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self care and other unavoidable annoyances

I get a bit annoyed at the suggestion of ‘self care’. For some reason, it just makes me think of overly indulgent people who see themselves as better and more delicate than others, and feel the need to handle themselves with kid gloves in order to be able to face the world. Okay if you’ve got the time and means by which to do that, but it isn’t always the case.

It was a nightmare few weeks, and one of those times where you just go, and go, and go, and somehow your mind and body just manages. Now the dust has settled and things feel much brighter in general, but for some reason, my system has decided that it’s now time to give up. I felt genuinely ill all weekend; my back ached no matter how I sat or lay, I was queasy and didn’t want to eat, but not eating made it worse, I had a headache on and off, and was overwhelmingly tired. I had plans of doing something fun, but they were rapidly jettisoned due to spending a large proportion of both afternoons asleep, which isn’t something I usually do. I guess my system decided to take a couple of self care days, whether I liked it or not. Would I have been able to avoid it had I been less mercenary with myself prior? Perhaps, perhaps not. I was under so much stress, it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I might also have genuinely been ill, after all, there have been a few listeria outbreaks recently. Anyhow, it was frustrating, given my good intentions and the fact that I’ve been pretty well in general lately. I had hoped to spend this more positive weekend doing more upbeat things, but was basically an exhausted hermit. 

It’s Monday night now, a surprisingly cold evening, but to be expected given that the equinox has ticked over. I kind of like this time of year, when things feel fresh and cold and nostalgic. Thanks to some complications at work, I’ll be typing until probably ten or eleven tonight, but that doesn’t faze me too much. I guess I’m just content to be feeling normal again, and not in need of any more ‘self-care’. I guess it’s that calm after the storm, but I feel weirdly grateful - for my family’s health, for life in a first world country, for a warm hoodie on a cold night, for a bar of chocolate, for good music and games, for money in the bank, for friends who send me weird memes. I’m glad I had the opportunity to crash for a bit, so now I can continue.

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It’s tempting to say life sucks, but it doesn’t. Illness sucks. Loss sucks. Pain sucks. And all of this sucks because it takes away from life, which is the most beautiful thing of all, yet they’re all entangled irreversibly.

I’m in that kind of emotional pain that feels genuinely physical, and every noise and other stimulus sets off a mini panic response. In times like these, I find myself trying to limit how much I move, as if I can somehow will time to stop. 

I try to stay hopeful, and at its core there’s almost an anger to it. No matter how pessimistic things around me want to be, I stay aggressively optimistic. I cleaned the bathroom this morning blasting System of a Down and scrubbed and dusted until I was out of breath and red in the face. But reality can bite hard sometimes, and as a quiet evening settles, bite it does. I’ve got very little hope left in me anymore, because I believe in numbers and statistics and scientists, not willpower and visualisation, although I do surrender to this in my darkest moments, and it’s transportingly good. 

A few months ago, things got Real Bad. Strange symptoms happened. Fear reigned. Ambulances had to be called in the middle of the night. I panicked a lot, I cried a lot, I hated the world, and it further confirmed that you’re never ready to let go. No matter how many years go by, it will never get easier. 

Once again, things are rapidly getting Real Bad. Except with each time it happens, it’s just a bit graver than the last time, and each recovery is just that bit slower or weaker. And that’s why I feel myself becoming more and more of an empty shell, because I’m too scared to hope anymore. 

What’s also bad is that, as is with the case of long term or chronic illness, is that I’m too scared to mention it to my friends. I have a small group of wonderful, supportive friends who I can discuss anything with, and they’ve been there for me so many times, but it’s gotten to the stage where I feel like I’m just attention seeking when I say what’s wrong, so I stay quiet. But it’s eating at me as it sits inside me alone, and I want so badly to just talk. 

I don’t know what the time ahead will bring, no one does. I’m almost scared to write about it, as if it has the power to change the outcome, as if any glimmer of hope within me invites the universe to crush it again. I feel like everything in life that is good is gradually being taken from me and I’m powerless to get it back, and that my deepest, strongest personality trait - the inherent joy that everything eventually will all be okay - is crumbling by the day. It also has me thinking of how insignificant we all are in this huge universe. I’m massively against suicide, I always have been, and after experiencing the death of someone reasonably close because of it, I’m even more so. However, my thoughts drift to the impact that would occur if I chose to carry it out. A handful of people would be devastated, just the immediate family, and some close friends, and maybe some extended family who are kind or empathetic. But I’m unmarried, and childless, and ultimately don’t matter. Even those who would mourn are just transient beings also, and before long pass into nothingness. 

There is so much else I could say, but I’m scared to put it down because it gets too black, or too poignant, and just makes the tears come back. Basically, I’m just having a ridiculously shit night, and for good reason, and there’s nothing I can do and no one who can hold the planets of my little universe steady enough so that they don’t spiral out of control. I don’t know what to do anymore.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

Work kinda sucked today. It’s not often that I have to transcribe interviews related to homicides, but when I do, there’s very little of the morbid fascination one gets from watching or reading crime drama. Instead, there’s repulsion, confusion, and a whole lot of pure anger that a human being can do something so vile to another human being. I can’t really discuss the details with people, because that’s obviously a breach of policy, but I might mention to the folks over dinner the basic essence of what was so shit. There’s often a murmur of “imagine how the police feel” and “I could never handle it”.

It links to something else that, perhaps unsurprisingly, is floating about my head at the moment. When do you know that something is the right decision, versus it being just giving up? 

Recently, I’ve quit two things that shaped my identity, perhaps more in an external sense than an internal sense, especially towards the end. I stopped dancing and I stopped studying, at least formally. I don’t regret quitting dancing, not in the form that I was in. Competitions are a young girl’s sport, and Lord knows, I’m not a young girl anymore. I’m not willing to dedicate myself so narrow-mindedly to a sport that can be toxic and detrimental. Dance, as an art form, isn’t something so restricted as that, and I plan to come back to it once money and circumstances realign in such a way as I can enjoy it for movement, artistry and expression. 

Quitting study does not seem so cut and dried in my head yet. I’m still swinging between feeling elated and free, and crushed that I’ve fucked it all up. I’m also a little disappointed in myself, and getting a sneaking suspicion that I’m just not good at this whole life thing. 

It goes without saying that, beyond everything else, I had to leave postgraduate study because of my mental health, and because of who I am. Where those are linked, I’m still not quite sure. Even on my sharpest days, I’m still not a particularly forward person, and a certain amount of that is useful in academia. On my not-so-good days, I can be a downright hermit, and that cost productivity over the long term. 

The past few days have been 

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Black dog or grumpy cat?

To say I woke up with a bit of an off mood is an understatement. The alarm went at 7, so not exactly early, and to be honest I wasn’t tired in body. I just couldn’t get out of bed. It’s sometimes termed being bitten by the black dog. I guess some days feel like a nip you get when roughhousing, but today was more like he snuck up, launched himself, pinned me down and bit into my throat. 

It’s not the strong thing to do, or the well-published thing to do, but I ended up staying put, for a whole hour, laying still and letting the tears come. It turned out to be the best thing. 

This isn’t depression. This is simply being upset. I had a singular and legitimate reason to be negative this morning, stemming from the scheduled introductory visit of a palliative nurse. 

The word sends waves of sickness and fear through most people, understandably so, since anything in relation to the end of life is frightening. Nevertheless, it’s also fraught with misconception. Palliative does not, in itself, mean “I’m here because you’re about to die”. It means “I’m here because you’re dealing with something incurable and difficult, and I’m going to help you make the most of each day.” Palliative nurses aren’t the faceless entities who inject suspicious looking drugs into ancient, shrivelled veins. They’re highly qualified, deeply insightful individuals who help out in difficult times, from tiny newborns struggling with defects to weakened giants dealing with chronic disease. 

Exactly as I let the fear and pain wash over, I also let the facts wash over in the minutes to follow. I realised, with an internal shake of the head, that it’s counter productive and a tad stupid to label every single bad mood as ‘depression’, which only means you stigmatise yourself more, and paint yourself as something you’re not. Despite the increasing openness about mental health, there is still an unfortunate tendency to desire a constantly positive mood in life, something which is delusional and impossible. I guess it links well with the self-entitled, indulgent aspect of the millenial personality. 

All in all, I was out of action for a little more than an hour, thankfully my schedule today was flexible enough to allow it. I got up and got started on the day, and now I feel fine, great in fact. Despite all the thinking I do about brains and emotions, I still don’t have all my answers, and probably never will. This week is only two days in and I’ve already learnt two things, however: firstly, that I can deal with a bad mood that comes up for no reason, and secondly, I can accept one that exists for a legitimate reason. 

It does make me wonder about the potential flaws of our generation’s approach to mental health. Very little is actually said about handling genuine, externally-influenced negativity. I suppose it is de-prioritised since people struggling with genuine depression are so hopeless since it comes from themselves, but I think some young people can also fall into the trap of thinking that clinical depression-oriented literature encompasses their own feelings when it kind of doesn’t. I do wonder if in fact the opposite result can occur when certain methods are misused; the increasingly popular term ‘taking a mental health day’ for example. If you’re so incapacitated by a low mood that comes from an imbalance within, you’re going to be taking a mental health day whether you like it or not, because you’re basically a walking zombie. Self care isn’t going to feel like it, it’s just going to feel as shit as the rest of existence. Watching a film or reading a book isn’t going to do jack either. 

On the other hand, if you’re genuinely battling because something in your life is crappy, wrapping yourself up in cotton wool isn’t always the way to go. Sounds hypocritical given I did spend an hour this morning doing exactly that, but bear with me. One of the key emotions when life is out of kilter is the feeling of helplessness. You feel lost, destabilised, and you want to grab on to something to pull you out of the choppy waves. When I’m having a really bad day, my own behaviour reminds me of a particularly clingy, poor-tempered kitten who just wants to curl up somewhere safe and not be of any use to anyone. As silly as that simile sounds, it can genuinely upset me because it reinforces the feeling of uselessness. The best remedy is to feel worthwhile and capable again, and that certainly doesn’t come from taking a scented bath or spending the afternoon lying in a photogenic corner of the garden (by all means do that, when you have the time though). 

That being said, a bit of brain storming this morning, and probably a bit of a cry, did me a world of good. Today isn’t the day to be a kitten crying on her owner’s collar. Today’s the day to be a strong, content, sassy cat, strutting its stuff along the street.

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Climbing out of the pit

It’s amazing how living with an occasionally depression-prone brain can sometimes feel like being at the mercy of another entity altogether. Despite the topsy-turviness of the past few months, I’ve been feeling pretty decent. I’m busy enough, and I suppose resilient enough, to not let bad moods get hold of me like I might have one or two years ago. Nevertheless, a couple of things happened yesterday and today which made me feel like I was that king in 300 who gets kicked into the pit by Leonidas. You almost feel like you’re observing yourself from the outside, as a blackness takes over. I stood in the shower last night and realised that I perceived everything differently, as if someone had unscrewed the regular lens and put on a darker hued one, and suddenly nothing seems right or pleasant, everything is an attack waiting to happen.

Another thing: easy distraction. The evening just gone, I’m too irritable to work, so I leave it for before dawn this morning. Annoying, but overall better, and very likely beneficial because it forces me to be up and about as soon as the light begins to enter the valley. This leads to the other thing:

Not wanting to wake up/get out of bed. Not that luxurious, warm, weekend feeling, when you decide to stay in your cosy clothing and watch TV in bed because you don’t need to do anything else, but an actual aversion to the thought of facing the day. Of course, the majority of the time you have to whether you want to or not, but it’s definitely better when you’re in a good frame of mind to do so. Unfortunately, it’s hard to psych up a newly-awakened mind, and all the mantras of gratefulness and exuberance tend to fall a bit flat first thing, when it’s cold and the sun hasn’t actually risen. 

After a long period of decent, often joyous living, and some recent changes to circumstance, I wasn’t going to let my brain take over. Firstly, I literally lay down for a short while and solidified in my thoughts the exact reasons why my mood blackened so rapidly; it could be isolated to three main causes, all significant enough to cause negativity and none petty enough to be brushed off. So - accept that something’s happened, that it’s affected me, and then move on. Secondly, I laid out as neatly as I could in my journal the tasks that needed to be completed over the next twenty-four hours, firstly work’s deadlines, then a couple of physical/mental health tasks (don’t eat sugar, get some exercise, sit in the sun for a bit) which easily get overlooked when you want to get mopey. Thirdly, get a normal night’s sleep without doing something dumb like drink a strong coffee in the misguided intention to work late, or finish the night with a hot whisky and honey with the plan of dumbing down my thoughts through external means. 

It’s nearly four o’clock on the Monday, and I’ve been steadily getting through the day. Quite pleasantly, I realise that I’ve bounced back to normal, without really doing anything that drastic. It sounds so silly to even write about it, but I feel the need to, because it’s a tiny triumph over an aspect of my past self, and also forms a point of reference for when days like this happen in the future. Coming from a family where anxiety and depression loiters in corners like an unwanted, ghostly guest, there is sometimes a fatalistic (nihilistic?) belief that that’s just who you are and you’ve just got to live with it. But I’m not my parents, or anyone else in the family for that matter. I have my own set of personality traits and my own internal drive to alter these if I feel the need to do so. I also have a medium-term plan slowly coming together, which now that I’ve withdrawn from my old uni project can now start to be put into action. I want to feel successful in something again, and work on something worthwhile. What it is, I don’t know yet, and I’ll probably have to spend a bit of time figuring that out. Whether it’s a new job or even something as small as a creative venture, I want to sort this out over the next few weeks, and bad nights and days form the biggest obstacle. Knowing that I can deal with them, and that I genuinely am different from when I was younger, is probably the biggest encouragement to aim higher for the future. 

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Endings and beginnings

Yesterday, I made the decision to completely withdraw from my postgraduate candidature. Probably, I should have done this several months ago, but at the same time it was good that I was given the opportunity to feel like I’d had a second chance to save the project. I’m grateful for the uni staff for being lenient while I attempted a second go. My primary supervisor, with his usual warmth, encouraged me to get in contact if I ever feel like I’ve come up with a decent plan, and we’re organising the paperwork so that if this happens, I can re-enrol with a clean slate. Even if I never take this offer up, it’s a good feeling to have it there, for several reasons. I guess it’s mainly the reassurance that my teachers still have faith in me as a student and an academic, and are maintaining that it was a series of extraneous circumstances that prevented me from completing, rather than my inherent lack of skill as an individual. 

I’m going to miss the interpersonal side of Classics. I’ve made my best friends and met my life mentors through this discipline, and that was probably a large reason of why I clung to my project for longer than it should. It’s a small group of people, same as everywhere else, and we generally stick together, especially in a far-flung region like Australasia. Aside from my office mates, some of whom I thoroughly intend on naming as bridesmaids and godparents some time in the very far-off future, I’ve met people at conferences and have maybe only spoken a handful of times face to face, yet when one of us needs some advice or help, the other is always happy to do jump in. You feel like you’ve got a small, strong network across the country and around the globe. 

I’m not going to miss the frantic, worried lens with which I’ve read so much lately. I’ve spent too much time reading through books and journal articles in a panic, trying to find something that will spark a new idea or add to a drowning project. This was about as unproductive as it sounds. It turned something I love into a chore, and made me rush down narrow pathways before exploring broader concepts. I’d put off reading sources that interest me because I’d skim through and decide they would take up too much time, or wouldn’t be relevant, and with breathtaking rapidity I painted myself into a corner. If I could never do that again in my life, academically or otherwise, I would be quite happy. 

As far as my mental health is concerned, certain aspects of academia dragged it down, but at the same time, other aspects buoyed it. Initially, I struggled with taking a critical approach to things and felt suddenly very negative and lost with all areas of my life, because I found the need to apply the same level of overthinking to personal stuff as well as academic stuff, and it became very hard to let things slide or be content when I’d found a problem (real or imagined), fixated on it, and couldn’t mentally let it go. I’m not sure whether I’ve gotten better at switching between an academic brain and a more easygoing every day one, or whether I’ve become more used to feeling critical about things. At the same time, developing a stronger voice to reason and argue is probably the one thing I’m proudest of. I used to be easily intimidated and was never given the opportunity to develop my arguing skills. I was easily pushed into things and got flustered before I could raise my own opinion. I’m not like that anymore, and a huge amount of that change can be attributed to an involvement in Humanities academia, where you’re constantly arguing and proving your point. 

- - - 

At the moment, I’m working and that’s it. I haven’t done this for four years, and I know it will drive me nuts before long. I’ll get bored with routine. I’m already feeling guilty about not doing enough and I’ve only pulled the pin yesterday. I’m looking into potential study options, but this is with the idea of making more money in a shorter space of time. If I am to study something because I actually enjoy it, that choice will always be ancient history, because it’s such a vast topic, and despite its temporal and geographic distance, always relevant to today. I still don’t know what I really want to be doing long-term, and for the moment I’ll just have to accept that that’s how I feel. I haven’t not been a student for a very, very long time. Much like staying at home for too long, being a student for too many years of a young life very likely affects your levels of maturity. There’s a lot of real world out there to be experienced, and there’s only so much you can get from books. I’m interested to see how the next few weeks and months play out. I’d assumed that I would be depressed, but I’m not at all. No one thinks I’ve failed, even though I preempted that. Everyone I’ve spoken to has just said the truth: it’s been a rough few years with some unexpected disturbances, and anyone in this situation is well within their rights to leave. It’s a good reminder to avoid staying in your own head too much and anticipating others’ reactions. Right now, I have some catching up and sorting out to do, but everything’s on the right track. 

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Let us turn our thoughts to love

 Or whatever Plato said. I guess it depends on the translation. 

The day dawned black and stormy, with rain hammering down and the occasional dark roll of thunder. It woke me up and sent a weird feeling of anxiety through me that took a little while to overcome. Maybe it was the dreams I’d had just before waking up, too hazy to remember but lingering on in mood, maybe it was just one of those things. It’s brighter now, blustery and cold with brief glimpses of sunlight, and the world seems suddenly a better place.

I’ve got plenty of stuff to do over the next few days. On Friday, essentially I learn whether the uni is willing to keep me on as a part-time postgraduate. If I’m kept on, that will be a good feeling. If I’m not, it will take a little while to mentally adjust, but it also means I’m free to pursue something new. 

I dreamt about my old supervisor last night, the one who both made me and broke me. When things initially fell apart, I dreamt of him often, and it was always a bitter argument or confrontation. He struggled with substance abuse and in my dreams, as in reality, he was often visibly drunk, and in dreams as in reality, he denied it as alcoholics do. Following his suicide, I no longer dreamt about him, so it was strange to suddenly have him arrive in my dreams again months and months later. Strangely, he was healthy, filled out, smiling, not smelling of cigarettes and stale booze like he did in reality. We exchanged some friendly words and he went on his way because he had some project he was working on. I guess I kind of loved him, in the way that younger folk do love their mentors, and that’s why his betrayal hurt because it was like being betrayed by a father or an uncle. And I suppose the current uncertainty about my position in the academic world makes my subconscious roam into odd places, looking for approval or reassurance.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and I made the mistake of checking social networking this morning. I’m not sure what is more irritating; the sickly sweet dedications people put up in honour of their six or nine month long relationship that’s probably going to crash and burn in the next year or so, or the falsely defiant, “I’m strong and independent and I’m SO happy as a single woman” broadcasts coming firmly from Denial Valley. I’m not denying genuinely independent women exist - they do. They just don’t have any need to try and prove themselves on social media. The ones that do have previously spent the past several months chasing down relationships, with no effect. Their attempts at advertising how over this they are look a bit hollow.

Now that I’ve blasted everyone else, I can turn to myself. I’m unashamedly jaded about the whole romance thing by now. I have every right to be. Essentially every person I’ve had an involvement with is an ultimately selfish individual, and none of them would make a true life partner because of that fact. That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve emotionally invested a lot into some people over the years and got burned as a result. I spent a lot of time letting negativity attack me before I accepted that someone isn’t going to treat me better if I were prettier, or made more money, or had more successful enterprises; they chose to treat me a certain way because of their own problems and flaws, and the one pure reason I’m temporarily salty is because I pour a lot of love into every interpersonal relationship that I have, platonic, romantic or familial. That’s just who I am and I’m not letting someone lesser take that away.  Jaded I might be, but I refuse to turn bitter. I needed to make all the mistakes I’ve made. I wouldn’t have grown as a person had I not. I realise that it’s okay to still have doubts, because ultimately, they don’t hold me back. They’re not affecting my current goals in life or my enjoyment of it, for that matter. I’m not the first girl to have a few dreams realigned. 

It’s nearing the end of the day now and the rain has come back in. Although it’s technically the hottest month of the year, outside looks like midwinter and I’ll have to swap the sundress for a jacket and scarf when I head out tonight for sure. I’ve cried on Valentine’s Day before, out of disappointment or frustration, when I was young and impressionable and let the waves of commercialism that the holiday is inevitably steeped in wash over. Today is not that kind of day. Ultimately, love is the most beautiful thing on earth, in all its myriad shapes and forms, I’m grateful to have it in my life and thoroughly intend on giving it all the more.

Vivamus...atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorem omnes unius aestimemus assis! 

- Catullus 5 

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longweekenditis

In true form to myself, it’s another long weekend and halfway through, my mood has come crashing down. Despite feeling on an even keel for the past few weeks, and trundling along with everything, and enjoying coffees under the birch trees and laughing over memes between friends, it’s come to the Sunday night of a long weekend (there are many in Tassie early in the year) and instead of picking a nice book or film or game and relaxing, I decide to hole myself up after dinner in my room and stew in self-loathing for a little while. You’re going nowhere. You never do enough. You don’t put enough time into things - the evil Fairy of Self Doubt makes a sparkling reappearance. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who constantly makes this phenomenon a problem for myself. It’s probably not the case at all, since the majority of us feel guilty over our productivity levels, but I wonder how many of us also feel this deep dissatisfaction over how we spend our leisure time as well. A mate drunkenly reports that she’s finally gotten back into Skyrim, and is loving it. There’s a copy out the back, I could easily go and fire that up, but I decide it isn’t worth it despite having had plans to properly play it through. I’ve got a pile of books sitting on the floor from my tip shop raid the weekend prior, I speed read the first chapters of several, and can’t commit to finishing any. Once again, I’ve gone from a happy, busy person longing for some time off, to a disgruntled person who has time off, and is disgruntled because she’s got time off and doesn’t know what to do with it. 

This week, I finally committed to a bullet journal, and it’s excellent. Despite the impractically pretty, fancy ones that are popular online, a bullet journal is in its essence a very simple format, and one that works very well for brains like mine. It means that you can’t conveniently let certain chores slip; they have to either be cancelled with justification or pushed forward, and that simple fact makes all the difference. It also encourages a very succinct approach to daily tasks and events. If I need to note down a meeting with the faculty head, that gets jotted down in a couple of words. If I’m chilling at Salamanca and happen to make eye contact with that dude I was hopelessly in love with a few years ago, I can choose to note it if I want, but with the same briefness, and all the mooning and pseudo-poetic shit can go elsewhere. Since it’s simple, it encourages you to update it on the daily as it doesn’t take long to do so, and since it requires you to actually keep track of your tasks, you don’t start making long lists of unrealistic or overly-ambitious tasks with the ridiculous hope that you’ll achieve them. Doing that doesn’t work, it just means that at the end of the day you’ll have a to-do list that’s 80% incomplete and makes you feel worse when you look at it.  

Back to my ongoing problem of generalised dissatisfaction during leisure time, I feel like I could probably factor this into journalling also. Bullet journals can be as simple or complex as you want, so long as they possess an index, a key, a month summary and a day-by-day section following said summary. People choose to add all sorts of extra sections depending on their interests and priorities. One thing you can add is a lists of films, books, and games you intend to engage with, and then tick that off as you complete them throughout the year. As possibly dumb as it sounds, factoring in things like this into a to-do kind of format probably encourages me to actually do them when I have the time, since it serves as a reminder that I had an interest in them in the first place. I feel quite guilty realising that I’m deliberating over spare time, which is ultimately a luxury. It’s incredibly stupid to do so. Maybe that’s why really rich people do cocaine because they have too much time on their hands. Maybe I should quit my studies and go volunteer in a war zone. 

Going back to my plan earlier in the week to list gratefulness, I managed to forget that, probably on the very same day I made the resolution in the first place. That’s pretty woeful, but it’s also one of those things where it’s never too late to start. In reality, I’m subconsciously, wordlessly grateful the majority of the time. I love the first few moments of waking up and seeing blue sky, or dark storm clouds, or splattering raindrops outside the window. No matter how repetitive it is, it’s always great to share a few words with family members or friends. Even though I’ve spent many years in the same city, I still love its changing moods and colours depending on the time of day and season in the year. Tomorrow is going to involve some work, left over from a stuff-up from head office on Friday, but that won’t take too long. I’ve also got a couple of pushed-forward jobs that really should be completed before guilty really sets in. In other words, it’s a holiday Monday but I’m nearly as scheduled as if it were a regular one, so I’ll probably feel quite good. 

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personal assistant

It astounds me how your own brain can act like your own permanent position personal saboteur. Absolutely nothing is going wrong today. It’s a glorious summer’s day, not a hot one, but one where there’s warm, direct sun and a stiff, fresh sea breeze. We’ve got another long weekend on the horizon, so that always makes everyone feel kind of more industrious with the prospect of some extra lazing about in the future. So here I am, suddenly depressed out of nowhere because I opened and attempted to begin a new to-do journal. 

I journalled somewhat in the later months of last year, and found the reflective side of it quite relaxing, and the symmetry-loving part of my brain was calmed by the part where you write all your to-dos out in neat handwriting and tick or strike them through as they’re done, for some reason it’s satisfying and I know a lot of us feel that way. However, for me, whenever life gets hard, journals go out the window. Life did get hard, for a few reasons, for varying lengths of time, in the later months of last year, and my journal was abandoned. 

So now, on this completely uneventful day, as I open a note book and jot down a set of goals, I’m suddenly nagged by the little saboteur inside my head: what’s the point, it already looks nowhere near as nice as the tremendously aesthetic ones online, something bad will happen and you’ll just abandon it anyway, yada yada yada. 

I’ve struggled with a lifelong fear of jumping into things because I’m frightened of the outcomes. One of the biggest struggles I have is to come clean on negative tension within personal relationships - unfortunately, I’ve let problems go for far too long, and struggled with the consequences, rather than bring myself to grab the other person for a tough but ultimately beneficial talk. For some reason, this also filters down into the planning side of my brain, so after I’ve dealt with a rough time, I go into a mindset where I only plan the barest minimum so I don’t miss genuine work and uni deadlines, and then everything else to do with personal growth or wellbeing just has to kind of work itself in along the way. 

I thought I’d overcome that fear recently. In many ways I have, and if someone pisses me off now, I quickly make up my mind to either bring it up and talk it over or let them go their sweet way. Unfortunately, though ultimately not that big of a deal, I’m still hung up about the concept of planning, feeling that something will go wrong through the very act of planning in the first place. I’ve just got to remind myself that whatever I do, good things will happen, bad things will happen, and a whole lot of in-between things will happen too. I’ve got to accept the fact that I’m in a slightly crabby mood with everyone and everything anyway, and it’s just decided to manifest via this journal idea. I’ve also got to remind myself that spending twenty minutes typing out a rambling blog post that will never be read by any eyes except my own isn’t exactly the most productive use of a beautiful summer’s afternoon, but it’s somewhat useful to look back on and that’s why I continue to do it. 

Finally, although my sabotaging little brain can sabotage all it likes when it comes to thoughts of the future, it can’t change the past, whose threads are firmly stitched into the unbreakable fabric of life lived. Before I got to bed, I’ll resume something I used to do, and something a close friend does also. I’ll write down five things I’m grateful for, since that refers to the past and present only. Ultimately, every day that you’re conscious, functioning and not in pain or illness is already the greatest blessing, and it’s worryingly easy to forget this as a young-ish, fit-ish person with serious FOMO complex. But much like the Tasmanian landscape itself, life is beautiful but dangerously close to pockets of dark wilderness, and you can’t take things like that for granted. This is something I can do that my personal assistant can’t do anything about.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

Red moons and island anniversaries

The other night was the much-publicised “Super blue blood Moon”, and the Huon delivered spectacular viewing conditions. Unfortunately, I had work early the next day and had also caught some kind of stomach bug which meant I ended up standing out on the balcony at 11 that night, throwing up into the towel that I had previously wrapped around my wet hair, and then staggering off to bed when the eclipse was around 25%. Before the bug properly took hold, I had been sitting taking in the view of the dark shadow that had begun to spread over the bottom left edge of the moon’s face. The valley was perfectly still and lights sparkled across the water to where Franklin sat sleepily, only the occasional car moving along the highway. The only sounds were the frogs in the nearby pond and, very faintly, someone’s radio playing old songs, where only the lower frequency notes carried. It was too cold for mosquitoes and so to all intents and purposes was a perfect night. However, whether it was the fact that my system was already under attack from a virus or because the moon indeed has an effect on your mood, I felt anything but calm, or balanced, or empowered. 

I’ve been able to spend some more time alone this past few weeks, and more time away from home, which has been incredibly beneficial. I feel more balanced than I have for a while, and interested in getting into hobbies again. Although I didn’t have the money to book my flights yesterday as I had planned, simply because I’d mis-calculated, instead of throwing up my hands and getting upset, I realise it’s just a case of saving for a bit longer, and this is probably a good idea given that I was kind of running into it a bit premature with a worryingly low budget. Being away up north for the weekend was a good reminder that unexpected expenses occur when away, and being on the other side of the world with a nonexistent budget is a pretty foolish thing to do. Giving it a bit more time, even just a couple of weeks, allows me to think out better ways to do things and more preferable places to stay. 

Today is the second day of February, our fourteenth anniversary of living in Tasmania. My mum likes to mark the date with a barbecue or dinner, good timing for me since I’m back at the family home today. It’s far from barbecue weather, but we’re grateful after the oppressive heat of the weekend. I can’t really think too deeply into this date. I’m one of those annoying types who feels the need to take any small event and tie in a broader perspective or parallel with life in general, but it’s not always a desirable or necessary action. It’s just a day, a slightly special one for us, and it’s my day off for the week, and everything’s going pretty well. And that is all there is to it. 

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

another house, another soul

House sitting is an interesting experience. When someone puts enough trust in you to stay and care for their home for several days, you have the time to really get a sense of what their life is like, even if you’re not intentionally prying. 

I also get a strange sense that I feel slightly different in myself when I’m in another household. I don’t quite work to the same rhythm that I do at my actual home. Usually I’m less likely to be rested, since I’m not in my regular environment, and so I’m up earlier and more perceptive of things around me. Since there’s also the constant feeling that you’re not in your own patch, I feel more conscientious of any mess I might be leaving and want to keep everything as neat as possible. 

I’m lucky in that this place is downright lovely. It’s a two storey gabled house, quite gigantic compared to where I live, and it used to be part of a vineyard that went bankrupt after a bitter divorce a few years ago (seems like running a winery ain’t as romantic as it looks). The family has a number of children, all under eighteen, and the ensuing clutter is inevitable, although it’s fairly tidy. Both husband and wife work full time, and the kids are all very proactive in their extra curricular hobbies. It gives a sense of youth and vibrancy to the house. The view, also, is incredibly uplifting - sitting out on the balcony in the morning with your breakfast, watching the sun warm the grapevines and letting your eye wander down along the river and out to the mountains beyond is energising and makes you feel happy to be alive. 

It’s got me thinking what sort of home and soul I want to inhabit in my own time. I’m an only child and my parents’ one wish is that I never sell the family home. I don’t plan to, but I don’t necessarily want to live there either in the future. I feel that it encapsulates one time of my life, with certain people and experiences, but not the rest of my life. I also want to discover how I would negotiate cultivating a new household from scratch. I feel that, fundamentally, I’m not the most stylish person, but I am cosy and understated enough to know how to craft a place that feels welcoming and home-like. Something I love about this place is its sense of security when the weather closes in at night. It’s lovely to arrive and ‘batten down the hatches’ as a squall sweeps over the valley, and providing time is available, I’m looking forward to actually cooking a proper meal one evening soon, because I find cooking one of the most relaxing ways to stick a full stop on a day. 

Something I want to do differently to my parents’ home is avoid the sense of isolation that somehow they manage to cultivate, even though the village isn’t actually remote or anything. They have a tendency to draw inwards and close curtains and windows too early in the afternoon, and there is an over abundance of mis-matched crockery and ornaments around, most of them second-hand and unimportant to us on any sentimental level. Over the recent years I’ve gotten very into de-cluttering and only keeping things that mean a lot to me personally, and also a strange little superstitious part of my being dislikes second-hand goods, almost feeling that they carry odd energies from their previous owners and households. 

I’ve been away in various places for most of the long weekend, and it surprised me when I came back to my own room yesterday that I disliked the dusty smell and atmosphere. It felt stuffy and oppressive, perhaps because it was a hot weekend and the window hadn’t been opened for several days, or because I haven’t vacuumed, or because I burnt a scented candle which came as a gift but turned out to be pretty choke-inducing. I can’t wait to get back this afternoon and brutally air the place out, strip the bed, throw more stuff out. I’ll be in that spot for a little while, it seems, while money and circumstances are the way they are. I like it, but being somewhere else reminds me of what I need to change in it. Perhaps some old sick energy lingers within it from the illness-ridden weeks we had over the Christmas break, where the car only got taken out for doctor’s appointments and nights were sleepless thanks to being surrounded by coughing and wheezing. 

Right now, concentration is making itself scarce. I have work yet to finish, and I’d very much like to not have to think about it in the evening, but my brain’s all over the place. I want to wander through the vineyard and explore the olive grove, but the dog’s stolen my shoes and I’ve no idea where she put them. I should clean the kitchen, but it will need to get done again this evening anyway. I’m still a little sleep deprived from a topsy-turvy, revoltingly hot weekend, but a nap later on feels like a waste of time. That being said, it’s a beautiful day, and you can’t ask for anything more than that.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

changes

After a bit more browsing and a chat with an old friend, another change has been made to this rather loose itinerary. Frankfurt winds up a couple of hundred dollars cheaper, on a good airline, and gives me the opportunity to visit my (non biological) aunt and uncle if they’re feeling up to it. I’ll be booking on the 1st of February, providing a meteor doesn’t crash into the earth beforehand. 

After the trauma of the past few months, I find myself frightened to get excited or look forward to anything. There’s been a lot of illness and a lot of things turning upside down in a short space of time. I tell myself things will be different this time around, but that doesn’t always work. The nights are the worst, when I wake up and everything starts turning over in my head. I resign myself to the fact that this is a part of my personality that probably won’t change for a very long time. I simply have to keep going, day by day, as busy as I am with work - both uni and monetary. 

I’m quite pleased at how quickly saving up happened, given my previous utter uselessness at doing it. A part of me hopes that it’s just a sign that I’m finally maturing in some way, and able to say no to a treat right now in order to achieve a bigger goal in the future. I realise that going out in Australia is a massive waste of money, and unfortunately I’m always too frivolous/generous when I do it. Just avoiding that has been the main help for my saving, that and staying away from dumb impulse buys that never give even half the enjoyment that you think they will at the time of purchase. 

I still haven’t actually planned what to do once I’m over there. A couple of friends are keen to meet up, but a little worried that they won’t get any time off work. I’m a bit of a museum fan and a few of those will definitely be on the list. Taking in architecture, in particular, older stuff that Australia is naturally devoid of, is a definite, as is food, because, well, it’s food. I’m too scared of disappointment to plan too strictly. As far as I’m concerned, any new experience is a good one, especially for a little-travelled person like myself. Additionally, I’m blown away by how short travel times are on the continent, to get to vibrant and diverse locations. In Australia, you travel for hours and hours only to see more of the same. 

The next several weeks will hopefully see a steady stream of work and enough productive hours of uni mindset to begin completing that 30,000 word monstrosity that is my thesis. My current body of work is simply a long ramble of thoughts framed in dozens of questions, most of them I can firmly say will never be answered, as I’m constantly drawn to stories of minorities and invisible peoples. My main hope is for everyone’s health to stay stable, and I feel like as long as that is okay, I’m happy to handle everything else.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

perspectives

It’s amazing the difference a goal can make with your overall mood. Now that my plans to travel are more concrete and feel achievable, I’m able to motivate myself far better when work is getting me down, or life in general, for that matter. 

It was said by some wise soul that a happy life requires someone to love, something to do, and some goal to live for. I have people that I love. I have plenty to do. I have something to live for. The depression that blighted my days over Christmas and New Year thankfully lifted rapidly. 

Physically, I’m feeling so much better, now that I’ve stopped abusing my body. I was in such a dark place a little while ago that I lost track of what it felt like to be healthy. In turn, feeling confident that my body can do what I want it to do helps my mood as well, because I don’t feel like a prisoner to sleep and malaise. 

I still haven’t told anyone for fear of jinxing my plan. I know my parents will be against it, like they always are, but I’m sick of letting my life pass me by because of their attitudes. Last year, I was devastated that I couldn’t go on a trip for uni, and they told me to wait until next year. Well, it’s next year now and if they tell me to wait again, I’m going to switch on selective deafness. If they want me to stay home all the time, they’d better be prepared for a perpetually depressed single woman in her late twenties hanging around, and that’s not going to be fun for anyone. For the first time in a long time I feel brighter and motivated about life and once they eventually make the connection, they’ll understand.

I haven’t yet planned what to do. Maybe it’s best to leave plans open, to avoid disappointment. The weather is probably going to be marginal, but hey, that’s Tasmania every autumn and winter. Give me a bit of rainy cold weather and peace over a million pushy tourists waving selfie sticks and photographing their steak any day.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

plans

I’ve tentatively arranged a plan. Late March, around the time of my birthday. Melbourne to London, with one stop, on Emirates. An atrociously long flight, but such is the way of living in the Antipodes. I’m scared I won’t have the money, but I know I will. Come Thursday, I’ll have the money to book. Some hustling needs to get done, finally getting around to selling stuff that I’ve been meaning to. 

I haven’t thought of what to do. Of course I want to see London’s sights, although I don’t plan on being there for a huge length of time. Just the usual; Big Ben, the British Museum, Piccadilly, just being one of a million useless tourists for a day or two. 

There’s the rough plan of visiting Surrey and Sussex, the place of my grandparents’ birth, and they look absolutely beautiful. It’s not an Australian’s first Britain trip without some kind of pilgrimage, isn’t it! 

Then, of course, the convenient notion that I have open invite to both France and Spain. I feel rather smug at the fact I can say that. Australians, though often well-travelled, aren’t always so well-connected, since we are so far away from other countries. The thought of staying with friends and loved ones seems far more pleasant than hostels with leaking showers and broken air conditioning.

That leaves a few days free, although I learnt from my last trip away that over-scheduling is a surefire way to ruin one’s mental and physical wellbeing. Something I love anywhere in the world is just taking a place in, and after living in the same district for a long time, I always love getting that feeling somewhere new.

It feels so nice to finally be out of the rut. For far too long I’ve put things off because my family has recommended against it, or I’ve managed my finances poorly, or I’ve lacked the skills to research flights. I haven’t exactly been raking it in lately, but I’ve saved pretty well just from not doing stupid shit. I shake my head at the thought that I could have done this last year, but a part of me knows that’s not the case. I wasn’t ready last year. I wasn’t grown up enough. I was busting to travel because everyone else seemed to be doing it. This time, I’m travelling because I want to, and I’m going where I want to, and I really don’t give a shit if it’s not “Insta-worthy” - a slightly sickening phrase used far too often by travel agents and blogs recently. 

I want, so badly, to tell someone because I’m so excited, but I’m also frightened that I’ll jinx something if I do. I’ve done it before and the disappointment crushed me to pieces. Until those flights are booked, I can’t, I won’t tell a soul. 

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

In the midst of winter

It’s far from summer here in the valley today. A gentle, steady rain is falling outside and we’re all wrapped in winter jumpers. It’s dark as late afternoon although it’s only two o’clock. 

a couple of nights ago, I heard a car hit something outside. The car’s occupants promptly turned around and stopped to have a look, but after that came silence. The next day I saw a little wallaby in our garden, obviously injured around its back legs and alternating between hopping and dragging itself along the grass. Today, it was in our garden again, but closer to the house, lying semi beneath one of the rhododendron bushes and in a heartbreaking state. It had completely lost the use of its back legs and could only drag itself a tiny distance before flopping back down in exhaustion. Even worse, evil blowflies had already begun to attack it while it was still alive. We asked one of our neighbours for help and he fired a bullet through its head to end its suffering. We stood there for a minute, waiting for it to stop twitching, and then it was unceremonially heaved over the steep bank where our properties join. The house was filled with blowflies.

I dreamt I gave birth to a dead fish. Mum looked at it and said it was sickly, or infected, or some words along those lines. It had a horrible face with lifeless, half-closed eyes and it was about the length of my hand. I felt violated and scared and was still uneasy when I woke up. 

I have a lot of chores to do, and I’m getting through them slowly. Although I’m not tired anymore, motivation refuses to lend a hand and I feel like I’m doing everything in slow motion. We went for a quick visit to the local cider house last night, and then for a brief drive down to Cygnet to have a look at the folk festival. It was stunning along the river, still and glassy, as the light faded for the night. The festival itself wasn’t in full swing yet and an ominous mood lingered in the half-light as people scampered around and a surprising number of police patrolled. A few marquees and vans were set up, but a feeling of darkness and deadness hung in the air.

I’m cleaning up and cleaning out a lot of stuff. In boxes and nooks and crannies I find little trinkets and mementos of times gone by. Some friendships are still strong; I look at a pair of earrings one friend gave me for my birthday, which I wear whenever I feel like I need a bit of her strength with me. There’s a card that was given to me by another friend on New Year’s a while back, and it’s nothing special in itself but it reminds me of her smart, kind presence. Then there are gifts from friendships that have drifted, dissolved or shattered, and I can’t help but flood with mixed emotions when I see them. After months or even years of closeness, one day you suddenly realise that you’ve grown so distant that it’s like watching a ship disappear on the horizon, and you only recognise that little spot as what it is because you knew it close up. Even more hurtful are the memories of “I’ll always love you” “You’re my best friend” or “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you” that ultimately turn into nothing, sometimes with frightening swiftness. I’m proud of my current group of friends. They keep me sane and I treasure them and hope I can help them in any way, whatever happens in their lives. It doesn’t stop the pain that flares up when I’m reminded of those dead friendships, how one person who used to be your world is suddenly like a ghost. Although it’s hard, I’ve slowly started throwing out old objects that no longer hold any relevance, and hope that on some weird psychic level it is beneficial. It’s painful because it’s like casting aside the last remnants of my childhood. I falter when I come across some things from a friend who used to be my partner in crime in pretty much everything. She was always the younger, dominant one and I was always the older, placid one. We were performers who both loved the stage, and performed quite a bit together. We joked that we’d make a good Jekyll and Hyde. Later on, her constant need to be the star of the show got on my nerves, amongst other things, and her ego blew up as she grew into a 5″8, size 6, model-perfect physique and started to attract the attention of boys. She moved to the other end of the state for uni and we more or less disappeared in one another’s lives. She developed a nasty alcohol habit which contributed to a panic disorder that had been simmering beneath the surface for years. She gained twenty kilos and for the first time in her life understood the dysphoria that myself and the rest of our peers experienced years before. Her dreams of being an actor and a model slowly dissolved as real life hit her the way it hits us all, and I’ve got the feeling that she’s a gentler, humbler soul than she was when we drifted apart. At the same time, I’ve no motivation to get back in touch. I just want her to succeed, and be happy, and healthy, and never lose that streak of craziness that I fell in love with right at the start.

Digging even further into the past, I find a little bracelet that I was sure I’d thrown out long ago. It was the first week of uni and I ended up standing in a circle with a bunch of semi-familiar faces that I’d seen at law camp the week before. One was a boy with an odd accent and a ready laugh. Very quickly, we discovered that we both had a Filipino mum and there was a high-five and a few rapid words of poorly-pronounced Tagalog. We were only born a couple of weeks apart and we both were obsessed with Ancient Egypt. I was stoked. I loved his bear-like presence and funny way of describing people and things. Since he was quite sheltered and fairly religious, he was also the unfortunate target of many light pranks which in retrospect were probably a bit wrong. 

Far too quickly, however, those early sunny days clouded over. Our mutual friends noticed something was up before I did. I saw nothing wrong with guy/girl friendships, and I still don’t. I think it’s stupid to assume that just because you’re friends with the opposite gender, you’re planning on banging. There’s this thing called liking someone’s personality. Unfortunately, lack of communication on this front meant that we had increasingly different ideas of what was going on; we’d go to the movies and meet up for coffee or hang out at the library, and although for me it was just spending time with a mate, he’d firmly chalked it up in his head as a date. In what I realise now was grossly inappropriate and a violation of my own innocence at the time, he managed to get it out of me that fact that I was a virgin and constantly went on about how rare and special it was that I wasn’t one of those ‘slutty girls’ - I feel like driving around to his house and punching him when I think of that now. Eventually, it all got too much and I made it very clear that I only ever saw him as a friend, not even one molecule of my being thought of him as boyfriend material, and I was more than happy to stay friends but nothing more. 

Once again, my lack of experience backfired and I realise that I should have just cut contact completely. More or less overnight, he turned into a vile creature. He criticised every aspect of my personality; my looks, my academic achievements, my choices in life. He made every effort to make me feel awful. The old Filipino connection, which used to be celebrated and was a source of pride, he now ground into the dust and tried to say that Filipinos were dumb and embarrassing. He still stayed in contact, constantly dropping hints about himself that were somehow meant to suggest that he was a wonderful boyfriend and I had missed out, but it got more and more irritating until one night I was at a party, a few drinks in, and sent a massive long text telling him everything I disliked about him. After that, it was completely over and there was no more drama. I wasn’t really harmed by the experience at all, I think something like that had to happen to make me more aware of life and relationships, but the lessons I learned stayed in my brain. I made a promise to myself that if I were ever in that situation of finding myself “friendzoned” to use the modern parlance, I wouldn’t do a full 360 and turn into a monster simply because the other person isn’t as smitten. It blows my mind how violently someone’s thoughts can turn in a confused reaction to lack of reciprocation. Not loving someone back isn’t a personal flaw, it’s just a fact of life. If you think someone is amazing enough to fall in love with them, how come that all has to shatter when you know they don’t feel the same way? I suppose it’s a reaction to pain, and like many emotional reactions, it’s not a rational one. I still don’t understand it.

Life has sometimes been described as a tapestry, or a long thread, and in many ways it’s true. Some people come into your life and their thread weaves a blaze of colour into your tapestry, but it doesn’t last forever. Humans are a clingy species and we don’t take kindly to a beautiful coloured thread petering out into a new phase, which can sometimes feel dull in comparison.

It’s the middle of summer and my thoughts are full of death, and darkness, and winter. I’m not actually depressed - not properly - although a friend of mine is starting to get concerned after our conversations the past couple of weeks. There’s talk of ‘seeing someone’ and ‘getting help’, which I’ve already done with no benefit whatsoever. I’m not in danger. I simply need time. Life’s tapestry gets tangled up sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do except sigh, sit back and unravel the unruly threads so you can go on your way again. 

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger — something better, pushing right back.” - Albert Camus

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

On cow grief

It’s just one of those days. I felt sick all last night, having semi fallen victim to the bug that has kept my parents awake and coughing for the major part of the past several nights. 

Since I don’t start work at a particular time, I stayed in bed a bit longer to catch up on some rest and find some inspiration for the day. I walked out to find Mum taking down the Christmas decorations and telling me that the baby cow had died. Maybe he was weak, she was told, and had an infection as well as his poorly formed front legs. It was glad you got a picture, he was beautiful. She gives me a hug as I burst into tears, and I’m surprised at myself. I like to think of myself as fairly tough when it comes to aspects of country life. I’ve looked after or helped neighbours look after sick or injured animals, with varying levels of success. I’ve seen the light go out of tiny creatures’ eyes and felt that odd twist deep in my chest at the irreversible nature of it all. There was a kookaburra that I hit with the car as I was driving down the road once. Panicked, I wrapped it up in a scarf and brought the rather dazed-looking bird back home. Mum and Dad made him a home in the little garden shed, away from our cat, and cooked some delicious-smelling meat scraps for him to eat. The next day, cured of concussion and general what-the-hell-just-happened, he was flying around in the trees with his kookaburra mates. There was also a cow who had what looked like a huge pimple on her eye. At the same time, she had begun showing signs that she was in calf. That pimple, with frightening speed, progressed into a hideous, foul, weeping cancer that consumed her entire eyeball, and you could smell its rotting meat odour from metres away. A few months later, a beautiful calf was born, and occasionally I’d sit with them up in the bush as she gently looked after it. She was tame and didn’t mind me about, but sometimes she decided that they needed to be alone and would prod the baby with her nose, the two of them walking off into the trees. She’s probably in pain, I thought, but she knows what to do. Her baby is well looked after. A little while later, once the calf was eating grass instead of milk, our neighbour - their owner - shot her and buried her on the property. 

I tell myself that I saw the signs with the New Year calf. I did, but chose not to think about them. Whenever I happened to walk past, he was curled up on the ground asleep. I’ve seen enough calves grow up to know that although they nap often, they also spend a huge amount of their time happily exploring the new world and having a big old suck on Mum’s teats, using her milk to rapidly grow bigger and stronger. This little fella barely nursed and spent most of his time lying listlessly on his side, heaven knows what was making him ill or causing him pain. I tell myself it’s for the better. If he had an infection, that would have been terrible, so I hope it was quick. 

I’ve got the window open as I download the audio to work for the next five or six hours. It breaks my heart to hear the mum cow bellow. I’m not sure if cattle grieve. There is a butcher who lives nearby and does his job by visiting the property and slaughtering an animal where it stands in the field - this is a good thing because it avoids a long and traumatic truck ride to a filthy slaughterhouse. It’s a morbid scene to witness, however, as a newly dead cow is strung up with its soft fur lying in a pelt on the ground, and all its herd just stand around quietly and watch. These are generally brothers and sisters and cousins, or sometimes randoms who just get bought and put into a herd. In the natural world, mums and babies are often different. I can’t help but feel that the mother cow is confused right now, and she’s mooing to try and find her little one, probably in the instinct that he’s wandered off. I decide not to go out and investigate because it will only make my mood worse. 

Why am I upset over two animals that are a) not mine and b) not pets in the first place? They would only have stayed on the property a few years before being killed for meat. I still eat meat myself. It’s hypocritical to feel this way. I put it down to being run down and having that ruin my mood. Research has shown, with increasing sureness, the link between inflammation and depression. Inflammation occurs when the body is trying to heal itself from invaders, whether that’s a virus, or a bacterium, or just a poor lifestyle in general. I’m a prime candidate for that right now and certainly feeling it, not physically, but mentally. Shit just ain’t fun today. Christmas is over for another year, and what a fucking doozy of a Christmas it was. Family illness managed to ruin pretty much every attempt at having a good time. I was going through what I guess one looks back on as a quarter-life crisis, and two weeks ago already feels like a lifetime away.

We’ve decided that once we’re all over this godforsaken lung complaint, we’re going to do a belated New Year’s celebration barbecue outside. It seems fitting; it’s only early in the month still, and everyone was either away or sick on the day itself, and the ones who were around managed to spread their crap mood to everyone else. There’s no point moping about the past.

                                                           - - - 

It’s now ten in the evening and Mama cow is still calling out for her baby. I still want to cry when I hear her. She’s sent out her call since late last night. Call it instinct, or call it grief, it hurts to hear it. I’m not sure how cow memories work (is anyone?) but I’m hoping that by tomorrow, she’s forgotten the trauma of the past twenty-four hours, and it will just be another beautiful summer day.

[observationsofanislandgirl-blog]

This is Sparta

I was browsing the news this morning and a new SBS show title turned up in the headlines: “Marry Me, Marry my Family”. It’s about mixed race marriages and the subsequent delightful and chaotic cultural clashes that occur in the meantime. 

I mentioned it at breakfast to my flu-ridden parents and as a mixed-race couple themselves, their own stories came to the surface. In particular, Mum started seething at the memory of an uncle saying “And now the old maid has found herself a white leghorn” - his (downright confusing) way of saying that my mum, 29 at the time and by Asian standards already past her use by date for marriage, had just had the good luck to snare a ‘white leghorn’, which I found out was a breed of chicken and therefore not exactly the most polite way to refer to my confused young father, completely oblivious due to the language barrier and with mounting social anxiety around a huge and overbearing extended family. 

It doesn’t stop there. Over time, Mum has received snide remarks of ‘gold digger’ or ‘mail order bride’. It couldn’t be further from the truth, considering they met before they married, and my father was so broke coming back from the Philippines that he had to get out of the cab from the airport and walk the rest of the way home. There is a revolting, insidious suggestion among some men that Filipino wives are dumb, materialistic and easily bullied. My mum’s worked in all kinds of jobs, from accounting to legal book-keeping. She reads widely and enjoys cooking, gardening and getting dirty to get stuff done. I feel that sometimes she tries too hard to buck the stereotype when there is no need - bigoted people will always be bigoted people and she’s awesome as she is.

Furthermore, strange assumptions crop up about Dad before people actually meet the mild-mannered, hobbity old dude that he is. He’s far from the pathetic white male who’s obsessed with Asian women in a deluded attempt to recover from earlier heartbreak and rejection back home. He’s a tad culturally insensitive, but at the same time he always treats individuals based on their personality, not their ethnicity or nationality. He said he liked Mum’s bright mind and the fact she tended to think outside the box despite her big, opinionated clan. He’s never talked about cultural clash between them because it never seemed to be a big issue in the first place. She was just her, and he was just him. 

People hear of a white Australian/Asian marriage and assume that there’s a massive age or equality gap. I get tentative questions about how old my parents are, and surprised looks when I say they’re three years apart, because some assume that Mum will be a young little maiden looking after a creepy old git. These marriages do exist, and they’re far from ideal, but we all have our reasons I suppose. 

The reason for all this word vomit stemming from the breakfast table conversation is that it’s put me in mind of another old-as-time dichotomy - the Greek vs Barbarian, full on Herodotean concept of Europeanness vs Otherness. In the case of Filipino families, the sense of otherness is sadly propagated by the Filipinos themselves. Shortly after the white leghorn incident, my mum’s cousin quickly blasted back at their uncle in frustration at his rudeness, however the younger man resorted to racism as well, using well-worn Filipino paradigms. You’re just rude about her fiancee because he’s better looking than you. He’s white and has a pointy nose but you’re dark and your nose looks like it’s been run over by your van. We had a bit of a laugh as Mum recounted his revenge, but those old themes of shame at non-Europeanness floated in my head afterwards. Rather than attacking racism, Filipino society is all too keen sometimes to embrace it, with individuals feeling the need to emulate whiteness in their looks, lifestyle and mannerisms. 

Much as the Persians are ridiculed in the movie 300, decked out in overwhelming ornaments and with effeminate characteristics, many Filipinos cringe at echoes of their past and the rich levels of tattooing and piercing that occurred. They stress that they’re “Malay” (untrue - the Philippines was settled before Malaysia, so technically they’re Filipinos) rather than “Natives” and shudder at tattoos, saying that they’re a sign of a criminal or deviant. I was pressured to get my ears pierced, because Filipino culture calls girls without pierced ears are “pisot” (the same word for an uncircumcised male) and that they’re not as pretty. I got them done eventually, at around the same age that most of my friends did, but heaven forbid if I wanted an extra pair of holes down the track. Once again, this is “tribal” and “ugly”. Spanish colonialism left a deep impression on Filipino society, and I feel that it is exactly the same kind of othering sentiment that we get from accounts of the Persian Wars. 

Slowly, these vibes are a-changing. Young Filipinos are getting quite “woke” to the fact that Filipino history doesn’t just begin with the arrival of the Spanish - written history does, but there are other ways to investigate the past. We’re gradually beginning to find out more aspects about the Barangay culture and beyond, and artists are retaining and reviving old tattoo and jewellery designs in an effort to keep them alive. Mixed-race marriages are increasingly common in this day and age of constant travel and living and working in various countries. As we share experiences, we break down barriers formed by old prejudices and stereotypes, and I like to think that the new generation of kids from these marriages will look back fondly on both their parents’ culture without feeling any shame or need to conceal aspects of identity. 

It’s a Friday afternoon and I’m in a good mood. Mum and Dad are still sick so they’re taking it easy. Mum’s watching the cricket and marinating a chicken for a delicious Filipino dish for tonight’s dinner. I’m looking at beautiful native tattoo designs online and wondering if I could get away with one in a really concealed spot, so she never has to find out. The reality of mixed-race families is that they’re the same as homogenous families; you have good times and bad times, but the main thing is that there is love.