Nothing in this blog post will be news.

Fuck, you know, I've tried to fucking "sculpt" an opening paragraph three times now. This isn't going to be a technically skilled piece of writing. It isn't going to have a structure that means anything to anyone but me.

Last night was not so much a breaking point as a an unexpected bubble making it to the surface. The tearstorm came out of nowhere. A conversation about devops suddenly careened into empathy and then I found myself sobbing into my hands and blubbering all over J. Which, being someone with depressive issues, isn't actually that out of character, but I hadn't spotted it coming. In fact I'd had a good day, was feeling fine. I thought I was.

Originally I'd been working 11 till 4. My own confidence growing and some crunch time at work led to an extension of my hours and my joining the 9-5 crowd for a week. Only one week. Not counting Wednesday. That's all I lasted. On Wednesday I slept until 3pm. On the weekend I did the same. Right now I'm using a mouse only with my left hand, because the increased hours simply resulted in me doing myself an injury. With a computer mouse. To my right intercostal. Which affects everything I do, including breathing.

It's a pattern established over six years. Change my work routine and set up, and something inside me will break. When I was a House Elf I had tendonitis from scrubbing the fucking showers in the bed & breakfast. At FOI I had to go part-time. Before that at my data-entry role, my body...broke. And I had to just leave and get another job. Actually that's what I did with FOI as well: I left the country, became a House Elf, and failed differently. Six years of failing, and being in pain for trying.

This time I'm in a completely new organisation, and it feels like having a fresh audience. In front of which I am failing. Again.

How can I plan for my future when I can't even control my capabilities in the present? I'm coasting along on the goodwill of others, and that's what my future requires, and it isn't something that can be taken for granted.

I'm just so tired of this. A positive frame of mind doesn't even come into it. I'm happy if I can keep my mind quiet, because it takes so little for all my frustrations and anguish to stir and stampede. It all just feeds my depression until I just look at the massive beast it has become and shrug.

There's no way out but through.

ETA: I think it's especially sharp-edged this time as my current work environment is amazing. A small comfortable office in which everyone actually does their job and gives a shit, and few people actually complain. I want to live up to that. And I all my aches and pains mean I have to make decisions which ensure that I can't. I don't want to be dead weight.

Today I also discovered that typing, not just using the mouse, aggravates my injury. This cuts into my editing work. Nowhere is safe. 

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. 

Noise & Sound

Every day I think about writing. Not merely acknowledging it's a task I should do, want to do, but composing sentences and stringing them together into paragraphs and then sections while I wait at the railway station or wash my hands at the toilets. But I don't write. I read a lot, and generally. I read fiction for my own pleasure, articles and essays online, all sorts of pieces to edit, and dip in and out of social media like a fussy gannet. A fussy and seemingly insatiable gannet. The nature and quality of the content doesn't seem to matter. Nothing wants to come out. There is just so much noise in the world. In fiction and non-fiction. Online and off. So much. And so much of it is empty. A cacophany of ultimately impactless voices. I have no desire to add to that, nor do I have the necessary audacity to believe I have something unique which needs to be heard. Cultivate silence, and be content.

The Submarineasaurus Protocol

Friends,

(And I do mean that; friends. Friends I have, friends with which I wish to turn our giggling creek into a deep and endless ocean, friends I have not made yet. The friends I choose.)

I.









can't.

Health issues have deteriorated so quickly I've been unable to manage my psychological
reaction? balance?
my psychologicals. All of them. I'm not coping.
And this spills out into my flat voice, flat eyes, weak smiles and flaking on too many social funtimes. In the past week, four and a half pikings at very short notice, three of which involved me hiding in a toilet cubicle trying to reteach myself how to cry without making a sound.
I'm sorry, but right now I can't be a good friend. Please invite me still, ask me still, and I'm sorry, do so keeping in mind that I am unreliable. I'm in deep dark waters. The signal strength is weak here.

For now I'll also try to cut down on social media. In this delicate state I'm desperate for golden moments, feelings, distractions, and I've caught myself too often in the past few days both indulging in petty jealousy of a completely irrational and irrelevant manner, and laying out bear traps of self-pity in an attempt to win attention. Fuck that shit.




I'm sorry.

I have not the vocabulary to talk about ice. 

Snow seems a gift. We seek a 'higher' power, we look up for hope, to the sky, the heavens, which hold that which gives us life, be it deity or the sun. That above gives snow as a gift. It comes quiet and soft, and for a little while brings with it the greater gift of newness. Of cleanliness. For a little while, all the traces of your passing are hidden. You can pretend that you, too, are fresh and original. For the soul that has not lived with snow, snow is the closest we will ever come to magic.

Ice is not magic. Ice is not kind. It hides nothing. The frost grows imperceptibly slow. You cannot watch it advance. Frost defines the liminal, highlighting the borders of all things and in doing so reminding you of the presence of the garbage littering the streets that you had long ago stopped seeing. Gum long bonded with the pavement is made a doily, the eternal pothole puddle a post-modern resin work examining the strata of urban filth. The streets themselves now capture and exhibit all evidence of your wake; the roads hold tyre marks, the footpaths keep your footprints. Still the air is full of water, and what you breathe is razors. All those puddles that never cleared congeal into sharp clots, then films and sheafs crystal papers. You step on each puddle cautiously. Most are solid now, and give you nothing, not even friction. Some yet remain with a belly of water, or air, and those you stomp on with glee. Something about that crackle and crunch of ice underfoot. Something so satisfying in that crisp sound, that crisp give. 

I cannot talk about ice. I cannot talk about myself.

On a double-decker bus between Glasgow and Manchester

A crisp autumnal morning with frost still bright in the early  morning sun, she blinks once, twice, before turning away from the window. It will be their first night apart. She is thinking of warm knot of his limbs and the wool blankets before the sun had risen, and wondering if now that she is used to sleeping in sanctuary she will be afraid of the dark. This seems a legitimate worry, and so she closes her eyes.

When she wakes she is in another country. The paddocks are smaller and the fences meticulously maintained. Turning to look at a sign for the way back as it whizzes past - SCOTLAND - and the signs ahead warning her that the bus is taking her to the SOUTH, the SOUTH shouted as though the traveller did not understand the foolishness of choosing such a destination. Farmland has given way to something that can only be described as 'countryside': a land without urban sprawl but so utterly domesticated there is not even the ghost of rural to be sniffed. The spaniard in the seat in front takes photo after photo of the motorway. Impressions of Preston are endless scenes from The Bill, now years forgotten and the hairdressers and bathroom shops boarded up with greyed wood the sprayed tags of delinquents now long married and mortgaged unseen almost lost in the grain.

She wants to say this is not Scotland, does not feel like Scotland, but she doesn't know Scotland. She wants to say Manchester is the windy-street version of Glasgow but she knows neither city.

Dinner is three boys, the parents, and her. Her second appearance in this household and the boys are no longer locked boxes in her presence. The dialogue that frolics between them is not loud nor boisterous, but full of energy and attention. There is no competition between them, which she marvels at. She thinks of her own brother as distant from her as is physically possible, and the lack of antagonism between them that had been and always would be. She thinks of these three boys who will grow up to be their own people, and thinks of distance, and how irrelevant it can be.

Standing on the floor of the Manchester Arena she puts her hand to her chest where the bass trembles in her lungs and ribs, and beneath her palm she can feel her body shudder as the music moves through it. Here there is no identity. She is no longer an autonomous body but part of the organism that is the audience, the crowd, the consumer of sound. A single cell at the beck and call of invisible energy; she sings, howls, stomps and pumps. Sweat that is not hers. Eyes aching in the strobing lights. Neck craned over shoulders. All these miles and years and this cleanses her still, again, ultimately. It is to cede her boundaries, those intangible ways in which she holds herself apart from how she absorbs the world, and in doing so ceases to be. This happens in Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Reykjavík, here. The ideal of her falls back into place with every step from the floor.

Just in time she looks up to see 'Welcome to Scotland' flash by the window. It is a nondescript standard highway sign, more than a little anti-climactic. None around her appear to notice nor care. She strives to identify any difference in the world out the window, but there is none.

It has been 33 hours and when she arrives in Glasgow she is starving, dehydrated and in dire need of a toilet. Priority of wellbeing, her feet take her straight into the pub, to the back, to his arms.

She is thinking of adventures and the exhilaration of solitary jaunts into the world. She is thinking of the home she finds in him. She is thinking of all the things she never expects, including herself.

"-and it will be alright," he said.

The blank page doesn't frighten me, has not done so for some time. It still doesn't. A blank pages is an invitation to make a mistake, a mess, a miracle. The blank page that breathless pause before the Big Bang and the universe begins.

What gives me pause it what comes after, when there are already words on the page and you have found something that may possibly be a flow, or a ghost, but it is enough of something for you to follow, and your thoughts have brought you this far, to a point at which you realise there is no point and you do not know what you are trying to say.

Blogging used to be such an effective weapon against myself, or the world, or myself. The act of structuring a post in my mind imposed a structure upon a struggle that in its very nature is without definition. An artificial and arbitary imprisonment, but one that gave me some measure of peace regardless. The composition of that post was a natural extension, requiring a further narrowing of focus and definition. The precision of a word was like the puncture of a pin through the hull of a moth, the 'preeeee-' that first prick and pressure before the point breaks the surface and the 'cish' the spearing and parting of organs and secrets as the shaft slides down, and finally the 'on' of the point thrust down into the board. That moth will not fly again.

You can only find such precision when you know your own voice. Second person to speak of the first. I. I do not entirely know this I. I, you, she, this entity, stopped blogging, stopped writing. She begin finding stories in photography, although even these she did not share with abandon. I spoke more, out loud I mean. More for me. People who encountered me still found me recalcitrant, but I knew the difference. Maybe I had nothing to say. Perhaps I didn't want to say anything. What I consider my true voice was left unused. It starved, warped, and eventually became nothing.

There have been, are still, so many hurtles between myself and the act of writing. The physical ones are lesser than they were, although this is due to a change of life circumstances and employment, not any radical healing on my part. I must still be careful with the time I spend both typing and writing by hand. This will be lifelong I imagine. It is not a bad thing. The flat tends to get cleaned when I need to stop. Everyone wins?

On only my second day in town I joined the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Group. It has been good not just to surround myself with writers once again, but to engage actively in writerly activities. I've dipped my toes into the water of freelance editing, but writing up a report differs vastly from engaging in a face to face discussion on the strength, weaknesses and possible progressions of a story. There are so many ways in which a tale can be read, and it is wonderful and refreshing to be reminded of that. The shared excitement. The giddiness that comes from being with people who care about narrative mechanics as much as you do. These are fine things.

And then there is gentle insistance of loved ones who recognise that this small thing is such an important thing, and although I am not afraid they will hold my hand without asking and believe in me when I am indifferent.

Writing is no longer something to be shied away from, neither the thought of it nor the action. Be proud of me? Tessa, these shifts may be slight but they take such time and exertion, like the push of continental plates. There will always be destruction with change. You cannot see the time lost and strings severed without acknowledging the shift. One does not happen without the other.

Start small and long. A flash fiction competition with months in which to contemplate your inability to produce neat short ideas. Which is actually really fucking frustrating.

I've been gnawing tentatively at the idea of doing another 7wishes type project, which would additionally force me to write some joy into Glasgow. The city and I have had a rocky start, not helped by the fact that I think we just have conflicting personalities. I don't know Glasgow as well as Melbourne, not nearly. Nor do I know myself as well as I did.

I was thinking about that, and this voice, and what has changed. For example; my lover. My normal policy regarding blogging about other people is not to make them identifiable or overly specific in interaction unless that other person had an online presence of their own, somewhere they could return fire, so to speak. He does not. I also want to respect the privacy of others. What ever I share here I am okay with sharing, but I would not make that assumption for anyone else.

These are incidental however, solved by merely talking with him, and I do love talking with him. No, what gives me pause is the line between personal and precious. I cannot blog about my life and excise him from it. To do so would be to lie by omission and deny the incredible and integral part of my life he plays. I am no longer an identity in isolation, not to myself. Yet, because he is so precious I do not wish to share him. These times and glances and moments are treasures immeasurable. Perhaps you have been in love and been loved. Perhaps you do understand. But then, you must understand the greediness and selfishness that comes with delight.

These are lines I have not yet encountered in the sand, lines I suspect I will have to learn to walk as I learn what this different voice has to say.

Circles or Spirals

The last time I was unemployed I had moved back to Melbourne from Canberra after breaking up with my fiancée of five years, I had just finished an arts degree, was living with my parents and had only retail work experience to my name.  It took a year and half of applying for jobs and smiling at interviews before I finally landed a full-time position.

Being unemployed when you don't want to be is awful. Quite a number of the blog posts in the archives are dedicated to the subject of just how awful it is. Very awful. Extremely awful. Awful to the point of staying in that full-time job despite it also being awful because I never wanted to go through that again.

There's been oceans of water under the bridge since then. I've exercised pure financial independence, collected some mean skills to toss on my resumé and climbed the organisational ladder (mostly to find a less crap job). It's one thing to know you're a fantastic worker; quite another to have the track record to prove it.

We've been in Glasgow a month and a half with not so much as a sniff of possibility. I had assumed, not unreasonably I think, that this time around the job hunt would not be as demoralising or as hard. Look! This piece of paper shows how awesome I am! I have references and everything!

Not a bite. Nowhere. On nothing. I've widened my net and started applying for jobs well below my ability and still nothing. No response when applying for a data entry position? I don't even warrant that?

Demoralising. Internal erosion. Cracking security. Despair.

It is different this time though. We've paid several months of rent up front on this place, and have savings to keeps us going those months as well as take us to Iceland. I do have a platform of proven amazingness from which to launch myself from. There are two of us. He's picked up shifts at a pub and I'm doing freelance editing. My worry and despair keeps his optimism grounded, and his optimism keeps my despair in check.

I sleep around 12 hours out of 24, and I feel good. Whole and rested. Even when I have full control over how many hours I spend working on the computer my body gets cranky much swifter than I plan for. It aches and I fight on in frustration, pushing myself into a stupid cycle of forced down time.

These things make me look at my future and wonder how I am ever to fund the dreams I wish to pursue. If I do require that much sleep to be sane, how am I to work a full time job and do any sort of writing or have a social life at the same time? If computers are the devil to my arms, what work can I do? Not housekeeping, that was just as damaging, if not worse. Customer service positions would result in mental stress, and to be honest I'd prefer the physical pain and psychological strain of a desk job than the mental stress of a face-to-face job.

I'm awesome. Really. I'm the most disgustingly great employee ever. And I am a completely spent monkey.

But.
It's different now.
I do not know what dreams I have, let alone which I wish to pursue.
Perhaps here and now is enough.

I find my thoughts tripping over small occasions upon which people have found fault with me. Slights and rejections that I have perceived. Looking at photos, I remember an impatient sigh that that pricked my quilt. They walked ahead and never looked back. None of these are insults or intended to offend. None of them. I did not need to bruise. But I chose to, and have, and when I run fingertips across these memories, those bruises quiver in their sleep.

There are memories here too, to shore up these failing walls.

But it is cold. There is no conviction.

Three Months

A couple of days ago, four to be exact, marked three months since I left home.

Three months is generally a point at which things looks less than wonderful. New jobs become familiar and new relationships lose their shine. This vagabond life has had the edges worn off, and I'm looking forward to stopping, but I'm also quite comfortable being beholden to no place and no person. This form of travel is the ultimate indulgence in selfishness and freedom. My time is mine own, my decisions need refer to no one else for approval or compromise.

Today, I woke up to a letter forwarded to me, regarding the work cover that paid for my medical costs for my fibro and RSI treatment back home.

Hunched over my measly free breakfast in a pub on a Monday morning, blindsided by tears and a rising stress that shook me with its relentless and unexpected onset.

All the majesty of glaciers and blizzards, ancient castles and quirky museums, dingy hostels and luxurious private rooms, all these days are nothing but distractions.

This letter reminded me that, no matter how many times I tell myself this journey is something I always wanted to do, I nevertheless undertook it as a retreat, that I gave up the life I'd built because my hands, my body, and an overwhelming depression one by one closed the doors and windows and threatened to trap me, that everything I'm running from is traveling with me.

Three months, and the change isn't enough.

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

little lights, a little light

I went walking, and found a little galaxy. I took a slice of time and froze it into a visual representation, which I then converted into 0s and 1s, and now I am putting it here, for you.

you me everybody everybody

no one has claimed responsibility. no one will. maybe because i have demanded you give up your anonymity with no sense that by doing so you will be welcome. you're known to me, you must be to refer to 'in person', but no i don't know you. there's no one left in the world i can claim to know. and there's no one in the world who can claim to know me. strangers all, so it goes without saying we will cross lines we are ignorant of.

there are a bunch of lines in the sand i am well aware of, and this is me ignoring the fuck out of them.

i'm not sharing myself. this isn't for you. there is nothing about me that is not driving by selfishness most pure. this is for me. i'm not blogging for sympathy or validation. this is self-sabotage at its simplest. left to my own devices i will bottle things up until i implode. it isn't enough to write things out. these words must be read. someone else has to know, and i have to know someone else knows. not so they can do something about it, not so they can fix it or go white knighting on me, just so my state of heart isn't a secret. so this farce i act out is recognised for what it is and doesn't become too heavy. experience has taught me this and it wasn't an easy lesson.

this is self-managing.

i know it looks like attention-seeking. it isn't. it is for this reason i have taken to disabling comments on the rawer posts, as i do not want to be seen as inviting any sort of response.

it takes a long tine to get it, if you ever do. long time readers get it. lots of you are new. or not. i don't know, i've no idea who is reading or why. maybe this is flogging a dead horse. it seems it needs rehashing though. now. i don't want sympathy. i don't want advice. i don't want suggestions or empathy. i don't want validation. i don't want comfort. in fact, beyond reading this, i want you to pretend that nothing is wrong and indulge me in the pretence that everything is just peachy.

this isn't sharing. fuck, look at what i air here in public, and then take a moment to think about what i'm not sharing. this blog is a fucking weapon. it's a poison and you don't even know you're weakened. shall i go there? i'm going there.

this blog makes people fall in love with me. oh yes it does. let me count them...four. no, wait, how about five. that i know of. why, why, why, i don't know. because i'm 'sad and dangerous'. because this place reeks of confessional, it lets you buy into the belief that these 'truths' are some intimate trust between you and me, as opposed to me and the whole fucking internet. you start to believe you have some special insight into my character. you start to believe that you can save me. or fix me. or tame me.

i'm the catalyst of three separations. they would have occurred even if i hadn't been born, but i was born, and i was there, with my blog, and i'm the catalyst because people fall in love with me. i've cut people from my life because they crossed lines and assumed an intimacy, familiarity and level of trust that hadn't been earned and they didn't understand it. i've had people cut me out of their lives because that was the only way to preserve their marriage.

because i write this, and because you read it.

this is for me. i need this.

and it makes it really hard to write with this history sitting on my back and knowing that the point of writing is to be read, and knowing that being read just invites all that shit to circle around again. self-censoring comes out, and it bleeds on and on, until eventually nothing is written and everything is secret and all is pointless.

can i tell you my joints are on fire right now? i have hot glass wires in my arms. i have no nurofen. i have a headache. i have no way out. but i have to write this because ever since that well-intended email landed last night i have been churning. turmoil. in what my psychologist had called a 'state of extreme distress'. this has to be written.

why i wonder. kind strangers have emailed me previously with messages of support and warmth (i'm thinking of you, you, you and you in particular, who i have not answered and probably will not, but thank you). they were not anonymous though. strangers, but not hiding.

anonymity shouldn't bother me either.

but you said.

you fucking said.




you know this wires in my arms, they're hot glass, they're rusted nails, i don't even know any more, i've lived with this for so long i don't even know what it is i feel any more. you know i'm on a new medication and it is fucking with me. there's a daily alarm set for me to take my tablet, or else i'll get withdrawal within an hour, because i don't trust myself to simply remember to take it. there's a song plying right now, and the lyric repeated over and over is 'i hope you die' to chill lounge music by a singer who is calm and without malice. i cannot write for me any more. i cannot write a lie. without fiction nothing i do has any point. my identity has been taken from me. the identity i made for myself, the only one worth having, and it's gone. people who knew that identity still interact with it, that peeling chipped shell i'm not even touching the sides of. i can take no pride in my ability to at least do my job well, i can't even do that now, and they slap me in the face and leave me to drown and don't care if i am a bad worker, so i don't care if i am a bad worker, and my absenteeism is late blossoming, i never wagged school, i never wagged the job i fucking hated, but now my alarm goes off and i don't care, i don't even use that stolen day for anything, i just lie in bed with my eyes closed as long as i can, because i cannot face the world and there is no point to my being awake, and i'm planning this trip as a means to force me away from easy outs and my comfort zone, where i will have to reclaim some sort of determination and build myself over again on the other side of the world where no one knows me and no one will know who i used to be and i don't want to go, i don't want to go, i'm afraid and i'm tired and i can't even get out of bed in the morning, how am i supposed to set off into the unknown when i don't want to go and all the challenges sand lessons i'll learn have no point if i cannot write them out but i can't stay. i can't stay. i can't stay. i can't stay. this life draws closer to being unbearable with every minute i am awake and aware.

i'm turning into everything i don't want to be just to last these last few months to go on an adventure i don't have the capacity to survive. all you new people, all you old people, i fucking devour you. you're distractions. i need to be alone, i need solitude and silence but fuck i can't take it any more, i can't bear to be with myself any more, i hate what i am and what i have and what i have not, i hate the choices i've made and how few choices i have left in front of me, and i seek you out, you people, you distractions, you time killers. put your trivial voices in my head, cock in my cunt, get some skin on skin and be just a body for a few minutes respite before i go back to being a mind that just doesn't stop, and none of you are enough. none of you. even if you were once before. feed the hunger and the hunger demands more. i've fed all of you to the hunger, and now you're all used up and useless. is it the new meds? i don't know. i don't know. i have to start the increased dosage tomorrow. what will that do.

are tehse even emotions? i don't know. yes. no. i don't know. i'm flat and featureless, and all the turbulence of atmospheric burn up at the same time. maybe this is simulating emotions i think i should be feeling. but no. because i cannot tease apart this confusion. hurt angry mean little animal. lash out. it is instinct. there is no why. do i care enough to write this post? do i not care enough to not write this?

here are the consequences - you're offended. i am lowered in your esteem. you withdraw. any of you. all of you.

i can't find it in me to care. i don't know if that is the medication or me.

what judgement. i have none. i'll post this because this is for me. and i'll leave comments open this once, because this is for you.

i've lied to my head doctors to stop them from committing me on the spot. i'm suicidal and i don't want to be. i plan based on the intellectual probability that things will get better, one way or another. there is no hope emotionally, and i can't afford it.

and you said.


you fucking said.




you're "glad" i'm here with you.




hey, i'm just going to go into the chemo lounge over here and tell all these cancer patients who are in for the third fourth fifth round that hey! i'm glad they're here too! because they make the world a better place for being in it. or something. yeah, be happy about that.

is that what depression is? emotional cancer. thought tumors. malignant and metastasizing and spreading to everyone who enters my mind.

i'm not selfless. i take no comfort that my misery adds anything to your life. this isn't a tragedy the bard would write. there's no fucking romance, poetry or beauty in this. don't even fucking try it.



and you said.

you fucking said.


"You're never alone."






oh, i know it. oh boy do i know it. i need you all, i hate that i need you and so i hate you all. the only peace i find is when i am truly alone, with no one around and the threat of no one coming, nothing to hear, no means for me to contact anyone else. never alone. no. there's fucking millions of me, arguing and fighting and contradicting and being a confusion. and then there's all you. you worthless useless distractions. you calorie-free cardboard. you nothing.

you're always alone. i'm always alone. all that hallmark good feeling is so much nothing. maybe that helps you sleep at night. i'm alone. in my head. none of you in here with me. none of you reading my mind and doing exactly what i need when i need it, because none of you could if you could. none of you can get me up in the morning. none of you can do my exercises for me. none of you can make the decision to wait another day for me. none of you can do shit for me.

all this hand-holding, cry on my shoulder, i'm listening, curl up on my couch, it's nothing. it makes no difference. it did, once. before. earlier. when such small arms fire would have had effect.

that was years ago. you can't do shit for me now. it's nothing. it's proved itself to be nothing, meaningless, worthless, make no difference at all. because i still have to go back to being me when you trot off back to your life patting yourself on the back for a job well done. the come back is too hard. now i'd rather have no comfort at all. not even the pretense. it gets too hard. and now. now it's all about making you feel better for having made an effort to make me feel better. pardon me for once again displaying my selfishness; i don't have anything spare to help you feel better about yourself. go white knight at someone to whom it will actually make a difference, to whom it will actually help.

you said

"We'll help if we can. If you ask."




i'm not asking because none of you can do shit for me. you can't change a thing. i don't want help i want change. i'm not asking because i can't ask. no one who needs help can ask for it.






you said

"You're wonderful."

fuck off. i'm not some beautiful broken thing.





you said

"Don't ever stop."

don't ever tell me what to do.





you said

"I love you."









now ask yourself, is that still true?

all of this is true.
now.

one day it will not be.
one day.
not today.

this is your fear, not mine

perfect weather to fly

There are only two things in the world that can heal me, comfort clean rejuvenate revitalise remind me; mountains and music.

Much money and time has gone into taking myself to mountains - the Andes! the Himalayas! - and it is effort enough that it only happens maybe once a year if I am particularly studious. Music is much more obliging. There's just some special power these two things...these ideas have, the power to erase an identity while maintaining an awareness. The power to make you so irrelevant and insignificant that you are free.



But it must be live, and it must be loud. I couldn't breathe because the music filled my lungs and there was no room for blood with the music roaring in my veins and there was no space for me-

And I am free.

This is. You see. The medication.
The medication is a thief. Perhaps it took the edge off the hurt, but it took the altitude from the highs as well. Take me away from me and I am a roaring fireball of joy. So often I am stormy seas, I am the howling heart, I am fury - the medication does not take that. And I can howl from delight just as loudly, the earthquake is from glee, the satellites buzz my ear I am so high so exhilarated so glorious.

It takes important things. They are all important things. It has stolen what this blog post was going to be about.

Of course I cry anonymous and alone in a crowd. The music demands nothing less than to pay fealty to its majesty. But I also cried from grief, as even as I was giddy with love, I knew this couldn't last. This magnificence is like smoke; you inhale and it is everything, and then, you exhale, and it is gone.

This message is for you. by sirtessa

I wanted to say to you, that, right now I am a superhero. I love you strangers known and unknown, and could heal all your heartsores by just looking at you, because I'm radiation, you can't see feel taste touch hear the wonder and I can't contain it, it's bleeding from me and into you and loosening your fears. All I need do is hook my littler finger around your thumb and you'll be up here with me, among the satellites. Tonight is beautiful, and tomorrow will be too.

I wanted to say that, while it was true.


But I have exhaled.









And it is not.

Where to begin when there is no beginning. Context has already been well and truly ground into this blog. Old ground old ground old ground. Stuck in a groove as they say, the gramophone playing the same ring over and over and over and over.

What was I going to say.

None of these are questions. They are confessions of ignorance that do not expect or require an answer. Rhetoric. What am I saying. Do I have anything to say.

If I said I was not doing well would you just laugh. Captain Obvious much.

The pain is phenomenal. I would say this is the worst it has ever been, but, I have lived with pain so long now I can't be sure. It is always there. Like skin. It is always there. Don't think about it much unless it is acute. That's not true. I think about it all the time. I'm thinking about it now, how all the tension in my body makes my jaw clench and pulls on my scalp and squeezes my skull and I have a perpetual headache, and it feels like there is broken glass sliding between my bones and in my joints. There is no comfort. Anywhere. Not a moment of it. My body is out of sorts, its bones don't fit, the muscles don't fit, the skin doesn't fit, I'm all wrong, everything about me is wrong.

Too much nurofen plus. Ibuprofen makes you bleed, and there is blood coming out everywhere. I see the docctor tomorrow. I will tell him this. Maybe he will give me something else. What does it matter. I was never sure, could never be certain, that the nurofen actually made a difference. Never without pain. You do not understand a chronic condition until you have one. I can say this, because now I have one, and have had one long enough to understand, and when I look back I know I knew nothing.

I had a spell on Tuesday. One of those fainting in a public place spells. Thankfully I was not too public, and not too alone. Fortunately, I didn't faint. Unfortunately, I didn't faint. It's like vomit. You feel better if you just do it, instead of fighting it off. Or maybe it's all the ibuprofen. I didn't faint. The threat of it has been dogging me since. Nothing is solid. Gravity shifts about nervously. My hands shake. I must sit down. I must rest my head in my hands, hands on the table. I must stop. And wait.

Maybe it was because I had a little relapse, and purged.

Maybe it is because insomnia loves me too much. Three, four hours of sleep a night. I'm tired. I'm resigned. I give up. For the last month I've been having accidents with my alarm clock once or twice a week. If you consider I take one day off a week for physio and to rest my arms, that's not a great track record. Got myself into severe flex time debt, because I simply can't stay and make up the hours. It hurts. I'm falling behind at work. The piles of files on my desk are growing, and they're all urgent. All of them need to be done last month. I'm given at least one more a day, and I'm not clearing one a day. They tell me not to get stressed. How. Why. I'm practically part time, I can't do anything for myself in my private life, and I can't even take refuge in the assumption I'm doing my job well. I'm not. I'm falling behind. Clients call and ask for a status report and yell at me and say they will lose their children and it will be my fault.

People ask my how my writing is going.

7wishes has been returned to me. Knocked back by every publisher in the whole world in all history.

The psychiatrists ran me back and forth between intake and outpatient. I sent them the referral over a month ago. Back and forth back and forth. Despite my repeated requests for a female doctor, they kept referring me to a man. No. No. No. Listen to me, please, I can't fight for myself any more. Finally, an appointment on Monday. Every time they called I'd hang up, go to the bathroom and lock myself in a cubicle until the shaking stopped. This is wrong, this is all wrong, I'm all wrong.

There doesn't seem to be any climbing out progressing improvement getting better. In anything. This rabbit hole has no bottom like the sea has no bottom it's just cold black and crushing forever. No walls no nothing just you sinking forever.

There was a permanent position advertised in my office. The very role I'm performing. I'm only on loan from my old department. Of course I applied. I was doing the job, why wouldn't I get it? Everyone in the office assumed it was mine, and my offsider would then pick up my contract.

Instead, they gave it to an external applicant.

Not just the usual kick in t he gut from a job rejection. Humiliation. I'm humiliated in front of the whole office. I'm not good enough. An external applicant. I can't remember how many times I've gone for this job. It is doubtful anything more will be advertised before I leave.

That day I went to a travel agent and booked and paid for all my flights. Spite and bitterness, what fine motivators. My life is propelled by all that is sour. Melbourne to Sydney to LAX to San Diego. San Diego to New York. New York to NC. FL to New York. New York to Reykjavik. Reykjavik to Copenhagen to Berlin.

What is to anticipate. What excitement. I have none. Desperate only to stop this. This. Whatever this is. But I can't leave myself behind.

Does it matter.

I just want my hands back. I want my voice back. I want to write. That is the source of all that is broken. I could navigate every unknown sea the world saw fit to put in my path if only I had my voice my hands if only.

That seemingly self-destructive binge has continued. Meeting more and more stranger. Some people become less stranger due to prolonged exposure. Still. Strangers. You forget. When your people are people who know you and you've each trained each other and you don't have to explain any more. You forget. And then you introduce new people, and at first it's fun and then over a period of time they start giving you this look, as if they realise that it wasn't a one off, you really are like this all the time, and then they start dismissing whatever you just said with "you're weird" and similar. And yuou remember all over again that you're not normal. There's not hing noraml about you. You're all wrong.

What are all these people for anyone. What do you achieve with all these people. They're just distractions. All of them. You use them to fill your minutes so they pass quickly, and fill your head with noise so you can't hear yourself. Just using them. You could be good friends with any number of them, but you'll never know, because you are all wrong and your agenda and motives are all wrong and there is no honesty left with you.

And they. Who are they. What are they using you for. I turned down sex you know. There was a very long time I could not say no, because I believed that if I did the world would take my refusal in black and white and no one would ever want me again. I had to be grateful for any attention I got, because I wasn't worth attention. I turned down sex because I was tired of this charade of whatever it is people keep doing. This social dance. This pretending to be BFF and totally understand and get each other. This. Whatever this is. Do you know what I have to offer? Big tits and a pretty face. If anyone talks to me, initiates conversation or continues contact, that is why. There was a time I wanted to be pretty. Now that I am, I hate it. Nothing but surface. Only the surface. All this depth. With no bottom. No one wants that.

Nothing is getting better. Nothin.

Nothing is relief. Respite. Nothing else. Nothing helps.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to bee at work. I didn't want to go ut. I wanted. I don't knoww. Everything I 'm not. I yelled on twitter because, because, attention whoring, take pity on me even though i am not physically capable of responding. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopathetic and asked for a hug. asked for one. didn't go and get it, no. felt so fucking ashmed for asking. humiliated again. because i was asking of someone i had no right to ask from. and i though, twho else is there?

i walked to the ferris wheel by the yarra. it wasn't moving. operating, but no one was on it so it wasn't spinning. lost my nerve. no courage. sat by the river staring at it and all the dark globes as the sun set. i couldn't ask for the engine to turn just for me. i couldn't. i'm not worth that. i didn't know what else to do with my time. it was cold. so cold by the river. i found a plastic figure in the dirt. his paint was worn off.



he'd been dropped, abandoned, forgotten, so i picked him up and put him in my pocket. now he is on my desk. where i will forget him too. what has changed. nothing changes.

i had no where to go. no where to be. this is not home. this is not home. home is a state of mind and i am home sick. this is not home. this is not my space. i have no where to be. there was nowhere to be. just sat there in the cold and dark waiting for enough time to pass, because otherwise they would ask why i was 'home' early. and i couldn't be there. but i had nowhere to be. no where to go.

i stood out the front of thet house just standing because, because that meant more time had passed, putting off opening the front door and putting on a mask. jsut stood there on the sidewalk like a creep.

that is. all.

i'm going to purge now.

Metaphor much?

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for a black t-shirt in a drawer full of black t-shirts."

"Oh."






"Want to talk about it?"

"Shut up."

"Just trying to be friendly."

"Well, my advice to you is: stick to what you're good at."

The Dead Birds of North Melbourne

BEGIN


Some say he gave his life - kamikaze - to defend them.
Some say he flew too close to the sun.
(We know he saw his reflection on a windscreen.)

BETWEEN


"It's not agoraphobia!" she wailed. "The sky has no point of reference!" And so saying she buried her head in the footpath and never moved again.

END


We are not dead.

We were never birds.

In September, 13 Years

"This isn't brought on by any specific event," he said. "It's more a general reminder that we know a lot of the stuff that lands on our desks is confronting, to say the least, and if you don't want to work on something, then say no. That's okay, no one will have any issues with that. Along the same lines, if you feel that perhaps you need to talk to someone about dealing with the material, whatever that material may be, approach your team leader, a member of the leadership team, whoever you feel comfortable with, and we'll organise a counseling session for you."

:::

The photos I see and documents I read in a single day are more than most of you would be comfortable with even skimming. The confrontation is gone. It is all just so much paper now.

:::

"There is someone down at corporate reception wanting information on making an application, do you want to take it?"

No.
I went down.

He was in his eighties, with grey-blue eyes that were milky with age. He was a couple of days unshaven, with sparse white bristles on his jowls and hanging from the wattle at his throat. Hands that had been firm and strong, but had a little tremor in them now, the skin slack around his knuckles. His mouth always a little open, breathing being now task enough that the nose was not enough for his aging lungs. His mouth moved a certain way when he spoke. A hearing aid in his ear, so I was careful to speak clear steady.

They all want to share their life story, circling around and down until finally reaching the matter at hand. "I'll tell you this, back in Tasmania-" and I settled in with my best listening face, prepared to endure waffle.

He didn't waffle, or talk in circles. Events were explained in chronological order with cause and effect in place, until the end, where he was now, with a tangled mess of bureaucracy. Oral story-telling came naturally to him, with the right pauses and no stumbling over his words. He didn't over-dramatise, but didn't attempt to hide his emotional investment in the events either. The mind was well sharp, perhaps lost in the events around him, but sharp.

It took a little teasing on my part to pluck out exactly what he sought, most of which was not in our possession. Still, I called the other organisation and got enough information to set him on the right course, and figured out what we could do for him.

I let him wander afterward. The story he had told me was a sad one. Those old eyes had brimmed more than a few times, although he never broke down. I would not stop him from indulging in happier reminiscences. It was never just a smile or grin, he could do no less than chuckle when mirth took him. His eyes near disappeared the few times this happened, as his sagging cheeks rose with cheer.

"Thank you," he said, an hour and a half later. "You've been incredibly helpful, and I've taken so much of your time."

I gave him a smile and told him to go get a cup of tea.

:::

It's all just so much paper, except when it isn't.

:::

Fencing with red tape, paper, bureaucracy and legalese is tough if you're not already familiar with the illogical, seemingly-petty and idiosyncratic rules of this alternate but co-habited dimension. He was frustrated with the brick walls he'd run against, and although he was far from settled, having someone actually listen to him brought some calmness about him.

It isn't the first time I've snuck in some ninja therapy on a member of the public. Just to be listened to is all a lot of stricken hearts need to rest themselves enough, just enough. It is no great tax, although time that I'm sure my boss would rather I put to better use. All it requires is patience.

:::

It isn't the content that gets beneath my skin. These years of exposure have led to a forced evolution. I have an empathy-off switch, and a different perspective on humanity.

:::

I couldn't not listen to this man, and I couldn't not empathise with him.

He reminded me of my grandfather.

Even smelt like him.