Category Archives: Not Acting

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Homeward Bound

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

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

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

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

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

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Fat Chance

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

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

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

‘I was happy when I was thin.’

How revolting.

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

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

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

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

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

Spanxtacular

Spanxtacular

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

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

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

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Conditions Apply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huh?

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

Oh. BPD brain go ‘splodey.

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

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

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

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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.

by

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.