Under the Skin

I've known for a while I've been headed downwards. I just did myself a favour today and surrendered to it, instead of fighting.

Maybe it was the heavy shit in my last post that tipped me over the edge. All of a sudden I got very weepy about not having a dad. I hardly ever get weepy about my dad(s) .... I repulse myself when I do. Watching Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler today ... the scene where he explains to his daughter that he sucked as a father .... seeing her anger soften, and the honesty in his words - "I tried to forget about you, tried to pretend you didn't exist. But you do exist .. you're my girl."

Kind of cut me to the core, in ways it hasn't for ages. I sat there on the couch, blinking back tears ... wishing so badly I had a lonely wayward dad to come back into my life to offer apologies, want to know me. When I feel this way, it's like a tornado of black-holeness. I don't want to be here, anywhere, anymore, and I collapse into myself like a retractable folder. Grief death abandonment addiction suicide abuse depression. It's all too much and I go into overload.

I used to think that I had been through SO much already in my life, that the next half of my life would just be slow and content and quiet, studiously picking up all the pieces. And then my husband gets cancer right before the baby came HAHAHAHAHAHA and stole any remaining safety in life I was clinging on to. Bad shit happens, man. Bad shit. I really really hope the cancer doesn't come back. What REALLY pisses me off is other people's reactions to his remission. They're all like, "How's Dave?" Cocking their heads to one side, reminding me of my auntie at drunken family functions offering me "lemonade." With this pitiful look on their faces - and when I say he's fine, he's in remission .... there is no change in their expresion. And they just nod, offering simpering words like, "Ohhh, good luck." Then skulk off, because I do not handle people who shit me like that, and my eyes accidentally start lasering them to death.

Cancer means different things to different people, some obviously think it's only a matter of time until the cancer comes back - "Hopefully not in his internal organs, tsk tsk." (Cue laser eyes).

I'm sick of Dave's cancer business. But it sent me for the biggest six of my life, adding more fuckedupness to an already fucked up unit.

Lately, Rocco has been screaming and screaming every night again, I can't placate him. Nothing works - bottle, rocking, dummy, soothing. Every night now ... usually a few hours at a time. It makes me want to lose the plot, like Marge did when she got scared of flying and she was running up and down the aisle like a lunatic. Except instead of big blue hair I have long red hair and I just want to run around the house at 3am waking everybody ELSE up screaming "I GIVE UP I GIVE UP I GIVE UP I GIVE UP." My sister has told me a few times to ring the helpline available with a 24-hour midwife on call .... I think I'm so fucked up I will ask for help.

Things MUST be serious.

Where is that pesky gratitude I had? I can't remember where I put it.

It's difficult, this "life" business. Last week I was in Kmart looking to price an electric blanket for Max because winter starts tomorrow .. and I saw the most shifty people, caps pulled down over their hoodies, loading their pockets up with stolen shit.

I did what any self-respecting member of the public would do and felt jealous of the junkies.


I wished I could just say "fuck it" and join them, but, I'd end up in some lady's driveway in Cabramatta dazed and confused thinking "WTF? Didn't I just have a family and a warm safe house somewhere??"

And I would miss out on moments like this.



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Thank you so much for your comments about my brother. He read them, and I hope he got a bit puffed up. We all deserve a bit of puff-uppery every now and then.