the beginning, the end, and everything in between.

i heard from him last week.

an unwanted and panic inducing event on a friday that had begun with missing the bus. it was earlier than i to the bus stop and i wasn't late. for the first time that week!

i couldn't breathe.

not a good look in my new job. i'm smart and together and professional there. not...the lingering vestages of who i once was. not the result of nervous shocks in someone recovering from ptsd. something he contributed to. by taking advantage of the fact that my decision making processes were so impaired to think not as bad as that other one meant a good thing.

anything he could have wanted to say to me would have meant somefuckingthing if he paused long enough to respect my parting wishes to (and i quote) never, under any circumstances, contact me again.

what that meant then as now, is that i know i deserve(d) better - especially from him - because i wised up, too late, to what he did. that he'd finally found the end of my good will. there's always that point with me and there's no coming back. not for him. not ever. i don't need his apology because i don't need or want him in my life. it's irrelevant. one day he may be sorry, maybe not. it doesn't matter. from that point forward it had nothing to do with me. no matter what he could have to say to me became irrelevant. how can interaction be relevant to people who don't exist to each other.

it's not.

but the worst thing. for me. is that i'm raw to it all over again. and i hate it. i hate that i'm having a perfectly sunday and i put on brian eno to help me sort my washing and i'm transported back to that time blissed out on some other sunday morning a lifetime away. but it was all a lie. it wasn't real to him. even after he left. even as he transmitted the words we can't be friends for now. no. if you do that. we can't be friends ever. that's your choice.

and i severed that part of myself and set about healing the void. on my own terms.

right up until the nadir, i had narrative in my life. even if i didn't like the way things were or ended up or turned out, things made sense. a so b so c. well, shit. that stopped. somewhere along the line. i had a thought this morning, earlier, that perhaps i feel less narrative in my life because i don't write about it anymore. not here, not on paper. i used to do both.

it got to a point where i stopped. i couldn't put pen to paper because nothing made sense. i had no way of processing what i was feeling. it was too hard. so i made things. endlessly. i make things. endlessly. one craft project blends into another.

they start to feel good again.

VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

via i fuck and i vote

Oh hi.

I'm still here.

Busy, but here. In between moving house (no interwebs: I DIE), looking for a new job and a whole bunch o stuff this place has been neglected.

BUT LOOK AT THIS BUBBA DEER!

(via daily squee)

An open letter to Andrew Darby

It was with a feeling of pride in the calibre of Australian scientists, and in particular our fearless women scientists, that I began to read your article in today’s Age. Though slightly condescending in tone, I felt that the headline What’s a nice girl like you doing with a Nobel Prize embraced the antiquated and, what ought to be decades old, attitude towards successful career women and women in non-traditional fields.

Dr Blackburn’s career has been highly successful and she (quite rightly) has won prizes that acknowledge the quality and importance of her work. And now, a Nobel.

Our country’s first female Nobel Laureate.

I read your article with some interest and cheered her success.

Until you capped off her life’s achievements with Dr Blackburn is married to biochemist John Sedat, and they have a son, Benjamin.

May I ask how this is relevant in any way, shape or form to her career? Or was it just that you felt you needed to tell the world that she is actually a real (read non-threatening) woman because she has a family? May I ask whether you would have included this snippet of personal information has she been male? I say you wouldn’t. Articles on our previous Nobel Laureates don’t mention that they have families.

And neither should they.

It is articles like yours about our successful women that patronise us and send messages that a woman’s true worth lies in her ability to mate and breed. We can win Nobel Prizes and yet the parting message about us is that we are not freaks, that we still tend to husband and hearth and children.

Your article is no better than a tabloid article about an A-list actress that says she’s a box-office success in passing and spends the rest of the time talking about her broken marriage.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

untitled 278

The world whirls past. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

Right now, time stands still for me.

My feet are stuck to the floor. It's not the floor's fault, I've lost the muscle memory that allows movement.

My legs petrified as the dark and crusted emptiness inside.


*******************

Things are not so bad. I knit, I read, I make. I love my friends and I want to tell them the real answers when they ask. But I know those answers aren't real. They just feel that way. The real answer is that my life is good. I have people who I love and who love me back. I sleep nightly with a much loved furry being who is more family than most of the human kin. I work. I play. And on occasion, I fuck and I'm good at it. (so I am told. A shallow vanity that pleases me.) I remind myself that life is good, that I have what I can have and there is no use allowing the rest to eat me up from the inside.

Things other people like

In this life there are things that other people like and you do not.

I'm not talking about the rough and tumble some people like this and some people don't. I'm talking about things that, when you mention your dislike people stare at you like you are from another planet and invariably tell you the you are wrong and "if only you had it the way I cook it/explain it/etc." that you would see the light and be enveloped in the rightness, the way things must be.

Here are a few of my things

• avocado
• tomato juice and consequently bloody maries
• tarantino movies
• oysters
• The Red Hot cunting Chilli Peppers.

warning: emo post

For the first time in about 6 months I woke up this morning with tears running down my face. For a while there it was just about every morning. So that's progress. And I've come off the medication since then, too.

I have felt it coming on for a few days.

I think I know the reason for it too. I've had a number of conversations in the past week where people close to me have talked about finding me a boyfriend. And you know what? I just can't put myself through that. I've worked extremely hard at regaining equilibrium and I am not going to chuck that out the window. And no, it's not "the type of men" I have been involved with (in general), it's me.

You see, I am not good in relationships. If I am myself I end up depressed. If I behave in such a way that I don't end up depressed, I wind up despising him. So it's best for me to stay unattached.

Which is something that eats away at me as I want, very, very much, to have children. And as I am soon to turn 35 I have to accept that this will not happen. It's something to keep locked the trunk at the back of my head where I keep the things that never stop hurting but I have to just ignore whilst I get on with my life. A trunk that's been rattling this week.

The end.