Post Two Hundred and Nineteen: Troglodytic is an Actual Word.

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.

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.

I don't want to fall victim to it.

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.

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.

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.

Here's to a stronger year, each little battle win or loss at a time.

Post Two Hundred and Eighteen: Blue.

Like an offering to the sea; yonder swept. Farther drifting, stalled afloat for a time unencumbered by all but the bulging, briny deep.

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"Just do us a favour, O'Connor. Write something."

Post Two Hundred and Seventeen: Until Then.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

I quit my job as a funeral director on Friday.

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.

It's not there yet. When it is, I'll be back. 

Until then, unless it kills me in the mean time,

Peace and love.
S.

Post Two Hundred and Sixteen: Shifter

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.

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.

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.

Post Two Hundred and Fifteen: Elephant

You said love. You said we made it, and you signed off with it.

But when you were in another country, another bed, another woman 

 

I felt the closest to you.

 

It ate the food off of my plate. It lay between us and stole the blankets.

 

You said love twice, while the animal was out of the room.

 

You said love. You said we made it, and you signed off with it.

But when you were in another country, another bed, another woman 

 

I felt the closest to you.

Post Two Hundred and Fourteen: Part Two - Roots

Part Two: Roots.

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.

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.

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.

So why the avoidance?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.





  

Post Two Hundred and Thirteen: Part 1 - In Deep.

Part 1: I'm in deep.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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