Pat

The heavy grey wind slapped across my face as I walked home to my car in the afternoon with the dull rumble of the river beside me and the sting of my hair in my eyes. With every gust my wrap dress would unwrap and lift then tangle itself between my thighs and little bites would come through my stockings into my legs and hip. I shivered walking, underdressed for once and hugged my bag against my side, the dangling arm holding my lunch pail cooling and whitening. The car was warm inside, having been parked outside all day and the leather had swelled and softened with it as I snuggled into it before putting my key in its holder and pressing the button that turns the car on and flinching from the too loud radio over the whine of the engine.

I backed out and began to drive, heading towards the mountains that hover protectively over our little hill and tried to let the tension seep out of my shoulders into the warm leather. Rubbing my dry lips together and feeling the flake of my matte lipstick as I indicated left for our street.

As the tension uncoiled, the tiredness began to set in and the fog of it surrounded me until I was wrapped securely in it unable and unwilling to break free. Thinking of dinner and wanting, wishing more than anything to not make and not cook and not eat anything but instead to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. But like always, I parked my car in its spot and turned off the engine. Sitting quietly listening to the radio for a few minutes as I always do before climbing out, collecting the bin and tapping my heels against the polished floor boards as I clicked into the kitchen and began the second round.

When Bingley's contract ended on his last job, it was of little concern. He's never been out of work since he graduated and has jumped his way up the career ladder as he always planned. And when 3 months later I returned from my time away, it was not so much of a worry that there was not much on the horizon because something always turns up. And we still had savings and we could keep on keeping on. Then Christmas came and the cool hand of it started to play around in my chest at times, as I watched our little nest egg erode.

Then it was 7 months then 8 and I would wake in a cold sweat thinking of it. Thinking how I couldn't support us all alone. Not without many things giving. And I love working, but we're a team, and all of the responsibility would suffocate me in the night until I sat up gasping.

At 9 months the cracks started to appear, and I began to feel each day that someone had a hold of the key in my side and was winding too much every day, and I worried about how many more winds I could take before the spring cracked and I was broken. But when I was at work I could shut it all out. I could be busy and work hard and not have time to dwell or be anxious. I could be good at my work and while the spectre of a looming exam was never far from my thoughts, I would chase my fear of failure and of study and of financial responsibility away and would instead throw myself into learning and procedures and having one thing in perfect harmony.

And it worked, most of the time, until the morning I came in and found out that the gentleman I'd done a procedure on the previous day had died. Had died of a complication that had come from the procedure that I'd done. That had it not been for me he and his kindly eyes and his soft voice would have still had life and his family would still have had warm hands to hold. And all the rest of that wretched day I worked, but the tears would not stay out of my eyes, and all I could think of was how I never see my children and I work so hard and in the end I have taken a life instead of given it. That that poor man's family would
have been called and if he had not met me, if it had been someone else, maybe he would have lived.

I came home that night and sat on my bed with my feet on the floor and I sobbed. I sobbed until all the tears had gone and the spirit had gone from my breath and so the only sounds that came were the sounds of the shudder as it racked through my chest. Bingley came in and stroked my head as it continued until the nausea began and I started retching, all done. Finished. Complete.

And for all those months that I'd planned how I'd celebrate for him, surprise him when he got a new job, of all days it was that one when Bingley could finally lift some of the weight from my shoulders. But there was a catch, that as my sobs subsided in the warmth of his belly as he held me there with my feet still flat on the floor, that started the sobs anew. This new job is away. Far away and he would be leaving in 3 days time. For weeks.

I thought of getting the girls to school and the Possum to kindy and then getting to work and I thought I could do that, that the rush rush rush I had not missed, but I could do that. Then I thought of coming home every night, of rushing home in the traffic and the rapidly darkening day as the sun tucks herself under her golden pink covers and making dinner and supervising home work and tidying and ironing and washing and sorting everything and whatever strength I had deserted me. I was 4 weeks out of an exam. A specialist exam with a pass rate of 25%. And I pulled my feet up off the floor, curled up under the blanket and cried some more.

Of course, eventually I got up, because what other choice is there? I could have lain there forever. I could have used any and all of those excuses for why I just can't do or be. But what sort of life would that be? There is a steely core within me. Some stubborn tenacious sort of fibre that refuses to break, and I set about making things work. I hired a new after school nanny, I wrote up a timetable, I had a family meeting and I had most of all a long, hard talk with myself and I told myself I could do this because there is and was no other choice.

It's not been all sunshine and roses. I can't be the worker I was before he died because he still haunts the periphery so that there's a tremble sometimes when I finish a procedure now, and an assumption that all things can and will go wrong. I have none of the confidence that comes from ignorance and I have tasted real fear for the first time in my life. There is a new quietness, and I was never loud in the first place. I withdrew so far into my shell that I'm blinded even coming near the light, and part of me doesn't want to come out again, but prefers to stay hidden and safe.

I am thinner again. My elbows are pointier and when I lie flat my anterior superior iliac spines are visible, tenting the pale skin above that does not pull taut but instead drapes across them. My belly again has the slack softness where it was stretched by the Possum and faded into silveriness and no longer has anything to hold it out so it falls. My jaw is stronger and has shadows underneath and there are little hollows in my cheeks that suck against my teeth when I am tired. Strangely, my breasts have remained full and soft and have not emptied with the rest of me, I am glad of this, to have one thing left of what it used to be like to be me.

There are lines around my eyes, still faint and not permanent yet, but they will be, and I am handsomer now than I was at 21 or 25. Not that I was or will ever be pretty, but my features are less harsh on this tired face than they were on the pillowy roundness of youth. My arms and my legs are thinner and my feet are smaller too. Who knew that feet could change in size. My hair is nearly down to my waist again and is darker too, and falls out in strands that get stuck in the bristles of the broom.

When Bingley is away I have no appetite and when the exam came I did not eat because I could not. And as I lay in my hammock afterwards, drifting listlessly in the pale afternoon light I was given food and forced to eat it for all I did not want it, because people were becoming concerned and I suppose they had reason. So I ate.

And now I live by my schedule where everything must be fitted in and around and somehow squished into the few hours of each day. And the children are happy and settled. They are thriving on all the routine and are helping. They miss Bingley too, but they know he is coming home and they know how much he needed to work. We read at night on the white sofa with the cuddly grey blankets in the pale white lamplight and they snuggle into me as I choke up reading Charlotte's Web. And I turn off all the lights at a sensible hour, and I climb into bed, feeling satisfied that the washing is folded and put away and that the kitchen is clean and the ironing is done.

And I lie here in bed, in my cold bed with the late Autumn wind whispering over me and I tell myself to sleep, because the tiredness makes my bones ache and I am doing far too much for one person who does not get enough sleep. And sleep evades me, night after night. So I read and I write and I compose stories in my head. And I miss the warmth in my bed that even on my worst days was always there, that I could somehow absorb into until his regular breathing became my breathing. Or the days when the tears came when I could burrow into the warmth and have it envelop me, encase me and penetrate me until all the cold was chased away.

I'm afraid to cry, but also I don't want to. The little thread inside me, the little core that refuses to break but instead tenaciously holds every piece together is intact. And while my skin may be softer than ever before and the legs that are holding me upright are whittled down, there is still a fire that burns there in the middle, and refuses to go out and believes all this is for a purpose. If only to prove that I can do anything, if I put my mind to it.

But I'm so tired.

Photography

When my babies were born, people told me they were beautiful, but I knew they were being polite. My babies were born beautifully, but what birth did to them was no aesthetic. They were squished, swollen and bruised and not the least bit beautiful. Of course, now that I am a mother myself, it is this very grumpy, very ugliness that stirs the greatest emotions in me regarding babies, but they were not, for many weeks, beautiful.

I remember being given a voucher for newborn photography with the Elfling at one of those shopping centre places hawked by those that spring out between racks of tiny clothes and ask you to sign up for packages before you've even seen the shots. And while I baulked at the idea of the ubiquitous gerbera behind the ear, I allowed the photographer who was probably months older than myself to try and pose my newborn baby while she took photos.

And I remember recoiling from the hideous photos she took, displayed as they were on giant screens, at the thought of taking home photographs that looked like that. My babies were not Anne Geddes munchkins that look adorably smooth with little dimples in fat wrists. They were red and scrawny and smooshed. And they way she had posed her, it seemed to point to these things as flaws, as if to show how unbeautiful she really was. And so I bought none, and vowed never to do that again.

But as they grew, not just into their long scrawny limbs and their peculiar features, but in character and spirit that shone through their little faces and they became beautiful. First to me, and then to the greater world. And nothing gives me more pleasure than capturing that on film (or with many megapixels these days as I am up to my very last roll of black and white film). I love taking photos when they aren't looking and when they're not posing. I try not to line them up for photos aside from the standard sibling sets which are hilarious for how bad they inevitably are. I love catching a glance or a moment and being able to keep that memory in beautiful, delicate colour. I loe catching something that belongs to them, and not to a calendar baby, however cute they may be.

We were at a birthday party today for a little girl who has fought very hard to make it to the party which is never a fair thing for any one year old to have to fight. But hardest still, for this little tiny girl, is that the reason she has fought so hard is easily seen on her face. Her skin. Still delicate, but not baby soft. Not smooth. Taking her out is difficult because there is no normality, no hiding, no anonymity. It is there and it is visible.

And it doesn't matter that she has cheeky dark brown eyes and round chubby cheeks and a perfect cupid bow in her lips. Because most won't see any more than her skin, before they look away. Not sure how to react, or worse, reacting with distaste. I didn't shush the girls when they asked, because it was important to me that their curiousity not turn into something other than it should be. I just explained, simply, that her skin did not work like theirs, and she needed special medicine for that. And being children, they understood, and the Elfling jingled a toy for her, and played as she would play with any other baby.

But even at almost 9, the Elfling had questions on the way home, about how sad it was and how unfair it was that someone so little should have to deal with that. And she was very quiet for a little while, as she took it in.

I took my camera to the party, because I always try to, and the weather was hot and steamy and yellow. The end of Summer in a humid golden glow. And I took photos of the Possum as he raided the lolly table, and the Monkey as she swished in her pettiskirt, and of various partygoers too. But I also wanted to take photos of the birthday girl. So I did, photos of her playing with her grandparents, and when I was jiggling soft rattly toys with her to make her smile.

And when I opened my SD card tonight, I could have photoshopped them into oblivion, wiped away all traces of that which society finds hard to deal with and I wondered if I were her mother, if that's what I would like, and I knew it wasn't. So I fixed my light source and my white balance, and I flipped a few into monochrome because I'm a sucker for children's photos in monochrome. And I looked at the photos that came out, and I was truly happy with them. Photos of a happy little girl on her birthday, that looked like her. That had been tinkered with, sure, because a little bit of extra shadow and contrast can make a subject jump off a page, but I didn't up my saturation to where only her eyes were visible, or correct any of the shine from her creams. And I hope that her mother and her grandmother like them too.

As I went through the photos, I also found a few of my Elfling, looking ethereal and embracing her Rivendell heritage. And it was an awful day when I took them, where I cried for the first time in a long time and revisited things I thought were gone and buried. And I was bitter and devastated and miserable and crumbling into the cave inside my chest when I took them, trying desperately not to cry in front of her. When I saw her climb up onto a rock, her yellow sundress billowing lightly around her knees as the sun rays from above hit the golden lights in her hair. And none of it mattered any more. I may have plenty of things that are pushing my buttons and trying to pull me down, but I still have her. Embodiment of the Gleam.

In which I write a title which is too long because I can't think of a good one.

Papery skin that bruises if you so much as look at it is surprisingly tough when it wants to be. The mess of haemosiderin in varying stages of decay splotched over cubital fossas and the cool flaccid turgorless dorsal surfaces belying the sheer grit of vessels that stare down the tip of my guide needle and dare it to pierce the flesh. And yet, even as I push and pull and prod, probe in one hand, fingers nimbly dancing with needle, each subtle stroke as with an épée, those who have most to complain about so rarely do.

"I'm Jennifer" I say brightly, clacking into the rooms with my very high heels and my pretty dresses and the hair that refuses to behave and ruins the whole effect, "I'm one of the doctors". And so many of them, on hearing this, relax straight away. As if those letters after my name actually mean something tangible and meaningful and that the fact that I'm about to poke them with sharp things is not something to worry about.

Sometimes I sit on the end of the bed, and have a chat about what we're about to do. Sometimes I chat while I'm washing my hands. Sometimes I hold onto the papery mottled hand and smooth out the bruises and cluck while vowing to not put another purple mark on skin that is so fragile and yet so tough.

Sometimes as I explain, the fear creeps up over skin, especially in those that are younger and the thought of pain has them recoiling from me while sheer force of will keeps them stoic. Some want to see my tiny needles and are reassured. Some screw their eyes up tight and look the other way.

When I am chasing a lesion - a mass of cells that doesn't look quite right - I turn the screen towards so that they can see too. They're there and they're part of this, it's not right for me to hide it from them. "See that white line in the middle of the screen?" I gesture as I hold the probe in one hand and point awkwardly with the other. And there's a definite pride that almost everyone gets when they realise what they're looking at, as I describe the bits that are important. And while almost no one wants to watch the needle or the biopsy gun pierce their skin, often they will be riveted to the screen as the sharp white line of my needle comes into view and reaches the mass of cells that they can identify too. Solemn quiet until the sharp click of the trigger as I withdraw.

"That wasn't so bad" is one of the commonest responses I get. But the one I get most is often "Thank you". I find it awkward when I'm thanked for hurting someone, because there are always bits that are a little bit painful, but I always hope that it hasn't caused fear and that the things I've explained, and described, so that the unknown ghosts can be chased away a little have helped.

Sometimes the response I'm given is that "That looks easy" and in some ways it is. It only takes a steady hand and some coordination. A bit of training and an understanding of the anatomy so that my needle pokes into the mass of cells and not into an artery or some such other important structure. And as I switch between hands, sometimes left dominant, sometimes right dominant (I'm sure the nurses think I'm doing it just to confuse them) it feels easy now. My needles go where I want them to go and I'm quick. I'm quite proud of that, because the frustration that gathered between my eyebrows the first few times as everything felt clumsy is largely abating. Sometimes things are harder, and I bite my lip and frown at the screen and fiddle with the dials until things look better, but I no longer feel like I'll never be able to do this, because I know I can.

And when I see my neat little purple line, exiting through the tiny hole in the skin; and the antibiotics can be hooked up or the chemotherapy started and my neat clear dressing is snapped into place and I don't see any bruises, I feel ridiculously satisfied. When I've applied my clean white dressing over the single tiny hole that leads to the subacromial bursa my pride gets a satisfied pat. Or when I'm standing next to my machine after the biopsy is all done and I can point with unsterilised hands to the point where my needle went in and the picture of how close we were to the artery or the nerve or lung or aorta but how I could see where I was all the time so that I wouldn't cause any harm and that look of amazement crosses both our faces, as we realise what we've both just achieved, I know that this is all very worthwhile.

I help. I heal. I still hold hands. I still explain even if it takes too much time. But most of all I love what I do.

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.

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.

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.

Do or do not, there is no try.

When I was little and at school, one of my teacher's (funnily enough, my Dad's) catch phrases was "there's no such word as can't". Indeed, according to him, all things were possible, I just hadn't found the solution yet. I can remember being cranky and wanting desperately to give up on whatever fantastical problem solving task he'd given me and being furiously rebellious in my head by shouting "can't can't can't" over and over. But what made me angriest still, was that I knew he was right. There was always a solution. Sometimes it was inelegant. Often I didn't like it. But there was always a way.

I find myself now, with too much on my plate and an exam that I'm certain I will fail wailing desperately in my head that I can't. I can't do this. I can't do more of this. I don't WANT to do this. And then I hear his voice as well, telling me that there's no such word. And I'm cranky. So very very cranky. I don't want to think of a solution. I don't want to work hard and that BE the solution. I just want things to be easy. But they're not.

I have too much to do and not enough time. I have too much I want to do and no ability to factor it in. And there are things that desperately need to be done that I don't want to face. And I want to hide under the blankets until it all goes away. Except it won't. And I really only have a few choices of which can't is not one.

The first choice is that I squander $2450 and a good portion of my self respect and just fail my exam. Not show up for it. Or not attempt it. Face the consequences of that. Ignore the looming deadline, be the parent and the artist I want to be, and make it up later. As if it were that easy (financial implications aside). This exam which I am sure to fail regardless of the effort of the next few weeks is more than just about getting it out of the way. The results are given to my training hospital. All my superiors are given my results. I have good reasons for not being able to study as much as my single, financially unencumbered, childless colleagues. But do you think they'll care about that? Or will I just be another clichéd woman who ought not to have been given a training place in the first instance?

There is no leeway. There is no understanding. There are no magical extra hours in the day that I'm given. And so my poor children go to vacation care every day with no parental holiday to look forward to and I force them to accept this life too while not being able to show benefit for it. There is no extra income. There is no extra time. I am not a better parent. We have no house. We own nothing. We are not building anything. Just my career which takes and takes and takes. From all of us.

And I know it gets better. I know that 5 years from now if I finally finish this that that's it. There's the finish post. The final one. 15 years after passing GAMSAT. 19 years after starting university. 32 years after starting school. It's there. And I think to myself, 5 years is really not so bad. Out of 32 it's less than 16%. I've made it 84% of the way! I have to keep going. And I hear my Dad and he smirks a bit and reminds me there's no such word as can't.

But the tantrum in my head right now is so epic. So painfully loud. It wakes me from sleep. It taunts me when awake. It clangs around and makes my eyes burn and my stomach clench and my muscles ache. And I ought to be studying right now. Practising exam questions until I can rote write beautiful essay answers and not have to have this conversation with myself again in 6 months. But instead I'm listening to the tantrum and I'm angry with myself for not listening to my Dad instead.

There is a solution. I just haven't found it. Yet.

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune–without the words,

And never stops-at all,

— Emily Dickinson

It is a truth universally acknowledged that things that are most hoped for only happen when you have truly given up all hope of them happening at all. As a hamster in the wheel of a large hospital, it was beginning to seem impossible that there would ever be anything else but feet blurring in front of me as the wheel spun around and around, the same faces, the same diseases and becoming mired with the feeling of helpless impotence. After my disastrous and ego quashing interview earlier this year, and the subsequent rejection for a higher position, I moped for a little while, before becoming philosophical and choosing a new path with fervor. One that encouraged me to read more books in the last month than in the last two years combined. 

I had sketchy plans of applying again, though the tiny sting of rejection still burned a little - a not quite healed paper cut over which fresh lemon was squeezed with memory. Until today when a phone call restored my dreams and ambition and told me with cheer that there was another light, along another tunnel and that I would one day not be just another junior doctor, at the whim and mercy of hospital bureaucracy and ancient consultants. 


I have been accepted into a training program, and now start the final descent into formal study (or hell, depending on your perspective), from which I will emerge as a fellow of a Royal Australian College. And at the end of these five long years, I will be able to work hours that will allow me to take my 12 year old to her school disco, and keep a watchful eye over her. I will be able to cuddle my 9 year old in bed every night, EVERY night, and read her stories if she will still let me. I will be able to be "that" parent that actually helps in a classroom and is there to help her 6 year old son read his first readers. 


It sometimes feels like I have done too much already, more study, more hard yards than most people do in their jobs. I am simultaneously anxious and terrified about this new position - about the new responsibilities and the study and cost that will come with it. 


But even when I think with rising panic of all that is to come - I see what lies beyond it, shimmering beautifully. And I think of all the wonderful times I had while studying, even when panicked and anxious - the total joy in learning and studying, I have so much hope for the coming months and years. 


I will be a nervous wreck. I will second guess my decision and my abilities and all that is within me. But while the beautiful song of hope trills through my chest, I know that I am working for something beautiful. Something worth having. 

Pronounced.

When my fingers curl softly over the wrist lying limply at the side, it's always surprising to feel the warmth. As I press against the flesh, feeling between my index and middle fingers for the thick radial pulse, there is always - always - a feeling of fleeting confusion when I can't. The heat of the skin surprises me, as if something momentous should have happened at the time of death and left a cold shell behind. As if warmth somehow equals life.

I hate putting my stethoscope against a chest that stubbornly refuses to rise or fall, and the stillness is eerie. Like children playing games. As if I'm waiting for a wink and a smirk and a "gotcha" moment. And yet the skin as I brace a hand against a shoulder is still warm. Cells still doing their lively thing even though the whole has shut down. The last of the workers hurrying home out the gates even as the lights are turned off.

I don't like the sensation of prising open eyelids to check for a pupillary reflex. It feels grotesque somehow, to force this person that is no longer a person to suffer this last indignity. But it gives me a chance to close them again, which when someone hasn't died with their eyes closed makes me feel better. I don't like the cloudiness that shadows beautiful irises that looked at me and laughed a few days before.

I have rarely had to pronounce someone who I have cared for. Through some odd twist of fate those who I have grown close to have died when I was not there, and I have not been called to touch their still warm skin. I have performed this ritual for many now, but mostly it has been for those I've never met, except perhaps to write up something for pain. And it has often been relief I've heard that a favourite patient has died, and that their suffering is now ended.

Two weeks ago today, on a crazy Monday with too much to do, I was called to see a patient who may or may not have been unwell. The nurses were a bit concerned, but not panicky, and I strolled over to the outpatient area to see this patient who was a bit short of breath. He was braced in the bed, holding the rails, and gasping into his hudson mask, distressed by the sensation of not getting in enough breath. The nurses were pottering around nearby, but were not overly concerned. Me though, the second I met this man, my adrenals kicked in as if someone had given me a punch to the back.

After examining him I had taken his blood, called for a CT scan and had started writing out the forms to take to radiology. I had given him some medication to help him breathe and had organised for him to be admitted to hospital. His ECG and his radiology forms clamped in my hand, I started doing some of the other jobs on my list and stopped for a moment to chat to a friend, conscious of my unwell patient and waiting for his bloods to become available so that I could request his scan.

20 minutes later, unheard of for my busy hospital I was called on my mobile, by a frantic radiology registrar because of the not good things on the scan that needed to be dealt with right now. It showed a pericardial effusion - or fluid around the heart causing tamponade. Essentially the fluid builds up so that the heart can't fill and contract so it feebly lists like a deflated balloon, the chambers collapsing in on themselves between times. I had found out why my man was breathless, and had diagnosed something that most had just attributed to his cancer. I had found something fixable - at least for the short term.

I watched in grim amazement later, in semi darkness as a Cardiologist did a bedside echocardiogram and watched his heart flutter in this pool of fluid and hoped that they would offer him something. This was a man that wanted to be treated, and I wanted him to be treated to. He was young, young by cancer and hospital standards, and though we were never going to cure his disease, there was something wrong about him dying like this, without trying. He wasn't at peace, he didn't have a loving wife gripping his hand as they made the decision to go... he was fighting. For every laboured breath.

They drained that fluid - dark, bloody and full of cancer, and I saw him again 3 days later when he left coronary care, minus nearly a kilo and a half of pericardial fluid and he was talking. Smiling. Sitting up out of bed and calling me Sunshine. Delighted that I'd worked out what was going wrong and giving him these days of sitting out of bed, reading the paper and breathing. Not thinking about it, not working for it, but breathing.

We had a few chats, even though he was brusque and obnoxious with most of the staff who tended to him. He liked me, waxed on about all I'd done for him, and it embarrassed me. He still had his moments, and the Sunshine name was a joke, because everytime I saw him it seemed I was giving him crap news, but I was even more delighted than he was to see him sitting out of bed. He had one single wish, and that was to go and walk on the beach just one. more. time. And I believed I could give it to him. I fervently wanted to. I had been to that same beach he was talking about just a few weekends before with my girls and I wanted him to have that last late afternoon heat off the sand and the crash of the waves and that wintry blue. All of that, just one more time.

On Thursday night when I stopped by to see how he was doing, he had the oxygen back on. He was still speaking in sentences, but he needed the prongs on, and I should have known then. I think I kind of did. I know he certainly did. But there had been nearly a week of improvement. Of getting stronger every day. And I just wanted him to see his beach. Friday though I knew, I couldn't even pretend. As he spoke in short phrases, broken by gasps to bring air into his lungs, I knew what it was. And I got everyone to see him I could. I weathered the cranky abusive call of a registrar on a Friday afternoon who liberally dropped expletives when I asked him to come and see him.

And he knew. He knew he'd had enough, knew that we were fighting the losing battle, and even though I could give him more days, that just wasn't enough. He wasn't going to see his beach, so what was the point? We offered, he said no thanks, and took the braver route.

Sunday morning I saw him, in pain, so breathless that he could do nothing but writhe in bed and tinged with the yellow that heralds multiorgan failure, and I stepped up. Sunshine might not be able to cure him, but I sure as hell could take away that pain, and that horrible feeling of not getting enough breath, and that rattle in his chest. And so I did, and by Sunday afternoon he was sleeping. Still going to die, still not getting in enough oxygen to feed his cells, but no longer distressed, no longer in agnoising pain. And I sat there, in the quiet darkened room, as the shadows played on the walls beside the bed, and held the hand rail. Watched the rise and fall of his chest, not quite as rhythmic as those that are going to live, but gentler than the morning when everything had hurt.

This morning he needed more pain relief. And as he opened his eyes to my voice, he gasped out a few answers to questions. He was Cheyne Stokes breathing and the apnoeic periods and the shudders between them gave me a flashforward of the next few hours. We called his sister, and his Mum and asked them to come. I knew it would not be long. It was as if having given up hope of the last thing he had to live for he just couldn't be bothered any more. And he was pissed that it was taking so much effort to die. And he held my eyes for a moment, before turning his head to the side, away from me and my eyes. Told me not to look at him like that. And I sat quietly for a while, not liking him being on his own, hands loosely clasped in my lap and bit my lip.

It was the last time he ever saw my eyes, and the last time I ever saw his. A few hours later, after 2pm when I'd raced away to scoff some lunch, I got the call that he'd died. His family was with him, and according to them, just suddenly, he'd stopped. One minute peacefully sleeping, his breathing settled, and then his chest had stopped rising and falling. They were a bit in shock at how fast it was, and saddened that they'd left it too late for the son and grandson that I'd never heard of before that moment to be told what was going on. And I bit my lip then, so hard that it bled, and I blinked my eyes a few times as I curled the soft cool tips of my fingers over his warm wrist and waited for the throb that would not pulse between my fingertips. And auscultated the warm chest where no air stirred. And quickly, opened and closed eyes that no longer saw me, and would never again see the beach.

And I excused myself to write paperwork, sat down at my desk, and stared forwards for 10 straight minutes. Numb.

And just for you, Greg. Here's the beach, just one last time.

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

Day 15, silhouette

The moon is so bright tonight it is hiding the stars, the sky covered in a pearlescent sheen. It was looking at that cold bright sky tonight, with my eyes blinded by tears that I decided I will never be a surgeon. I could not treat someone as an organ to be sliced and managed, and then passed on when there is nothing left to cut.

I had to make a call tonight, to a girl who is still young enough to be at school and ask her to come to the hospital. I explained as carefully and as gently as I could that her mother had started to deteriorate and that she needed to come to the hospital. I listened to the frank fear in her voice as she understood immediately the implications of the calm words coming out of my mouth in my gentle voice. And it was the hitch in her voice that had my own vision swimming and swallowing hard. That trembled my gentlest voice and made me angry at myself for still not being able to do this without staying professional. To be calm for her.

I had had the same chat with her Dad and her brother, explaining to them that their world, already grey and miserable had started to hail down around them. Raised my voice to be heard over the massive thundering blows that were rocking them where they sat. And as I wrapped up that horrible meeting, with tears in my own eyes and started on the paperwork that goes with something like that, the surgeon that operated on her walked onto the ward. Glancing at the paperwork I was filling out he intoned how sad it was, before turning his attention to another scan, another tumour, another operation. Next.

I felt so disillusioned sitting there, my neat handwriting filling a sheet of progress notes to document what I'd said and what the Palliative Care team had said. When I had never cut her, had not poked around inside her body, had done nothing but care for the shell that was left after the cancer had been scooped out like a hellish icecream. I was not the one who admitted her to hospital, had not explained to her family what was going on. And yet I was the harbringer of death.

I looked at the clock then and realised I was late for the meeting for the Monkey's school orientation session and I swallowed hard, blinked and signed my name under the notes. Other doctors working with me whisking paperwork out of my hands and shooing me out the door knowing that I had needed to be somewhere else while I stubbornly insisted on seeing it through. Knowing that I could be late to the meeting, but that this, this was something that needed to be done properly. Not as an afterthought, not a careless "oh that's sad" but properly. She will only die once, and I don't want it to be thoughtlessly.

And as I looked at the silvery moon, and the almost oily sky, and couldn't see my star, I trembled a little and vowed that I would never be like that. That I would never ever be that person that does not want to be involved at that time. I've been told variously that I would make a brilliant surgeon and that I never could be one. My hand eye coordination is excellent. I am meticulous and driven and pedantic. I am organised and methodical and I have an understanding that means that I would make a great surgeon. Those are not my words, they are transcripts from references that I have in my possession.

But all of that means nothing to me if how I am defined is in the scars that I leave on my patients and their families. I can't have that as the silhouette that chases me on a moonlit night as I leave in the cold and dark, my breath fogging around my face as I cry.

Stream

It is the most beautiful afternoon, and I am home, having left work at a time when the sun was still in the sky and the blue was almost blinding. It is windy this afternoon, whipping around and the sun and the blue and the wind are seeping under my skin and making me cheerful.

Bingley brought the Possum to work today to have lunch and we ran around in the sun and the wind and watched the helicopter take off and ate chips. And the Possum babbled away in earnest sentences that make no sense and dodged and weaved and launched himself at my chest for fierce cuddles, and for the first time in some time I laughed. Properly laughed. Down to the bottom of my toes laughed.

I did not realise until Monday, when I trudged to work after having worked all weekend (over 12 hours each day), how tired I was. It didn't hit me until Monday night when the Possum was sick and I held him in my arms just how much I needed to stop. Inhale. Breathe. Eat. I have developed, as Ave rightly pointed out in the last post, a flirtation with an eating disorder that has mostly left me alone since I was a teenager. I am both bemused and frightened by its reappearance. I have not sent it packing just yet, but I am aware of it, like an annoying guest that you're tolerating until such time as you turf them out of doors. I am somewhat fascinated by it, in a detached way, as one would be by a particularly ugly sculpture perhaps. It does not own me. But I acknowledge that it is not good for me either.

Bingley and I had a tearful discussion last night. About all and everything. And I realised a few things that I hadn't realised before. And I remembered some things I hadn't thought of for a lot of years. Happy things. Things that you forget when you're tired and miserable. And we talked of things that we wanted, and how sometimes we can't have what we want, no matter how hard we try. And I'm still not sure what I want, or what will happen, or if I will survive it, but sitting out here, with the wind on my face and my eyes closed I don't care.

When I have been lost or frightened in the past I have always reached a point of anxiety where I have been terrified to move, paralysed and unable to make decisions. So I have stopped trying. I'm laying down in the stream and letting it take me where it will and having faith that wherever I wash up, no matter what shore I find myself on I will make the best of it. That I will be happy there.

Paris is always a good idea

When I was little, back when I still believed in God as if He were some sort of omnipresent wizard that I'd confused by watching too much Dorothy and Toto, I used to make wishes rather than praying at night. I wished for some silly things. I wished I would fall in love, because I desperately wanted to (and only ever managed it once!) and wished that others would fall in love with me. But my most consistent wish, while curled up in my ankle length nightie with my long hair twisted all around the pillow beside me was to be beautiful. It makes me smile today, in that wry way that only someone who has grown up with that wish and come out an adult on the other side can smile.

I used to watch movies with Mum on Sundays while she ironed, stretched out on the couch as we watched classic old films, and my idea of beauty was heavily influenced by that. I suspect my determination to conquer eyeliner in no small part is related to those days of watching Gregory Peck smoulder at some ingenue and wanting to one day be smouldered at. (Segue, I know that it's unpardonable to end sentences continually with prepositions but I can't help it! They keep popping up, regardless of my careful planning and refusing to move).

My favourite muse was, as with many, Audrey Hepburn. To me she embodied everything I wanted to grow up to be. She was so elegant. She was unusual. She had a fearlessness and yet embodied vulnerability. I loved the contradiction of doe eyes and angles. That she could be so feminine and yet so angular. And it wasn't until I was in my teens, and grappling with growing breasts that never seemed to stop and hips that didn't fit any of the fashions and features I still haven't grown into that I started reading about Audrey, and some of the things she said too. And one thing she said resonated strongly with me, elegant in its simplicity, and yet exactly the right thing for a young, depressed ugly duckling realising on the cusp of adulthood that she was not going to be a swan either to read.

 

Lost

I opened this window an hour ago and have been blinking at the narrow white box ever since. Needing to write and not knowing where to start, and instead deciding to start with nothing. I am on a rotating roster at present, and so I have no idea what day it is, only that it is not a weekend, even it feels that way to me. All of me feels jumbled at present. Topsy turvy. It's difficult to explain except to say it feels like there are several of me, running around and playing the role of one.

The work version, which turns up to work in her freshly ironed clothes and sees a bucketload of people, works hard and stumbles home. Body tired, brain all used up, and slightly scruffy around the edges. Wanting nothing more than the bliss of crawling into bed and a soft pillow undercheek. The one that misses her friends when she thinks of them, but mostly gets up, goes to work, comes home, occasionally eats and falls asleep. This version is also keeping her eye out for research projects and in all her spare time often opens an anatomy book so that she can keep up her skills ready for the next phase. This is the grown up version, and I am scared of her sometimes, because I don't really recognise her.

The family version rejoices on coming home to the noise and the chaos and delights in the fact that the Monkey can now write her name clearly. And that the Elfling got 10/10 for her spelling test. The family version comes home to the cheeky face of her Possum and is smothered in kisses and hugs that wrap around her knees from behind. The family version helps finish making dinner and getting the three musketeers in bed, reading Fairy Realm to the Elfling and the Hungry Caterpillar to the Possum. The family version is tired at 3am when she rolls out of bed to mix a bottle of formula, but does it anyway to calm the horrendous sobs coming from the cot. The family version wants to spend more time with Bingley but despairs at how mundane the time is, when the work version is desperately wanting to sleep.

Then there is the dreamer version, she drifts in and out, in between work and family and whispers that if you just escaped now, think how beautiful life would be. If only I didn't have to make school lunches in the morning. If only I didn't have to go to work. If only I could sit on a rock in the middle of the air and think only of the blue of the sky. The dreamer version composes half story ideas and then convinces herself that she could be a writer instead of a doctor. And in the dream version things like having to mop the floorboards never really feature. Nor do little things like if I didn't live with Bingley any more, that I would still need to do things like take the children to ballet class and would never be able to move from this city. That travel would be near impossible and the work version would be left weeping in a corner.

And I preside over all of them, feeling like I am herding cats as they all do what they please. No matter how often she's told to just switch off when she comes home from work, the adrenaline overlaps and often it takes hours to unwind. And the noise and the chaos can be so overwhelming for the family version that she hides behind the dreamer who won't restrain herself from living in fantasy no matter how many stern talks we've hd on the matter. And by this stage the family version is playing blocks with the Possum who is trying to stick them down her cleavage and wondering why she hasn't gone to bed.

I feel I am drifting at the moment, loose threads of me spreading out like oil on water. And I can't seem to reel them in again. Just as soon as I get a grip on one thread, and one part of my life seems to be doing what I want, the other parts make a run for it and I'm left tired and shaky in the middle just trying to hang on. I shall get through this, and I know the other side will be beautiful, but right now I feel swampy, and lost.

Yasi

When the floods hit, it was surreal, and it was a little bit scary - at least while we were evacuating the Possum and worried about my sister. And watching the water rise over the city and into the cultural precinct was a bit traumatic, but because I was here, and because I could see how much the city was just getting on with it, it was OK. I was never truly frightened. I knew we'd all be fine, and while a lot of people may have been inundated, they were safe.

I had been terrified watching the Toowoomba flash flooding because my parents and my family live that way, and as the devastation ripped down the range my heart was in my mouth at all the people I know who live in the Lockyer because that's where I did some of my biggest bits of growing up. And I love that community, and my little school and the pub where we had dinner and lemonade sometimes. And part of the terror was because I couldn't reassure myself that things were OK. I wasn't tehre. I wasn't watching it with my own eyes, so every bit of horrid footage of water gushing across James St made me want to vomit with fear and anxiety.

So you can imagine that this week, while Melissa was sighing with relief that Yasi spared Cairns and Townsville how I felt, with family and friends at Mission Beach and Tully. I watched those unreal pictures, of the giant angry eye descending on the beautiful country where I have seen wild Cassowaries, pulled more than a few coral trout off the reef and laid in a pool overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and cried a little.

That main street in Tully is where I walked for the first time about 10 years ago and was stopped countless times in the street because people already knew who I was. Such is the grapevine in a small community. People openly friendly and curious to know who Bingley had brought home. Mt Tyson stands guard over this wettest city in Australia and I've climbed it myself. Sat on top of the rock at the top less than a week after I had abdominal surgery (being both stubborn and stupid) and gazed out at the vista.

We've heard from all the family and friends, and they're all alive, but the towns and the houses are not unscathed. Even though I know logically that they're ok, I think of the girls' only great grandparent, alone in her house as the eye passed and I cry. I can't help it. She's a tough and stubborn woman, and she would have dealt with it fine, but the idea of it is scaring me. I can't see them. I can't touch them. I can't see the trees that I love and I'm anxious because all I can do is imagine and it doesn't help.

My anxiety has been causing issues of late. To the point where I actually went and saw my GP yesterday (first time in 2 years). And knowing I'm a doctor, he asked what I wanted him to do and I couldn't say. I couldn't say that I have vomited almost every morning for a few weeks - just as I did when I was pregnant. I am so tired that my limbs feel heavy. I have reflux a lot. I have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. I can't eat. I am losing weight. I am having difficulty maintaining concentration at work sometimes, especially after 10 or so hours in a shift. I have difficulty when friends ask me questions about their illnesses and I take it on and I'm not dealing with it ok.

I need a break, and there's none coming. I have lots of good coping strategies, and they all work - but when nature brings something like Yasi, it just brings it all undone. I'll be OK, because I always am, but right now, I selfishly feel a little bit fragile, and I just can't deal with some things. But I will. Because that's what I do.