blandwriting

[blandwriting]

Have you ever loved so lowly

I have thrice

Always my temper burns unholy

Communication breakdown

I feel violated but I violate volatile with ashes in my wake

For each love impure faltered I fall fallen

I am scorned for I scorn unholy

I am to blame

[blandwriting]

I've spent years fighting with myself, trying to figure out the binds that have tied my hands together making it impossible for me to craft the destiny and future that I've been unable to see, as those aforementioned hands that have been bound and unable to free my eyes from my mask.

I remember running hair a mess atop my sun beaten scalp sitting in a weed filled garden bed planting sunflower seeds picking prickles from my bare feet, Singing loudly on a swing set and seeing our large black family cat scaling 25 meters above me on the neighbours red brick building.

I had many of my cognitive milestones forged alone. Many moments I was developing my little brain, and the neural pathways that have formed my personality, survival instincts and a lot of my characteristics I exhibit today as an adult.

The thing about trauma is, when you dig deep down into the archives of your psyche you could metaphorically rummage through mental filing cabinets containing manilla folders of years or specific dates, adorned with polaroids of events with colour coded paper clips to pull out that one file thinking you have found the sole root cause to all of your afflictions... But you'll succumb to the mountain papers that slip off the top of high shelves and bury you deep inside the feelings of guilt and shame and sorrow.

It'd be naive of me to believe I know all of the answers to healing your inner child, to understanding why with such great complexity and needless exhaustion you can go through an entire lifetime and never get one fucking moment right.

It comes with no great surprise as to why I find it hard to maintain relationships, fit in with the "status quo", I've never really been a good liar or actor so I guess it's all in awash of understanding that perhaps in all I've endured as many do in their lives my constant need for validation and belonging has led me to those who will happily concede a wanting hand to help knowing how easily manipulated I can be.

Without the emotional complexity to have and understanding as to where my emotions are actually coming from.

But I'm learning.

And within all of a sudden moment I can feel my hands loosening from their captivity and I have just enough momentum to pull down the blinders just enough to focus on what and who I need to let go of to truly be free.

[blandwriting]

Every single human being has their own story, 

Some stories are told with eloquent execution and have a taste of affluence and opulence dusted across the crust of it, 

More palatable for success in a capitalist sense. 

Others have a dark and mysterious depth, rotten woody notes and rich with imperfection. 

Stained shag carpet and blood stained wall paper, the tangy scent of spoilt milk, the taste of the tin in their lukewarm soup. 

There are children who were classically trained in piano, violin, cello and there were the others who were trained in what the pitch of voices or the weight of footsteps approaching their bedrooms. 

The exact amount of air being pushed through the door frame and how quickly it’s slammed shut. 

Some lucky enough to be tone deaf given singing lessons, others acutely tuned to the laboured breath of their drunken care-givers and whether or not the sips of cigarette stained air are shortly spaced apart enough drawn in long enough to solicit a berating or beating. 

Some had never had lack, some never understood that there were children who weren’t dubious to dream for a deficit in funds. 

We all have stories. 

You’ll never have a more biased opinion of suffering than taking stock of your own coup, counting your own hens and their lay. 

It reticulates like the vertebrae on a cats back when you think about such quarrelsome affairs, 

Your own bias. 

After the days spills some are left hand and knee bent down cleaning up the mess of their own past, finding solace in sweetness and deafening silence, the embodiment of solidarity and seldom face the world with brave faced intention. 

I find myself sitting alone quite often, spitting into my own wounds. 

The darkness and depravity of such an act one far too shameful to share with others. 

No one has stuck around long enough to know the true grit that comprises these thin blue veins. 

An appetite within social class held in tightly bound lips hidden behind faux hilarity, after all if you laugh after you say something self deprecating and heinous you’ve done right by the lot of others. 

It’s far too uncomfortable for people to have an insight to your very core, the fibre of your being. 

Shameful of you to have a personhood or a distinguishing palate. 

A cog in an ever polite machine. 

To talk about matters of health and heart are only fine upon surface level, but when you get into the tangled deep depths of your makeup the distinguishing failures and falsehoods you’ve endured, people truly don’t give a flying fuck. 

Therefore it’s far more polite to say “I’ll be fine.” 

And smile than to say, 

“I will most likely hyper fixate on that one definitely avoidable conflict or imperfect moment I’ve had today in the shower then end up writing my name in the steam on the shower door and think of my last failed romance and talk to myself in an exasperated exhale.”

No one is interested in knowing you’re a mess. 

Even though you deeply are. 

Within each human moment, you are most likely completely self indulgent. It is after all human nature to be self indulgent.

You cannot tell me that there is another soul out there in existence at this very moment who know's why you have a scar on your hip or thigh? One who knows the feelings you had when you failed your first driving lesson, or passed?. Again it's all about perspective and perception. You and I writing this are no more interesting than one another. We are just two people, experiencing a human lifetime.

Whether or not we get to indulge in the ecstasy that life can truly bring is all up to our own perception of what is beneficial to happiness.

Personally, if you're at all interested; Find great indulgent pleasure from fine linen and a hot coffee wrapped in blankets on a rainy Sunday morning, preferably sharing lazy kisses with a person who I feel safe with. Of course this is just a fantasy, a human moment of weakness, of course, of course... one should not ruminate on such silly indulgences when reality bites hard, digging it's teeth right through your flesh down to your soft parts, I should respond I find great pleasure in working.... as a single woman in her early 30's I should find great pleasure in working.... working towards making money.... which of course is a resource that someone in my very own position should be more than pleased with. However money it comes and goes.... Just as most things in my short yet colourful life have done so.

It comes down to that born privilege thing, I often contemplate if I were born into affluence would I be more beautiful? more desirable? after all who wants someone who is a burden?. I'm more than happy to build a fortune and a castle for myself and I know I am a diligent dedicated and loyal worker. I can if I put my mind to it have more than enough for myself and my future. But sadly without any motivation I just do not foresee a viable future for myself, without obviously a reason to do so.

There is a certain vanity in how people choose their lives.

There is a dedication to set a standard and a facade for others to observe. Something in which I can be quite talented in seeing straight through, down to the gritty parts and it comes sometimes at a crude cost.

With all the best intentions, sometimes feeling into the heart of others isn't something that sits well on the stomach of some who are so hell bent on creating a false narrative of life, and they so much as feel a spare true sense of humanity that delves deeper than superficial bullshit they could barely stomach the sight of you.

it's your breeding after all.

[blandwriting]

There was a time I wish I never met them, 

Never felt their lips to mine or knew what it felt like to be told I was loved. 

It’s been so long since I’ve had that secondary warmth,

I’ve grown into myself like thistle, bramble, lantana. 

I’ve got these walls around me covered in the thick impenetrable vine I’ve tended and nourished. 

I’ve stepped through the world with a scowl stomping my anger into pavement trying to survive. 

There once were a time I wished I never were touched by another. 

Held closely with longing eyes. 

To be told I was something special, more than just my body but a soul. 

They pry deep with greedy fingers and scoop out the last precious sweetness left in my bleeding heart. 

I no longer feel that, I no longer have guilt, I no longer carry that disdain. 

I’m too grown for this, too tired for this. 

My light has been shut off for too long, 

I want to glow again, I’m not defined by the wrong love, the greedy love, the love that came with deception. 

I have decided to fill my own cup, 

I am beautiful enough for myself. 

I am warm enough for me. 

I am caring enough, maternal enough. 

I have a mother, I have a friend, I have the world at my feet, on a precipice. 

Endless choice, endless wilderness, endless endlessness. 

I am here to experience, 

So I no longer wish to have not felt, 

Not felt heartbreak, betrayal, the depths of imposter, the depths of depression. 

The bottom, 

The ashes. 

I pick myself up, I dust myself off, it doesn’t take one person, it takes a village. 

I have a depth of a thousand memories, 

The words of a thousand songs, 

The movement of a thousand dances. 

My heart is deep and dark and dry 

It is endless, it is beautiful. 

I am beautiful. I am not my mistakes, I am not my misfortunes. 

I am all I need to be and who I will be. 

Endlessly. 

Life it glistens, it shines, it’s the coldness, the warmth, the tears, the laughter. 

Without the loss there is no gain, 

Every equal has an equal, 

Every whole has its full, 

As above so below. 

I am growing; out of my own emptiness, out of my own darkness, 

Too large for my walls, 

Too deep for my seas, 

And so they swell, they expand they grow they ravish the coast lines of my boundaries and I allow them to wash me away. 

Renewal is more than an envisage of inspiration, it’s a shedding of your skin, the bold unknown. 

It might just kill you, but it’s damn well necessary to grow. 

I’ve felt alone for so long, so I say so long to that. 

Goodbye to the mis grievances, to the ordain, the ordinary me, a flightless bird that finds its wings, 

I will soar high above the clouds and dance among the stars I’ll kiss the dust of comets and tangle intangible with the milky way, 

I bow my head to the end; the endless. 

I curtsy to the fallen, 

With every stroke of the minute hand I count down to my very last moment, 

No longer wishing for the graceful hand of death; but the final curtain call of every ill fitting moment I’ve shrouded myself in: 

I am thankful I was loved, lost, hated. 

The world hasn’t met me yet, for I haven’t met myself. 

And I’m calling myself home.

Come home dear you, to me, to you. 

I love you, I truly, madly, deeply do. 

[blandwriting]

I’m Thirty years old, Moon’s ago I sat in quiet contemplation in a room not too dissimilar to one I have now, Alone just as the exact state I am now. Pedestal fan blowing draughty air onto my face as the air-conditioning hums above me, I feel a quiet contempt brewing inside of me, the only difference the face I see in the mirror is now in clear focus, aged sun beaten. My eyes framed with more lines than they once were ten years ago. I sit alone on a soft mattress surrounded by too many pillows to fill the needless void I’ve chosen for myself, by myself. See one thing I’m seeing clearly more in focus since the anxiety has been quietened since the loud screaming of insecurity and past trauma was tugging at my insides blowing hot breath into my diaphragm making me choke on thin air scented with soy candles and incense deeply woody with fir and cypress, Although I’ve been lead down many a path by holding onto the hands of others I’ve only ever made choices that effect myself. I’ve chosen to be lonely. 

When I was younger I had a blissful ignorance, I was angry at the world, and I wanted nothing more but to yell and scream at anyone that wronged me in the slightest. See everyone had wronged me. I was the victim, I had this godless complex that nothing I did was ever met with the same adoration or appreciation that I could give to others, All I wanted was to be someone, to be seen, liked, appraised. Little recognising that, that couldn’t simply ever be the case. I didn’t like myself, I had nothing to offer and I was so caustic, so combustable the minute anyone dared to stare too closely to my inferno they would be burned. I was burning myself alive. Charring every bridge I ever crossed and placing swords at every cross roads. 

They say you mellow out with age, but I believe you just become tired and too numbed out by the world and life’s successions you become so joyless nothing can make you burn like you ever did before. I was brazen, fearless and head strong. I never gave up, there was never a time in my life that I stood and contemplated the towel being thrown in. I danced with the devil and if I were to be burnt I was the inferno, all seven circles in Dante’s prophecy. How could you be in hell when you were already the walking embodiment of such torture. The pain I lived with for Thirty years, numbed now, I can see the path in which I were laid out in front of. I was never lost, I always knew which way to go just blindly followed where the arrow took me, but now I feel so lost. No map, No compass, No rope to cling to. I’m lost. I have no longer a fire and and greater understanding but now I’m so damn lost at where I am going and what I am doing. I’m alone. Familiar but completely different. This sensation is none other than feeling like being stuck in purgatory. I don’t know how i’ve sinned so badly to spend countless nights humming myself to sleep in an empty room, daydreaming about a belly full of child and a loving husband who adores me, and I them. Just to shrug it off with tear stained pillows completely bereaved for a life I’ve never had and know for certain I’ll never qualify for. Why am I so undeserving. My dare to dream, is one that hurts me, more-so than any physical earthly punishment. I dream of being held, healed, loved. But I know it can never be. If it’s all for the good of manifestation, I dream. I wish. I fawn. But the choices I’ve made have raised Excalibur's sword from the cursed stone and placed it over my neck waiting for the signal to end this forlorn misery I exist in. 

I was too young, full of fire to understand what future I wanted, because I burned with such intensity and with such quick succession I never realised, that the future I now dream to have is beyond my grasp and beyond my reach and one in which I will never now have to borrow.

It’s too late for me, so I sit here with my head hung in sorrow. 

cest la vie. 

[blandwriting]

I was four years old the day I decided I wanted to be a Hairdresser, I remember that day as clear as today. Mum was doing something maybe napping or cleaning in the small house we lived in in Hendra, I was playing out the front yard with my dog and I felt this pang of curiosity, Mum used to attend a hairsalon that was out the front along the row of shops that were facing the main road that the small ex-jockies quarters that was converted into a cottage for our land lords father. When she would go in I was with her as she was a single mother to me for 6 or so years, So naturally I was curious poking my head around the salon in child like boredom. I would go through the trollies and colour co ordinate all of the perming pins, putting red with red and white with white, I would colour co ordinate all of the rollers and neatly stack them into piles in the trollies I would even clean out dust and hair while Majella worked away on my mum’s mass amounts of hair. Majella had a bustling clientelle and she was so beautiful to me, She always had perfectly foiled hair in neat up do’s and her salon smelt of perm solution and colour, I’d sweep her floors and eat her biscuits, so obviously left to my own I would be automatically drawn to take my small Australian Silkie over the fence into her salon, I would say hello and choose colours for her clients and mum would angrily come in and yell at me for a. annoying Majella, and b. leaving the front yard, But I couldn’t help it. It was something inside of me that needed to be in that space, As I grew older I thought of many other professions I could have done, Forensic Scientist, Mortuary assistant but non other stood out to me more than Haidressing. Especially when I was always met with being told I was never going to amount to anything in my life. I was constantly met with dead ends and without any support I knew I had to take a leap of faith. I had a taste of the industry when I was 15 I enrolled into the school based traineeship that gave you an inside into the industry. When the enrolment fee came out I knew my parent’s couldn’t afford it and although I had found my work placement and finished my hours at the local hair salon, I knew my parent’s couldn’t afford to pay for the tuition needed for the books, Heart broken I relented and flunked out of highschool. With mounting pressure for me to get good grades but also be the perfect young lady and do the housework required and ensure my brothers were looked after I simply couldn’t help but fold and flunk out, I failed , the only things I passed were the studies I felt interested in, Not for any other reason than I made time for those subjects, I were never good at mathematics I think I was lost in year 3 when we started to do division and multiplication. I was never mathematically minded and always day dreaming and preferred to be reading a book getting lost in fantasy and pushing myself to read more advanced novels and more often than not I’d find myself in trouble for being disobediant. But still to this day I don’t think it were ever an obedience issue but more that I was getting lost in an education system designed to ensure all the children are the same exact carbon cut out as the last, and in theory it works for the 98 percent, after enough time but the 2 percent that need to be nurtured they fall betweeen the cracks, I feel as if there were potential deep inside of myself that no one ever cared to look for. I was only 15 when I made the choice to be disobedient to disturb my family against their wishes and to leave school, I used my money that was left for me by my great grandmother 1000 dollars, to put into my tuition fee’s to do a certificate 1 in hairdressing, I began that with great satisfaction, It allowed me time to do work outside of my home and complete to high regard, I was effortlessly making my way through my course without any complete abruption and I was highly recommended to work tea and tidy for a salon in the city. And so I went. The first dayI stepped into that space my stomach tied into knots, I was overwhelmed and excited dressed in all black with a scarf around my neck, and I worked, and worked, and worked, and was not met with an apprenticeship, so I finshed my course and sat defeated again I’d been denied and left unsupported, I felt like I was spiralling being yelled at to get a job daily and threatened to go back to school. I’ve always refused to go back to where I’ve come from, there is no part inside of my spirit that allows me to fall back. I move forward and never look behind myself. It was draining and difficult but I finally made myself a position within a company that would allow me to set up my future, ultimately at a huge cost. 

[blandwriting]

I seem to only be writing about the negative aspects of my childhood, I want to make it clear that, Within the shadows of my past there was also great light, Imagination and adventure. My mum would work tirelessly to supply myself and later my four brothers with a life that was as stress free and frivolous as possible. I remember falling asleep on my mum’s best friends lap while they sat around the kitchen table smoking Peter Jackson’s and Long Beach super milds, drinking coffee, I remember playing with the hair of my Aunties and my mum’s friends, playing the bongo drum’s on their heads and playing with their acrylic nails. I was so severely loved by the adults I was surrounded by, I felt peace and comfort falling asleep on my cat Jordan’s belly on the couch and sleeping with my dog’s paw in my hand, playing endlessly in the yard finding snails and flowers and digging around garden beds, singing on the swing set and riding my tricycle around smoking paper cigarettes pretending to drive. I remember the smell of the mint behind our landlords out house and the feeling of the grass beneath my feet after it was freshly mowed. Sitting beneath the Lilly Pilly tree planted for me in the front yard and feeding them to my dog. I remember sitting in Tony’s shop for hours watching him make signs and he giving me the offcuts of the stencil tape for me to stick anywhere I pleased around the property. I was so deeply adored. I have memories of visiting my great grandmother and she feeding us chocmint slice biscuits and reading our tea leaves, I remember her beautiful voice explaining her passion and love for Spain and how she would watch the Senorita’s dance with their beautiful dresses, she would tell me I needed to visit Barcelona one day. I still owe her that promise. I remember the husky voice of her husband Ron with his broad English accent asking for Margaret to bring out the smoked cod. I remember her beautifully maintained garden with a banana tree in the back. I remember the sound of the car tyres against a wet highway, sitting in the backseat watching the street lights zoom by during a storm holding onto a wind chime mum was gifted while acdc played loudly through the speakers. I remember eating at our favourite restaurant and reading the wind in the willow’s books in the car driving home after eating a full meal and deep fried icecream. I remember burning ants with a magnifying glass. I had so many wonderful moments I can still clearly picture as if I were still standing there this day. Through the lens of my younger self. I’m so grateful I have those memories. After all 30 years is a long time to make memories. And with a photographic mind like mine I still remember my first lucid dream where I had a life sized Barbie. I remember our cat Squizzy bringing in rats and mice and grasshoppers to me, I think he thought I was his kitten. I was surrounded by dogs and cats and chickens and ducks, brothers, my life was full and chaotic. Although I felt lonely, I was never alone and I was truly adored. I know for certain my mum did all she could and both of my parents were so so young. Some part of me feels guilty for sharing only the negative because truly there was magic, magic in me. I remember playing with ghosts, and the lady with the parasol at my grandma’s house. 

As I write this I lament, in all of my “great loves” no one ever held on long enough to know any of this about me, It is sad that I spent years of my life doting over those who didn’t even know my middle name. Which is Lee by the way, after my Aunty. It’s only now that I’m older and slightly a little less apologetic about being myself can I understand or try to comprehend the truly amazing life I’ve had. It’s insane. I believe in full hope that one day I will find that love. Someone that will know I write insufferable poetry on the way to work, the one that know’s that I’m a hopeless romantic deep in my heart. I know I will find that, because I want to know those things too. I cannot wait to meet that person. I have true blinding faith that I am ready to do so. 

We will go over the dating history later, I just felt it necessary to write that although life were difficult I still had so much support to still become as creative and magically as I want to be, and that were necessary for me to become the woman I am today. I love my mother so much. And I am so grateful my soul was here to be bound to hers. Always. 

[blandwriting]

Where were we, The house of horrors.... it was 2001 the time in which we lived in that space I remember because that was the house I saw the Twin Towers terrorist attack on 9/11. There are a few major world events that I can remember from my childhood but I definitely feel as if that day I had a veil lifted from my eyes, the world stood still.... I was 10 years old and that definitely changed my perspective, My family weren’t really globe trekking we never had family vacations we never even went camping as a family unit, Prior to making a best friend in year 6-7 I hadn’t spent a christmas holiday outside of the family home. We will disregard the Christmas day that I spent up at a Prison because my dad had landed himself in there and charmingly sent me a photograph from that day last year in a random stream of text messages... If you can’t tell we aren’t super close so that was jarring... Anyway back to the story. Living in that house we had neighbour kids my younger brothers would play with and I hung out with a 21 year old, she loved RnB and gave me all her name brand hand me down’s old supre clothes and we watched movies together I adored the time spent with her, She was admittedly a huge bong head and I’ll never forget the day she moved out I felt like the cool older sister I never had had just left me. I so enjoyed the hours I spent with her... I really crafted a major part in my interest in music and fashion... I love my mum but she was so overwhelmed with children and working that she never so much as put a face of make up on and she rarely had the time to brush her hair.... so I never really did a lot of recreation with her other than house duties and being yelled at. 

There are so many memories I have of my childhood particularly my bedroom being a mess and any disregard to actually clean, the amazing work of my aunties helping mum clean my bedroom for me and renovating it with new bedding, I remember another time my Aunty came over with a little box full to the brim of fancy soaps and my own grown up shampoo and conditioner a face cleanser and all sorts of makeup and cd’s. 

I was spoilt and also not all in the same vein so I don’t really understand how to feel, I think my consistent inconsistency now as an adult really plays into the way I grew up, wanting reward for my good deeds but also feeling too ungrateful to speak up for what I really want. I always found that no matter the situation I found be it I would spend an entire weekend cleaning the house for mum, which I still do to this day when I am up in Brisbane left alone for a few hours... for just some approval... which unsurpisingly is only met with expectation. I guess all I want is someone to praise me for the hard work I do put in and the efforts I do make, but I find myself at a loss for those very things. 

I’m assured my life hasn’t even begun yet and I’m only at the beginning but I see the people around me my school peers moving forward and making massive strides knowing goals, owning houses, starting families... and I’m only now understanding I’m not neuro-typical and I have some major issues.... that have altered and regressed my emotional development... 

You cant’ go through life wishing for everything to just pause for a moment..... 

[blandwriting]

precession..

Please forgive my lack of punctuation and grammar, it’s been a long time since I’ve sat in front of my laptop and just gone for a long type, let out my thoughts and feelings through the medium of my fingertips tapping at a keyboard, long have my hands been holding my Iphone which for lack of great disdain has autocorrect and the ability to check over any grammatical mistakes without me having to put in much thought or effort, I swear I did pass English I even made it into English extension in High school, But we will get to that later. 

I left off from the second Primary school I went to from grade 4- 6. We moved house from the cottage, there were some drama’s going on with the Landlord and his wife, the neighbours and with mum being pregnant with her third child at 26 it was time for an upgrade, The neighbours were with lack of a better expression strange, There was a man that mum had lovingly nicknamed “Agent Orange” I never understood what she meant until just this year when I asked her why she named him that and apparently he was an ex vet from Vietnam.... Oh mum, He had a balding head and what hair was left was grown out into a grey pony-tail, he was overweight and always wore maroon polo shirts the home he lived in was attached to the back of the hair salon there was a four foot tall chain link fence dividing our properties, he had a large shed filled with news papers and hoarding junk that was rat infested, as we lived in a large race horse area surrounded by horse stables and jockeys. The cottage we lived in was an ex jockey’s quarters converted into a cottage suited for our Landlords late father, I think don’t quote me but he died in that property... I could have made that part up.... but I think it adds to the imagery. Mum had planted a bougainvillea vine with bright fuchsia flowers to hide the unsightly hoarders shed. A.O didn’t like that the vine had grown up the side of the shed and was providing privacy to our bathroom, so it began a long and needless feud.. He had a wife who was a very thin pale woman with long dark hair down to the backs of her knee’s I’d only seen her very few times in my childhood as she was agoraphobic turns out she was a very wealthy woman and ended out having a mental break and married old mate who actually starved her to death and made it into a newspaper.

When my eldest younger brother was around 6 months old mum had put him down in a bouncer and was hanging out washing in the back and left the front door open to air out the house while she was doing some house chores, and the landlords wives poodle came running in and bit his face and drew blood, so that began the landlord feud.... 

So you can see how it was quite necessary to move houses, not only that I think the weatherboard frame and old glass shutter windows couldn’t support our then growing family. 

We moved and I was then reinstated to a new primary school, the house we lived in was a small brick home with decent sized back yard, it was one level and the kind of neighbourhood that people mostly kept to themselves. It backed onto a highway there was a large mound of dirt and tree’s dividing the property from the sound of the highway, however we lost a cat to the highway rest in peace Chevy. 

I made friends with a girl that lived across the road we would listen to Kylie Minogue together she was a kind girl and we both had a love for the Harry Potter books, which I couldn’t keep my nose out of, It was an escape for me I’d monitor my brothers in the bathtub and read my book while mum made dinner or was doing whatever homely duties were needed, Dad was mostly sleeping on the couch out with his friends or up to no good... this is the house we ended out getting raided in because my idiot father decided to grow MALE mary jane plants in the backyard which the council constantly mowed and up-kept so it wasn’t much of a surprise he was caught out and ultimately ratted out to the police.... idiot.... I’ll never forget when he tried to dry bud out in a microwave and hotboxed the house with the air conditioner on to keep the smell in and was laughing because he said “ OH SHE’S GOING TO BE HIGH” 

Champion... 

That house was filled with memories of playing on the playstation one my uncle gifted us with ripped games and unfortunately losing my friend across the road.... shortly after my mum’s mother moved back down from Mackay and bought a trailer and lived with us.

After being relentlessly bullied and being set up for petty theft of students wallets by one of the girls who constantly and endlessly harassed me we moved house yet again, and then mum moved my school, I started year 6-7 at my third and final primary school. 

Christmas time between year 5-6 we were kicked out of our house because the owners had decided they wanted to move back in mum just had three children and my second younger brother was only months old, we moved to a two story home this time with a huge backyard that went down on a massive incline, it was filled with gumtree’s and koala’s and possums we had two cats and a dog at this point. That house holds a lot of painful memories for me, some of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen or been through have happened in that house. When I still lived in that city I’d drive past that old house late at night and think of all the ghosts left behind, the innocence of childhood the pain those walls had felt.... 

to be continued. 

[blandwriting]

It's been a long pause, where have I been? Mostly procrastinating at knowing how to be a functioning adult. Despite my flaws, characteristically I'm still very much the same. Major Depressive Disorder, a term to prescribe me antidepressants at a low yet effective amount to keep my anxiety at bay. Effexor XR, Side effects include loss of appetite, drowsiness, blurred vision, fatigue, dry mouth, nausea, sweaty palms, leg tremors, insomnia; I guess the cure and the ailment are one in the same. I'm functioning now at a rate where I feel almost numb enough to feel sufficed by my less than mediocre existence. Thirty years old, greying hair and pubes, a long list of non established idea's that never got off the ground. Financial freedom.... We just reinstated a credit card due to the pandemic taking away our wage and making us less than satisfactory to pay for our fancy Meriton apartment in Mascot. Paces ahead but still trailing behind. I always find myself romanticising life.... Looking for the hidden posies in the mess. No wonder my outlook had degraded to catatonic self destructive seeking missile. I was hit by a car and rolled up onto the dash.... fell to the ground miraculously leaving unscathed only bruised and badly shaken... although the longing for greater injuries if not death was the only thing I could fixate on. Why was I so depressed... why was I so unnerved at my miraculous and somewhat outstanding ability to survive a car driving directly into my right leg without so much as even breaking a bone? I flew over the top of the bonnet and rolled down onto the wet and unforgiving bitumen with nothing more than a manic episode. It opened up a huge sinkhole.... the medication was the only thing stopping me from taking my own life. I cared for nothing. I've had a lot of sobering moments in my short by well worn life. But sitting across from my doctor with tear stained cheeks, quivering bottom lip and shaking hands, I'd spent the last three days just scream crying every moment I had left with my swelling thoughts of self harm and suicide. I simply no longer wished to live.... My doctor worried expression painted across her face sat there and listened to me, as my emotions heightened and I cried out that I was fine... everyone said I was fine... so if I'm fine then why do I no longer want to live... Something has to change... I'm exhausted.... I simply no longer wish to exist, I am meaningless and broken I'm discarded and used, People whom only benefit from myself keep me around I am not loved, I never had been unconditionally loved. She sat there mouth agape... "Krystal..." I looked up to her, With what I can only imagine would have been one of the most pained looks I've ever given another person... " You're not going to kill yourself are you?..." she said furrowing her brows at me with a downturned expression, I looked to the right with my lips pressed into a straight line, rubbing the edge of my thumb nails to the underside of my thumbs, swapping them back and forth, as I looked to my left avoiding eye contact but ruminating on how I felt... softly I let out " I don't know anymore". She reached her hand across the table and asked for my left arm as my right was rendered useless by the bruising. I handed her my hand, hers warm the warmest hand I've felt in a long time, " If you kill yourself Krystal I'll be very angry with you, It will hurt everyone you love, You make me laugh everytime you come in, there are so many other choices".

In that moment I looked at her, I knew I couldn't do it, I'd been held accountable. My heart swollen she wrote me a prescription and I'd left that office with a follow up appointment booked, before I walked out of her room I asked her for a hug, In that moment I felt loved, truly loved with an unbiased heart, She literally didn't have to at all, but I just so needed a hug without answers without question, I just needed that in that moment. To feel loved.

This is the thing, loved. A feeling every human being on the face of the planet longs for a feeling of complete and total acceptance. That is all I've ever been looking for, to feel accepted. I grew up in an unconventional yet familiar family story, My mother freshly 18 two weeks out of the legal boom gates, and my Father turned 22 an hour and fourteen minutes after I was born, It was the typical Australian 1991 period, Still heavily influenced by Christianity, My mum was placed in a separate wing from the other mothers who were Married or accounted for, She and dad were on-again off-again young lovers with a fiery relationship built on jealousy drama and pure attraction, I came into the world on a Monday, it was Mercury retrograde, need I say more. Mum didn't have a lot of money or a stable household at that time, she was living in-between homes, Momentarily we lived in the garage out the back of her mothers house, a red back spider infested ex photography studio and teenager hangout spot, They had a tumultuous relationship themselves, That's the difficulty with family scars, My father from memory lived in a share house with friends, he and his parent's also from a not so forgiving background, both of my parents were dragged up I wouldn't really say either had the golden childhood either of them really deserved, two seperate sides of two different coins, but both resulting in the universal fate of their meeting and my existence. It wasn't long and without shock before my parent's broke up. My dad wasn't ready for fatherhood, he was still drinking and fighting and doing whatever he wanted to do, and mum a young mother had taken on the role of responsibility with a bit more of a stiff upper lip, Rightfully so. He and she were again on and off again for the most of my formidable years, I remember my mum writing notes on a phone pad, back when corded phones were a thing and you were stuck in one place, She'd write his name with hearts and little doodles, I also remember her agonising cries when they'd broken up. It wasn't unusual for Mum to drop me at dad's and for he to leave me with his latest fling and I'd give them hell while he went out stalking down Mum wherever she was. I remember the arguments and my dad's alcohol induced rages towards mum. He showing up to our cottage at random hours banging on the doors and window's to be let in, I remember being dragged out of bed at 2-3-4 am to be placed in a cold Torana to drive around because he was in a violent frenzy smashing every valuable mum had collected on her very small wage she was earning working at a pub to support us, to give me all she could. He'd come in and ruin everything, our tables our chairs the television he'd smash her beds up throw the kitchen around smash the dining tables and chairs, a violent and unstoppable force, and then just like a hurricane he would dissipate and we would rebuild; I don't know how my mother did it, that man didn't even pay the child support he was owing, how do I know this as an adult I went into my centrelink history and saw all of the unpaid arrears.... funny that.

Due to my home life being so far from average or normal I really focused on my imagination, I was plagued with nightmares and an extreme amount of anxiety.... But we didn't really know or talk about mental health in children back then... So I just played with our cats and dogs, singing on the swing alone or annoying our Landlord who owned a sign writing shop out the front, I'd collect snails or grab my dog and escape to the hair salon out on the main road our cottage was behind. The creativity really appealed to me, it gave me an escape from an otherwise crippling existence even for a small child, I was so loved and my mum did everything she could to prove that so, but I just felt so conditional.... I think even as a small child below the age of five I knew that my mothers life would be different if I didn't exist... At school there were rumours around about my family so obviously the children were biased based upon their parents opinions even as early as preschool mum and I faced adversity... I was an outcast from a poor family going to a Lutheran preschool in an affluent area, my mum showing up in a Commodore to drop me off, young and beautiful, I found it difficult to make friends, although I had one best friend but she ended out going to the adjoining Primary school and I were to be moved to the state school three doors down from our cottage.

When I started at my primary school there was 27 students from year 1 to year 7, there were Three educators, Miss S was year 1 - 3, Mrs B was mathematics and science and the Principal Mr F educated year 4-7. I'd made some friends but I was a little off-beat and bossy and a real stickler for the rules so I was always telling on everyone, I wasn't overly athletic or smart, I was more interested in writing or talking or reading than really doing any actual school work. I remember vividly being in trouble for talking while we were doing maths which I still very much struggle with today.... But I ended out being put in time out and I sat there and thought I'd counted to a thousand... because I was entirely bored.... Miss S walked past and I told her " Miss S I counted to a thousand". She looked down at me and said " No you didn't, You silly girl you don't know how to... now be quiet". I'm still cut about that... Mole.

There were many times in those years I was subjected to questionable people and activities many in which I know for sure, No child of mine is ever having sleepovers at their friends houses.... and I mean it. I was socially under developed and preferred the company of adults to children... I didn't fit in with kids my age and the ones I was socialised with were little sicko's with weird parents...

Surprisingly my parent's got back together when I was around age 7 or 8... My dad was working overseas and for some reason mum and he decided to get married by this point my mum had my first younger brother and She and Dad got married...... even that day was a flop for my poor Mum... he ended out going on a four day drinking binge with his friends and mum was left to clean up the mess of the wedding after party and retire home alone. Romantic right?.... I love and adore each one of my four younger brothers and I am so thankful for their existence they’re all individually wonderful and loving and kind i just find it difficult to sometimes sit there and think about how different my mum’s life could have been... had none of us existed.... although I am grateful sometimes for existence I just wish that my dad had dealt with his demons and maybe had gotten some help, flash forward a few years and dad ended up in rehab for six weeks during that time he’d seen mental health professionals but nothing came from it... he just decided to not take his Zoloft because “he hates feeling happy” He for some reason needs aggression which for me is something I just cannot simply understand, now as an adult I recognise my parents have their own issues their own histories and past just as we all do, but it’s one of those things where when I was younger and learning about the world my perception wasn’t of that but only of a lack of unconditional love, now as an adult I’ll do upmost anything to prevent being like my father, so when offered the help I took it... there weren’t other options in that moment for me to be functioning... I just hope I made the right choice.

As a teenager I experienced the usual laziness,  my household was filled with children and crying and new borns the precession of another brother came closely after the first was born and mum was dealing with a “hyperactive” toddler and a newborn and myself now a pre-teen.... I’d moved school’s by this point but realistically speaking and I’ll cut it fairly short, I never really fit in with anyone or anything.... Without being academically gifted or Athletically gifted... my value wasn’t highly ranked... I spent most of my lunch breaks playing Chinese checkers in the library or reading books, I loved books and Encyclopedia’s, hyper-fixating on certain topics and being drawn to the mystics and paranormal.. I would spend hours pouring over pages within books my Aunties had gifted me for Birthday’s or Christmas’s. I feel like my time filled within that school was also darkened by my own inability to behave like a “normal person” I don’t know if at the age of ten I was acutely aware at all about my inability to fit in... all i know is getting choked out at lunch time and ran away from wasn’t the best...

I’ll continue the story later.

[blandwriting]

When I deleted every last photograph video memory from my phone I realised there wasn’t one last piece of you left to look back onto. All of those details are gone with the wind, but those people in those videos don’t exist anymore. I am not the same person I once were, it’s been a while since I have felt inspiration to write anything, let alone create sentiments out of scraps of information I now feel like I have fabricated. I forget how it feels to open myself up to another person, I don’t believe I am capable of doing so, was that time spent an oasis? A mirage of perfection for such a fleeting moment where I was fooled enough to believe I actually am loveable? Fore I know I am more likely am not. This doesn’t sadden me but further cements my cynicism deeply ingrained into my DNA after years of never being loved, I was a burden on my family, I’ve only ever had myself. So I lay in bed late at night holding a pillow closely to my body talking myself down from a metaphorical cliff edge saying hopelessly optimistic slogans to myself, finding comfort within this loneliness, contentment in my own skin, breathing words like “ it’s just you and me brain, for the rest of this god forsaken lifetime.” That’s fine, All I know is I will never break my own heart, I’ll never drain from my own cup, I’ll never cheat on myself. If my lifetime is spent as it is now, laying alone in a double bed, sighing into the darkness of my bedroom, I guess that’s a life lived best. This solitude is my solidarity with my own respect.

[blandwriting]

I’ve come accustomed to being let down but the pang in my chest still rings aloud in my ears.

There’s no relief.

[blandwriting]

Silent moments filled with prosecution and devoted negative mindsets creating deeply cut creases through the psyche of a insecure indolent woman,

Too bound by regrets and forgotten vocabulary that expresses those forget me knot bows tied to purple fingertips

How does one introduce themselves with confidence to a silent audience who have not a value on ones worth when one has none of themselves.

I digress self medicated forms of endearment spoken from inflamed gums forming unprecedented words of praise and self loathing, a contradiction of love and life’s regrets.

Who am I but a paradox

[blandwriting]

How could I ever love another

Dry lips drawn apart like two arrows pointed in opposing directions, shot into the distance teeth chattering at the thought of your aching distance from my reality.

Short breathing sighs drawn out in chambers made of ones own anguish, to say the soul has a mate my twin flame one could not have known.

If time heals all wounds then what’s the number that the last hand ticks still, when will the thoughts of your flesh bound to mine leave my mind and let me foresee the shadow of another drawn across the footing of my bed on sunday mornings?w

When will I let you go, for you have left me, I was never a number in a list a name upon your lips a scraping of a tree branch on your bedroom window as you lazily breathe the sweet skin of a sleeping woman warming the right side of your bed that I once laid.

How I wish I knew how it could feel to feel whole again, why do flashes of us holding hands while you were sleeping you kissing my shoulder your arms around me your eyes staring deeply into mine as if our work lives never existed.

Why do I have these visions as I’m walking down market street with tired eyes counting steps in the morning to my next cigarette.

I wish I couldn’t love you, always. I said forever and I meant forever but I wish I didn’t feel forever see the problem with forever is that it’s always and will never leave but you never promised that to me, so here I stand unrequited unmoving unable to clamber together confident words or clear vision enough to find someone else in this darkness because I’m terrified if I ask too many questions it will always come back to you,

You, I cannot stay angry. I cannot stay stagnant in hatred built upon my own barriers I just wish you knew back then the words to say and I could be holding you in my arms instead of a body heated pillow holding up my left leg.

I miss you

[blandwriting]

I’ve never felt captivatingly beautiful,

Striking nor sweet,

Below mediocre within every capacity of the meaning.

[blandwriting]

Healing

I sit on a train, staring out of a window in soft focus, I’m prying into myself reminiscing the face and touch of someone I no longer feel a connection with,

It’s surreal, the cavernous hole left in my chest is no longer there. No longer do I feel a dull thudding of a swollen heart rattling around my rib cage, no longer do I feel anger, nor is it emptiness.

I’m starting to feel whole again, I’m starting to try and figure out who I am, who is this person occupying this body, I’d been so focused on someone else that I’ve lost and forgotten who I was in the process of grieving.

A year ago I sat on a ferry, tears would swell in my eyes my heart was in physical pain, a ball of resentment bubbled inside my stomach, a desperation to have back someone who never really fitted, who never really wanted me.

Instead today I sit with poise and strength confidence, I need to figure out my passions, my interests, my individuality.

I can say with whole hearted confidence I’m over him, I’m over grieving, I’m healing.

And god doesn’t it feel good to have that smoke pulled from before your eyes and to have the veil pulled back and to be just, me.

[blandwriting]

Love is like a prick in your thumb,

No one else but yourself can feel it.