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You used to take my breath away. There was a time when I’d look at you and my heart would stop, just for a moment. I’d watch you dance and my knees would buckle at the heat emanating from my very core. I used to wonder how I got so lucky to get someone as sexy, as talented, as wonderful as you.

Now, it’s all been exposed as an illusion. You tag me in things because I wrote music for you, hoping I’m sure, to impress me. But I can see through it all now. It doesn’t impress me. I don’t feel the same heat. In fact, I feel a passing indifference. It’s all the same. The same moves, the same looks, the same songs, all directed at someone else, all trying to show me what I’m missing out on. I’m not missing out on much.

Today, though. Today was different. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, a day of love. It was, but I walked into that room where three years ago we exchanged vows that I thought were sacred, that I took very seriously, and it all came crashing down. Here, in this room, where another same sex couple were joining themselves together under the law, where I thought my life as a married woman had begun, I was reminded that you got away scot free. You walked away relatively unscathed. You don’t have to be confronted with any of this.

I returned to New Zealand seeking solace. Seeking my home. I didn’t find it. I hadn’t been home since my mother died, since you and I became wives, and it all slapped me hard in the face. You don’t have to feel any of this. You keep telling me that you were hurting too when you ended our marriage, but how could you have been? You will never be forced to come back here and go to the places we went to together, to relive those times now knowing it meant nothing to you. You do not have to look into the eyes of my family that took vows with you to help us to honour our union and admit that you fucked up. You will never be forced to remember, to have your home forever linked with something that was so full of promise, but wasn’t treasured as it should have been. You can just walk away into another person’s arms and never have to take responsibility for the pain you caused because you’re so good at pretending that everything’s fine.

I have to carry that weight. I have to carry it for both of us. Still. And I hate you for that.

But …

But, I’ve met someone else. I’ve met a man that has opened my eyes and my heart. I’ve met a man who has reminded me that I’m allowed to be beautiful, that I’m fascinating, that I’m intelligent, that I’m sexy. All the things you failed to see in me, he sees. I’ve met a man at a time when I don’t want a man’s attention. I’ve met a man at a time when I don’t need anyone’s attention, and yet here it is. And it’s reawakened in me the knowledge of my own power as a woman. It doesn’t lie with you. It doesn’t lie with him, either. It’s all within me and it’s all mine.

I am not pursuing this man. He came into my life simply as a signpost. He has reminded me that I am not your soon-to-be ex wife. I am not a divorcee. I am not one of many of the broken souls you have left behind. I am not one of your victims. I am better than how you left me. I am better than how you treated me.

I am moving on.

Onwards

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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

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I lost myself, defining myself by my grief and by the mental illness which is a result of events beyond my control in my childhood. I lost belief in my self, in what made me who I am. I became stuck in my limitations, trying to validate myself through pouring my energies into others.

Being with someone younger seemed only to remind me that I am older, and that became a limitation. The more limited I became, the less secure she became. How foolish. In trying to be everything she wanted, I forgot to be what I needed. Her security was not my responsibility any more than my validity was hers. But I understand now. I understand that I failed to see the beauty in that difference between us. I see it now and I am grateful.

This does not define me. This failure is a gift. It has reminded me of my worth and that worth can only come from within. I am my own power. I am my own worth. I am my own success. Of all the lessons she taught me, these are the most valuable.

I have no need to prove anything to anyone, or even myself. I am content to sit in the moment and be present with what and who I Am. This does not discount my pain, this does not decrease the value of my experience. It is what it is, and I am who I am.

This is my lesson.

Beginning Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace to you all.

http://www.startingtodaycoaching.com.au

Music Gets The Best of Me

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

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

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

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

Rant

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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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This is not a “wah wah, poor me” post, just an observation on life and things. I’ve just had new headshots taken because of new hair, and I’m going through them looking at my face and asking “When did I get so old?” It’s not that I’m old, not at all, but I don’t feel the way my face looks. There are crinkles and lines and crepe-iness that I don’t feel old enough to have. I am blessed with very good skin, and I look after it fairly well, but there’s no stopping the ageing process. There’s no reversing of gravity, preventing of folds or ceasing of smiling, frowning, laughing, grimacing – all the things that have an effect on the face. And other than drastic surgery, there’s no changing what already exists on the face. That’s a very sobering thought.

We – I – live in a society that reveres youth. Beauty goes hand in hand with youth, and although I’ve never considered myself to be conventionally beautiful, I’ve felt that I’ve grown more attractive the older I’ve gotten due to my acceptance of self, and the fact that I behave like a child 80% of the time. Older certainly doesn’t equal ugly as far as I’m concerned, but it interests me to look at photos of myself, or to look in the mirror and have that slight sense of panic that my face isn’t smooth plains of creamy unblemished goodness, and that somehow that diminishes my worth (particularly in the acting industry), or means that I’ve failed as a woman.

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Heather
Acidtongue and Dollface
Photography by Alexandra Dye

How ridiculous! How stupidly, profoundly, contemptibly ridiculous. I resent being conditioned to feel like that. I resent buying into that bullshit as if it’s a true measure of who I am as a human being. I stand up in the face of that ludicrous societal standard of beauty and acceptability and I laugh! I love my wrinkles (that I slather cream on every night to reduce)! I love my tuck-shop-lady arms (that I do repetitive, pointless exercise to try to get rid of) ! I love my grey hairs (that I cover up with artificial colour)!

Oh gods, I’m such a hypocrite. Because I can say all that, and rant and rave to the four winds, but I will guarantee you within the next 24 hours I will be in front of the mirror examining my pores and inwardly sobbing over my rotund abdomen and judging myself because I don’t fit the media/society-dictated norm. I don’t even find that norm particularly attractive, but I want to fit it.

Humans are stupid sometimes.

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