Sunday sesh, and I’m reminded of my years of playing gigs with my band Tempest in days gone by. Oh, those were the days. 3 hour gigs every Sunday afternoon, residencies, getting that elusive gig at the Espy, recording, rehearsal, APRA, all that fun stuff.

Honestly, it was actually fun. I look back on those times with a great sense of nostalgia. The band ended badly, as such things do when ego is involved, but it was three years of awesomeness, singing and playing the music we had written, entertaining people, having all types of music lovers come up to us afterwards telling us they loved what we did. I remember one gig when a punk gentleman approached me after a set saying our music wasn’t usually his thing, but he really enjoyed what we did. Those were the moments we lived for.

Watching Meg sing, watching her revel in the magic of song made my heart ache – gladly. Music has something, an unnameable thing that automatically lifts the spirits. God, that sounds so conceited and wanky, but it’s true. Mind you, I’m writing this after two bottles of vino, so really, everything is a wank. But back on topic, I reckon every artist is inspired and gratified by another artist’s work. Seeing people do the thing they love is infectious. The energy of watching that act of art awakens something in an artist’s psyche. Art begets art, always and ever, and thank God it does, otherwise I’d be lost for inspiration.

I want to write again. I want to compose music just for the hell of it, just for the fun of it, for the joy of creating. I have no plans to record and release, or even to perform, but just to write is enough. Meg awoke that within me, just through the act of singing. Crikey, it’s powerful stuff, art. The cool thing about Meg is that she’s a life coach. Like, she actually gives a shit about helping people be better people. And you can hear that when she sings, that care. That’s the power of art.

Now, I’m no sycophant, I don’t believe in blowing smoke up anyone’s arse (what my ex-girlfriend used to call a trick with a packet of cigarettes and a length of hose), but I’m an advocate of helping people be better people, whether it be through art, or therapy, or group discussions, or education, or psychics, or psychotherapists, or whatever. Bettering oneself is bettering oneself, however which way you butter your bread. Therefore, I’m including a link to Meg’s website ’cause I think she’s great, but also because I believe in supporting fellow artists in whatever they do.

We’re at a point in existence in this world in which we’re on tenterhooks. There’s war, there’s death, there’s man’s inhumanity to man all over the damn place. Any chance we have to find our inner truth and have better relationships with other people on this earth, we should take. So here’s my unabashed plug of my friend Meg, singer, event planner and life coach extraordinaire.

Peace to you all.

http://www.startingtodaycoaching.com.au

Music Gets The Best of Me

by

Of Loss, Lying, and Love

Seven years ago, at the age of 30, I did this crazy nutso thing and went back to University to finish my degree. I was nervous as all get out as I knew that coming in to complete my third year I would be interloping on an already established network of student artists and theatre makers – most of whom would be 10 years my junior. How on earth was I going to fit in to this group of people who already had two full years of experiences and bonding and getting drunk together and all that? Could I still write essays? Did I know what ‘pathos’ meant (I reckon I still don’t know what ‘pathos’ means)? Would people want to work with me? Could I match wits with my classmates and teachers? Would I pass my degree? It was scary and intimidating, but given I had spent the previous year in a depressed, stoned and fat state of self-loathing, I needed to jump right in and swim.

Within the first week, I was pretty much accepted into the fold, probably because I have no problem making a dick of myself to get people to like me. I was also fresh blood. Within six months, I had a whole new group of friends, had come out as an ex-hooker, and had earned a reputation for being unapologetically honest, accepting and funny. The age difference meant little, the laughs were a-plenty, and new theatrical exploits were planned and executed with aplomb and alacrity.

Cut to seven years later, most of these friends are gone. I must admit that the majority of them I chose to step away from, mainly because I didn’t like who I was around them, but a few kind of forced my hand somewhat. Some of them were my closest friends that I had spent the last seven years forging deeply important connections with. Seven years of cheap hair cuts, and tea, and hugs, and listening ears, and the keeping of their secrets, the countless tarot readings, the acceptance and non-judgement, the theatre, the wine and the laughs. All gone because they believe my wife abused her ex, because that’s what my wife’s ex told EVERYONE. That and many other lies that manifested silent judgement in my friends’ eyes when they looked at me, when they looked at my wife. I want to scream at them “FUCK YOU! How dare you! Damn you for abandoning me, for not returning the faith I had in you, for believing the worst, for not talking to me because it’s ‘none of your business’, but let’s face it, you make it your business because you talk to everyone else except me about it. Fuck you and fuck the high horse you rode in on!”

*rage!*

…

By gods, I miss them. There’s a hole in my life created by their absence. There are comments and messages missing from my social media page, texts unreturned and unread, conversations that I can’t have with anyone else. I feel lost. Bereft. My heart hurts and I cry often, usually alone. My pride will not let me reach out to them, my fear warning me that any attempt to connect will be rejected. I don’t cope well with rejection so I don’t try. I’m pig-headed like that.

I know it’s my own fault. I walked away. I made a choice and I stuck to it, as righteous and indignant as it may have been at the time. I still believe it was the right thing to do, because I do not believe or give any credence to what my wife has been accused of. I didn’t believe it before she and I began our relationship and I still don’t. I will choose her time and again because it’s the right thing for me to do. Yet, I still grieve what I have lost.

Wikipedia defines friendship as having the following characteristics: affection, sympathy, empathy, honesty, altruism, mutual understanding and compassion, enjoyment of each other’s company, trust, and the ability to be oneself, express one’s feelings, and make mistakes without fear of judgement from the friend. For once, Wikipedia can be relied upon as being fairly accurate. That aside, I cannot deny that I do still have friends that offer me the aforementioned things, and I can requite them the same. But the connection I have with those friends differs from my Uni friends, and I can’t quite identify why. It’s a feeling I guess.

This too shall pass, as all things are ephemeral. In closing the doors to those people, I have manifested the opportunity for other avenues of connection to open. This is exciting and different, my life has changed immeasurably, I feel there are magnificent and wonderful experiences to come, and I fully believe that all has happened just as it should have happened.

it still sucks, but. And it will suck for a while. I hope they’re okay. I hope they achieve all they desire. I hope in time I will see them again and all will be fine. I hope they miss me as much as I miss them.

by

I Do

I got married yesterday. As with most things in my life, the act was non-conventional and probably quite impulsive. I proposed to my girlfriend a couple of months ago whilst visiting my family in New Zealand with the idea in mind that we’d travel to New Zealand to marry for legals while the Australian government continued to waffle and be embarrassingly reticent to allow the same civil rights for all their citizens. It was our government’s failure to recognise the rights of homosexuals that precipitated our decision to participate in a marriage equality rally yesterday. The date marked ten years since the Howard government amended the Marriage Act to state explicitly that legal marriage is ‘the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others’. Ten years. Why the hell are we still having to protest this discriminatory and archaic ruling?

In reality, I believe that marriage equality is essentially a non-issue. It’s a no-brainer. Why are we wasting energy, time and money on something that is a given – human rights, hello! – when there are children dying in Gaza, passenger jets being blown out of the sky, and Yazidis reportedly being killed in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam? It’s ridiculous, frankly, and insulting.

Yet, this is where we are. Speakers at the rally yesterday told stories of getting married overseas and the sinking feeling of knowing that as soon as they disembarked from the plane on Australian soil they were longer married. A woman, our marriage celebrant, told of dedicating her life to bringing people together in love since her gay son passed away before fulfilling his dream of marrying the man he loved. An intersex person told of their experience of having to lie on official marriage documents in the past about their gender so that they could marry the person they loved, the only options being ‘male’ or ‘female’, not ‘both’.

I am fortunate enough to have a relatively simple gender identity and sexuality, my sexual preferences being quite fluid. It has always been about love for me – it’s the person, not the gender that I have been attracted to. Growing up with a gay dad and being exposed to ‘alternative’ sexualities in the sex industry has afforded me a healthy, well-rounded acceptance of who I am sexually. My coming out was non eventful, I have experienced little discrimination due to my preferences, and my family has always been accepting of my choice of partner, their only concern being my happiness. Even so, I feel marginalised and restricted (not just for being a little bit gay but also for being a woman, but that’s another post at another time).

Our decision yesterday to get ‘illegally married’ – as the celebrant put it – was mainly prompted by circumstance. At the rally, it was announced that any couple who wanted to make a commitment to each other would be given the opportunity to do so. As we were marching towards parliament in Melbourne, my partner turned to me and asked “do you want to marry me?” The decision was easy, given that I had already declared my intention to her in New Zealand, and quite simply, because I love her. I adore this woman, and can’t imagine my life without her. The act of getting married itself, grounded in complete acceptance of and adoration for each other, was a kind of protest. Our own protest against the friends we have both lost due to the circumstances of our relationship, against those who think we have moved too quickly, and against our stupid, myopic government who doesn’t think we have a right to share our lives as a married couple. Who knew a commitment to the person one loves could be so politically charged and powerful?

It has been a stupidly hard, yet wonderfully magical few months. My life during that time has been perfect in its imperfection. Every loss, every gain, every tear shed, every note of laughter has enriched my soul and made me love my life, myself, and my wife. We will wed legally, whether it be in the country of my birth or here if and when the law finally changes. Until then, love well, dear readers. Be as you are, be with whomever you choose, and trust that the Universe will always provide as it has done for me.

Be blessed.

by

Love’s Labours

She burst into my life like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. I stole that line from Christopher M. Cevasco who said that in reference to reading Tolkien for the first time, but it’s accurate. It was unplanned, unexpected and unsought. I had thought she was beautiful from the moment we met a year ago, but she was in a relationship, about to get “married” – as much as lesbians can get married in this country – and I don’t mess around in other people’s relationships. I kept my friendly distance, stayed acquaintances with her and her wife, and continued my lonely journey.

Six months after the wedding, the marriage soured. Gauntlets were thrown, mud was slung, feelings were hurt and names were besmirched. It was ugly. Ugly and painful for all involved, I’m sure, but the only people who know what truly went on in that relationship is her and her wife.

Five weeks later, I took her on a date, simply because I wanted to give her a moment of sanctity, maybe even a little bit of joy. It had been a long time since a woman had elicited such feelings in me, and it may have been a long time before I met someone who did again, so I took my chance. I saw her more often, my heart growing larger every time. We spent hours talking, kissing, laughing and enjoying our connection. I believed at first that I was a band aid, a means to mend a lacerated heart, and although the thought saddened me I accepted the possibility that this was my only role in her life. I honestly felt privileged to be that momentary salve for her soul. However, despite our best intentions, and even against our own wishes, we fell in love.

We celebrated, publicly and privately, this new discovery of love. We took photos, we shared photos, we accompanied each other to significant events simply because we just wanted to be together, experiencing each other in these moments, as people in love do. Within a month, we became official. We’re in a relationship.

And then the knives came out. Some were sharp, keen and loud; others dull, silent but no less painful. Opinions were formed by those ill-informed, unsolicited advice was delivered with the arrogance of those who have not yet learned to let others be as they are. People started telling us what to do, using mutual friends as catalysts, suggesting that we might perhaps think of others and not be so “cutesy” quite so publicly. We were accused of using social media to be spiteful, of manipulating others’ emotions for our own gain, and for proving nasty accusations against my partner as fact through our inappropriately timed relationship.

And I snapped. I ranted and raved. I lost my temper and my ability to be understanding and compassionate. What we were being charged with sounded juvenile to me. I am capable of being an arsehat, but vindictiveness is not in my nature, so being reproached for that offended me. It angered me, for one very simple reason:

I am happy. And people I barely know are sitting around talking about my relationship like it’s an episode of Game of Thrones and coming to the conclusion that my happiness is objectionable and should not be displayed in a public domain.

I have no shame in declaring that my life has been difficult. I have had many moments over the last 37 years in which I felt I was existing in some circle of Hell. I have fought, and struggled, and heaved my way out of that pit time and again. I have been sexually, emotionally and physically abused by strangers and by people who claimed to love me. I have put myself through trial after ordeal whilst stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to be human. I have suffered indignities, sorrow and pain, and through it all I still found the ability to breathe, to find joy where I could, to love as much as my battered heart would allow. And yet I was never really happy. I didn’t think I could be.

She came into my life at a time when I had resigned myself to a continuing reality in which I existed alone. Rather than being a depressive, self-pitying realisation, it was an understanding of who I was and where my existence was at. It wasn’t a reflection on who I am as a person, whether or not I was loveable or worthy, it was simply an acceptance that perhaps my life wasn’t about experiencing that particular kind of partnership, that it was more about my spiritual development, and my art, and my friends, and the more I searched for that elusive love that I craved so much, the more miserable I would be. The thought also occurred to me that perhaps I was simply too damaged to ever be completely vulnerable and let someone else in. So I let it go with an abeyant sense of sadness, and told myself I didn’t like who I became in a relationship anyway, so I wasn’t missing much.

Then she entered my field of vision and everything changed. We are unflinchingly honest with each other about everything: our pasts, our expectations, our faults, the things we don’t like about ourselves, the things we do, how scared we both are, how cautious we know we should be, and how quickly we fell for each other anyway. Maybe it’s a lesbian thing, I don’t know, but I can’t deny that I am in love. So utterly, overwhelmingly, scarily in love.

For the first time in any relationship I’ve had ever, I feel like myself. I am comfortable and relaxed, and I have so many moments where I am present and content. I don’t feel the need to impress her, to compete with her, to hide my crazy, or to be right all the time. I don’t feel the need to be thin to be attractive to her, and I don’t need to play the femme fatale to get her attention. She thinks I’m funny and sweet and beautiful and smart and a dork and clumsy and she loves me for all of it. At last, I think I’m having the relationship I should be having. I’m actually happy, not because she “makes” me happy, but because I like who I am around her.

It’s happened very quickly, and if I’d had my way, I would have preferred her to spend more time single. But it is as it is, and being the sort of person who takes risks for love, art and experience, I have accepted this path that the Universe has put me on. It’s hard, though. Staying vigilant amongst the well-intentioned but ultimately hurtful “advice” that has been sent our way is difficult. Doubt is always a factor in new relationships, but it usually comes from within, not from external sources. Many of her friends believe she has moved on too quickly, but what they don’t know is the hours of discussion between us and our close friends over what went wrong, the times she has wept in my arms over the end of that relationship, her sorrow at the loss of her wife who was her best friend, and her fear of fucking up her time with me. Of course no one else knows this, it’s private. I understand the concern of her friends and mine, and I begrudge no one the right to have an opinion, but I do draw the line at imposing that opinion as fact onto my experience. I would never dare tell anyone what they should and should not say, do, think or feel. It’s insulting.

Our relationship is not a “fuck you” to her ex, a woman who whilst hurting hurt others, including two of my closest friends. Our time together is about us, not about sticking it to anyone else. We share our adventures with our online world because this is the age of the internet, such is the time we live in now. The only person who has any conceivable right to be offended or disaffected by our public declarations of mutual admiration is her ex, who has blocked us both on social media (such is her privilege) and has no access to our private lives. Her name is not mentioned in any of my posts, and I try very hard to be respectful of her perspective of her relationship. But this is mine, and I will not be shushed.

Look, at the risk of sounding overly poetic, love will not be denied. It demands attention, expression and celebration. We as humans need to hear “I love you” as much as we need to say it. I love hard and I love well, and the opinions of a few is not going to stop me from rejoicing in my happiness with the many who have been waiting to see me in that state for decades. If that means I alienate some acquaintances then so be it. I personally think it’s sad that someone’s happiness can be the cause of so much disdain in others.

I love her. She is my illumination, my muse, my paramour, my biggest fan and my greatest ally. She is graceful and erudite, she is considerate and charming, she is accepting and reflective, and is one of the most brutally honest people I know. I admire her strength and her vulnerability, and I hold in high regard her ability and willingness to take responsibility for her own life, to seek help, and to own her mistakes.

She makes me laugh. She makes my heart sing. And yes, she may one day hurt me just as much as I may hurt her, but I choose to take the risk because I’m an adult and have the competence required to make my own decisions.

What makes me laugh is that none of this is actually anybody else’s business, not even remotely. The only people who know what really goes on in our relationship are her and me. The reason I share this now is because I want to. I have nothing to prove and nothing to justify to anybody. This, what you’re reading now, is about me. Little ol’ me, finally receiving the love I’ve always wanted.

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Little Fat Flying Cherub Day

Lupercalia

Valentine’s Day, eh? Geesh, when I think of Valentine’s Days past, I am reminded of two years of working the phones at an international flower delivery service and that day being the day to dread. 12 hours of frantic, last minute orders, angry customers, overworked and stressed florists, and my frayed temper. Honestly, if your entire relationship rests on whether your uninspired choice of a dozen red roses reaches your beloved by closing time, you’ve got a huge fucking problem.

Oh my gods, customers would get so infuriated if anything occurred that was not within their expectations, as if theirs was the only order/relationship/existence of importance. The experience of working at that place greatly opened my eyes to the absolute absurdity of this annual “holiday” and the lengths people will go to to conform to an accepted display of affection on this consumer-driven, banal day of twaddle.

Now, you may be forgiven for thinking that my enmity for the 14th of February actually stems from a lack of romantic attention on this day in the past because you’d be partly right. The only Valentine’s Day present I’ve ever been given was a rustic CD stack from my ex-fiancé. One year, he took me for lunch at Arthur’s Seat which would have been lovely if we had not had a sotto voce argument in the restaurant that I started which consequently left me in tears, which was the regular occurrence in our relationship. He gave me beautiful gifts for Christmas and birthdays, but Valentine’s Day was a fizzer always. I bought him a Valentine’s gift once, I’m sure. I just can’t remember what it was. Obviously, it was so much from the heart that my blinding love blocked out the memory of its physical form.

Ha ha.

Subsequent relationships garnered little in the Romance Day of Gift Buying department mainly because my ex-girlfriend was too wasted to notice that it was THAT DAY (or any day, truth be told, bless her cotton socks) and therefore was oblivious to any of my romantic overtures in celebration of the day, and the most recent ex was so busy trying to prove that he didn’t love me, like me, or even particularly want to be around me that I’m sure a failure to acknowledge the Day of “Love” was yet another attempt to wound me with his indifference.

Here I am, talking about Valentines past as if I actually care. I don’t really. I mean, whether or not I get a gift or a card or a gesture remains relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, but in the midst of my crusty cynicism, I do have occasional, private wistful wonderings of what it would be like to have an unexpected romantic surprise from one’s paramour. I also ponder why it’s so important, why this day is so bloody significant to the general unwashed masses.

Being slightly pagan in my world view, and knowing that Valentine’s Day has some basis in pagan history, you’d think I’d know the history of this day. Well, I don’t, but I did some hasty research and found out (woo, internet!).

This day of mass-produced love has its origins in the festival Lupercalia (which I do know a little about as it turns out), which is the ancient Pagan, possibly pre-Roman festival of fertility, or as the right-wing Christian fundamentalists like to call the “festival of sexual licence”. Apparently, celebrating our fertility is a sexual perversion (rcg.org). Go, you crazy Christians!*

Oh, you crazy Christians!

Oh, you crazy Christians!

Lupercalia is actually a ritual involving the twin founders of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who were fished out of the River Tiber and raised by a she-wolf in a cave at the base of Palatine Hill. The cave was dubbed the Lupercal (from the Latin lupus meaning “wolf”), and became the sacred site of future rituals in honour of the twins and the wolves who raised them, represented by Lupa, the she-wolf, and Faunus Lupercus, the alpha-male wolf deity.

The ritual included the sacrifice of a goat and a dog, “the killing of a herd animal and a herd defender presumably echoing the feral days living in the Lupercal” (manygods.org.uk) by two young men representing, I reckon, the twins, who then led the Luperci – a gaggle of priests formed for this particular ritual – down the street, thwacking women, men and children with a bits of dead goat in an attempt to cleanse out the bad juju of the previous year and promote fertility.

Goat spanking. It's the new ... um ...

Goat spanking. It’s the new … um …

As is the way with the crazy Pagans** the ritual ends with a big feast (presumably of goat meat) and lots of sex.

This all happens on the 15th of February. The 14th of February is the eve of Lupercalia and was the day of the love lotteries as it was also the day of Juno, the Queen of the Gods and big fan of marriage. According to witchology.com, unmarried women wrote their names on bits of paper which were tossed into a jar and chosen at random by unmarried men. The couples then paired up for the remainder of the festival and could remain together and marry if the partnership worked. How this fits in with the tradition of anonymous and perhaps slightly stalkery love note-giving of today’s Valentine’s Day is perhaps due to the Lupercalia custom blending with folklore beliefs in Britain and France that the 14th was the day the birds started their bonking season, so everybody thought “let’s get bonking too!” and it persisted as the day of love.

But then the early Christians came along and spoiled all the fun. “Now stop this, we can’t have blood sacrifices, that’s just not on. And we certainly can’t have all this rampant spanking, bonking and carrying on, it’s so undignified. I know! There were two martyrs called Valentine killed on this day in different years sometime in the 3rd century by that Emperor Claudius II person, let’s give one of them, oh I don’t know, the second one … let’s give them this day and we can get back to some sort of decorum … oh, the people want to keep frolicking? Oh, all right, just keep your bloody clothes on!”

Or something like that.

And so it evolved, as these things are wont to do, into what it is today. Some Christian groups have distanced themselves from the supposed religious aspect of the day admitting that it really has nothing to do with a couple of dead saints, and claiming that it is against their God to celebrate it.

But really, in my humble opinion? It’s a day that celebrates love. Yes, it’s consumerised (just made up a word there) to buggery, yes it causes more stress in relationships than it should, yes it may have lost its true meaning somewhere in the works, but so what? We celebrate birthdays, we celebrate our national holidays, we celebrate Christmas and Easter (both with their roots in Paganism), why not celebrate a day of love? Forget the sappy bullshit that accompanies it, Valentine’s Day is a great day to remember, reflect, and bask in the warm-fuzzy glow of romantic love or platonic love or familial love or any kind of love because love is pretty awesome. Hey! It looks like I care after all.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers and their loved ones. Go have some chocolate covered candy hearts.

*No disrespect to sane Christians anywhere.

**No disrespect to sane Pagans anywhere.

Aside by

What the fuck is wrong with people? From our myopic Prime Minister here in Australia inciting the country into “war with the boats” to stop “illegals” from entering our country, to twits in the US throwing up their racist arms at a multilingual ad campaign by Coca Cola featuring different coloured Americans singing in different languages, it seems that the people of this world are fuelled by malice.

I’m a big fan of Lorde, the singer/songwriter from New Zealand, not just because she’s a Kiwi, but because she’s a talented young girl who writes interesting and well-considered music who doesn’t have to twerk in order to make an impact. I watched her performance at the Grammys on YouTube and then made the mistake of reading a few of the comments. It was like watching a car accident, I couldn’t look away. The amount of hate-fuelled, vile taunts that were pitched this young girl’s way were astounding. Comments ranged from “is she having a seizure” (in reference to her dancing) to “she’s ugly,” “what’s up with her hair,” “she looks like a witch” through to “I hate you, you bitch.” I was gobsmacked. Here was a young, smart, talented young woman who I would consider to be an excellent role model to girls everywhere being torn apart mainly by other women. I mean, if you’re not a fan, you’re not a fan, but where is this “haters gon’ hate” thing coming from? Since when is it good form to personally and vehemently attack someone you don’t even know on a public forum? I don’t get it.

My housemate says that this is the age of the internet, where you can write what you want, fairly anonymously without fear of recrimination. I get that, but why then, would one choose to express hateful remarks? What is it in the human psyche that revels in being nasty? When did we forget that we’re all the same? Did we ever know? Where did this separatist belief come from, is it just religion, or are the secret governments of the world conspiring to isolate us from each other? We are all of us made up of the same stuff, our bodies all have the same things in them, we all shit, we all cry, we’re all born, we all die, we all feel the same emotions even if we have different responses to them. In essence, we are all connected by this simple fact, therefore we are all one. I struggle with compassion for my fellow human at times, particularly if I think that fellow human is stupid, but hate? I can’t hate anybody, especially since I understand that my irritation with someone else is usually because I see something I don’t like about myself reflected in them. To hate on them is to hate on myself, and frankly, I’ve done enough of that. What a waste of energy.

I don’t know the answer to this one. It confounds me, it saddens me, and all I can do is shake my head in bewilderment and go listen to Lorde.

Rant

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Homeward Bound

It’s just past midnight as my plane approaches Auckland airport. I lean over the man sitting next to me to look out the window at the lights of the city. If it was daylight, I’d see the sparkling water of Weymouth estuary, the iridescence created by distance and sunlight belying the grottiness of the Manukau harbour on ground level. This is home. I haven’t been here in five years, and that last trip was only for two days for my grandmother’s funeral. This is home, where I’ve come to reconnect with myself.

I arrive at my brother’s house feeling strange, not quite believing that I’m actually here. Within a day, I can hear my vowels flattening and my speech returning to the idioms of my youth: I call my brother “bro”, “bra”, “eho” and “ao”. I say “choice” constantly, meaning “excellent”, and the Maori words and place names roll off my tongue with an ease I haven’t experienced in years. I see my mother, who is suddenly old. I see my nephew who is suddenly 16 and tall and skinny, and I feel all of my 37 years with a sense of finality. I remember things: the reason why my hair was so fluffy as a teenager (Auckland is bloody humid); how to take off on a hill with the car in first gear (you have to put on the hand brake, then give it some gas to stop the car from stalling); the taste of New Zealand milk, ice cream, and lamb; kumara chips; driving at 50km/h, which Auckland roads seem to demand; the hills, all the undulating hills.

I think I expected a feeling of relief being here. I’ve always considered that home is where one can stop for a moment and take a breath, where one can relax a disquieted mind. I was quite depressed when I left Australia, and I expected New Zealand to lift me. It does, after a fashion, but I think it’s more to do with spending time with my eldest brother and his girlfriend, and hugging my mum than it does being physically present in this country. It’s not the country of my youth anymore. My family members live in suburbs far removed from Manurewa, where I grew up. There’s no click of recognition as I walk the streets of Ponsonby and Northcote Point, I don’t feel that “phew, I’m home” feeling. I’ve always idealised New Zealand, I know that, as I suppose a lot of expatriates do. I am immensely proud of being born and bred in the little country that could, the nation that legalised same-sex marriage and where the indigenous culture is not only represented but fully integrated into every day life. I’m proud of the culture, the common sensical ingenuity of the average local, and of course, the physical beauty of the land of the long white cloud. There is something deeply spiritual, even magical about certain parts of New Zealand, and I feel a connection to the earth here that I don’t feel in Australia. I ate dirt and sand when I was a toddler, my mother tells me. New Zealand is in me, flowing through my veins.

So, why don’t I feel like I’m home? I put it down to still being a bit depressed, but then I’m having a conversation with my brother about petrol prices (Auckland prices were $2.19 per litre. Atrocious!), and I said “yeah, they’re much cheaper at home.” Melbourne. Not New Zealand. My heart breaks a little – only a little – as I come to the realisation that Melbourne is my home now. It could never replace Auckland, but it has given me opportunities that Auckland never could, and I find myself telling my mother that I can’t make a life here. She frowns. “You mean acting?” she asks. “Yes,” I reply, but that’s only part of the reason. It’s too small here. As my brother says, it’s small-minded. As my cousin says, it’s boring. I don’t tell my mother this, but as much as I love my family, and miss them intensely, that love isn’t enough to keep me here. I begin to get really honest with myself, and I admit that my memories of this country and my childhood here are not entirely pleasant. A lot of trauma happened to me here, a lot of innocence was lost. I finally realise that my aroha (love) for Aotearoa is based on the romanticised version in my head, not on the reality I now experience.

You can never take New Zealand out of this girl. I will always be a die-hard, up-standing and proud Kiwi. As I walk towards the departure gate to get on the plane that will take me back to Melbourne – home – I weep a little. I weep for my mother, who I fear I may not see again any time soon. I weep for my nephew, who will spread his wings and fly away from our little country at the arse end of the world to go find opportunities not available where he was born. And I weep for my country, the place of my birth and I say goodbye to the shining ideology of what it means to be home.

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Fat Chance

Once every six or seven years, I get fat. It’s not a planned thing, like I don’t sit down and work out a mind map for adding junk to my trunk, it just seems to happen. Which isn’t to say I get skinny in those intervening years, I just fluctuate from nicely slim to nicely curvy and back and forth until my body just says, “Bitch, I’ma get you all chunked up” and next thing you know I can’t fit into my jeans.

My weight’s always been a problem. I come from a family of big women on both sides, and it’s a battle I’ve fought since I hit puberty. I have been underweight too, in my early to mid 20s, so much so, I’m pretty sure my dad thought I was a junkie. I wasn’t, but I must admit, I loved being thin. I looked revolting naked, but man, I looked hot in clothes! Clothes I’d always wanted to wear but was too afraid to because of my fat bits. I was lean and limber and for a few years I actually liked what I saw in the mirror, and therefore I liked myself.

Isn’t that an awful thing to recognise about oneself? This confession that ‘I was happy when I was thin’ fills me with dismay. The years I have spent pondering the mysteries of the Universe, searching for answers to the unasked questions, and seeking enlightenment all collapse in the face of the absolute banality of that one statement:

‘I was happy when I was thin.’

How revolting.

I’m performing in a musical revue next week. This will be the first time I have sung musical theatre numbers since I was 16. It’s not a huge deal, but I’m looking forward to it. In the process of choosing a costume, I tried on a few of my slinky black dresses last night, only to find that most of them didn’t quite fit, especially over the boobage area. I struggled a bit with a sense of consternation over this fact, but given that I had had a kinesiology session earlier in the day, I was feeling quite buoyant and unwilling to give in to the fat-hating gremlin that lives in my head and whispers nasty things in my ear. Tonight, however … Well, tonight it has hit me smack in the face that yes, I am fat again. Not the “fat” where the body is a bit flabby but with the help of some carefully chosen layers and maybe some Spanx pants one can hide it and still look sleek, oh no no no. This is the “fat” where the body has actually changed shape and no amount of clever dressing or suck-me-in-knicker-wearing is going to hide the bountiful 15 kilos that have found their way onto my tall and already curvy frame.

The realisation of this made me cry. I cried because I have to get up on that stage next week and sing some quite difficult songs to an audience of my peers and I feel revolting. Revolting, repugnant, repulsive and rotund.

And I’m really, really pissed off that I feel that way. I should not feel worthless and ugly and self-conscious about my abilities as a performer because of the way I look at the moment, but I do and it angers me. I could launch into a massive diatribe about the media and its role in perpetuating the ridiculous thin ideal that gets shoved down our throats day in, day out; I could have a go at the industry I choose to work in and the pressures it puts on all of us actors to conform to a physical archetype; I could rant and rave against the injustices of a society that’s into fat-shaming and thin-worship, but you know what? This is the world we live in. This is how it is, and to be honest, I think I’ve realised I’m just a little too lazy, too old and too tired to get off my arse and commit the time and energy to achieving the kind of body that would fit in to that paradigm. Instead, I just feel shit about myself, and cry, and emotionally flagellate myself for being so crap at being thin, and life, and stuff.

It’s hard. It only gets harder the older I get. I don’t have any answers for this. Yes, I could go to the gym five days a week and cut out sugar for life, but I’d be miserable. I do need to exercise more, but since my surgery earlier this year my body has taken its time to be ready to go back to my old routine. Right now, I feel so overwhelmed with the pain of the hair shirt I’m wearing that the thought of all the things I’d have to do to kick start any weight loss is just making me feel worse.

Fuck this life sometimes. Honestly, fuck it. It’s difficult, and it hurts, and there’s no end to it. It’s at these times that the challenges must be met, however.

Spanxtacular

Spanxtacular

This is the time to maintain vigilance in the face of internal adversity.

I’m still going to sing next week, even if I do feel like I’ll be heifering it across the stage. The show must go on, and life must go on. The lesson herein, kiddies, is that sometimes one just has to adjust to the circumstances that arise for no other reason than ‘the show must go on’.

Now excuse me while I stuff myself into my Spanx. I’ve got some songs to sing.

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Conditions Apply

I never thought I’d be the sort of person to place conditions on friendship. I have proudly waved the flag of total acceptance and therefore have walked around for years in a gold-infused state of delusion that I am totally awesome for waving said flag. Well, ha ha ha, I’m a dick because it’s entirely untrue.

I expect a lot from close friendships, from relationships, from any meaningful connection with someone. I expect respect, consideration, attention and (yes, it’s truth-tellin’ time) admiration from those close to me. I also expect honesty and accountability, and the lack of these can and have been deal breakers. I don’t support friends who have fucked up unless they ‘fess up; I can’t abide by dishonesty; and I when I reach the end of my tether with someone, I do have the tendency to give them the cold shoulder rather than say what’s pissed me off.

The terrible thing is that I’ve absolutely refused to acknowledge any of this until very recently.

As with everything, I have to preface this post with a little background. About a decade ago, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. The disorder part of that diagnosis I have since overcome, but the borderline part is still very present in my personality. What that means is I have (now mostly resolved) issues with abandonment; I tend to idealise close friends and lovers, a feeling that can rapidly morph into devaluing if the other person falls off the pedestal I have built for them; I have moments of intense episodic dysphoria particularly if rejected or criticised by a friend in which I feel I’m the worst human in the world; I tend to disassociate if I’m in a bad mood; and I have extreme sensitivity and empathy to those in need – with the condition that these are returned in my time of need.

Now, when most people hear of BPD their immediate thought is of someone with extreme mood swings, self-harming behaviour, suicidal threats and/or attempts, and who is generally a psycho sad sack. As I mentioned above, I have outgrown and worked through that stage, but the lingering traits in my personality make relationships veeeeery interesting. I have fought and screamed and sobbed and torn my hair out in relationships, more explicitly in the past and greatly internalised more recently. I’ve done some awful things to people I love in the past (and in the present; there’s that honesty thing again), and they have done some awful things to me, which I have responded to with dragon-like acerbity which has culminated in a very final “fuck off, I hate you.” I have been left steaming and angry and stomp-around-the-house-y and that has led to extreme disappointment in myself for allowing any of it to happen in the first place.

Which brings me to forgiveness. I believe forgiveness is essential to growth as a spiritual and intellectual human being, particularly forgiveness of self, but it’s so bloody hard to do sometimes. And why is that? Well, I think there’s a certain amount of power in holding a grudge or holding on to resentment; being the person wronged is an opportunity to be the person pitied, quite frankly. It puts one on the moral high ground, often with the added clause of “I wouldn’t do that to another person” to add to the acrimony arsenal. But, let’s face it peeps, we all have done ‘that’ to another person, and have probably felt indignantly justified in doing so. I think that I struggle with forgiveness because the act of forgiving seems to me to be condoning the other person’s actions, therefore making it okay for them to repeat the behaviour, or merely to not feel any accountability for their conduct which is just unacceptable!!! And I can’t forgive myself because I excel in self-flagellation so very much.

I find forgiveness easier with time and separation from the act and the person. I also find it easier when the offender has apologised. But is it always wise to forgive, to piously exonerate a person from their wrongdoing like some overdressed pontiff? (That’s the image I have in my mind at the moment, go with it.) Well, that’s a tricky one. I haven’t forgiven my childhood abusers because I don’t think they deserve it, but I certainly do not hold any hate for them. In fact, I don’t even think of them very often, because to do so would give them power; power that I took back a long time ago. I have forgiven my parents for the silly things they did as I was growing up, but I still experience fragments of pain from those experiences. Some slights I have been subject to have simply faded from my mind, while others have taken root, which is not altogether a bad thing as they serve as a reminder to be wary of certain behaviours in the future. Some things I have done I have forgiven myself for, while others hang in the back of my head like musty old cheese at the back of a walk-in larder.

In other cases, removing the offending people from my life has served to alleviate some of the rancour, and although no active forgiveness has taken place, if I ever meet these people again, I’m not going to run screaming from them.

“But what about people that you want to keep in your life?” I hear you ask.

Thanks for asking. Funnily enough, I was talking to my therapist about the fact that sometimes my best friend forgets to respond to my texts and this leaves me feeling ignored and unimportant and that that really hurts me. I went on to say that I don’t like feeling this way about her because she’s otherwise an awesome human being and I have no right to apply conditions on our continued friendship, as love should be unconditional. My therapist went on to say something very interesting about unconditional love only existing between a parent and child (which I may discuss in a later post), but then she said something that blew my little brain: Don’t place conditions on your friends, place conditions on yourself.

Huh?

She went on to explain, “Place conditions on yourself with how you respond to these things. You have the choice as to how someone else’s behaviour affects you. Place a condition on yourself that you will not distrust the friendship (if the friendship is important to you), or that you will gently remove yourself from the relationship if you can’t bring yourself to trust the other person. That way, you will be accountable for your own actions, and not expect others to live up to an idealised behaviour pattern that you have created for them.”

Oh. BPD brain go ‘splodey.

But it actually worked. For my best friend, for my other friends, for my family and for myself I’m able to trust in our relationship. With others, like my ex, like an old friend who was quite awful to me a few years ago, and another young thing that I’d adopted into my clan who turned out to be a bit nasty, I’m working on forgiving them and accepting their humanness – not for them, but for me, so I can move on with no lingering feelings of bitterness or pain or general ickiness.

I guess that’s what forgiveness and acceptance is really about, yeah? It’s about freeing oneself from the pain one has decided to feel over the actions of others (pain which is entirely normal and understandable). If those others take one’s forgiveness as an excuse to indulge in more arsehat behaviour, then that’s their responsibility entirely, and is not a reflection on the awesome person who is learning how to be even more awesome.

Time, I think. Time is the only condition to a friendship, to forgiveness, and to being human. We can’t escape it, so I guess we make it work in our favour.