Category Archives: Not Acting

Aside by

This is an angry rant. Something I have to get off my chest once and for all and then I won’t waste any more time or energy on this bullshit.

Am I okay? No, I’m not.

I wish I had never met you. I wish I had never given you my heart. I wish I hadn’t fallen so hard for you. I wish I had never taken you home to my country to meet my family. Do you know that no one in my life EVER has met my entire family? No one, not friends, not partners, not even school friends have met both my brothers and my mother and father much less my extended family. No one. Except you. And now, with my mum gone, no one will again.

I wish I had never pinned my future on you, talked about kids, dreamed about where we’d live. I wish I had never believed you when you said my heart was safe with you. I wish I had never trusted you with my darkest secrets and fears. I wish I hadn’t relaxed with you.

I wish I had never married you.

I wish I hadn’t wasted all those beautiful and special experiences on you, you who didn’t appreciate or respect how so very important they were to me. You didn’t care.

I wish I knew how I had got it so collosally wrong when everything in me believed you were the one. I wasn’t naive when I met you, but I got it so wrong.

They say these things happen to teach us something. Well, all you taught me is that love doesn’t exist. All you taught me is that no one can be trusted. All you taught me is that I’m better off alone.

I had hope before you. I trusted before you. I saw the best in people before you. Now I’m closed off and cold and brittle. This is your legacy. You have ensured that no one will feel the depth of my love for a very, very long time.

But I’m so silly, because you don’t care about any of this. You don’t care about what you did to me. Our relationship was never about us, it was always about you. Even now, it’s about you. You didn’t love me. If you did, you would have never done those things to me. If you did, you would have left me alone.

So good luck. Good luck with your new, “completely normal” bedfellow, after all the lies and bullshit you told me about not being ready for a relationship. Good luck with not abusing her like you did me, and the woman before me. Good luck in not fucking it up like you did your marriage. A marriage that was only sacred to one of us.

Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You’re not. Don’t tell me you care. You don’t. I am a light that showed you the way and now it is lost to you. And you don’t even know how valuable it was, you narcissistic fuck.

You are dead to me.

Just In To Leave Her

by

A Woman of Wonder

I miss something that doesn’t exist. A whisper, a feeling, a brush of a hand. It used to be so solid, so clear. Now it’s fuzzy and distant, this thing I miss. It’s like trying to embrace a cloud.

I took my first plane trip when I was 11. My brothers and I flew over to Australia to see my dad. As we flew I looked out the airplane window and imagined I was flying through the clouds, bouncing off each one like they were cotton balls. My mother had parachuted through a cloud back in her Navy days. She described it as passing through damp gossamer. Clouds have no substance, she told me. They’re like dreams.

On long road trips past oceans, I’d imagine the sea had frozen and I was ice skating over the waves. It gave me a feeling of freedom and power to believe that on some plane of existence I could conquer the impossible. 10 year old me could command the weather, use my ridiculously long hair as lightning, stop an oncoming train with a look. In my mind, I was unstoppable.

It should be no surprise that Wonder Woman was my first crush as a kid. I became obsessed with her at the age of 5. She encapsulates everything I want to be: strong, fast, awesome boobs, a lasso of truth, the ability to run in heels and an innate capacity to take no shit. She’s a saviour with good and honest morals and values. She’ll cut a bitch, but only if that bitch is violating the liberty of someone else. Also, she likes girls and boys, but that’s besides the point.

Being my own version of Wonder Woman is intoxicating, particularly when someone else is prepared to be Steve (or Stephanie) Trevor. Being the one who saves the day is empowering and satisfying and ego stroking and extremely dangerous. It lulls one into a false sense of invulnerability, which then makes the inevitable fall from the messiah pedestal that much more painful.

The thing about superheroes is, they don’t exist. I mean, yes, there are extraordinary people who do amazing, miraculous things, but they’re just people. No capes, no superpowers. No one can leap tall buildings in a single bound. If only. There are plenty of damsels and dudes in distress, though, that fuel the need for superheroes. But it’s false. No one can save anyone else. We can only rescue ourselves, truth be told, and I used all the skills I learned in my journey through life for the one I loved, all the while forgetting that even Batman was not always everybody’s favourite guy in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne had to eventually acknowledge that saving the day was not going to take away his trauma.

Growing up has a tendency to curb those thoughts of indestructibility, to transform them into things more attainable. There’s always been a part of my mind, however, that has believed that the improbable is still possible. The Universe has a way of making things happen along a path we least expect. Goals can be achieved, dreams can come true.

Ah, yes. Those dreams again. Paper thin and fragile. Unsubstantial and deceptive, like a cloud. Like you turned out to be. My cumulonimbus. I believed in those dreams, in those clouds of my youth. I allowed myself to be swept up in the fantasy, in the idea that me and my love could overcome anything, that the Wonder Woman inside me would stay vigilant and true. It could have, but it didn’t exist. I miss a thing that didn’t exist. I miss my Paradise Island. I miss you – not the victim you, not the damsel you, certainly not the abusive you, but the version of you that was loving and strong and generous and kind and honest. Sadly, that version you gave to me was as false as it was true. What I felt was truth. Who I felt it for wasn’t.

So, my heart breaks one last time as I reach for those flimsy, filmy illusions, wishing so hard that they were real. Wishing I could grasp them to my heart because they were so beautiful. My belief in making the impossible probable hasn’t died. I’m sure you didn’t intend for your abuse of my love to do that, any more than my saviour complex was intended to deny you your autonomy. I like to think you’re not aware of what you do to people. I guess I’ll never know.

But, it’s no one else’s concern, my awakening. It is mine. My renewal is my responsibility. For probably the first time in my life, I’m being my own superhero. I’m saving myself and although I have wise, wonderful, pull-no-punches honest friends and family to guide me, I’m doing it alone.

And it feels so good.

 

by

I’m Still Here

CW: Suicide.

I called the CAT team tonight. There are a couple of reasons why I did that. Firstly, because I really, really wanted to die. Secondly, because I wanted to die but I didn’t want to disrespect the people whose house I’m staying in by ending my life in their home. Thirdly, because I made a promise to my friends that I would reach out if things got bad. Fourthly, because I didn’t want to burden my friends with another night of me sobbing on the couch.

I’m on a ridiculous amount of anti-depressants, and they’re probably going to go up in dose this week. I see my therapist regularly. I have wonderful, supportive, amazing friends who love me and tell me so all the time. I have a talent – many talents, actually – that I’m proud of and work on constantly. I have moments of awesomeness. I have moments of being babin’. I’m fairly intelligent, I’m quite funny, I’m fun to be around. But I consistently seem to fall in love with people who don’t believe I’m worth fighting for. And right now, I’m very, very alone.

I’ve never really had a problem with being alone. But now, it looms. It’s crushing. My family, whom I adore, are away from me in other countries and on other plains. There is nothing more lonely than being surrounded by incredible people, but only wanting the company of one. And when that one proclaims that they no longer have love for you, that in essence, you’re not worth the fight, suddenly the world seems very large and expansive and empty.

It’s an odd feeling to know that I’m worthy and deserving of love and happiness and all that entails, but feeling so lost and hollow that that knowledge seems meaningless. I, once so independent and fearsome in my knowledge of my place in the world, am now directionless. Without a home, without my beloved cats who are not doing well without me, without my family, I’ve been very, veeeery slowly hauling myself up a very steep hill, all the while impatient to be settled again, to be over and done with her, to be happily single, living the life of my dreams. Unfortunately, the realisation of that dream seems to be moving further and further away, like when you try to run down a hallway in a nightmare but it keeps stretching on away from you.

I don’t feel like this because my marriage ended. That hurts, yes, but it’s not the reason I am teetering at the edge of the pit. I feel like this because I never saw it coming. I trust my intuition keenly, it’s never steered me wrong. But this time it gave me no warning. I had relaxed – maybe a little too much, but I finally felt safe.

And then I wasn’t.

I feel like this because it all seems so cruel. I didn’t deserve any of what has happened to me. I’m not blaming anyone, because I’m tired of that pointless circular game. I’m usually the type of person who will cry and wail when I’m hurt, but then I’ll pick myself up, dust myself off, acknowledge the part I had to play in why things fucked up, and with that acknowledgement, things seem to move on naturally. Awesome things happen, and suddenly I find myself not grieving anymore. This time, though, it’s different, and I’m struggling. I’ve acknowledged and acknowledged and acknowledged, but I still feel so very lost.

I was doing fine. I actually was doing really fine, and then something happened and I rolled back down the steep hill, bumping and grazing myself along the way. I didn’t fall down as far as I was when I started, but it’s a significant drop. I don’t have the energy to start heaving my way back up that bloody stupid hill, but I can’t stay here. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m relying on other people so much that I feel like I might forget my own autonomy. I don’t trust anyone. I still have a lot of love, but my wall is getting higher and thicker and I feel myself hardening and cracking like cheap paint in the sun. This feels bad. It feels so bad, and nothing I’m doing seems to be helping, and I’m really, really scared.

I had made peace with suicidal ideation just before everything fell apart, and then it’s like the Universe went “okay then, let’s test that theory.” Fucking Universe and its experiencing itself through me in a way that’s not starry and delightfully magickal. Fuck it.

Do I really want to die? Obviously not completely, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to write this. But the desire to be with my mum, to be away from this endless darkness, to be free from this sticky, sickening pain is so great that sometimes I have to call the CAT team. And that sucks.

I’m sharing this because writing about it whilst in the thick of it helps, and also because a friend of mine once told me that she had spent an afternoon reading every single post on my blog and it helped her to feel less alone. I know I’m not the only one out there in the pit.

We’re okay. We’re still here.

by

Just Say Yes

 

Yes folks, it’s that time again! It’s that time to pull out my dusty old copy of the Gay Agenda, turn to page 246 of sub-section 39b (the Bi Agenda) and wax rhetoric about marriage equality! Yay, that old chestnut.

Australia, while a wonderful country in many ways, is a little bit backward. Besides the rampant racism and xenophobia, the alarming domestic violence rate, and the existence of XXXX beer, Australia is the land of the seemingly homophobic government. Tim Minchin puts it best in his latest online offering, so I won’t go into why it’s ridiculous that marriage equality isn’t legal. But let me just explore our options here.

In 2004 John Howard’s Liberal government introduced the Marriage Amendment Bill, changing the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act 1961 to state, “Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. Certain unions are not marriages. A union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman; must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia” (source). What that means is that the government pretty much sanctioned discrimination based on sexual preference and it was done without consulting the Australian people.

In 2013, however, the High Court found that the Constitutional standpoint of marriage included same sex couples and that basically the federal Parliament has the power to decide to whether same sex couples have the right to marry. Instead, good ol’ Malcolm Turnbull has decided that we should have a plebiscite, even though his government can pass the law if they choose to.

What’s a plebiscite? Well, time to get my nerd on. A plebiscite (ˈplɛbɪsʌɪt,ˈplɛbɪsɪt/) derives from the mid 16th century: from French plébiscite, from Latin plebiscitum, from plebs, pleb- ‘the common people’ + scitum ‘decree’ (from sciscere ‘vote for’). The sense ‘direct vote of the whole electorate’ dates from the mid 19th century (source, Google dictionary). The word is a noun and its definition is:

  1. the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question such as a change in the constitution.
  2. a colossal waste of time and $122 million (second definition is the author’s).

Why is it a waste of time? I’ll let australianmarriageequality.org take this one: “… a free vote costs nothing. A plebiscite will become a platform for hatred and division. We elect politicians to make laws, not handball them back to voters. Issues that raise religious and moral concerns are almost always resolved by free votes in parliament, not plebiscites. A plebiscite is not binding so the issue will have to return to Parliament anyway, at which point there should be a free vote. There is more community support for a free vote than for a plebiscite, especially when voters are aware of the cost of a plebiscite.”

Kinda a no-brainer, huh?

Of course, the majority of the LGBTIQ+ community has rallied around the issue, stating that all love is equal, that it’s a human rights issue, and most importantly, that there are other far more pressing issues to put that time and money towards. We are the last developed English-speaking country in the world to legalise it. It’s embarrassing.

But there’s another facet to this issue, a less buoyant, positive, fluffy facet. Yes, love is love. Yes, we should have the right to marry whichever consenting adult we like and be happy. Yes, marriage is not about gender. But on the other side of that truly beautiful coin is the sobering reminder that things can turn shit. Marriages end, dreams die, break ups are horrible and can be really messy, and the unfortunate thing is that in Australia, there’s not a whole lot of legal support for same sex divorce. Our marriages aren’t even recognised for one thing, so it’s stay married forever, or go back to the country you got married in and become domiciled, and then apply for a costly divorce. Break ups are disruptive enough, but the added insult of not actually being able to legally divorce the person one legally married in another country means that closure is deferred, the connection to one’s ex is still active, and salt is rubbed in the open, suppurating wound.

As it stands, my marriage was not taken seriously by some members of the communities I am a part of (much in the same way that my sexuality isn’t taken seriously, but that’s a different post). Therefore, by extension, my divorce is not taken seriously, and that adds to the devastation. My need to cut ties, move on, perhaps even marry someone else is thwarted by this myopic view of a relationship that was very real (if I want to marry a man in the future, I can’t, as I will be committing bigamy in every country in which same sex marriage is recognised). It’s a cruelty on top of an already hurtful situation.

Divorce rituals are important for healing. Many cultures and religions around the world have rituals that are designed to break the bond and ease the suffering of both parties involved. People throw divorce parties. A temple in Japan allows visitors to literally flush their failing relationship down the toilet. I could do all the rituals in all the world, but still, the country I live in doesn’t give me or my ex the option to make it legal. And that’s shit.

I hope that this plebiscite will not go ahead, because there are many, many people that I love (including myself) who will be affected by the inevitably hateful ‘No’ campaign. The anti-marriage equality lobbies that we have in Australia are champing at the bit to unleash their homophobic vitriol upon my community, and this plebiscite will give them leave to do so with relish.

However, I fear that it will go ahead, so I’m throwing everything I have into campaigning for an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote – even if it isn’t binding, even if the government continue to be a pack of cowards, even if it doesn’t lead to an immediate legalising of same sex marriage, I will still vote yes. I hope all my Australian readers will do so too (mind you, if you’re a regular reader of this blog and you don’t vote yes, my mind boggles as to what you’re doing here).

Once upon a time, I campaigned and protested to have my love recognised. Now I’m campaigning to have the end of it recognised. Equality is equality.

by

A Woman Scorned

I hate liars. I hate being lied to and I hate being lied about. I have spent the last three months being lied to by a person I loved. A person I trusted has continually twisted the truth, even when asked point blank. Now she’s lying to my friends. Misrepresenting me and situations I’m in to my friends.

Now, of course, I wonder what else she has lied about. I dedicated a whole blog post to her story once and I wonder how much of it is true. I don’t know if she was an abuser. I just think she is and was an asshole.

You know, when you go through a break up, there’s always one person who feels they’re the victim, the one wronged, when in actuality it is always both who are the aggressor and the victim simultaneously. I’ve gone back over the last three and a half years and recounted all the things I did wrong. There’s a fair few of them. Mistakes, moments of anger, moments of hurt, all the while trying to deal with the horror of watching my mother die. Over the past year, though, while she was saying she was unhappy, I was throwing everything I had into her career. I put my stuff to the side as I became her manager, the director of her shows, her music editor, her publicist. I spent time, money, energy and love on her life whilst learning new things and discovering abilities I didn’t know I had. I put our marriage to the side because I thought we were strong enough for that. And I thought once it was all done, once she was on her way, we could reconnect and then it would be my turn. But no. Once it was all done, almost immediately in fact, she started an inappropriate relationship with an 18 year old girl. And she did this behind my back. And then she kissed this girl in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by our mutual friends. And lied to me about it. All of it. I had to confront her with the fact that this had been confirmed by someone else before she admitted it was true.

She was scared I was going to leave her. She made a lame, manipulative attempt at her own life because she was so scared. I was with her the whole time. I was still angry, hurt and betrayed, but I stayed with her because we were married and marriage means working through the shit.

We decided we would stay together. We both made the decision, but then she fucked up again. When I was sick in bed, she went out and got drunk three nights in a row. One of those nights she was with the 18 year old idiot. She says nothing happened. I believed her. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

Two days later she ambushed me at our therapy session saying she didn’t want to be in the marriage anymore and hadn’t for a long time. She said I had disappeared. She said I was always tired. She didn’t want to have sex with me because I was always complaining that I was fat. Well, so did she. All the time. But what’s good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander.

We separated. I took her word for it. She flip flopped back and forth between us going on a “break” and us divorcing. We agreed to a six month break. She told me, my family and my friends that she wanted to “find” herself so that we could reconnect in the future. She told my sister that she would fight for us.

She lied.

Two days later she told me our marriage wasn’t working because she couldn’t deal with my mental illness. She told me it was over and she was never coming back and I should have known that. I asked her what had changed. She said “I’m getting shit done.” I asked her if there was someone else. She said no. I asked her if she had fucked someone else. She said no.

She lied.

She said I could stay in the apartment until I found somewhere else to live even though I had just lost my job, had no money and my father had just left the country. She left to go to her sister’s. That apartment was toxic. I became unsafe.

I was placed on unofficial suicide watch from that day, a Monday. While she was away at her sister’s I moved all of my things out and went to stay somewhere else. My brother, my poor caught-in-the-middle brother who was waiting for the call to go back overseas for work had paid rent and stayed in the apartment. I didn’t speak to her for a week.

She had promised me, her best friend and her therapist that she would stay single. She told me she was scared of doing it alone, but she would try.

She lied.

I contacted her after a week. I asked if I could come see our cat, Orpheus. She told me the 18 year old was there. I was in a restaurant at the time. I had to be taken out the back where I collapsed. A friend was with me and was scared for my safety.

She tried calling me that night, but I had blocked her. The friend of mine had sent her a nasty message and she wanted to see me to talk about that and finances. She got hold of me the next day saying this was getting out of hand. Could we meet? I said no. She pushed and said I was telling lies about her and she was suffering, but she loved and respected me. I told her I was suicidal and didn’t want to see her. She pushed more. I agreed to meet.

We met. She told me she missed me, wanted me in her life, she still loved me and she told me that maybe we could be together again. She told me she was drinking all the time, not eating, and that the girl I suspected she was fucking was her “business partner”.

She lied.

She later told a mutual friend that she had never said that. She lied.

She kept asking me what we were going to do. I told her I didn’t know, I couldn’t answer that question for her. I said I was still in love with her but it was not healthy for me to see her as she couldn’t give me what I wanted. She insisted on staying in contact with me. I relented and we made plans to meet again in a week. We hugged. She told me to look after myself. Please. Losing me would tear her apart.

Two days later I went to the apartment to pick up my brother. I saw her and the 18 year old idiot walking up the path to the apartment I had left less than a week before. I had an anxiety attack. A bad one. A mutual friend left work to come get me. My brother sat in the car with his arm around me as I sobbed. My friend went upstairs to tell her to give me some space, to leave me alone. As I was in the car, she came downstairs. My friend was angry. She stood by the car and stared at me saying little. I railed at her. She accused my brother of spying on her. She lied. She accused me of abusing her during our relationship. She lied. She told me again that she loved me. She lied. She told my friend that she was dealing with this break up on her own.

She lied and lied and lied.

I was taken to the hospital. At the hospital, waiting to be assessed, I forced my brother to tell me what he knew. He had heard them. He had heard her fucking the 18 year old in our apartment – sorry, her apartment less than a month after we separated and less than a week after I moved out. I lost my shit. I thought I was going insane. I sent her the foulest message I have ever sent anyone in my life. I wanted to destroy her. I wanted to put my death on her. It was a shitty thing to do. I couldn’t control the pain.

I wanted to die and she kept lying and lying and lying.

Now today, she told me she’s happy. That it was all worth it, all the pain, the cruelty, all the disrespect she showed me. She’s extremely happy – and bloated from all the drink, pimpled, broke, and still fucking the teenager. She has no shame. But, you know, at least she’s happy.

I would like to wake up now. I would like to wake up and six months have passed, and I have my own home, my cats are with me, I’m acting again, and I no longer hurt. To say this all feels like a surreal dream is a predictable cliché, but there you have it. Clichés become clichés because they’re rooted in truth.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s such a childish, naïve thing to say, but again it’s rooted in truth. I got married to prevent this from happening, because marriage means staying together and working through it when things get tough. If it doesn’t work, you make it work because you got married. You made vows. You signed a legal document. It’s like a legal promise to not give up when shit gets hard. That’s also called being an adult. Some of us are better than others at that.

I’m here, living now. I no longer want to die. The voices in my head telling me that her treatment of me proves that I’m worthless are being drowned out by anger. Fury. Rage. She is denying that I paid back a loan I got from my boss to pay for the first term of her dance school. She is denying that she ever told me she wanted to possibly work towards being together in the future. She is using the treatment she received from her ex as a way to silence me from publicly reacting to her utter arseholery. Fuck that.

I mentioned above that I have gone through all the mistakes I made in our relationship. Let me tell you, there is nothing – nothing that I have done to deserve this. Nothing.

I have done nothing except be too good for her. I have done nothing but love her despite her immaturity and selfishness. I have done nothing but provide a home and support and encouragement. I have done nothing but ask for the same in return.

She does not deserve me. Not now. Maybe not ever. The measure of a person is weighed by how they take responsibility for their own shit. She has been found wanting. And she will crash and burn and be left in exactly the position she is fighting so hard not to be in:

Alone.

I, on the other hand, will rise up and shine like I have always shone. I will blind her and everyone around her with my dazzling power. I hit rock bottom. But I’m a fucking goddess, and I will smite anyone who tries to dim my light.

I am better than all of this.

🖕

by

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel

I can be on my own. I’m actually quite good at it. I enjoy my own company. I think I’m funny, smart and a good conversationalist. I could talk to myself for hours. I can be silent by myself for longer. I function better, actually, on my own. I have more money, I eat better, my career thrives, I’m thinner. I’m better on my own.

I never expected forever; I wasn’t brought up in a family of forever, but I must admit I got used to the idea of it. I felt like I could relax. I had no fear of making future plans.

I’ve been in love before.  I have loved keenly and powerfully, but with you, I don’t know, it was different. I can’t even say why it was different. I mean, I can give you reasons, like my eye was never turned (except once by an old high school friend who lives in New Zealand so there was no chance of anything coming of it and I wouldn’t have done anything anyway because I was so ridiculously in love with you). Like I could be myself around you, my full mentally unwell, ageing, thickening, witchy, farting and burping self. Like my family loves you. Adores you even. Like I could be wrong and you still thought I was cool. Like, I married you.

And then you lied to me. You did something that hurt me and you lied about it. I was angry and betrayed and I did what I knew I was allowed to do and I felt that anger and betrayal and I didn’t let you slide away from it softly. But I was prepared to forgive because I have been forgiven. I was prepared to love you anyway because I have been loved anyway and to be honest, I couldn’t help but love you. I always knew that I would with you.

It was hard, don’t get me wrong. Everything you did triggered (I hate that word) what had happened with my ex, and all that distrust, that black, sticky doubt came creeping back in, but I wouldn’t let it infect me like it did back then. It was a struggle, but I was determined. Sometimes it overtook my thoughts and strangled them because my BPD doesn’t let go easily, but I was working through it and trying to find ways around it. Understanding myself and my own hand in it. Understanding you and where this behaviour comes from. I understood. It didn’t take the pain away, but it would have eventually. If you had just held on.

But it was too hard. Facing up to not being perfect, owning that sometimes you’re an asshole – just like every single member of the human race is sometimes an asshole – was too hard for you. The fighting that is inevitable after a bond has been tested was too hard for you. The work that had to be done was too overwhelming because you believed you couldn’t do it. You believed you weren’t worth it. So you left. And again, I understand. But my God, it cuts deep into the depths of my soul, a place that I have kept wrapped up and hidden away from the world. The path to that place was something I allowed only a very few of you to discover. A wiser person would grow vines around that path, obscuring it, allowing no one to ever again stumble upon it. But it appears I’m not wise, because I would let you find it once more. You left your mark there. It wants you back.

I was put on this earth to love. I am a nurturer, a guide, a gardener. I am a welcomer and a helper. A healer. But I forget that I need those things too, and I am cursed to feel all my experiences and all of yours and yours and yours and yours and I am left empty and broken but I still feel. I cannot stop feeling.

I am not perfection in any way other than my imperfection. I am a child, stumbling around in the dark, pretending I know the way, faking it until I make it. Life taught me that I must be prepared to make mistakes in order to grow, so I have made them gleefully at times, ready for the wisdom that comes with it. I am a hermit, I am insular, I block people out because I feel too much, I isolate myself because the voices in my head are too much company. I’m a terrible friend one minute and the best person to be around the next. I am selfish and selfless, I am strong and fragile. I am beauty incarnate and the hag of your nightmares. I am the queen of the Universe and the muck on your shoe.

This is who I am. And I will walk this trail again and again until the day I die. I’d just prefer to walk it with you.

by

Two Years of Phenomena

I haven’t written much of late. I haven’t really had much to say. Well, I have. I had a whole rant fest about the plebiscite and Trump and racism ready and waiting to go, but I wasn’t saying anything that anybody else hadn’t already covered.

My mum died two years ago tomorrow. Two years is a relatively short time in the scheme of things. It still doesn’t seem quite real, although I know it very definitely is. I can look at a photo of her without crying now, although occasionally I get a flash of her face when she was dying, and my heart drops down into my butt, and I can’t breathe, and there it all is again.

My life changed inexorably when she died. I have had a leaden pall over my head since then, a feeling of greyness. My therapist calls it grief, and it is, but it’s also something else. It’s fear. Mum was my safety net. I may have hated her in my youth, but as I got older her value became more and more apparent to me. It’s that thing, you know, when you’re feeling like absolute shit, and all you need is a hug or a word from your mum and you suddenly feel better. I know not everyone experiences that with their parents, and despite the wounds of my childhood that still seep blood every now and then, I am distinctly aware of how lucky I was to have mended my relationship with Mum so I could have that.

Now I miss it. So, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of life without my emotional safety net. K tries, she really does, but she’s young and scared too. And really, let’s be honest, a partner is no replacement for a parent.

But, yeah. I’m scared.

Like, really actually scared. All the time.

I’m scared of being wrong. I’m scared of being not awesome. I’m scared I’m actually an asshole and no one told me. I’m scared of getting older. I’m scared of getting fat. I’m scared of losing my hair. I’m scared of randomly meeting my wife’s ex in public somewhere because I think I might not be able to stop myself from punching her. I’m scared I’m full of shit. I’m scared that people don’t like me. I’m scared of being pitied. I’m scared of my own anger. I’m scared that I’m not writing for me but for others to see how “human” and “awesome” I am. I’m scared that my marriage won’t last. I’m scared that BPD will ruin everything. I’m scared that my wife will wake up one day and decide I’m not all that because I’m too old/fat/lazy/stupid/ugly/fucked up. I’m scared that my Dad will die soon. I’m scared that I’ll never get over Mum’s death. I’m scared of never making it as an actor. I’m scared I’m damaged goods. I’m scared that sex work has left a smear on me that I can never get rid of. I’m scared I’ll never be well. I’m scared that I’m lazy. I’m scared of being stupid. I’m scared of men. I’m scared of women who are stronger and smarter than me. I’m scared of being wrong – have I said that already? I’m scared of being alone. I’m scared of expectations being placed on me that I can’t fulfil. I’m scared I’ll never love myself. I’m scared of injustice. I’m scared of change. I’m scared of demons. I’m scared this spirituality thing I’m into is bullshit. I’m scared I’ll never be able to have a child. I’m scared of not knowing things. I’m scared of people. I’m scared of needles. I’m scared of ambiguity. I’m scared of pain. I’m scared of being judged. I’m scared that women will never be equal. I’m scared of secret governments and big corporations. I’m scared of guns. I’m scared of being raped again. I’m scared of violence. I’m scared that I’m self-indulgent. I’m scared of you.

Here’s the thing: You are scared of me too.

And all of that other shit that I just purged all over the page.

At the end of the day we are all the same. We are all scared. Terrified. Of everything. No one is better than anyone else because we are all the same. The only things that separate us are constructs of our own design: wealth, privilege, education, race, etc. Put a cross section of us on a deserted island and sure, some of us will be cannier than others with ideas of how to survive, but we all need the same things: food, shelter, water. Therefore it’s kind of silly to be scared because we’re all in the same boat and we’ll all die one day, so stick a geranium in your hat and be happy!

Yeah, okay.

Fuck, I don’t have the answers. I turn 40 in a few weeks and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I actually made it to this point, to be honest. There’s a term psychologists use for the feeling someone gets after they’ve attempted suicide, but they’re still alive: it’s called phenomena, apparently. I’ve felt it before because I’ve tried to die before. I feel it now, not because I’ve tried to die lately, but because in spite of everything I’ve subjected myself to, I’m still here. It feels … odd. What’s even odder is that I’m alive and Mum isn’t. I still can’t quite get my head around that one.

I miss my mum because I knew, despite everything, that she was always on my side. I said at her funeral that the stuff I have done in my life, the things I’ve thrown at her, could have caused her a great deal of shame. But it didn’t. She took it in her stride, she understood that shit happens, and she told me as often as she could that she loved me. And she did.

She visits me sometimes. I’ll smell her perfume, or a song she used to sing will come on the radio somewhere, or – as happened this time last year just before I was about to go on stage – she’ll just be in the room, and I and the people around me can feel her. A medium friend of mine did a reading for me recently, and she said that Mum has been unwilling to come forward very often because she was ashamed of what she did to me as a kid. She could see my mother, standing to the side, looking abashed. I’ve never seen my mother look abashed in my life, but I believed my friend because I’ve been feeling it. I never told Mum that I forgave her. I do. I do forgive her.

This is getting easier, this life-without-Mum thing. Actually admitting that I’m afraid has helped. Time has helped. Getting rid of awful, unsupportive people from my life has helped. But there’s still that piece missing; that scar that will never quite go away. Phenomena. This is life now. It’s never going to be what it was again.

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Dancing With Orlando

I’ve sat on this post for a while, not knowing what to say, but knowing I had to say something for my own healing. As a friend and fellow blogger noted, there are plenty of blogs and articles and think pieces out there by people more informed, more connected, and more articulate than I. But I have to write. So, here goes.

Early in the morning of the 12th of June, a heavily armed gunman entered Pulse, a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire. 49 people were killed, 53 people were injured, some still in a serious condition. It was Latin night at the bar, so many of the victims were Latinx or coloured. Most of them, as has been reported, were members of the LGBTIQ community.

Australian television reported the event as breaking news. Not once was it reported that Pulse was a gay bar. I didn’t discover this fact until the next day as I was trawling Facebook. An already horrific event just became all the more terrifying.

I am a cis, white, femme woman. The way I look invites assumptions that I’m heterosexual. The only time you would know I’m bisexual is if I tell you, or if you see me holding hands with my same sex partner. I came out to family and friends 20 years ago with little fanfare. I have never experienced random homophobia unless I am holding hands with my same sex partner. My ability to “pass” as straight has afforded me the privilege of living relatively free from fear. I’m also tough and opinionated, so the times I have been met with stares and looks in public whilst with my partner, I have defiantly returned the looks and stares. Homophobic epithets yelled from passing cars have been laughed at because I think it’s ridiculous.

My wife, however, is a cis, coloured, androgynous lesbian woman. She screams gay. To look at her, you could safely assume she’s gay. She has had a different experience all her life. She does not feel safe holding hands in public. She has to check who she’s with before she refers to me as her “wife” rather than her “partner”. She has experienced discrimination, hatred, thinly veiled contempt, and violence in the form of homophobia. She has felt a fear I haven’t.

We have both, however, taken refuge in our community. In our clubs and bars we have felt safe. Surrounded by LGBTIQ people we have felt at home, free, able to be ourselves.

Now, in the wake of Orlando, for the first time in my life, I am afraid. I know I shouldn’t be. I know that I shouldn’t allow the hate of that act to change who I am in the world, but it has. Because it could happen to me. It could happen to my wife, my friends, my dad, my family. In that one place where we go to take off the armour of staunchness against society’s view of us – us queers, the gays, the lesbians, the bisexuals, the transgendered, the intersex, the ones questioning, the ones uninterested in labels but who know they aren’t straight, the “others” – we are no longer safe. And it scares me.

The day after the Pulse shooting happened, I was on a train going to rehearsal. A man and his girlfriend were sitting next to me, arguing loudly. As they left, the man yelled out to an Asian man opposite us that he was a “filthy fucking chink pig”. Usually, I’d call out this behaviour. Usually, I’d apologise to the person abused for being subjected to that. This time I didn’t because I was afraid. There was too much hate that weekend for me to stand up against this.

Our community has had enough. This is not to say other minority groups haven’t; we have all had enough of hate. But the LGBTIQ community have been fighting for decades – for generations for our rights, to be treated equally, to be recognised as human beings who are as we are, not as degenerate, or mentally ill, or perverted, or criminal. We have fought not to be brutalised or “corrected” or killed for being not straight, for being born “different”. We have fought for our freedom to marry our partners, and to walk down the street holding hands without being heckled, abused or bashed. It seemed like it was getting better. It seemed like we could relax for a little while. Then this happened.

Not only has this act of the worst mass shooting in America’s modern history slammed the fact in our faces that we’re still not safe, the refusal of the heteronormative mainstream media – and some of our country’s leaders – to recognise the homophobic element of this crime has made us feel that we are invisible.

Yes, this was a crime against humanity and a crime against our freedom to be as we are – all acts of terror are – but this was also, unequivocally an act of homophobic hatred. There have been reports that Omar Mateen, the perpetrator of the shooting, was a regular at Pulse and a closeted homosexual. It is still a homophobic act. Growing up gay in a world that tells us being gay is wrong and evil will, in some cases, elicit feelings of self-hatred so intense that they explode in violent acts against others. That’s homophobia.

Oh, and then there’s the hoaxers – the people who believe the shooting was a false flag to further the “gay agenda”, Islamophobia, gun reform and Obama’s “black politics”. You know, the people who post videos, vehemently insisting the victims don’t exist, demanding photos of gun shot wounds from survivors to prove they aren’t “crisis actors”, giving “evidence” that the whole incident didn’t happen. You know what? I’d probably take these opinions more seriously if their videos and opinion pieces weren’t littered with homophobic tags (e.g. “aw, look at the poor grieving faggot”), racism (“it was only them spiks that were killed”), and general insensitivity.

Look, I’m not going to deny anyone their right to express their opinions however abhorrent I find them. I’m not a big fan of blindly swallowing whatever the mainstream media feeds us, but for fuck’s sake, people are dead. Those who are using Orlando as a platform to vent their anti-government/authority/big corporation/whatever viewpoints aren’t serving the greater good. They’re just augmenting the hate.

People are dead.

Fuck, it hurts. It really hurts because I’ve realised that I haven’t seen myself in any of the terror victims of the past. I haven’t recognised the fellow fallen humans in Baghdad or Paris or London or Syria or anywhere at all. It’s not until my community – MY community, MY identity, MY place of belonging – is threatened that I am affected. That saddens me. I may not have been at Pulse. I may live on the other side of the world in a country with gun control. I may not be connected to any of it other than the ownership I have as a queer woman. I may not know any of the victims or survivors, but I see myself in them. And it’s made me aware that I see myself in all victims of violence, and that’s overwhelming.

Enough. Enough hate. Please.

Having said that, having admitted my fear, K and I have been going out to our local gay bar for the last couple of weeks because she is competing in a drag competition (she’s a drag king, and she’s hot as a guy, and more on that later). There was so much love, so much acceptance, so much the gathering of like-minded and love-minded people that all my fear dissipated, even if it was just for a few hours. I love our community. I love the supporters of our community. In spite of all that’s happened, we will keep on dancing. We are dancing.

 

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The Weight of the Cross

I hate Sydney. I’m up here touring a lesbian show for Mardi Gras, and I’m trying desperately to make peace with the city that stole whatever innocence I had left. This city with its cockroaches, rude drivers, homelessness and drunken backpackers. I’m here at a time when I should be celebrating my gayness, where the rainbow flag waves with pride in the humid breeze, where my wife and I can hold hands with confidence in the busy Newtown streets. But all I’m doing is trying not to be broken.

I lived here for a very short time more than ten years ago. I lived here to attempt to move on from my failed relationship with my ex girlfriend. To be more accurate, I lived in the Cross, in a brothel where I worked. The Cross – Kings Cross – is Sydney’s notorious red light district. It’s been cleaned up considerably since I walked its pavements and ate in its dingy restaurants. It’s still a tourist attraction, but maybe for different reasons now. In my day, there were streetwalkers every few metres, interspersed with junkies, strippers, and organised crime bosses. It’s where I witnessed an Aboriginal man, high off his head, being brutally manhandled into a paddy wagon, and when I say manhandled I mean beaten across the head with a baton and thrown – literally thrown into the van. It’s where I witnessed a woman being slashed and stabbed by whom I assumed was her pimp in an alley by the brothel where I worked. It’s where I walked passed a teenager dying from an overdose in the gutter. I saw all this, and I kept walking. I told no one. I pretended it wasn’t happening. I was too afraid. I kept walking back to the brothel where I let men pound me for $110 an hour so I could forget. The Cross is where I lost myself.

Being back here is like paying penance. Every time I come to Sydney I have a headache. It feels like a tight band around my head, just behind my eyes. My mental health deteriorates more the longer I’m here. I thought that touring here, doing something I loved here would create new, better memories. I’m all for facing my demons head on, but I think this is one dark part of my life that I can never make up for.

Sydney broke me. I realise that now. I forget the effect it had on my life until I’m back here. I was walking up Darlinghurst Rd with my producer and a few cast mates the other day, hanging up posters for our show because our theatre is just down the road in Woolloomooloo. We turned left onto Bayswater Rd and I couldn’t keep going. I couldn’t walk past a particular street. It was an odd sensation, feeling trapped in my shoes. It’s like being stuck in tar. I started to cry, the tears prickling in the corners of my eyes as the band around my head tightened. My wife asked me what it was that hurt me so. I couldn’t tell her. That fear was back, laced with a sprinkling of shame. This is the place where I learned not to care. This is the place where I hardened my heart and my soul. This is the place where I fell apart, bits of me scattering everywhere, and I still can’t put the pieces back together again.

Never before has my mental illness affected my ability to perform, but tonight it did. My head was scattered, my thoughts disappearing into black holes. Being here a week, trying to keep it together, dealing with missing my cats and my home and my ordinary love-filled life finally dealt its blow and I gave one of the worst performances of my career. I came offstage and burst into tears, so embarrassed, so mortified that I couldn’t get my shit together enough to actually do my job and act well. This place is threatening to tear me apart again. Thankfully, my cast and my producer are a tight knit group of understanding and compassionate people. They deserve a better me than the one they’re getting.

I am tired. I am beaten. The weight of my experiences and decisions is heavy on my heart.

I am trying not to be broken.

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Anatomy of an Arsehat

I think we human beings have a big problem. We spend millions of dollars every year in search of this problem, it is taught to us as children by our parents, by our religion, by our politicians, and it causes more psychological and emotional grief than any of us realise. It is the pursuit of perfection. For some reason, there is an unnamed paragon of virtue that exists somewhere in the world that we are supposed to live up to at every moment of the day, every day of the year for as long as we live. Some people call this paragon Christ, which is cool, except he was a human being just like the rest of us. Others call this person Gandhi, or Mother Teresa or some other such public figure that is held up to be superhuman in their goodliness. That’s the thing. We are supposed to be “good” all of the time, and one slip into not-goodness means we are crap human beings who should be forever vilified and tarred and feathered and left out to rot and be fodder for vultures and hyenas.

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. In fact, it’s a bunch of bullshit. We are not Prometheus tied to a rock. Our livers are not to be consumed on a daily basis by a Chianti-and-fava-bean-loving eagle because Zeus said so. I defy anyone to put their hand up and declare that they have never in their lives snapped at someone they love, or lied a little, or pushed in front of someone in a queue, or not let that car in that’s been waiting to pull out into traffic for 20 minutes, or any number of little not-good things. Okay, let’s raise the stakes a little. Who can say that they haven’t cheated on a partner, or treated a family member badly, or embellished a sickness for attention, or called someone names, or behaved cruelly or like a brat or like an immature douche bag? Seriously peeps, look deep inside yourselves. Every single one of us has done something – usually to someone else – that we feel bad about. If we allow ourselves to look back on that act, we feel a sick, prickly sensation behind our sternum, blood rushes to our face, we feel hot and twitchy. If you don’t feel these things, you’ve either come to terms with your humanness and therefore deserve some sort of delicious biscuit, or you’re a sociopath and don’t care. No judgement there. Good for you.

Something I hear from a lot of friends is this notion of “deserving” things. I don’t like this idea of a rewarding Universe/God/whatever, as if ticking all these boxes of good deeds will earn us the spiritual equivalent of a free toaster oven. The Universe gives us what we ask for. Period. It doesn’t care if we’re “good” or “bad” or indifferent because the Universe has no ego and neither will it get a free gift if it recruits more souls. Our behaviour is our responsibility, no one else’s. Whether we are “good” or “bad” is entirely our choice, and our accountability for that choice is what means something. As I’ve said to my partner, my friends, and anyone who cares to listen to me pontificate, I don’t actually care what you’ve done as long as you own it. And because we all have the capacity to be an arsehat for various reasons we all know the feeling of embarrassment and shame in the admitting of it. I have moments of looking back at my behaviour towards past partners and cringing at my assholery. The fact that I was very sick at the time holds no water as I still feel responsible for my actions – as I should. But bashing myself in the head because of past behaviours that I have admitted to and apologised for (when given the chance) serves no purpose except for ensuring I feel shit for longer and giving myself a headache.

Of course, there are people who actively abuse others. This is something completely different from people just being arseholes. Abuse happens more than it should and if it’s emotional abuse it’s difficult to prove. There is no excuse for abuse and those who abuse others for whatever reason, in my opinion, are people who desperately need help themselves. The definition of abuse is thus: to treat with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly; to speak insultingly, harshly, and unjustly to or about; revile; malign; to commit sexual assault upon. As someone who has experienced all of these things, I can tell you that abuse has the propensity to seriously affect and/or destroy lives.

However, there is a trend at the moment on some social media sites (tumblr, I’m looking at you) in which arsey behaviour from a partner, workmate or family member is being labelled as abuse, specifically a form of abuse called Gaslighting. Gaslighting is a term used for a form of emotional abuse. As a fellow blogger Alfred MacDonald states: “There are several definitions of this term, but in a nutshell it refers to the act of trying to deceive someone into a false reality by discrediting their emotions. Like most mental health terms, it describes something serious; also like most mental health terms, it is ubiquitously misused.” I’m not going to go into this too much as it’s a detailed and complex issue, but accusing someone of abuse when their behaviour is not abusive is as much of an arsehole act as anything else. Having said that, the accusation in itself is a cry for help, so like everything arsey that we do there should be a measure of understanding in how this behaviour is dealt with.

To recap: being an arsehole is not being an abuser. Being an abuser is waaaaay more serious than being an arsehole. Learning the difference between the two is advantageous for happy life-living.

Back to the issue at hand. In my little world view, if you are sorry for hurting someone, if you acknowledge your accountability in a toxic relationship, if you can raise your hand and say “yep, it was me, I fucked up”, then no one should use your behaviour as evidence that you are a horrible person. Because no one is infallible. No one really has the right to point the finger at any one else and make a judgement on their character because, let’s face it, everyone’s an arsehat at some stage of their life. Everyone. We’re supposed to be because we’re not perfect. And truthfully, as much as we’re all connected and have this shared knowledge of emotional responses, no one really knows what anyone else has experienced. We’re all equipped with different tools for dealing with these experiences, and some are better at dealing with this shit than others.

Of course, this knowledge by no means should be used as an all-access pass to the arsewipe expo. Running around being a dick on purpose and then saying “oh, I’m sorry. I’m just being human” is not cool. The point is, try not to be a dick. If you are a dick despite all your best efforts, own it, accept the consequences of it, fucking apologise, and move on. Here endeth the lesson.