Fuck me dead it took a hot minute to remember the buttons to press to upload a new post here. There’s some demolition and reconstruction work being done on the back end of this website of mine. This collage of catastrophes. This missive of memories.
This blog.
Something terrible has happened. As a tribute of sorts I’m writing this tonight for Heather who will never kiss her daughters goodnight again because she committed suicide this week. I can’t believe it. I just … struggling for words.
She paved the way for thousands of us. She was a brilliant writer, said motherfucker a LOT, she underwent electric-shock-therapy for her depression a couple years ago and urged me to do it because our brains were waaay similar. I made the appointment and a few weeks later she messaged me just one sentence: “Crazy Australian, how was your appointment.”
Told her I didn’t go so she sent me a single question mark. I followed with the laugh-cry emoji and “Mate Iwas too depressed to go.”
Then we just kept exchanging the death skull emoji in increasing increments until one of us gave up.
One of us gave up.
Sometimes we’d share the darkest most fucked-up memes possible; shit that if you posted online you’d get CRUCIFIED for but anything to stay alive, right?
Speaking of staying alive last week I joined this new app called TikTok have you heard of it. I’m doing a video a day for 365 days - committing to a whole year seemed like the most logical conclusion to jump-start my synapses in a creative way. Oh for fucks sake I’ll just say it instead of PUSSYFOOTING AROUND: I’m always on the lookout for ways to not kill myself and this seemed as good as an idea as any. I didn’t link my socials over there, wanted to stay anonymous. But I’m blowing my cover now. Feels like I now need to do the whole 365 days more than ever.
This is just a screenshot .. I’ve tried for an hour to embed the code but I JUST CAN’T and I'm crying but it's not about that. You are so welcome to join me, my name is Eeeedie over there and I’m either clunky, nervous, completely manic, sad ...all of the feelings, all of the time. I’ve met some lovely people which is nice but I’m doing it for me more than anything else especially now. ESPECIALLY now.
The topics I’ve covered so for include a brothel in Newcastle, trying to crack on to an arsonist in the psych ward when I was 26, the time I was broke and deciding whether to rob a servo … you know, normal things. Siri how does a depressed person do an OOTD? Out of all the apps in appland TikTok is the most mentally unwell. It’s fucking wild. Sometimes at 3am in the morning when both night and Soul are at their darkest I’ll scare the fuck out of my cat by laughing so loud and my face feels like it might fall off because I haven't laughed for such a long time..
Anyway. I gotta go make some bolognaise for Max and Rocco because it tastes best after it’s marinated a few days. They specifically ordered it for Mothers Day weekend and I can’t wait to just sit at the dinner table and watch them eat, talk, laugh at each other. Watch a movie on the couch. Kiss them goodnight.
You know what? I DID remember what I was saying to her at that moment but I didn’t want to write it because it sounded too cocky so I censored myself but fuck that: We were talking about GOMI, the well-known hate site for bloggers at the time. I told Heather that when I read my thread (come on, you would too) I’d go in and correct things under my own name. She couldn’t believe the audacity, I told her I just couldn’t be fucked to make a fake account like other bloggers did and go in to defend myself.
Heather never could hide what she was feeling and neither can I. We lost a real one and the world needs all the real ones it can get. God bless you Heather Armstrong, you beautiful motherfucker.
"Life is a very difficult business .. you know, it's fatal. And it's full of suffering and betrayal and malevolence. There's *nothing* about it that's trivial at all, life is ALL profound. In order to find your way through hellish inexperience you need to develop a relationship with something that's profound. And you can!" - Dr Jordan Peterson
It started with me buying a broken watch for $8 from my favourite op shop which was so pretty I put it on to admire while driving .. it's elegant, gold, slim (not shady but it is for ladies.) It wasn't my usual style at all - who am I kidding, I have no "watch style"at all! I stopped wearing watches altogether in the 80's after I found out I couldn't wear my new navy Swatch watch on my right wrist, only my left wrist. Anyway so I dropped off this new old fancy gold broken watch to the watchmaker on my way home, asked if he could please try get it working, perhaps also fix the clasp? As I rounded the corner before home, my epiphany had started.
I had purposely bought something broken in the hopes of getting it fixed.
It's been a minute, since I last possessed hope. About anything. And everything. But especially about broken things.
Obviously the pressing, profound point here is:
It took me over thirty fucking years to realise I could've been wearing watches on my right wrist my whole life!?!? I mean fuck is there a Holy Book of Immutable Laws of Watchwearing? Jeezcrust, for somebody born with anarchic tendencies and anti-establishment leanings I sure have followed a LOT of rules in my life and done things like not pointing out the laughing elephant in the room (he's laughing because people keep trying to sweep him under the rug.) I smiled when I got told to smile because I had to be polite. If I had a daughter, not smiling when she's being told to smile would have been one of the first things I would have taught her. Just because somebody tells you to do or not do something doesn't mean you can't do it. It also doesn't mean they're right. For all of my failings as a human and parent, I try to let my kids decide things of their own accordion as often and as much as possible.
There is SO MUCH POWER in being a parent to another human being I mean, obviously of course my sons love Jim Carrey and George Carlin and Eminem and Playstation and how bullshit advertising works. Of course they love the shit out of mac and cheese, of course they stand up to bullies. A lot of their traits I think hell yeah great job me! However most of their personalities and traits are just who they are as people and they are a couple of fine, decent, critical-thinking, awesome Souls in the world. If I didn't have such amazing sons? And if my brother wasn't so beautiful and caring as he was in his too-short life? Then I would have lost all my faith in men by now. True story.
It's taken me hours to write only this much of a blog post already because my brain is all, will I put a comma or full-stop? Italics? This adjective? How deep will I go in this one? Eventually I'll go balls-deep ... I can't NOT go balls-deep when I write to you guys Soul to Soul. I have missed you. I have missed me. It's been tradition to always change my blog header every time I found some new fresh horses to ride on, every time I was "back" every time I'd gone through the worst most painful things in my life. This time I'm keeping this header. I like this photo - my neighbour took it of me hanging my latest cowboy boots out the window a few years ago. He told me he thought I was drunk! I wasn't drunk I just like to get comfortable when I sit on a couch.
You guys, the broken watch is now fixed! Even if it wasn't fixeable, at least I tried, you know? It needed a replacement battery and a strap adjustment which cost me $15 and this time when I wore it while I drove it looked EXPENSIVE. When I got home I looked it up and said to my son, "Umm, Max remember that time I came home raving on about the meaning behind getting a broken watch fixed? Well, not that I did it for monetary gain but it works now."
I told him how much it was worth and we both laughed in disbelief. He asked me if I was going to sell it because he knows I'm not a "flashy" person but I'm keeping it mostly because of what it means to me and what it represents. (And also because it'll only get higher in value and we might just need to sell it one day.)
Wow Computer it feels SO INCREDIBLE to write to you again. I've got a lot to tell you! You'd have a lot to tell me! I almost deleted this website because every time I looked back on old blog posts I'd be reminded of happy times and when my boys were little and I was still a married housewife and my little brother didn't kill himself yet and it would send me spiralling and keening all over again. I can't look back anymore so I won't look back anymore, but you're welcome to because it's all here, it all happened and I lived. I've been writing here since 2008. Guess the fuck what - THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS ABOUT TO HAPPEN! That's mostly a promise and only a teeny bit of a threat.
(Hey in 2007 I started a blog under the pseudonym "Topcat" - click HERE to see how indisputable I was!)
Welcome, to you if you've been reading me since way back then, or if you're breaking your Edenland virginity right now, I truly welcome you to this space. Buckle up ... shit's about to get real therefore interesting. I did delete most of the blog posts I've written here in the past few years. I had to. They all had one thing in common: I was pretending. Since about 2015 I've been BEYOND LOST AND FUCKED UP. Grief-stricken, panicked, falling, failing, angry, suicidal, lost, broken, miserable, lonely, resentful.
"People who whine about being alive are dangerous. Dangerous to themselves, and other people." - Jordan Peterson
I've learnt so much. I'm so glad I'm still here. I've grown, changed, reeaallly got in there and did the hard work on and in myself. This is the me-est me I've ever been in life so far. Putting my life back together was nigh on impossible and you know what that dude said about impossible things before breakfast?! Plus, I didn't just put my life back together - how could I, I burnt it to the ground! I'm building a brand new life (boat) and holy motherfucken shit the biggest best thing of all? I have important work to do. And that's not my ego talking either - ask God, it's true.
Late last year, I was violently assaulted. It's been going through the proper channels in the courts. I will never tolerate certain behaviour ever again. Before I moved to this house (which I LOVE) I was living in a teeny flat by myself and because I was so terrified I'd stay up all night. One particular night I picked up the Bible and went to Psalms because they actually are poems. I was reading out loud, and as I started going through the Psalms it felt so powerful. It was crazy beautiful and resonated deeply - I stood there reading out loud the Psalms which also happened to be EVERYTHING I was going through right then.
I got to Psalm 40 ... that's when the tears came. (I don't often read the Bible fyi and I should because it's the most powerful book in the world.) There's a song called "40" that U2 have been leaving as their last song at their concerts for oh I don't know, MOST OF THEIR CONCERTS EVER. I've been to every U2 concert in Australia since 1989. Bono and the guys are the soundtrack to my life. I know every song and I love the song 40 but when I got to Psalm 40 out loud in December last year? I already knew it because I've been inadvertently singing it since I was 16 years old. Now I'm 50 years old and only now - only now do I get it.
I told God I was going to write that story in this blog post. For years my prayers have been different variations of:
"I don't want to die!"
"I want to die."
After I read Psalm 40 from that heavy bible in the middle of the night and I felt such strength and force and faith and care, my prayer was along the lines of this:
"Holy SHIT GOD!!! I feel how Job might have felt am I allowed to say that to You? Everything has been taken from me - my work, my sons, my family, my self-respect, everything, all of it, You know it and see it and I've complained and wailed to You, but never have I blamed You. Thank you for working in my life. Thank You for the things I DO have. I lost my way, but not even after everything that's happened, never have I lost my belief in You .. sucked in to satan that my faith in You is stronger than it's ever been. Thank You for my life ..., oh my God this means I have work to do! Remember that deal I made in my twenties still stands. I will do my best from now on to not let evil people in my life. May I always remain teachable. Amen."
I don't know why I had to learn them the most excruciating way, but I've learnt some huge lessons. It's only a mistake if you keep repeating it. All the darkness in the whole world can NOT put out the light in one candle. I've lived through stuff I legit didn't think I could or would live through. That's gotta count for something. Oh btw don't worry I'm still batshit crazy, I'm just clear and clean and renewed batshit crazy.
I need to be careful in saying how hard and viciously this day ripped me away. Don't want to tread on any toes. Hearts. My heart beats and then beats me up, every day.
I do have a soul. Then I singlehandedly brought two beautiful, joyful, empathetic, strong, insightful delightful a new eyefull of the most precious Souls into this world. This world - I zoomed only one person during last year's covidia and that was my psychiatrist. I'm officially medication-resistant. Especially against at least three of the top dangerous mental health brain disorders/diseases/fuckeries known.
Spiralling all these years .. I don't know how else to get help anymore I was supposed to collect medication on Friday but the gigantic bill prevented me from doing that. Maybe if I had, things wouldn't have turned so unbelievably painful today. Dunno.
I can't scroll through photos right now to show you the beautiful faces of my sons. It's too painful and already so hard writing this. Maybe one day they'll scroll through these years and years of writing here and maybe they'll feel my fierce love speaking to them straight from their computer screens to their bone marrow. Bone marrow is deep and so am I, my grandmother told me I am a deep well. Well I found an old letter from her she wrote me years ago. She would always write to me and I would always write back. Long, intimate letters I've never shown anyone. We were very, very close. In her old-fashioned cursive she once wrote:
"Edie, you're never alone. Not as long as I'm alive, and not even when I'm gone."
She's been gone for a long time now. I need her. Nan, I need your love so bad. You know it got me through my childhood.
FUCK it's hard to write while weeping. But hard things in life we do anyway, yeah? It's scary realising how relentlessly brutal things are. I can make it through again over and over like I always have but ... life is excruciating. I'm scared.
My sons are my world, my heart, my love, my everything that will ever be. They are the reason for my existence, I don't care if that's wrong. It's the truth. And the truth is the fucking truth. So many of us, scared by the truth! Getting as close to the real inner core of things may be terrifying but its freeing.
My brain is my biggest battlefield and I lay here in bed, invisibly duking it out in my head. Nobody, nobody in the world knows how powerfully hard it is for me unless you live in my brain next to all the monsters. Monstrosities. Everyone has their own individual problems and issues but mine have taken so much. I've lost my confidence. My happiness. My two loves. I'm empty .... so go fill it up God, Divine Creator. Please motherfucker fill me with love and faith and strength.
I pray my sons went ok today and Jesus do I pray they never feel the dark this way. They've already been through too much. I never, ever want them to know the feeling of needing to reach out and there's nobody there. Everybody needs a few somebodies. At least one somebody to turn to.
I'm a flawed human - flawed mother. When I see my sons I want to portray and say that I'm ok and it's fine and it's all going to be ok. They need and deserve that. I used to be such a proud mother.
But it's not ok and I can't pretend anymore. Last year, people wanted me gone like, gone gone. People on both sides of "the law." I was told no wonder my dads didnt want me, no wonder my little bro killed himself just to get away from me. No wonder my family won't speak to me anymore. I was told to do the world a favour and just die.
Words are incredible and words are weapons and words can kill. Local constabularians know I see them but I'll never believe them. Not after all that corruption whoops better be careful now Eden.
But I'm still here, still crying, still writing and trying, even at the lowest ebb. What kind of a word is ebb anyway. Dunno but it fits.
I missed my sons so hard today which broke my broken heart. All I care about is their hearts. They've magic magnificent hearts.
I love you my two guys. I love you and I love you and I'm sorry I love you and you are never alone. Not as long as I'm alive .. not even when I'm gone.
Two seconds past midnight I gave my nine and a half year old son Rocco the biggest hug and said "Hey mate we haven't made any mistakes this year! Or told any lies! Or hurt anybody!" He's long used to me talking like that since that's the only way I can talk and he just hugged me back, so hard. He loves me.
Some cocksucker who obviously had blue balls or some shit smashed the passenger side mirror on my car last night and I was ALMOST as cranky as uncle Stevie. I went with uncle Stevie to the copshop this morning because he had to report. He's out on bail for daring to grow medicinal cannabis plants ... which are the only thing that gives his two daughters pain relief for their chronic Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. According to the law in Australia he's a criminal, according to everybody in his life who truly knows and loves him he is the most pure, caring and good-hearted man. (Meanwhile white Australia started with convicts and let's all worship Chopper Read in the new Underbelly.)
Hey you know how I moved house? Well it's a beautiful magic house with the best energy and jeez when my life changes it changes quick like ZZZZZTTTTT. I haven't written here before about how I easily go into bipolar psychosis and freak out about what's real and what's not real. Are you real? What is real? Rocco had an oral presentation last year in class and he read out that beautifulest passage from The Velveteen Rabbit when the toys talk about what being real is. He did so well he got a Principals Award for it at school assembly. The award is at his dads house - I want it to be at my house on the fridge because I am the word person of the family and though my three sons may have a thoroughly crazy mother she be SMART.
We went swimming at Glenbrook Pool today and I dived straight in. "Mum you never do that you would always stay on the sand when we were at the beach house" and I said sweetheart everything is different now.
Everything is different now.
Thank you cocksucker who broke my mirror because it's a huge reminder on the first day of the new year to just stop looking back. I find it so very difficult to not live in the past.
Probably the most favourite thing about my new rented house is the aqua splashback in the kitchen. Pictured here is the Goddess print my cousin Karen gave me on my 21st sitting next to my grandmothers sugar bowl.
Nan always made life sweet.
So. I just had to write a new post for a new year. I hope you're getting through ok ... this year I got a lot to say.
That poem at the top of this blog post - how good is it. I had it saved in my computer under "loveafterlove" and when I went searching to upload it here I mistakenly uploaded the file in my computer simply called "love." Want to see that one? It made me good-cry.
Dan J Daley was one of the best friends I will ever have in this lifetime and he died last year and it's been hard to go to my very best friend Megan for support around it because he was her husband. And he loved me .... he was a guy and I'm a chick but there was never ever any hint of inappropriateness in mine and Dan's friendship. Just a kinship. I'm taking Megan to the Foo Fighters concert in Brisbane in a few weeks and Dave Grohl will be alerted to the fact of how big a fan Dan was.
Christmas sucked another massive dick last year but Max gave me the latest Eminem album and Rocco gave me a plant that cost $39.95 from Katoomba Hardware and my eldest Tim sent me a happy new year text at 12.10am this morning.
One of the last things I believe in in this life is love. And I'm loved. Thank fuck or else I wouldn't have made it through.
When in turmoil, just smoke a ciggie, have a staunch bird on your arm and put flowers in your hair. We're all just as strange as each other, some of us just hide it better.
I moved house in a heatwave which I do not recommend. Sweat dripped on my glasses and I cried because obviously I did most of it myself and realised how hard it was, despite so many offers of help. Help ugh get it orf.
I can't show you any photos of my new beautiful 1900's miners cottage because a bomb has gone off in here - but I have a backyard, beautiful verandah, A WHITE PICKET FENCE complete with white matching swing on the porch. Like Anne of fricken Green Gables. And aqua splash back tiles in the kitchen. And stepping stones (symbolic.) I made it out of my prison flat alive. I'm one tough motherfucker.
A FUSE NEEDED CHANGING IN MY ELECTRICITY BOX AND I CHANGED IT MYSELF. THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL.
I no longer live directly across the road from the charming police in the police station ... thanks for being SO considerate, fair, and understanding you guise!
I dreamt of a cemetery that was on fire - all of the graves got razed to the ground but I knew there were still rotting corpses underneath. I tried to tell people but they wouldn't believe me and I finally didn't care that I wasn't believed. I know death like the back of my wrinkled hands and I don't need to point it out to others.
I absolutely do whatever I like except there is no curtain of madness. Embarrassing but true. And I don't care anymore. I just. Don't. Care.
Oh where is my lover who takes away the lies, brings me hope and coffee and poetry?
Right here. I'm my own lover who refuses to settle for anything less than spectacular which won't be happening in this lifetime so I'll light up the sky myself. Write my own soothing words for me - and you. Kiss myself goodnight. Move out of a prison flat straight into the light. Blessed the fuck be.
As for you, Computer? I love you. Be careful .. for what it's worth I'll be having another crap christmas but it's just a day. Stay alive, stroke your hair, sweep your back deck, find at least two teeny things to be grateful for ... remember life ends eventually. Which is scary for some, relieving for others.
This last picture is for you. Swear on all the Gods if I can get through the things I get through then you can too and I don't promise anything these days but I promise you that.
Katoomba Street, November 2017
I'm taking Rocco and his mate to the movies tomorrow, somebody gave us Gold Class tickets which I'm inordinately excited about.
He's tired, and sensitive, and only nine. I've a long history of mothering boys .. you know how you finally learn how to do shit right on your last kid? Yeah. Tonight I cooked steak for dinner. We ate it while watching netflix. I introduced him to Fantales .. they are smaller than I remember? Or I've gotten bigger? All I know is, one of us has changed FANTALES.
Jokes we all change. You live long enough and life forces you to change. You live long enough and you see things in a completely different life (pun intended.) Last week mum and I visited the flat in Newtown that Cam died in. Mum took yellow roses and left them .. it was really peaceful, I'm glad we did it, and I only cried after I got home.
Missing U
How's the current climate of the #metoo campaign? Jaysus I've had to block out a lot of memories lately. If I had girls, I stand with Helen.
This week Eminem nonchalantly dropped his new single featuring Beyonce (her part sung here by Skylar Grey.) It's about not being who people think you are, second-guessing yourself, the wild ride of living a creative life. I've got a huge case of writers block which I've never experienced before. I think writers block - any block - is fear. I have a huge case of fear which is now dwindling because the tincture for that is love, truth, courage, etc. All the good marrow stuff.
I give life a seven and a half out of ten, this week. Not bad, all things considered.
The end of world has already happened many times and only those whose world has ended can understand. This morning I checked the news - guns, American flag, how could dozens of people die in church was it God's plan all along because the president himself tweeted (apparently you run countries by twitter now) to the Texas people yesterday "May God be with you."
Did I hear somewhere that St Peter has a big thick book of the day people are born and the day people die because if so then that's a heaven of a lot of people destined to die in a church I don't get and by the way pope (the vatican one not the kink one) you can jam your catholicism down your throat just like it was jammed down mine when I was a kid confessing all my dark deeds to the snake in the box.
The bag was next to the yellow box of Ratsack for a reason see drugs are poison but I was just trying to kill Kevin, the mouse. You can scroll back and see it in my dumb facebook videos if you want but you won't want and you won't believe me and I care what people think of me but I can't change that. I have the courage to change the things I changed and I have more to change because I'm changed but not everybody will see the changes in us but that's ok. Even if we show them Proof he died 2006. Doesn't mean Eminem will stop rapping about him.
Speaking of change I arrived back from Scotland with forty-seven one pound coins in a bright green purse I bought from H&M from a cranky sales assistant so I panicked and handed over a note I couldn't change the fact I couldn't understand their change. I flew across the world to feel the exact same things I feel in this Katoomba flat and when all the Scottish people asked me why I was there I answered all of them differently and never lied.
"Looking for my father." "Taking a break." "Checking out my roots." "I keep asking myself that question."
This morning my son cried at the school gates because it's changeover day so I told him in the rain that I'm right here and he knows where I live and when he cracked a smile and said of course I know where you live you're my mother? I knew he'd be ok.
Just once this year I was asked the four letters RUOK but it was followed by ".. you're sounding crazy again" but this time I didn't take the bait like Kevin because I don't take poison anymore irregardless of opinions. Turns out irregardless must be a real word after all because there's no red underline spellcheck underneath it.
Mental Health Week runs from the 8th to the 14th of October. My brother died on the 15th of October. He was always quite polite but I care less, now. I accidentally put the last t-shirt he wore in the pile of dirty laundry in my hallway and even though I know I won't wash it I still care less, there's other people to grieve now. Grieving is a state of heart but it is no longer the only emotion that I feel and if you hate yourself that's good! There's still something left of you to hate.
The world will end for all of us for real one day but until then I text my grieving friend that she should have called me when she was crying lord knows she's heard me cry the ocean enough.
In the meantime I'll write literal literature bask in the heat of my fire eat properly after I edit even though it's Monday. Poor Monday telling its therapist it's hated just for being Monday. I'm sad for Mondays I'm a sad woman but sadness isn't the only emotion I feel anymore it's taken me a life to realise you don't just feel one thing all the time. Sometimes you feel everything all at once but I still won't take the poison bait if I did I wouldn't be feeling like this I'd be feeling nothing at all.
No news is new news - we're doomed to repeat our same mistakes until we're so fed up to the back teeth we change. I got forty-seven pounds of change and the weight of what you think of me weighs heavier than what you think but today is Monday and yeah I really do have writing to do clothes to wash and just because I've already made my own bed doesn't mean I'm lying in it.
::
I watched this and laughcried from pure resonance and I felt happy because I wasn't alone in not feeling happy or also having a broken headlight. So many #meetoos never whispered only thought but chicks like this remind me all over again that if you tell the truth in public, the world doesn't end.
