Disabled In The Water

Yesterday saw (after a couple of weeks of grumbling about key selection criteria) the opening salvo of job applications sent to Sydney. Exciting! I have to confess, the past month of navigating the absence of my lover has been, is, continues to be harder than I let on. The job hunt may be a hateful process, but I will go at it tooth and nail to close the distance between us.

The positions were with the public service, and at the end of the bemusingly complex online form, I was asked quite simply if I had a disability. The drop down list gave me two options: lie or dare.

I often fall into the thought trap of assuming myself to be normal. "Okay." I mean, I have a job I can do just fine, I can go out with friends, I can-

-not.

I'm part time because I cannot, can not, survive a full working week without pain and deep fatigue. My salary is so much lower than my friends and peers because of this, because I must balance my health before any sort of job advancement and stress, the fucking demon shitheap it is, can decay my wellbeing in mere minutes. That extra day off on Wednesdays I have is not really a 'day off'. Much as I like to plan to do things on that day, mostly it is used to rest. Sleep. To do nothing and use that inertia to keep the fatigue and pain in balance so I'm capable of another two days of sitting at a desk.

Whether or not to be open about this in my job hunt is a little imp of indecision and anxiety I can never quite crush. The fear that admitting I'm a lame horse will mean I'm passed over for jobs isn't unreasonable. The fear that this will see me waiting months before I can move up to Sydney is nauseating. However, if an office isn't prepare to accept my limitations, then it is not an office in which I want to work. I know this. It's the buoy I cling to.

So I chose 'dare'. 

It's the first time I've referred to myself as disabled. 

Some threshold has been crossed in my mind.

Then there was Chinese New Year (KUNG HEI FAT CHOOOOI!), and a house warming party, and a birthday BBQ, and I was all set to bounce into all three. The logistics were planned out, I had my outfit picked, I was fucking looking forward to the silliness and cackling.

Bones wrought of fatigue, a substance heavier than lead. After firing off my applications I crawled back to bed, hoping a nap would bolster me. It didn't. I didn't leave my bed until today. 

FOMO is close, but not quite the right trajectory. My own not-particularly-well-thought-out take on FOMO is that it stems more from the lack of invitation than not being present. We're adults now, I'm not being invited to events out of pity. My friends ask for my presence because they genuinely want it. That's a fine gift, and I do treasure these requests. I just can't.

Every time this happens, I think of all those passing remarks in which someone is referred to, with exasperation and a touch of disgust, as 'flakey'. That I am that person is anathema. I don't want to be unreliable. I don't want to be a bad friend. All your celebrations and achievements I want to add the happy too. In that joyous memory-making dance I want to play my part and add another thread of glee. I love your presence.

The apologies I send are weeping with penance and self-flagellation and regret, and I doubt anyone is blind to the fact that I'm not asking for their forgiveness, but my own. 

There is no way out of here. 

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.

Insomnia visited me again last night. It was unexpected, I had and had not done all the things I need to during the day that would normally moderate insomnia off.

I missed my alarm.

The Dragon cannot transcribe the past few minutes of choked silence. I can think of no better way to describe the hour it took me to make a single decision this morning. Choked. Whether to get up, go and simply work late, or call in sick. There were a ridiculous number of factors that I took into consideration when weighing the pros and cons of each. Indecision was paralysing me, and I knew it, and I knew, no, I know that means that I am running too close to empty.

It feels ridiculous saying that, “willing to staytoo close to empty" (the Dragon interpreted that, truth is a slip of the Dragon?) When I have been running on empty for I don't even know any more, I think I remember what it felt like to have will end determination and strength.

The Dragon still cannot translate words thrown tears.

I lay there long enough that eventually the decision was made me, and I called in sick.

Of course, having made the decision I instantly felt better and felt that I could face work to do this. And now I am choking on the same decision a second time . In a

Did I tell you I was referred to a psychiatrist? They have not called back. I can't commit to a decision to go or not to work today this; thought of calling to make an appointment to this is a I can't work on and if five

Don't know what do. There are no safe place is in the world.

Cross Section of Strata Emotional and Forgotten

There is a marked difference between the previous two posts. Not in terms of the emotional megaphone confession of soiled laundry and public displays of melodrama, but where they came from. One typed, one dictated. The dictated is the shorter by far. Perfunctory. Concise. Not even attempting to furbish the reader with details or texture because the Dragon is not my voice. It is a translator, and even the best translators lose some ethereal poetry of being when taking meaning and filtering it from one language into another.

In terms of pure logistics, the Dragon cannot keep up. It mishears so many of my words, and so every sentence is broken midstream as I correct and correct and correct. Perhaps the Dragon could keep up with a train of though; it can only fail miserably and watch this crashing satellite flash by.

This is my voice. This, unheard and sometimes unseen. Chewing the inside of my cheek as I hammer furiously on the keys and burn up in the atmosphere - is there nothing so exhilarating as choosing your own destruction, brilliant and slashing the twilight sky caught only in the periphery of a stranger's eye, knowing that your end will be to disintegrate without ever touching a soul or crush all those present at your termination - because I am sitting here typing this, this small act this small slight act, and my stomach quivers with old excitement that runs too deep to ignore, and my wrists ache, my neck aches, my shoulders ache, and in doing this I will amplify that pain and the consequences will stretch languidly across the week ahead.

The choice is always one pain over another. I'm tired.

Last night I took myself to the Butterfly Club and saw Tom Dickin's one-man one-hour cabaret show "Fuck Plan B". Despite the fact that I adore simply sitting in and being surrounded by the curios and sweet lights of the place, arrived at the perfect empty time to have the bartender spend 10 minutes making me the perfect ridiculously extravagant red wine/chambord Bloody Mary, I walked out containing ground zero of a nuclear detonation within my rib cage, and watching the shock waves flatten everything and nothing.

Plan A is being a successful artist, travel the world, inspire others, and follow your dreams.

Plan B is the necessities of reality. Rent. Food. Cocktails and socks.

You don't have to follow many blogs of artists to know that it is a constant struggle to maintain balance between A and B, and the odds are stacked against A. It isn't as though writers even have much in the way over overhead; our tools are minimal and not specialist, physical logistics are rarely an issue and there is no use by date in terms of getting too old to write. All we need is time, and it is the one thing in which we are poor.

It is a privilege to pursue Plan A at all. Art is a luxury of the middle class and up, and yet, and yet.

And yet.

For so many artists, the pursuit of their art is not a decision they get to make.

They are artists because they must be. They can be and do nothing else.

















My dayjob was only ever to support a life that would let me do what I want. It was there to pay for the necessities; food and a roof over my head, and exploration and travel, for these too are necessities for me. My jobs have all been proof of this: they do not and cannot follow me home, they do not and I will not sacrifice extra hours to them, and they do not and I will not let them take up any more space in my mind that what is required between signing in and signing off. Some of these jobs have been shit boring, others exciting and interesting, and all of them have only ever been jobs. I am not career orientated in any traditional sense and am not even making eyes at the corporate ladder. Higher paying jobs I've left unpursued because they would ask more of me than I'm willing to give.

But we all know how that ended out. My dayjob was there to support the writing, and the dayjob required the same physical tools as the writing, and the dayjob destroyed those tools, and I had constructed my life in such a way that no amount of small alterations would be enough to correct this balance. Everything is over-balanced. These past months have been the topple. It is all too late. There is nothing to do but watch the fall, that moment between losing contact with the cliff and making contact with the ground.

I'm tired.

Tom said he'd taken out a sizable loan and traveled the world to allegedly study theatre, and instead wound up writing song after song and performing them to strangers in strange places, and that was...right is not the world. True, perhaps. There are so many trees that we forget to be the whole forest.

I've been looking at this 'scuttle your life move to another hemisphere make no plans and see what happens' caper and feeling nothing but dread and nausea, because I'm at the centre of that plan, I cannot escape myself, and where ever I go these aching bones come with me. Nothing is left behind.

I'm tired. Much as my friends feel shut out because I do not speak of these things, I've leaned on them so much, my feet are on the ground and my knees are hanging low. The only reason I'm not face down and blank on a city sidewalk is because they're holding me up. What resilience. What determination. What illusions have I that I will weather the stress and fear of being alone in unknown and survive without them.

















More strangers last night. More strangers the night before.

















None of these people are known to me. None of these people know me. I could be anyone.

I could be someone who is not afraid of strangers. I could be someone who listens to you for a drunken half hour and takes your stories and antics and uses them to attempt to conceal the void I am but a vessel for, and then I could use them again, somewhere and somewhen else, with my voice, instead of throwing them away as useless, as worthless, as having helped me not at all.

If no one around me knows I'm a nothingness, then, I can and will buy into that illusion.








What's that. Determination. Obstinate pig-headedness. The conqueror and king rolled over in her sleep and opened her eyes a moment, she who would view this as only a challenge to be accepted in order to prove herself victorious again, over all things, and would meet that challenge with teeth-bared and eyes-wild and welcoming all the damage that would come from the battle ahead. She who in conquering the world so conquers herself, over and over.

Excitement. Anticipation. Lick your lips and fantasize about the messes you will make for yourself.








It's hope. It's hope. It's hope. Hanging out with all the shit in Pandora's Box because there is nothing so agonising as hope, and my fears cannot decide which is the greater threat; depression or hope.

Spectacular failure, quiet lie. Tedious failure, thin-worn lie. The fish aren't a school.

















But. It was Plan B that got me here.

I'm so tired, and this hurts like this and like that, and I can't remember what point I was trying to make. Pointless. There are no points, on masses of fear and indecision that change shape and colour like so many metaphors you fail to capture because you have strangled your voice enough that nothing it says is worth listening to, but it must be said, it must be said, let it out out out out out.

I was considering not going. I was considering committing myself and spending all my hours staring at wall and waiting for my heart to stop beating as I can't find it within me to do anything else.

I'm tired. So much has died. Death is a cessation that is not wholly encapsulated in medical definitions. Wastelands and deserts. No fish in the open ocean.

Some perverse sense of curiosity is still twitching. The smell of all the stupidity of the past few weeks is coiling thick in the air and it wants to see what other messes we can make.

Some perverse sense of fury will not stop breathing. It will not let the consequences of Plan B be the victor.

There are no winners in this. But fuck it, I'm going to lose on my own terms.

It is still cold, within and without.

The referral to the pain management specialist went out in the mail today. I've been sitting on the letter a couple weeks, always intending to but never making any effort to act upon it. Did I hesitate before releasing a letter to mailbox's maw? Yes. It is so little an act, but then at the moment it takes very little to overwhelm me, and nevertheless have left my hand my reaction – physical and emotional – was complex.

But it is done.

A few people have contacted me regarding the last post. I cannot reassure you. It is. .. Some would say I share too much, and yet the burden seems to fall upon me, and the price is not paid by me, because I do not care. Those I spoke of at the last, those who still love and still care, they pay the price.

It was a necessary release. As I am no longer spending strength I do not have it maintaining a rational facade and hiding my implosion I can now use that strength I do not have on small little other acts, such as posting letters.

I admit more strangers yesterday. It is still cold. You wake us, even though we are dead in the water. The piles of books on my bookshelves grow; there is nothing more calming exhilarating delightful soothing and inspiring that being surrounded by books. The sight of all these books guts me. I hoard what I cannot have. Hampson of time with.

Dragon can barely understand and Australian accent; it cannot dictate a voice from a sob-choked throat.

Winter comes, true Winter, Winter with a captial W, the season that pays fuck all attention to the Roman calendar and heeds only the orientation of the sun, and the sun turned away and it got cold.

Your physio was off sick, but you were desperate and so made an appointment with whoever was free on the day. R has a mop of blonde curls and a baby face that rivals your own. He has read your file and is unhappy with what he has seen and the answers you have given. Raise your arms here. Now here. Tilt your head. Hold your hand out.

Thoracic Outlet Syndrome

Thoracic outlet syndrome(TOS) is a syndrome involving compression at the superior thoracic outlet involving compression of a neurovascular bundle passing between the anterior scalene and middle scalene. It can affect the brachial plexus (nerves that pass into the arms from the neck), and/or the subclavian artery or rarely the vein which does not normally pass through the scalene hiatus (blood vessels as they pass between the chest and upper extremity). Rarely a Pancoast tumour in the apex of the lung may be the cause.

The compression may be positional (caused by movement of the clavicle (collarbone) and shoulder girdle on arm movement) or static (caused by abnormalities or enlargement or spasm of the various muscles surrounding the arteries, veins, and brachial plexus), a first rib fixation and a cervical rib.

Beneath his fingers your muscles, nerves, tendons and scalenes shriek and shiver, and you lie on your belly with your teeth grit and your concentration divided between merely breathing and listening to him. It's a tirade, and you're not sure who it is aimed at; these stories of patients with symptoms and stories identical to your own, fixed after a mere four months of therapy and exercise focused on different muscles, and he didn't like that you've been like this for years, he didn't like it, he wasn't happy, and he knew with this and that you could get better, because you're still young, what do you see in your future?

Remember to breathe.

You may not agree, he says, as his fingers press here and sends a knife of pain there, you may think everything I've said is a pile of rubbish, and that's fine, but, I don't care, I've read your file and I'm not happy with it. It's up to you what you want to do, but I don't like it-

It's your lack of reaction, always your lack of reaction.

You can't afford hope on a new diagnosis. You just can't.

















At the end of your session, your counselor says
She says
She








I don't know if we should continue these sessions. I'm just not sure if this is giving you any benefit or if it is making it worse.












Remember to breathe.
On the train those brief minutes between Richmond and Flinders Street, trying to smother the howling heart, dam the tears and stop, just stop, turn it off, turn away.
With a new diagnosis R gave you hope which terrifies you, and his vehemence highlights its absence in your normal physio, H, and you wonder what she will think, you wonder if she even cares, and you wonder how to put this to your GP, who is absolutely set on the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and will fight this new suggestion, and your counselor, who-

Does she think you're beyond help?

Winter comes and sows cold into your bones, and with it your pain blossoms. Back to flinching when laying your hand on the mouse, snatching your hands from the keyboard, holding your wrists and staring out the grime-flecked window at nothing because there is nothing you can do. Back to weekly physio treatment and taking whole days off work to rest your hands that little bit extra.

Remember to breathe.

But, what for.

The weeks pass, the cold is sinuous in your veins and no amount of wool and warmth can soften your terror. Reel in your future, because to look at it is to see nothing worth living for. Think not of Scotland, new lands new people new adventures. There is nothing you will discover that you cannot find here. You will change nothing by going there.

You must take yourself where ever you go. There is no escape.

This room is too crammed with things, just things. This house is full of people. People who love you and care for you, people who know you and around whom you can relax, but there is never any stillness, silence, solitude. Their presence echoes in the floor boards, the kettle boiling in the kitchen, unmuted conversation through the wall. You cannot go to the toilet, get a glass of water, stretch, without having to leave this room and put a face on because they will see you, talk to you.

You cannot howl. They will hear you.

You go to bed early. Earlier. Earlier. The sun follows you down and you lie there with heat packs swallowing painkillers and waiting for random bleeding and low blood pressure. You can't get to sleep fast enough. You wake too soon, too often.





He fights. The GP shakes his head and disagrees and argues. The spare cervical rib he will not let go, he's sure you don't have one, and for that matter so are you. You don't believe you require one to have TOS, but he does. He wants to raise your dosage. You don't.




You go to bed early. You wake before your alarm in a cold sweat. You miss your alarm. You're late. Later. Later.

Drown yourself in work, but, you cannot.



R discusses medication. Celebrex and Cymbalta are heavy duty stuff, he says. You agree. He recommends other pain medications, stating you should go off both. You say you were prescribed Cymbalta as dual purpose.

Ah, he says, and says nothing more.

Your GP shakes his head at the medications R has suggested. The relief and disappointment are equal and equally perverted. You'd looked up the numbers for an overdose of Valium.

He shakes his head at the pain management specialist who specialises in TOS. He wants to send you to one specialising in Fibro. He talks about rehab. You argue why can it not be both diagnoses, and he shakes his head and shakes his head and disapproves and disagrees but it is your body and your decision and he types out the referral letter.

His disapproval evaporates when you start crying, even though you have already won.

No one wins in this.



















The void will not be ignored. Nature abhors a vacuum. This hunger saturates your minutes - there is only so much future you can turn from - and you are weak and feed it and feed it and feed it. With good friends. With friendly acquaintances. With distant friends and far friends. You sign up to dating sites and rummage around forums and fuck with strangers and buy drinks for strangers and flatter strangers and press them down stretch them out and force as many minutes upon them as they will suffer. You seek out new people, meet new people, people worth knowing, people who could become quite good friends if only they had entered your territory in a different era an era without famine and hunger and desperation. You push your true friends away in favour of these strangers, because you know exactly what you are doing. No one can fill this void, and yet you will try to make all do so, and when they inevitably fail you will still resent them for it. Keep your friends away from that. Keep them precious.





You cannot make the appointment with the pain management specialist. It is too great an ordeal and you have not the strength to lift the phone.






This is your 30th birthday.

Imagine that. Three decades. You're still here. Remember to breathe. But, what for?

People will say that how you spend New Year's Eve is how you will spend the coming year. This sentiment you've applied proper logic to, because the Roman calendar means nothing, but the internal calendar listens. Do not repeat your last birthday. It was your own doing as much as anyone else's. This birthday will be your own doing as well.

Make it a birthday week. Go out, every single night. Fuck more strangers, meet more strangers, drink more drinks and eat more junk and laugh a little louder and with a little more ice. The cold is every where. You're good at this. You're really good at this.

Some sanity in the sunshine, with family and friends. For a day or so, you don't have to concentrate on breathing. Years of having a birthday in the middle of exams have scarred you well, and combined with a marvelous lack of self-worth have made a formidable obstacle, and in spite of that you organise your first birthday do. The anxiety of who to invite leaves you in tears and sick. People come. More than you anticipated or booked for. On the night, you're in a room full of people you know and people you like and people with whom you have no social awkwardness. An amazing night. The cocktails stop your high heels from hurting your feet, but not the grinning from hurting your cheeks. You jump out of a plane and fall 14,000 feet to the Earth. You use your birthday to bully a number of leads into dancing with you. You sleep exhausted and exhilarated.















None of this is shared with your counselor. There isn't time. This is your last session, and you ask her what she meant by her parting comment; that she did not feel she was in a position to help you, or that you are not receptive to help.

She speaks of psychiatrists and medication, and the fact that your depression is so intense and deep seated, and most of the sessions have seen you in a high anguish for their duration. There needs to be more discussion, less silent howling, for progress to be made. You need to have already started to heal yourself.









You go to bed late. Later. Later. Because you get home late. Later. Later. Arrange to meet more strangers. Buy more drinks. Walk slower between the station and the front door, you have to have control of yourself before you set foot on the front verandah, they might hear you.

You haven't done your washing for weeks. Your room is filth.

Go out. Find more excuses to go out, stay out, stay in company. Name after name is added to your contact list. You can dazzle them with the shit you talk, make out like you're someone worth knowing, a bit of sleight of mind and you don't even need your neckline that low cut.

Hunger has no end. Now fed, the void grows, because this is not what it wants. Plans are canceled, rescheduled, canceled, and you take it because it is still something, anything, that will sit in the forefront of your mind for long enough.

Friday night you end up in a lovely guy's flat, a thai restaurant, an unknown bar, where you meet yet another stranger, the three of you talking shit as the music gets louder and the lights lower and the arrivals uglier. Wing it. Why not?




























Until it's just gone midnight and you're standing in a warehouse in Abbotsford with a long neck in one hand and the wall painted with ghoul sperm by your shoulder and the toilet being the rape alley around the corner and someone in a ratty beard is telling you that another in a ratty beard rolls the best joints ever no one rolls a joint like him at least you think that's what he said because you can't hear anyone over the band crammed in a room under the stairs and and you know no one, no one here, and you don't know what you're doing here, or why you're here, or what you were expecting, you only know that this isn't what you wanted and the resentment and bile rises up because no one here is saving you from yourself.

No one is capable of that.

Blink hard on the train home. Oversaturated by people. Overstretched. Easy to fix, simply cut everyone out for a while-

-and sit in the void.

The void will not be ignored, and you are not strong enough to withstand it.

There is no escape. Remember to breathe.

But, what for.




The hangover is sullen. You're weary and broken. So broken. You'll do your washing today, clean your room, make the bed, stay home because there are enough chores to keep you busy for this one day, surely. You'll write this post, because this has to come out, this must be written, it must, surely, it must, you'll feel better for it. A day, surely one day, surely that would be just enough, just enough to make the difference between a trip and a fall.

A stranger asks if you want to see a movie.

After the movie you find old friends, and cannot dazzle them so sit sullen and ill at ease with the delusion you're clinging to.

Later, after drinks, after dinner, decisions before you. You could call that person. This person lay out an open invitation, they're only a few blocks away. This person would jaunt in to catch up. There's this event and that event. Choices.

You find yourself slumped beside the parking pay machine at the end of the escalator, heart hammering and staring at the options listed in your phone, and paralysed. You could go out, it would be great. You could. You should. You could. You would. You press call raise the phone to your ear and immediately hang up oh no oh no you can't you just can't face any more people not tonight not now but you don't want to go home because there is nothing there but the void framed by all the evidence of what you once were.





There is no escape. Remember to breathe. But, what for.





With the new diagnosis comes hope and thus more terror than you can bear. A wonderful counselor cannot help you. Doctors will agree with specialists who've seen you a total of ten minutes and dismiss what you know of your body. So many brilliant new people unearthed, worth nothing. Too long. You can't do this any more.

Raise the dosage. All of them. There is nothing to preserve.

There are people who care, still, and love you, still.

But, you are not one of them.

Schrödinger's Tessa

Music that is loud, unrepentant and live, no, alive, and awesomely alive at that, music so loud it fills your mind and leaves no space for you to think even the smallest of thoughts, music that makes your hair shiver and your ribs ache and for which you cannot help but grin manically, shout incoherently, and be saturated by it, no, not saturated, by absorbed by the music until you are nothing and it is everything. That is catharsis. That is clensing, purging, hell, an enema for the mind as all the shit gets blasted out and lost in the bass line.

That's what I expect of live music, and perhaps sadly what I need of it as well.

I was standing in the Corner Hotel last week. It was a Tuesday night, and I was alone in the crush of bodies before the stage, too hot but armed with water, mindful of those around me, resigned to tall people in front of me, and the band was good, they were fantastic at what they did, an incredibly tight and smooth performance with unebbing energy, but-

But.




How to say this. My grip on my voice is uncertain of late, voice being such a slippery thing and I no longer have gentle confidant hands, I'm clutching and snatching too quick too tight and it's getting away from me.

How to say; I did not go away. How to say; I was neither saturated nor absorbed. How to say; I stood in the music, and apart from it.

I was waiting to be filled and full of something other than me, and so have some brief respite from the self-absorbed burden of being me. The spaces inside me were near quivering with anticipation of that storm of sound to come in and blow all the detritus of doubt and fear away and sweep all clean and clear, and those spaces waited, and waited, as the music beat in my bones and blood and came nowhere near me.

It's hard to control that little upwell of panic when one of your crutches breaks.

I kept moving. You can't help but respond to such volume when those around you answer the same call, but my hands were in fists and my teeth were clenched and I was already writing this post over and over, trying to define what it was that...what it was, what any of it was.

The invasion of living music into the mind serves not only as a clensing and purging process, it presents also the opportunity for a controlled instance of recognition. That is, the loss of self is defined as being the loss of the conscious and self-aware self, which in turns allows the unconscious and instinctive self a moment to rise to the surface and free of conscious oppression, be heard.

When the idea of Tessa is put aside, even for a moment, then foundations upon which that idea is constructed are bared.

That is my howling heart, resonating with the roar in my blood and bones, roaring free and uninhibited and anonymous in the roar of a hundred other voices.

I could almost feel it, almost, thrashing and gnashing and trying to get out get out get free. Here and there, in snatched moments, the music echoed something inside, for a moment there was synchronicity, but only for a moment. The show ended, and my howling heart had not surfaced.

This is perhaps an extreme example of the state of affairs of late. I find that I am fine, yes, I am fine. I feel solid and whole and well, and there are no undercurrents I am actively monitoring. But this being okay is, is, it isn't an illusion, it isn't a sham but it is. It is. It takes so little to rip everything out from beneath me, everything, with such swiftness and thoroughness and savagery I'm left gasping not only from the sting of whatever the world saw fit to slash me with, but with the seeming betrayal of my own self that it should collapse so easily, without even the semblance of resistance.

It is hard to trust myself, knowing that my limits are very much changed, yet still not being familiar with them, having as yet developed no understanding of how they lie and what weaknesses they possess, being now wary of anything and everything, for I do not know what will prove to be a fatal blow and set me back again and again and again.

Not knowing myself is a strange thing. It frightens me. A thorough understanding of myself and all my whys is the only certainty I've had, the only map and compass by which to navigate.

But it, I, it, that howling heart, it is still there. I felt it distant but straining in the music. I will feel it when looking at the carpet in my lounge room, or opening the fridge cabinet in the supermarket, or reaching for the phone at work. It is still there. It is still howling.

It is as though it is in a glass box. Double-glazed to keep the sound out in, of course. I'm sitting here at my desk, typing gingerly with my nerves sawing in my wrists, and this glass box sitting before me. It has no seams. Inside, my heart is a snarling, furious thing, all peeled lip and broken teeth. Thrashing and throwing itself against the glass when I fold my arms on the desk and rest my chin on them, trying to break that glass and have at me. It is so upset. There is such hurt, distress and rage in that wild mean little heart.

As it has always been, I suppose.

But.

I can't hear you, and so I don't know how to sooth you.

I've been trawling through my music trying to find something that will, without volume, let you out. Even just for a moment, even now, at 12.17 on a Monday with the sun out and lawnmowers in the distance. I think that, if I find the right music, if I find the right emotive harmonic that is the same frequency at which you howl, with combined resonance from inside and out we may shatter that glass box and set you free.

But that is wrong. It is old habit for me to assume that which is within me is mine to change. The glass box is an alien intervention. To remove it, I need only stop taking the medication.

I am afraid, my howling heart, of not being able to read you and interpret you, I'm afraid that not having that understanding and thus not having that control over you means you will find ways out over which I have no power. I am afraid of not knowing myself.

I am certain, if I were to remove the glass box, that the understanding would not help me at all. I am certain I would not be able to contain you by mere force of will alone. I am certain you would devour me.

Who is in the box, you or me? Are we dead when you are in the box, or when you are free?

I wanted the anguish to be gone, yes. I couldn't carry it any more. But not like this.

I didn't want you cut out. I wanted you to feel better.

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.

because the sun cannot last

Remember how to drive. Pull out into weekend traffic. Pull out onto the Ring Road. Pull out into rain, and rain, and rain, and rain, and rain. Cannot see the road. Cannot see the side mirrors. Rain, and rain, and rain, and the spray of cars on water. Watch the traffic ahead lift off. Cannot see the hill they climb. Turn the music up louder. Louder. Cannot pull away from Nine Inch Nails long enough to start driving playlist. Rain, and rain, and rain. Hairy moment. Rain. Louder. Hairy moment. Rain. Repeat. Pass Geelong. Follow the Princes Highway to Colac. Still cannot pull away from Nine Inch Nails. Pause at Information Centre to confirm road still open. Still cannot pull away from Nine Inch Nails. Leave the Princes. Chase the 155 down through the Otways. Rain, and wind, and rain, and wind. Too fast on the corners. Water bottle rolls off the seat, side to side in the foot well. Clouds, and wind, and clouds, and wind. Cannot see the drop offs to either side. Cannot see the ranges and valleys. Cannot see the corners as they come. Louder, louder, louder. Free of the old trees and old ferns. Down the hills to the coast. The sea enraged. The coast eats ships. The wind and wind and wind pushes the car. Repeat that song. Take these corners too fast. The cliff tops charcoal from back burning. Ash in the air, smoke on the tongue. No sun seen today. Port Campbell. Five minutes too early for reception. Overpriced cup of tea around the corner. Watch skinny boys come out of the surf. Flash of fish-white buttocks out of the wetsuit. The kitchen hands come out to watch the derby. Milk and butter and a bottle of cider at the supermarket. Hostel is new. Hostel is clean. Hostel is warm, bright, not at all the setting of a slasher movie as the other backpacker joint. Sharing dorm with a chopper pilot. She defies gravity every day. This borrowed car is heady freedom enough. Back out with the last of the light. No music. Loch Ard Gorge. Herbie the Camera out. The wake of fire. Girls stopping their parents to emulate me in the ashes. Down to the gorge. Herbie freaks out in low light. There is no colour. The wind pushes me over. Hands too cold to be steady. Ears ache. Face numb. Retreat. Sit on bunk bed. Choose to read. Choose between two books. Cup of tea. Comfy couch. Warm room. Read. Old comfort. Old delight. Pause. Heat soup. Butter bread. Warm full belly. Cider. Book. Surrounded by tour group. Make my own quiet. Content. Bed. Listen to the wind, the rain, the sea and sky. Wake. Listen to the wind, the rain, the sea and sky. Wait. Doze. Wake. Listen. Wait. Doze. Wake. Listen. Wait. Doze. Listen. Wake. Shower. Downstairs. Warm porridge. Cup of tea. Book. Couch. Read. Listen. Rain at forty-five degree angle. Read. Hostel empty. Read. Warm. Quiet. Read. Warm. Quiet. Read. Rain. Wind. Rain. Wind. Warm. Quiet. Read. Rain stops. Car. Too fast on the corners. Clear air. Loch Ard again. Walk to Sherbrooke River. Photos and photos and photos. Ears ache in the cold. Hands clumsy. Nose running. Lichen. Flowers. Leaves. Grass. Succulents. Distance. Wind. Wind. Wind. Prickles. Water. Tussocks. Trees. Decay. The river is fat. The inlet an apoplexy. A froth of sour milk. Pale air. Waves immense. Vengeance. Foot stuck in clay. Distracted by ant carrying birdshit. Slip on wet rocks. Cannot feel face. Watch the violence. Wait. No silence. Alone. Need toilet. Walk back. Vow no more photos. Break vow. Break vow. Break vow. Break vow. Break vow. Break vow. Stop at Broken Head. Waves dash so high. The wind carries the spray up over the cliff top. A bird taunts me. Break vow. Break vow. Break vow. Cannot feel fingers. Car. Stop at 12 Apostles. Toilet. Ponder hot drink. Too tired to wait in line. Sit in car. Sandwich of leftovers pilfered from last night's tour group. Apple. Popper. Watch tourists in carpark. Drive. Gibson's Steps. Wind roars at me. Shoves me. Deafens me. Takes my face. Creep down steps. Dead mutton bird at bottom of cliff. Take photos. Given funny looks. Turn around. Snap shots of sea. See shore covered in dead mutton birds. Many photos of dead mutton birds. Sea foam lifted and spun in circles. Like plastic bags in a parking lot. Photos of dead birds. Bottle without message. Photos of dead birds. Dead birds. Dead birds. So many dead birds. Turn and walk away. Live bird next to stairs. Leave live bird alone. Blow back up cliff. Sit in car. Wait for shakes to stop. Drive. Stop. Photos of the wake of fire. Cold. So cold. Drive. Past Port Campbell. First Scenic Lookout on left. Trail head for Discovery Trail. Bugs. Flowers. Stamen to end all stamen. Cliff tops. Wind. Alone. Howl. Unheard. Scream. Lost. Sky swallowed. Spent. Turn around. Go back, down, down, down. Buy milk, hot chocolate, some chocolate-vodka alcopop thing. Shower. Core warm. Cup of tea. Book. Couch. Blanket. Read. Chuckle. Read. Finish tea. Make soup. Butter bread. Read. Read. Warm belly. Make hot chocolate. Spike hot chocolate. Book. Couch. Warm belly. Warm blood. Finish book. Lose quiet space. Bed. Rest. And. Sleep. Wake. Rain. Doze. Wake. No rain. Dress. Pack. Check out. Porridge and banana. Cup of tea. Car. Petrol. Drive. Great Ocean Road. Too fast on the bends. Through Lavers Hill. Through the Otways. Through Apollo Bay. C119 at Skenes Creek. Stuck behind slow driver. Pollute the air with obscenities. Past. Play chicken with the laws of physics on the slopes and bends. Grass parrots play chicken with me. Turn the music up. Turn the music up. Between leaving and arriving. Moving. In control. Free. Equilibrium. Stability. Strength. Breathe. Some semblance of exhilaration. Any excuse to accelerate. Overtake. Overtake. Overtake. Turn the music up. The earth regained. Some semblance of determination. Some semblance of hope. Until the sun comes out. Until the Princes Highway. Until a glimpse of the city. Until the traffic crowds in. Until traffic lights and stop signs and roundabouts and cut offs and car horns and road works and the roar of a different world. Until returned to this life. Until this.

















































The sky was furious. The sea was furious. The cliffs and the bruised beaten life upon them an implacable wrath. The battery never ended. The howling and roaring beyond sound. The world conspired to be my state of being, and being in that turbulence took the turbulence out of me. Spent. For a moment, I could see a future. For a moment, even the present was okay.

Not enough. Not enough to bolster me. Moments are, by definition, only moments. There are days and weeks and months of this life to come. Sitting here at my desk, there is no wind and rain, only people, I hear people. Perhaps if I'd had longer I could return properly replenished.

But. Why. Why should this wisp of wholeness I find on the edge of the continent be used on you. This cycle always ends with my retreat. Incoherent and disintegrating. Retreating, fleeing and flying from you. Finding some quiet eye in the storm to stand in. To remember how to breathe. To- to come back and have you wear me down again. Flay me raw with kind words, harsh words, no words at all. Until I retreat. Again. And again. And again. Why must I spend the quiet I fight for on wading into your world again.

Why is the price always mine.

Today is Not My Birthday

Being as it's broad daylight and office hours, recreating the Flaming Lamington Fortress of 2007 that started this whole Not Birthday affair would not appear to be a pragmatic move.



Sticking a soldier upside down in a banana-choc-chip muffin is, I believe, an appropriate alternative. Creatures of war, as said the King of Mars.

Being a largely international flock of readers, providing you with cake would be logistically unfeasible, so instead I give you this short film. It says with calm and quiet a great many things about which I am not calm and not quiet. It resonates strong enough to be entirely intangible.

Peace of mind is for peaceful minds, as said the King of Mars.



Thirteen years. Last year I forgot this date. It's some small, sad, insignificant failure that I didn't manage to do so this year. Some things you don't get to move on from. They define you, and you carry them around for the rest of your life, like a forgotten stick of chewing gum lost in the bottom of your bag, old and well past its use by date, and sticking with you forever.

I often consider what I'd say to the ghost of this sixteen year old Tessa that won't let me go (or that I will not let go). Were I to sit on the ground next to her on that station platform on this day all those years ago, knowing what the next few hours hold, and then, knowing what the next thirteen years will bring, knowing all this, there must be something to justify us.

Hey. It's okay. We came true.

And she'd look at me, that dead fish in a dead pan lack of reaction face I haven't been able to discard. She wouldn't even given me a mouth twitch.

Because she is me and I am her, and we both know there's no comfort in that at all.

The Elephant and the Tortoise

The program for the Melbourne Writers Festival was released today. In the week leading up I tried to work up some enthusiasm, and got out my diary and pen when flicking through the schedule today. I jotted down a couple of items, and then...scribbled them out. That wasn't enough, so I whited them out too.

I kept asking myself why I was looking, why I was even thinking about the writers festival, when I am not writing, and therefore not a writer.

It hurts.

At the top of my thoughts is an obese flaccid white elephant that I'm doing my best to ignore and failing miserably. At some point during my slow fitting of the identity of writer I ruled that I would not be a "writer" by intention only. Writing is an act, and if nothing is produced then you're not a writer, you're a wannabe. A poser. Worse than someone with no luck and no skill, you're not even bothering to try. And in all honesty, there are better identities to fake than that of the shut-in-spending-all-day-in-your-head-making-shit-up home body, which is also easily confused as 'nutjob'.

Here I am. I'm not writing. I haven't opened my manuscript since returning from Tibet, nor have I given it a great deal of thought.

I'm scared.

It hurts, it still hurts, it hurts enough that I don't want to type, I don't want to type anything at all. Every now and then I try. I get brave and ballsy and start a blog post. They look long. Longish. Long enough you need to scroll even without photos. And they hurt. I wince and flinch and stop too often to flex and stretch and take the edge off.

I can't write like this. I can't immerse myself in anything if all I'm thinking about is how much my wrists hurt and how much more they'll hurt by the end.

I'm afraid to try and work on my manuscript, because I'm afraid I won't be able to at all.

Do.

Or do not.

There must be something else. This white elephant just sits there, not saying a thing yet all the while asking, "If you're not a writer, then what are you?"

I have to be something else, I have to do something else, I have to. Writing shapes my whole life. Everything I do, decide, consume, no matter how random or trivial or unrelated to anything of significance, it's all collected because I might need it later. It will out in a story, inevitably. That is the purpose I have given my life.

It is not enough to merely live.

Whenever I tackle the elephant the possibilities I feed it aren't big enough to fill the void that writing will leave. Sometimes I wonder if it is defeatist thinking. There are many who have had their dreams thwarted only to discover alternate ones that are just as rewarding, but.

Always the but.

The only thing I can think of that would consume me, shape my every waking thought and colour my whole existence is to have children.

Which is a whole other elephant I don't want to acknowledge.

I just spent $500 on ergonomic equipment. I'm using it now, and have lasted longer than I would have before, but that may simply be rum taking the edge off. This sweet little tortoise of hope peeked out of its shell when the packages arrived, because maybe this will make enough of a difference that I won't have to tackle the elephant at all.

This tortoise has peeked out before. This tortoise has been crushed before.

I don't want to do this any more.

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.

The Writer Who Cannot Write

There is no such thing as a writer who cannot write. If you cannot write, then by definition, you cannot be a writer. A writer writes, and while I have gone through periods of insisting that I am not a 'writer' (the title coming to mean something other than the noun), writing has always been present in my life and psychological make-up. I find myself without definition when unable to write. I cannot shape my days and I cannot explain myself, and I cannot. I cannot. I cannot. There is no such thing as a writer who cannot write, therefore, I am not, I am not, I am not.

Which means there can be no first person. Second person is not distance enough from this non-existent figure. Third person remains, and there is not distance enough in this perspective either, but there is no fourth person perspective to take. What would the fourth person involve? No pronouns, in fact, it would not mention the writer who cannot write at all.

Intellectually, she has always recognised the reasons for which people turn to drugs and alcohol at times of stress; an artificial buffer, chemical-enforced mood alleviation, necessary distance introduced by an introduced substance, all a welcome reprieve from the claustrophobic confines of the human mind.

However, she's never truly got it. She finds the mind an unpredictable beast to tame at the best of times, it's whacky enough without bringing foreign chemicals into play. Why mess with it? (Said purely from fear.)

She thinks about writing a lot. A lot a lot. On that first day, lying in bed long after she has woken because there is no point in getting up, this becomes apparent. Being unable to address any of her top tier writing projects she accepts, bitterly. What then to do with all the time that leaves her?

There's a couple of short stories she's been meaning to look at- wait, no.
That post on those books- wait, no.
The quick movie reviews- wait, no.
What about- no.
And so on, and so on.

There isn't enough housework to last a day and, as she discovers, it only exacerbates things. The things she finds when she digs through the accumulated strata on her desk - cards, letters, receipts, things she'd though she'd lost, things she didn't know she'd lost - all warrant attention of some sort. The stories they give rise to, the memories they unearth, all these moments she begins to compose in her head, giving shape to a paragraph, testing the phrases- wait, no.

Planning a written piece without being able to then write it creates a stranger inner pressure, as all that intent has no outlet. Thwarted once, twice, thrice over, she has no way of releasing any of what is building up in her. By being awake and alive, she cannot help but collect things to write.

She keeps returning to the metaphor of a dam, which is obvious. Without controlled release, eventually the dam will break. She can already feel the cracks.

Having finished all her chores, and possessing no desire to be out in the world, there is only one option left to her. She reads.

To her surprise, reading isn't always enough to occupy her mind. Her diligence in quashing any writerly thoughts is paying off, and all the hintermind and subconscious processing that would have been occupied with said writerly thoughts is now sitting idle. As such, the books she reads are brutally and savagely ingested as mind parts fight for sustenance, and not every book is enough to fill her. She finds herself looking up from the page, a response to what she has read running through her head, making a note of that reaction so she can write about it later- wait, no.

And so, because she just can't stop the internal writing engines and they're driving her to despair, she resorts to drinking.

Which, given she's a lightweight, she's a featherweight, she's a nothingweight, isn't as dire as it sounds. It doesn't take much to dull the edges and make her comfortably stupid. In the evenings, when the sun is down and no one can see how red her face is, she goes for a walk. Or more accurately, she goes for a drunken shamble, and burns off the worst of the alcohol to save herself the hangover.

This is not a healthy behaviour to indulge in, but, the state of mind she was heading towards is worse.

She doesn't doubt that for a second.

And she understands, now, why people drink.

She will also never be buying a $14 bottle of pre-mixed pina colada again. You get exactly what you pay for when you buy one of those. Looked like raw egg as well. Despite what the label stated, the ingredients did not 'mix'.

You also get what you pay for with a $10 bottle of sake. Which is still much better than a $14 bottle of pina colada.

FYI.

Given the circumstances, she isn't adverse to spending money on a decent bottle of something, but, given the circumstances, she has to be thrifty. No typing means no typing. She cannot perform the tasks required in her job, and try as they might to accommodate her, there just isn't enough work to be found in an office that doesn't require typing. The work they find her is embarrassingly mindless, humiliatingly tedious, and only available during business hours. The paycut that comes from losing shift penalties is manageable. Lousy liquor and house arrest is only a temporary trial.

Truth is, the house arrest is a welcome solace. She's a mess, knows it, and doesn't need witnesses. The order prohibiting her from writing is its own protective measure - it ruins her, yet stops her from venting it at others.

She's irrational, furious, distraught, illogical, grieved, vicious, unfair, and far too self-absorbed. Every single person who fails to offer some token of support, who does not check in on her, who does not acknowledge her existence at all in this trying time, she hates. Every single one of you. Without exception. Even if such contact is beyond what she has any right to expect from a person, even if such contact is not even welcome by her. She hates your indifference, your selfish lack of consideration, she hates you for highlighting how vulnerable she is.

Every single person who reaches out and expresses their concern, sympathy and support, she also hates. Every single one of you. Without exception. She hates that you dare intrude on her when she has so little to spare, that you dare assume you could possibly EVER understand the HORROR she is going through, that you dare burden her with your concern when the last thing she needs now is to feel guilty for causing you worry, you dare offer advice when none of you can help, and she hates all of you for knowing she's weak, and knowing her as a writer.

Identity is not something she has a comfortable relationship with. It's an artificial construct created purely to for the aid of social navigation, yet she feels obliged to be the identity she has assumed. If she cannot define herself in her writing, then she defines herself by its absence. If she cannot be a writer, she doesn't want anything to do with anyone who knows her as such. That identity is dead. (Well, in a coma.) They can't unknow that part of her, and she doesn't want reminding.

What if this is permanent? What if she can never write again?

She'll jettison her identity. All of it. Change her name. Move. Never have anything to do with any of you again.

Dramatic and selfish, and startlingly unexaggerated. She is not graceful when tested.

Over time, as she survives one day, and another, and yet another, the rawness fades. The jagged edges dull. The pressure behind the dam wall stops climbing. She's resigned to her one allotted task at work, and the longer she sits in that chair, the more her shame becomes just another piece of furniture. With all the hands-on training (haha, no pun intended), she gets in the hang of quashing writerly thoughts. She's so good, she doesn't even think writerly thoughts anymore. Days go by without any sort of meaningful or interesting dialogue. She can't even have a conversation with herself.

It's a false calm, a tranquility that exists only because she is careful to do nothing that would disturb even the air around her. Thin and insubstantial, it cannot contain the turbulence beneath, and regularly she'll choke, look up and look away, and wait for that escaped sob to subside.

The metaphor changes from dam to dog. If a stray dog stops by your door and you keep feeding it, it'll stick around. If you ignore it, it goes away.

It isn't just the hours immediately before her she must learn to traverse a-new, but the land in her head that is dedicated to her vision of her future. Plans she wasn't aware she'd devised and expectations she didn't realise she was carrying are now rendered null. The rest of her life abruptly vacant. There's an immeasurable emptiness opening up in front of her.














She reads fifteen books in fourteen days. She finishes three bottles of spirits. She hopes the dam will hold and the dog will wait.