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

Olfactory

I love the smell of wisteria and pine trees. Wet pine needles in a bucket turning slightly swampy. tied to a tree to make the birds a warm nest over the frost. Wisteria on the breeze as I hang precariously from the tree, binding the ugly blue bucket to its trunk.

I love the smell of downy soft wattle, honey sweet and delicate. What fairies must smell like. Soft grey foliage that highlights the bright sunshine of the perfect blooms and holding hands for the first time.

I love the smell of WestCoast coolers, sweet and sickly. Backyard barbeques and adults lauging while children scoot between plastic outdoor furniture playing hard.

I love the smell of sparklers, dancing in the long narrow back garden and making circles. The hiss and fizz amd watching the sparks hit the grass. The pungent smell of them while cupping the fallen sparks in my hand until the last of the light is gone and the piping hot wires are plunged into Dad's waiting bucket.

I love the smell of overripe mangos in the sun. Pocked skin and finding half green ones hanging from trees. Picking one with only half of it blemished and eating the warm sweet flesh as the juice runs down my chin. Dancing on the blue painted trestles under the trees and singing songs made up out of my own head. Desperate tales of love and loss.

I love the smell of jacaranda flowers before they sour on the ground. The way it intensifies in the heat. Sitting in the tree, high above the ground making houses in the air.

I love the smell of fresh cut cedar. Distinctive green leaves and a fence with trees evenly spaced. Paper daisies. Sandcastles in the twilight glowing.

I love the smell of the approaching storm. When the cirrus clouds form overhead to herald the rain but the sun is yet scorching. The gust of sweet breath before it arrives and buckets down.

I love the smell of warm skin under cotton. The heat that rises through and blends so that it tastes and smells of warmth. Resisting the urge to bury my face in it and never come up for air.

References

I'm lying in bed, with my headphones on listening to soft and slow music. On really low so it's just whispering about like waves do on a distant beach when you're on holiday. Sprawled out next to me is the Possum, who is breathing a bit noisily and probably has an ear infection. He wasn't too miserable today until I tried to put him to bed, which was apparently a very bad idea. So I cajoled. And stroked. Then cuddled. Then cuddled and sang. Then lay him across my chest and sang until he got heavy and started snoring.

I love baby snores, even if they're associated with grumbly nights, because somehow, they're just beautiful. He's curling and uncurling his fist in his sleep, and it's hard to beat the temptation to reach over and touch his skin. The sweet sweaty smell of him. The mustiness of his scalp under his too long hair. The shirt pulled up over his belly showing the soft soft skin there and a belly button that you want to press.

He is perfect in sleep; stretched out diagonally next to me, his feet on my lap, kicking the keyboard occasionally. But I love him so much more when he is awake. His cheeky smile, his babble, his habit of lifting his hands innocently when he can't find something with the quizzical lift of eyebrows.

.........................

I was so tired today - I got home from work last night around midnight, and as so often happens when it's the last shift in a block I couldn't fall asleep. The insomnia washing over me in waves as I tried futilely to just switch off and sleep. The hours ticking on by and reminding me that I had to get up and take the kids to school in just a few hours making me anxious and sleep even further away from my grasp, drifting off near two and waking groggily at 3 to the Possum.

This morning I prepared lunches in a dream, and dropped the 3 off at their respective daycares so that I could stretch out and catch up on my "weekend" sleep. But it wouldn't come. A rude guest that I'd prepared for and waited all week for, asI lay on my bed with Oscar the cat curled up in the crook of my knees and didn't sleep some more.

..........................

Last night at work I was told that I should consider Emergency Medicine as a career as I'd be wasted in Radiology. This is from the same rotation that told me last year I wouldn't get a job as no one would give me a reference. You would think that would go a long way to taking away my anxiety of even turning up to work there every day - but it doesn't. I still feel small and stupid there, even though I know that I'm not. My logical self and my feeling self battle over it every shift as I prepare for work, the feeling self getting worked up into hysterics and breathing into a paper bag while the logical part tells her to harden the fuck up as she wields a mascara wand. But I have filed it into the part of my brain that lists all the reasons I shouldn't quit for the days when it's hard to remember not to.

........................

While lying on my bed, impotently waiting for sleep to come today I pondered the mysteries of eyeliner, and wondered if I could wear both eyeliner and red lipstick without looking like a $2 whore. Make up can be a little hit and miss with me, to the extent that some days I will carefully apply, look in the mirror and then wipe it all off. I find that some days I can wear make up and some days it wears me, and on those days it needs to be removed.

I have always liked red lipstick, and have had some somewhere, the rouge making me happy for some reason. My mouth is too small, and bright lipstick highlights that, but I've found that as I've become older I care less. I can't somehow contour my way to beign beautiful, so I'm doing what makes me happy instead. And of course, because this is how it works, I look better that way. I'm more me when I try to be me, than when I try to be a better, prettier, perkier version. Obviously.

......................

I am sad tonight, listening to my sad slow music and with my eyeliner from earlier smudged over my lower lid, as tears fall from tiredness and fatigue and something else so poignant. I hurt tonight. Hurt in those places that medication can never reach and that don't ever go away, not even in sleep. I think I'm losing a friend, a friend that is angry with me and hurt by and all sorts of things that I can't heal. Not with my hands or my heart or my voice. Not even my doctorly brain.And it whispers to me occasionally that it's proof again, that I'm just not worth it, not good enough. And no one will ever give me a reference.

White bread.

I've been avoiding acknowledging its possibility for approximately the last 2 years. It's always been in the back of my mind, well at least for the last 15 or so years, but as I had no symptoms I realy didn't think it was likely. But these holidays, even though the Possum is still waking once a night I've been getting quite a lot of sleep. And sunshine. And exercise (lots of exercise). And yet I still feel tired. Slightly "off".

Part of that, I reasoned, was because I've been enjoying slothing around in between gym sessions. Baking and eating and consuming far too much cheese. And if I felt a little bit crampy, a little bit bloated, then maybe the occasional drinks I've been having will be contributing.

But the tiredness can't really be fobbed off that way. I know I have a massive sleep debt. I know that the Possum means that I don't get to entirely regulate my own sleep cycles, but it's more than that.

Part of it is assuredly my anxiety at the moment, which, as my fingernails can attest, has been rampant. But that's settling down. I am feeling more human. I am laughing a lot more and more easily. I am finding all the good things in my existence instead of pining after the things I can't have, which I have found do not (obviously) contribute to a sense of well-being.

But again, it's more than that.

My grandmother, who I don't mention enough considering her importance in my life, was an enigmatic, energetic, mentally sparkling woman. She was a ferocious competitor in board games and at cards and was not the sort of benevolent granny who "let you win". If you won against her it was a triumph to remember through the ages. Thanks to her no-one I know will play cards against me, having inherited that sharp and canny way of bamboozling opponents. But no win was as sweet as laying down Canasta against Nana. In fact, I can remember her voice clearly, in one phrase that se used to use while playing my Dad (perhaps the only person on the planet I know who is more competitive than me) at Scrabble.

She was a painter and artist. She especially liked painting porcelain and scattered through the family are her gifts of hand painted plates, porcelain dolls and Victorian jewellery boxes and powder boxes. She crocheted and knitted like a demon also, fingers always busy, never one to sit still. She had a ferocious determination to grow begonias and fuschias and battled against the soil that she insisted on growing them in until they flowered.

I still have a tin of her pencils and paint brushes in the top of my wardrobe. It smells slightly of cedar, slightly of cinnamon and completely of a scent that belonged only to her. A scent that recalls sitting in her rocking chair, listening to her berate the Australian cricket team and brand them all cheats and poor sports as her fingers moved with lightning speed, hooking wool through loops that she didn't even look at to create.

To say that I loved her is woefully inadequate. To say that she was my mentor, guardian and the person who understood me more fully than any other on the planet doesn' come close. There is a spark of recognition amongst the race that knows Joseph, that is unable to be fabricated. It's either there or it isn't. And we were definitely of the same race.

Family was the most important thing in her life. Children and babies and adults coming together to celebrate noisily was a faithful part of my childhood. And at everyone of these gatherings she'd be in the centre, with al of us orbiting around her, drawn in by her remarkable gravity and presence. Sitting around the outdoor tables at Christmas, plates groaning with food, Aunty Gail's slice sitting in tupperware waiting and Aunty Sue's cheesecake beckoning. Rum balls in the centre, all the flavours of Christmas that as soon as they spread on my tongue even now recall that pure joy.

Nana always made her own special food for these occasions too, funny salads and boiled potatoes and other good things. Things that, I realise only now, didn't contain wheat. Because Nana had coeliac disease. A disease that seemed more a nuisance than anything else. It meant that she would only occasionally sneak a rumball. Or a piece of cake. Never bread, because 15 years ago there really wasn't the variety of gluten free anything tat there is now. She was pretty good with managing it. I'm not sure when or how she was diagnosed, I never thougt to ask. Even wen she was diagnosed with the lymphoma that is associated with autoimmune diseases it didn't occur to me, being as I was only 18 and didn't really have a clue what any of it meant anyway.

Until she died. Horribly. 3 months later. I couldn't get enough of information about cancer, lymphoma, chemotherapy and treatments. I researched biology and chemistry in my spare time, wanting to know what it meant. Trying to understand. A path that eventually lead to me sitting the GAMSAT exam and entering medical school. A path that caused me to give Bingley a chance and to start a family of my own. A path that lead me to sitting here, in my little house with 3 children, a husband and a whole bunch of letters after my name.

But it was trying to understand her and how we could have somehow staved off her death that was the real motivator. One of those useless magical thinking traps that we all perhaps enter into when faced with things that we just don't want to deal with.

A few years after she died my sister was diagnosed with coeliac disease. And my two Aunts, who stopped making cheesecake and chocolate caramel slice, were diagnosed too. But with only 1 first degree relative, a couple of second degree relatives and no symptoms I never really considered it.

Then my Dad, who has given blood voluntarily over 250 times was rejected because his blood count was a bit off. So he went off to get investigated and words like bowel cancer were thrown into the "have to exclude" mix, so that we were relieved when we found out it was "only" coeliac disease.

And so now I have 2 first degree relatives, 3 second degree relatives and I am symptomatic. I am not ready to be tested though. I love wheat. I love dense Italian bread. I love lighter, crusty French bread. I love baking. I love kneading dough. I adore pasta and noodles. And did you know gluten is in barley and rye? And possibly oats? Or that half of the thickeners, sugars and syrups in any sort of processed food are derived from wheat?

I knew that, but today, in an effort to just see how I go with a low gluten diet I actually considered all the things I can't have. As someone who primarily eats meat, fruit and vegetables (and the cheese foodgroup), it's not such a shock to the system, but almost ALL the convenience foods are out. No quick sandwich for lunch. No cereal for breakfast (unless it's the prohibitively expensive, cardboard flavoured gluten free variety). No muesli bars. No porridge for breakfast. No up and go when I'm too rushed to make a proper breakfast. No biscuits (not that this is a great loss) or cake.

And of course, after 3 days of eating low/no gluten all I want is bread. I want a baguette to eat on its own with butter. I want cake and biscuits even though I don't normally eat it. I want some dense, grainy bread that crunches between my teeth. I even looked at a bag of jubes (even though the last time I bought a bag of lollies was for the Elfling's birthday party) in the Supermarket today.

Denial's a powerful thing, and if this experiment leads me to further testing I guess I will have to unOstrich a little. But right now I can't bear to think of never again being able to have a guilt free bowl of penne with home made pesto. Or being able to roll out my own ravioli.

But every time this week I've thought of it, and considered abandoning it al for denial, I've thought of the grief of losing someone who meant more to me than all the chocolate cake in the world and eat my banana chips instead. Because what I want most out of life is to be like her. To have meant so much, to so many people not through what she did, but because of who she was.

The bar

I'm watching the lightning flash outside my window and idly looking at the hole I tore in my stockings today. Can see the storm in the university lights, see it coming up the hill towards me.

Work got a whole lot worse after the last post. I sank deeper than I have in a very long time. And it felt like when I was 16 and learning how to indoor rock climb. There used to be this one course that had an overhang and I very rarely attempted it, just sticking with what I knew I could do instead and improving my skill and technique. But I really really wanted to try this course.

And I got to the overhang, and I was tired. I wanted to dig in and try harder but my hands and fingers hurt. Anyhow I remember deciding one day to just grit my teeth and launch at it, and I managed to grab a hand hold and pull myself up. For a glorious second I was up, and I swung my left hand up to make purchase higher and to strengthen my hold on the wall. And I slipped, my fingers excoriating on the sandpaper like texture of the wall, pain flashing in front of my eyes like a red curtain.

And I had the choice to just let go. To swing away from the wall and where it hurt, to let my hands free and just fall until my safety rope caught me and get lowered to the ground. It was a perfectly acceptable way to go. I'd tried really hard but with more practise maybe I'd get there. But either way, no big deal. Don't always have to get it right first go.

But I remember the surge from the pit of my belly. The fierce, animalistic determination bubble up into my chest and force me to dig my poor sandpapered fingers into the wall, to scramble for grip. The way the warm blood felt as it trickled down to my knuckle. The pain of my knee hitting the wall as I pulled my whole body towards it, toes gripping onto the tiny handholds through my shoes. And I pulled myself up. Hauled my body up until I got hands full of holds and could push my feet up. And I climbed until I reached the bar. Sat up there up the top, leaning back in my harness holding onto the bar while my chest heaved from the effort and my breath rolled in and out crashing like waves on a beach. Sweat rolling down my temple and stinging my eye.

I'm 12 years older now, and it is so much more tempting to give up, but I can't. I'm going to touch the bar.

Revelations

Astute or particularly bored viewers will have noticed that some of my tickers on the right hand side probably need to now be removed being as a) I have now gone to Bali and b) have graduated. If you've been following along veeery closely you may have noticed that my weightloss ticker has also been going down, and I need to update that again. At my lowest point I actually went down to 64kg which was something I'd been aiming for for a long time.

What I didn't tell you is how I achieved it, because frankly, I cheated. After promising myself I would do it the hard way, I went for a foolproof weightloss method, guaranteed to make me lose between 5 and 10kg.

Exhibit A


So yes, cheater extraordinaire. I apologise for the general whininess and grumpiness over the last 4 months, because, quite frankly I've been uber-sick. Stupidly sick. My friends have been supplying me with drugs I can't afford sick. All that angst about my subjects? I was very sick. The worrying about my exam? Yes that plus vomiting several times a day too. The whole graduating from medicine thing? So glad to get it over and done with because it meant less vomiting.

So yes, I've been a bit unenthused about doing anything lately, and I wanted to apologise for keeping you all in the dark. At 18 weeks now though I've been letting people know including my amazed family and less amazed inlaws and have been adjusting to the fact that my family is not going to be what I thought it was. Nor my career. But that's ok, because if you look up at that picture again, that's a very cute baby. And honestly, who's not going to fall in love with that?

Christmas post to come, but I'm on holidays in the tropics so likely to be sporadic!

(All posts regarding the offspring can be found here)

If

If I had not decided on that fateful night in November 8 years ago to go for a walk, and in the course of the walk decide to go into a room, and once in that room to sit on a certain bed, then I would not be lying in this bed right now writing this. I would not have the Elfling and the Monkey and it's entirely likely that I wouldn't be married to anyone.

If I had actually done any study and therefore received high distinctions in my original Maths major for my science degree it's entirely likely that I would have continued on with my ambition to be a pure mathematician majoring in number theory instead of hating calculus and mathlab and refusing to deign either with a look. I have certificates from international competitions in Mathematics, but I threw it all away on ego and laziness.

If I had not had a certain English teacher in Year 11 and 12 who brought my perfect A+ rating for highschool English down to a B+/A- (grudgingly) then I may have continued on believing that I could write and made something of it, instead of the sense that I was deluding myself for those years.

If I had swallowed a few more pills when I was 16 I wouldn't be writing this at all. Same same if I'd been game enough to cut deeper.

If I was not so desparately afraid of failure (sensing a theme here? lol) then I don't think my weight would bother me so much.

Tags to
Blythe
Shel
Shannon
Nadine
Kim

Bruise

I have a mystery bruise on my bicep. I have no idea where it came from, but every day in the shower for the last week I've been marvelling as it at first darkened, then turned a brilliant purple, then green and now yellow. It joins the similar bruise of unknown aetiology on my hip and the one on my shin. I have no idea where they came from - probably the result of me walking into a benchtop/door handle/bed frame or similar but I have no memory of doing so. So I watch in fascination as they evolve, every morning bemused by their ambush attack.

The best bruise I ever had was at 18. Friends and I had gone to the local watering hole to be, well "watered" and stayed out past the last bus home time. Being as it was barely 2km home from this local establishment (though extraordinarily hilly) we set off in great spirits on foot. Now had we continued on foot, this story would probably end with "and we went home and went to bed". Unfortunately, after a few hundred metres we spied a pair of shopping trolleys.

Now shopping trolleys are reknowned for their precision handling and comfortable seating arrangements so we decided that we should ride them home. Clambering in in noisy appreciation we took it in turns to push or be pushed for a while. I had the great joy of having my turn at pushing on an uphill stretch and getting to the top of the hill I was puffing and sweating from the exertion of pushing a 50kg shopping trolley with 70 odd kilograms of friend up a steep hill. So obviously it was my turn to rest.

At the top of the hill we swapped places and I sat in the extremely comfortable hard metal contraption and leaned back against the cracked babyseat, chest heaving a little with the effort of the aforementioned push looking forward to having a break. So we set off again, Smudge holding on gamely to the handle of the trolley as we descended down the hill (Sir Fred Schonell Dr for those familiar with the area). Except it was steeper I think than she'd anticipated, and Smudge was not the strongest of girls. Suddenly, about halfway down the hill she lost her grip.

Picture the scene now, it's after midnight but there are still occasional vehicles on this busy road and I'm hurtling down a hill in a shopping trolley hair streaming out behind me feeling not a small bit anxious - shopping trolleys of course getting a very low ANCAP rating due to the lack of airbags and antilock brakes (being somewhat deficient in any brakes...). I had, at this stage, a couple of options. One was to close my eyes, scream and hope that it miraculously all turned out ok. Another was to open my eyes, scream and hope that it miraculously all turned out ok... or there was option number 3.

As I was hurtling along, bouncing a little on random debris on the road and watching with dissociative amusement of the spectacle I was making, I decided that at some point I would stop, and that the manner in which I stopped could be decided by me, or by some "higher power". Not being the religious type or having a particular higher power to turn to (as well as being slightly independent) I chose to stop it myself. When there are no brakes and your momentum is increasing, the options to stop are somewhat limited, and the best solution I could think of was to tip the trolley. Trolleys are very heavy. I weighed about the same as the trolley - so it took a lot of determination to decide this, but once I had made my plan I set about implementing it.

And I did - tipping the trolley on its side while executing a near perfect J turn - so precise that if I could do that on a snowboard LH would marry me all over again. The trolley shuddered to a stop almost immediately and I was still in one piece - no broken bones, not having got up close and personal with either tree or oncoming cars... Excelsior! Unfortunately, as I went to stand up, I realised I had made a single fatal flaw - in using my body weight to both swing and tip the trolley I had waved my arm outside of the cage and on tipping had effectively trapped it between trolley and asphalt - thankfully not shredding it to pieces. It did however leave a bruise that was the talk of my friends for months afterwards. The rainbow of colours catapulting it well into the realm of king of the bruises...

The funny thing was, aside from the throbbing pain and the absolute revolting appearance of the bruise, every time I looked at it, my immediate thought was how clever I'd been to stop the trolley. And in the shower this morning, looking at the baby brother of my ultimate bruise, I was grinning like an idiot - because once upon a time I bested a trolley at 40km an hour.



PS I passed paeds - 1 more exam til I'm a Dr
PS2 I went to the gym again today - arms are shakier than they were when I was using them as a trolley brake

Insomnia

I'm never sure what to do on the nights when it's past midnight and the world is sleeping but I am not. Some nights I watch the clock tick slowly and wish myself to feel tired. Other nights, like tonight I am restless, like a runner waiting for the startgun at the beginning of a race. My mind gambols around playfully, toying with topics, a kitten on a mat, swatting away.

I love that I am alone. I love the sounds of silence. The way that I feel like I am stealing something from the night that is all my own that I don't have to share. I love the way that night tastes on my tongue when I don't have anyone around to see it, and I love the way the night sky glitters knowing so few people are seeing what I'm seeing.

Occasionally an unwelcome logical thought like the fact I will likely have to get up out of bed in 5 hours pricks me and makes me uncomfortable. Squirming on my chair a naughty girl waiting to go into the principal's office, I mull it over before something distracts me. Something magic about this witching hour, something about the crackle in the air.

Once upon a time when I lived at college this used to be my hour, when the sensibles had dropped off and gone to bed, I would prowl around outside, rugged up so as not to be deterred by the cold, in search of other nightdwellers. We would meet and have that same knowing look, often gratitude marked on our active faces that we'd found each other. Nights filled with mind expanding conversation. Nights filled with endless games of spirited 500. Nights filled with easy quiet camaraderie as we just gloried in the presence of another.

Something about night just heightens everything. Every encounter becomes more intense, every conversation more meaningful, every playful game more spirited. After midnight is when Phil is at her silky, velvety best. Her laugh, her quick wit, the way her mind snaps, the way she even moves is imbued with something stolen from the inky darkness. I never felt unsure about myself at night, never felt that cloying worry of teenaged girls that they are not enough. I knew Phil was always enough, she practically purred in your belly.

I've tried going to bed early on nights like this. Tried in vain to lie still so as not to wake LH as he softly snores, having failed to keep up with my Voltaire inspired conversations. Have laid there, eyes trained on the sky outside, searching for my favourite star, and felt my soul move even as the body lies prostrate. Felt the cool, gravelly texture of the bricks on the windowsill as I grasp them, and then as it digs into my knees. Felt the grasp of my hand on the edge of the window even though my hands are next to me on the pillow. Heard my footsteps on the ground, smelt that sweet tangy night air, that ephemeral scent that is always gone come morning. Felt the breeze play with my hair as I look around the darkened yard, felt the tickle as a tendril brushes my ear.

Still in bed but outside at the same time, eyes adjusting to the darkness, pupils dilating until they are almost catlike in the dimness. Far off I hear LH snort a little in his sleep as he rolls onto his side, and I feel a guilty pang, as if I need to return back into the room with him, where I am lying slumbering, but I am so light and so free outside. I undo the latch to the gate, lifting the heavy gate as I do so making sure that the bolt does not shout. I marvel at how cold the steel bolt feels under my hand, how the brush of the treated pine gate scratches at the skin of my palm. Imagining is one thing but I can feel it under my palm, and yet I am in bed.

The leaves rustle in the trees ahead, and I look behind to where I should be before venturing further. The first night I did this I was so unsure I stopped at the window, afraid to go past that physical barrier. It is many nights now and I have finally left the yard, and am lost as to what happens next. I listen to LH's breathing for a while, feel the warmth of the quilt on my chest, then go back to where my mind is exploring. I sit down on the concrete steps out the front of our building. The coldness of the concrete invades through my pyjamas and into my thigh in that biting way that cold concrete does. I'm sitting outside my house in my pyjamas watching for falling stars and shivering slightly from the breeze. Theres no one out here with me. I'm all alone. But how can there be anyone with me when my body is still in bed?

I love the secret thrill that courses down my back at the strangeness of this. The power of it, of having such an incredible secret. Like the first time I knew what an orgasm was and knowing no one else knew but that it had been so monumental for me. I'm completely dissociated from my body, feeling sensations that are not possible for me to feel, looking at things that I cannot possibly be seeing. And I'm awake. This is not a dream.

Eventually I become tired of looking for meteors and satellites, and I reluctantly return my mind to my bed, where I'm curled up, hands tucked up on my pillow like a little girl, hair splayed and covers up to my chin. It takes a little while to settle there, to comfortably have my thoughts in the same place as my self, but once we're synchronised, I can finally sleep, my hands curling up under my chin as I snuggle down, wondrous at how far I made it tonight and wondering just how far I will be able to go next time.

Words

It's getting close to midnight and I should be in bed. In fact I was in bed 2 hours ago, but I got out of bed. And for words.

I lay there in the darkness feeling the tears trickle down my cheeks and willed myself to sleep. To listen to the strong regular breathing of LH and to forget about words. To stop hoping for words. And feeling them come unbidden into my head, to feel them trouping around. But not once the words I wanted most.

Words have such power over me, and I don't even remember giving it. A slave to an unhealthy relationship that I've never been able to escape. I once wrote that the rain was my one true love, but it pales into jealous insignificance when it comes to words.

Words bind me. They enlighten me, embolden me. They cheer and cajole, they caress and they confuse. Words have the power to build in my chest, to expand and fill until they burst in a maelstrom of emotion. They uplift me and hold me up to the Gleam, they let me dance in it and capture tiny reflections that I post here. They make me laugh, and consider, and feel. Words grab hold of my imagination like a child grabs your hand and pulls me along for adventure. They set me dreaming, they can excite the most secret parts of me.

I love knowing where they've come from, where they've been and where they're going. I love knowing who created them. Words that grow and have families of their own, new and fascinating uses, evolution before your eyes. Sadness that the French limit to make pure instead of seeing the beauty of the growth of words and language.

Words define me. They express joy and sadness and anger. They allow me to be rational, to stop fights or to overcome them. Words give me the power to be understood. Words in anger, words in secret furtive whispers in the dead of night, words in sensual overtones each one deep and heady and seductive. Words to music, bits of my soul floating suspended in the air.

I lay there in the dark, silently sobbing, willing the words to go away. To not care about words so much. Knowing that if I got up and gave in to them that I was making a choice that I should not be making. But I couldn't. I want to. I want to not care about words so much. For them to merely be the sounds that trip from my lips when thought or touch or action are the main players.

But I couldn't. And I'm here. Wondering if words will take it all away one day.

83

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that is the life expectancy for females in Australia. Which means that reasonably I could have expected that today I would have come home early from work, picked up the girls and taken them to Redcliffe and spent the afternoon with Nana and celebrated her birthday. Because according to the AIHW she should have had on average at least another 7 birthdays left before she became a statistical average.

Except she died nearly 8 years ago. Which is her. Nothing about her was average.

I want to write so much but even putting my fingers on the keyboard is making my face crumple. Outside now grown into our fence is one of Nana's orchids which has burst into vivid purple bloom, a splash of colour against the winter frostiness of our yard. 5 massive flowers, the biggest display I've ever had from it, all flowering on her 76th birthday.

It makes me so angry that she's not here. It's so unfair. She would have loved my babies so much, would have loved me and supported me so much. Seeing the Elfling and the Monkey would have been such a perfect birthday present for her. She was always the relative I identified with best, who seemed to understand me the best. More than my parents, more than my other grandparents who I know loved and adored me as well, but Nana was someone who was like an older version of me. Who I wanted to be. She did so much for me, and still does. I want her to be here. Want her to know that I have children and a husband and I want her to know my babies names. I want to hear her say my babies names. I want to hear her voice again. Want her to wipe the floor with me in Scrabble. Want to see her paintings, see her sitting on her rocker with her feet curled up like I do with a mass of crochet in her lap as her nimble fingers worked too fast to see.

But you know the crazy thing? If she hadn't died I would not be married or have either of my girls.

I still wish she was here.

I started back at work today, leaving the house at dawn and getting back home well after dark. It was an interesting and mentally exhausting day that left me spent. The last case of the day I correctly diagnosed over a registrar who got it wrong, but I really wish she was right - because her diagnosis was happy and mine was not. When I got to my connecting busstop to watch my bus pulling out knowing that I was already going to be home too late to do much besides kiss my girls before bed I sat down and burst into tears. And while I was sitting there a santa claus blew up off of the congested city street and into my lap.

And I held it and could not think of a wish to make. Because although I am sad, my life is still wonderful, and my babies are safe and warm and healthy, and because of my Nana they are here. Even if the AIHW says that she should be.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Further proof as to why I should be locked up away from society... Remember the commuter with the eyepatch? I saw him again during the week... he asked me for the time and I had to concentrate on not doing a pirate accent when I answered half past five.

I caught the "y' scurvy cur" just before it tumbled out.

Jenn = perhaps not the maturest person you will ever meet.

it is an ever-fixed mark

This afternoon I am reviewing neonatal examinations and also cardio-respiratory and CNS examination while pinging e-mails back and forth to LH. We had one of our strange weeks the other week, where I go completely off the rails into scary territory and he looks on in bewilderment and waits for the dust to clear.

I think sometimes, that I wonder too much about the “what ifs”. The “where I would be if I hadn’t got married or had children”. These what ifs always seem to strike at a time when I’m particularly stressed about work, and probably stem from some envy of those that are footloose and fancy free at those times.

When LH and I got married was one of the most stressful times of my life and indeed our whole relationship. It was my first year back after having had the Elfling and the first time I’d had to do uni while juggling someone else’s needs that were more important than my own. 2nd year medicine is widely regarded as the hardest year, and the exams are legendarily difficult. So we decided to plan a white wedding for nearly 100 people right smack bang in the middle of it. Even just recalling it is welling a sense of panic up in my chest. So much responsibility, so much stress, so many things to do. To make it even more fun, this was the year of the worst job that LH ever had, where he would at a moment’s notice be sent overseas for work (with NO bonuses, overtime etc etc). Two weeks before our wedding, one week before my major end of semester exams, LH was sent to Qatar. Here is a map showing Qatar.



Yes, as in the Persian Gulf 5 billion miles from home. With a stressed out, freaked out, already skittish, commitment shy fiancée at home with their baby daughter. I can remember crying to him on the phone and him crying too just a week before the wedding, unsure of when he was going to be home and me being out of my brain. I wanted to jump ship then and run far far away from all this commitment and responsibility and just act like a regular 23 year old whose biggest decision was “vodka or Midori?” at the pub next weekend (Vodka obviously – Midori is VILE). I thought about running away with a friend of mine (just a friend – we were never “involved”) simply because it just seemed so much easier than dealing with all of this.

I have a selfish streak and when I am stressed I seem to resort to it. Even though LH is my best friend, at that time, even though none of it was his fault and he was even more stressed than I, it was easy to blame him when I was trying to study through tears as I got a call from daycare saying that the Elfling couldn’t stay there being as she had conjunctivitis. I wasn’t one of those dreamy, ethereal, mooning brides spinning fairy castles in the sky. Even on the morning of our wedding (he got home in time!) I wasn’t calmed down yet, and driving there I was still tempted to jump out of the car and run away.

We got to the park in our polished vintage cars in the brilliant mid winter sunshine with me in my beautiful meringue dress and elbow length veil and I took a deep breath as Dad arranged the filminess over my face. I thought about all the reasons I loved LH and all the reasons why I needed to walk down this pathway to where 80 or so people were gathered around a pagoda facing out onto the sparkling river. The breeze lilted gently off the water and my 2 bridesmaids swung the Elfling down the “aisle” as we proceeded to Pachebel’s canon in D played by a string trio. And with every step I took in my brand new ivory coloured shoes under the heavy brushed satin skirt with my hands clutching the simple but heavy bouquet of trussed red roses I wondered if I was doing this for the right reasons. Was I doing it because it was all arranged and I had to? Was I doing it because of some stubborn obligation?

As I sang the words to Canon under my breath (it was my favourite choral piece of music from the days when I sang regularly in choirs) I reached LH’s side just as the music canons with hallelujahs. As they reached crescendo around us we were silent – looking at each other, and at that moment there were no other people on Earth. Just him and I, surrounded by the haunting music of the cello, separated by a translucent pearly veil. LH reached forward and lifted the veil, and with it went all my fears and trepidations. As the music ended, and all that could be heard was the birds in the trees, all I could see was LH’s eyes, emotion welling up in them, and suddenly I felt the prickle and sting of tears hit my own. There was no doubt, there was nothing there but pure unadulterated love for the man in front of me and there was nothing I could do but bite my lip hard to stop the tears cascading down my face and ruining my very expensive make up.

The ceremony was simple and brief and poignant as we held hands in front of the celebrant. We didn’t write our own vows and we didn’t want to do rehearsed, tacky, “symbolic” kitsch. The symbolism was in the fact that we were making promises to each other in front of people we loved, and in the incredibly plain and simple matching gold bands that we exchanged. We had two short readings (1:13 Corinthians and Shakespeare’s 116th sonnet) and in the shortest possible time I was able to finally move into his arms and be kissed as his wife.

The rest of the wedding day is but a mere blur. I remember going through the paces of having photos taken and picking at our fantastic lunch and listening to speeches, but all I really wanted was to be alone with my husband. To escape from all the well wishers that were taking my attention away from him and our magical little locked kingdom that only we had keys for. Of the utter relief of getting into our taxi to go to the hotel, and the joy I felt at walking into our luxe room where it was just him and I. I remember the shyness and strangeness we felt as we looked at each other, a mix of love and lust and some sort of undercurrent as well. We’d thought that being married was merely a formality, but standing here, in our winter finery in this plush suite it was the start of a new beginning. Our new beginning.

Sometimes still, when I am snowed under and stressed, I revert back into the selfish “if only” mindset. Wishing for the lack of responsibility and the lack of people who depend on and rely on and love me. If pinned down I will start thinking about escape plans and how life will be when I don’t have to worry about everything and only have to worry about one thing at a time. And I am so lucky, because I am sure that some husbands, when confronted with a freaking out, implode-y wife would dust their hands or would start throwing out lassos to tie me down and force me to behave. But I married the most patient, beautiful and loving man on Earth who trusts me above all else. Who when asked why he doesn’t come down on my behaviour and force me to act like a mature responsible adult ought, simply says that I am free and he will never cage me. That I have to make my own choices and he will never be the one that I have to rebel against. And it is this simple trust, this simple unswerving faith that he has in me that forces me to behave myself. To love him more fiercely and to be even more protective of this special (Nat calls it sickening :p) relationship that we have.

Even last week, the scene of my last meltdown (in spectacular style – I don’t like to do things by halves), was met with his steadfast clear statement that we love each other and that we will get through everything. As I lay on my back with my head in his lap under a tree and the tears coursed down my face I thought about how lucky I am and how no one else I will ever meet will have the strength that he does. It’s funny because so many people see our relationship and think I wear the pants and run the show and whatever other dodgy clichés are out there. But the truth is that he does. He always has. While I am headstrong and passionate and free flying and spontaneous and visible, he is the rock that allows me to be the best that I can be. And for that, and the two most perfect children that ever existed (because of course, they were made from us) I am the luckiest woman on Earth.

I lied

I said I didn't care. But I did.

Mea culpa.

Eight

Tagged by Melissa

8 Things I'm Passionate About

1. Justice. I am calm and easy going until I perceive some injustice - then I become a raving lunatic.
2. Writing.
3. Education for all. Education for education's sake and not measurable in dollar terms. Education not to get a job but to learn and grow and expand.
4. Rights of women. The right for girls to have equal standing as boys in all parts of the world. To not fear rape as a method of social control.
5. Latin American politics, though I'm much less informed than I used to be.
6. Australian politics, and the politics of politics.
7. Philosophy and the meaning of life.
8. Music. Australian pub rock, ballads, indie rock, classical, trance


8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

1. Study Philosophy formally
2. Own trees, lots and lots of trees. I would sell my body for trees lol.
3. Play with my great grandchildren
4. Decide on and get my tattoo
5. Learn an instrument
6. Actually use my French and Spanish
7. Skydive, it's only finances preventing me atm.
8. Learn how to ski/snowboard

8 Things I Say Often

1. Anyway
2. Crap, as with Melissa, need to tone this down
3. I love you. To my husband, to my children, to my friends - I don't think it's ever said too much as long as you mean it.
4. Fuck me dead. This is a very inelegant saying. I need to remember that I'm a laydeeee
5. Get DOWN - usually yelled at high volume to my kamikaze children
6. Now! - usually after number 5 has been ignored
7. I'm sorry. I'm an apologist. I apologise even when I know I haven't done anything wrong. I have had PATIENTS tell me to stop worrying so much lol.
8. No. I am trying to tone this down as well. Sometime you really need to just say yes.

8 Books I've Read Recently

I can't honestly do this one for 2 reasons, one is because 6/8 are textbooks which I don't think count, and the other is far more embarrassing and that it that the books were kind of the equivalent of eating a Big Mac with fries and scarfing it down in 30 seconds before barfing it back up again behind the pub...

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. My Happiness - Powderfinger (LH and my "song")
2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Beatles
3. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
4. Fix You - Coldplay (Sums up my relationship with LH)
5. Throw Your Arms Around Me - Paul McDermott version (close but not quite)
6. I Alone - Live
7. If You Could Only See - Tonic
8. Flames - VAST

8 Things That Attract Me to my Best Friends

1. Humour
2. Levity
3. Principles
4. Compassion
5. Intrigue
7. Contradiction
8. Passion

8 Blogs I Love AND Why.

1. Once Upon a Dream
- like Mel I love the cheeriness of Ave's blog. She reminds me of the type of woman, wife and mother that I wish that I was.
2. The Things I'd Tell You- I get Mel, I think she'd probably get me too.
3. Diary of a Wannabe Hippy- If I think Mel "might" get me, I *know* that Shel does.
4. Gossip, Hearsay and Tittle Tattle- Marywin is an amazing writer, she makes me laugh and squirm and blush. It takes talent to make your audience actually feel something.
5. Anne Nahm- Absofreakinglutely hilarious
6. Here Be Hippogriffs- Julia is one of my favourite writers, I actually cried when she posted those first pictures of her twins.
7. Go Fug Yourself- Fugly is the new pretty... Fashion with snark!
8. Postsecret- I'm a voyeur, secrets are my thing.


8 Things That Have Made Me Smile This Week.

1. "MUMMY"
2. Monkey and Elfling sliding down our couch both squealing WEEEEEEEEE
3. My latest present from LH
4. Being told that I am the most beautiful woman in the world by LH
5. Getting bunches of pungent red roses (my favourite flower) from LH
6. Waking up next to LH (are you sensing a theme yet lol)
7. Making Level 73 on my EQ2 Wizard
8. Sitting on my couch after an awful awful day and having my babies cuddled into me


8 People Who Have Influenced Me.

1. My grandmothers. I miss them all the time. I still open the box of Nana's paintbrushes just to remember her smell
2. My parents
3. LH. I wish I was as good and loving as him.
4. Miss Wills - my English teacher in year 9 and French teacher from years 8-12
5. My mild mannered Spanish lecturer who invoked fire in my belly when he taught us about Latin American politics
6. My suave, dark, impeccably principled and attractive French professor who believes passionately in the Arts
7. Certain friends in and outside of the computer. Who have reminded me of the beauty of life and to never ever stop seeking the Gleam. Who've shown me that there is more than one way to love, and that I am valuable even if I"m not beautiful.
8. My daughters who have taught me humility, compassion, patience but above all the lessons of unconditional love.


8 Things I Cannot Do.

1. Snowboard - I am almost willing to cede defeat.
2. Make pan gravy that tastes as good as LH's
3. Wear makeup as a daily occurrence. I want to scrape my skin off any time I wear it.
4. I can't make my hair do what I want it to.
5. I can't commit. I am a complete commitmentphobe and run away at the mere mention of being pinned down to something. Without panic anyway.
6. I can't reach a full octave on a piano properly. My hands are too small.
7. I can't do a chinup any more. I tried the other day and failed. Then felt very embarrassed.
8. Admit that there are things I can't do *blush*

8 Places (or things) I'd like to see before I die.

1. Paris, La ville d'amour
2. Petra
3. Prince Edward Island, particularly in their autumn. (no arguments here Mel!)
4. Karnak
5. Angel, Victoria and Niagara Falls
6. Kilimanjaro
5. Tibet
6. Wales, Derbyshire
7. Angkor Wat
8. Macchu Picchu

Tentative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crash and Burn

I'm so tired and so stressed. The house is in a state that can only be described as condemned. The kitchen is buried in a pile of dishes, the lounge room is being overtaken by the clean laundry pile and any and all carpet is covered in a fine film of children's toys and accessories. The beds are unmade and the dirty clothes pile having secured the laundry is staging a coup on the rest of upstairs.

In the middle of the chaos the girls are currently screeching because The Monkey has the particular piece of junk mail that The Elfling *wants*. WANTS for the mere fact that The Monkey has it and she doesn't. The Husband is currently curled in the foetal position on his computer chair occasionally yelling at the screeching children, but mostly huddling down and wishing he was on one of the ski fields that he's perusing to forget reality.

Then there's me, similarly huddled into a corner of our once treasured couch. A red, simple, but comfy and attractive couch that was the first bit of furniture that we owned together that wasn't a hand me down. It's not even from Ikea. I say once treasured because its corduroy like texture which once made it interesting and nice to look at now harbours thousands of unidentifiable stains, pen marks, crusted bits of banana that I can't scrub out thanks to said texture.

I'm feeling tired and harrassed and nauseous and trapped. Caged and cagey waiting for the migraine that has been threatening me all day to hit. Feeling the pit of my stomach somewhere around my ankles, and having difficulty breathing. Knowing I'm going to fail my exams tomorrow. Knowing that I suck as a mother. Knowing that in the last few months I have been a terrible wife. Trying to breathe through it all and get back to normally serene me and not making it.

Freefalling, panicked and jittery. Wishing I could take some sort of sedative that would allow me to sleep instead of lying awake until the wee hours and then waking before dawn. Trying to play with the girls and not get irritated when they trash the room that I've just managed to tidy. Trying not to yell at the Elfling when she pushes herself into my space, her hands or a book or a drink in my face, bodies climbing on top of me and making it even harder to breathe.

I love them so much, but for this one week a rotation, I wish I lived in my own apartment, away from anyone wanting to be near me or touch me or talk to me. Where if I don't want to eat for 3 days and mainline caffeine then that's fine and I don't have to prepare food for anyone else. Where if I go to bed at 3am I don't have to answer to anyone, and if I need to sleep until 9am the next day then that's fine too. Where if I clean up a room it STAYS BLOODY CLEAN.

There are very few times that I doubt my decisions that I've made, to get married and have children so young, to do it while I'm still studying. But in this crazy period I wish I'd been selfish. I wish I was alone. I wish that I was unattached and had no strings or responsibilities. I wish my money was my own. I wish I could go to the gym right now instead of waiting for a lasagne to cook and encouraging the girls to eat it before having to bathe, dress, cuddle, brush teeth and hair, read books and tuck in.

I wish I could hear silence right now, or my Matrix CD, or Radiohead, or the Verve instead of the freaking Wiggles and occasional screeches.

I wish I could just breathe.

More procrastinating

Yesterday after too many hours of writing notes, I was feeling very cold and assumed it was from the ridiculous airconditioning. As I walked out into the brisk early Autumn evening I realised that it was only slightly warmer outside but that I was still very very cold. It wasn't until I found myself walking in the bright sunshine towards the bougainvillea path that I realised that the cold was not from the air, but from within.

Somewhere in the midst of reviewing cuboidal epithelium and stromal changes at puberty I had had a bit of a crash. I have no idea where it came from, or why it was there. I had been studying well, I had gone to my ethical tutorial and participated, I was having friendly email interaction with friends, but somehow, it all crashed. I looked up at the big low heavy sun and wondered why it wasn't warming me. I walked through gardens and amongst trees that normally make me happy if not revealing the Gleam. But I was just a big ball of cold and despair.

So I did something I haven't done in years, and boarded one of the tiny ferries that meander up and down the river, and climbed up the stairs to sit on a hard wooden bench with an incredible view of the city and the sunset. I let the cool autumnal breeze wash over me and marvelled at the golden light on the satiny river, and the glinting buildings. I studiously ignored the couple on the bench in front and to the right of me, her snuggled into him against the chill and both of them with dancing eyes and focused instead on the beautiful scenery trundling by. I didn't even notice as the sky changed to twilight and the first stars of the night twinkled in the ebon sky. Until suddenly I realised that I was the only passenger on the boat, standing at the bow with the wind ruffling my hair, and that it was long past the time that I should have been home.

I loved the solitude but I felt so horribly lonely. So I went home. You never asked where I'd been and I never told you.

The Gleam

Part two of Nina's topic...

I am a dreamer. I always have been. Even in the midst of conversation I often drift into dialogue with my own ethereal whimsy while maintaining social grace. It takes little to distract me from everyday things, and if I get a whiff of The Gleam, then I am lost to it, beholden to its call.

I was about 15 when I first found an old copy of Tennyson's poems that had belonged to my father at college. A small red, cloth bound book, pages the colour of weak tea in very plain print. It is not a beautiful book to look at, it is very simple. But inside, o, the beauty and the song that leaps off every page... The first time I opened it, I flicked straight to the poem I knew - The Lady of Shalott, and thrilled to its melody. Even now a good 18 years since I first read that poem those opening stanzas still reveal The Gleam

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

The introduction to metaphor, the abililty to describe things so beautifully - "that clothe the wold" - that description is so perfect. It brings a vivid image to my eye instantly. It is why I love Tennyson.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

But the second stanza, the melody is the breeze, it darts forth and gently raises the hair on your arms such that you yourself are dusking and shivering by the river that flows to Camelot. I still am entranced by the beauty of this work, and have spent many a day hiding in some greenery or other looking up at blue or misty skies and feeling the wind tumble and play at my feet like a kitten as I drank it in. But once I had finished the LoS, I began to delve further into this slim book of poetry, and found still more works that enthralled and enraptured me. One of those was Merlin and The Gleam.

Obviously, from the title of this blog, The Gleam resonated with me. The mention of it throughout the poem teased me, called me to it, but those final words...

Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow The Gleam.

...I cannot describe how they inspire me. The passion in them - the absolute need I have to pursue The Gleam, La Vie Moins Ordinaire, whatever I name it. It is something greater calling me. I see it glimmering before me, sometimes I actually dance in its light. I can only describe it as this is why people believe in heaven. A glimpse of something so ascendant it must be of another world. But to me it is incredibly unholy as well - it is earthy, primal, primitive, pagan.

I see The Gleam sometimes in the purple haze of dawn, when I awake before I am fully conscious and see the smokiness on the horizon and know as the cool jovial music of twilight pervades my soul that I have a window to somewhere other. I smell it in the balsam of the forests when I run through the trees of my ancestral home and I chase it with eyes sparkling and amber. Some days I catch it, and it runs through my veins quick and golden and light and I hover in some space that is not quite of this world. I am almost always alone in my pursuit of The Gleam, I have tried to explain it to LH and lovely though he is, he does not see The Gleam. He is happy to follow me as I chase, but he doesn't quite see the gold that we're after. Others don't understand it at all, and it is the most precious thing that I possess so I don't share it often.

I can't make it come before me, things that one day will have me lost I will another barely notice. I possess only the ability to see The Gleam, not to bring it to me, or I would spend all of my time drunk with its beauty. It comes most often when I am lost in my imagination and dreams, though being around beautiful things always brings it closer. I am always on the search for great beauty. And in the meantime I dream and spin fancies and imagine - the castles in the sky where LH and our little pixies will live. I've asked him what he imagines our perfect home to be and he simply says that if I am there... then that is his perfect castle. I adore him for that, but I wish he knew of The Gleam.

Nina's Topic

My question... where is your favourite place to be in the world (your happy place), and why?

Whenever I think of Happy Place I always think of Happy Gilmore which sadly is a movie that I love even though it is Adam Sandler and very very B grade. But I digress. In previous posts I've detailed the fact that I have moved around a lot, therefore I've not had really that one place that I could always escape to. There have been some constants that always make me feel at peace though. So the physical places...

1. Suttons Beach at Redcliffe. This is a little family beach that opens onto yellow/orange granular coral sand and green seaweed where the air is saltier than just about any other beach I've ever visited. There is often a discernible odour of dank seaweed and there are almost always gelatinous jellyfish washed up on the sand. There is almost no surf being as the beach is protected by the islands and to get down to the sand in the first place you have to climb down steep concrete steps. But in spite, or rather because of all this, it is one of my favourite places in the world. We had barbeques and picnics here under the ancient pine trees, I walked this beach with Nana and found unspoiled shells and rock or glass rolled smooth by the surf. Shiny opalescent mussel shells with their smelly beards. I made sandcastles in the coarse sand and decorated them with the seaweed.

It is also the place where I go to be close to my grandparents. Their ashes were scattered off Woody Point and I love taking the girls to run on this beach so that they can be close to their Great Grandparents who would have loved them so much.

2. Lamington National Park
This is one of my favourite places in the world to be. The drive up through the winding moutains is incredible, sheer drops off the side of the mountain into temperate forest and then subtropical rainforest. In parts the road actually winds a single car width through the forest as it treks and crosses back in places so steep and so precarious that your heart will be in your throat as you drive it. Especially if it is a misty afternoon. We always go via Tambourine, where the tourist strip is abundant in artsy stores, coffee shops, markets and stores that sell fudge. It is impossible to come home from one of these trips without a crisp packet of fudge in weird and wonderful flavours.

But nothing compares to actually getting out of the car into that sweet, gentle, brisk and damp mountain air. To feel the breeze whip your hair while inhaling the delicious tang of balsam. To rug up the girls and wander into the forest. To listen to the trees and to feel my heart sing that I am *home*. To watch the bustling Japanese tourists excitedly taking photos of scrub turkeys, and the bored Australian tourists with their smokes dangling from their hands who neither see nor feel the actual forest.

I hear music in the forest, I hear voices and I believe that fairies and elves are not fantastical constructs. I know the Elfling feels it too because both of us look different in the forest - something makes our eyes sparklier and our ears just that little bit more pointed. At O'Reillys plateau there are two things that thrill my soul - the first is the treetop walk that allows you to walk about mid canopy through the forest. About halfway along this walk is a tree with a steel ladder that ascends up to about 110 feet off the ground. Often there is a crowd gathered around the base of this ladder, but many are too spooked to climb, especially when the wind is blowing and the tree is swaying. But last time we went, the Elfling at all of 3 and a half climbed up the ladder with her Daddy so that they could look out into the vast crater formed by the McPherson ranges and feel her spirit come alive as well.

The second thing that buoys me is at the edge of the plateau looking out on sheer drops into the canyon is a botannical garden full of beautiful exotic plants that flower and bloom amongst winding stone tracks. Here in the middle of the forest a secret windy garden clinging to the edge on the mountain. When I am there I cannot but dream and thrill to my soul.

I only discovered these particular national parks while living with my husband, but my home is amongst trees, and my spirit dances whenever I am there. I cannot describe in words how light I feel, or how my heart lurches when I smell the sweetness or the breeze begins to tease tendrils of hair at my neck. How golden my eyes shine and how unearthly I feel.

Next post I'll talk about the happy place that is within me, and can't be reached by plane, train or autmobile...