Compelling.

"Last year I relapsed after ten years. Wait - Eden, don't say that, it's too much information. What will people think? Write something else - anything else."- My brain, ten minutes ago.

You know what's worse than wanting to kill yourself? Wanting to kill yourself but you know you're not going to. That shit SUCKS, because you know you're trapped here. On earth.

I first tried to kill myself when I was seven years old .. left a suicide note on my bed, climbed inside my cupboard and waited to be suffocated. My sister happened to walk past my bedroom at that time, came in and read the note. She dobbed on me so I got out.

I don't know why I wanted to kill myself at the age of seven. That's a pretty full-on thing. Obviously I had issues. Pick a card, any card.

A few years ago I was sitting late into the night with that same sister, and she said, "Remember you tried to kill yourself that time when you were a kid?" I was shocked that she remembered. I've never forgotten it, all these years .. but to hear somebody else talk of it somehow made it real.

My real dads name was Bill and he was from Glasgow and he had red hair. He played tennis and acted like Roger Moore. My stepfather of eleven years was from Manchester in England. His mother used to keep him and his brother home from school and get them to break into the neighbours houses to steal things. We shared a love for horror films.

They are both dead now, and I have a category in this blog called "dead dads." It's a very flippant category, isn't it? I'm very black and wry, aren't I?

Recently I bumped into a very dear, old family friend in the street. She looked me in the eyes and told me I need to get over my childhood.

I'm trying. It was a trying childhood. My whole life to this point appears to be some kind of series of comedic, large events. My theory is that before I was born, I was up on some cloud going, "Ok ok I got it. Make this next life a DOOZY, like, so many challenges. Let's see if I can remember how to get through them."

Alcoholism/violence/hatred/suicide/addiction/psychwards/rehabs/detox/recovery.

Then? I thought I was home free. I was all settled down, married with my beautiful son and another on the way .. and the moment my husband got those goddamn fucking cancerous  tumours  in May 2008? Every single bet was off, from every single thing in my entire life. How much can a koala bear? HA.

I went nuts. But pretended I didn't. Until I couldn't pretend anymore and relapsed the relapse of a thousand dead junkies and here I am, back again. The soles of my feet are charred from running out of hell. What does that mean? You wouldn't want to know what that means. I tell you something right now .. the past while has been hard. Like, bad.

I write posts here that are freaky and scary, then I wake up and think you IDIOT why do you keep writing your crazy on the internet? PEOPLE WILL KNOW.

Guess what? There is no internet.

There's no internet, no twitter, no blogging, no infernal facebook. All there really is, is people telling their stories. Like cavemen.

You know what I did today? Took my boys to the public swimming pool, came home, and weeded a whole veggie garden. Then I made fresh coriander pesto chicken pasta. Then Donna Hay pancakes from scratch. I like to bake! I put ice cream on those pancakes and walked out to my back deck. The sky was pink and my ice cream melted and I was deeply ok.

I can do normal things too. I can be just like you.

Lately I feel a strength that has not been there for a long time .. maybe ever. I can be quite hugely powerful, if I give myself the chance. So can you .. you! The people who read here but will never say anything. That's cool. Thank you for the good thoughts ... I felt them. I feel you.

My two sisters know I will be ok and so do I. They tell me they are not worried about me anymore, that when I go dark and deep, it's cool.

It's cool.

I had to give up being a stepmother, for a while. Too hard. I'm married to a man who would die for his kids - all of them. He has a good heart. So do I. Life is messy.

My stepdaughter is the most amazing firecracker of a girl .. she gives me faith in the future. She reads my blog. If I was allowed to blog about her I would write a beautifully-written story about how creative and talented and amazing I really think she is. That watching the solid love between a father and daughter kind of crumbled me, a bit. (A lot.) That it is all my stuff, all mine.

I told myself I do not miss what I never had. It's a lie.

"Get over your childhood Eden." "I'm trying."

This is the post I could not not write. So annoying. It's dedicated to Cherie's people:

"I'm just a tiny little nurse, in a metropolitan city of Australia, who reads your blog to my patients every Friday.

And you mean something to me. And you mean something to my patients. And that matters.

So maybe you have 1 or 2 haters? Meh. You have 9 people who request a dose of Eden over any other drug that's prescribed to them.

Every. Single. Friday. And it's been this way for a long time now :) "

That right there is the power of a "blog."

::

To rebuild some semblance of  credibility, I will be blogging about blogging for most of next week. Do you have any questions about blogging? Or the fact that these days I do not take drugs ... I AM THE DRUG. (insert lolcat here).



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