I shouldn't write a post like this but I shouldn't have written a lot of posts so let's just press on.
Today in a meeting I referred to my twenties as "the barnacle years." I was in some shitty, dark places. But I held on and I'm still alive. This makes me really good at enduring and coping. The past few weeks, (months? years? MY ENTIRE LIFE!?) I have felt my grasp on .... everything .... loosen. Unhinge. My mind keeps saying over and over "I don't feel so hot." This has all culminated spectacularly into one of the worst bouts of depression I've ever had. Which is saying a lot. Being a barnacle is hard work. It literally is a bout. A round, a fight.
I hate the word depression. It gets used too much. Anyway, there's nothing "wrong" with me. I have seen poverty first-hand. Slum piles and sick children and sad faces. There is nothing wrong with me.
I can travel to Africa on five different planes by myself but I can't pick up the clothes on my floor. I've spent the past week pretty much uncontrollably crying. I'm in a bad way. I don't want to write this and I don't want to admit it.
This is the third time I've written this post. It keeps coming out wrong, keeps sounding so weary and tiresome. Who gives a shit, really. I'm so sick of people spewing out their bullshit to the internet like it means something. Who gives a motherfucking shit about any of it. We're all clear that nothing means anything, right?
I keep forgetting which realm I'm in. Keep forgetting how I'm supposed to be.
The thing about blogging is that the blogger is continually editing their own lives, polishing up shiny or clever parts. I'm doing it right now ... going back to the first few paragraphs above, taking out words and sentences that don't fit or are too exposing.
I feel like printing off some MISSING posters of my face and distributing them evenly around my neighbourhood. I don't know where I am. Have you seen me? I should be more together and successful than this. I should be having a proper career somewhere. I shouldn't have spent four days in a row lying prone on the couch crying, only getting up to order a pizza, take a piss, and charge my phone.
Climate change, poverty, covert global anarchy, non-government, the need to consume so we don't feel our feelings ... I'm frightened, Aunty Em. My mind keeps falling in on itself and I wrack it for a time when I've ever actually been ok. My online friendships and boundaries are getting blurred. My childhood issues are incredibly triggered, and I have huge trust issues.
WELCOME TO THE BONFIRE OF THE CLUSTERFUCK.
Yesterday I dragged my sorry arse into the car and drove Max into town to buy some cans of cream. He's been planning this big sleepover with three of his mates for some time. On the way there we heard American Pie - man that's a long song. It's quite fabulous. I stealth-cried, and asked Max what he thought of it. He's eleven, and was hearing it for the first time. He shrugged, said it was ok.
"The church bells all, were broken."
Maybe my church bells are broken. Maybe this is all spiritual stuff, because I have never doubted God the way I've doubted God these past months. I'm thinking the atheists might be on to something. Jim was agnostic. I wonder where he went when he died. I was taught by nuns who used to whack my bare arse in front of the whole class, in kindy. I just knew from an early age that I'd be going to hell. Now I know that's not true, because hell is actually on earth.
So I'm buying these cans of cream for my kid yesterday because he told me that he just wanted to do something crazy, like make cream pies on paper plates and have cream pie fights with his friends like there's no tomorrow. I get wanting to do something wild. All our kids ever get told is "no" and "you can't do that" and "behave." Fuck all that. Sometimes all kids need is to smoosh the shit out of each others faces with cream pies so I let them all and it was hilarious.
I stood there inhaling all their eleven-year old boy reverie and joy.
In return for the cream fight, I made Max come with me to an art exhibition at the new cultural and resource centre. (That's all parenting older kids is, by the way. Dealmaking.)
Walked in. Fell in love.
Max was so bored. I felt so much better. We went home.
Thank goodness for my meetings, for my children, for art that shows that dark is just as important as light.
There's a quote by somebody famous about how, we must not be afraid to share the hard times in our life. Something about poets heralding the darkness, because if it doesn't get documented, how will people know we got through? That they can get through?
Like a reverse lighthouse. A darkhouse.
So. That's where I'm at. I'm ok enough to log on to my computer and upload some photos and write some words, so that's something. I miss the days of just coming to blog and offloading like I used to, without triple-guessing every little goddamn thing. Because what will people think?
At this point I don't care. It's night-time and it's raining. Tomorrow is a whole new day where I'll have to keep fighting and proving to people that I haven't wasted my entire life, that I'm NOT a fuckup. (Actually, they probably have a point.)
I will make some kind of appointment with some kind of professional. I've made a few in the past six months but kept cancelling because I felt better. But I'm getting worse. There's no pretty bow for it. I'm really struggling in a mental rip, like probably millions of other people in the world are too, right in this moment. Free lifejackets for all!
Let's just end this post with a song that came on in the car with Max. I got him to shazam it for me - I knew it was Nick Cave, but I never knew Nick Cave was in a band called Grinderman. I just heard it for the first time yesterday. There's so much new art to discover. It'd be a shame to turn back now.
Today in a meeting I referred to my twenties as "the barnacle years." I was in some shitty, dark places. But I held on and I'm still alive. This makes me really good at enduring and coping. The past few weeks, (months? years? MY ENTIRE LIFE!?) I have felt my grasp on .... everything .... loosen. Unhinge. My mind keeps saying over and over "I don't feel so hot." This has all culminated spectacularly into one of the worst bouts of depression I've ever had. Which is saying a lot. Being a barnacle is hard work. It literally is a bout. A round, a fight.
I hate the word depression. It gets used too much. Anyway, there's nothing "wrong" with me. I have seen poverty first-hand. Slum piles and sick children and sad faces. There is nothing wrong with me.
I can travel to Africa on five different planes by myself but I can't pick up the clothes on my floor. I've spent the past week pretty much uncontrollably crying. I'm in a bad way. I don't want to write this and I don't want to admit it.
This is the third time I've written this post. It keeps coming out wrong, keeps sounding so weary and tiresome. Who gives a shit, really. I'm so sick of people spewing out their bullshit to the internet like it means something. Who gives a motherfucking shit about any of it. We're all clear that nothing means anything, right?
I keep forgetting which realm I'm in. Keep forgetting how I'm supposed to be.
The thing about blogging is that the blogger is continually editing their own lives, polishing up shiny or clever parts. I'm doing it right now ... going back to the first few paragraphs above, taking out words and sentences that don't fit or are too exposing.
I feel like printing off some MISSING posters of my face and distributing them evenly around my neighbourhood. I don't know where I am. Have you seen me? I should be more together and successful than this. I should be having a proper career somewhere. I shouldn't have spent four days in a row lying prone on the couch crying, only getting up to order a pizza, take a piss, and charge my phone.
Climate change, poverty, covert global anarchy, non-government, the need to consume so we don't feel our feelings ... I'm frightened, Aunty Em. My mind keeps falling in on itself and I wrack it for a time when I've ever actually been ok. My online friendships and boundaries are getting blurred. My childhood issues are incredibly triggered, and I have huge trust issues.
WELCOME TO THE BONFIRE OF THE CLUSTERFUCK.
Yesterday I dragged my sorry arse into the car and drove Max into town to buy some cans of cream. He's been planning this big sleepover with three of his mates for some time. On the way there we heard American Pie - man that's a long song. It's quite fabulous. I stealth-cried, and asked Max what he thought of it. He's eleven, and was hearing it for the first time. He shrugged, said it was ok.
"The church bells all, were broken."
Maybe my church bells are broken. Maybe this is all spiritual stuff, because I have never doubted God the way I've doubted God these past months. I'm thinking the atheists might be on to something. Jim was agnostic. I wonder where he went when he died. I was taught by nuns who used to whack my bare arse in front of the whole class, in kindy. I just knew from an early age that I'd be going to hell. Now I know that's not true, because hell is actually on earth.
So I'm buying these cans of cream for my kid yesterday because he told me that he just wanted to do something crazy, like make cream pies on paper plates and have cream pie fights with his friends like there's no tomorrow. I get wanting to do something wild. All our kids ever get told is "no" and "you can't do that" and "behave." Fuck all that. Sometimes all kids need is to smoosh the shit out of each others faces with cream pies so I let them all and it was hilarious.
I stood there inhaling all their eleven-year old boy reverie and joy.
In return for the cream fight, I made Max come with me to an art exhibition at the new cultural and resource centre. (That's all parenting older kids is, by the way. Dealmaking.)
Walked in. Fell in love.
It's called Dark Stations, by Julie Harris. I was transfixed, transported. I want to go there every day for lunch and eat a cheese sandwich on the chair in front of it. This piece has energy. It's dark, it tells the truth. There's so much in it. Even angels cast shadows.
"The 14 sheets are highly-personal meditations on Christ's Stations of the Cross. To convey the intense emotion and suffering embodied in the event, Harris has wrestled aspects of the Devil's Wilderness to act as a physical and psychological prelude to the horror of crucifixion."
Max was so bored. I felt so much better. We went home.
Thank goodness for my meetings, for my children, for art that shows that dark is just as important as light.
There's a quote by somebody famous about how, we must not be afraid to share the hard times in our life. Something about poets heralding the darkness, because if it doesn't get documented, how will people know we got through? That they can get through?
Like a reverse lighthouse. A darkhouse.
So. That's where I'm at. I'm ok enough to log on to my computer and upload some photos and write some words, so that's something. I miss the days of just coming to blog and offloading like I used to, without triple-guessing every little goddamn thing. Because what will people think?
At this point I don't care. It's night-time and it's raining. Tomorrow is a whole new day where I'll have to keep fighting and proving to people that I haven't wasted my entire life, that I'm NOT a fuckup. (Actually, they probably have a point.)
I will make some kind of appointment with some kind of professional. I've made a few in the past six months but kept cancelling because I felt better. But I'm getting worse. There's no pretty bow for it. I'm really struggling in a mental rip, like probably millions of other people in the world are too, right in this moment. Free lifejackets for all!
Let's just end this post with a song that came on in the car with Max. I got him to shazam it for me - I knew it was Nick Cave, but I never knew Nick Cave was in a band called Grinderman. I just heard it for the first time yesterday. There's so much new art to discover. It'd be a shame to turn back now.
Why do you read my blog? Who are you? I'd really like to know. Because I forgot why I write it and I'm lost.
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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell