2015: Acknowledgements

[The larger part of me is still afraid to bring any of what I experienced upon another, let alone the people I love, so I cannot name you. It is still important to acknowledge you, however. If you find yourself in this, then it was meant for you. I apologise now if you think you should be here but find that you aren't. I've tried to encompass all, but I doubt that's possible. I've lost my voice and my ability to brain confidently.]

Thank you for giving me a home that has always been open to me, whether I be child or adult. That sanctuary is not something to be taken for granted, and simply knowing it to be there has always given me strength. Thank you for being proud of me, though my unorthodox life choices have caused no end of worry, and for relishing in my strange accomplishments and adventures. Thank you for growing in me a sense of self determination and responsibility. Thank you for never doubting me. Thank you for making me someone who could do what I did and survive.

Thank you for opening your home to me, and letting it become a home for me. Thank you for letting me be a useless wreck and feeding me and nourishing me with your glorious cooking and house full of goofy laughing. Thank you for finding me, amid all the trauma and mental catastrophes, and showing me that I was still there.

Thank you for saltwater and sunshine, for sitting in quiet over avocado on toast and for squealing about big blue gropers and squid. You made it easy for me to step out the front door when it was at its hardest, because I knew you were at the end. Thank you for curling up with me on the couch and watching terrible telly. Thank you for being a safe place.

Thank you for your wonderful, luscious and vigorous conversations. I always felt safe drifting into rougher waters with you, because that grace of spirit that comes so naturally to you will see a smoother navigation than I in my mind. You are an inspiration of kindness and gentleness, two things I crave but find so wanting within myself. From your patience, I find patience. Thank you.

Thank you for being the cavalry. You amazon warrior valkyrie. You and that happy-maker I still have not met saved me. Saved us. For that, you will always have my love and loyalty, my door will always be open, and, and, there is no way I will ever be able to repay you. I know you don't expect or want repayment, but. Thank you. I hope you are never in such dire straits as to need cavalry, not ever. However, even if never called upon, this cavalry stands by solely to rescue you. Thank you.

Thank you for finding time for me when you can barely find time for yourself. You've always soothed this howling heart. You're a beautiful constant in my haphazard life.

Thank you for being so understanding. You listened, and gave me what I needed to continue as long as I could, and it is only because of you that I lasted that long. I doubt I'll meet another your peer for a long time.

Thank you, the staff at Coogee Medical, Equilibrium Psychology and Spiral Medical, for handling this shattered wreck with care, and making sure I survived the worst of it. I honestly don't know how I would have managed if I'd been put off at any point by a brusque encounter or indifference, such a damaged thing I was. Thank you.

Thank you for that phone call. You grounded me in the storm and showed me how to see the way forward. Thank you for laughing. Thank you for being the first person out there to say "You can do this."

Thank you, neighbourhood. for being so softly suburban, so muted and quiet. Thank you for rolling out great swathes of silence in the deep night, silences so vast I can hear the sweep of the night birds as their feathers tear the air. Thank you, home, for just not being right on top of a major traffic and pedestrian interchange, including buses, and seriously heaps of pedestrians, and look, if you're ever considering renting the flat above Oporto in Coogee? Just say no. Between the Pav turfing out its clientele at closing time and the 4am street sweeper you'll get maybe a couple of hours unbroken sleep a night. The texture of overgrown gardens and lawns, and greyed wooden fences, and lichen on tiles, and powerlines through trees, and a train in the distance, a car passes nearby, somewhere a door slams, and this is a soundscape in which I can exist. Thank you.

Thank you for being my friends. I thought I was lucky before all that happened, because I had to be lucky for having so many incredible and awesome people in my life. I don't really know what word is appropriate now. 'Blessed' perhaps, although I'm not religious, but the idea that it is a gift, and a divine gift. You are a fortress around my heart, and when it seemed all the pestilence of the internet was spitting at me, you just kept on being you, kept on being beautiful, kept on being in my life and telling me that I was worth having around as well. I love and am loved by you and not all the bile in the world can touch that. You are treasures no one can steal. I don't know what I've done to deserve you in my life and I don't care, I'm just glad that you're here, and you still choose to be here, and as long as you're here, I can't be that broken. It does one no good to rely on external validation, but I can't say there's any real belief in the internal validation I present myself. You've given me in so many words and acts undeniable proof that awesome people do not share my opinion of me, and see something here worth waiting for. I don't trust myself in the slightest, but you haven't changed. I trust you with me.

Thank you, new friends, who have seen something worth hanging onto amid all the breaking down I've done this year. This is a greater compliment than you realise, and it is very much appreciated.

Thank you for not telling people that I'm the person who did the thing. Thank you for letting me be unremarkable.

Thank you for being wonderful upon finding out I was the person who did the thing. I've lived in fear, waiting for someone to find out and have a go at me in person, so I really haven't let many new people in on it. You who do know, though, you're ace.

Thank you for that text message, DM, private message, email. Even if I didn't reply to it, I saw it, and it probably made me cry, because every grain of kindness, love and support given to me has been a precious thing. I have kept them all. I know I've been a dead end this year, there have been so many missives I just haven't been able to answer. I am sorry. Thank you. They meant and still mean much.

Thank you for the invitation, and for the fact that you keep inviting me, even though I barely pretend I'm going to attend. It's not for disinterest. Combination fibromyalgia, major depression, social anxiety and trauma echoes mean I just can't face people. It's definitely not you. I want to be living my best life, which includes turning up to help you celebrate that which deserves celebrating. One day, I hope to do this, and thank you for inviting me in person.

Thank you for sitting with me over a cup of tea and letting the conversation go where it may. Thank you for sitting with me in silence. Thank you for giving me your time and your company. I don't know that my own quality of company is worth your time at the moment, so your time is a greater gift for it.

Thank you to all the retail, hospitality and customer service staff who have just done their job with a friendly smile. Social anxiety means your smile is a life buoy. Thank you to all those too who have let me wander through unaccosted and unnoticed.

Thank you for all the support. All of it. I don't think I got to see even a percentage of what rushed by, and what I saw was as vast as only the internet can be. The long tail of trolls did its damage to me, but you, you're a voice that far outnumbered them. I can say that with certainty. Vile and loud as they were, there was always more than us than there were of them. In a weird way, this thing that completely destroyed me, has reminded me of what hope tastes like.

Thank you for asking me to take part in research, to be interviewed for projects. I'm sorry I've not been able to accept any of these invitations. The fact is, I just haven't had enough therapy. All these projects and dissertations are tasty, however, and I've started to see bits and pieces of research findings surface. This podcast does a great job of breaking down how hate speech affects social spaces, and ends on a comment that- It seems arrogant to believe because so many others have been doing hard work for so long, but if it is true, even just a little bit, then. I think it all might have been worth it. One day, I'll be able to give you what you want of me, and I'll be excited to contribute. Thank you for keeping on with the good work.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to prove myself. It is an honour and the work is so important I don't feel worthy, but I could not let go for the world now. This has become a rich vein of joy and satisfaction in my life, and the chance to prove myself to myself is very much appreciated. One day, I may have confidence again, and I'm certain it will grow from these small tasks. Thank you for trusting me with this, and for sharing so many wonderful stories with me. Thank you for letting me be a small cog in a good machine.

Thank you. You've born the brunt of my breaking, which has been a process of interminable hours strung together in endless months. You've seen the worst of me come out as the best of me fell away, and yet you still reach for my hand in your sleep. I am so sorry. Thank you. I've said these words so often I don't know if they mean anything anymore. I don't know what I am anymore, but I know that we remain, because you still choose us. Thank you.

I didn't get through last year on my own steam. I made it because of you. Thank you.

$30 for 20 minutes

The memory washed in with the warmth; first through my nose, down my throat to rest cozy in my lungs. My cheeks are next, as the only thing that can be done with arms full of clean washing fresh from the dryer is to bury my face into that soft, comfortable warm pile, and hug it to my chest. Let it warm my bones.

It was getting last night's tea towels out of the dryer that was my first waypoint for a standard housekeeper's day in Ullapool. First came the cleaning of toilets, wiping of windows, incessant mopping and buffing; interspersed by dashes to the laundry in the little country garden out back to switch the loads over. Most of the time it was bloody cold, because a Highland summer is a wonderful thing, but not a particularly searing one. After having my hands immersed in cold waters, grabbing all the towels out and flomping myself over a bench and them was the purest of delights. I was overly fond of them, in a weird way. After all the weird stretching and bending and scrubbing, being able to stand still and methodically fold the same square of fabric in the same fashion until the pile before you is a pile no more was peaceful. It did not involve other people's bodily fluids or uncomfortable strenuous activity. Just nice warm hands. The folding of the tea towels also indicated breakfast time. We'd fold them, have them sorted into their colours, and drop them into the kitchen on our way to the staff hut. Lovely cup of tea with the sound of the village waking up and the first ferry coming in from Stornoway.

I don't miss housekeeping. But I do miss Scotland. 

Tessa New Year & It's Lack of Importance

Despite talking to mum on Tuesday, and her saying "I'll talk to you Thursday," it didn't stick.
Despite skyping a hot couple yesterday, and them saying, "Happy birthday for tomorrow!" it didn't stick.
Despite my brother sending me an SMS first thing in the morning, and my mum again, and my best friend, it wasn't until dad called and my initial reaction was "Oh shit, something's happened, SOMEONE HAS DIED," that it finally sunk in.

Okay, today marks 33 orbits of the our star for me. It's a birthday, and usually people make a fuss out of these things, and I like to quietly mark them, but honestly, I couldn't attach any weight to this event if it begged me to.

This isn't because I'm distracted, busy or stressed. I think it's simply because there are things I am more excited about, things that a birthday just can't compete against.

I look forward to visiting Melbourne in a couple of weeks and leaping upon people I haven't seen for a year, and people I haven't seen for a month, and seeing my beloved dogs and sitting at the kitchen table and chatting to my family.

I look forward to J coming home every day.

I don't look forward much, to be honest. There's no need.

Every day is pretty nice.

Given the tumult of the last couple of years – not all of it bad – it's really nice to get to a space like the one I find myself in. It's calm and comfortable, and it's precious.

I've love to spare right now, so you can have it. I love you muchly, and I wish warmth upon you. 

Dear Diary

Today was brilliant. I didn't sleep in too far, and gave myself a slow enough wake up/get up process that I felt absolutely fine, instead of shellshocked. The sun wasn't too hot, but lovely and deliciously warm and bright. The roll I ate while I walked was also delicious. We saw a cormorant fishing the rocks by the Clovelly cliffs, as if the dashing waves were just a dream. Clovelly was calm, with no swell and slap-happy waves, and so clear. The water bit us cold as we dove in, but Clovelly is full of different waters, and we passed through warm and cold waters alike. Right by the stairs, as if waiting for us, was Big Bluey, the dominant blue groper. An entourage of wrassers and bream followed him, and then smaller striped fish, toad fish and the odd goat fish. Such a glorious velvet blue. I'd never seen him before. Well over one metre long, big enough to grab and throw whole fair sized rocks while grazing. He was unfazed by our presence, and simply continued doing his business. Saw another two smaller females, and a smaller male. Each with entourage. The garfish have grown and grown, and the school is full now of thick ribbons of silver weaving away from me. With the water clear and the sun bright, their subtle colouring became vibrant. Blue shot through the tail, red down the dorsal. Never alone. I saw a small groper missing its upper jaw. Not an open wound, all healed. It was hiding in a crevice. I could see its teeth. Little nubs of enamel, four of them. We sat on the warm concrete and let the sun dry us and cuddle the cold from us. "John's Seagulls" were in court near us; two gulls who get handfed by John pieces of his sandwich, and who do an excellent job of keeping every single other bird away. This exchange takes place apparently every day. One of these gulls had white talons, which in its red webbing looked odd. Then we walked to Gordon's Bay, and clambered over barnacle-crusted boulders. The water here too was calm, and clear, and so deliciously warm. We waded in with ease, until I fell off the drop off. The sand of the seabed was pale and perfect, with small dunes laid down by the waves above, and goat fish leaving frenzied calligraphy on those dunes with their two chin whiskers as they fossicked for snacks. More wrassers, more bream, and many dark wrinkled medium sized fish that simply lay on the seafloor as if terribly depressed. We went looking for the stingarees, but none were to be found. The water was clear and the sand so bare, like floating over a pristine desert. And then I saw it, first thinking it was a clump of seaweed which had broken its mooring, turning to look at it and seeing a sea turtle. Gliding against that white sand backdrop. It caught sight of me and changed its path to give me a safe berth. The gropers of Clovelly have spoiled us with their relaxed and non-threatened nature. This turtle was shy. Once it figured out we were following it, it put the speed on, and without flippers we could not keep up. Extraordinary and completely unhoped for. We tried to high five while treading water and it didn't work. A couple had joined us on the rocks, with an 11 month old Great Dane called Julius, a younger Great Dane pup with enormous feet, and a wee Jack Russell called Troy. They were standing waist deep in the water, trying to get Julius in with them, and he wanted to, he so wanted to obey his human, but this water business. He just didn't know about it. He started barking and wuffing when his humans got too deep for his liking, poor silly boofhead. When we got out, he came over to say hello. Had no idea how big he is and stepped all over us, tried to sit on us. Lovely floppy dog. The puppy was adorable, and Troy came to sit next to us in the sun and get a good back scratch. There's nothing that can cause a grin like a happy dog, let alone three. We basked in the sun some more, and then parted ways. I feel so incredibly buoyant and clean and fresh. 

The Year of Solar Slingshots

I started 2013 on the other side of the world (in the dark, in the misery, with an angry bird and cheeky lover), and after five new lands I came home. I can say that now, with certainty. Home. Then followed the joy of sinking into and being subsumed by all that we left behind and still love. Months of simply enjoying being here with these people. 

Restless heart returned. An impatience and need to know there is an adventure confirmed in the future, and that I only need make my way the ought this ordinary 9-5 day, and the next and the next and it will become the present. Financial limitations beset us. There is naught to do but be patient. 

Rather than face the continual appointments and stress of WorkCover I went parttime. It feels like a good balance has been struck in terms of pain management and time and money (but still those limitations chafe). Yet it is not an extra day off, even though I may think of it as such. Too often it is literally consumed by sleep, desperately needed and unstoppable. My limits are greater than my capabilities. 

I come to realize the limits of my vocational experience, and the limits that imposes on all my future decisions. I feel trapped. In my body. In my job. Resentment blossoms. 

My lover struggles with the job market, and it grinds us both down. The karmic balance is whiplash; the day before Christmas he is offered his dream job, with great pay, and we both stare at each other in bewildered delight. It is hard to believe. Such wonderous things don't seem our lot, perhaps because we burn up our wonder in with each other. 

He will move to Sydney.  I will follow, somehow. Time spend by the sea seems a dream. There is your adventure, Tessa. A city you don't know awaits. 

I still haven't written anything. 

My family is the happiest I've ever known it to be. My friends are beset by monsters, but they prevail. I've spent more than a year living with my lover, and despite seeing him every day I am still excited to come home to him, the sound of his voice on the phone is like a drop of gold ink in the water of my being. We are unstoppable. 

There is a lot to work on. I thought we were landing, but as it turns out, we're still in orbit. May this never change. 

Still, there is a blight creeping out from the core. There is always a war. 

The sun keeps rising, and I keep breathing, and these terrible, wonderful things keep dragging me on. 

Stocktake!

On this, the eve of my...uh...thirty-sec-ond? Thirty-second? Thirty-second, yeah, my thirty-second year of life on Earth.

Dad's right, birthdays mean less and less the more you have.

This time last year I was working a shitty shit shit job in what has become the most precious place in the world to me – Ullapool, in the Highlands of Scotland – with the knowledge that my lover would be at the end of my fingertips within a week after years disguised as month apart. Pretty great way to show in the era.

Since then, we have been a we (we counted and are pretty sure that in the past year we've only spent three nights apart (not counting those nights when either party was perhaps out being a menace and didn't notice the sun come up)), have travelled to the Faroe Islands and seen massive colonies of PUFFINS!!! and watched an ocean of clouds crash against and up over the cliffs while gannets ghosted across the ocean below, and then we got lost on several islands and were rescued by wonderful locals several times. We put a tick beside the "our first flat!" and it was indeed a complete and utter mould and mildew-infested, draughty, freezing, dank, dark, cramped, fetid, stagnent crapbox in a tenement for which the front door didn't lock and the corridor light didn't work and used syringes, bent spoons and half-eaten pizzas were regularly left outside our door and bedroom window. I've managed to not completely suck at freelance editing which my confidence enjoys. We've done Iceland (again!), Amsterdam, Nordland Sweden in deep winter, Paris in a diamond-cut crystal winter, Kiev in a lazy winter and Chernobyl, oh goodness, Chernobyl. Vancouver in a wet but gentler winter.

And home.

And back to the Monday to Friday, and back to the office cubicle and the same bed every night, the same streets and the same trains and friends who were there and are there now.

And gosh it's nice.

And possibly, maybe, I'm actually settling down. Or still riding the adventure high. I just don't feel as restless in my heart and lungs, there's not that same sense of urgency to chase every horizon.

Or, maybe I'm just tired.

Anyway. Got my love. Got my families, my friends, my dogs. Got my happiness. Got a pen and space in a notebook. Got shit to learn. 31 was pretty damn amazing. Looks like the forecast isn't going to change for 32.

Thank you, my sweet random microclimates. 

Punctuation in a Lifetime: 2012

This time last year I was in Berlin, bewildered and bemused by the incessant fireworks lit in the streets, shooting into the side of buildings, falling and firing at pedestrians, people with handguns firing blank bullets at cars driving past. Although I've always travelled alone, at this point I was lonely, I was exhausted, and facing nothing but uncertainty in my future.

2012 played out as I knew it would, in that nothing turned out as I expected. I've lived in amazing places and shit places simultaneously. Ullapool is such a sanctuary and haven of beautiful wilderness, of birds and flowers and the Arctic wind, but the shared housing that came with the job was not...amazing. Glasgow has ridiculous amounts of cheek and character, but this flat in Calton is bloody horrid.

I've met extraordinary people who have surprised me in both their kindness and the fact that I genuinely desire their company. They're in distant places, in distant countries, and I miss them and prize their presence in my life, however fleeting.

I've worked a shit job - if you prize the use of your arms, don't be a cleaner. I've worked brilliant jobs - freelance editing is wonderful and ghastly, contracting for a publishing house is confidence boosting and I just love reading. I've worked no job at all - despite six years as a public servant in a secure environment no one wants to touch me, not even for filing. Sadly, this does not make my resumé any more impressive.

I've not seen nearly as much of Scotland as I would like. Failing to break into temp work means no travel, no weekend flights to Barcelona, no drives along the west coast. I have explored St Kilda, however, and sailed through the Hebrides on a beautiful tall ship. I have roamed the Faroe Islands, and returned to that most breath-taking country Iceland and enjoyed days and days of live music.

I started the 365 project, and have not taken a photo every day. I did not expect to, and am surprised at what I managed to produce. When this entry is finished I will walk into Glasgow with my camera, and the last photos of 2012 will be taken.

I started writing again. This is perhaps the only thing I wanted of this year.

It cannot be denied that the largest, the most meaningful and profound change to have occurred in my life in the past year has been the presence of J. Have I ever told you of my forecasting? When looking into the future, I have always pictured myself alone. Not sad or bitter, simply flying solo, as I have always done. When I was little and assumed that getting married and having children was inevitable, I would try to picture this future, and in all such imaginings the woman with the husband and children was not me (she was white and had a perm for starters). Even when I was engaged this vision did not change, which should have tipped me off sooner. I kidnapped J, and J kidnapped me, and suddenly we have become a two-headed monster. To find that when I look into the future I can see the two of us getting old and remaining young together is a shock, is still a shock, is something worth struggling and fighting to keep.

Right now, I'm full; of love, excitement and hope. The first quarter of 2013 will be full of adventures and explorations with my partner in crime in places neither of us have ever been before. Then we'll be home, and I know now that yes, Melbourne is my home, my family and friends are my home, gumtrees and magpies are my home. There are babies to meet, weddings to attend, people to hug, and oh yes, future travel plans to be made.

There is so much to look forward to, and there is so much to dance about right here and now.

The sun keeps rising, and I keep breathing, and these terrible, wonderful things drag us on.

<3

Arbitrary Periods of Time

Today marks one year exactly since leaving Australia.
Since leaving home.

(Well, it's past midnight in both countries now, so technically yesterday is the anniversary but I haven't slept yet so it's still today, dammit.)

It snuck up on me, amid all the other passages of time that I mark. Two days til Iceland. One month til rent is due. Two months without a job. Two months as a freelance editor. Two months til next year. Minutes until winter arrives. One year and one month until my visa expires. One year since I left.

Birthdays and calendar years are opportunity enough to reflect on the recent past, are they not? Yet I have never had a year like this. I have never been so long without my family and tribe, and that is a strain so deep and subtle our lives are too short a lesson and we will never understand it. At the beginning I was fraught with my own daring, at once empowered and paralysed by the question what have I done? Now I can state exactly what I've done, yet I still don't know the answer.

It is to go a layer deeper. The difference between knowing you are cursed with a ravenous insatiable heart and that the search will dictate your every decision and deny you lasting contentment, and understanding it. I understand now that cities are not enough. That villages are not enough. That perhaps even mountains are not enough.

Somewhen along the way I tangled myself in a fine knot of threads, held by so many kind hands, hands driven by hearts that stay in time with my passing time, despite, perhaps because, of my restlessness. They have forgiven me my constant absence even has I am continually surprised and blessed by their persistent presence.

The world is endless.

The sun keeps rising, and I keep breathing, and these terrible and wonderful things carry me on.

Thank you.

Now, Then, and Soon

Now I'm behind on video blogs as well as blog blogs and pbbbbbbt I give myself permission to not give a flying fiddlestick.

Now I am in London.

Now I am convalescing. At least, I am trying. This being sick business is utter horseshit. The fever and chills are done, got that out of the way in one night, yet the aches are still hanging around and the weakness, by Belanos, the weakness! Didn't rouse myself til 1 in the afternoon, didn't get out of the house til 3, only walked to the British Library to see da Vinci's scribbles and Brontë's scribbles and Lennon's scribbles and had to had to had no choice in the matter but to sit in a cafe afterward, drink a drink I didn't want simply so I could sit, and it wasn't really sitting it was slumping, and I was addled and exhausted and somehow that made my drink confusing, and twice the server came over to check if I liked the drink. Then I attempted grocery shopping. I was confronted by many types of butter. Brain was unable to make decision.

Now I am ensconced once again in my room, with a near 20 year old black cat with a cataract and I can hear a child crying and I don't think anyone else is home.

Now the business end of my quest begins. No one asked for proof of funds when I entered the country. The immigration officer was perhaps distracted by the fact that after clearing me she would be on break, so she cleared me right quick smart.

Now all the 'deal with it when the time comes' are coming in to land. Such as, if I do not work in an office, what work will I do? With my physical limitations, what work can I do? Am I really capable of winging it or will uncertainty be too much stress?

Now I am tired.

Now I am going to bed.

The Year of Folding Hands

I haven't written up an end of year review for a few years now. Things fall apart. My control, or, my sense of control over where I am steering my life has slipped from my grip. A lot of things have slipped, and even more things I have let slide.

In Berlin, in a hostel in Kreuzberg, in the kitchen, with two other travellers sitting behind me, eating pizza they fried because the oven is broken, speaking with Australian voices, from Melbourne, from Frankston. A dorm room full of drunken snores entering in stages. Bad sleep makes itself at home in my joints. These are aches deeper than the dimensions of my body.

There is no quiet, peace, privacy. Alone without solitude. I am run ragged by people I have nothing to do with. They judge me because I do not want a beer, I do not want to chat, I do not want to go out. Not with them.

The people I want to be with are on the other side of the world. I am as far from them as it is near possible to be, and that is my doing. Christmas passed, New Years is passing, summer will pass, and that I have not spent my time in their company is a wistfulness sharp enough to blossom into regret.

I have seen a Southern White-faced Owl, a bearcat moving, Manhattan lights from the Empire State Building, a Gutenberg Bible, Christopher Robin's original stuffed toys that became Winne the Pooh, the biggest meteorite, the Northern Lights, the leaves change in North Carolina, a bald eagle hunting ducks, rats in a New York subway, mice in a Berlin U-Bahn, Nefertiti, the holotype of Archaeopteryx, DNA, the black beach, walked into a glacier, lost myself in medieval streets, stood in the Nuremberg palace where the Roman Emperors would reside, touch bullet holes and the Berlin Wall, watched polar bear twins dunk each other, watched manatees do nothing, touched the ash of new volcanoes, climbed through a lava tunnel more than a kilometre long and 5000 years old, seen shooting stars over the Atlantic from both sides, and bought a train ticket to Poland without speaking English.

I changed medications over and over this year. I had tests, I failed tests, I lost hope. I was passed over for permanent position for the job I was in three times. I moved back in with my parents and sacrificed my kingdom. I was told therapy couldn't help me. I did not write. I did not read.

I found friends. I misplaced friends. I found lovers. I refused lovers. I was a good friend. I was an unreliable friend. I was a useless enemy. I hurt, and was hurt in turn.

Church bells, ambulance sirens and free-range fireworks are the soundscape of Berlin.

I have left my job, and my home, my family, my dogs, my friends and lover. I have left the city of my heart. I have left everything I knew, and knowing everything I know, threw myself into everything I didn't know.

There is not so much different here. There is not enough different here.

When running from yourself, there will never be enough distance.

It has just gone midnight back home. My heart is in pieces scattered in a handful of individuals so far from me, in a different year to me now. Moving on without me. That is what life does. It keeps going, whether you keep up or not.

So many hands have been folded to get me where I am, in a position may would envy. I am told I am brave, when people look at what I am doing, but I am not. My demons simply come from other angles, and I am running and running and failling to escape them. So many hands folded, in external pragmatics and internal commerce. I am so compromised I no longer know how to define myself. There is no way to identify what is of my own making and what has changed because of medication.

I know I should be enjoying myself. I know I should be exuberant, wild-eyed with curiosity, delight and horror. I know the sight of snow on those plains should have brought me to tears. I know standing on a railway platform at night should be an event to record, remember, in every country. I know I should be learning, learning, learning, soaking drinking saturating myself in the world around me, for all these contrasting details, all these mundane little surprises, all the earmarks of my ignorance and all I have yet to learn-

But I am not, I do not.

New experiences and learning were to feed future writing. Without that purpose then what I experience has no point nor potency. This is an awareness I cannot shake. There is no purpose I can assign to my existence. It is all time wasted in agonising seconds.

I am tired.

I am here because I could not be at home. Now I find that I do not want to be here, and I know of nowhere else to be.



May 2012 fear you, respect you, and treat you with kindness.

<3

The Empire State Building! The Subway! Steaming Manholes!

World Fantasy Con happened. It wasn't the greatest venue, but none the less I had myself a gay old time and will do it again. And again and again and again. Collect some fabulous new people and stalked some fabulous old friends and yes. I feel warm and fuzzy and that the world is full of fun.

Talk shop? What? At a publishing con? Pfffft.

• San Diego in autumnal garb is ridiculously delicious. Warm sun, unblemished blue skies, and did you know they have an Ozone Layer here? Not a hole? THE SKY DOES NOT BURN YOU.
• Desert nights are, however, intense. That cold comes on like a sleazebag.
• There was a painting of a little girl in a blue dress in our room. She was fucking creepy. She was also apparently in every room. All the rooms. Ever. Except for two. Bulk discount on weird arse interior decorating?
• Did not buy a single thing in the dealer's room. This is heartbreaking, and quite impressive.
• Swimming!
• Apparently when I snore I sound like I am a mongoose being strangled.
• I also sound like a horny zombie.
• And growl if you attempt to wake me.
• I will not comment on the sleeping patterns of my companions as I am a gentleman.
• The trolley in San Diego is the lovechild of both a tram and a train.
• Mexican food, even at its worst, is unbelievably good in San Diego.
• Even if it is free, I will screw my nose up in disgust at the beer and not drink it.
• No wine for Sir Tessa not ever never again for all time forever.
• Bringing out the left over book bags for distribution is like watching sharks in a feeding frenzy.
• I did not play Twister while drunk.
• I did get a blue tongue though.
• And hit on an awful lot of pretty people.
• And stole chocolates and decals from the banquet once the diners had left their tables.
• I did that sober, actually.

The day after the con, we went to the San Diego Zoo.

!!!!!

Which deserves its own post.

The next day we flew in to JFK Airport, and I am sitting in a skinny apartment in Brooklyn. Yesterday I did things like take the subway across to Manhattan, see and squeal over the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, be overcome with grief when realising we could not see all of the Metropolitan Museum of the Art in one day (but nonetheless being incredibly immature in the Roman section, see twitter for evidence), went out for a magnificent steak dinner with a slab of Little, Brown, and then on to karaoke which was EPIC and FABULOUS, and then delivered safely home.

At some point in all that, my comrade turned to me and exclaimed, "Tessa! We're in New York! When did that happen?"

Shit Just Got Real

1. Friday was my last day at work.
2. Sophie, our 13 year old West Highland White Terrier, will probably die while I am away.
3. Ten days.
   

Domestic Archaeology

Having finally emptied my bookshelves (books, CDs and DVDs filling a total of 30 boxes), I've moved onto that part of packing involving rummaging around in boxes and cupboards that haven't seen the light of day since the last move.

It started with the discovery of an 'easter egg' in the packaging of my copy of MS Office 2004 for Mac, as blogged here. All that came to pass afterward was recorded on twitter, and by recorded on twitter I mean I spammed the crap out of my follower's timelines. Extracted and provided below, for your perusal;

• What day is it? #bewildered
• You've had your banana, back into the breach, maggot.
• Yes, you just smashed your head. Sit the fuck down.
• OMG, Apple made the packaging on MS Office hipster and cool; toad town hall terraium?! - http://tinyurl.com/4pqxggy
• That felt good.
• I just found another tooth, and I know this one didn't come from me. #packing
• And a spent bullet casing.
  
• Found my Red vs Blue stickers yesssssssssss!
• Shit, nearly dropped the water buffalo.
• Found mask from Buenos Aires. Shall not be taking it off for the rest of the day. Badass warrior packing FIGHT! http://twitpic.com/41pdbb

• Required: Masquerade Ball, STAT.
• Found: story books made in Prep. This one is about poo. Not the honey-eating bear kind.
• Found: old diary.........................................................................yeah, I'mma stop reading and shove it in a box NOW.
• I have hunger. Feed me.
• What's this? A WHOLE BOX OF OLD DIARIES. HAVE AT THEE, MAGGOT.
• My twitter feed is full of anti-old-diary activists. I defy you! Now hush, I'm reading 16 year old angst, hot damn it's bad.
• OLD DIARY FROM HIGH SCHOOL. CHECK THAT INSANITY, DEDICATION AND MASSIVE FUCKING BOOK - http://twitpic.com/41r1v9

• Primary school diaries!
• Found: letter I wrote to myself when 11 years old because no one else would write to me. It is very short.
• In primary school, I made stories about explorers and yetis, sharks, dinosaurs, and magic ants. And dinosaurs. Also, dinosaurs.
• 6 year old Tessa illustrated her grade prep work book with drawings of...Asterix.
• My freaking darlings, sheepish apologies for spamming the crap out of twitter today. I go now to make my fortune/find dinner. As you were.

I also found old letters and post cards from people who weren't me (seriously!), and picture story books I'd made in school, and old school projects, and photos, and had myself a gay old time.

With various blogs, diaries and journals, I have an account of my life going back to 11 years old. Reading them is both hard, humiliating and hilarious, and in many instances, surprisingly dull for the drama being written about. Some find this dedication to documentation alarming, especially the fact that I keep it all. These are external memory devices. Just as you carry a USB stick about with all your photos and important documents on, I take cart these old books from home to home. One day my memory will start to fade, and I will have these as the back up of my mind.

That said, if ever I go into politics? They're going up in a bonfire.

Then I chatted to Ben Peek for a bit, and when the opportunity was presented I gleefully pointed out to him that I am not 32, 33, no, I am 29 years old. There's nothing quite so brattishly satisfying as pointing out to your older friends that you're not just younger than them, you're younger than them.

Having recorded my life since 11, that means I have 18 years worth of documentation. That's more than half my life.

Most of it has nothing to do with pants, either. How odd.

The Year of Vanished Fish

Hey, you.

You're a bit lost right now, a bit bewildered to find your foundations absent and sureties you had taken for granted now unsteady things. There is, abruptly, a fog of uncertainty in your head, obfuscating your present and making a smeared water-colour painting of the future you're trying to aim at. You've never coped well with uncertainty, being a touch too gifted at taking all potential hypotheses into consideration when presented with any decision, but you're doing okay for now. Ish. Okay-ish.

That's all we can hope for, really. The uncertainty is you. Or rather, you are uncertain about all things including yourself. Especially yourself. You do not trust your own judgment, nor your capacity for logic, nor your ability to function. Lately, you've found yourself a startlingly unpredictable creature. Mood swings that have no trigger you can identify, nor any overarching plot to trace too. Violent bouts of crying that blindside you like a brick and disappear just as abruptly, leaving you nothing short of perplexed and confused, because while that violence ambushes you, you don't feel it.

What are you? You are not known to yourself. Not right now. For perhaps the first time. Your mind is now terra incognita.

No idea how people live like this.

In the interests of getting to know you, me, I, us, them, let's try a little exercise. I know it will be tough, because we've already tried this a couple of times with the result being Ctrl+A, Delete. I know your heart isn't in it, because mine sure as hell isn't.

But for the you, me, her, them that come back from the future to read this, some balance is required. This blog has become an unhappy place. You, I, we're only recording the misery. That's no fault of yours, I know. Processing the turbulence is more important than maintaining balance for the readers. But let's just try, okay? For you, me, us, them. For later.

Without further ado; things that made 2010 worth living.

And without further ado; I have deleted the list created.

Partly because it was forced. There is no capacity within me to be grateful for the privileges I've enjoyed the year passed. I acknowledge them, but right now I cannot feel them, and so to speak of them would be an exercise in lying to myself.

Also, I am battered and bruised and flinching. There is no capacity within me to trust the randomness of the world and its enduring capacity for capriciousness. If I were to announce the small wonders I hold close, then the acknowledgment would drive the world to then poison those wonders. Let them stay precious for now. Let them stay private. Let them be only mine.

Last year everything clicked into place. It was as though you had finally reached the age you have always been, and fit your skin and personality for the first time. You're a school of fish, and last year the fish swum out of their chaotic lack of coordination and began to move as one.

If you are composed of a million pieces, and those million pieces move as one, then that is almost the same as being composed of one single piece.

Almost.

Here and now, some of the fish are missing. Not eaten, not fled, simply disappeared. The remaining fish do not roil in confusion, although they are confused. They are lost. They don't know where they are going, and so they are not going anywhere.

You're a school of fish, full of holes and still in the water.

Sharks will find you if you stay like this.

2011 is going to wear me down. The decisions I've made will involve a great deal of fenangaling, and I expect to melt down often and with significant fallout. Even from out here the plans scare the shit out of me, but, scary things are worth doing. Remember that.

I wish I could go sailing into this year hollering and wild-eyed with some misguided sense of glory, delirious anticipation of the mistakes and messes I am to make, impatient for my triumphs and awards, and full of hunger for all that is unknown ahead of me. I wish I still had that strength, that willful heedlessness to all that might rend and scar. I wish I still knew that I would conquer the world.

It's come to three letters, two nested, each responding to the last, because by all that is infuriating and exasperating, THERE IS TOO MANY ME. We are an arrhythmic school of fish, and every damn fish has something to say. We, Planet Tessa, a fucking hivemind of one.

We have something to say to ourselves.

Maybe I'm not a school of fish, maybe I'm a migration of Golden Rays, or Blue Fin Tuna, or Wilderbeast. Maybe parts of me are meant to split off. Maybe my identity is meant to diverge and separate and be a fractured thing that will, later, come together again as something new.

It's 12.34am, and my ears are ringing with the memory of music. Music = mountains. There's mountains in me now, as intangible as music. This duality of being both immense and macroscopic in their extremes simultaneously is rare these days, it doesn't sweep through and out my head as often as it used to. But it is here now, and so I will ride it and say this.

You will not escape this year resolutionless. I had thought to let you off the hook this time, as the pressure of promises won't help you right now, and there are so many things you want to address, the size of the list alone will choke you.

You choked a lot in 2010. You're scared.

Now, now, now you'll be the spread lace of the Frilled-Neck Lizard, the raised quills of the Crested Porcupine, and the rampant fluffage of the White-faced Scops Owl. You're not dangerous, but you can pretend to be.



What do puffer fish do when they are frightened?

They make themselves look a damn sight sillier, but the point is made. In taking damage, they defeat their adversaries.

You are not strong, little fish, but you will be brave.




Also, you need a haircut.

Stranger Things Happen At Sea

The Most Loyal of Black Dogs

Yesterday a friend dreamed of having a great big wolfy dog that never left their side. Yesterday my mum dreamed of one of our current dogs and one of our past dogs and the work she had to do to get them out of a thunderbowl.

It is therefore not particularly surprising that this morning I dreamed of dogs. One of our current dogs playing with an enormous St Bernard who simply adored her, as everyone does. A surprisingly non-confrontational dream, considering. Not at all my unconscious's standard fare.

What You Choose To Be Proud Of

I just put my laptop Eddie on mute.

Only one person reading this will understand the satisfaction I take from this statement. That person is probably laughing at me.

Sharks, Dolphins, Barracuda, Tuna, Whales, Gannets, and You

There was no summary of the year type post for 2009. This was partly because I was out of the country when the new year rolled around, but I had intended to write something up when I was reinserted in my life.

I wrote that post about four times, and then walked away. I'm still not entirely sure why. Sometimes I think it's because I'm still in the midst of some turning tides, and so have no perspective from which to analyse even that which is a year behind me. Say nothing unless you are sure of what you're saying. Don't give your future self any more ammunition to use against yourself. Or, it could simply be that the territory in which the currents have shifted the most are territories I do not wish to share indiscriminately with the internet. With increasingly frequency I pause when posting, as I do not know who reads this any more.

The vaguest of summaries states that in 2009 I became a solid person.

Entering 2009 I wrote;

We come into the world without shape. We're perpetual works in progress. We die unfinished. I have pondered what I need to do in order to recover and regain the parts of me I have lost, but I will take no such steps. The world will do with me what it will, and make of me what it would. We're none of us given time to be whole. We'll never be whole, always being shaped by what's come, and what's yet to come.

I also wrote:

Never been single-minded about anything.

I'm a school of fish. Not a very coherent school of fish. The individual parts of me were in constant opposition. Fish were zipping around in all directions, no agreement between any of them, with 'school' being used in the loosest possible sense.

There have been predators disturbing the water and so disrupting the fish, but I can't blame it all on the sharks and gulls. Even without exterior threats, this school of fish would be a churning chaos of frenetic fish going nowhere and doing nothing.

Last year, not only did all the predators disappear, but the fish just...came together. It almost felt like I'd reached the age I am supposed to be. Maybe it's the first calm water I've ever been in. I don't know why, but suddenly all the fish started moving in unison.

I just...I've never felt so whole. Solid. Strong. Certain. I trusted myself with myself, trusted myself with the decisions I made and that I could weather any consequences that came from them.

Which isn't to say I was a person, no. Just because a million fish move in unison doesn't stop them being a million fish, but if they behave as if they are one mind, then nearly the same as really being one mind.

Lately, there have been sharks in the water.



Doubt, my old friend. I haven't missed you.

Please Hold [Your Call Is Important To Us]

There. All books read written about. 42 books read this year (and 5 manuscripts critiqued, 0 novels finished). I wasn't sure I'd get them finished in time. Definitely ran out of oomf at the end there. Too much analysing in too short a time. Or, I'm just tired and stupid.

Tomorrow morning I fly out without laptop or phone. I'll probably remain off the grid till I'm home again in late January, as the majority of time I'll be camping. If you have stalkerly-inclinations, you can track my approximate whereabouts following the itinerary here. If you're not quite that intense about your stalking, then just know I'm in Patagonia.

(It's amusing how many people have no idea where that is.)

Last Thursday I finished work. When it occurred to me I wouldn't be back in the office for more than a month I started to cry. The last couple of months have been a slow drowning. I'm understating that, because I've spent a considerable amount of energy not thinking of my circumstances, keeping myself distracted and the rug pulled over my eyes. Even though I can't see it, I can still feel the water rising.

There is no way out.

And-

I need to breathe.

Tomorrow I fly out, and then I will be able to stop worrying about money as everything has already been paid for. I won't have to organise anything or anyone, as that's someone else's job. I won't be carrying the weight of all the friends I'm neglecting, because I won't be in a position to do anything for them. I won't have to hold myself together, because I won't be me. I won't be afraid for my life, because I won't be in it.

I won't be unable to write, because I will not be writing.

For the record: the balance remains in favour of the year. Despite the plunge I've taken recently, 2009 has been the best year of my life. Everything that did happen, everything that didn't happen, all I've learned and gained and lost, it was worth it. It needs to be said.

As for you kids, I hope the new year treats you kindly (and you greet it with hijinx and tomfoolery). Keep on keeping on.



<3
Sir Tessa

The Year of Decaying Orbits

Crossing into 2008, I wrote; You don’t matter. Might as well go out and live.

It’s something of a quandary, living out that philosophy. There’s a freedom that only comes with being utterly irrelevant in every context, and a solace that only comes with being invisible. Yet even as I seek out such anonymity, I rebel against it, some ingrained streak of contrariness a mile wide and a mile deep sees me unconsciously, instinctively and habitually distance myself from any given norm. As the act of differentiating myself from my surroundings brings me attention, so I flee that attention and hide away in being an ordinary person leading an ordinary life, unremarkable and with nothing to set me apart from the faceless masses. But I don't fit in. I won't fit in. I'll never fit in. It's a well-worn groove, this cycle. It’s frustrating. Exasperating. Infuriating. Exhausting. Never been single-minded about anything.

Passing out of 2008, I would like to add: Just because you don’t matter doesn’t mean you won’t hurt.

I’ve written about it all enough. I don’t want to write about it any more. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to revisit those memories. Whenever I do, I just fall back into that trap of trying to find a way to undo it all, make it better, make it a trial that was worth going through. It wasn’t. I can’t. I fool myself, endlessly, going over this one instance or that moment or this conversation and telling myself I could have dealt with it better. Much better. And perhaps if it was each was an isolated event, I would have, but the stresses of this, and this, and that, and these, and them, they fold in on each other and feed each other, an incestuous knot of anxiety so heavy it’s practically a singularity, drawing ever more panic towards it, warping all perceptions until everything I said was wrong, everything I did was wrong, and knowing, somehow, that I was making mistakes, I’d fumble around trying to correct them and find the right thing to do, whatever that thing was, and miss it completely and propagate more wrongs in the process, and that won’t ever change. It’s past tense. I don’t want to think about it. Are you sick of hearing about it? I am.

I guess I haven’t yet forgiven myself for not being a stronger person.

This year broke me. I lost my self-respect, dignity, certainty, equilibrium, hope, all perspective and balance. I gained shame, anxiety, regret, fear, and doubt, amplified paranoia and endless extra doubt. All my avenues of self-preservation were used, and used, and then used up. There wasn't anything left. It won, I lost.

I spent most of the year with an eating disorder, because something had to give. Messing with my diet was better than cutting, I suppose. I only mention it now because I appear to be done with it, and I only mention it at all because it was turning into a secret, and I don't want yet another secret. Trying to shrug off a bad habit that you don’t actually want to shrug off and have absolutely no incentive to shrug off is and really does provide a whole lot of relief is…not the most heartfelt or thorough fight I’ve engaged in.

Occasionally people tell me I’m strong, but that’s all a charade. Nine parts of being strong merely involves keeping weakness out of sight. I'm not strong. If you think my TMI blog posts aren't 'out of sight', then consider the things I haven't written about, that you will never know. That I revealed as much as I did indicates how cracked up I was.

Occasionally people call me brave, too. They say this about my travels, the food I eat, the things I write, the conformations I shrug off, the activities I do on my own, the risks I take – things they wouldn't do. They're things I do. Things that cost me nothing. Things I choose to do, because I want to do them. Maybe that makes me adventurous, on occasion. Maybe that makes me daft.

Bravery means overcoming fear. Some people are brave every day. They're strong people. I can count the number of times I've been brave, properly brave, in my life on less than one hand. Perhaps I carry less fear than most. Perhaps I haven't been properly tested.

I'm afraid now.

It was a horrible place. I don't want to go back. Just thinking about it is like passing through cold water. I don't want to go back. It's dread. It's panic. I don't want to be like that again.

This equilibrium I've found, this status quo, it has nothing to do with my own ability to cope. It exists purely due to circumstances. No more storms. Nothing I did changed any thing. Enough time passed. I'm still at the mercy of chance. I'm terrified. Every day could be the day it all falls apart and I go back. I haven't been a good friend and I won't be a good friend. I'll cut you out of my life if you're sending me there. I don't want to do anything to bring it on myself.

I don't want to do anything at all.

And I don't want to be like this.

I should be okay. I am okay, and yet, not recovered. I've never had to force myself to do something I want to do. That I should want to do. That it is entirely in my power to do. There are exciting things on the horizon. New job. Tibet. Writing projects. Good things. Great things. Ridiculously amazingly oarsome things. But I perceive some challenge in them, and challenge requires effort, and effort leads to stress, and that's the avalanche begun. I'm frightened of these great things, I don't want to do them, I don't want anything to do with them.

Scary things are worth doing.

I'll just have to be brave.

I went into 2008 torn between paralysing despair and delirious hope, full of the violence of opposing forces. I've lived with the volume turned up and my head and heart howling. I'm going into 2009 without violence, small, trying not to attract attention. I write this, I admit this, and I am sad.

So much has happened, and yet, so little has changed. It's something to be ashamed of. It's something to be grateful for.

We come into the world without shape. We're perpetual works in progress. We die unfinished. I have pondered what I need to do in order to recover and regain the parts of me I have lost, but I will take no such steps. The world will do with me what it will, and make of me what it would. We're none of us given time to be whole. We'll never be whole, always being shaped by what's come, and what's yet to come.

There's more on the horizon.

There will always be more on the horizon.



The sun keeps rising, I keep breathing, and these terrible, wonderful things drag me on.

Round 2: writaaaaaaaaaaar!

The novel grew quite a bit this year. I'm not a good writer, I don't track my daily word count at all, so I have no idea by how much it grew, only that it grew. But then 7wishes kicked off, and a whole lot of shit hit the fan, and it ground to a halt again. Poor novel. Soon, baby, soon.

As stated earlier, due to 7wishes I wrote 42 short stories this year. I don't think it can be said enough that such an undertaking is INSANE and I will not be repeating it, even if I didn't exactly do it deliberately this time around. I don't know what the word count is, I'd guess around 40k.

It became pretty obvious from this that I am incapable of working on more than one project at a time.

My one proper print story featured in ASIM #34, and I admit I totally failed to pay any attention and read any reviews, so I've no idea how it was greeted.

Ann invited me across the threshold (I'm like a vampire, you know, you only need ask and THEN YOU NEVER GET RID OF ME) and I'm now an editorial assistant for Weird Tales, something which continues to surprise me. I also critiqued four and a half novels this year; two of them are on the shelves, one will be on the shelves in a year, and the other I expect on the shelves at some point.

Behind the scenes, it was an even better year for learning about my own writing mechanics. The novel took off because I found myself entirely incapable of distracting myself; living in the city with no TV, internet, not even a desk to put the Decepticon on in order to play games, what's a girl to do with herself? gussy up and hit the bars! STAY INSIDE. WRITE. That brief stretch was all it took to teach myself how to block, really block, distractions, and more importantly, the urge to be distracted, out.

It was a process I'd half started a couple of years ago, when I bought Eddie. Having two computers seems overkill, but keeping writing to one and play on the other works perfectly for me. Eddie is the writing machine. The Decepticon is the slackassery machine. And never the two shall meet. I even bought this particular desk because it was long enough to fit the two on without the spaces overlapping, and without loosing the ability to look out the window. I've found my ideal set up. It took 27 years, but a secret once learned is never unlearned.

7wishes was a veeeeeeery interesting ride. Something that started as a personal exercise in distraction of another kind turned into something else, I don't know what. It never stopped being personal, but in my mind, the idea as a whole came to belong to you readers as much as it did to me. That, perhaps, was a half-taste of what it is to be an established, lauded and much-stalked author. Have my stories ever been as read? They were well chopped up at Clarion South by at least 17 other people, but there's a different mentality involved between submitting a rough draft for critique and essentially self-publishing a finished piece for anyone passing by to read. These aren't the traditional paths of waiting for circulation, reading, and reviewing. What reactions there were, were posted here - feedback was pretty much instantaneous. I didn't have time to fall out of love with the story. Given the long time lines involved in the publishing industry, it's a turnaround I don't think many have the chance to experience.

Some of you I know, but a lot of you I don't know, and you have no investment in any sort of relationship and thus no need to pander to my ego. You've stuck around and read and read a bit more, and that alone says more than any positive comment.

I had an enormous tanty a couple of years back. I was all "AAARUGH I suck at writing I am a failure I will never be a proper writer ARRRRUGH writing sucks I don't care any more AAAARUGH" etc etc etc. This was triggered partly due to post-Clarion South stress and a prolonged period of unemployment and depression. For a while there it was quite confronting. If I wasn't a writer, if writing was no longer the point of my life, then what was? That's a void I'd never experienced before. It's not all that pleasant. Still, I'm not a writer, and writing is not the point of my life, and I think I've made my peace with that, at last, and now I write because I want to. I'm not pushing myself to do it because It Is My Goal In Life. The onus of my future has been kicked into a gutter. I'm not a writer. But I write anyway.

I still can't tell you why. I don't know.

Probably because I don't know how to do anything else.

Now that my head knows what it's doing, and I know what I'm doing...I'm having a right fucking godddamn bugger of a time doing it. Ben Peek wrote about some of the less than stella aspects of the writing life, in that he chose time to write, and thus isn't in a great financial position. I'm the opposite; I have money fine, but no time to write. My job is a set 40 hours a week, there is never any over time or staying back an extra hour or so to finish a job, so I have more time than most full time workers. I can squeeze in a good few hours or so of writing on some days, no writing at all on others, and it only takes a couple of engagements to slaughter a week's output. Christmas has kicked my progress in the nuts. My word count is curled up in a fetal position, red-faced and crying as Christmas gears up for another kick and New Years is cracking its knuckles in the background.

I hope (five million fingers crossed) that having a 9-5 mon-fri job will at least let me develop a set routine, something shiftwork never allowed. Six months of that will be an adequate trial and if it hasn't made a significant difference to my output, well, we'll have some thinking to do.

If you really want to be a writer, then go get yourself an understanding partner and live with them. Shared costs makes a difference, and shared household living errands makes a difference. Plus, if they're really nice, they'll make you cups of tea.

Or you could just not be a writer.

Actually, if you really want to be a writer you have to die in obscurity. That's doing it properly. To make this easier, I'm going to establish my own nation within Australia. It will be called Obscurity, where all writers come to rest, not unlike an elephant's graveyard. Tortured artists will be lining up and sending me inflammatory letters, demanding to know who I am to choose who does and does not get to die in Obscurity, after all, I'm not even a writer.

Pretty good year for someone who isn't trying.

Round 1: blaaaaargh!

January: I walk along the tram tracks on Flinders Street, because I can.

February: FIRST: Deb will be in Melbourne this weekend, just in case you missed it and wanted to make the most of this rare opportunity to observe her in the wild.

March: Herr Bear

April: When I raise the blinds, I see jellyfish.

May: Here's the deal: instead of 7wishes, you get MS Paint doodles.

June: Somewhere, there is a committee, and that committee decided that security was paramount, and while Britain’s emulation of Orwell’s 1984 is a sterling effort, it isn’t enough.

July: never say yes to garlic sauce. even when it's free.

August: I’ve been thinking about vengeance.

September: Philip Glass will be performing at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in October.

October: “I beg your pardon,” the ButlerBot says.

November: What a pleasant day!

December: Come closer, I have something to tell you.

Methinks I need to exercise my wit around the first of the month more often, or pointless summations such as this fail to even be passingly amusing. Got caught by less nightshift exercises than I thought. I'm very partial to November, there.

Maybe I should declare themes for each month of 2009? "This month is the month of Vegemite Sandwiches!" and the like. See how I totally fail to live up to a month of vegemite sandwiches.

Well, a month of vegemite sandwiches is just not sensible. BUT! This the perfect excuse to go out and buy more finger puppets, one for each month. WHAT MY LIFE NEEDS IS MORE FINGER PUPPETS. YOUR LIFE NEEDS MORE FINGER PUPPETS. SO DOES THE INTRAWEBZ. Clearly, this is my destiny.



"NEVAAAR! THIS IS MY BLAAARGH! MIIINE!"

Shut up, shark puppet. You look like a right twat with a finger up your cloaca.

(I walk along the tram tracks on Flinders Street, because I can. The sun is gone, and didn’t take the heat with it. People everywhere, so many I can’t see the faces any more, just people people people. I get home later than usual, strip all clothes, pour a large drink, sit down, and start editing this, this tirade. this manifesto, this recap.)

(This great big long self-absorbed, self-infatuated, self-involved wank. Holy crap. What a steaming pile of horseshit. Mock mock mock.)

An Open Time Capsule Containing Three Photos, Borrowed Lyrics, And A Letter That Isn’t For You

(Die, pretentious title, die.)

/2007


osorezan, shimokita-hanto, honshu, japan
windmills left by the parents of dead children


(Yeah. But selected 'cause it was pretty. Heh.)

i think i’ve reached that point

(Lyrics. Oh Tessa, I mock you. Sweet fuck. You emo twat. You might as well get your lip pierced and wear black eyeliner. You’re quoting The Cure, FFS.)

(Don’t start listening to emo bands though. There’s only so much dignity you can strip before it isn’t funny anymore.)

(Wait, what am I listening to now? 65DaysOfStatic? Haha, PSYKE! THERE IS NO HOPE FOR ME. We shall retract that statement. You may listen to any music you like, provided it’s good music.)

Let's talk about 2006. You need to remember 2006 before you can understand 2007.

2006 was a good year. Nothing bad happened. At all. It was smooth sailing, punctuated by a fantastic trip overseas containing mountains and hilarious friends. You were financially secure, well clear of unemployment and no one’s financial burden, lived in a good sound home and possessed all your teeth. The perfect year to get your act together, and little girl, you tried. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. You pushed yourself to be happy, bright, cheery. You looked for little joys to bolster up your days. You beat yourself senseless for falling in a slump and dragged yourself back out. You sought and found wonder in everything, even when there was no wonder to be found. You made up more reasons than you’d ever need as proof that you should be grateful to be alive. You did everything you could to be the person you wished you were.

You tried.

where giving up and going on

At the end of this easy, good, smooth, unchallenging year, you looked back, and realised that despite all your efforts and a distinct lack of any real obstacles, you were only ever 'okay'. Look at that. 'Okay.' One of the worst words in the English language.

And you were exhausted. Fighting yourself everyday does that.

(This sounds distinctly like whinging. Are you whinging? “Oooh, I had a good year, POOR ME.” Insert my total lack of sympathy here.)

(And don’t give me that crap about how you only ever have the life you live, and your misery can only really be compared to your previous states of misery. That’s justifying feeling sorry for yourself, and a lousy justification at that.)

(Oh shut up. I was there too.)

The few people you tried to relate this to missed the point. They congratulated you on how strong you were, without realising this so called ‘strength’ was driving you face first into the ground. (“OH I’M SO MISUNDERSTOOD WAAAAA.”) Oh, but you’re not strong, you never were, you’re just good fooling the people around you (…or not). Even better at fooling yourself. (OR NOT. I WAS THERE TOO.) You’d convinced yourself that you would not fall apart, and then couldn’t fall apart when you needed to. Quite frankly, the thought of being strong made you sick. The thought of carrying on this ridiculous fight every day for the rest of your life made you sick. The thought of all this effort just to be 'okay' made you sick. Sick, sick, sick.

(Well, that bit’s true. I’ll give you that. You’re still being a bit dramatic though.)

You realise you’ll never be the person you wish you were.

(Cry more, noob.)


utoro, hokkaido, japan
no buses leaving

are both the same dead ends to me

Let's talk about 2007.

and i’m going nowhere fast

(Oh well, at least you’re now quoting Patrick Wolf. You’re still being emo about it though.)

The first couple of months were spent in deadpan panic. What to do. Continue the fight, every year, month, day, hour, minute, second stretching into second for the rest of your life? Fuck that horseshit. (Damn straight.) Get help? Stupid, stubborn, wilful, mulish little girl. You’ve never asked for help, you’ll never ask for help. (Damn straight.) Counselling? Not your cup of tea – you’ve already mastered the art of self-manipulation and single-player mind games. (Damn straight.) What’s left? It's quite easy to spend a couple of months brooding over crap like this. You’re a worldclass champion brooder, you are. You could out-brood Hamlet. (Damn straight.)

a darker day has hold at last

Oh, but there are always new single-player mind games to try on yourself, and you found this one by accident. (Your tone here is getting a bit…er…ridiculous. “Oh”, what do you mean, “Oh”?) Reading about space, planets and stars, generally clicking around wikipedia in the long hours of nightshift, researching this novel you know will never go anywhere, you fixate on the size of the universe, on the span of time, and it reminds you of mountains.

deep in a dream i

In grade 1 you had this moment: sitting at your table, looking out the window, thinking about the solar system. It was overcast. Elbow on the table, chin in hand. You were going through a space phase, like little boys do. You weren’t listening to the teacher. You were thinking of the distance between each planet, the time it takes for the light of the sun to reach them, and for an instant, you held that distance in your mind. It’s enormous, too big to hold for any longer than an instant, and you let it go quickly. It frightened you. In that great span, you saw how small you were, and how irrelevant everything around you was. You were 6 years old. You let the teacher’s voice in your head then, and she filled that vast space, but you never forgot.

(This is true, but irrelevant.)

set the compass

(Doggamn with the lyrics! NEVER AGAIN.)

You remember that feeling, twenty years later, and this time, you don’t let it go. The people who study astronomy, the immensity of space, the agonisingly slow tick of a geological time frame, you wonder why it is these people do not simply lay down and die, and how they keep the size of what they stare into from overwhelming them. You let it overwhelm you. You see yourself as nothing . You are nothing. You, the city you live in, the people around you, the history that follows you, everything is entirely irrelevant. There’s no point to anything. Nothing matters at all.

(Melodrama much? You should write romances. You’d be ACE.)

It doesn't matter if you’re a miserable fucker. Your state of mind doesn't matter at all.

(DAMN STRAIGHT. NOW GET OVER YOURSELF.)

to spinning

So, you stop fighting.

You stop looking after yourself, stop protecting yourself from your triggers. If you see trouble ahead, (and boy, did you see trouble) you no longer make any effort to steer clear of it, and keep going. Speeding cars and concrete walls. (Actually, I believe the correct term is FACEPLANT.)

Oh, you haven’t faceplanted (Heh, see?) this much since high school! You daft muppet. (Are you talking to yourself? Did you just call me a muppet? Whatever, wiener.) You let a boy in your head, you let him lean on you because he says flattering things and tells you secrets, and you, you’re a greedy, desperate little thing. A sniff of trust and you’ll roll over like a good dog. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, that you don’t need proof you’re worth trust. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter if you do.

You tell yourself it doesn’t matter if you let him trample your heart.

You tell yourself it doesn’t matter if you let him do it again, and again. It isn’t as though you have anything better to do.

You let him use you like a toy, and like a toy, he gets bored and finds something else to play with. (Holy crap, no one wants to hear about your weird little infatuations. Not even I do, and I was there. Particularly because I was there, actually. Ew. Embarassing.) You tell yourself it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. But you’ve spent years trying to avoid these sorts of messes, and the behaviour patterns that have carried you this far don’t break easily.

What a mess. What a lot of crying in the dark. What an awful lot of tissues. This year, mucous production is up ten fold from all previous years. Ew. (+10 Ditto)

This is how you learn. In those small wretched lonely hours when you’re afraid someone will hear you snivelling, you realise that this misery is, all things considered, easy. It doesn’t matter if you’re miserable, so you’re not telling yourself you shouldn’t be miserable, and my goodness, doesn’t that make all the difference? You’re miserable and (word repetition, muppet) upset and depressed, and you let yourself be just that. What a relief, to be a mess and not beat yourself up about it. It goes away faster, because it doesn’t matter, and you come out the end thinking, well, that wasn’t so bad.

Then you find the catch to letting yourself be miserable when you’re miserable is that-

-you have to let yourself be happy when you’re happy.

Which is harder than you expect.

(Trufax.)

But you’re a fast learner.

(Don’t flatter yourself.)

And you find that doesn’t matter so much either. All that self-loathing doesn’t matter. All the good memories don’t matter. All these ups and downs and difficulties and surprise joys, they don’t matter. Which starts you doing things you wouldn’t normally do, because, well, whatever happens, it doesn’t matter, does it?

(Yeah…well…)

You get a little addicted to new things and risks and you seek out experiences and scars and anything with an ending you can’t see. Why not? It doesn’t matter. Might as well see what happens. You never know, there might be elephants.

(I have to reveal that, sadly, there was a distinct lack of elephants to the year. I know, it’s appalling. Look what the world has come to; mediocre wank with no elephants. Hemlock and crushed glass, I say!)

Another boy happens. You expect it to be a mess, and it is. (Admittedly, not as messy as you expected.) You’ve no idea what’s going on, and you’re a little weirded out to find that’s okay by you. (Haha, do you actually believe that? Is that the sound of self-delusion? I think it is!) Doesn’t matter.

The family divides, again. Your father goes to Malaysia, and over the phone you hear him wilting and tired and at war with the family. Most of the time, he doesn’t say anything. Sometimes he drowns you with everything that’s going on, and hangs up in tears. Does matter.

The first boy pops up now and then, and you eyeball him, and fail to get hung up on him, which is very out of character. You’re impressed. Doesn’t matter. (Actually, I’m impressed too. What’s up with that? Why aren’t you all clingy and mopey and, what is it Helen of Troy does? She pines around the topless towers or something.)

(Well, he did treat you like shit.)

(You could at least get hung up about that.)

(Okay, fine, whatever. Be all reasonable and rational and shit. See if I care.)

You go on a ridiculously long and convoluted trip to Japan, (which rocked the muthafucking kazbar) where all these budding thought paths and behaviour patterns get a thorough work out. Every day, you confront something you’re not familiar with, and you find you love winging your way through it all, bemusing as it is. You conquer that country, and in doing so, conquer yourself.

(That sounds like bull. ‘Conquering’? Oh please. So several years ago.)

Maybe you even come back changed.

(AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAaaaaa…ah shit, you made me cry with that one. That’s fucking hilarious.)

Doesn’t matter.

You stop talking about it and go ahead and apply for a lease while in the middle of nightshift. You’re no fool. You might be changed, but not that much. It takes a nightshift-induced lunacy to make things happen, and while you’re lying on the floor in the upstairs bedroom in Malaysia, things happen. (You did show some sense there. Well played, that man.)

You loose your certainty. Things matters, things don’t matter, you loose your grip on what is right/wrong, good/bad, polite/impolite, heartless/honest, true/false, real/not. You’ve been down this slippery slope before, and you don’t like it, and this, this does matter. (Yes, yes it does. We are of one mind on that.) You fight, then, and regain some measure of certainty. Still, the world is a little less in focus, and you have these moments, more and more of them, in which you find yourself looking for a sign of the impossible, something to indicate everything that everyone assumes is a certainty is an elaborate farce. This matters, but, less and less. (You get used to it. After a while. Still, it isn’t nice. I think we’ll need to do something about it soon.)

You make the conscious decision to leave your safety net. You know, just to see what happens. You move into a white box in an old tower with a view of an airconditioning vent and pigeons. Your mother isn’t there. Your father isn’t there. Your brother isn’t there. Your dogs aren’t there. You fear loneliness, which leads to depression, which will lead to you isolating yourself, which will lead to deeper loneliness, which will lead to- (Look at those drama llamas run! Run, drama llama, run!)

You surprise yourself a bit. The teething problems aren’t nearly as big as you expected. You take to this white box like a fish to water. Maybe shiftwork kept you away from people more than you realised. Being alone has never troubled you, and it isn’t troubling you now. (Nah, you just had yourself convinced, for a little while, that you were a people person. You’re not. No surprise there.)

You let yourself be friends with people you like. People you like so much they make you shy. They’re hilarious, ridiculous, frustrating, fascinating people. The worst thing they do is laugh at you. The best thing they do is laugh at you. They tell you you’re fabulous, and it doesn’t matter if every now and then you believe it. (Fah. No one cares unless you’re going to name names. Are you? Didn’t think so. Too much doubt that you’re wrong, and they’ll see their name here and be slightly creeped out that it means more to you than it does to them. You talk big about everything not mattering, but you’re not 100% sold on your own mad theory. You’re definitely not fabulous, but you can be amusing at times. At some point, probably sooner than later, you’re going to revert, and they’ll think you’ve just gone and snobbed them all off, and dislike you immensely for it. Eh. It happens. You’ll live survive.)

You nearly turn into an arsehole. (AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Fuck me, ‘nearly’, did you say ‘nearly’? How about, YOU ARE AN ARSEHOLE. REVEL IN YOUR ARSEHOLEOSITY. BE AT ONE WITH YOUR ARSEHOLE- no, wait, that came out wrong.) It’s easy to throw ‘doesn’t matter’ around. You draw lines; it doesn’t matter what happens to you, but other people, they still matter. It’s doubtful anyone around you is seeking out all the unexplored places on the map, all the here be dragons, as you are. (Wank.) No one else has carefully nurtured a space-induced irrelevance complex. (This is probably true, and probably a good thing.) They matter, to them. Respect that, at least. You’re not entirely sure where all of these lines are, but you suspect you’ll know them when you cross them. You suspect you’re still an arsehole, regardless. (Oh, I know you are.) Doesn’t matter. Sometimes.

You say more. You reach out randomly – why not? – and people say things back! (No. Fucking. Shit.) NO WAI. (Wait, let me underline that.) You collect an enormous number of conversations, and more secrets than you know what to do with. You wonder if this is normal, this large pile of secrets you have, from all manner of people. You imagine keeping them under the bed. The real estate agent comes around for inspection, and screams at the sight of them. What are they, she cries. Oh them, you wave dismissively, they’re just secrets. But they’re staining the carpet! They’re secrets, you repeat, they come out with time. (Okay, I admit I like this piece of wank. It can stay.)

(Just between you, me, and anyone else who has read this far, this isn’t a behaviour pattern that’s going away any time soon. You consider the gift of a secret the greatest compliment you’ll ever receive. They make your ego puff up bigger than it has any call to be. It’s shallow and desperate, this need to be acknowledged as worthy of trust. But you like other people’s secrets. Maybe because they overshadow your own.)

(Where’d that set of brackets come from? True and irrelevant.)

You don’t hold onto the little acknowledgements of your worthlessness as much. This is a good thing. You don’t hold onto the little proofs of your worth as much. This is a better thing. Always thought that was a little pathetic. Neither of these things matter. (+10 Ditto.)

You have a secret. You didn’t know you had it until you tried to let it out. You can’t decide if this matters or not. (Blah, blah blah…)

Probably not. (DAMN STRAIGHT.)

You’re here now, and this is no longer addressed to the second person, but written in first person. Here I am. I am here. Funny old year.

(That is one butt ugly paragraph. Dude, you suck.)

(Also, not ‘funny old year’. Great year. A year with messes and pitfalls and bruises, and yet you made no mistakes. Ridiculous stupid ludicrous dumb incredible hilarious year. That was fun, again, again!)

Used to be, I placed great stock in knowing who I was. I might be a useless horrible worthless sack of shit, but at least I knew who I was. Maybe that was the problem all along.

Now, I don’t know who I am. Things happen, and my reactions are unexpected. My mind works differently, and I keep surprising myself. Some of these surprises are hilarious. Some of them unflattering. I keep looking for something new, something that will push me in a different direction, something to draw out another unfamiliar reaction. I like this unknown thing I’ve become. Let’s see what happens.

(You know what’s happening. It ain’t pretty. Couldn’t really expect otherwise.)

Used to be, I was going to change the world. Conquer it, even. (Yep. Sooo several years ago.) Never even doubted it. Oh, my arrogance can topple towers. It could wreak more destruction than Godzilla.

Now, I’m rather more interested in how the world can change me. Augh, I’m so self-absorbed, I find my own personality shifts fascinating. Heh. Lame. I’m easily amused. And you ask me why I don’t need a television. (About time you started mocking yourself.)

Used to be, I’d consider all this entirely self-destructive.

Now, doesn’t matter. Haha, how’d you like them apples? I’m not writing stories, so I might as well make a story out of my life. At this rate, it will be long, badly written, unbalanced, and with an unreliable narrator. (LIKE YOUR BLOG POSTS?) A narrator who keeps going on about how she doesn’t mean a thing. If I don’t mean a thing, then anything I go through means nothing as well, and I might as well just take that freedom and run with it. Oh, logic traps. Oh, mind games. I loose every time. Don’t know if any of this is healthy, but it’s a hell of a lot more interesting.

But this can’t last. Rubber bands, when stretched out, snap back into shape. Usually with some force. I’m winging it, every day, and I love it, and it can’t last. I can feel it, some old me, a Tessa who couldn’t stand the thought of not being in control, a Tessa who let her insecurities matter, a Tessa who couldn’t have done any of this, she hasn’t gone away. She never went far at all. It’s building up, and soon the fight will start all over again. I’m afraid. It shouldn’t matter. It does.

(Silly little girl. You’re forgetting what started this all. You’re “okay”. Doesn’t matter what you go through, you’ll always, always, fucking always be okay. One of the worst goddamn muthfucking goatsucking words in the whorish English language.)

(Admittedly, before you get to be “okay”, you have to go through the nasty stuff first.)

(But you will be okay.)

(Eventually.)

(Ugh. I’m not even convincing myself.)

To you, the future me who might read this again a month from now, a year from now, remember; you don’t mean a thing. You are irrelevant. You don’t matter.

(I rather think any future Tessa reading this is going to snort, like this *snoooort* and find this disgusting mess of blather both amusing and humiliating.)

There’s no point to anything. The dinosaurs don’t matter. Hitler doesn’t matter. The death of the sun doesn’t matter. Clearance sales don’t matter. The change of government doesn’t matter. Your shift penalties don’t matter. That he didn’t reply doesn’t matter. The depletion of the ocean’s tuna stocks don’t matter. That she doesn’t and has never listened doesn’t matter. The guy who flirted with you in the store doesn’t matter. The secrets you keep don’t matter. Your blisters don’t matter. You sleep doesn’t matter. Your dreams don’t matter.

(Oh for- you know this mind game isn’t going to last much longer. It’s too hard walking the line between pure apathy and reckless, harmful stupidity. This mind game is ending. You felt it, I can feel it. The battle has started, you can see it in this post. How many Tessas are there in here? Never been single minded about anything. I had to ridicule myself before I could consider posting this, because I can only take myself seriously if I’m not taking myself seriously at all. What’s the point, if you can’t laugh at it? It’s all coming down, and one day I’m going to wake up in my usual, old frame of mind, trapped in my head and unable to deal with anything, and I’ll be alone in a white room. I don’t see myself coping with this. At all.)

(Yeah. I’m afraid too.)

(Doesn’t matter.)



little collins st, melbourne, australia
i think it speaks for itself

You don’t matter. Might as well lay down and die.

let’s see how fast this thing can go

You don’t matter. Might as well go out and live.

(Oh, platitudes. You sound like a Hallmark card. Nice sentiment though.)