tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13257725539319536332024-03-12T20:14:37.578-07:00Until it kills me...A Random Collection of Death Inspired RamblingsSarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.comBlogger216125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-59600935859204416422020-01-26T04:54:00.000-08:002020-01-26T04:56:23.862-08:00Post Three Hundred and One: Softening <div>
The cat breathes, her exhale making a throaty sound. A syncopated humph. The smooth swoosh of a car as it passes outside. From the sound of it, there's still the sweat of summer rain on the road. </div>
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It feels like a nice time to time travel. </div>
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My first home that I remember clearly was the one my parents bought in Wanneroo, Western Australia in 1988 after moving further out from the RAAF base. To this day I could draw you a map of the route from our home at 37 Belgrade Road to East Wanneroo Pre-Primary School. Mum worked there for a while as a cleaner, and being the youngest kid with my older sisters already in other schools, she'd take me to work with her. While she cleaned I'd draw on the blackboards and snoop through the children's desks. I stole stickers and stamps mostly. In fact, I also used to steal from Coles New World. I stuffed my Brownie Girl uniform pockets with a Golden Rough and a Mint Pattie once but fearing the retribution of my father if he ever found out, I returned them back to the shelf the very next afternoon. </div>
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I hated school in Western Australia. I hated it because I hated Daniel Delborello, a five year old that wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. It's always been a challenge to be female, and even as a small child I have memories of understanding that men and boys were awarded many privileges that I would be told to suffer through. There was a boy that I did like, Christopher, who had hair as white as snow and golden skin, but he ended up pushing me out of a treehouse in that year before school and the fall broke my wrist. I don't think we saw much more of him again. It comes as no surprise that I loved my friend Carly more, and I assumed that I'd probably marry her one day if I couldn't get my hands on Ranger Stacey from Agro's cartoon connection. </div>
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One day, I'd say in 1989, I decided that I'd had enough of life at home with my regularly combative family so I packed up my favourite knick knacks in a hankerchief and tied it to a stick. I'd seen Blinky Bill take a hike like this and I was confident that this was all I needed for a life outdoors. Out I went, up towards the school. "Mum better not find me when she goes to work" I said to myself. When I turned out of my street I looked back, thinking how sad it was that nobody yet knew that I was running away. Nobody ran out to stop me. So away I went, for hours, playing in the bush behind the school with all the beautiful kangaroo paw, <span style="font-family: inherit;">the <span style="background-color: white; color: #3c4043;">Xanthorrhoea and the </span>Chamelaucium. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was even sadder when the sun went down and I made my way home. The rough life wasn't for me at five years of age. And no one asked me where I'd been or what I'd seen. It was then that I learned that I could ghost if I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, and in many ways this survival technique saw me through a number of difficult transitions. </span><br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-72458212802595541602018-10-08T17:32:00.000-07:002018-10-08T17:32:40.302-07:00Post Three Hundred: Graveyard. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1ixqn-fLp8M/W7v3C5m34CI/AAAAAAAABDk/WTDjzPVKeHUfUpj1wG0mlbM9HyjOUvyagCLcBGAs/s1600/in%2Blove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="394" height="243" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1ixqn-fLp8M/W7v3C5m34CI/AAAAAAAABDk/WTDjzPVKeHUfUpj1wG0mlbM9HyjOUvyagCLcBGAs/s320/in%2Blove.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It was a sports day and my blue school shorts offered more skin. I can't remember why we were fighting. Eleven years old, maybe twelve. <div>
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We were two or three roundabouts from home after school, driving through the fancier part of the neighbourhood where the backyards met an unimaginative man-made canal system. Where I imagined that this sort of combat wasn't an every day expectancy. She slapped my leg hard with her left hand, harder than usual. Even with the welting imprint burning up my thigh, I watched her. There were no secrets to discover from the way the muscles in her face sat to suggest that she wanted to communicate more than this fire. She had no intentions of watching me in return. </div>
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I have forgiven, over and over. I appreciate the grieving that I went through for a relationship that I didn't feel that I had. I'm realising now, at thirty four, that mothering has a mythology of it's own and just because our story deviated from this, it doesn't mean that we have failed to exist. </div>
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Every now and again I will accidentally excavate some experience that causes pain; the time Dad chased mum around the backyard with a rake and my friends and I watched, giggling from the back toy room because we didn't understand. Or my first period, which I kept to myself for months. I stole my first bra from an old stash of my sisters that I'd found in the spare room. I noticed one day from my reflection in motion, half way through a team dance rehearsal, that my breasts were budding. I mourned then. I knew that I didn't want to share whatever this was and it was in isolation that I both blossomed and withered.</div>
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I will share my joy with who I chose, and how. My door is open to love, but armoured by a lifetime of attack and defense. </div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-21753078482741036512017-09-28T05:00:00.002-07:002017-09-28T05:00:14.444-07:00This one time when I had road rage Anchored hands jerked the wheel<br />
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perfectly ten and two.<br />
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tossed liked the hull and bow of a passenger liner <br />
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bowing to Poseidon<br />
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back and forth<br />
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back and forth<br />
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over the violent deep.<br />
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The sound of my own voice.<br />
Did I startle at this curdled cry, wet<br />
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as a baby.<br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-78130513343878727602017-08-05T22:51:00.000-07:002017-08-05T22:51:31.371-07:00UnspokenIt was quiet. No platitudes. No casseroles. No broken heart emoji laden tributes.<br /><div>
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unspoken. </div>
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I wonder who bought the dress that they put back on the shelf. On my flesh and bones it sat, briefly, tucked into my waist with a pair of bull nose clips. But it was magnificent, and I deserved to see me in it. I won't have the joy of kissing in it next month, but I like to imagine the day in store for it after being hemmed up to the height of the right girl. </div>
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No one died, but there's a part of me calling for the space and time to respect the fallen. And to be acknowledged within my grief and relief. I have both, and sometimes they bicker. </div>
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Where's the narratives to look at that feature women who try and fail. Someone needs to write a guidebook for the ones that got away or got away upon. </div>
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I am not lost, but I lost. </div>
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My ghost of a September wedding. For a bride-to-be that isn't to be, I'm left wondering what I can do with this time. I didn't realise before now that you could observe a countdown even when the vital components of ritual have been deconstructed. </div>
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I have almost lost to time the tactile memory of it, my ring, cold on my skin and nestled between the two low creases of that fourth finger. </div>
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-68674608885272570282017-07-21T02:14:00.000-07:002017-07-21T02:14:38.275-07:00Post Two Hundred and Thirty: Unspoken<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_EMiiZrJWS4/WXHF9e3fsYI/AAAAAAAABCA/37HFpeqIxowHh_tvvGJjdh55pgb3synYwCLcBGAs/s1600/fingerknit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_EMiiZrJWS4/WXHF9e3fsYI/AAAAAAAABCA/37HFpeqIxowHh_tvvGJjdh55pgb3synYwCLcBGAs/s1600/fingerknit.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I've had this word, unspoken, in my head for weeks. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Unspoken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I don't know what to do with it. I don't really know what it might want
from me. I've played with it, toyed with it as a concept and a tool, and I've
let it sit and steep like a tea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">unspoken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">But where do you start, and how do you stop, when you're polishing stories
like knives and forks and serving truths. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I cringe at the noise of social platforms. I cringe harder at the irony
of pointing it out when I contribute to the endlessly rising volume. Considered
things, talk and text that fit a smooth narrative. Things that speak of a
transparency, but through the lense of creation. Can something formed ever be
free of shape? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Here, I will speak to this, the picture says. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This is something that you can talk to me about, I say into the
screen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This is what I feel safe to share.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">unspoken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">There are things that I preference. That we preference. And this comes
at a cost to the issues that cause us discomfort. That cause me pain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I am slipping my fingers between the gaps in my thoughts and spreading
them open like the threads of a long, thin knitted scarf. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-67348964163638026882015-12-07T04:06:00.000-08:002015-12-07T04:13:10.819-08:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Nine: Pine and Vinyl <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lJARd-yVUiA/VmV0QESWJRI/AAAAAAAAA2I/fgAF0JDYUyc/s1600/tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lJARd-yVUiA/VmV0QESWJRI/AAAAAAAAA2I/fgAF0JDYUyc/s400/tree.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
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What fears aren't mine, but yours? <br />
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What have I carried for you, but have forgotten to put down? <br />
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I always had places in my home that I could hide in. <br />
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In the late 80's it was easy for me to scale over the edge of the wooden toy box and layer a menagerie of glow worms, cabbage patch kids, and carebears over and around me like an encoffined babe. <br />
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By the time that I was six, I had learned to seamlessly disappear from the watch of my sisters and parents and I made a home in the cypress pine tree in the backyard. A miniature door was constructed out of some scrap metal propped up against the far reaching tree branches and the side of the fence, and unbeknownst to the rest of the world that little door created a magic portal into a space of unyielding potential. My memories of others joining me in the tree are few, bar a handful of friends from kindergarten that complained of the itchy needles scratching their skin and my sister Deb, who was rapidly growing bored of my style of play being five years my senior. I suspect her absence in the tree house was also due to her being hyper aware of my proximity to her Ninja Turtle card collection which she protected with a matching strength of Poseidon over his Seas. <br />
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I'd carefully hung 'ornaments' made out of trash in the branches and intended for them to signify different levels of the cubby. Winding around the trunk in a circular fashion you could easily make your way up through each 'room' to the roof of the house and sit up there, undisturbed, to watch the clouds take the shapes of my Enid Blyton book characters. Eventually, I was banned from the tree because I was covered in scratches and itchy bites, which my parents put down to fleas from the birds that lived within my sanctuary. <br />
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My mothers closet soon became a place of wonder. I would gently slide open each drawer in her dresser, with it's wobbly plastic ornamental handles, and innocently sniff each silky nightie or pair of socks. Though laundered, they smelt of her. Often I'd find a block of Cadbury's hazelnut chocolate, with it's purple paper wrap, in the drawer that she thought I couldn't reach. I'd wonder why she didn't want to share with us, to keep this happiness to herself, but I'd never dare to break a row off in the belief that I'd never catch her out in a sneak again.<br />
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One particular item of treasure was a blue vinyl cosmetic case that mum hid behind the shoes on the floor of the wardrobe. It could be locked via the strap across the top of the case which clipped in to a close, however Mum never bothered with the key, much to my delight. Inside was a mix of old Avon cosmetics, pearl pink lipsticks with cracked lids that smelt of glycerine soap and blue eyeshadow pallets rarely given their opportunity to shimmer. But thrown into the mix of powders and primers were a few tattered photos from Mum's younger years, old Christmas bon-bon prizes which would fascinate for hours and some clip on earrings that I'd put on and then rip off thinking that they would somehow leave an evidential scar. I would spend what seemed like hours lifting each trinket out of the case, imagining it's life out of the closet, and then putting each one back carefully before clicking closed the clasp. Imagining what it would be like to be a woman was more challenging than imagining myself as a Diplodocus, and I'm not sure if all that time imagining, literally hiding in the closet under the skirts, prepared me for the realities of my born gender. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-34123792813569174662015-09-19T17:34:00.001-07:002015-09-19T18:18:11.501-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Eight: The Couch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R5EWTsPbMQU/Vf4JNNyNWgI/AAAAAAAAA1s/lgjpMVENK7g/s1600/sad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R5EWTsPbMQU/Vf4JNNyNWgI/AAAAAAAAA1s/lgjpMVENK7g/s320/sad.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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I expected that I'd be writing forever here, y'know, and then one day I just stopped. I'm not sure whether it was too uncomfortable or embarrassing, maybe I felt like an imposter in my own home, but I lost connection to the blog that was started so long ago under such different circumstances. It's like picking up a diary from school and following on without break in the ink. And I cringe, yet I yearn for a similar expressive space.<br />
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I don't miss the mortuary. I do, however, miss the sense of purpose the job provided. The reward was rich, and helping the dead made things more interesting than now. There was a strong sense of duty and an element of selflessness that seems lost in the wider business operations.<br />
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I am only now coming to realise that in losing my daily dedication, I have been in mourning. <br />
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People poo-poo dwelling in the past. I can understand why, but I figure that if you haven't quite nabbed why you're feeling a little lost, maybe the past isn't a bad place to visit so that you can wrap up the ends. <br />
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I like remembering where I was when I first started writing on the blog, even if the memories are tinged with sadness. <br />
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In the beginning I'd ride my girlfriend's bike home from work, take a shower and plonk on the couch with the laptop. Every day I'd rush to write an entry so that by the time she came home I'd have something to show her. When the relationship ended I painted a world that was unshaken, but it was far from the truth, and writing from other couches and with other people wracked me with guilt. The blog brought me other people, but never a sense of pride. <br />
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The years passed and naturally the entries stacked so as to follow days, but I've been writing from a distance, away from the couch.<br />
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I have been in mourning. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-64190940008407951202015-04-06T00:38:00.000-07:002015-04-06T00:40:20.256-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Seven: Lunette; Information for Smart Girls and Boys that know and care about Smart Girls. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fwG62__3Llc/VSIywVmdJpI/AAAAAAAAA0I/y1hKwk6kL1k/s1600/carrie.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fwG62__3Llc/VSIywVmdJpI/AAAAAAAAA0I/y1hKwk6kL1k/s1600/carrie.png" height="320" width="255" /></a></div>
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I wish I wrote this when I was sixteen. I'm thirty, and this is my own little reproductive revolution. <br />
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I bought a tiny cup, but it's also kind of a trophy. A clever little victory prize for the squadron of unhappy crampers. A gift that not only gives, but takes away. <br />
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Thinking back on some of the various discoveries in my life that have been game changing; things like the little arrow symbol on your car speedometer that shows which side the fuel tank is on, or the discovery that barbeque shapes are vegan and therefore obviously a perfectly acceptable breakfast food, buying a cup for my vagina has been pretty up there. *Takes bow. <br />
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And for all you peoples who are rollin' your eyes saying "Man, she's going to talk about periods again" then this article is not for you. Go home. Sit on your soggy pads, or live with the fact that as you ignore the leaking ladies around you, we are bleeding EVERY MONTH for decades, and if we know about it and your aversions, together in the same room, we'll purposely keep on bleedin' right up next to you. <br />
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If you're wondering what menstruation has to do with funeral practice, it has little relevance, other than the fact that I am awesome at both things. I am also trying to write more, and sometimes a girl leaks thoughts. <br />
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*Warning. This article has been written under the influence of luteinizing hormones. <br />
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The 'lunette' menstrual cup is made of medical grade silicone and it's only duty is to catch period blood, month after month, for as long as it lives. It'd house little humpty dumpty if he was small enough to hang around in my palm, or, as it nestles in situ, alarmingly undetectable in the crook of your nook.<br />
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I think I first read about menstrual cups in a health food store catalogue. The marketing was aimed at women who grind their own sage to rub into their sweaty pits and use the activities of the moon to decide whether or not to cook zucchini in the same pot as the squash. I was not keen on the idea of running around the toilet at a movie cinema during the previews, hiding a goblet of my own slosh under my cardigan until I could throw it down the sink. Would I just go and wash it on down the sink next to the girl on a break from the candy bar? And then what, did I just wipe the cup with a Kleenex and whack it back up? <br />
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It was only when a girlfriend of mine and I were talking about the joys of negotiating our periods and simultaneously attempting the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, with it's fancy all-white get up and forward rolls, that she brought up the topic of menstrual cups. She'd been using one for a while and I was blown away by her bravery and commitment to her clam. I had ALL of the questions. <br />
"And it isn't too big?" I asked.<br />
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"Does it spill, leaving you looking like the sole survivor of Carrie's prom?" <br />
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"And when it gets full, are you at risk around sharks?".<br />
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I am so dumb. <br />
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Off I went in search of some more information. I read a few great articles about regular women (girls who liked music and doritos and comfortable crotches) that wanted an alternative to forking out a wad of cash every month for something that we seemingly couldn't avoid purchasing. Some of the articles were about women with shitty cycles too, girls that struggled with pain and heavy bleeding and also girls with periods that sprung forth solely to ruin important events, for example walking down the aisle or sitting on an international flight for twenty hours, hunched over in follicular agony. <br />
<br />
<br />
With my homework done, the only sensible thing left to do was to buy one of these things and try it out. Aiding my enthusiasms, I'd also heard about the chemicals that many companies use to bleach tampons, and the cost (both financial and environmental) of organic tampons was kind of getting me down. I could make this cup work, if it worked. <br />
<br />
<br />
When I got to my local health grocer I must've looked kind of scared because a lady came to my aid almost immediately. There were two sizes, but I'd been pre-warned that the bigger of the two was generally only necessary for ladies who have given birth vaginally. Both my friend and the lady at the store had told me to trim the end of the tab at the base of the cup, as apparently it had a reputation for dangling and making things feel a little weird. She was right, and once I'd worked out how to insert the cup I couldn't feel a thing other than the 'release shoot of the blood balloon'. (My creative description, not the store persons, FYI). <br />
<br />
<br />
The first time was kind of weird, I won't lie. You have to fold the cup into a little 'c' shape and then after insertion, you have to make sure that the cup has opened out and created a seal. If it's in the right place, you're good to go. Literally, you can go. To jiu-jitsu, to countries where you can't find tampons smaller than a chiko roll, on tour with a band when you don't want to have to buy tampons with the dudes buying chiko rolls, on a massive bender (I always forget about my period if I've been drinking)....<br />
<br />
<br />
What I'm getting at is that you can reclaim a little bit more of your freedom. Learning about your body is a pretty rad side effect of using a cup. You know how much you menstruate and when you menstruate, and the coolest part is that once you buy a cup and learn how to use it, that part of the consumer process is done and dusted forever and even the word menstruate is less of a grandma thing to say. <br />
<br />
<br />
The march from Menarche to Menopause shouldn't be mocked but I always thought when I bled it was kind of mayhem. Once you can see what is going on, it's kind of a non-event, bar the cravings for oreos and somewhat violent fascination with arm bars the day before. You can leave a menstrual cup in doing it's thang for up to ten hours, so once it's in for the morning you literally don't have to think about it until you're getting ready for rest at night. What I thought that I knew about my body wasn't accurate. Shape, regularity, awesomeness, comings and goings, it has all been re-evaluated. This little tool cost me about $45, and in the twelve months that I've had it I would've otherwise spent at least $150 on tampons and liners. <br />
<br />
<br />
So that's that. Just like the forth or fifth day of your period, once you've made the switch from tampons to a cup, the pain of the whole process goes. I hope this helps you, or your girlfriend/wife, or your sister. I feel weird saying your mum, but hey, maybe it'll even help your mum. <br />
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Peace. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-57368538423695854842015-04-04T19:00:00.002-07:002015-04-04T19:06:51.244-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Six: We're Not Weird, Death and I. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ncloGZ69r-E/VSCKFPh6JPI/AAAAAAAAAzE/d60tYfg2TmI/s1600/blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ncloGZ69r-E/VSCKFPh6JPI/AAAAAAAAAzE/d60tYfg2TmI/s1600/blog.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
I saw my Aunty a few weeks ago at my Dad's sixtieth birthday party. She beckoned for me from the seat next to the esky, and when I reached her she said, tapping my hand like a wise elder, "You know though Sarah, you're weird. I read the things that you write on Facebook and it's all weird." <br />
<br />
I grabbed a drink and sat down*, feeling like shit. There's heaps of things that I could write about that I'd accept as a little left of field for public discourse, like poops that disappear down the bend without a trace or how Aliens might look at us while we're masturbating, but I don't ever write about that stuff. <br />
<br />
I write about Death, because I'm surrounded by it every day. <br />
<br />
When people say that I'm weird (and I've heard it often enough to develop a thickness of skin), I think that they're actually denying that what I do and thus what I tend to talk about is the only certain reality that is destined to all of us. <br />
<br />
Just sayin', there's nothing really all that weird about Death. <br />
<br />
On the contrary, the only weird thing about it is the wacky glasses that we put on to look at it, if we allow ourselves to take a peek at all. Those wacky glasses, the ones that turn a natural curiosity into an oft muttered 'morbid fascination'. The spectacles that frame the process of Death as 'mysterious', when really there are people in our midst *gasp* like Doctors, Aged Care Workers, Police and Death Care Professionals who choose to make a closer connection with the Reaper in an effort to undiddle some of the effects of his big do do's. Something is weird if it is unearthly, but how could the process of death and decomposition be anything but when choose to reverently plant our loved ones back into the Earth. <br />
<br />
Can you throw a kettle to the wall or boil it repeatedly without water in it's hull and expect it to still produce a cup of tea? Then why is it weird that after illness or injury, our mortal body will logically cease to function because a threshold of functional health has been reached? And why is it weird, that a person might want to be there and hold that persons hand, or even hold the hand of the person that's holding the hand, when they reach that inevitable point? <br />
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Death is not atypical. Death care is not deviant. <br />
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Denial is weirder. <br />
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*If I had the nimble intellect to reply, I would've told my Aunty that what was really weird was that she has never said hello to me without adding insult, and that I think this might be a family trait that stems from my beyond my childhood, feelings of which she should really release before she or I eventually die, too.<br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-53063539655398783152014-08-31T06:46:00.001-07:002014-08-31T06:52:51.537-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Four: Downfall of Paris <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l85AJvzJvGU/VAMmxMDhmLI/AAAAAAAAAyU/ZFfCLHXDRrg/s1600/dancing%2Bsarah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l85AJvzJvGU/VAMmxMDhmLI/AAAAAAAAAyU/ZFfCLHXDRrg/s1600/dancing%2Bsarah.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">When I was a young girl I was a dancer. Lots of girls
were (and still are) schlepped to dance lessons at a young age as a gender
defined rite of passage, yet the years that I spent ‘jump 2-3ing’ and
‘battering-up’ were largely bereft of any true cultural appreciation. I spent
fifteen years in pursuit of the hobby so I’ll expect you to go “shit, that’s a
while” before you discover how horrifically underwhelming my passion and focus
was the whole time. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">This isn’t to say that I didn’t want to be good. I did.
It’s just that I wanted be successful without any sacrifice or reason, in the
same way that I wanted to have the entire catalogue of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles cards but I resented the idea of having to build the collection from
scratch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It all started in my first year of primary school when,
one morning tea break, my very Irish friend Eibhlish was hopping around the
school oval. She had the concentration of a cub chasing a butterfly, repeatedly
lifting up her front leg, leaping out onto it and completing the move by bringing
her lifted hind foot in front of the grounded other, closing them tight, toe to
heel as if pulled by magnet. I asked her what she was doing, making her endless circles
around the patch of land that we had usually flicked marbles around on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“I’m doing my Jump 2-3’s” she said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“Your what?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I was alarmed that she knew how to do something that I’d
never seen before. She was usually very reserved and quiet, and such a bold
move from her to switch our game to something unchartered had made me instantly
suspicious. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“The circle at the start. Then I do skip 2-3’s.
Here, I’ll show you” Eibhlish said, as she took my hand and taught me my first
steps. From then on, all term, we’d take the same strides in close hemispheres.
We’d dance during all of the breaks and every day after school while we’d wait to
be picked up by my poor parents, whom must’ve eventually caved in to my pleadings
to begin classes at the same Irish dance school that Eibhlish visited every
Saturday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It turned out that Eibhlish quit taking dancing classes shortly
after my father was posted to another state with the Air Force, forcing us to leave
Perth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had formed a very close friendship,
but I started to realise that even from the age of nine, dancing was to
be something ongoing that I could hide behind. It was a part of my character as
much in childhood as young adulthood, and the music genuinely inspired and consoled
me, but it was still a performance act that other people enjoyed as much, if
not more, than me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I started properly competing in 1994 at the age of ten.
My older sister Deb would be bribed into curling my hair with ‘rags’, which entailed
strips of old bed sheets being wound into my sectioned and moussed mane. I was
made to sleep in them for two nights usually, and then they’d be yanked out on the
morning of the competition with a Shirley Temple inspired end result. To this
day, the smell of cheap cedel or Final Net hair spray gives birth to
butterflies in my stomach and more often than not, an oddly shiny eye. </span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span> </div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Progressing from the Beginner stages to Primary, Intermediate
and then Open divisions happened over the course of the next three or four
years. My family couldn’t afford the fancy costumes at first, but
somehow or other mum managed to hide the true total costs from dad and I never
went without something, even if it was the pre-loved fashions of the other
girls. It was seemingly always the richest kids with the glitteriest tiaras that
took home the big trophies, but I didn’t care all that much. My dancing kept me out
of the house and away from the ordinary, and instead of being swept up by house chores and
hormones I was being groomed as a reasonably respected little
entertainer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I got better and better at dancing, but I was certainly never
the best. At the same slow rate I grew closer and closer to adulthood, but I
was still a kid behind the ever-developing arsenal of fake tan, wigs and
diamantes. My dancing teachers were committed and generous, but at the same
time they could be brutal. Weekends were too often spent in championship ‘workshop’ conditions,
which meant that our feet bled, knees ached and muscles burned to the point of
spasm from hours upon hours of repetitive strain. Other girls came and went,
but for the majority of those years I was too afraid to rock the boat in case I
lost my distraction from what was going on at home or at school. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dancing stopped being an effective diversion some time
after my seventeenth birthday. I’d travelled interstate every year for at least
half a decade with my competitions and I’d travelled to Northern Ireland to
pursue my ‘dream’. I wanted it, and I eventually worked hard for it, but the
praise was peppered with guilt for being so expensive and causing ‘real world’ financial
issues with my folks. My schoolwork eventually suffered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My high school boyfriend was doing what high school boyfriends do best
and filling me with the confidence to run away and leave my stress behind. When
that intense relationship fell apart, my dancing did too. Bitterness* replaced joy and
the music eventually lost it’s draw. I went to practise once a week,
and then once a month, and then not at all. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Whenever I hear a tune that is remotely jiggable, I dance
it with my fingertips. Every irish dancer does this, I'd imagine. I get shitty with myself when I can't remember how each dance went, and the versions it took on as the trends changed. I kind of hope that one day some friendly
stranger asks me to hold their hand and do some Jump 2-3’s in a circle with them,
because that’s how a true Irishman or woman would probably react if they found
out that I knew how. </span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span> </div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #141823; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">*Read alcohol and party drugs </span></div>
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-22002412773001199482014-06-07T18:02:00.001-07:002014-06-07T18:02:26.698-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Three: Walls Don't Talk, I Do. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aVzR2rEVOos/U5Oz6LZNHgI/AAAAAAAAAxM/PUU65kT-sNg/s1600/rescuers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aVzR2rEVOos/U5Oz6LZNHgI/AAAAAAAAAxM/PUU65kT-sNg/s1600/rescuers.png" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
<br />
My mother and fathers marriage, although surviving multiple decades
before combustion, was of even greater volatility. I say this as if I was there from the start, but I was born long
after any fires of passion had turned to suspicion and contempt between them. <br />
<br />
They
lived through each day's task list just to get to the next, it
seemed, struggling against each other as if morbidly motivated by the decay of their intimate lives. I loved them
individually and more so with any glimpses of reciprocal joy that my
sisters and I could harvest from them, but after seeing them throw garden tools
at each other and speed away in the Fairlane clash after clash, I very quickly assumed
that marriage was not an effective constitution for the role
modelling of healthy interpersonal relationships. I knew that something was really off when we tried to take some friends to the movies in the City. I might've been about five years old. It was school holidays and my parents rallied up us three girls and our mates, which seems a difficult task in itself in retrospect and all fairness. We took the train from Wanneroo to Perth, but by the time we'd pulled away from the station Mum and Dad were casting vehement looks at each other from across the aisles. We blocked around to the cinemas and I think they got into a massive fight about what money they were using to pay our friends movie tickets with, so before we had a chance to grab our tickets Dad took off and Mum was sobbing uncontrollably, with seven kids staring at her, wide eyed. She tried to chase him down, pleading him to validate her argument, and we scrambled behind in tow all the way back onto the train and back to Wanneroo, without the social credit of seeing The Rescuers Down Under in the big smoke. My big sister kept asking me to shush every time I asked a question, but it was clear to me that I wasn't the only one wanting resolution. <br />
<br />
I didn't grow
up with any expectation that my parents would want to share their
lives with me after I reached an age in which I could fend for myself, perhaps because I sensed that the family dynamic was already strained beyond the powers of my intervention and thus destined to break apart before I got a chance to stitch anyone or anything back together. If the walls of our family home could talk they wouldn't yell, and if they had fingers they wouldn't point. The fear of the walls breaking apart and exposing our weaknesses was possibly the mortar holding my parents together all that time. Unsurprisingly, we had mixed reactions to their ultimate divorce, even if it took the GFC for them to find a reason to call it quits that lay outside of their own emotional deadlock. I felt relief, and not unlike a vulture I picked through the decomposition to find two unique parents in which to develop new individual relationship frameworks with. <br />
<br />
I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. Things happen in which we find reason, and sometimes this is in order to forgive. It's harder to talk about things close to home, and that gives reason enough to place a high importance on sharing them. <br />
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-76603005992983716082014-05-24T06:10:00.004-07:002014-05-24T06:10:54.673-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty Two: Seven Times, From First to Last. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oQMXqz9dhMk/U4CaAtmXtzI/AAAAAAAAAwk/LyrkTHbWltg/s1600/flower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oQMXqz9dhMk/U4CaAtmXtzI/AAAAAAAAAwk/LyrkTHbWltg/s1600/flower.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
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<br />
<br />
"Have you ever been in love?"<br />
<br />
"Oh yes." she replied. "Seven times, from first to last. And I can tell you, that unlike the tick of a clock nothing can be predicted in such affairs but the rapture and sorrow of your first and last kiss."<br />
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__________________________________________________________________________________<br />
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<br />
Dorothy was a spinster for some time. It says so on certificate, right in the spot that lists her occupation, pre-domestic coercion. I like to think that as her granddaughter we might now have indulged in conversations about romance, had she still been alive. She might've told me about the occasion in which two seperate suitors rode on horseback to her family property to escort her to the same dance. We might have discussed too, the impact of war on her young family, and of the tension of those days that lead into weeks that lead into years. Maybe I could've gained a greater perspective on life's commitments and regrets. I would beg to talk about each year, without any blanks, to congratulate her not just on her life as a wife and a mother, but on those experiences that she hid away from the limiting opinion of others. <br />
<br />
Through the instinctive eyes of a child, her marriage to my grandfather was like a perennial winter. On more than one occasion he showed up at my family home unannounced, some three and a half thousand kilometres away from her, having driven all the way from Melbourne to Perth on a whim. No one ever asked him why he felt the need to escape her, and only in retrospect can I imagine how she felt as he 'left for milk,' failing to return for a fortnight or more, and with empty hands raised in demand of roasted meal. <br />
<br />
~To be continued. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-55181927602829031402014-04-01T05:54:00.002-07:002014-04-01T05:54:47.188-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty One: The Ties That Bind. <div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-dr8vBvoJs/Uzqsp7RERDI/AAAAAAAAAvE/BO1u3T4BIMw/s1600/kink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-dr8vBvoJs/Uzqsp7RERDI/AAAAAAAAAvE/BO1u3T4BIMw/s1600/kink.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">I saw online that a close girlfriend of mine from school was due to be married.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">The next night I found myself in a Fetish Club watching two costumed women. They were fervidly circling a seated gentleman in a cyclone snare of knitting wool, and even though off-stage, their unique dramatic indulgences gained them a particularity that distinguished their act from the other kink around them. Their victim was yarn bound from shoulder to knee, nipples popping out like the corners of flattened milk carton spouts. I imagined cutting him free, watching his cocoon fray upon release into an erogenous pom pom. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">I was lost as spectator, suspended in wonderings of how a young man found himself publicly flogging his wife in stocks, or in another instance, how a man wearing a thong and a traditional Native Indian headdress first experimented, slinging his girlfriend up with rope ties from a roof hook. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">After the group dynamics of the more involved patrons were established, and probably after I realised that no-one was going to lay into me with a paddle without my consent, my own self inquiry emerged. I was comfortable there among the ladies in latex, and perhaps even more so among the men dressed as ladies in latex. This place of assumed disrepute seemed to be a place of unparalleled respect and honesty. It appeared to be a joint where partygoers could congregate to escape the repression of that which truly made them feel alive, and their bold and brave pursuit of self actualisation made me wish that mainstream culture could make room for such authentic confidence and adventure. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">It was the next morning that I saw online that my mate was getting married. I felt a surge of rejection, and even though I hadn't had much contact with her for many years I was confronted by the realisation that although once close, most of my friends had drifted away. I'd been noticing the special occasions of those that I once deemed dearest pass by not with my own involvement but with guilty mouse clicks through profile pictures and status changes. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">The internet makes it easy to be a voyeur into other people's lives and not active participants in them. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">Herein the self discovery lies, of rejecting the path of no resistance; the one in which we wake just to work, scrub our decaying teeth and repeat until death, save for the brief illusory pleasures of youth and conventional asylum. I don't want to rely on the security of established safety nets, even though I might mourn the natural extinction of them. I want to push back at my social networks to see who would really like to share with me the type of life that challenges and inspires. I'd like to see who'll play with me, maybe not with whips and ropes, but with an undertaking of honesty and courage and a commitment to having an endless collection of colourful stories to share. After all, life seems to be a delicate jig around pleasure and pain. </span><br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-70354333267521859132014-02-11T23:20:00.002-08:002014-02-11T23:20:50.971-08:00Post Two Hundred and Twenty: Riot. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Depression is such a dick. <br />
Here is a real story. <br />
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<u>Riot.</u> <br />
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I've heard it referred to as a black dog, but the depression that I know isn't like a pet. It's not something that I would breed pure and parade at a showground. I don't seek companionship with it. It isn't a beast outside of myself, mostly it just feels like I'm divided into vacillating healthy versus unhealthy hemispheres. I'm generally managing work and (minimal) social stuff, but running in the background like some sort of corrupted app is the volatile presence of feebly suppressed fear. Oh, and sadness. Much sadness. Super negative and sometimes violent self-talk results, and like a set of pop-up notifications they are super fucking tricky to disable. <br />
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It has helped that I sought help and received a diagnosis, and I am learning how to make triggers lesser...well, lesser triggers. <br />
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I miss how I used to be before I was depressed. I guess I hope that somehow knowing what a big old dark emotional pit looks and feels like will make me less of pretentious, privileged asshole. I don't know. Maybe the state of being depressed is a result of trying to make it in this unjust, unfair world where people are starving and others are wiping their shitty asses with wet wipes just because it makes their anus' smell less like their ego. <br />
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One benefit of wanting out is wanting change. The change part is good, because it's a way of giving energy out to issues and causes bigger than myself. Discrimination and social injustice; these matters actually matter more in the world outside of my head, and another by-product of feeling shit all the time is being able to see and help others that are actually being treated like shit. <br />
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And I don't really know how to end this blog. This is my attempt to be transparent, and maybe even make someone else feel more comfortable to do the same. <br />
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We're all fighting our own riots, right? <br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-55091641587633081802013-12-30T17:43:00.004-08:002013-12-30T17:43:45.297-08:00Post Two Hundred and Nineteen: Troglodytic is an Actual Word. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Troglodytic. It means that lonely, unfriended sack of shit feeling of self-unworth, or at least the preceived state of being sat in it. I'm in it, I can't get out of it, and I suppose that's how I found that ludicrous word to begin with. <br />
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I'm feebly resisting that end of year, calendar-imposed slip into self absorption, that brooding over what is tangibly done and dusted by December's close. It's hard to buck. What sticks out most, as I fight the urge for both good and bad, is that on this last day of this year, I feel small. <br />
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I don't want to fall victim to it. <br />
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I was at the gym a couple of months ago busting my ass. I don't consider myself particularly fit or sportsminded but I was genuinely enjoying the results of a routine workout. I was about ten minutes into my session and I noticed three gym members sitting on a weight bench in the corner, laughing at the active class. Laughing, I assumed, at me. <br />
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I went home distraught because I'd already been feeling like a stranger in other areas of my life and this sensitivity was processed in the dark, self-feeding mechanism of the depressive think tank. The more rejection I assumed, the more I would and continue to bury myself away in defense. The gym had been a way for me to connect with others and dare I say myself, in a healthy way. It was a place where physical and mental strength was fostered, and this was a motivation form that I could see benefit from.<br />
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After that evening and that particular episode my nervousness and sensitivity levels have run high. Even though I can reason with these feelings in general, a mini moment of sad can act as a trigger for all those other, big bullshit feels. I forgot a friends birthday and I wanted to disappear. I had a fight about a tomato on the bench and I wanted to disappear. No one called me, and I wanted to disappear. Someone called me, and I had nothing to say, and I wanted to disappear.<br />
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Here's to a stronger year, each little battle win or loss at a time. <br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-33033978523690752652013-12-18T02:35:00.003-08:002013-12-18T02:35:34.415-08:00Post Two Hundred and Eighteen: Blue. <br />
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Like an offering to the sea; yonder swept. Farther drifting, stalled afloat for a time unencumbered by all but the bulging, briny deep. <br />
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___________________________________________________<br />
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"Just do us a favour, O'Connor. Write something." <br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-79115156745380585202013-10-15T04:28:00.001-07:002013-10-15T04:35:13.070-07:00Post Two Hundred and Seventeen: Until Then. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Love. Love hard, and without hesitation. Love your way. Connect with love, because when everything else fails be it with your environment or your dollar bills or your mental and physical health or your material distractions, true and honest love will be the only thing that you will wish not to let fall from your fingers if you have just a minute left to live. <br />
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After five years of burying and cremating people, this is what I've gathered as my richest insight. I have substantial evidence that through the height of our grief for each dead or dying person, the legacy that one leaves behind seems to perpetuate the balance of pain and happiness for us left, for those still living. <br />
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Directing memorial events, washing, treating, suturing, dressing and coffining dead bodies, giving information and assistance to grieving people, driving hearses and body transport vehicles; these are tasks that the average funeral director may execute every day. Sadly though, a funeral directors role (or at least in Australia), is considered an unskilled labour. The salary is underwhelming, the hours can be unbearable, and the support systems hollow. <br />
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Now hear me in this. Funeral directors in Australia do what they do as a sacrifice, be it for good or for something else entirely. An individual collecting trolleys at the supermarket brings home $5 an hour more than the professional who might collect your grandma from her deathbed. The funeral director who will roll her gently with dignity and respect to tuck a sheet around her. Who places a rose on her chest as a gesture of appreciation before taking her into their care. Who will answer your calls in their own time at the gym, at the supermarket, at their child's birthday party, at the dinner table, on the toilet, while they are supposed to be getting sleep. The funeral director who will clean your grandmother's soiled body and rest her with care as if she is in fact their own family member and still an individual walking amongst us. And this is just the beginning of the relationship between funeral director, funeral commissioner and deceased person. With little care of sounding conceited, I sure as hell believe that the role of the funeral director is in fact one of immense skill and great dedication. I sure as hell believe that a funeral director should be respected as the professional that they could and should aspire to be.<br />
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There is always a but, and this blog entry cannot escape such extension. Not all funeral directors feel such motivation in their role. Some seem to not think about death, or loss, or love. They go through the motions, generally well. They wear the same suits and drive the same vehicles, but their disconnection to reality and the gravity of their role in the life and in the death of others seems to pass them by unawares. Perhaps this is why some aspects of traditional funeral custom are slowly changing due to consumer awareness and rejection, and thus the antiquated views of the stern male funeral director in tails and a top hat, smoking outside the chapel are slowly being shaken off. <br />
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I quit my job as a funeral director on Friday. <br />
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I have resigned from this career because my understanding of my potential as a funeral director has divorced from how the varying duties can be honestly and ethically executed within the current Australian death care system. It has been a difficult decision to step aside from my experience and a unique skill set. It is disappointing that I have to start from scratch, perhaps doing something that I am not as intrinsically excited and inspired by, because the basic conditions of the job have not allowed for my pursuit of self actualisation. I would stay in the job, but I cannot honestly do that without my basic needs being met. I need to grow, I need to be able to pay the bills and save up to pursue my goals, and I need to be able to rely upon the experience and dedication of other funeral directors who should by the very nature of the role share the same altruistic traits as myself. It is sad, and maybe I'm a giant wanker for expecting others to meet me up there, but I expect the highest standards of a business that makes money from such an unavoidable circumstance as death.<br />
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It's not there yet. When it is, I'll be back. <br />
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Until then, unless it kills me in the mean time,<br />
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Peace and love. <br />
S. Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-57365452911185980122013-10-07T05:53:00.000-07:002013-10-07T05:53:28.710-07:00Post Two Hundred and Sixteen: Shifter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kdkaaes4His/UlKumbGpctI/AAAAAAAAArU/ulmRRDpFoI0/s1600/death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kdkaaes4His/UlKumbGpctI/AAAAAAAAArU/ulmRRDpFoI0/s320/death.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I'm sitting on my bed with an animal hat on my head, eating peanut butter on toast for dinner. I'm nearly at my 29th birthday. The bread just fell out of my hands and on to my t-shirt, wet side down. I feel reluctant to move it. The woman and the little girl in me, sitting one in each other like a stack of chairs. I'm contemplating on age and sorrow like an antique in a new store. <br />
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I ask myself how much of my identity is based upon being a funeral director. Without my job, without my insider's upper hand on something different, what else might I be.<br />
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For five years my life has run alongside a track next to my professional duty. If I wasn't to continue in this career, who would I be? I still question death, this bastard, this cause of immense suffering, without answer. It's like shooting hoops alone at night, with no way of finding the balls that bounce off the hoop and into the shadows. <br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-65760347366084993702013-10-07T03:44:00.001-07:002013-10-07T03:44:38.435-07:00Post Two Hundred and Fifteen: Elephant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You said love. You said we made it, and you signed off with it. <br />
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But when you were in another country, another bed, another woman </div>
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I felt the closest to you. </div>
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It ate the food off of my plate. It lay between us and stole the blankets. </div>
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You said love twice, while the animal was out of the room. </div>
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You said love. You said we made it, and you signed off with it. <br />
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But when you were in another country, another bed, another woman </div>
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I felt the closest to you. </div>
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-40552954403442502032013-08-29T18:00:00.004-07:002013-08-29T18:00:59.754-07:00Post Two Hundred and Fourteen: Part Two - Roots<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Part Two: Roots. <br />
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Life was more shattered than I dare wish to push my breath to speak of. Normal daily decisions grew from being mere annoyances to overwhelming binds. I was driving to work one day and I considered wetting myself so that I could go use the embarrassment to go home and hide. I felt selfish, and I'd get angry at myself for my ignorance. Day after day I witnessed people in real pain, in excruciating grief, and yet there I was constricted and consumed with hurt because of a boy exercising his own free will. It wasn't until I considered crashing my car into a wall on the Monash Freeway that I knew I had hit a low point and I needed to change my projection. I fantasised about my own death in a similar way to how a little girl dreams about her wedding. I desired it when my cheeks were flushed with rage, even though I held fundamental issue with the covenant and conditions of execution. <br />
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I packed up my shit and moved from the tip that I lived in. The time was not without incredible stress but the action was healthy. In some ways I longed for friends to talk to or family to support me, but my avoidance coping mechanisms kicked in and I entertained the illusion that as soon as I parked my car back in Brisbane my troubles could be dumped in the southern state. <br />
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Herein lies the beginning of my legal fuck ups. I didn't pay a bunch of tolls, because the auto payment function on my e-toll device had been disabled due to a declined top up transaction. I continued using the toll roads because of time pressures at work, and I didn't follow up on it because I just wanted to get the hell out of Melbourne. Time passed. Fines accrued. Six months down the track and I'm facing some heavy penalties. Twenty one way trips can cost more than an overseas holiday. Take example and be a good citizen. <br />
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So why the avoidance? <br />
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Good question. Because of hurt. Because anything Melbourne related brought back feelings of anxiety, and I wanted to push it all away. Maybe because even something that could land me in jail got me out of where I was. <br />
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This made me consider what else I had avoided to my detriment. Like Alice into the hole, I fell further and further into my empirical experience. Major stressors, life long, appear to have been dealt with in a similar fashion. When I had my first period I didn't tell my mother, I just found the tools of the trade and got on with it. I parented myself through my teenage years and early twenties and I avoided anything that compounded my feelings of injustice for being required to do so. It may hurt my parents to hear it, but I did not feel that I could discuss problems with them. I assumed and considered my burdens with an existential awareness that they may not have been able to connect with me on. <br />
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In my early twenties I intermittently experimented with drugs with relatively little drive or reward. Very few people know of this time. I don't have much to say about my experiences as it's not very interesting, to be honest, other than how I have never addressed how close I came to using drugs as a way of self medicating and numbing issues of disconnection and depression. Being sober brings clarity if nothing else. <br />
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And here I am, examining my roots. If I have met you and have seemed distant or preoccupied or just fuzzy behind the eyes, it's because I have been preoccupied and fuzzy behind the eyes. I'm not an asshole or a ditz, if this is how I seemed. If I owe you fifty bucks and have never paid it, this is why. If I haven't returned an email, or a CD, or your love, this is why. <br />
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Being close to death isn't the cause for my feelings. Not being close with the living is. Roots are fortified with the strength of other trees. Luckily for me, I've started sharing. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-13438845815945546202013-08-28T06:55:00.002-07:002013-08-28T06:59:39.515-07:00Post Two Hundred and Thirteen: Part 1 - In Deep.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Part 1: I'm in deep. <br />
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My life events are starting to string together to create a weave of action and reaction. There's a natural ebbing and flow of connection and solitude, and in the last five years I've observed myself navigating a career change, five romances and five corresponding breaks to the heart, an interstate fling, two global adventures, and this here literary adventure.<br />
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I'm facing an erupting volcano. A situation that I'm going through today has been developing over the last six months due to a maladaptive avoidance coping style that I've since self identified. It's no secret that I had a rough 2012, but I didn't share the full extent of my issues other than the odd "A book this heavy should be closed in private" sort of analogy. It was very certainly the most challenging period of my life. <br />
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I told someone about my anxieties and a depression that I had faced during this time, of which I still succumb to occasionally. This companion said "You're not anxious. You're the happiest person that I know. A REAL anxious person does 'x,y,z'....". This stung to the core, as they didn't even pretend to consider the internal conflict that I had been facing at any point of the year before. My anxiety wears lipstick, hides knots under smoothed hairbands, speaks softly and with temperance, and unleashes like a high frequency whistle to a dog when the burden is too heavy. It also pushes strength to it's limits and faith for a clearer future, and blends it up into a smoothie of 'life on this planet hurts.' <br />
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Prospective funeral directors take note: if you're a nervous or anxious person generally, becoming a funeral director will give you a new found perspective on life and love and make you grow into a very aware and capable professional. On the other hand, the time pressures and responsibility specific situational factors involved can send you on a downward spiral if you fail to keep your life in balance. I took a little from column A and a lot from column B. I burned out in 2012, working too hard and too rigidly in a new city. <br />
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I drank too much, ate badly, wasted opportunities and constantly chased my next pay day. I felt lonely and restricted by finances, so instead of the bigger picture I kept focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. With one step forward and seemingly sixty five back, I didn't get anywhere but deeper and deeper into it. Into debt. Into desperation. Into illusion. <br />
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There was a point where things felt good. I met a gentleman that could seemingly take my blues away. He addressed my loneliness and my intellectual hunger and he literally took me away from my problems at work and at home. We spoke of travel (and did some), and then of marriage and children and a house full of light and love. Obviously, this didn't work out. He left for travel and never came home for reasons that neither of us can really understand. It was on, and then it was off, and my life was more shattered than I dare wish to push my breath to speak of. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-36980849704666198772013-07-16T06:28:00.004-07:002013-07-16T06:28:58.977-07:00Post Two Hundred and Twelve: The Organic. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This period in my life feels alien. <br />
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Some days I can't break out of my own thoughts and I'm all consumed in a battle to feel better. Stronger. More connected. Less stressed. Then there's other days, sometimes flowing in succession, in which I am a detached onlooker of my behaviours. This period of observation exposes how easy it can be to ruminate in resentment and dejection. <br />
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I'm arrogantly absorbed by these things, these feelings that have no relevance to how strong I am, how much stress I place onto or absorb from others, or how connected I am to the world around me.<br />
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I have more information about myself than I have ever had before. I'm 28. I know shit. At least shit about how I function best. And I know that I don't know even more about the actual world than how much I think I know. <br />
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It's another new good start. I want to learn and love and stay steady in the ebb and the flow of those two pulses. <br />
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This is not alien. This drive is as organic to life as the salt is to the surf. <br />
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-18883927518930379522013-07-01T07:32:00.000-07:002013-07-01T07:32:14.824-07:00Post Two Hundred and Eleven: Roll On. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A perfect* gentleman entered and exited my life, romantically speaking, and I'd probably let him do it all again.<br />
<br />
I was sure that I'd be able to record our days together, our quiet work nights in and our noisy weekends out. There was something intrinsically supportive born in the early days of our relationship that made me feel dynamic and inspired, and even though I was reluctant to settle into monogamy I felt so swiftly bewitched by his perspective. And those eyes. The way his hair sometimes fell across his face and called to my hand like a magnet. The exemplary steering wheel percussion. The Seinfeld Sessions. The.....fuck.......the almost everything.<br />
<br />
You know what the Rolling Stones say. You can't always get what you want.<br />
<br />
I wanted more than what I could have. Within reason, but without a basis in reality.<br />
<br />
In retrospect I can see that I wasted more time in being consumed with the fear of losing the relationship than I did in actually enjoying it. Circumstances changed but the contract couldn't. I was like a fat woman and a packet of twinkies; it was comforting but we were just no good for each other. That and twinkies can't actually sustain you.<br />
<br />
I cried like a fucking child for days because I guess we just don't go into these things thinking that they will fail. Especially at an age where people are having children, not acting like them.<br />
<br />
And unrequited love is just sad.<br />
<br />
I'm ok. I really hope he is. I also hope that he doesn't think that I want to eat him.<br />
<br />
Peace. x<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
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*Perfect, with discretional allowances. <br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-2563937178774104582013-06-12T05:02:00.001-07:002013-06-12T05:04:38.478-07:00Post Two Hundred and Ten: The Circle Game <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You and I. </div>
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We're in for a good time, not a long time. Lessons concentrated, tightened in a loop by sight of the start and the finish. </div>
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The truest love lies with the realist; he who holds an awareness and acceptance of our impermanence. </div>
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I'd wish me for you, and all of time, but all of time wants more from<br />
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you and I.Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325772553931953633.post-22736574551054925342013-06-11T01:38:00.001-07:002013-06-11T01:38:51.073-07:00Post Two Hundred and Nine: The Book.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm not asking for much. A simple black book. I don't even want a picture on the dust jacket.<br />
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For fucks sake. I don't even need a dust jacket.<br />
<br />
Let me write a book.<br />
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I'll put my best stories in there. The profound ones and the shocking ones and the nonsense ones and the ones that make you smile and the ones that make me cry.<br />
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I'm not asking for a lot of money. Just enough to pay my way, and enough to buy one of those fans without blades. Those things are so rad.<br />
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I want a book that I've published to hand to my mum.<br />
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I want a book that I've published to hand to my grade seven teacher.<br />
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I want a book that I've published to prop my feet up when I'm resting in my coffin.<br />
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Deal? (give me).<br />
<br />
S.<br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00575497683093382928noreply@blogger.com4