Post One Hundred and Ninety Nine: Raw

Sometimes thoughts kamikaze into consciousness. Today, enjoying a coffee and reading the paper,  my concentration was interrupted by the mindful realisation that I was indeed relaxed. Why my brain felt the need to say "Oi Sarah, you feel tranquilised" was curious in itself, thus manifesting in a ditched Courier Mail and a half an hour of me staring at the wall, cogs turning recklessly.

I'm on holidays, initiated by my relocation after the Molotov cocktail that was 2012. Most of the year was spent with my days dictated by work and the pressures of kicking it in a busy city. The job itself in Melbourne was not that difficult, yet I found myself feeling like a falling Alice. I observed people toying with logic. There were constant limitations. I felt like an outsider. I had a yearning to return home. There was an overriding theme of death, a sense of urgency and an obsession with time and self analysis as I woke up. There, back in the real world, half way through my soy latte.

 Being in direct contact with death for forty to seventy hours a week shapes you. It smooths your corners during the day; it softens your tone of voice and sharpens your focus. When families thanked me, I had the go-to phrase of "That's what I'm here for." In reality, that wasn't what I was there to do. I was there to arrange for the disposal of a body and to co-ordinate a memorial event. I took the rest on, because I thought I could.

A hangover of this dedication is the exhaustion that I'm facing now. As a twenty seven year old, I came home mentally depleted and could govern nothing more than a bath and half an episode of futurama. I wished for my time in Melbourne to be spent growing and learning, but instead I could feel my batteries wear like a torch left on in a drawer. In my private life I felt hypervigilant, perhaps due to my constant exposure to high stress situations. Being the one in control of arrangements I assumed a responsibility to alleviate heightened emotions. The more aware I was of this responsibility, the more sensitised I became to stresses outside of work. I was highly strung. I catastrophised, and this is potentially the root of many of the problems I faced in my personal life. It no doubt caused rifts between myself and others that I cared about, and explains why I felt like such an alien to my peers.

So these thoughts stole me away from my otherwise passive enjoyment of caffeine. I am glad for the deviation. I am glad that in knowing this, my year will take a different shape.

Peace
S.

Post One Hundred and Ninety Eight: Travel Light.

I've been reluctant to write, knowing that I've been ruminating over denouement, pensive and sober, my feet stuck in the drying mud.

Times like that; black, hungry times. The crushing ones, the ones that make you throw things and cry out. Should I have shared them? I could have given legs to my pathos and let you take them for a run.
Finding the words that match the way I feel, to colour mood with more dark than light, allowing others with minds that paint with words to see alike.

I enjoy the idea of words dying as time does. Of laying them out like corpses to say goodbye. Yet in shock and tragedy perhaps the close of such a heavy book is best done with a private funeral.

I'm moving. Come along and read with me. I'll blow air into a new balloon with words that float, born of the hunt.  


S.

Post One Hundred and Ninety Seven: Bad Girl Gone Good.

 

 

 

This term gets thrown around a bunch, but the last twelve months have been a f*cking rollercoaster. A portentous, rough and ungoverned amusement ride with the occasional reportable injury, lost child and zombie infection. Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

 

Rewind to New Years Eve, 2011. The one beyond last night, back before this years loops, the free falls and the corresponding bouts of vomit. I was new to the city. I had just started dating a pretty clever guy, so clever that he told me that under no circumstances was I to ever write about him. So I didn't and won't, apart from this, because the story is pretty entertaining. It's also pertinent to the general mise en scene of 2012.

 

We got ready to head out to a 70's themed party at some fancy Melbourne restuarant. I knew a couple of people attending, but the majority of the guests were strangers. Funny, smart folk who seemed to have their shit together. At this point in time not only did I not have my shit together, but I didn't even know where my shit was or if I was creating said shit from scratch.

 

I'm not proud to admit it but at that stage in my life I had no reservations about indulging in both legal and illegal intoxicants. My friends and family know this, but for some time I partied a little too hard and fast for a young woman with no 'issues' to pin the occasional substance use on. Not that everyone has a reason. I didn't. I was just young, bored and a maker of poor decisions. Never did I play with anything jabby. If there was fun to be had and mind states to be altered, I was smoking or snorting before anyone could find the lighter.

 

This was one of the very last times that I took a drug. It was a horrendous evening. 

 

Proceedings were lighthearted. Merriment was in the air, yet not even two hours later my brain exploded and I lost all ability to reason. To ring in the new year I was in a gutter alone, crying, because some hot french bird at the table mentioned that she was missing her Parisian friends. I missed my friends, more than anything. In Brisbane people were interested in who and why I was such an oddball, but these people and especially my date were nonpartisan to what I could offer. It was not me at my finest. In fact, this was me at my worst hour.

 

Needless to say, I was dumped pretty quickly for being ridiculous. I lost, and was lost. I started the journey from January 1st to clean up in body and mind.

 

After that there was a period that stank of melancholy and loneliness. I felt split down the middle; I could go from feeling strong and free to insecure and fragile in the time it takes to shut the doors of the cremator. I had very little human interaction outside of work, which I've decided is just not good for anybody.  I met the occasional fellow and had the occasional snog, but nothing was right and I lost all confidence in my ability to capture anyone's interest.

 

Baseball saved me from turning into a hermit. I ran around hitting shit and sliding in mud. It was a necessary outlet for the frustrations building from feeling forsaken. When you're in the game you're not in your head, and that for me was like a benzo. It was, and is, one of my favorite discoveries of 2012.

 

And then I felt good. I felt better than I had all year. And then it was July.

 

Oh, July. I fell in love thanks to this here blog.

 

The way I felt was like as if I'd never experienced live music, and suddenly a symphony orchestra was setting up their instruments in my loungeroom. I had to stop myself from saying that it was crazy, because it wasn't, and we damned well deserved each other. From the day we met I was devoted and all consumed. And then, just a couple of months down the track and after a phenomenal holiday filled with companionship and adoration, it fell apart with as much fire and gumption as when it begun.

 

December for me has been a time of very necessary scrutiny. From all the crazy business, the feelings of inaedquacy and rejection and deficit; I've brought that upon myself.  There is just no need for it. No need, and no room for it in my plan to meet others and shoot the shit.

 

I spent this New Years in a bath tub (clothed, in case you got excited) with two of my dearest friends, of whom I met through old mate that I was dating at the 70's party. I lost contact with all of the other people associated in that circle, due to my erratic behaviour no doubt, but these two girls have stuck by me through all of the drama. I've been late to countless dinner dates and so forth because being in the funeral industry sucks a fat and is very good at interrupting my personal life, but they are patient, kind, and wise beyond their years and I love them for their advice and excellent laughs.

 

And so that's that. You know me a little more now. Probably too much. And don't worry, this is the start of being an excellent decision maker. I'm open. To everything (apart from spliffs).

 

COME AT ME DAWG.    

 

 

 



Post One Hundred and Ninety Six: Here I Am.

I get it. Or as much as there is to be got on being miserable, I took as battle wound.

A constant, I wept as a widow does.

Like the obscene Vatican Fountain, my tears fell. For all who passed by to see, splashing down with intensity as if falling from a giant's cheek. Yet for what was spent in construction, and the toll was considerable, not a soul was fed by these tears. Nobody healed. My energy atrophied.

So I sat. And I thought. And there is only one way to go. And that is on with it.
To continue in being miserable is to ignore what I know and to thus miss the entire point of it all.

"Only by embracing all that you regret and not denying it, only by placing the highest value on what you've gained because of all that you have lost, does regret lose the ability to cripple you." 
- Augusten Burroughs. (He said this because he is awesome).

Dear Self: Change things and see what happens. As the days develop, so should you.

Peace.
S.

Post one Hundred and Ninety Five: To you, Highly Regarded Imaginary Offspring.

What would I tell my theoretical thirteen year old daughter about growing up and being a woman of influence and strength?

THIS:

My lady,

Your mother loves you. She thinks you're an excellent human being based on the fact that hopefully you've reached this level of maturity without setting other family members on fire.Your face also resembles hers or the person that she does/once love(d), so there's joy found in the nostalgia for her that takes away the horrific memories of labour and the subsequent occasional bladder control problems that she experiences to this day. She's sure you're brilliant. She's sure that you're her proudest accomplishment.

She feels that now is a perfect time to talk to you about your potential. You're at an age where not only can you influence your life, but you can take it and build a megalopolis. You can also run away (when at legal age) and build a teepee in the middle of the Mojave desert with a large exotic black man, if that is what you feel will enrich your days. If you don't mind her and her cats moving into either establishment with you when she's 80 and senile, then you're both winning.

At the time of your mother writing this you are not born, conceived or even possible. In fact, your mother is yet to find a partner that can handle her perspective, her past, and her slightly incongruent plans for the future. At this moment she is flying a flag of self-deprecation, but in an unorthdox way she feels that by writing to you now she is both making sense of her situation, bringing hope into her mindset, and being altogether quite hilarious.

Do what you want in love and in life, always. But do it with every awareness of the future and those that share the world around you. Be kind, be honest, be fair and be compassionate. This will help with that fact that life itself does not always manifest these characteristics. Do not care what other people think of you. Listen, always, because every bit of interaction will shed light on something. It may be bullshit but it's still a lesson, even if uncomfortable.

Do not strive for perfection. It is not even a goal. It's something created by a dickhead who didn't understand the concept of the middle path. Just be. Be you, and be admired by doing so.

Thirteen marks the beginning of a really rewarding time for self exploration. You are not a child anymore - hooray! Your body is doing really whack stuff, but rest assured that all of your friends are pretty much going through the same thing even though you'll more than likely be hairier than the rest of them. Don't worry, this year your mother will pay for ALL OF THE LASER. Your body is your vehicle for so many excellent things, not the be all and end all but a very interesting shell. Keep it safe and treasured, but forgive yourself when you bump it. It will take quite some time to understand and grow into. You are not alone, but you will soon understand that you can be very sufficiently.

She wants you to understand that when the time is right, you will have your heart taken by somebody. Well, it will feel that way, but in reality what you've done is given it over. Make your decisions based on the way they make you feel; you and they should be excited and inspired, and if so it will be the start of something tremendous. If your body doesn't respond to the way they look at you, and if that isn't corresponding to your intuition on their role, go and chat to your mother. Do not allow people to make you feel less than valued. If you've done something shit and fessed up, the right people will stand true and the others will fall away leaving you to do the right thing next time. At the end of it all, believe it or not your mum has experience in both being heartbroken and in breaking hearts. Love is good. This is all the insight that she holds on the matter right now, but it made/will make you and that is good, so YAY LOGIC.

Your childhood days are passed so let them go. You cannot change them. Your mother hopes that those days were filled with an appropriate mix of imagination and reality. Appropriate for you, and what you required to grow. She hopes that you weren't embarrassed by her crying every time you sung a song from the 90's in the right key and in the same style as the original and not the shitty remix. She hopes that you felt safe from threat in her care, no matter how universal.  Above all, she hopes that you know happiness and will have the confidence to fling it around to others.

Go! Be! Don't fear, ever! SHE GOT YO BACK.

Post One Hundred and Ninety Four: It's Not Like The Movies, It's A Documentary on Evolution.

I wrote about him as if the sky would fall before we did.

I've lamented his connection to my writing. To my guitar. To my passport. To my skin.

To lemon meringue pie.

Now to the repetitive morning heartbreak, like the uncomfortable backlash from a late night kebab. I wake up with a burning chest, sobering to remember that we've indeed fallen apart.  

____________________________

An elderly lady lost her husband of fifty two years and I drove her to his grave today. A simple, dignified service was planned as we lowered his body into the soil. She wept, we prayed, and then we headed home.

On the way we talked about many things. Tofurkey, lavender, trucks, Officeworks, The Age. Then we spoke about love.

"What's the secret to a happy union?" I asked, as I often do.

"Knowing what battles to fight, and what to walk away from."

Post One Hundred and Ninety Three: The Weather.

I have crucified you. I have stabbed you and hung you above the city for your action and belief. Instead of a tomb I have laid you out for the birds to make meaning from your insides.  

The first topic to come to tongue, you are the weather.
Swept through.
Your signature sweating with hurt. Heavy and hot.