On My Own

I woke up on Sunday morning to the brush of the Possum's silky head against my cheek. The musty unwell smell of him as he curled in against the curve of my neck, his knees tucked up against my belly. I rubbed my cheek against his head involuntarily and listened to him mumble in his sleep while I cried. Silent sobs that matted his already damp hair.

I think I thought then, that I would not be able to forgive myself for later that day getting on a plane. And certainly, while I stood in line at the gate and the tears messily rolled off my chin and onto my new hand luggage I did not feel optimistic. All of my perspective and determination deserted me, left me desolate as I walked across the tarmac, wind whipping my hair into my eyes.

It was a short flight, bumpy, turbulent as my neighbour sculled Bundy and Coke while I stared out the window, watching the flat blue sea blend into the winter blue sky. The tears dried up somewhere near the Proserpine coast as my ears popped painfully for descent. I looked out at the water morosely, not wanting to find anything to appreciate. Enjoying my special brand of misery, branding myself with it to alleviate the guilt. The guilt of being a mother who abandons her children for 3 months. Even if she had no choice. Or no real choice at all, when the choice is unemployment and poverty and throwing away all the years of training.

My forehead rattled against the cold window as the mountains came into view. Beautiful mountains that reflected in the still water. In spite of myself, my tears dried as I watched the clouds graze across the fields, fluffy herds in the sky as we dove between them towards the tarmac. I felt the tiniest prickle along my spine as the possibility for adventure filled my mind for the first time. 3 months to head off to the beach after work to watch the last light on the water if that's what I wanted to do.

But as I walked off the plane, and into the cramped, tattooed and sunburned departure lounge I was grateful for familiar faces as we pulled my luggage off the carousel and headed to the hospital to pick up the keys to what was to be home for the next few months. The tears nearly started again when I saw the ugly apartment with the dirty floors and the stained carpet. The bed with the polyester blend green and yellow garish sheets and plastic pillows. The broken toilet and the dead phone line, and worst of all, no internet. If it had been just me I would have wallowed, then. Curled up in a ball on the thankfully clean couch and sobbed until it too was manky to match the rest of the house.

But my beautiful guardians took me to the shops where I bought new linen and groceries and a plant, so that I would have at least one living thing with me in my little house of mismatched ugly furniture and cheap fittings. And once they left, and the house echoed with all the sounds of silence, I didn't fall into a heap. Instead I moved the furniture around, trying not to notice the inch of dirt under each piece, as I made it less cramped, and more welcoming. Banishing the ugliest things to the room I don't need. Made my bed with the lovely light natural fibred linen and fluffed up the pillows. And I stocked my shelves with fresh food and fruits and curled up on the couch to watch some TV before crawling into bed and wondering at the vast emptiness, while I curled up on my side.

The next day was Monday, and my first day of work. I looked nice. I looked respectable and I was on my best behaviour. I smiled as I met new people, eager to make a good impression as a hard worker, a team player. And I smiled tightly every time someone reminded me I was staying for 6 months and tried hard to look enthusiastic at the thought. Knowing my eyes told the truth but not wanting to offend. Until someone asked me if I had any family, noticing my wedding rings and asking in that polite breezy way. Asking if I had children, and how many? And I thought of my sick little possum, who I had sung to sleep only 24 hours before as he rocked feverishly in my lap and I burst into inconsolable tears. Ruining my first day make up. And as much as I tried they would not stop. I did not care that my director was in front of me. Or some man that I do not know. Or that I never cry at work. Because I needed to cry and it's natural to cry and to be sad and to miss my babies. No matter how many people tell me that it will be fine.

But I got through the day somehow. Relieved when I could just work. Relieved that it was stuff that I knew how to do and that I could just get in and do it. Surprised when the end of the day came, and everything was ok and there was no fear in coming back. And I caught a taxi home in the afternoon light, put on my running clothes and went for a wander along the river. The beautiful river turning gold as the breeze teased ripples along the surface. The trees whispering quietly to me, to not be afraid while the birds chirped merrily. The heavy fog of murraya and honey blossom, warmed by the winter sun perfuming the air. And it finally felt ok. Felt worthwhile me being here. And I knew it would be ok.

Sponge Worthy

*ahem*

She says as she watches the tumbleweed roll lazily across the screen, scattering dust that billows in the late sunset and windchimes tinkle mournfully on the saloon verandah...

So, I've been away. You may have noticed, and you may have not. I certainly did, being as writing here has been my therapy for years. But then, suddenly it wasn't.

Now just like the first time I tangoed with depression at the awkward age of 11, it happened all of a sudden and nothing happened. No one took me behind the bus shelter and roughed me up. No one broke up with me, or called me a slag, or crossed my name off of their ruler. In fact in bloggy terms, I was actually on the up with page-views again.

But suddenly, one morning, I woke up, and I did not want to talk to anyone. Every time I tried to talk, it felt like bits of my guts were heaving out of my mouth and splattering viscera all over the pavement. And I don't like that feeling. That feeling, and really, that imagery, makes me nauseous. I tried to keep it in, and I think, in the main I succeeded, but I wanted to all the time. I wanted to talk and talk and talk about stupid things and my thoughts were always racing.

This wasn't just online, this was in real life as well. My entropy fizzed and buzzed in the enclosed space that was me and nothing lined up. Chaos reigned. I still got up and went to work every day. Most days I worked more than 12 hours, because at least at work I had goals for every second of the day, and when I came home a bit tired, the chaos was at least a little bit dampened through the inability to move.

I didn't eat, because I didn't need to and I didn't want to. I bought a lot of new things, because the joy in buying something, and then sometime later receiving it in the mail brought little fizz pops of joy that I could focus on for a few minutes, sometimes hours.

Bingley loved and hated it. I was suddenly wildly affectionate and desperate for affection at the same time. I wanted touch - more, more, more! But I was irritable too. And which of the two states I felt were sometimes inseparable.

Part of it was driven by the hunger. I started losing weight this year and got addicted to it. I'm an addictive person in general and losing weight is a fun one. You get so much positive reinforcement that you don't even think it's an issue, until you literally stare at food and start daring yourself not to eat it. And if new hollows appeared under my eyes (but happily sculpting out a small amount of cheekbone) then it was probably worth it to have people commenting favourably on my appearance every single day. I don't exaggerate that, literally not a day went past without someone commenting or congratulating me.

Now considering I started at a healthy weight, this should probably count as some kind of moral message, but in truth I am too tired to pontificate except to say that even though I knew it was slightly fucked, I liked it. And I still do tbh. I like buying clothes from the UK in a size smaller than I wore a year ago in US sizes and know that it will fit. And look kind of ok really. I still think I look pretty much exactly the same, except tired. But I'm not the best judge of this. And I've gradually been allowing myself to eat again. Occasionally.

One of the things that tipped me off was when my Mum started voicing her worries. Now to many of you, having a concerned Mum mentioning your weight is nothing new. But my Mum never does. Never ever. She didn't mention it when I got to 85kg after I had the Elfling and she said nothign when I lost the weight with hyperemesis. She knows painfully well how much noting weight instead of person plays with the mind, and she had the experience of me as a teenager and disordered eating so she said nothing. Until a few months ago when she started in a phone call to mention my weight. And ask if I was eating. Or sleeping. And for my Mum, for her to say something, that meant something.

But after all that, the weight was not a disease, but a symptom, just like those earnest high school health sciences messages said, of wanting control. I am not someone that needs to have rigid order. I'm not obsessive about things and have never been an A type personality. I don't freak out about changes and generally my philosophy on life is expressed by the ideal of a shimmering river cutting through the country or the wind that blows where it will. I like to feel unsure of destinations and to enjoy the journey to get there.

I cope with things. That could be my epitaph. I'm often asked how I do things, how I manage and my answer is usually (because I don't know how else to say) I just do.

Sometimes though, you don't just have your own life bobbing around in that beautiful shimmering river wending through life. Sometimes you have other people, some that can't swim, and you have to hold onto them and help them float too. And if you are lucky, maybe you have things in your life that belong to you, or matter to you or that have attached themselves to you, and if you want to stay in that river, you've got to keep them all afloat as well, or else you're all going to sink.

And I combined all of that, with certain ports that I wanted to stop off at for a while. Little towns along the river that I wanted to visit and explore and suddenly I was tethered to all these things that were trying to drown me AND stop me from exploring at the same time. I would wake up gasping sometimes, from the weight on my chest and the fear. The Fear. That grips at the tangled outer margins of the ego and whispers all sorts of things that are clearly insane, but you can't get out of your head. All those foibles that you worry all add up to overtake the sum of who you are. And I worried, constantly, about all the things and people tied to me and that I was drowning them too. Me with all my Not Good Enough.

Funnily enough, that Jenn doesn't feel up to chatting much. She might post pretty pictures, because in a slightly hysterical tense way they can patch up the truth for a while. Hey look at all this evidence that actually I'm doing brilliantly! Isnt' it wonderful just how normal and well adjusted and coping I am! Drowning? Not me! I'm just waving my arms above my head in JOY.

Ok, so maybe not that dramatic. I'm not very good at that. I can't do accents either. But there was a little bit of hysteria there.

But one thing I was sure of was that I am good at my job. I am very good at that. I always have been. People tell me that regularly. Unbidden. And while I think peopel are just trying to be nice about many things, I knew it was true about that one. Until one day when something happened at work to make me wonder if maybe I didn't know. Maybe they were just being nice. And that last little certainty in my life slipped out of my hands too and I freefell into space. Into a vacuum where I fell but in all directions at once.

So the only way I have known how to keep going is to break things down into infinitesimal pieces and to take it one step at a time. I write lists. I rigidly lay things out in my mind with neat little check boxes next to them, and when I get to it, complete a task and put it neatly on a shelf, another box is ticked and I get the joy of both progressing and having finished something. And all this rigidity feels foreign and slightly itchy, but I have started noticing things again.

Like how big the sky is and how it tastes on a cool, clear night. Of how much simple joy it gives me to find Orion and Scorpius and Alpha Centauri. To trace pictures in the sky that have been copied and studied and revered since the first man looked up into the heavens. Of how blue the sky can be in midwinter and the way that white light off a sandy beach makes everyone who plays on it seem to be lit from within. Of the feel of sand under toes and the way that light plays on the ripples of the water.

Of how beautiful my children are and how much I love them. How much it makes me smile in the middle of the night to be woken again by the tickle of auburn curls wedged under my nose and my little Monkey girl snuggled into me with her arm across my chest. Of how funny the Possum is and how brave and fearless he can be. Of his giggle and his cuddles and the earnest expression in his big blue eyes before they crinkle into mine when he smiles. Of my Elfling and her honeyed hair and her desperate fear that she is somehow missing out on something. Of her long limbed cuddles and her temper and her dramatics. Of the way she practices ballet without even noticing while watching TV in her pyjamas on a Sunday morning.

And even though sometimes I just want to give in and drown, to just not have to swim any more with all these things attached to me, mostly I just want to lay back and watch the sky overhead. And for a long time there I blamed all those things attached to me, made it all their fault. Forgetting of course that I was the one that attached them in the first place and only I could decide which things I wanted to stay where they were. And I stopped feeling panic when I loosed the ties and let them drift on their own... watched them for a moment and then lay on my back and stared up at the stars. Letting the current drift me along.

source unknown, please contact me if you wish to have credit for this image

Sapped.

I'm tired tonight and want to sleep, but am just now finishing work. It's been a very long night, lots of calls, lots of stairs, lots of walking to see patients.

And I was feeling ok about it, on top and thinking about lots of things that had my brain buzzing and made me want to share. But now I feel deflated and irritable. Teary.

It's probably tiredness but I know it's not. I'll feel better in the morning. And maybe I'll start writing here again. At least when I put it here I know what I want back.

I am ridiculous.

Ever feel like you're having a totally pointless conversation? One of those ones where you think you're expressing yourself clearly, but it's patently clear that with every response, the person you're talking to is misinterpreting everything you're saying? The rotation I've just started is rife with this. Circular conversations that make you want to bash your head against the wall at times. Even though I know it's not deliberate (in most cases) it is still something that makes my stomach churn with irritation. I hate repeating myself, I hate feeling like I'm repeating myself, and I absolutely loathe it when I keep on doing it and being misinterpreted in the process.

In fact, this afternoon one particular conversation bugged me so much I composed witty, cutting replies the whole bus trip home, and enjoyed myself stamping my feet in a temper as I stalked home, the warm evening air and my ire raising a film of sweat over my bare arms. I was so comically pissed off, that with one final hill to get home I started giggling, the ridiculousness of it all tickling me hugely.

I've lost my sense of humour a bit lately, and the inability to find the funny side of things has been pricking uncomfortably at my sides. Usually I can find that dark bit of comedy in everything, especially when it comes to things that are getting me down. But lately I've been enjoying being wrapped up in selfish sadness too much to bother thinking about the ludicrousness of wandering around limply and wringing my hands.

Life's truly too short to be miserable, and there's no point to me to continue with it when I know that I can laugh instead. It might be slightly hollow laughter at times, but it's still better than misery.

Squeamish

I used to love reading thrillers. Crime dramas with cliffhanger moments and sometimes paranormal themes. I voraciously read through about 8 Patricia Cornwells before I realised they were all the same, and the death and misery was a bit boring. I went through a solid Agatha Christie phase and bought a stack of brick sized Dean Koontz books filled with paranormal terror and violence.

I didn't watch a lot of TV, but a good crime drama used to keep my attention. I preferred the gritty English dramas, but also got sucked into watching SVU and CSI and various other TLAs.

And then I had the Elfling.

The change was instantaneous in me; and from that day onwards I couldn't watch anything that involved hurting children, or violence against women. Suddenly gripping came to equal stomach turning and I switched it all off. Books were put aside for lighter fare; I suddenly understood my Mum's love of terrible chicklit.

In spite of this, I got sucked into True Blood earlier this year (no pun intended). The first series was clever, erotic and different to anything I'd watched in ages. The heat of the deep South pulled me in, and I was interested in the story lines. There was blood, and it made me uncomfortable, but the rest of it was worth it.

The second series started off in a similar vein, and I genuinely liked the characters. Then, as the story evolved, I started to find it very difficult to watch. The much whispered about blood and sex started to seep under my skin and instead of finding it vaguely erotic I found it painful. Instead of watching back to back episodes I started to ration it for days when I felt I could stomach it. I was still interested in the characters, and they were acted well, but the gratuitous nature of the events became too much. I was on my Emergency rotation and the constant stream of self inflicted injuries, assaults, scalp lacerations and alcohol-related everything made me extra sensitive.

Fast forward to now and I'm dealing with an area of medicine that's difficult enough as it is, with pain and death and the violence of both a part of every single day, and I've just finished watching Series 3. And I feel vaguely violated. Like a part of my brain that should have been closed off has been pricked and it's bleeding into other parts. I honestly can't recommend it to other people - even though the story line is interesting.

It's just not entertaining for me to watch death, even in fiction. I live in this bizarre world where I talk about it all day, discuss staving it off, talk to families and listen to the darkest fears of proud men and women who can't believe that they're saying these things out loud. I meet people who've given up, or who have families that are keening in pain as they watch the deterioration helpless, and I watch the almost comical blood letting in True Blood and I want to punch something.

There's something wrong with a society that takes joy and gets turned on by prime time depravity. I kind of wish for the mythical 50s and a world where watching someone fuck in a pool of blood would be considered so incredibly disturbed that there would be uproar about it. Instead of a swathe of Emmy nominations.

I want to believe in rainbows and fairies. And to sit on my back steps and blow soap bubbles that dance on the breeze and glow in the sunlight. And forget that one day I will die.

Dear Rita

I've never understood why people keep working in jobs they don't like. I guess I've always naively thought that you could always find *something* to enjoy about your work, or if you couldn't, that it was the impoetus to find something else. Study/learn, reskill. I never expected that I would be the one dragging my feet to work. Feeling sick at the sight of the doors that i have to walk through and push myself to be there. Of feeling not very competent. Of feeling below par. Of feeling unexceptional and unrequired and unnecessary.

It's demoralising. And when it's on top of the guilt and the pain of leaving the Possum it's almost unbearable. I've tried really hard to find that niche. To find that part of me that is good at things, that finds things easy and naturally enjoyable. But it's been missing. And I've wondered what the point is.

Tonight, at 7:30ish after I'd come back from dinner I clicked on the next patient and had a quick flick through the triage notes. A couple of lines on a screen giving you a hint as to why a patient was here. An elderly lady with a fall, 91 years old. I am pretty numb to it these days, scarred by the alcoholics with their fetid breath and lewd comments, the malingerers and the drug seekers. My compassion has been stretched to its limits, tried sorely by the long hours and vomited on by the youth who imbibed 50 standard drinks in an evening.

But when I walked in and saw Rita, something that should always be there nestled back into my chest. That warmth and that want to heal and soothe. That cliched desire to help people and actually be meaningful to someone, if only for a few hours. She is old, not frail, and suffering dementia. Over the next four hours I think I repeated the same things at least 20 times, but I didn't care. I liked that when I talked to her she settled, looked at me with some sort of comfort and I helped.

She broke her collarbone, and I diagnosed that without the x-ray. I explained it to her every time I went back to her bedside, because with her dementia she would forget. But one thing she didn't forget was my face. Every time I started talking to her, as she would get agitated being in the unfamiliar surroundings, she would soften and settle. I explained everything, carefully, to her and not over her. And she thanked me. Over and over too, because she didn't remember between times. "You've had a fall, you've hurt your shoulder and broken a bone. Yes, that one, where this bump is." Over and over again. And not once did I feel frustration in it. Not once did I want to walk out and throw up my arms, because every time I did it, she nodded, understood, and calmed.

Her daughter was there and she thanked me too. Relieved that someone was talking to her, relieved that someone was talking to her Mum, and I wanted to hug her, because the love she felt for her mother was so touching to see.

Over the next 4 hours I made her better, excluded nasty things and carefully wrote notes in the chart. Talked to superior doctors and checked I was doing the right thing. But the thing I did best of all was go back to Rita's side and have her thank me and me thank her, because every time I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do as a doctor. Feeling like, for the first time this rotation like maybe this whole thing was not a mistake.

Several times Rita held my hand, squeezed it and looking into my eyes said "you're an angel, a beautiful angel, thank you for helping me". It made a lump swell to my throat. Having just one person, even a beautiful old lady with dementia who won't remember me tomorrow and doesnt' remember a thing I say for more than 3 minutes appreciate me and what I'm doing is the first validation I've felt this whole rotation.

Just as my shift was ending, I managed to finish everything I could do for Rita so that she could go home. I finished all the loose ends and got everything ready for her, and when I walked out of the hospital doors my heart was light. Even better it was storming, lightning flashing across the sky and heavy splodgy rain squelching in the gutters and running down tree trunks. The first time I've thought that I want to come back tomorrow.

And there on my car was a $100 parking infringement notice. Nearly 4 hours I worked tonight, to pay for a parking fine. I sank then. Caved like someone had kicked a giant flail segment in my chest. I just want something to be fucking easy. Just one good night. FOUR hours of work for nothing.

And then I thought about the fact that for four hours tonight I had been helping Rita. Helping her daughter. Actually learning again that medicine may be the career for me. That I will make more than an adequate doctor and may actually make a good one. Feeling pride in accomplishment but more than that feeling human empathy and compassion and joy in my work again.

And Rita, for you I would have done it for free. Fuck the $100. It was worth it, because for four hours I felt like a doctor again. And I wanted to be.

Thank You.

Water

He doesn't smell like me any more. He is still beautiful. His eyes are still wonderful. But he smells different. Not so sweet. He is getting sick. I can smell it in his scalp and I feel my breasts filling in response. Active milk, strong milk, milk to settle his belly and to ease the pain in his throat. And he won't take it. It soaks my shirt impotently as he feeds from the bottle that won't soothe him and I cry.

Cry because he is hurting. Cry because I feel useless. Cry because of the pain of engorged breasts that I can't empty. Cry because I want to press rewind and start over.

It's is dark tonight. Rainy and cool. My favourite time. And I am so tired. So overwhelmed. Floating on a sea of emotion both hormonal and induced. A body clock that doesn't know if it's night or day. Skin that can't decide if it wants to be touched or cloaked in protective warmth. Eyes that fill far too easily.

The air is liquid. The rain has drenched everything, even breathing is like drowning. Each breath shuddering up and down like water in a rip and I feel myself being pulled along and then under until I gasp and want to just give in.

My skin is covered in prickles. The coolness of the wet breeze licking along it with too much familiarity. I am being assaulted with sensation I don't want. I just want to curl up, in a blanket and wait for the storm to pass.

Normally I would revel in it, the juiciness of the water sloshing out of gutters. The delicious smell of wet earth rising between the floorboards. Of children giggling in gumboots, splashing in puddles.

But I just want to be alone. Alone and cool and comforted.

Australia Day

It's nearly 3:30am, and this is important, because 3:30am marks the midpoint of my shift tonight, and even more importantly, the midpoint of my run of night shifts. 5 nights in a row, where I see the beginning and the end of each day here at the hospital instead of curled up in bed.

I'm actually taking my designated, non paid for break tonight. Watching the lights of a sleeping city while taking long warm mouthfuls of hot chocolate that soak into me. It's been tough. I think I can say that. Sleeping during the day is really, really difficult. It is so bizarre to walk out of the hospital after a 10 hour shift into brilliant sunshine and know that after driving home in such intense Summer lightness that I have to somehow convince my body to lay quiescent in bed and sleep.

So what happens is I walk out into the sunshine, feel my blood swell, and the bone breaking tiredness dissolves and is replaced by some strange consciousness. And I fitfully grab naps of an hour or two at a time and try and convince my weary body that they count.

Tomorrow, or technically, today, is the Elfling's first day of Grade One, so when my shift finishes in 5 hours, Bingley will bring her here to the hospital so that I can take her in and meet her teacher. My hair will be lank and I will be wearing the rumpled look of someone who hasn't slept in a week, because I haven't.

Because of the upheaval we missed the narrow window to go to the uniform shop and it's with pure motherguilt that I remember that she doesn't have a new uniform to wear tomorrow even though we'd promised her one with the start of the year. So after I drop her off and orientate her (probably late, because my chances of getting from the city to her school in 15 minutes including parking are slim to non-existent) I will then race to the uniform shop and buy her everything she needs.

We didn't buy the booklist pack either, because in October last year when they sent around the forms we were still contemplating moving schools to one closer to our new house, and we missed the deadline there too. So my poor beautiful Elfling will start grade one in a hand me down uniform and no new books. I feel tremendous pointless guilt about this. In the scheme of things it doesn't matter. She is highly unlikely to be the only child without everything ready to go, but it makes me feel inept. Especially as I know that if I hadn't gone back to work that she would be turning up to school tomorrow with everything in perfect order.

The house is trashed. I barely remember my neat ordered shiny floored abode. And I have been studiously ignoring the mould that is again encroaching on the ensuite.

"At least I'm being paid" has been the rhetoric of the last week, and today I was. So I took my paycheque, looked at the lovely largeish number that still makes me feel proud. And I paid the Monkey's kindy bill and the Possum's daycare bill and I am left with... almost nothing. More than nothing yes, but considering the deficit, it hardly seems fair.

I'm coping, the house is running, my children are happy and I'm getting my work done. But this suspended animation and the sheer grit and determination that it's taking just to stick with this can be hard to deal with sometimes.

And yes he weaned. I weep blue-white tears every morning.

Douleur

I'm not ok. I don't know how we got here so fast. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I'm not sure how I will cope. I have forgotten everything I knew. All I know is what the back of his neck smells like. How his sweaty fuzzy head feels under my cheek. How warm and heavy he feels against my chest as he falls asleep in my arms.


I think about tomorrow. Of being separated from him and it feels as though someone is scraping off my skin. Long bloodied strips of pain. My throat is clenched and dry and my eyes burn. My breasts are heavy and ache. As if they know that they will not be stroked and kneaded and suckled by him tomorrow. Instead it will be plastic that catches the breathless tingle of letdown while I try not to cry.

I went to the gym today to inflict as much pain on myself as I could, to leave myself breathless and unable to think. And it worked, I sweated and pushed myself far beyond my limits until everything burned and my head was empty. For an hour. Maybe two.

But it's back. The other pain. The pain that's curdling in my heart and spitting through my veins like an angry cobra. He's sitting in my lap a the moment, babbling and occasionally looking up and grinning at me. Snuggling into my bathrobe and smelling me. I can't bear that tomorrow I have to leave him.

I wish that things were different. I wish I had chosen some other career. I wish that I could just be happy with the way things are and not want more. I wish I didn't have the ability to do anything else and I wish I didn't have this stupid soul destroying need to keep achieving.

Everything feels wrong at the moment. Everything. Like every choice and every path I've taken in my life is wrong. I want contradictory things. I want things that can't ever happen and things that would destroy me if they did. But most of all I just want my baby.

All That You Can't Leave Behind

I bought a packet of M&Ms today and the first 9 that I squeezed out of the packet were blue. Kind of sums up my day really.

OK Computer

I woke up this morning in a stormy mood. Colour irked me, I just wanted to cloak myself in black. Getting dressed I chose black from the skin out. Black underwear, black fishnet stockings, black 3/4 knit shirt, black pencil skirt, black shoes. It still didn't feel enough and so I wore make up, which I wear so rarely anyway, but emphasising my mood with smudges of black kohl. Between the makeup and my miserable bright green eyes I'll wager I looked somewhat disturbing.

My mood kept up most of the day. The weather was revolting today, reaching 30 degrees before 10 o'clock and over 38 when I went to pick the Elfling up at school to go to ballet. The air was like a blast furnace and the Possum and the Monkey were both damp with sweat when we got to the gates.

The drive to ballet was frustrating. Idiots who can't drive and try my patience. People who insist on driving in the right lane 4km below the speed limit causing accidents and near misses in their wake as people try illegal manoeuvres to get past. The commentary on my driving from the back seat just adding to my stellar mood.

On coming home it was not much better aside from the fact that I had fortuitously put on the airconditioning, so it was like walking into a welcome fridge. The kids were tetchy and needling each other and the Possum, who'd fallen asleep in the car, was awake but unhappy and the afternoon turned to shambles as well. So I put on a DVD for the big kids and lay down with the Possum in front of the computer in just my stockings and shirt, looking for all the world like one of those cliched girl gamers in my emo make up and stockings. All miserable pent up emotion.

Until the Possum, decided enough was enough and he erupted like a mini krakatoa in a cheesy smelling fountain all over himself, my hair, my black clothes, in clumps in my stockings and down my cleavage. It obviously made him feel better, because once he was done he erupted into spontaneous (if smelly) giggles. And above us, the sky rumbled too with what sounded suspiciously like laughter.

His eruption was so complete and so spectacular that we both needed a shower and every trace of the blackness that I'd coated myself in today needed to be washed away. In the shower the Possum clasped at my cheeks and patted them while looking into my cleansed eyes and smiled. And outside, the rain and the hail began to fall.

Perfection

Every year October takes my breath away. Every year I try and write it, but always end up with an empty echo of its beauty. So this year I'm not even attempting aside from saying that the air is warm and bright and tastes like honey and I love it.

I am loving the warmth for the most part. After months of having to wear a lot of clothes, it's nice to put on floaty dresses (with exceptions) and shorts and singlets and to laze away in my hammock with a good book (not that this actually happens but a girl can dream).

The flipside is dealing with the fact that with lots of clothes comes the ability to cover up, and peeling off the clothes is revealing what lies beneath...

While pregnant, everything was taut, full and glowed. Now, it's not. Skin that was luminescent and smooth as glass is now a doughy mess. Hair that shone in a luxurious thick mane is now thin and stringy and both oily and dry at the same time. Even with Bingley's terrible photographic skills I wish I had demanded more photos. Booked an artistic "nude" session, frolicked in a bikini somewhere, because I have never felt so confident as I did in the last few weeks of pregnancy.

Now I'm the cliche of a used vessel, sunken, bloated and fleshy with no hormonal blush. The permanent blue bruises under my sleepless eyes do nothing to enhance a beauty that was never there. I don't want to be touched, I'm touched out as it is, with the Possums affections and the girls' need for cuddles and petting. But it's also the way that touch feels on the squishy softness. How much I recoil from the sensation.

I feel used up. Unnecessary and slightly embarrassing. I do my hair and almost wonder what the point is, as if a perfectly blowdried fringe will detract from the heavy features I've never grown into and the saggy mess of popped balloon. I feel shy meeting strangers for the first time in my life, apologetic that they're seeing me like this. Embarrassed for my husband and children.

It comes in waves, a horrible self consciousness, usually when I'd been on the brink of forgetting. And I know it's stupid, I know that it's shallow, but I can't seem to break the way it hurts me. I've succeeded in so many parts of my life, but I can't change my genes, or my phenotype, or the fact that not everyone has a dazzling smile. And for someone as stubborn, and determined as I, well it's aggravating.

The stupidest thing of all, is that holding the possum, and nuzzling his soft skin I can't help but nom nom nom on his gloriously pudgy thighs, kiss the tiny roll at the back of his neck and stroke his cherubic cheeks. I adore his smackable bum and the way his belly spills out over his nappy. And yet, those same parts of my self I view as imperfection, grinding away at the gym knowing full well that even if you remove all the fat, I'm never going to be a Hollywood clone.

I miss the way that pregnancy made me feel. Miss how peaceful and zen I felt in those last weeks. Miss having a baby kicking me and tumbling as I fall asleep. Missing sleeping. Missing the heavy ache of full breasts devoid of crescent shaped fingernail scars. Miss my long hair, the colour of my eyes when pregnant. Miss my hormonal euphoria, my excitement and my anticipation.

But, for all that whinging, and it IS whinging, I still would not change any of it. Even my ruined body. Because the fruits of it are lying on a soft minkee rug, slurping away at a contraband toy with joyful eyes that crinkle up when they see me. His whole body kicking with the full body emotion that he feels for me. He gives big sloppy kisses now, long strings of drool sliding wetly off his cheeks. He giggles and laughs, and he snuggles into me every night. He loves banana and hates rice cereal. He is barely on the 5th percentile for weight and I don't care. To me, he is perfect and I know, to him, so am I.

Melancholia

Sometimes listening to the rain outside is the most beautiful and uplifting sound in the world. It caresses over your senses raising the fine hairs and enticing those tiny shivers of electricity through your soul. The mere smell of wet earth can leave me in paroxysms of joy.

But then there are other times when you need the sun. When you need external warmth to heat your skin and keep the fire burning. When the pervasive melancholy has seeped in and wrapped its silvery shroud around you.

Melancholy and I are well acquainted. We had an intense relationship once upon a time, a story that I'm not sure if I ever want to rewrite. But it was not all miserable. I have never been as creative as in those suspended years. I wrote, I drew, I painted, I composed, I sang. I don't do any so much any more and it's strange sometimes listening to the music that is so closely entwined with then, how much it can invoke in me.

I don't listen to music enough any more, part of it I think is that without the intensity of melancholia it's never felt quite the same. Like sugarfree chocolate. Pleasant enough but not something you'd willingly seek out. A substitute.

I miss the way the opening bars of a song could pierce me, could infiltrate my skin and flood my veins. The way a chorus could rip little holes in my composure, that impenetrable brick wall, until I was screaming it out with no reserve. The way that I could listen to a whole album, 13 songs one after another while lying on my bed and finish that last chord with a tiny shudder and then lie there silent in release, eyes golden, breathing shallowly, spent.

Sometimes it happens again, a song so intense, so perfect, or timed so beautifully with my world that I feel that familiar fire in my blood. The Gleam. A song that makes me want to lie back against the pillows contemplating the images behind my eyelids as sensation arrows through me, heats me, flushes my skin and gilds my iris. Forever imprinting on my brain.

I just don't seek it so much, don't chase the Gleam and it worries me. I have a blog dedicated to the pursuit of the Gleam and yet I spend my day on a treadmill with a TV screen in front of me. I work, I come home, I interact lovingly with my children, I go to sleep. I clean the kitchen when I have a moment, I don't sit back. I don't absorb. I don't release and I don't regenerate.

I woke as the cool greyness of today seeped in as I cocooned myself under the quilt. Curled in around me stroking itself along bare skin like fine spun silk. I tried snuggling further down, pulling the comforter high over my ears and nuzzling the pillow, soft and langurous. Creeping melancholia through my veins. Seeking something, that exsanguination of emotion while blanketed in the greyness. Feeling something swollen within me needing release, a voice, an emotion.

I lay back in my bed, watching the droplets on the window coalesce and race in rivulets down the pane. Wondered if anyone else in the world ever stops to place bets on a crystal droplet of water and feels heavy when she doesn't pick the winner. Watched the breeze ruffle the curtain and felt dampness on my cheek and didn't know if it was precipitation or escaped emotion.

This afternoon, curled up on the couch, ensconced in my softest cotton clothing listening to the continuing rain I am surrounded by music with my laptop on my lap, my knees underneath me as lyrics and chords brush over me featherlight. Skin primed until it is almost electric, soul floating off somewhere away from petty worry. Aroma of freshly made potage parmentier and roast chicken in the air competing with the misty scent of rain lifting from wet earth. Wishing I was living somewhere wilder and more isolated, where I could tramp over waterlogged hills alone. Feel that sharpness as cold air sluices into my lungs.

But instead I'm listening to music that takes me there anyway, and trying to remember why I forget.

Drowning

It wakes me, sitting on my chest. Thick and dark and heavy. My breath is short and not deep enough. But I can't inhale properly. It's there, on my chest.

It's 4am. I went to bed after midnight and stared into the darkness. I should be asleep.

It's cold, but I am hot. Its weight is pushing me down and holding down my arms.

I am claustrophobic and the weight on my arms pulses cortisol, the hormone of stress through me. I panic and struggle, finally sitting up, but it is still there, still stopping me breathing.

Each breath gurgles, as if the air is too thick. I inhale sludge into my nose and mouth, down my throat and panic some more as I gasp and more of it fills my chest.

My hair is in my eyes and I wonder at why I care when my chest is bursting. Snakes of sludge now sliding into my belly squirming over eachother in a serpentine orgy.

I make it to the bathroom sink, still pinned, still full of sludge,and vomit copiously, mucus and green bile, until my abdominal muscles lock painfully in spasm, bent over the sink, eyes bloodshot, chest still full and heavy.

The thickness travels further, into my spine, shocking each nerve root as it climbs steadily until it swirls heavily in my mind. I see the flashes as it lazily tumbles around in my eyeballs, still gasping for air, bent over like a woman 3 times my age.

I get in the shower, cold at first, the water heating until it is almost scalding and shiver under the spray. The sludge begins to wash off of me, until I am clean again. Tears streak the mud on my face until it is clean too. The rivulets of water running to the corner of my mouth salty. The snakes are still there, still jostling for position, still making me squirm. My hands are shaky and I wonder at the tremor.

I get dressed, black agent provocateur underwear, fishnet stockings clipped high on my thigh. Below knee sensible black wool skirt. Tailored blue shirt. Covering them until I look sensible and plain aside from the 8 inches of visible stocking clad calf. Hair scraped back into a pony tail, errant fringe tucked behind one ear. No make up. Still can't wear the crap even though I know I look better if I do.

The blackness is still covering my face, even though it is light now. Still breathing underwater.

I can't do this any more. No more months of this. More exams, more assignments, more deadlines, more nights lying awake with my brain racing then waking up too early facing the cold.

But I have to. A song starts whirring around in my head. The snakes bursting into spontaneous harmony. A stupid song. An offensive song. Around and around and around it loops like a record player jumping over a scratch but it makes me laugh. So I head out, drink diet coke with freshly brushed teeth and grimace, and plod through another day. With this as my soundtrack. WARNING DO NOT CLICK THE LINK IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED!

I may be fucked but at least I can still laugh.

Staring into the abyss

You know it's bad when you watch someone spontaneously burst into tears on a bus and feel jealous.

Tentative

I noticed something the other day while I was in the midst of a messy downward spiral. I bite my lips a lot. I don't know if I've always done it, but now that I'm aware of it, I notice that I do it all. The. Time.

When I'm thinking I bite the right side of my bottom lip. When I'm upset or worried I tend to suck the whole lip between my teeth and gently gnaw it as I contemplate, often leaving my lips quite swollen and very tender. When I'm afraid I take tiny bites and often quite hard. When I am trying not to cry I often bite down hard enough to leave a mark and occasionally the metallic taste of blood on my tongue. When I'm angry or frustrated I tend to bite my top lip because it's pretty damned hard to talk when you have your top lip in your teeth.

I have a very expressive face. I can shield it if I need to (apparently this is my ice princess face and = in cave go away, go away now... I didn't realise it was *that* obvious) but happiness, concern, fear, sadness, joy, they all flash over my face so that even if it's not beautiful I'm told that it's very interesting to watch. It's part of why people relate to me I think, because my face is welcoming.

I don't smile quickly - I have a slow blooming smile that starts at the corner of my lips and twitches up, pulling my poor swollen lips upwards and gradually reaching my eyes which crinkle up, and eventually my slightly pointed ears move up and back completing the smile. But the reservedness I have combined with the smile seems to shut me off a little. I'm not the person smiling engagingly with someone they've just met in the centre of the party, I'm more likely to be the one sucking the corner of her scarlet painted red lips off to the side. But I will notice things that others don't, and I usually use this for good.

But sometimes, I need someone to notice the extra bright filmy eyes and the swollen bottom lip and kiss it all better.

I took most of this week off to find myself again, and I'm pretty much back at Jenn. The house isn't clean enough, and I didn't finish my knitting, but I feel sane again. I feel happy. I feel in control of my thoughts and actions and I'm not waiting for someone else to lift me up again because I'm already standing with my shoulders back and my hair rippling in the breeze. I'm laughing again without that desperate undertone and I'm not withdrawing from my husband and children as I was when I broke. I'm just happy.

But if you look closely, my lips are still swollen.

Why I blog

Tagged by the lovely Kisses...

Ask me on any different day and you'll get a different answer. Truly. The reasons are so multifactorial.

I have written a diary/journal in some form or other since I was about 9 years old. Originally containing such incredible stuff as "I think Bradley likes me, but I like Anthony more - what do I dooooooo???" it was and still remains a way to write out my thoughts and examine them. When I hit highschool, we had a teacher that liked us to write a journal that we felt comfortable handing in to be read. So you could write as little or as much as you liked. And I surprised myself by actually opening up a bit in mine. Still mostly childish stuff, but things that I would have previously kept to myself.

After she stopped being my English teacher, I continued writing the more opened up raw stuff. I took my journals everywhere, kept them in my blazer pocket and whenever I felt emotionally raw I would pour that out in words. I've read back on some of it and it's pure unadulterated crap, but it's value to me then was immeasurable.

The odd thing is that when I was really depressed I stopped writing. Words were just too painful, and so I moved more into art. It was easier to draw how I was feeling than examine my non existent emotions. Easier to draw blades over my skin that to put that turbulence into historical record.

And I didn't really write a diary again until the day that I found out I was pregnant with the Monkey. I'd wanted to, but hadn't actually had an impoetus. And then I peed on that stick and saw those two lines and freaked out. Hyperventilated and shook and did all those things you're not supposed to do when you receive your "happy news". And I opened up a diary on a parenting website and originally typed up an entry about just how out of control I was feeling - before hitting backspace until a giant blank box was sitting there, cursor flickering.

And I thought about the fact that I was going to keep this bundle of cells that would become a baby, and I thought about the fact that if I was going to do that would need to come to terms with it, and instead wrote something pretty innocuous.

Well

Apparently we are not so clever after all.

After having a big chat at the end of last year about postponing our baby plans until I graduate we seem to have thrown a spanner in the works.

I found out today that I am pregnant again with baby #2. This was no slight faint positive on concentrated morning urine at 6 weeks like the last pregnancy - this was a bright pink line that almost fluoresced in the sunlight.

I had bought the test in the first place as a reassurance that my periods were just out of whack again. Didn't quite work out that way. And my response was not very Hollywood either. I cried. Then made DH come home from work to make it better. He arrived shortly after with a bunch of red roses and a huge smile on his face. He is so happy. And slowly I'm getting there too. And am already feeling very guilty about my less than enthusiastic response.

It's going to be pretty difficult with uni to try and work out deferment etc but at the moment I don't care. I am having a baby! To go with my perfect little girl. We are a real family!

Still feels surreal - like I'm making it up. Off to the Dr tomorrow to get a quantitative hCG and a referral for my OB. It feels very odd typing that. I'm sure it will become real eventually.

I bought the little Blueberry a toy this afternoon. A stuffed Gund Puppy Dog. And as i stroke its plush fur this is starting to sink in. I'm going to be a Mummy again.

And then I didn't type anything again for 6 weeks or so. But after that break the flodgates opened. I wrote about my ambivalence and my fear and parenting in general, but mostly I didn't write about my inner me. I don't think Phil ever got a mention. It felt wrong to record pregancy details and the girls milestones in amongst the absolute crud that permeates my brain. So after 18 months or so of parenting diaries, I opened this blog. And for a while it felt like I was two timing my EB diary. I had a loyal band of around 40 readers over there, and although *this* blog is opened up to the real world, it was relatively anonymous as well, and I'd come to like having feedback on my posts. But then I'd never let people into my head.

But little by little this offered more. My brain is so full sometimes, it races and is filled with so many thoughts and confusing contradictions that I needed somewhere to blah about it so that I couls try and sort it out. And that's what this is for me. A pensieve maybe. A way to take the things that hurt my head, those things that I know aren't normal in my head, and to rearrange them so that they make sense. And hopefully become a more enlightened and more empathetic person when it's done.

And sometimes I don't blog it here, because it's too raw, or because I can see the direction it's going, and I'm not sure that I really want to examine that part of myself (see Friday). The problem with not doing it is that if I haven't managed to sort it out, then I can end up doing stupid things, or saying hurtful things to people I love. And lose any respect and credibility I've had as being a decent and empathetic person.

It's a bit of a codependent relationship really...

Tags to
Shannon, Melissa and Candi

Bleeding

Normally when I am about to heamorrhage I have some warning. A spell of downness, an attack of the Phil, something that signals a warning beacon that I'd better get a group and hold just in case I need to be transfused.

Last night though I was blindsided when a huge gash appeared. I wasn't expecting it, wasn't prepared for it, and the sting of it brought me to my knees. So I did what I always do when I'm scalded and I retreated into my cave and stuck up my big icy walls so that I could recover and work out what the hell had just happened.

Usually when those walls are up, people see me and they hastily beat a path in the opposite direction. They wait until I come out into the sunshine and generally give me a pretty wide berth. So this morning, hiding there, in that cold damp darkness, I was basicly just getting reaquainted with my cave, feeling safe, even though it was chilly, because no one ever comes into my cave.

Except this afternoon someone did. And I always assumed that when someone did manage to get through those ridiculous walls of mine that they would be gentle, that they would coax me out into the sunshine. Or at the very least that they would hunker down in the darkness with me and just let me know without pushing me that they were waiting.

Instead what happened is that the walls were breached and then I was pinned against the back wall of my cave. The cold wet stone pushing into my back. And I could not move. I was trapped in the only place that I'm allowed to hide in and I could barely breathe. I panicked and tried to fight my way out, hoping that the intruder to my previously pristine cave would let me escape. But instead I was slashed from head to toe. Until finally, with a scornful glance and a spit in my general direction, I was left bleeding in the corner of my cave.

I need stronger walls.

The New Girl

As I drove to work this morning, far too early in the cold dreary rain, there were yet occasional cars filled with school bags and panama hats and beuniformed children crowded into backseats ready to be dropped at before school activities. All looked the part of involved and belonging children, with parents fussing over bags and blazers. So sure of themselves, so confident. So secure.

Where I park is right next to a private school, filled with girls who have gone to that same school (or selected feeder schools) their whole lives. They fit, they belong, their position they need not even think about most of the time because shared history cements them in it.

And watching them I searched for the girl amongst them who I knew had to be there, the one that didn't belong. The new girl.

At the beginning of each school year I was exactly the same as every other child - new slightly too large uniform for me to "grow into", new bag and lunchbox, new books and pens and pencils with my name stamped into them. Hair carefully brushed but never as immaculate as other children's, often hanging in two long plaits down my back. Excited and cheerful at the idea of a new school term, with all the adventures and fun that that would entail.

But there was one difference, 6 times out of those 12 first days of the school year I was the new girl. The one with no history, no past, and nothing to recommend her but herself.

Even from a very young age I knew the power in this, the ability to reinvent each time, to project whoever I wanted to project, be whoever I thought I would like to be. But I also realised the massive disadvantage. Children can be and often are insular - the schools that I went to often had less than 50 students total whose families were intertwined and had histories going back generations. Breaking into those social networks is the sort of thing that brings grown men out in a cold sweat, so for a tiny (for I was a very small child) pigtailed little girl it was a difficult task.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily as the case may be, I have always been attuned finely to the needs and wants of other people. I have also known how to make friends in an hour, whether by intuition or calculation I do not know. Friendly, jocular, interested in others, rarely by the first week had I not made friends. Friends who would divulge all their worldly secrets to me and rely on me for a hug, a friendly word, or a good deep and meaningful where I would help them explore their feelings and inevitably make them feel good again. Without sounding full of myself I understood the power of listening and reflecting and the healing effect I could have on others.

But it wasn't just altruism that drove me, beneath that, in the scared tiny girl underneath was the fear that if I wasn't all of that, if I didn't continue to give then no one would seek it. I am not the vivacious life of the party, and even though I tried that in one of my reinventions I found it too hard and too superficial to maintain. I was terrified of being alone at all of these new schools, and I had the power to not be, so I didn't. And I told myself that it was enough to have many friends that relied on me, and I tamped down any part of me that needed something back, because if I couldn't help and heal others, then there was no appeal for them to take me into their groups. I had no history, they had no loyalty, so I had to manufacture it.

For someone who so obviously craves solitude at times, this probaby screams contradiction, but I have always preferred solitude with a warm body curled at my back.

As I've moved into adult life my craving for human interaction has remained the same. When I see people I know that I can help heal I can't stop myself from opening my heart to them and to trying to give what I can to soothe whatever ails them. But I can't open myself up for the same thing because I know that ther is no incentive to heal the healer. Aside from anything else I know I project an aura of calm and coping that only the most determined onlooker would see through.

And usually I can cope fine with this, I've chosen this, and I'm aware that I could certainly change the way that I act, and that if I allowed them, there are friends that would gladly try and heal me too. But I can't let myself be open like that, because if I do let myself be vulnerable and they walk away - then what? I am not sure that I would have the strength to heal myself. So I take pleasure in helping others, and refuse to feel sorry for myself. Until such time as some friends are healed well enough that they don't need me any more, or they shun the one thing I offer.

Then I get back in my cold lonely cave and stay there. Until I'm brave enough to come out and be the new girl again.

Reflecting

I want to write a big long blog about how I am feeling right at the minute, but it feels like picking off a scab that hasn't healed. I don't particularly feel like getting blood anywhere at the moment so I'm going to leave it.

Sometimes looking back and being introspective and understanding why you feel certain things isn't necessarily good. Sometimes they just make you want to camp out in your cave where it's nice and dark and cool and there are no other people there to make you feel unimportant.

I know why I'm feeling like I'm feeling, but even here I can't list out the reasons why. There are some things that even I, purge blogger extraordinaire, can't admit. It's also hard to look back retrospectively on your life and rewrite a lot of it, right back to childhood. But that's where I'm at.

Anyhoo enough cryptic rubbish, I'm off to my cave.