I want to know if you can bear the throb of abandonment,
And not abandon your own soul.
I want to know if you can be your biggest cheerleader,
Your own knight in shining armour,
When no one is by your side.
Continue reading ““Favourite people”, self-love & empowerment”
As I have written about in another post, one of my all time favourite stories is White Oleander. The book/film is about a young foster girl called Astrid who moves from foster home to foster home, tragedy following her everywhere. There is a moment in the film where Astrid’s social worker offers her a good foster family. Instead Astrid chooses Rena. Staggering across the yard in high heels, a low-cut spaghetti top bulging with boobs, a pencil skirt, and sunnies, Rena screams bad news. The reason Astrid chooses such a shitty foster home is because the pain of finding love and then losing it is worse than the pain of not having been loved at all. Hope is not always our friend, and the higher we go, the greater we have to fall. Continue reading “Love: a double-edged sword”
“And you stand in your permanence, my name unwrapped on your tongue like an awkward gift when I haven’t got you one.” Prosopagnosia, Ros Barber
Cluedo has always been one of my favourite games, and a game I came to be quite good at. Over the years, however, I’ve found myself playing a different kind of Cluedo. Embarrassingly, I seem to be losing the ability to recognise faces, so have had to decipher who someone is using some quite round-about ways. This strange disability, which I’ve found difficult to talk about, is something that’s landed me in several awkward situations these last many years. There was the time I met a tech savvy man at a filmmaking workshop and he offered to fix my film’s volume for an upcoming festival we were working towards. We exchanged email addresses and communicated a fair bit online before the festival. However, as the day of the screening got closer, I became more and more anxious as I knew I would struggle to recognise and therefore acknowledge him at the screening. A lot of people can sympathise with anxiety over public speaking, work pressures or social events in general, but I have met no one else who’s had to deal with the added anxiety that comes with not being able to recognise/process faces. Continue reading “Blur of faces”
I’ve been living under a rock the last many years in terms of current affairs, but last night something kept me in the lounge room when my father turned on the television to watch the seven o’clock ABC news. The very first report was about the royal commission into institutional child sex abuse which was conducted between 2013 and 2017 (an article of the news report can be read here). I had never paid much attention to it, but for some reason it had been on my mind all week as I’ve been trying to understand the things I wrote about in my previous post, ‘An invisible scar’. There must have been something in the air. It was wonderful to hear some positive news for once: Malcolm Turnbull apologised to the survivors of child sexual abuse at the hands of institutions, and announced the government are implementing many changes to prevent it from happening again, some of which are listed at prolegin.com. Continue reading “Early morning awakenings (trigger warning)”
I read a quote once which said we should forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because we deserve peace. I found myself thinking about this when writing my previous post, “An invisible scar”. While there is a place for anger, there is a point where anger just ends up hurting ourselves, like punching a fist through a window. There is no finer example than the story of my friend’s mother and the pathological grudge she carried and took out on myself and my family. The woman died of cancer in her forties, an illness that, I believe, does not happen in isolation from one’s emotional life. Continue reading “The power of forgiveness and letting go”
Sometimes I wonder who I would be if life had dealt me different cards… if I had of grown up in the one place or stayed at the one school, if I was not bullied, if I had not crossed paths with the people I did. Today I dug up some old songs I used to play on the piano when I was younger. With these songs came memories from those days, washing over me like ripples through the lake. It was my first year of high school at a Catholic college for girls and the school took us to stay at Phillip Island Adventure Resort. I was down by the lake with some other girls, and we were instructed to build a raft using some pipes, ropes, and planks of wood. After building the raft using our amature skills, we were to test it. We nervously set off into the water on our shonky raft praying it would stay intact; we didn’t want to sink, especially as none of us were wearing bathers. The whole exercise was a perfect analogy of what the first year of high school is all about. Like the pieces of the boat, we were all, more or less, scattered, trying to form bonds, coherent groups and a coherent sense of self. Over the years, most of us would eventually find our place, find a group of friends and the security that comes with this, and grow in confidence. We would set off from the shore and complete our transformation into butterflies, spreading our wings and taking off into the world. I feel like, somewhere, I have missed out on this. While others around me sail into the horizon, I have barely left the shore as my boat keeps falling apart. By the time I reached high school, I had already been to four different schools and my self-esteem had been annihilated. I was also bullied at this school which led me to move again in year nine. When I look at photos of myself, it’s as though my colours have been washed away. It’s as though a part of me has died. To this day I feel like an outsider. I feel like no one really knows me. I feel like I wear many different uniforms. I feel fragmented, lost, confused, unsure of myself. I feel like a butterfly trapped in a cocoon. Or, as Anneli Rufus puts it, a dud popcorn kernal or bonsai tree.
I came back to an old episode of Star trek Voyager called “Meld”. Tuvok performs a mind meld with one of the Voyager crew called Suder.
Basically Suder is a serial killer that wound up being lost on board Voyager in the delta quadrant. Suder murders one of the crew and Tuvok apprends him. When definite proof that Suder is the murderer is obtained Suder is asked what his motive for the crime is. This is his response:
“No reason.”
Tuvok is puzzled and insists on a real answer. Suder respondes with:
“I didn’t like the way he looked at me.” Continue reading “No Reason”
“Here I am this is me
What you get is what you see
Look around I am free
And there are no fears in me.”
Delta Goodrem, ‘Here I Am’
It was a beautiful late Autumn day which I spent at the park. After my walk, I wandered down to the lake. I stood facing the nearby path and oval with my back to the lake, letting the last of the light seep into my hungry body. It has been a while since I’ve tasted life without depression. Since I’ve been able to look up at the strangers who pass me by and smile without it feeling phony. Since I’ve wanted to have fun. How nice it would be to play a game of cricket, I thought as I gazed across the empty stretch of grass. How can I play? Who can I play with? When can I play? Will I still want to play tomorrow? These were the thoughts which flooded my mind as I stared, seemingly, into nowhere. Continue reading “A glimmer of light”
I just watched “13 Reasons Why” season two. It was well produced and intended. It is hyperbolic in that way that afterschool specials are but I got enough out of it. One thing you can’t fault is the intensions of the creators and producers. They seem to genuinely mean well.
Something was bugging me about it though. Many of the plot developements are meant to be rather affecting towards the audience but that really is the point with a project like this. Along those lines I found myself having emotional reactions on a gut level that I usually don’t notice in myself. I am aware, though, that they are there even if only in the back of my mind. Continue reading “13 Reasons Why”
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