My hair is longer.

Wrap up posts are always a bit tedious. Both to write and to read. But we write the equivalent of the mass mail out Christmas letter because we feel the need for a punctuation mark in this little written universe of ours. So here goes...

There were and are plenty of things I could write about, but the first thing that came to my very very tired mind tonight as I bullied myself into writing the sort of post I usually glaze over, was that my hair is longer than it was this time last year. Quite a bit actually. Sometimes, in the tedium of growing my hair and trying to keep it looking healthy, it has felt as if it's not growing at all. That I'm spending all this time pursuing something that's just not possible, and as far as poorly drawn metaphors go, that about sums up good portions of this year.

But whining is not attractive at the best of times, and even at the worst of times it's not really one of my defining characteristics, because no one ever achieved much whining, and I've always been an overachiever.

So here's a few things I actually achieved this year:

I started drawing again. I've talked about it and half heartedly tried to pretend I was making an effort, when in reality I wasn't doing much of anything. But this year I really did, and I was even brave enough to give some of it away to a friend who deserved something much more impressive, but who was properly appreciative of the effort and thus I love her to bits.

I started a training program for a Royal Australian and New Zealand medical college and got excellent reviews. I got referees to say wonderful things about me and make me cry (in the good way). And if I didn't pass my exam first go, that's ok, I can do it again.

I moved into my first house all on my own and not only survived, but enjoyed myself. I went to the beach after work and sat on the sand. I stopped and bought icecream just because I could. I stayed up to late and read crappy books to cure the insomnia. I got up too early and did yoga on my purple mat.

I came home to my beautiful family and never want to leave again. Though it would be nice to still be able to pop down to the beach after work, or to the top of the mountain. I'd still rather come home to a noisy house full of squabbles and laughter and hugs and tiny sunburned hands that grip my fingers and steal my pillow in the middle of the night. I sleep better here.

But in general , 2012 was far harder than I anticipated, and in ways I hadn't expected. It hasn't been so much about enjoying as surviving and it's not my favourite way to live. 2011 finished on such a high - home from Paris, a major life long dream fulfilled, succeeding at work, succeeding at home, loving my beautiful children and with dreams this year of saving for our first home together. And I think that has what has been hardest this year, not the long hours, though they have been longer than almost any other time I have worked, or the stress of Bingley's prolonged unemployment, or the financial difficulties, or my weight gain that has been enough that my beautiful clothes that I wore to Paris pinch and no longer drape as they're supposed to. No, what has been hardest of all is that it has seemed pointless to dream, for fear of disappointment, and with no tangible goals to work for, I have floundered.

So for 2013, my goals are these - to have goals again. To work for them, even if they are smaller than the dreams of a year ago, when circumstances were different. To feel beautiful again, and dress accordingly. To learn how to curl my hair in curls that last longer than the time it took to put them in. To pass my exam. To go on a holiday, booked and planned in advance, even if it's not as glamorous as Paris, and sit in the heat with Bingley with limp hair and drink mojitos in the sunset.

Sometimes, I forget I'm 31, and I want someone to swoop in and save me. To make me feel clever and fun and beautiful and to make it all easier for me. To not worry about money or learning or holding the steel that is pressed against a person's heart and controlling their fate. To wake up and worry only about doing my hair and  making breakfast for the family and planning dinner and listening to homework. To still feel like there is magic and joy in the world.

But it's not my job or my study that takes that away, and no Disney Prince could ever give it to me either. And there are moments of magic still, when I make someone laugh, while taking away the fear of the procedure I'm doing. Of being thanked by the big burly security guard when I've given him the joint injection that means his arms work like they're supposed to. Or the little old lady who tears up when I am the first person to explain what it is that she's doing in hospital and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Who holds my hand with frail paper skin that buckles under my blade and bruises at a whisper.

Little old ladies always comment on my hair too. My beautiful long hair. I guess that's another thing I achieved: I have my old hair back.

Sun setting on 2012

PS I want to write about Christmas
PPS I want to write more this year. And not just because Liss told me to.

The sky is angry and throwing things. They fall and smash and the lights sparkle off the fragments. The birds are afraid, cowering in the trees, frightened to make a noise. The trees are whispering to each other in hushed tones while the wind is still and breathless. The air is sweet, heavy and intoxicating.
The sky is darkening, reaching the zenith of feeling, tears freely falling. The wind becoming excited, rushing and shaking as the ground begins to tremble. Water sluicing along bitumen while arrows of pure feeling arc towards the earth.
The day of black sun was amazing for her pure beads of light, gathered over the surface. But she had nothing on a storm.

Eclipse

I woke with the curtain brushing across my cheek and the morning sun already filtering through my lashes. Tomorrow, the sun will wake me again, before disappearing, hiding behind the moon. Last week I would have been just under the path of the true eclipse, hoping for a fine day - though what other sort of day would I have had in the place that hadn't rained for 3 months? But I would not be anywhere else but here, enjoying the partial eclipse from the verandah as the breeze rushes up the hill.

There's an excitement and romanticism about the eclipse. One that extends to its very name despite what Stephenie Meyer may have attempted to do to besmirch it. I imagine there will be many proposals tomorrow under the dark morning sky - promises to be lights in darkness, suns to moons etc etc. The thought makes me smile, but I am still happier home with my partial eclipse and my partially romantic life.

Because, after 18 hours along the Bruce Highway I am home. Properly home. Not just for a weekend, not for a holiday, but home. I have given up my little flat with the wallaby that came in the mornings and the evenings, foraging in the grass. I have said goodbye to the little room where I danced in the dark and the friends I made in the middle of the night. I am back from being someone respected and feted to bottom of the ladder again and it's the way it should be.

I received an amazing end of term report and even nicer personal reviews. There is nothing quite like the feeling of having your mentors think well of you, and not only think well but share that with you and with others. To have people that will remember you, long after you've stopped working under them but will write nice things when a reference is required. But even nicer is the knowledge that they liked me as a person, respected and genuinely enjoyed my company. It made what could have been an awful time not only bearable but valuable.

In some ways it has been hard coming home and being responsible for hair brushing and dinner for 5 and setting the table and loads of laundry. To a husband that not only has never thought of writing me sonnets about suns and moons but who has become profoundly depressed about his lack of employment since I've been gone and as aware as I am that my hours are now much less and I am earning barely enough to keep us all afloat. To the extent that I am looking for a second job because a life of just getting by is too difficult.

But somehow, even with those stressors, I'm still happier home. Where I'm woken in the morning by the brush of curls under my chin and the sun in my eyes. Even if it will be hidden for a time tomorrow. The shadow will pass. And it's not the same unless I was on a yacht anyway, watching the moon ink the waves.

November 3

I am so out of practice with the writing thing that I thought I would try and write every day for the next month. A plan that failed spectacularly when I realised that it was already past the first of the month and that I had not written a word. I wanted to write about not me, and not my work, but because I find myself both tired and lazy, it's hard to think of much else.

I leave soon. Within a week this little 5 roomed apartment will have another tennant who may or may not care about arranging the furniture in ways that are designed to be appealing when you walk in the door. They may not bring flowers in every week or go to Bunnings and buy big leafy green plants to purify the air and soften the walls. Who won't leave out their overripe fruit for the wallabies. Who won't wash on Sundays and mop the floors on Wednesday nights. And curl up on the couch with the contrasting cushions and the soft fuzzy blanket on the nights when it's hard to be alone.

In spite of myself I have loved it here. Being alone for the first time in my life has been something that I think I needed without even knowing it. It will be hard to go home to a house of continual noise and competing needs. Here the only needs have been mine. I have been allowed to be completely selfish and it has been nice, though I'm glad as well that it's over.

I went out last night with a friend. A friendship that forged on quickly the way they used to when I was a child and I would be only in one place so briefly that it was a necessity. It has been fun. I've forgotten what it was like to just make friends without having to fit it in between everything else. And I've had opportunity for more but have held back a little. Knowing I'm leaving and not wanting to leave too much behind.

We went out to a pub dressed the way I would have dressed if I was a 30 year old woman who had nothing but a little apartment to go home to that was always cleaned on Sundays, even if it was 2 in the morning. Who spent her time doing yoga when she hadn't gone to bed too late reading terrible literature and ate asparagus dipped in fried egg on the couch when she came home from on call shifts. A sequinned dress that dipped a little over the cleavage and far too high on the thigh, pulled together with a classic black blazer so that it was just that little less obvious.

I kicked off the sparkly platforms, rejecting them for their very sparkles, put on the simple pumps instead and headed out to a venue that hadn't yet kicked off, driving myself so that I couldn't drink while my carefully curled hair went limp in the humidity. We played pool and drank iced water while the crowds ebbed and flowed. Losing the game by sinking the white on a foul shot with a rueful grin.

We found a livelier bar later and while she danced I perched up on a stool and people watched to my heart's content. Not needing to make conversation and enjoying myself quietly. Apparently an open invitation, that clearly I was in need of company that was offered often, sometimes politely sometimes not. Rejection that was taken and sometimes not. Grateful for the bouncer that moved along one man who seemed unable to understand my reticence.

It was worse at another club, where I was physically pulled onto the dance floor and another where I danced to try and make myself less conspicuous (my dancing is terrible at the best of times) and was immediately approached. Touched. Something I've never been fond of and we finally went somewhere where the crowd were less forward. It surprised me because as a tiny 18 year old I was always hyperaware, hoping for attention and it was a rarity.

But for that, I enjoyed myself. It was a punctuation mark about this whole interlude. A break from reality underscored by a strange night that smelled of acetaldehyde and cigarettes, bad fake tan and worse fake hair. It reminded me of the artificiality of this whole experience. Of how even though the nights I've been able to spend looking after only myself eating what I wanted, when I wanted, falling asleep on my preferred side of the bed instead of the one I've been designated and tangled in sheets that don't overheat and smell like clean laundry. Of the few days off spent doing whatever I wanted to do. For all that I still want, more than anything else, to go home.

I want the girls. I want to see their homework and do their hair for ballet. I want to read their funny stories and hear about what they did at school today. I want to wake up with the Possum standing by my side of the bed in the moonlight, waiting for me to lift the covers so he can curl up into me and steal half my pillow. I want my house with my porch and the smell of hot nights in my hammock. I want my new antique cedar dressing table with the mirror that's flaking on the sides in that perfect way that old mirrors have.

But most of all I want Bingley.

31

In blackness I woke from the dream terrified, and stiffened as I felt your arms around me. Your strong hard arms that enfold me the way only you can. They tightened a little, gathering me back against the heat of your chest and you mumbled into my hair, your voice seeping through the follicles, slowing the pounding in my ears and I drifted back towards sleep. I felt the impression of your thighs on mine and the subtle grind of your hips as I relaxed into you, comforting but also male as the cool night air caressed my cheek and my eyelashes tickled your forearm as they fluttered closed.

I woke this morning and didn't see your eyes looking sleepily back at me from the pillow. It disoriented me a little, though stranger still it would have been to see you there. Tangled in white sheets and the thin film of sweat that heralds scorching days. I tried to get up but realised my head was swimming and nausea had clenched the middle in a vice. In my early fog of waking and the delirium of illness I wondered if you were in the kitchen and tripped out of bed, wearing my sheets as a toga to find you before remembering, hazily, that you would not be there. That no one would be there. That I was alone.

I curled up on my side and wept a little, giving myself to the fantasy for the first time in a long time, before the last hiccough was gone and I was spent. Still ill, still hot, but cleansed of the ghosts that visit me in the middle of the night, in dreams when I cannot defend myself.

I am 31 today. As I was yesterday, from 10:20 am. It is only a number. A prime number and yet it has filled me with none of the anticipation and excitement that 30 brought. The last prime was 29 and that year was hideous. The one before that at 23 not much better. I wonder if it just suits me to be melancholy, or if it's the temperature racing over my skin. My birthday was spent flying away from the ones I love to this loneliness here and it hurts more today than it has in a long time.

The dream of you just the icing on a cake that I never actually had, the burn of your skin on my skin unable to be scrubbed off in the shower, but lingering, trying to comfort as I pushed it away.

I dreamed of you again. Your hands and your skin. I dreamed of the roughened bits on your palm and your strong fingers. I dreamed of the smell of you that comes from work and sun and the perfume of you. I dreamed of the muscles of your back and the coolness when the fan beats over us and the air is heavy.

For a long time I stopped dreaming. And still you touched my flesh and waited for it to respond. Your patience annoyed me and I used it as some kind of barrier between us. I hated every little thing about you and wanted to slap you away.

But now all my dreams are of you and the nights when the airconditioner rattled and smelled sweet and green. When the dampness of my body stuck to the dampness of your body and all the dreams we had were in that room.

Your pillow is empty and when I reach out over the sheets it's only coolness there in the middle of the night. And you would think that that would make me sad this big emptiness where you should be.

But I can't be sad because you are there in my dreams again and the fan is beating down over us. And my skin is like my skin used to be, when it only seemed to belong to you; and even though the darkness is laughing at me I am laughing too.

Because I have spent my whole life terrified of the dark and being alone. Of all the big emptiness. But tonight I am not afraid, because I dreamed of you again.

Mind reader

When I was a teenager, a friend used to say I could read her mind - as if I somehow had the ability to poke around in her head, and sometimes see things that even she couldn't. A close friend from a few years ago remarked something similar - that I had free access to thoughts that had never been verbalised. It was always a privilege to see inside someone, an intimacy of which few can boast.

The full moon was bright over the road as I drove into work that night and climbed into my chair, bare feet tucked up under me as I scrolled through the inside of other people's heads yet again. Silently assessing, appraising, categorising. Most of the heads I looked at were old, and the memories of a lifetime were gradually fading away. I wondered at some, as I scrolled past a dark spot, the herald of loss of a bundle of neurons, of what memory had gone with them. What moonlit walk, what tragic loss, what phone number or frisson of potential had held its place in memory.

I continued to work hard that night, steadily, playing my part in my little warm room as the patients came and went. Until he came in and I looked at his brain. His brain was young. Far younger than the brains I am used to seeing, a brain full of all the things that a young, fit, healthy, clever young person should have. Or it was once, before the accident that brought him into my care in the first place.

I wasn't in my little dark room as I looked at his head. I was in the bright room. The frigidly cold room to keep the machinery operating well. The machines that go beep were in there too as I stood at the terminal and began to scroll. And all those memories and that fun and that life and that spark were closed to me and all the people standing behind me, listening to every word I said. Until I stopped speaking and the room began to empty and the shoulders of all around me slumped. The adrenaline high that pulls you in in the middle of the night to do your best and do good futile at that point.

Where they all went I'm not sure. Some went back to work, and saw the next elderly brain that would shortly wend its way to me to delve through, others I think went home. Others went to see the family that had been woken in the middle of the night and wanted to know and to hope but couldn't. Not after my words that night.

And I sat in my little dark room and became acquainted with every part of his body. Following every line and contour. And at some point in the night I realised my cheeks were wet, as I thought of all the things that were lost. And it was important to me to do things properly, as I looked deep inside him to the parts that no one had ever seen before. To take that privilege and that honour and not take any shortcuts. Even if as I was scrolling his breaths were slowing and those around him were hearing my words from kindly mouths that have had to say them too many times before.

I drove home when the moon was still in the sky but the birds were singing and the sun was glorious through the clouds. So tired that I felt that my limbs were leaden. Few thoughts racing around a usually noisy brain as I indicated for my turnoff and parked my car. The wind chilly as I stepped out, ruffling around my ears and tickling my cheek. And it struck me again, how lucky I am to have thoughts. To record them here. To keep on having thoughts.  And the tears started again, silent ones that kept coming and coming and coming. And I cried as I saluted the sun, stretched out on my yoga mat until my biceps shook with the pain.

And I cried as I drove to the water, and ran into the choppy sea while my hair laced with seaweed and salt. But as later I lay on the sand and it pressed into my cheek the tears finally stopped. And the sun tickled along my bare skin and began to warm me from the inside out.

I can't change what happened to him. It was all over before we'd even met. And I could become cool and hardened like some of those I work with. Who look at organs and wounds and that's all they see, because there are too many sad stories. And it's not because they're lesser people or doctors or somehow innately cold. It's because they will see that tomorrow and the day after and you have to find some way or else it will break you.

But I need to know their stories. Who they are and where they've come from. I need to feel like I've earned the right to the secrets locked up inside that no one else knows. And when I find the secrets, the memories that are lost forever, I see them just for a moment, before I report them gone. And maybe it's silly and maybe it's delusional and maybe I should just buy the bottle of wine like so many others. But as I drove home under the moon tonight, the heavy golden moon, I felt the sadness shift - I did right by him. I did right by others. I will continue to keep on doing my best.

And that's my secret.

Flying high

The first time I took a plane ride I was 9. It was an Ansett flight and my grandparents dropped the 5 of us at Brisbane Domestic Airport. I remember strapping into the funny seatbelts and the roar of the engines. I remember my Dad explaining the clunk that was the landing gear lifting into the belly of the plane and I remember the airline food with the alfoil lids that you peeled back. My sister and brother got "kids packs" of food that had icecream and SPC two fruits but I got the congealed chicken and I remember being disappointed but trying not to show it. I remember the funny head phones that were really tubes, like a stethoscope. The amazing sense of adventure. Of doing something so outside our experience.

It was a big deal that we were even on that flight. Or the two that came after it in quick succession. No one else in my school had been on a plane before. It was a luxury - a massive and expensive one that my Mum had saved up for because she wanted to travel and she wanted us to love it as much as she did. But we were fortunate, something that I think I realised even then. Our car had airconditioning, a rarity at the time that was the envy of friends, even if we were only allowed to have it on on the hottest days. Opened windows good enough the rest of the time.

But that first holiday on a plane was exciting and wonderful if only for the plane itself. In the years that came after it as we travelled far and wide, the taxiing onto the runway and the initial burst as the jet engines fired up has always sucked me in to that same excited 9 year old, wondering at the magic of being in a plane. Of going somewhere. That potential and possibility.

I leaned back this afternoon into the leather seat and picked up my magazine. I didn't realise we were taxiing until I heard the rumble of the jet turbines as we were pressed back into the seats. The familiar sight of the slightly extended flaps as we tore down the runway. The belly lurching moment of liftoff, of pure elevation and weightlessness if only for a second and the awe in being able to do that. The pure magic of it all. And then, the crunch, as the landing gear lifts, and curls up under the belly, an aluminium bird in flight.

It's been more than 20 years since that first flight, and this one wasn't to go on a holiday. Or somewhere new or different. And it hurt to leave, and to get on the plane. Not as much as last time, but it still did. To get off the plane in the humid dark and walk across the tarmac to my car and drive home through the wide streets. No holiday to look forward to. No new place to explore. Just work and a pile of sheets that need to be washed.

But there is a part of me, that watched the red sun shining above the cloud cities, and just for a moment became that 9 year old again. Wishing and wondering. Peeling the foil off my crackers and cheese with my headphones in my ears. Travelling off into the sunset, the world slipping by underneath and the possibility of it all struck me. The adventure.

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.

Wattle

I am curled up on the back step, in the final rays of sunlight as they lick along the verandah. My new dress diaphanous in the light, sleeves fluttering in the winter breeze.  It will be cold soon, the warmth retreating behind the mountains and I will have to move, but for the moment I am exactly where I want to be. The hem of my dress riding up over my thighs, lending weight to Bingley's assessment that it's a shirt, but it's the way it brushes over the smooth bare skin that made me buy it in the first place. The delicious swish with every step.

It has been too long since I've written. I feel creaky and stiff. Even if what I used to write was not fabulous, it used to come more easily, but now it stutters and falters, embers not flames.

There is wattle everywhere this winter. Perfect yellow honey scented blooms holding in the light even when the days are coldest. I like them best on the bluest of days when they glow. It is dark, often, when I leave and come home now, and so I don't see the colours, but even in the dusk the wattle glows.