Chronic

A dear friend of mine recently brought two articles to my attention. The first I read, Women with Fibromyalgia Have A Real Pathology Among Nerve Endings to Blood Vessels in the Skin, (pdf) is a concise description of an actual, recognisable, testable THING relating to fibromyalgia. The first. Ever. It's also the first time I've read something discussing the symptoms of fibromyalgia and had it gel with my own experiences. It explains my awful tenderness, which seems to be the longest lasting of my symptoms. When I think back to where I was living when my pain levels were at their worst - a one-bedroom flat with no insulation, no heating and windows that didn't seal - I can't help but wonder if perhaps there is not only some correlation, but causation.

A moderate climate would go a long way toward explaining my current state of wellbeing. 'Wellbeing', that is, not merely 'being'. Although I've deteriorated somewhat since it has become too cold to swim regularly (I took a dip not two days ago and fuck me I won't be doing that again), I have not done so nearly as much as I'd anticipated. I still feel pretty good. My energy levels are mostly in the green.

Definitely something to keep in mind next time we move.

The second article is What is Wrong With Me? (pdf), and it is written by someone with a chronic condition, for people with chronic conditions. It's a story we are all familiar with. Some peculiar flex in my guts forced me to stop reading when O'Rourke stated the years it took to get a diagnosis, which is a statistical average. She goes on to acknowledge the particular conflict a person with a chronic condition must contain within their being, in that we must advocate for our illnesses while at the same time be resistant to conflagrating these same illnesses. She acknowledges the resistance to a shifting baseline.

It was something I needed to read. It's probably something I'll need to read time and again. I encourage all who have any chronic condition to read this article. 

Jade & Free

J noticed it first. "I think getting out of the water made you sad."

It isn't enough to enjoy swimming in the sea. The ending of such enjoyment does not lead to sadness, which is a rare emotion to surface, so often with other feelings stealing its name. A small enigma. The next time I left the ocean I paid attention.

It's the tangible, palpable, measurable return of gravity that presses down on my heart. It's experiencing the return of the complete heaviness of my body, including the weakness in my muscles and the dense weight of my bones. Once again it requires effort to remain upright, effort to merely walk, effort to lift my arms from my side, effort to hold up my head, and all the threads of my movement, once again, sigh.

It's a raising of awareness of the corporeal prison I will never escape, and the nature of the long-standing frivolous agonies it contains. Not, I must clarify, a raising of pain. Simply a raising of awareness and direct attention.

This reminder shadows the experience of being in the water. Of feeling almost weightless, and all my movements, grand or fine, seem so easy. There is no heaviness in my body. I imagine I can almost be capable of grace.

It's jade. Varying shades of. When it is clouded this jade is deep, rich and dark, an incredible colour to gaze into. If blue sky is looking down then the jade is bright and strong, and if the sun touches the water it is slashed with bands of pale gold and it is almost turquoise. To immerse yourself in such wealth and purity of colour can draw out a gasp slowly. With grace.

I can contort myself freely. Treading water requires no energy or effort or even conscious thought, and so I can hang suspended and free indefinitely. I can climb up waves three times my height and only be breathless from squealing. Spiraling, diving, twisting and spinning. I will strain myself. It doesn't take much. A few seconds of vigorous swimming, or fighting my ridiculous natural buoyancy to touch the sea floor. Even then, the effort required is something different. Rather than straining against the limits of my body, it feels as though I'm straining against the water. The battle line is external, rather than internal.

That is what the water gives me. A moment of respite.

Getting out of the water does indeed make me sad. 

Too Much Men

Last night we watched Noah, a film that fails spectacularly in all aspects. I've never made any sort of religious study so I can't comment much on the liberties it took with the source material, but I'm sensitive to storytelling, and it was a spectacular pile of confused asshattery. I'm honestly not sure what point they were trying to make, and harbour the horrible suspicion that the whole shitfest was in fact an exhibition of the Nobility and Tragedy of Manpain. That while making Noah a complete shitstain they were putting his manpain up on a pedestal and asking the audience to bow before it because there is seriously nothing greater in the world than manpain. Not all the explicit violence against women. Fuck no. It's about men, specifically cast as white men, and their manpain.

They could have written the story so many different ways, but this is what they chose. And I've had it up to hear with the Tragic Hero's Manpain.

This morning, it was men being oblivious and privilege-ignorant online. As it always is. That's not new. That's never new. It's never absent either. I can't even be bothered highlighting the specific incidents because it'd be like picking out grains of sand on the beach. Most of the time I can ignore it, because all who haven't lived the heteronormative male life learn to ignore it. That or drown. But I can't do it all the time. Sometimes, I just need to get away from it, the same way I try to get away from sand before I get worn down by sandblasting.

The book I'm currently reading, The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolaño, is wonderful. I really enjoy his writing even if I do pop out the end of his books somewhat bemused. This book hasn't disappointed me thus far. Yet, when had my cup of tea and settled on the couch, opened to the bookmark and started reading, all I saw were men. For a couple of chapters, nothing but men. Not even a waitress. They weren't engaged in any overt misdemeanours of privilege, other than the fact that they were there, not a single woman anywhere, because only men and what men do are worth of attention.

Constantly consciously deciding not to be bothered by the fucking patriarchy is exhausting. It really is. Those times I decide I shall be bothered require admitting and giving voice to my anger, which is also exhausting.

This so called progressive Western culture is exhausting.

And guys, I don't hate you.

I hate what you've internalised and are unwilling to even consider critiquing. I hate that your instant reaction is to say, "Yeah, but what about men-". I hate that you talk over the top of me. I hate that you hear me, but don't listen, and barely even consider.

I know what's internalised can be addressed and amended, because I have had to do it with myself, and am still doing it, and will never, in fact, get to a point at which I can say I'm 'done' and it's all fixed.

I know if I can do this, you can too.

It's your callous refusal to try that I hate.

The Text is Saturated

The original plan was to wait until I had work before joining J up in Sydney, but, well. I really like him. And it's been three months. And fuck that noise.

This whole expedition has not been as organised as anyone would have liked. Winging it. It has been completely wung. To the point where I didn't know how much notice I had to give work, checked the HR policy and discovered that if I wanted to be in Sydney by the end of the month I'd have to give my notice that very day. Big step like that, I like to be psychologically prepared. I wasn't. It was a rather wide-eyed day.

Post like this should be about beginnings. About everything I'm looking forward to, and anticipating, and the new shape my future seems to be taking on. But, there's that word. "Should."

I've worked for the Victoria Police for over eight years. Although I've changed roles and positions, I have always worked with the crime reports themselves. I read the narratives of what happened, I read the dossiers of people in regular contact with police, I read detailed statements, I read charge summaries, I listen to 000 calls, I watch interviews, I look at photos of crime scenes and photos of injuries.

Every day.

I remember, all the way back in 2005, when I first started, how incredibly confronting this was. A deluge of trauma, fear, hurt and pain. All of it laid out in objective, unbiased terms. Date, time and location. Realising how easy it is to enter a home. Processing my first rape report. My first child incest report.

This was, is, paper. It's just information. No contact with the persons involved, not even the police members.

That wasn't distance enough. I'm a reader and a writer. A life time of training has my mind honed to extrapolate the lasting impact of every crime, and I couldn't stop it getting under my skin. You can't, I couldn't, pretend it was fiction. Empathy can be a right arsehole at times.

But a job is a job. I got used to it. There were always reports that would sink into me, sit in my gut like churlish poison, but when years go by it all becomes familiar furniture. I learned how to turn the volume down.

Last night, talking with mum about I don't remember what and I don't remember how it came around, but she said she'd never understood how I could tolerate the work I did. Sometimes I can't, I said. Sometimes the anger that is simmering rises up and I'm furious, unable to speak from the fury.

Maybe it's a good thing you're resigning, she said.

And that sunk into me to sit with the anger.

This morning I read an interview transcript that made me sick. Then I read a collection of statements that forced to get up, walk away, lock myself in a toilet cubicle and do nothing for a while. The subconscious knows it doesn't have to be resilient to this siege of trauma anymore, and the walls have come down.

Sitting here in my last week working for VicPol, my growing impatience and refusal to compromise on social justice issues, on issues of sexism, gender discrimination, homophobia, racism, misogyny, ableism, classism, all the fucking -isms...you know I've never been quite sure where that comes from. A lot comes from my own experience, being as I tick various oppression boxes, but I've never...I'm not...these personal things don't feel as though they're equal in balance to the anger.

When I think about all that I've read over the course of 8 years I understand where the anger comes from.

And it's time to leave.

Maybe, after this, I'll have the space in my heart to







I don't even know how to finish that sentence.

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. 

The Midriff Conundrum

The realisation that the t-shirt you grabbed from the drawer this morning is just a touch to short is just a touch too late, coming as it does when you raise your arms to stretch out a yawn while talking to a co-worker. The lift gives him a perfect view of the waistband of your jeans, which are just a touch too tight and emphasis that little flap of paunch just a touch too well.

And you can't work up the motivation to be disgusted with your body, or to be disgusted at the socially-conditioned reaction of disgust, because you're at capacity with frustration at the knowledge that you will have to manage this oversight of overflab over the next 16 hours when you know you do not currently have the mental resources to spend on something so ridiculous and trivial as keeping your midriff concealed because your sleep the night before was so utterly broken and crippled and limping and crying at its ineffectiveness and all this could have been avoided if you'd only checked yourself before stepping out the front door, but you were so addled, so tired, that it slipped your mind just as your belly slips into view; with easy.

This doesn't put you in a wonderful frame of mind, and you were already in negetive attitude. You can always choose your mood - no, you can - but you can't choose whether or not you are exhausted, aching, and addled. You can choose to vent your petty miseries, or you could choose to shut up and stop polluting the emotional airspace, but the one person who doesn't benefit from that is yourself.

You could try and turn this into something mildly thought provoking, and whip up some navel-gazing blogpost concerning the constructive analysis of physiological mood factors and the responsibilities we take with not only our mood by how we choose to project our mood onto the world, but truth be told it would only be a thinly veiled piece of waffle that, even with the long words and needlessly meandering clauses, is just a whinge.

Tuesday in Melbourne

Don't need to learn about tickets or zones, no need to translate fare restrictions or look at gates in puzzlement as impatient locals queue behind you. No anxiously peering out the window at every station and check the line map every minute to be sure that you know where you're going, and that you're on the right train going in the right direction. No need to stumble around the station looking for the right exit, any exit. No need to stop and look at street signs and landmarks to decide on left or right. 

Of course it's a relief to be home. Of course it is.

I fell into a routine today. A pure indulgence in consumer daydreams. Visiting shops and flicking through racks of red, green, orange, blue, pink, all colours unrepentant. A European winter is a hard thing, I know this now, and I feel starved for colour. Melbourne delights in peacocks and parrots. It is not yet winter here. 

There's comfort in routine. Relief. Exploration of new land is always exciting, and it is also always tiring. To be constantly on the look out, not for danger or threats, but because the whole world is unknown, and so you must let the whole world in. No filters. Be aware, be always aware.

I sat down the back of a café, as far from the street as possible, and scribbled in my notebook, and didn't need to pay attention to anything beyond the page before me. No fear of emerging from the notebook to switch my awareness on again. Able to relax, and remain relaxed, and fear no mundane thing.

It's such a relief.

And yet-

Do you worry about burnout? Fear of fatigue haunts me like a considerate ghost, not intrusive but patient and present. Physical fatigue is something I am struggling to live with, and I daresay it will be some time yet before I accept and work with it, instead of fighting and being frustrated by it. Sitting in that café with the words coming so easily I gave some attention to the concept of mental fatigue, or emotional fatigue, or...would you call it fatigue of desire? The exhaustion of the heart?

Is it possible to use up your curiosity?

It is okay to be tired. It is okay to rest. Fallow time is a requirement not only of farmed fields but of life, all meadows of life. 

The 9-5 Mon-Fri will welcome me back and I'll none too willingly submit to the structure and safety promised within. But I am afraid my relief is too acute. I'm afraid the restlessness will not return. 

I am afraid if I stop I will not start again.

("And what happens to creatures of war when they stop moving?")

Slowly. Breathe slowly.

Trust your forever dissatisfied heart to bring change through its own lack of change.

Ullapool, now Tessa Base Camp

If I walk to the end of the verandah, this is what I can see. In the foreground, beyond the frame of this glimpse, a flock of ducks scabbling lazily as they settle on the grass in the dying light.

The shore is stone. The loch is sea. Dried weeds amid the pebbles. On the steps to the footpath a shattering of mussel and scallop shells, derelict barnacles and crushed mother-of-pearl.

A raised voice echoing around a corner. Such fury and vehemence. Don't you dare. Get back here.

To my left, an empty carpark. Two horses in coats, clopping in tandem across that space between buildings. Whingeing whinny and snort.

For a moment, I believe the supermarket not to stock bananas. For a moment.

There is no wind down by the water. The air is cold, too cold busy itself. The silence surrounding me as I stand in the daffodils is dense with space.

The Responsible Adult

That's the mark of a true adult; total responsibility for self. It is a mostly exhausting process, sadly, and much of the time the rewards feel few and far between.

This isn't a reward as such. Traipsing about the world is an incredible luxury. Awareness of this cannot and should not be undone, and the opportunity not taken for granted.

At the same time, the only person responsible for me is me. I make my own decisions, pick my consequences and get to choose which regret to live with.

Tessa, come Boxing Day you will have been traveling for 2 months, the longest you've ever gone, and there is no known end to this. You were not at full capacity when you left home, and haven't operated on such for too long. To this journey you've assigned some purpose. There is something you need to prove, but what, and to who, you do not know.

You are not as strong as you think you are. It is okay to admit that.

While in Berlin, I give you permission to do nothing. Go out and tourist your little butt off if you want, or stay in the hostel dozing on the couch between cups of tea and look only out the window.

Ask nothing of yourself. Test nothing. Challenge nothing. Be nothing.

And maybe we'll get through this.

Some Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and those Nürmberg drunks I mentioned earlier.

There was a soccer match on the other day. Footy fans and drunks - these are things that Australia and Germany have in common. Unfortunately.

Caving! In ancient lava tunnels! Holy Magma!

Summary!

1. I am tired.
2. It was dark.
3. I am tired.
4. Ice is insane.
5. I am tired.

In addition, a sound clip I took while alone. That manic hiss is simply my poor old iPhone, unable to process the quiet.

1350m long lava tunnel, the sound of rain underground. by sirtessa

This isn't so much a self-portrait, as that term implies some sense of purpose, a point to that particular portrayal. This is one of those CHECK THIS OUT photos. My hair isn't wet. That's purely sweat.

Oh so THAT is -6 degrees.

Extremes take it out of you. Extreme cold is just as exhaustinq as extreme heat, the only difference beinq cold is far more insidious a leech. I traipsed about town all ruqqed up and apart from my thiqhs was perfectly warm and cozy, and barely lasted an hour, half an hour, between wantinq to find somewhere to sit out of the cold for a bit.

I've walked to the station on Melbourne winter morninqs and had my ears ache, and considered that quite a cold morninq.

Imaqine that sharp freezinq ache takinq up your whole butt. To the bone.

Totally wearinq my thermal leqqinqs tomorrow. I'm sittinq on a heater riqht now, and have been for the last half hour, and I'm still waitinq for my bum to come back to me.

Utterly exhausted. Pleased, but wrecked. Flruqle.

who sent this