Author Archives

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Higher Learning

In 1997, two years after leaving high school and a year after migrating to Australia, I entered university to study performing arts. I did my research before applying for universities, auditioning for a few courses that sort of offered what I was looking for, but my first preference was Monash University’s Bachelor of Performing Arts. It was, at that time (and still is, I believe), the only university course specialising in theatre and performance. I wasn’t interested in going to uni to get any degree, I wanted to study theatre. That’s it.

In 1998, I got sick in the head so I deferred for a year. In 1999, I completed my second year of uni. In the year 2000, I got sick again, both in the head and in the cervix (I had early stage cancer). I deferred indefinitely.

Early in 2007, having spent all that time doing things other than acting, I went to see Peter Fitzpatrick who was the head of the theatre department at the time. He still remembered me six years later, calling me by name as I entered his office. I told him I wanted to come back to school. He said he’d be delighted to have me. In mid 2008, I finally completed my degree and went on to achieve First Class Honours in 2009, completing the Graduate Ensemble honours year, where I trained under Peter Oyston.

I have been working steadily as an actor since then, often with people I met through that course. I am a member of two companies – Before Shot and Quiet Little Fox – both of which with people I met through that course. My life has completely changed in that I left an industry I hated and entered into a vocation that has my heart, soul and intellect utterly committed to it. I achieved that mainly due to that course. Getting my degree pretty much saved my life.

A few days ago, I heard that Monash University may be discontinuing the Bachelor of Performing Arts (known as BPA), with no intake of new students in 2014.

My BPA peeps

My BPA peeps

Now, please remember that this is the only course of its kind in Melbourne. Some universities in Melbourne have three year acting courses, or offer theatre studies as a stream in an Arts degree, but BPA is the only degree that is specifically designed as an all-encompassing theatre and performance degree. Look, the degree has its problems, it’s not perfect. However, I am a big believer in getting whatever you can out of anything you do, and I took some amazing skills and knowledge away with me when I graduated.

Now, I’m not a director. I’m not a playwright, although I’ve written plays. I’m not a stage manager, or a lighting designer, or any of those ultra cool things that I wish I had more knowledge of (I sometimes didn’t pay attention in class because I’m slack) and can therefore do and get paid for. I’m intelligent but not particularly academic. I haven’t worked for big and impressive companies. I’m just an actor and occasional composer, but I’m a very good actor/composer who knows theatre, who understands theatre, who appreciates the craft of theatre and even film (because I studied that too) all thanks to that degree. The BPA is the only reason I went to university, and it was the best thing I could have done to change the course of my life, something that desperately needed to happen.

My Graduate Ensemble peeps

My Graduate Ensemble peeps

There seems to be a lot of focus by politicians (and university board members, let’s face it) on tertiary education that leads to employment, particularly in sectors that are lacking skilled workers. They want to put money towards training that gives money back to them. Hey, that’s great, train up them students, get ’em working, boost our economy, rah rah rah! But honestly, if you want me to either kill myself or turn into a raging alcoholic, drug-fueled misfit, train me in a skill I don’t want to make me work in a job I have no interest in which will eventually make me hate my life. We are not all wired the same way, and I think it’s dangerous to enforce in society a directive in which art is deemed unnecessary, therefore not worthy of finance, support or an education in. We must have artists, just as we must have doctors and nurses and teachers and vets and lawyers and scientists. And how about taxi drivers and postal workers and cleaners and garbage persons and other “non-skilled” professions? I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. In my ever-so-humble opinion, education is not just about making people employable. It’s not even just about making people smarter. It’s about teaching people to use their minds, to discover the world in their own heads to such a point that they’re excited about discovering the world outside their own experiences.

No, my degree did not guarantee me a job. Yes, I’m still working three jobs outside of acting to pay my rent. Yes, it will take me a while to make a living solely from acting, but I am a much more functional member of society with my degree than without it, even if it’s not tailored to an industry that is lacking skilled workers. And I am capable of such great things now that my mind has been expanded through that awesome thing called education.

I will write an email to the vice chancellor at Monash, imploring him to reconsider the decision to cut the BPA. I have no impressive achievements to offer as incentive; my resume is full to bursting, but not particularly remarkable. But I have a resume. I have training. I have a vocation and a desire to make art that will maybe change the world, or maybe just one person. That’s enough, surely.

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Delving Into the Dark

I have a confession to make that may seem incongruous given what I do for a living: I don’t particularly enjoy going to the theatre. It’s not that I don’t like the theatre, I do. I like being in it, I love acting, I love creating, I love bump in and rehearsals and homework and learning lines … okay, I don’t really like learning lines, but being in the theatre; being in a show is really the only time that I’m truly happy.

But I don’t like going to see theatre, really. Often. At all. My reasoning is quite domestic, to be honest. When I’m not doing stuff, I’m essentially a lazy person, and getting up out of bed or off the couch to put on clothes and a face, leave the house and go sit on oftentimes uncomfortable chairs for one to three hours is sometimes just too much effort and I can’t be bothered. My other reasons are somewhat cynical; a lot of the theatre I see – made by people I know and those I don’t – I consider to be self-indulgent wank (hey, I’m being reeeeeally honest here), boring, or just another rehashing of stories I’ve heard before. I don’t like watching actors who suck, and I don’t like good actors being used to prove to a director how good he or she thinks she or he is. And this is across the board, folks. This is everything from independent theatre to community theatre to Fringe Festivals to MTC shows to Melbourne’s “Broadway” scene.

But here I am, ranting again, probably sounding like an arsehat who thinks that all theatre is shit unless I’m in it. I’ve seen some good theatre, yes, even excellent theatre, but it’s very rare that I’ve seen theatre that viscerally affects me, and that’s the theatre I like. That’s the theatre that engages me; where I’m not sitting in the audience thinking “I could have acted that better,” or “godsdamn it, when is this gonna end?” but rather, where my snarky little ego is quiet, and I am completely focused on what’s happening on stage.

I saw that kind of theatre last night. It was a show called Columbine, based on the high school massacre back in the late 90s and it was put on at the student theatre of my old university and it was amazing.

The writer/director (or, as he likes to call himself, the Cobbler, as in he just “cobbled together bits and pieces” as verbatim theatre usually requires its cast and crew to do) had been wanting to this show for years, and when given the opportunity to, decided to work with students (my gods, what I would give to have had an opportunity to perform in something like this when I was a younger actor! It would have shaped my understanding of my craft in ways indescribable).

The director (Cobbler), Daniel, is one of my closest friends, so I won’t gush too much about his work, but I will say this: as an artist he has never shied away from telling the difficult stories; the confronting and uncomfortable truths about human behaviour. He has been criticised, at times severely, for the subject choices of his plays in the past because they were so stark and desolate and honest about really horrific things, namely child murder, cannibalism and now, school shootings.

I have a deep fascination with the darkness of human psychology that simultaneously thrills and repels me. I want to understand what makes these people commit these acts, because I can’t imagine how anyone who is not a sociopath or a psychopath could want to murder other people. How could “ordinary” people – teenagers! – perpetrate such atrocious acts and not conceive the effect of these actions upon their own souls and on those around them.

So does my friend Daniel. He created a piece of theatre that very respectfully but firmly explored the events that led up to and took place at Columbine High School, and I came out of the theatre affected.

Affected. Not disturbed, not distressed, not horrified. Affected. Affected in a way that I can’t even really put into words. It was brave, quite simply. The student actors were courageous and engaged and committed and displayed the all attributes I look for in an actor. They were not all the best actors, granted, but I didn’t care. I was right there with every single one of them on that stage, and I felt everything they did. The show was not perfect either. It was slightly over-long and a touch clunky in some areas (issues Daniel is aware of and will fix for the remount), but again, I didn’t care. I was taken into this world and I came out of it a little altered.

That’s the theatre I want to see. Not all the time ’cause I likes to have me a good laugh at the theatre sometimes, but this is the stuff that excites me, that reminds me why I love theatre acting so much, and how it is such an immediate and powerful medium for presenting the thorny issues and raising the questions that need to be raised.

Well done, Daniel. Well done to all my friends who are brave enough to scrutinise and question and probe through this amazing instrument called theatre. I approve.

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Same Love

I’ve blogged about marriage equality before. Yep, I’m gonna do it again ‘cause there’s nothing I love more than whipping that proverbial horse until it’s broken and bleeding on the ground, staring up at me with those pleading eyes that are asking me, ‘why? Why??’

Anyway, I digress.

I went to a lesbian wedding yesterday. A Jewish lesbian wedding in fact, that was quite religious, albeit progressively so. It was held in a synagogue with the smashing of the glass and the walking around in circles and everything. You could have knocked me down with a feather when God didn’t come stomping down out of the sky to smite us all for celebrating this sacrilegious besmirching of the sanctity of marriage. No thunderbolts of lightning or evil laughter emanating from the pits of Hades. Nothing. I was a little disappointed.

I lie, I wasn’t disappointed at all. It was one of the most beautiful, moving, divine weddings I have ever been to. Both brides were beaming and exquisite, both sets of parents were bursting with pride, the love and commitment was evident and obvious in both the couple and the congregation. Many tears were shed, including my own. It was, quite simply, a celebration of the love and bond between two people who chose to be together, and were making a commitment to choosing each other for many years to come.

Isn’t that what marriage is about?

You know, it’s interesting, I’ve been to three gay weddings in the last five years, my father’s included, and one thing that is common with all three of them, besides the homosexual thing, is the very solid choice that these people have made to be together. They weren’t doing it to please their parents, or because it was expected by their communities, or because they wanted to prove something. They did it because they loved the person they were marrying and they wanted to celebrate that. That’s my definition of marriage, and why the little romantic that’s buried deep, deeeep inside me still wants to have a partnership that fits that paradigm, ‘cause yeah, I wanna get married one day. It really doesn’t matter to me whether I marry a man or a woman, so long as that person and I love each other like my just-married friends showed me they loved each other yesterday.

So, get up marriage equality horse. Have a drink, take a painkiller and saddle up. ‘Cause I’ll be riding you until Australia catches up with the rest of the cool countries in the world (like New Zealand, ahem) who realise we’re not free until we’re equal.

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The Child Who Knew Too Much

So, another Catholic priest has been arrested after police investigated an online child pornography ring in Sydney. The FBI has just freed 105 children from a child prostitution ring in the US. There is an increase in sexual abuse of indigenous kids in rural and outback Australia. Every day there seems to be more and more reports of children being sexually molested by people in positions of power, by priests, by neighbours, teachers, uncles, fathers – you name it.

Studies say children who have been sexually abused can experience depression, anxiety, guilt, fear, sexual dysfunction, withdrawal, and acting out. They can suffer from sleep disturbances, eating problems, and non-participation in school and social activities. Some kids stop trying at life. Other kids try too hard.

Adult victims of child abuse can suffer from high levels of anxiety which can result in alcoholism, drug abuse, anxiety attacks, borderline personality disorders, insomnia and depression. Victims can go on to engage in high risk sexual behaviour, including prostitution.

Let me tell you what happened to me. I became extremely depressed as a child, but was unable to articulate what had happened until I was 12. The disclosure was not met with a great deal of acceptance by my family. As a teenager, I began to display borderline tendencies and started to cut myself. I developed bulimia. Simultaneously, I became an over-achiever at school, committing myself to several extra-curricular activities at once in an effort to occupy my mind until I burned out at 17 and almost failed Seventh Form.

Outside of working in the sex industry, which you all know about, I would occasionally have indiscriminate and sometimes unsafe sex with random men and women. It’s actually quite amazing that I didn’t catch a sexually transmitted infection. That behaviour, together with the borderline traits and obsessive compulsive tendencies continued well into my adulthood, and still exist in much less severity to this day.

My parents live with an undisclosed sense of guilt that they couldn’t prevent the abuse from happening to me. We can’t really talk about it, simply because I don’t want them to feel that I’m making them responsible, and they don’t really know what to say. My brothers are the same.

My self worth and value is rooted firmly in my sexual attractiveness. I tend to use sex as a bargaining tool; as a weapon; as my armour. I have been working to offset this for a number of years. It’s hard, but I’m much, much better than I was.

Today at rehearsal, there were some child rape jokes thrown around. I am not angry at those who perpetrated these jokes because it occurred in a context that is difficult to explain. Needless to say, I had to walk out of rehearsal because it broke my head. And finally cemented home a realisation:

I will never get over being sexually molested as a child.

I have healed immensely and have worked very, very hard to not let that trauma impede on my everyday life. I am a very functional member of society, and my experiences have provided me with a very thick skin most of the time. I do not dwell on it, or cast myself as a victim in life’s drama. But it’s there. All the time, whether I acknowledge it or not. Today it’s very much at the forefront of my mind. And it hurts.

Child abuse destroys lives. It’s a topic that is drowning in shame and outrage and guilt and pain and it has to stop. Of course, it never will, because humans can be cruel and sadistic and nasty and apathetic of what impact their actions can have on others, so we have to be prepared to nurture and comfort and support and help heal those who have suffered this horrible, horrible experience.

My love and my heart goes out to all survivors of child sexual abuse. I’m feeling your pain right now because it is also my own.

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Sexy Bitch

I recently posted on my Facebook wall that I’ve never been asked out on a date by a man. I’ve been asked out twice by women and I’ve asked guys out on dates (albeit a “I’ve got tickets to this thing, do you wanna come too” type dealie), and I’ve gone on a woefully small amount of dates (most of which were disastrous), but I’ve never actually been courted by a man. Most of my relationships with men have consisted of: we meet, we flirt, pretty soon after we have sex and then boom! We’re together. Our getting-to-know-each-other time has been spent in the bedroom.

After posting this confession I received a slew of messages from men who told me that I was sexy and exciting and beautiful and that they’d love to do things to me and I should be asked out often. One was an old friend who wanted to make me feel better (and it was lovely and appreciated), others were old boyfriends who should know better. It may be that I’m old, suspicious and cynical, but they all seemed to be saying the same thing: “I want to root you. Doesn’t that make you feel good about yourself?”

Now look, sex is great. I love sex. I love talking about it, thinking about it and I love doing it. I get better at it and love it more the older I get. I appreciate that some people find me sexy – of all the hang ups I have about myself, that’s one thing that I know I’ve got going on. I’m also fascinated with sexuality from a context that is purely academic. I’m intrigued by human psychosexual behaviour; what makes people prefer certain types of sex, why people have sex that they don’t enjoy, why people don’t tell their partners how to do them the way they like, etc etc.

But, you know what? There’s more to me than that. I like being sexy, but I also like cross-stitch and gardening and cats and obsessively cleaning things and reading and spiritual existentialism and dream interpretation and mowing the lawns and all sorts of unsexy stuff.

I read this article recently on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl phenomenon. You know the one, the girl who is epitomised by Zooey Deschanel in those revolting movies about the uptight guy who is loosened up by the kooky artist/photographer/yoga instructor who teaches him how to be free with her infectious smile and her nauseating sense of whimsy. Yeah, well I’m not her, but the author made a point that these girls (not women, girls) so judiciously represented in these movies and television shows by the likes of Ms Deschanel (whose whimsical face I’d like to slap, quite frankly) are so two dimensional in their kookiness that they’re no longer human. Therefore the men who are attracted to the real world version of these women are shocked to discover that their dream girl is actually a real person with real needs and real problems.

Sex Goddess Photography by Christian Callaghan

Sex Goddess
Photography by Christian Callaghan

As I mentioned above, I’m not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I’m a Sexy Psycho “Real” Woman and I teach men how to free their sexuality and I’m always looking hot and booby and curvy and I’m always strong and in control and slightly dangerous and I’ve lived – really lived – an audacious life outside of the norm. I’m the woman who intimidates men (and their mothers) and I’m the best fuck they’ve ever had.

Okay. I’ll buy that. I’ll wear it even, ’cause it’s true.

To a point.

I also do other stuff. I grieve when a friend dies. I cry at sad movies. I like receiving flowers. I’m nice to people, I snort when I laugh, I use big words because I’m well-read, and pictures of baby animals make me gooey. I fart, I belch, I pick my nose with a tissue, I get pimples on my butt, I have to regularly wax my moustache, I get ingrowns on my bikini line and I have wrinkles. I am a real person who would like to be wooed not just because there might be sex at the end of the night, but also because I’m lovely and interesting and good to know. I’m a little tired of being the novelty, the ex hooker with a million mental health issues and a gay dad. It’s not a sensation to be oohed and aahed at, it’s the life I have lived. It is mine and it exists beyond the scope of others’ entertainment.

Now, I’m aware that I may sound a little like a hypocrite, as I have bared my internal naughty bits for the world to see on numerous occasions. I can see how that could be interpreted as some sensationalist attention-seeking “look at me and how fucked up yet awesome I am” palaver. Yes, I totally agree, but please understand that my intention is to show the human being behind the sensation. Because there is one there. There’s a heart behind the tits, and a brain connected to the mouth, and I’ll stop before I say anything weird about my vagina.

Somewhere out there is a man (or woman) who has the balls (or tits) to see this and appreciate it. Not just for me, but for all the manic pixie dream girls, and the sexy psycho “real” women, and the quiet studious nerd ladies, and even the misunderstood emo goth girls – no capitals because we’re all real people. The capitalised archetypes only belong in really bad romcom movies.

So yeah, I’ll teach you a thing or two in the bedroom, but only if you’ve taken the time to discover my favourite colour, among many other things.

Photography by Christopher Bryant

Photography by Christopher Bryant

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Keep It Together Through The Arse Pain

Disclaimer! The following post mentions my bottom and poop a lot. If you don’t want to read about my bottom or poop, you’re missing out.

Two weeks ago
Two days ago I had a haemmorhoidectomy, which is a very simple surgical procedure to remove one’s haemmorhoids. It may be a simple procedure, but it’s brutal: it involves cutting the haemmorhoid out – not banding it, not asking it politely to leave, cutting.

The pain is indescribable. It’s a stinging pain that no matter how many painkillers I take, it never quite goes away. As I remarked to my housemate this morning, it’s like toothache of the arse. Haemmorhoids themselves are bad enough, the pain of a bad outbreak affects all other areas of the body, radiating out from the core. It hurts to cough, to laugh, to sit, to run. This pain is like a bad haemmorhoid outbreak times fifty. I have twice woken up at 3am sobbing from that intense hurt that I can’t get away from. Breaking wind is a mixture of sharp stabby mc ow ow and blessed relief. I am totally terrified to poop. I have even considered not eating because frankly, dying is preferable to pooping right now. I pooped this morning and almost passed out from the agony. It felt like the creature from Alien was trying to escape out my arse. I sobbed very loudly for a good 40 minutes afterward.

The point of this very graphic and personal treatise on the state of my behind is that I will be bed-bound for at least a week, possibly as long as a month, and this will afford me a great deal of time to reflect on things. Let it begin.

Today
I went back to work today after two weeks of the most excrutiating pain I have ever experienced. I fully intended to use those two weeks to do some internal self-improvement, to spring clean the inside of my head. I kinda did, but not through any deliberate thought processes. My head did it all by itself.

That’s the thing about pain. It’s very focusing. I was totally and completely present the entire time because no matter how many Endone I took, the pain was demanding my attention, insisting that I stay in my body, not deviate from experiencing every twinge, stab, and wrench of agony. I wrote this on my Facebook wall just after surgery:

I have never before experienced a pain like this: thick, oozing and faithful, roiling slowly along the cracked floor of my reception chamber, making its insidious presence felt, allowing no respite. It is constant. Steadfast. It has laid its anchors down and it’s here to stay.

Poetic, huh?

I’m rambling a lot, but what I’ve discovered is that I’m capable of withstanding just about anything, be it physical or mental pain, trauma, needles, the indignity of passing out on the toilet, a broken heart, loneliness, rejection, weight gain, getting older, stubbing my toe, not knowing the right thing to say to a friend in need, being wrong, succeeding, failing … you name it. It hurts. It all hurts. But it hasn’t killed me yet, and as Neil Finn says, everything is good for you if it doesn’t kill you.

Pain is one of our greatest fears next to death. And yet pain can teach us so much. It doesn’t mean we have to like it, but it’s not pointless.

Aside by

Depression is the great clarifier. It brings you resolutely and firmly into the present moment. You don’t want to think about the happier times because it depresses you that you’re not happy. You don’t want to remember the crappier times because that just sends you deeper into the muck and the mire. You can’t think about the future because you don’t believe you have one. You are, quite simply, rooted to the now; sitting in it, entirely breathing, thinking, feeling, fucking, hating, experiencing the absolute reality of the moment you’re in. Right now. Yeah, the now, the point of power.

Powerfully awful and true and authentic and real. And happening. The only way to get through it is to feel it, however agonising or, conversely, numbing it is. So I am. So much so that I have to write in the second person. To own this, all this that I’ve just written would be too much. It’s enough that I’m present.

It’s almost a gift, in a way. That presentness. Almost.

Aside

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Share And Share Alike

I share an awful lot on Facebook. I share how funny I am, how smart I am, how socially aware, how much I’m awesome at life and conversely, how much I suck at it. I share my ups and downs, my heartbreak, my successes, and all the things that make up the online persona that is me (which is not unlike the real world persona, just clarifying).

There are those who criticise me for this, that I should perhaps not be so open so publicly (it’s a common criticism, as those who have read this blog will know). I get my back up about it for a number of reasons:

1. I don’t like being told what to do with regards to the way I choose to live my life, particularly by those significantly younger than me. I figure I’ve been around the block enough times to know how to life, and if I’m having trouble doing the life thing, I am self aware enough to acknowledge it and ask for advice.

2. I very rarely share about other people, and if I do, I don’t use names and I’m usually having a passive aggressive rant about a person who isn’t on Facebook anyway.

3. I am subconciously afraid that maybe these critics are right, maybe I do share too much. Why else would I get so defensive about it?

Look, there are times when I post and then realise seconds later that I perhaps shouldn’t have, so I delete it. Then there are times when I think I’ve overshared, but then the response to said share is one of recognition and gratitude that “someone else is as fucked up as I am!” I am not going to pretend that I’ve got my shit sorted, or that I’m never wrong, or that I’m always level-headed, so I’ll talk about my haemmorhoids and my sore boobs and how grumpy I feel ’cause I’ve got my period, and so on. I’m getting older, things are starting to fray at the edges. And I like to whinge occasionally.

Just yesterday I found out my cervical dysplasia is back. Cervical dysplasia is abnormal cell activity on the surface of the cervix, caused by the HPV virus, or by having multiple partners over an extended period of time, or having sex before the age of 18, or a combination of any of the above. I’ve dealt with it a number of times before, all with varying levels of seriousness, all successfully with surgery. It’s back again, however, and last night I was having a hard time coping with the idea that maybe my behaviour earlier in life (as the nasty voice in my head calls it, my “whoring around” – that voice is a bitch) has caused this. I know, in the cold light of day, that there is no point tearing myself up over something I can’t change, but at 11.30 at night, by myself in my room, it’s pretty overwhelming to deal with.

And that’s the point of this rant, really. I’m alone a lot of the time. I have one family member in this country and he lives an hour and a half drive away. He’s also 65 and incredibly busy and will probably be asleep at 11.30 at night, so won’t answer the phone. I no longer have a partner to look after me when I need it (not that the last one was very good at that, bless his cotton socks. Well, actually, that’s not fair, he was getting better at it. Then he dumped me), and my friends live away from me and have their own stuff to deal with. I guess I’m not the sort of person that a lot of people think needs taking care of (which is fine by me) or maybe there’s the assumption that I already have someone to look after me when I’m sick, sad, grieving, whatever. But I don’t. And that’s okay.

It’s okay, because that’s when I share on social media. I share because I need to tell someone I’m not doing great, but I know I’ll be fine eventually so I don’t necessarily need to have a three-hour long conversation to realise that. Just the knowledge that someone out there in cyber land is thinking of me and knows what’s going on is enough. When I do need to talk, I call my Dad in the daytime when I’m not going to sob in his ear and make him worry about me when I’m an hour and a half drive away, or I call my bestie, or talk to my older lady-boss. And I share because that’s what I do. No other reason, really. It’s just what I do.

So, to my detractors, thank you for your opinion. When you get to my age, maybe I’ll actually pay attention to you. In the meantime, go live your life, learn from it and then maybe even share it. Warts and all.

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Fifteen Assumptions That Might Be Useful To Make

Exactly what I need to read right now.

Anne Thériault's avatarThe Belle Jar

1. Assume that you are loved.

2. Assume that those who love you find some kind of value in you and the things you do.

3. Assume, however, that you don’t need to be valuable in order to be worthy of love.

4. Assume that there is no one out there keeping a tally of all of your failings, ready to throw it in your face when you’re either feeling too good or too awful about yourself.

5. Assume that if anyone actually is keeping a tally of all your failings, that act says more about them than it does about you.

6. Assume that you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time; maybe not even some of the people some of the time.

7. Assume that you will, over the course of your life, sometimes anger or disappoint the people you love.

8. Assume that…

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Relationship Status

How many chances is too many? How many times can one turn the other cheek? They say a leopard never changes its spots, but considering I’ve changed mine a number of times (stripes are slimming) I would assume others can too.

About ten years ago, I was in a relationship with a heroin addict that lasted for approximately 5 years. I did not take heroin – hated it, in fact – but this did not stop me from loving her. I went back to her time and time again, forgave her every transgression, cried and ranted and raved at her, but I had faith that my continued love and support would eventually make her see the light.

She did see the light, but not because of me. She saw it because she wanted to. All I succeeded in doing was laying myself open for punishment. I kept smacking my head against the proverbial wall whilst wondering why I had a headache. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, because it made it very clear to me that I have no responsibility for saving anyone else. In the process of “saving” her, I damned myself. Again, not a bad thing to experience, but one would think I would learn not to do it again.

I did do it again, not to the same extreme, but I totally did it. I must admit, I am now aware that I have a habit of throwing myself in front of the metaphorical bus for love. My tactic for keeping a relationship going is to keep giving, even when I have been sucked dry and am lying in a puddle of my own delicious tears, a desiccated, useless husk. ‘This person treats me like shit even though I am giving as much love as I can to them. I know! I’ll give more!’

Now that’s smart.

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When I was a teenager, I read this book, Women Who Love Too Much, because “if being in love means being in pain, you need to read this book!” (I was a teenager. Everything is painful. Duh.) It talked about co-dependence, addiction to relationships, giving up your own life for the sake of your partner’s, making the other person the centre of your universe, all the stuff that makes me want to regurgitate my cookies. But, when I think about it, I know that I put up with a hell of a lot of bad behaviour from a partner because I tell myself I like to be understanding and supportive, that I accept their foibles and faults, and ultimately I expect to be given the same in return. Unfortunately, compassion, understanding, and empathy are sometimes taken advantage of and seen as an excuse to continue the behaviour. Enabling, if you will. ‘She’s so understanding and forgiving. That means I can do it again and she’ll just keep forgiving me!! Hooray!’

Yeah, hoo frickin’ ray.

So yes, I forgive and I support and I understand that other person and that other person says all these lovely things about me being lovely and then goes away and ignores me and forgets that I exist and I’m left feeling like the idiot with egg on her face and a big sign saying KICK ME on her back. I don’t believe I’m crap at relationships. A failed relationship does not a failure of a person make, but I see now how so goddamned hard it is to get it right! You have to choose the right person, first of all, which is not as easy as it sounds. And really, I don’t think any of us can control who we fall in love with, so that point is moot. You have to be comfortable and in love with yourself before you can be in love with someone else as well, and who’s got that down pat? Then you have to be sexually compatible with the other person (which is soooooo very important to me) which is sometimes difficult because so many people have such hang ups about sex. Then you have to have a relationship agreement as to whether you’re monogamous, polyamorous, open, closed, etc etc. Then there’s being at the same place in life for marriage and babies (if you want that), or mortgages and holidays (if you want that), or living in India for a year, or even just living in the same house! It’s insane, and it can’t be planned, and it can’t be figured out because nothing about love is logical and relationships are confusing and nobody knows the right way to do it!!

And yet, human beings fall in and out of love, get married, get divorced, have flings, become fuck buddies, post “it’s complicated” statuses all the time. And a few of them actually get it right, whatever it is, even if only for a short time. So, I’m holding out hope that if I ever do end up spending a significant amount of time with someone who is worthy of all that love I seem to keep excreting all over everything, that I get it right. Even if only for a short time. ‘Cause right now, it all seems a little too hard.