Gauze

I hadn't washed our curtains since we moved into this house. I am sure that experienced Hausfraus are currently shocked out of speech, but it was well down on my priority list. They were the heavy, block out type of curtains, and so even though the faded minty green colour matched with the yellow of the walls to look precisely like bile stained vomit, I left them. Blockout blinds provide both insulation and the dark cave like sensation that promotes sleep. And that's all I wanted to do. 

But after my dawn experience the other day I felt compelled to take them down, clean away all the dust and to hang gauzy white curtains that billow in the breeze and make me wake to the soft glow of light in the mornings instead of the miserable peal from my mobile phone at whatever ridiculous hour it is that I need to get up. 

I have started my new job and I'm tired. Miserably tired. I am trying to fit too much in and it's so hard because part of me just does not want to. I want it to be easy. I don't want to race and panic and stress, but I have to and that's part of the deal. I come home so tired I want to crawl into bed, but I don't even get the luxury of that because I have to make dinner and read books and sign homework folders. 

I want to be gleaming and excited and happy. And I am quite often. But right now, even though I intended to write about the beauty of waking with the birds, my brain has collapsed into tears and I just can't. The girls are doing beautifully at school and the Possum is thriving at kindy and I want so much to write about those things, but right now I can barely move my fingers to type. So I'm going to crawl under the covers, now that I've kissed the last forehead and finished the last exciting Tashi adventure and feel guilty that I'm not studying. Because useless emotions creep up one you when you're tired, and never give you the giant reassuring hug that you need. 

Gleam chasing.

I first realised I was an adult when I was 22 years old. It's a very distinct memory, in amongst the general slide into aging that occurs as a transition from adolescence. I was lying in bed, alone, and the Elfling was crying. I had been up to settle her probably 4 or 5 times already and I was beyond tired. Bingley was overseas working and I was completely alone and no one else was there besides the squalling baby. I was laying in bed shaking from tiredness and that irrational anger that the baby just won't sleep when I realised no one else was going to get up and settle her. No one else was going to pick her up. No one else was going to swoop in and take over from the (at the time) horrible situation. I just had to plod through. And it would be morning soon, and a new day, and we'd just take it from there.

I have thought of that night a few times lately. As I have woken in the grey stillness of morning with the golden sunrise sparkling on the windows and fought with myself to get out of bed, go to work and just get on with it. Part of me just doesn't think it is fair. Part of me just wants to roll over and ignore the screech of my alarm clock and any responsibility and just do what *I* want to do for a change. But there is somehow freedom in realising that you have to just get up and do it. On the very few occasions I have been sick as well as exhausted, all I've done is lie in bed all day. And while that felt good for the first few hours, it also felt unproductive and misery inducing as well. I enjoy grey a lot, but only when I'm dancing with it, not when I'm buried in it.

I have a job interview next Friday. It's an interview for a training position as a registrar, another rung on the ladder instead of this roundabout that is currently giving me a little bit of motion sickness. I haven't talked about it much, to anyone, because I am desperately wanting it so much. And because I am so tired I am afraid that instead of the interview being my chance to shine, it will be my chance to babble incoherently and stumble and blush a lot. When I put in my resume for this position, there was this tiny stone that sunk in my gut, as I realised that if they didn't offer me an interview that it would confirm that I'm just Not Good Enough and there was an instinct to not hit "send" on the application form. The same way I felt he first time I submitted a piece of writing for criticism. That feeling of at least if I don't try I can't be rejected.

Which is an odd feeling for me, as usually I have such a steadfast faith in my ability to just do things, that that unsurety and its nasty offspring have not been welcome. Part of it I blame on my job and the insane hours I have been working lately that leave me in a little bit of a fog, not entirely sure which way is up. I don't do my job for validation, and it's lucky because there's often little to be found, but I keep plodding along with it, even if sometimes the hysterical tiredness twists my mind into a subconscious wasteland.

In spite of that, and in spite of the crazy hours in my crazy job, I love it. I really do. It is sometimes so awfully hard that my heart twists in my chest and I want to smash a punching bag to just vent all of the emotion that it causes. Sometimes families are lovely and sometimes they are so horrible and entitled and rude that I want to scream. And sometimes I have to do things that I feel so very strongly are just not right. But I do them because I believe even more strongly that patients and their families have their own right to make decisions about their own bodies and their own healthcare even if I think that their choices are causing harm.

But a lot of the time I get to do good things too. I get to make people smile on the days when they feel their worst. I get to calm that look of terror out of their eyes and see it replaced with faith that someone is looking out for them. Part of the reason I work such long hours is because I feel the responsibility of making sure that my patients are OK. That it's not OK to just run out the door because the clock says it's time to go. That sometimes someone needs me to sit and talk to them and explain again what we're doing and why. And to allow them to make a decision that they actually understand.

I am not saving the world. I am not inventing the cure for cancer. I am not painting the world's next masterpiece or penning the piece of literature that I've always wanted to write. I am not ever going to be listed on the most impressive people under 30 list. I am never going to be listed on the Aussie Blogger Blogs to watch list. I am not someone that others look up to and not someone that is extraordinary.

But I am that person who if you are on my ward and you are in pain that will come and speak to you and explain to you what is happening and who will stay long after home time until it's ok. I am that person who will weather being yelled at by grumpy registrars interrupted from their weekend plans if you need a consult and I am that person who will go and fetch a jug of iced water if your nurse is busy and you are thirsty. I want to hear about your grandchildren and I will cry if you die, even if (or perhaps more if) no one else is by your bedside.

It sometimes feels that my friends and family wonder why I stay in this job, when I could do anything I wanted with my life. Why this? Why these stupid hours and crappy pay and terrible conditions? And maybe it sounds like I have a God complex, but mostly it's because I want to make a difference in people's lives. I have stood at the bedside and felt impotent and keened in pain as someone I loved beyond words suffered. It means so very much to me to be able to prevent that from happening to others. Or at least to be doing my best to try. And that's why I do the job that I do. Plus it keeps me in funds to buy books and paints and fodder to write incoherent blog posts...

Wish me luck for next week.

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

Working weekends

It is cold this evening. I am under the doona and have my new favourite charcoal hoodie keeping my ears warm. The windows are open of course, because I hate closed rooms, and I love the smell of the cold wet air. I woke in mist. Pale grey and damp, swirling quietly. It was a morning for sleeping, cosy and comforted. But I went out into it, drove into the sunrise as it evaporated away the clouds.

I love being out early in the morning, even when I'd rather be in bed. The other people who are awake with me always seem the happiest. The fittest. Running and walking and glorying in experiencing as much daylight as possible. Often I'm still feeling slight pangs of regret about not still being in bed, but driving into the sunrise perks me up every single morning. I love seeing the beginning of a day, and not wasting any of it.

I have perfect eyebrows tonight. I had them waxed and tweezed this afternoon by a girl at a cheap walk in place at our local megamall. I am wary of these places, as I have had some odd experiences with sperm brows or accidentally removing far too much hair. But these current brows are perfect. And cost me $15. They are a bargain, and if only I was not curled up under the doona in my pyjamas, I could take them out on the town and show them off.

I was at work today, and it was mostly dull. I have had enough of rude patients on weekends. I dislike it immensely. I recognise that pain and fear and suddenly being weaned from cigarettes and alcohol and having to depend on others is traumatic. I understand that some people cope better than others and I understand that sometimes you catch people at bad times. But truly, clicking your fingers at me, asking for a "real doctor", shouting obscenities at me or being rude and abrasive when I ask you politely if you have any specific worries on a Saturday when most people are at home with their kids is not fun for either of us. Ignoring me will not make either one of our lives easier either.

The life of a junior doctor is not glamorous. Scrubs is true. All of it. I grimaced to myself the other day as I stood by the lift balancing coffees (I don't drink coffee) for the morning meeting. 10 years of university education and I'm fetching coffee. I have had consultants that don't know my name, who have ignored direct questions and speak directly over my head, issuing orders for me to my registrar when I'm standing right in front of them.

I have stood in semi darkness with a single bulb over me, sweating profusely as I try and poke a cannula into a vein from someone that has been "handed back" from IV services. IV services put cannulas in all day. That is their job. I'm lucky if I do one a week at present. You do the math. And often aside from the cranky and already jabbed patient looking at you witheringly you will have a nurse, and maybe if you're lucky a student, huddled in your bay as you flush deep red, sweat running in rivulets down your back as you attempt. If you succeed, the accolades and the sheer achievement will put you on a high for hours. Right up until the point that you are paged to the ward, as the patient has pulled it out.

I dream about veins. After one particularly brutal run of ward call, I started noticing the veins of every person I met. I would be carrying on a conversation with people, while thinking about which vein I'd cannulate. The juicy one right there? Or the smaller straighter one? I stood on a train once, and as we all gripped the overhead bar as the train lurched out of the station I had already triaged the people around me based on their vasculature. Subtly when someone shakes my hand, I will be feeling for the plumbing under my hand, and it takes all my concentration sometimes not to rub my thumb across to check the calibre. I could get a grey in that one. 

I have been chastised by patients for having "no idea" how to treat diabetes as we look at their massively swinging BSLs. I have been harrassed by nurses who are concerned by the HI reading on the glucorometer 1 hour after a massive dose of novorapid. And I've wandered down to the ward and looked at the box of chocolates next to the bed, the cup of tea with 4 sugars and the empty Hungry Jacks bag in the bin and wondered what miracle I'm supposed to work.

I notice who all the people are who drink too much now. In the shops, at the theatre, when out to dinner. I can pick them on sight now. Not the alcos you're thinking of, the ones lying in the park with a silver cask. No, the people who work with you. The people who work with your friends. The people who work with me. Your body gives away so many signs if someone is willing to read them.

I feel the barrier start to come up slowly now. The one that means that I am no longer as affected as I was in my first year of medicine. In my first year there was so much humanity on display. I struggled to look at people objectively, I struggled often with what it was necessary to do to people. I shuddered at the cynicism of many of my superiors, while also quaking at their vast knowledge. I was the slime on the bottom rung of the ladder of the medical career, and the deference and the rungs poking up above me were well and truly out of reach. I felt overwhelmed often, but I felt cheated too. Medicine is not some mystical science. It's mostly simple patterns and a lot of paperwork. There are no magic wands, there are no crystal balls. It's just synthesising information and making sure that you don't miss pieces when trying to solve the puzzle.

I can still remember certifying my first dead body. I was terrified. Not by death, not by the peculiar rigidity or the scent of death. The man in front of me was quite clearly not alive, but I didn't know how I was supposed to prove it. It was like some of the Maths problems that I'd been given in my extension class where I had to come up with an answer and the proof of it. Often I arrived at the answer in seconds, but actually explaining how I got there was difficult.

I stood there fondling my stethoscope, remembering the signs of life I was supposed to check for and fumbling my way through it while the family stood back reverently. It's a very easy thing, to certify someone as not living, and yet to that family it had some significance. And it was for them that I stumbled through some sort of cliched message of sympathy and confirmed the obvious. Then left as fast as I could.

I've had to look at so many anuses (anii?) that they no longer hold any sort of grossness for me. The PR (per rectum) exam is still one of the most feared practices that medical students are supposed to become proficient at, but so rarely do. As a student, finding willing patients to allow you to practice your technique with someone competent overseeing the process is rarer than rocking horse pooh. And the ironic thing is, that the people that refuse to let the medical student have a go, will next week be having to deal with a junior doctor who may never have performed it under supervision having a go in the middle of the night. There is no dignity in hospitals. For all the hands I've held and all the apologies I've made, when it comes to it, your privacy will be as stripped as surely as your chest will be to stick on the ECG leads. Though luckily if you have me, I'll remember to close the curtains first.

I'm feeling tired at present, but satisfied as well. I'm getting home most days now when it's light and I'm getting enough sleep. I'm hungry again too, which is good for my health, but oddly disappointing from a shrinking point of view. I am less snappish, and I'm feeling warmer, after months of radiating cool. But I still get grumpy working on weekends, and I'm not sure if that will ever change. Especially on a snugly one like this one.

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.

Catatonia

Want to write. Just too damned exhausted. Remind me to tell you about that thing. And the other thing.

Brefday

When the Elfling is tired her skin goes translucent and all the veins under her pale skin become more visible. Most prominent of all is the vein that runs over the bridge of her nose - it's almost irridescent. And when the dark shadows and the bridge vein pops she becomes irrational, combative and generally painful to deal with.

The Monkey is not much better, though she's possibly worse when she's hungry. Irrational, grumpy, irritable. All of those fun emotions that are somehow exacerbated by their littleness and their lack of coping strategies so that life becomes unpleasant for everyone around them until they can be bundled up safe and warm in bed.

And as they get older the really bad nights are not so bad, because they understand that when they feel so out of control that it is the tiredness, and that when they eventually go to sleep they will feel better. And talking them down becomes easier, to the point where I can breathe a sigh of relief that they will soon be in bed and be less painful to deal with on a really late night.

Some nights I don't deal with their overtiredness well and I am snappy and grumpy with them because I have been working hard all day too, and I am irrational and tired. I sometimes walk home with a slightly sinking feeling in my chest because all I have the energy to do is to strip off my clothes and pull on my pilfered tracksuit pants and curl into a ball on the couch; but I have to suck it up and help feed, bathe, dress, and read stories before they go to bed.

They're easy children really, warm and loving and cheerful and playful. Good with routines and usually pretty well behaved. They are exuberant and messy and expansive and always getting into mischief as well, but they are lovely children and I am proud of them. And it hurts that same part of my chest when I realise that I half wish some nights that Bingley has already put them in bed so that we can just sit on the couch together and not be adults for a moment.

Tonight it was me that was too tired. I had too much work to do today, and while normally that would be OK on Friday afternoon because there is that release in knowing that you have the whole weekend ahead of you, I have to work tomorrow. So I already felt like I was swimming in soup. And then we had a new patient on the ward, yet another person that doesn't want to help themselves but feels happier blaming everyone else for not "helping" her. Or fixing her. I had just had enough.

I was so grateful as I walked out in the waning afternoon, so tired as I stood outside in the rain afterwards waiting for Bingley and the 3 Musketeers to pick me up.

Except they didn't. 20 minutes of standing out in the rain later I checked my phone to find all the missed calls from Bingley who had taken 3 very overtired and hungry children straight home due to the nightmarish traffic. And I burst into tears as I looked at my watch and realised it was too late to catch the bus that drops me off around the corner from home and that I would need to catch the train.

I got to the train station and stood on the rain swept platform and shivered as my dress became soaked as I waited for the train to come. Not caring that I was crying in public, unable to do anything else. The waves of fatigue battering me like the rain as the last of the twilight sank into the enveloping clouds. Got onto the train as the rain stepped up and walked out into the drenching spray.

Walked the 1300m home, sprayed by the passing cars and assaulted from the pelting rain until my skin chaffed against my clothes and no one could tell I was crying as the water trickled down my neck. Shoes squishing and stockings adhered to my legs. And thought about things to make me happier. Remembering the excited smiles on the girls' faces as they presented me with their handmade collage birthday cards this morning. Trying not to feel ungrateful that Bingley hadn't given me anything.

Thinking of how birthdays are just not the same when you're an adult, especially when you're married to someone who just doesn't "get" occasions. Remembering how much I've tried to ignore my birthday for the last 10 years and why. How every year I try not to think of it as any other day because I can't bear the childish disappointment when it's not the sort of day I want.

Getting home to the stack of gluten free chocolate macaroons that Bingley had cooked and cemented together with chocolate ganache and a sheepish expression. The belated card and expensive gift that is not really me but that I appreciate regardless. Tamping down the brattish part of me that had really just hoped for a snuggly pair of pyjamas as I peel off my sodden clothes, step into the shower and sob away the tiredness for a little while until I can smile properly at my babies and indulge in my cookies as they gleefully tuck in.

Sapped.

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

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

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

Signs you need a holiday

• You have a cold sore on your lip for the first time in 10 years
• You don't recognise that you're getting a cold sore so rub and bite the spot where it's forming, leading to pain, dear God, paaaaain and a lip so uniformly swollen it looks like it's been injected with collagen
  
• You have bitten your fingernails to the point where several are bleeding
• You have trichotillomania
• You are underpaid $1200 in a single fortnight and wonder if you can be arsed organising sorting it out
• You finish a 12 hour shift (that was meant to be 7 hours) and take 10 minutes to decide if you will catch a cab home (taking 12 minutes) or catch public transport (taking 71 minutes)
• You fall asleep in said cab, resulting in a much more expensive cab ride than intended while the cab driver frantically tries to wake you up
• You start crying in the middle of an iPhone ad
• You start crying when the piece of cake that you've just cut crumbles when you try and transfer it to a plate
• You realise that you forgot to claim around $1000 in deductions on your tax return and you just can't be arsed

Mondays

The moon hurt my eyes when I walked home tonight. The perfect orb luminescent and beautiful but so bright that as my migraine pounded I could do nothing besides look at the dimly lit ground at my feet and trudge home. It summed up my day, beauty that I couldn't appreciate through the fog of crappiness that oozed around me.

It started in darkness and finished the same. Mist and fog, rain at one point, all barely noticed against the blur of tasks that needed to be done yesterday, disgruntled nurses that wanted to berate without actually listening and families that wanted too much of me today. I actively avoided one lovely family today because I just couldn't do it. Couldn't do a deep and involved chat without breaking down in tears with fatigue.

I felt the warning signs of the headache to come as I looked at my watch to notice briefly that without registering I'd already done an hour's overtime. The spaciness and the squiggles at the edge of my vision before the swamping nausea.

I wanted desperately to be home then, to a quiet empty house with no responsibility or conversations. To come home to quiet and warm welcoming arms. To ignore dinner time and crawl into cool sheets and put my already softened skin against the pillow and sleep for 12 dreamless hours.

But instead I listened as the Elfling read her home reader before finishing another chapter of the Fairy Realm. Smiled as the Monkey read to herself aloud and winced as the Possum screamed for me. Sat cross legged in the rocking chair as he slumped into my chest and we rocked and rocked and rocked until the tiny whistle of his snoring allowed me to start the ninja manoeuvres required to transfer him into his bed.

I love them dearly, but sometimes I wonder wtf I was thinking.

Gold

Every morning as I dip my fingers into the cool richness of my moisturiser, I smile as I read the SPF on the side of the pot. It seems so hopelessly optimistic to assume that any part of my skin will be touched by sunlight. I shiver as the last drops of water from my scalding shower evaporate off my skin. Not a polite, delicate shiver but a full body shudder as the cold invades. Getting dressed by the light of my walk in robe. Pulling stockings on as my fingers move clumsily, stiff with cold. Yawning as I try not to stab my cornea with mascara and try to coax my belligerent hair to behave.

I stumble out of the house in the ghostly pre-dawn light, jogging portions because I inevitably have left it until the very last minute to walk the 1300m to the train. Breath that fogs and steams around my face, clings to my nose and condenses. Digging my chin into the soft folds of my scarf as I run pink cheeked up the stairs to the train station and stamp my feet to keep them warm, watching the same dance by the handful of other passengers on the early morning train.

There are no rainbows when I reach the bus stop any more, just purring grey shadows and the ever present mist. Grateful at last to climb into the warmth of the bus and to curl into the hard seats. It's still too early and my body protests. My skin still sleep soft. My face, even made up looking younger and half asleep. The creeping cold with every opening of the bus doors keeping me awake, snaking along exposed skin.

As the bus climbs onto the overpass the clouds are pink and orange overhead, the sun waiting to rise, heavy and golden against the ethereally pale plue on the horizon. Pulling into the hospital, slapped again by the cold as the first rays pierce the sky, the closest the SPF of my moisturiser will come to protecting me, as the tiniest bit of warmth radiates through my blood.

Holding chilled fingers over my ears as I walk past the piercing pigeon alarm as the pigeons wander unperturbed between cafeteria tables and eat the crumbs of yesterday before a new crowd starts the cycle again. The smell of the coffee van and the snaking queue of others who are here so early. Never having the time nor the cash to join them, instead waving my lanyard in the direction of one of the hidden swipe terminals and stabbing my finger to ride the lift to my ward.

As I reach the top every morning I turn to face the glass plate windows to the right and feel the newborn sun blind me, dazzled, high enough now to see the sunrise and let it wake me. Let it fill me, let my blood rejuvenate. Know that it may be the only part of the day that I will get to see, experience, before work takes over. The interminable forms and charts and paperwork. I know each day I will need to talk about terrible diseases. To try and give hope where there is very little. And sometimes I dont' want to think about that. I want to think about the way it feels to watch the sunrise every morning. To see another golden start to the day, ripe with promise and to not be able to share.

I love the selfishness of it, of knowing that every day there is a little bit of it that I have stolen for myself. That even if I will not get to go home until the stars are twinkling and the moon is bathing the earth with its strange ephemeral light, and that even if I forget to dream in the dark and heavy sleep that awaits when I collapse after walking up the stairs, that for just one moment, I felt light.

I worked 122 hours last fortnight. 12 days in a row and it just about killed me. My body on autopilot, my brain rabid, frightened and desperate to escape. My 5th wedding anniversary passed in a blur of waking and sleep and falling through the day, before stumbling home in the velvet dark. Hollows appearing under my eyes and a new pallor to my already pale skin. But for a moment each day, in the seconds before I started work, before I picked up my pen and started writing the first of many things, I stood there in the sunlight, and felt alive.

Summer

It's easy to complain about Summer, especially in Queensland where the heat and the humidity can literally suck the life from your bones. When you have airconditioning it is possibly worse, the comparison between the frigid dry coolness of aircon and the indecent sultry humidity is stark. It can feel like an overfamiliar hug, hands everywhere and thick heady air that heavily pulls into your lungs.

It's lazy weather, it slows your mind and your body. Adorns it with a glistening slick. Coats your tongue and makes it sluggish and slow. When you fight the heat it punishes you. Puts stars in your vision and gives headaches. Frays tempers and raises blood pressure.

But when you succumb to it, when you let yourself be touched and welcome the embrace it curls through your blood, slow and warm and golden and suffuses you with light.

I lay in my hammock this afternoon, glowing in the ambient humidity, damp curls over my forehead and clothes limply clinging. I swayed gently, kicking with one lazy foot over the edge and felt the light southerly breeze dance over bare arms and legs. Listened to the strains of Radiohead and the Beatles and Muse that Bingley had queued up and just let myself soak in the warmth.

And as I listened to the air hum with the thick heat of Summer, I fell into the warmth, let it fill me and succumbed. And it was actually not so bad.

PS. He was fine. Even had a 90 minute sleep! I'm still sad but school holidays are doing much to inspire good things about going back to work.

Week 37

Whoever said that nothing prepares you for parenthood obviously did not have pregnancies like mine. Or maybe they were a man.

I am still vomiting. Did I mention that? It's not as bad as it was, it's probably only once every day or so now, but it's still there. Do you know how awful it is to vomit almost every day for 9 months? Or to feel nauseated by regular every day foods for that long?

I have reflux. I've had it before, a bit of indigestion here and there, an "oops, I ate a bit too much dinner" or "ooh shouldn't really eat chocolate". But for the last few nights I've been waking at 3am thinking I'm having a heart attack what with the left sided severe chest pain radiating to my back and down my arm and proceeding to keep me awake until dawn.

I get contractions continuously if I exert myself. Walking around the shops leaves me hobbled over a trolley like a little old woman trying to brace against them.

My boobs hurt and are growing again. Why E cup boobs think they have inadequate milk production potential I have seriously no clue, but theyr'e in overdrive.

Basically I hurt, I leak, I'm not getting any sleep and I still have to deal with other people's poo (thanks Monkey!).

This weekend we had a wedding to go to and I got dressed up and had a nice time, but the best bit was after when Bingley and I drove back to the city and into the reception area of a 5 star hotel. Giant bed with pillow top and fluffy down pillows. Shower with all teh hot water you could ever want and teensy little bottles filled with nummy smelling toiletries.

We watched TV, we watched movies, we walked around the shops (then rested lots so I could stop trying to go into labour) and slept. So much sleeping. Well aside from 3am because apparently even 1000 thread count sheets can't stop reflux. We ate at the buffet breakfast early each morning and went back to bed to have a nap to sleep off the effort. It was so lovely and relaxed and such a perfect way to unwind and shrug off the last vestiges of work and the guilt I'd been feeling about staying at home.

We then went and picked up the girls in the Autumn sunshine and watched as they gamboled over a village green too busy having fun to sit down and have some lunch. I bought them both a lollipop (pink of course) and took a lot of photos some of which you can see on facebook. The Monkey has been delighted to stay home with me, and delighted to go to daycare today and is generally just delightful fullstop. The Elfling had her ballet uniform bought for her yesterday and seriously looked like she might explode from the sheer joy of wearing it. To be fair I felt a bit misty looking at her in her fairy floss confection of a costume.

The Possum is mostly well behaved, if by that one assumes that he has been trying to kickbox his way out of confinement. As I have said to Bingley, it's not him giving me hell, it's my body that's being the traitor, insisting on being ill and having contractions and not closing oesophageal sphincters adequately. I suspect that both the Possum and I will be much happier when he's out.

Anyhow, I missed posting week 36 belly shot so that's here (last day of work!)


And Week 37 at wedding on weekend

Terrible Tuesdays

It all began with shit on the floor. Shit on the floor? Shouldn't be there at all...
Then I looked up and I said oh man and that's how fucked up Tuesday began*

There was the shitty traffic in the morning which meant 30 minutes to travel 200m.
There was the patient that wanted me to "examine his groin" and didn't want me to wear gloves.
There was the patient I examined and when I walked back to the write up area the nurse noticed my belly, blanched and said "I don't think we should have got you to do that exam, especially not alone"
There was the abusive patient hopped up on speed
There was the patient who stopped taking her meds and deteriorated
The patient whose blood pressure defies nature
The patient who stuck his almost healed hand up his arse to disempact and shat on the floor.

The woman with the cakebox on the bus (that I managed to catch after 20 minutes of watching full buses sail merrily past) who kept walking in front of me, pushing into me and then walking slower than me.

The man with his bag sitting next to him taking up a seat on the crowded bus sitting in the GODDAMN FUCKING priority seating for disabled and pregnant persons as identified by the attractive sticker in front of his face who would not move necessitating me standing for the whole journey.

Getting home too late to be able to suck it all in and be cheerful and happy with my babies.

Sitting on the floor in the kitchen just crying because I couldn't do anything else. Couldn't move, couldn't talk, couldn't think of anything else to do.

Sometimes, it just bites.

*The Monkey's favourite book is Wacky Wednesday

Weekend Poster

Sort of what I've become hey. It's such a cliche, but by the time I get home, have dinner, put the girls in bed, read stories, turn the light off 30 bazillion times and have a shower I'm just exhausted. To top it off, I got sick on my RDO on Tuesday, and have struggled through covering a whole ward, nightshift and then working today while being "under the weather" (code for not being able to breathe). When I realised I was getting sick on Tuesday I just lost it. It's like, fuck, what else do I have to cope with?

But I did cope. And I got through, because, it's times like these you learn to fight through, to get over. And realise that next time you will be able to do it too, because hell, throw it at me, I can take it. And I will stand up, and I will take it, and I will do it well.

But now, I need to go to sleep, because my body is very very tired.

Autumn

The air here is starting to clear from the heaviness of summer. It is a golden green now, darkening as with the leaves on the trees. Autumn in Queensland is not of the fabled motherland: there is not a true crispness in the air, nor are the leaves a brilliant vermillion. The differences are more subtle, in the way the breeze gambols around your feet and the grass is somehow greener. The afternoons in particular are sprightly. After the impotent heat of Summer, suddenly there is the ability to run and jump and play without worrying about heatstroke.

I always feel alive at this change in season. When the wind whispers gleefully in my ear as it passes. It makes trivial things actually seem more trivial. Those things that had stuck in my conscious like little barbed claws, hanging on and hurting whenever I tried to brush them off.

There have been some hard and awful things that have happened around here lately. A cousin who was almost as pregnant as I lost her baby last week. "Lost" being such a stupid euphemism because it's not like she forgot her, or misplaced her. After 10 years of trying to meet her, it's not something you tend to do. I have no idea what to say or do, except be angry at whatever deity it is that people believe in for being such an incredible arsehole. There is no infinite wisdom in this.

I went and had the interview with The Elfling's teacher. It went really well and I think a lot better of her when she is relaxed and not at the classroom door on my daughter's birthday. We discussed a lot of the Elfling's behaviour and tried to discuss her quirks and the things that work for her and the things that don't (like being expected to sit still without having some sort of external sensory input, or time out). It's still not 100% but I'm not hysterical now.

I thought my marriage had died. There's probably a lot more subtle ways to say that, but I honestly believed it. Somehow in my head I though there was no saving it at all, because everything had gone. And I blamed the marriage. Instead of the immense pressure it's under, I thought it was the marriage that was all wrong instead of the circumstances. Until I finished my rotation, relaxed a little, and suddenly could see clearly again. And remembered little details like, I actually adore my husband as more than just the co-parent. I'm not sure how I forgot that, I could blame pregnancy brain, but that would be unfair.

I'm 30 weeks pregnant. How, I'm not sure because it's just happened without any input from me. Work has started to become difficult. Walking up both lots of stairs has become difficult. Going for a run this afternoon was not pleasant, but... difficult. The incursion on my body is so much more severe this time. I may look better, but I feel like I've been run over by a truck. The fatigue is relentless. I have 25 shifts left of work and I will be counting down every last hour. The late shifts and the 15 hour shifts are going to kill me.

I got a good report for my end of rotation assessment. This pleases me, but it could have been better. I know that gives me something to strive for, but by the same token I am a little disappointed. For me, I wanted to do better. To prove to the misogynistic bastards that being female is no barrier. That being a heavily pregnant female is no barrier. But I can't seem to breakthrough. And above average isn't the same as exceptional.

It's night now, Autumn night. Clear and cool, but not so you need to put on a jumper or anything drastic. Just a light caress on bare skin raising the fine hairs. No mosquitos, not even the raucousness of crickets. Just cool velvety darkness and brilliantly clear sky. It seems apt somehow that I can see them tonight, because for months all I've seen I've seen are clouds.

What my days are like

Stressful. A lot.

I start too early and I am on my feet for most of it. In my short breaks I am on here, procrastinating you would assume, but also doing a timed online exam at the same time. I'm going better than expected in the last 2 so I've actually done 4 exams in my lunch break.

My blood pressure is too high because I'm spending my time chasing after doctors to sign my forms like a lovesick teenager runnign after an autograph. I'm exhausted by 3pm but I don't get to go home then. There's at least another hour worth of time consuming, back hurting work and procedure.

I then race for the bus, or walk 3km to pick up the girls, getting home around 5, usually half past. Even though all I want to do is curl up in the corner and go to sleep, the girls haven't seen me all day and they want me. In that "I'm so tired I don't know what I want" kind of way that preschoolers have. Setting them up at the table with pencils and books buys me maybe 20 minutes in which to prepare dinner. I've gone right off meat at the moment so there is a fair whack of preparation involved. I do it like a woman possessed.

Yesterday, for shits and giggles I combined this with being on the phone to Centrelink to sort out a major issue with childcare benefit. When I refused to allow the 2 year old to talk on the phone, I resolved the ensuing tantrum with the delights of bubblewrap. I am nothing if not resourceful.

Bingley gets home around 6, and if he's very lucky (because he's exhausted too) he walks in to the table set and dinner ready. Dinner is actually really nice, because we are all sitting, and we can talk about our day. The Monkey is becoming more conversational as we go on and in between trying to get the Elfling to keep her mouth closed while she's eating we get some entertaining stories from her as well.

After dinner is bathtime and the girls splash around while we lie on our bed and try and stay awake, watching the Elfling teach the Monkey how to do things like draw on the shower door. Which I intend to clean off but never do - so it is a glorious bath crayoned masterpiece.

We then each tackle a baby and brush their teeth, pyjama them and tuck them up in bed with a book, reading aloud for a few minutes, occasionally succumbing to the cries for more books, before lights out. Usually they are so tired they fall asleep before I've reached the light switch.

We then go downstairs and on a good night clear up the dinner plates and turn on the dishwasher feeling smug at the be-Spray and Wiped sparkliness, or as is more common lately, collapse on the lounge room floor watching bad BAD tv and alternately half heartedly expressing the need to get up and clean. It mostly gets done, but I confess, often, it is left there to dry out overnight, so that cursing as we rush through the morning, I try and scrape dinner off plates.

While prostrate in front of the TV I usually have my laptop open so I can answer e-mails, download study modules, finish off minor essays and check my schedule for the next day. Bingley at this stage finds it hard to talk, being upright using up the last reserves of his energy. We both look old and ragged. Sometimes, in a fit of tearful exhaustion I will pick a fight - because at 9pm at night when you know you will be up at 5am, when you're exhausted, when you've had a very long shit day, when you're about as rational as a garden gnome, is a sensible, grown up time to have a "big" discussion. The make up sex is probably worth it though.

I don't enjoy this part of the year. The lead up to the grand finale. Dress rehearsals day and night for the big end of year performance. All that gets me through at the moment is crossing off a day in my diary. Looking at my countdown and seeing how few of these days are left.

Thinking of lying by the pool in our villa in Bali. Of Christmas craft with the girls. Of putting up the Christmas tree and rolling out rumballs. Of making gifts and spending time in the sun. Of coming to the end of each day, and having a surge of panic that I've not done anything all day before realising, gleefully, that there is nothing I'm supposed to be doing.

18 days to go

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.