Month: June 2017

What’s with people’s incessant need to know the ins-and-outs of relationships that aren’t their own?

I’ve been guilty as a goose.

The classic stalk of one (or both), contemplating whether they are still together because they haven’t posted anything with the two of them in a while. (Turns out they are still together, just too busy actually enjoying each others company to appease you and throw it all over social media).

We do it with celebrities, models, footy players – friends, foes and people you’ve never actually met from your hometown but feel you know quite well because, well, you’re constantly checking their social media.

We sit with our gals over wine, boiz over beer, friends over the phone, indulging in our little guilty pleasure – light hearted gossip.
“So! Did you hear?”
Whoever sits across from you lights up, eyes sparkle, ready to get their daily dose of hot goss right off the press.
“Ooh, what?”
“____ and ____ broke up!”

You tell each other what you have heard from other mouths that shouldn’t have been sharing what you’re sharing.
“But don’t tell anyone,” you say, half-hoping that if they do, they don’t mention your name.

Sometimes a couple breaks up and you feel as if they have broken up with you as well. You had poured so much of your own admiration into the love they shared that it hurts to see them ending it.

You start dating someone and get onto the topic of past relationships.
“So why’d you break up?”
What are we searching for in that question?
Are we checking to see if they were the heartbreaker or heartbroken?
Or are we just so used to feeling as if we need to know, to fulfil some innate desire inside of us that craves knowing details? An odd sense of curiosity that almost all share.

The title of this post, no doubt, will draw some readers in purely due to curiosity. They’ll think, ‘ooh juicy!’ and ‘I didn’t even know rackers had anyone to break up with?’ (haha! joke’s on you, I have so many tinder baes).

It’s a phrase that will probably always spark peoples interest. All I can tell you is that those who live the happiest existences, in my experience, are those who couldn’t give a flying fuck about who’s in love with whom.

I’m not going to tell you to stop caring about other people’s relationships, because I am never hear to tell you how to live your life. I am, however, here to guide you (your spirit guide, if you will), and to let you know it’s probably healthier putting all that time, energy, and effort, into your own personal relationships.

I’m out, off to stalk Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

(Aren’t they just so fucking gorgeous?)

Until next time. Your gal, rack daddy

It’s Friday night. 8.48pm.

I have turned down two invitations to go for drinks and, you know, have a good time.

I have taken my pants off. But not yet my makeup, because it looks really good today and I am not yet emotionally ready to part with it.

I’m sitting under my doona. Doona, not duvet, because Australia.

I have a half-drunk, luke-warm cup of coffee on my bedside table.

I ate a lemon meringue tart for dinner, with a side of skittles. I’ll be treating myself to onion rings for dessert, and possibly a banana. (Diet of champions).

I just had my twentieth existential crisis in four weeks. I looked at my reflection and my reflection looked back at me. I am a person. A real, live person. I stretched out my arm, and my arm stretched out in front of me. Weird, right?

Was my coffee laced with something?

i read all of these words and i wish they had come out of my hands, out of my heart, conjured from my mind. i want to dive right into the abyss, soak myself in words, sink into these little joinings of letters that just understand me right down to my very bone. the way you can read a sentence and just think, fuck. fuck, how does that resonate so deep? how do these people know my soul inside out? they write the words my veins are filled with. you wish you could write every single piece of writing that has ever spoken to you in a certain way, you want to write it all over a blank wall but you know that the blank wall will eventually turn into a block of black. because when you get to the end, when you finish writing every single thing, every piece that ever made you feel something more than… more than life, it will have overlapped. just overlapped into nothing and everything and it will be every word and every sentence and every phrase but it will no longer make sense. because that is what words end up being; endless nonsensical things that can be forgotten in a second, but you remember the feeling it gave you, the shivers and the joy and the love and the hate. the sadness, oh the tears shed over words, just words. and there’s that particular feeling, that one that sits at the bottom of your spine. a mixture of sitting in a weird position from reading for so long, and it almost feels like nerves, nerves at the thought of someone understanding you so well. and you just get lost in the thoughts of someone else, and you think, you wonder if they can feel it too? if they know how much their words have affected you? can they feel it? i want them to feel it, i want them to feel the intensity and the love and the words that i just don’t have. the words i want to say and the words i can’t think to say and the words i am saying, i want it all to be understood and i want to make people feel the same. i want to make people cry, and laugh, and go, oh my god how did she know? how did she know the words for those feelings i could never quite pinpoint? i want it and i’ll have it. i’m going to have it.

Your thoughts are going to trick you. Your memories change your opinion on what really happened. You can (somewhat) control where your mind wanders, thus your state of mind. I only just discovered how utterly wrong I was about a situation in my past and how much I had conditioned myself to remember the feelings I had.

The ‘revelation’ came as I was reading old things I’d written. It was dated quite a few years back. (Keep in mind that this is not a significant revelation, nor changes my life in any way today).

Moments before reading it, if someone had asked me about my feelings toward this certain…incident, I would have replied all blasé. I would have acted as if that time in my life hardly had an impact on who I am today, I would have just seemed… cool about it. 

Which I’m just not. Ever. Not when it comes to the feelz train. My opal card is permanently topped up for that shit. I am a gold, honorary member of the feelz train association.

Reading it brought these weird little butterflies in my stomach. I had completely squashed the significance of this event, the importance of the people involved.

And I was, for lack of a better word, amazed.

Amazed at how successfully my thought pattern had warped my opinion; how much I had convinced myself that it didn’t matter, that they didn’t matter, that I was okay. It was then, and only then, I truly realised the power our thoughts have on us.

I have beaten myself up in the past (on so many occasions) on what I should have done, what I should have said, how I should have handled myself. I should have laughed a little softer, talked a little quieter, cried a lot less.

It was only my thoughts (and a few insensitive assholes with the inability to let things go) that was doing so much harm. The way I was remembering things.

I had managed to remember – right down to the very feeling – how people had hurt me. I had (conveniently) forgotten – right down to the guilt – how I had hurt people.

“We keep secrets from lots of people, including ourselves – and that we call forgetting.” Trance (2013), Dir. Danny Boyle

The best way to adapt to being conscious of your thoughts – and not allowing them to take over – is to realise that moments are fleeting. And you are only giving significance to those moments that you choose to give significance to.

You can read steps, self-help articles, self-help books and blog posts from some gal who had a “life-changing revelation” that will probably conveniently be forgotten by this time next week, about changing thought patterns and choosing how to think. But the change will only come when you make the decision to change. And work at it. Every day.

(not in conjunction with those who suffer any type of mental illness)
(also don’t expect you to suddenly have complete control of your thoughts)
(I certainly won’t)

Choosing your favourite holiday destination is like choosing your favourite pet. You know you’re not supposed to, but you do. (And you’re really obvious about it).

Every place has its own charm, something to fall in love with around every corner. No words can explain seeing the Eiffel Tower after years of staring at the canvas above your bed; the first moment you take in the pure beauty of San Sebastian as you accidentally stumble upon the beach (when you were only looking for a supermeerkat). The culture, history, stories and memories that have been made, written about and thought about for days since.

Every childhood dream of mine was fulfilled the fateful day I arrived in Rome. I knew I was to have a love affair with Italy, as carb-loading is essentially my religion, but I expected it to be like those ones when you are 21 and a little dumb. The love affair where you know it’s going nowhere but you still make the decision to give it all and cry when it’s over.

That’s what I thought Italy was going to be.

This is what dreeeeams are made of…

I was obsessed with Lizzie McGuire. No, I mean obsessed. I would stay up until 3am watching marathons on Disney Channel at the age of 10/11 years old, or wake up at 5am to watch an episode I had already seen aired at 5.30am. Ah, the beginning of an insomniac rackers…

Not only was I obsessed with Lizzie McGuire, but Hilary Duff as a human bean. I used to watch all of her movies, sing all of her songs, and (deep, dark secrets coming out), I had a scrapbook of her.
Just Hilary Duff.
Her face pasted on pages and pages of a book.

But that’s not the worst of it.

A couple of years ago, I was googling myself (normal, right?) and I came across a website.

And it had this:

Yes, you read that right.
11 year old Racquel went on the internet to ask for Hilary Duff’s email address. You know, it was alright that I couldn’t… but how AWESOME would it be if I did?
Suffice to say, I didn’t get it. Off a random forum on the internet. As an 11 year old.

I’m sure you can now understand the complexity of my love for Hilary Duff.

So I’m 11 again. Except double that, triple the stupid decisions regarding the internet, and quadruple living through shittier things than Lizzie accidentally falling for fuckboy Paolo’s shit (though I’ve done that a few times too), but somehow this makes the whole childhood dream thing that much sweeter, and so much more emotional.

I first saw Trevi Fountain with my Contiki group – it was fun and we all took photos and laughed and ate lots of gelato and threw coins and made our wishes in the fountain.

I went back 3 weeks later by myself. This time I got to sit and stare, and to be perfectly honest, entirely cliche, really cringe-worthy – it was magical. It had away of making me realise just how small me and my problems were, while simultaneously only making me think of my happiest memories. (That doesn’t even make sense but also it does).

Essentially Italy made me feel all the feels. Driving through the Tuscan countryside while the sun set, listening to music and thinking of my mumma; riding the ferry along the Amalfi coast while everyone I started uni with was handing in their last assessments; hearing my year 10 history teacher’s voice in my head at Pompeii, probably the hottest day on record in the history of the world.

Wandering through the markets and getting doted on by beautiful old Italian ladies; hit on by potential, really gross, sugar daddies in Atrani. Sunsets in Sorrento, fleeting friendships in Florence. Reading so many books my back hurt, eating so much pasta my gut hurt, walking so far my feet hurt.

I still have so much of the world to see but I am counting down the days (and the dollars) until I can see Italy again.

Choosing your favourite holiday destination is like choosing your favourite pet. You know you’re not supposed to, but you do.

“There are people we meet in life who miss being important to us by inches, days, or heartbeats. Another place or time or a different emotional frame of mind and we would willingly fall into their arms; gladly take up their challenge or invitation. But as it is, we encounter them when we are discontent or content and they are not. Whatever they are, we are not and vice versa. Two trains going in different directions that pass for a few powerful moments at full speed, blasting noise and wind but then they are gone. Whatever serious chemistry might have been possible if, isn’t.” – Jonathon Carroll

Timing.

“It’s just not the right time.”
“Maybe later on in life.”
“If I had have met you a couple of months ago…”

You have either said something along those lines or you have been told so – or, if you’ve lived, loved, and (actually put yourself out there) tried enough, you’ve been both.

Timing’s a bitch. Innit?

Your feelings are always a gamble. And despite Sportsbet’s constant reminder, we don’t gamble responsibly. How are you going to know if you don’t give it a go? *Shoulder shrug emoji*

You meet someone at what seems like the right time. “Ah, I’ve been waiting for you.”
You don’t stop to think about whether it’s that particular person you’ve been waiting for, or whether you’ve missed the familiar touch of a hand on yours. The burning feeling of a kiss on the cheek. The satisfying, sore feeling after a night full of… strenuous activities…

We blame flings that don’t turn into relationships on ‘not the right time.’
Long term relationships, summer romances, fleeting moments.
It just wasn’t the right time.
Right person, wrong time.
Wrong person, right time.

The same shit. Over and over. We (almost always) blame it on time.

You chew your friends’ ears off, (over)analysing what went wrong and why she’s better, and they do the same to you. And the reason is almost always, because you met him at the wrong time.

When I was young, dumb and… young and dumb, I had a crush on one of my friends. As luck would have it, he had a crush on one of his. My galpals tried to comfort me in telling me that it just ‘wasn’t the right time’ for him and I.
‘Maybe in the future,’ was what they said.
I asked, ‘yeah but how farrrr into the future?’ (whiny 15 yr old girl voice).
They said, ‘I dunno, maybe like in three years. Probably when we’re in year 12 or something.’

I couldn’t help thinking, well fuck me that’s a bloody long time! He’s not worth waiting that long for!

That thought there begs the question – if he’s not worth the wait, is timing what I can blame?

And here lies the answer –

3 years later came and went. We had remained friends and liked different people and gave each other advice. After getting my poor lil feels hurt from one (who I thought was) special boy, he was my shoulder to cry on and ear to whinge (incessantly) to.

And, naturally, that 15 year old crush started to seep back into my head like fog on a cold Canberra morning.
Feelings came and settled in. Shared and not quite received. Took some time to leave again.

I, he, and the effervescent, loving galpals of mine, blamed it on timing yet again.
Could we really blame it on that?
Or, god forbid, dare I say that classic cliche… we just weren’t meant to be.
(Which we definitely weren’t and I sure as heck know that now).

Another one?
I met a boy two weeks ago. Literally a week or so before I was due to move back home. He was fucking gorgeous, man. Like typically good looking. The type of looks you’d write books about [and that I probs will do]. We met at one of my favourite spots in Sydney, on that fateful day I decided it would be a really fucking good idea to trek 6.4km to the city centre at 5:30am, all because the bus drivers in the inner west were on strike. I was tired, delusional, and 47% could have made the guy up had I not received a text from him the day after.

I was almost kicking myself that it wouldn’t work out.
Wouldn’t, because fuck attempting a long distance fling when I can’t even be bothered to date someone a 10 minute drive away. I’ve even tried the cross-seas thing and it sure as hell ain’t for me.
So I didn’t try. Because all these 23 years has taught me a lot about myself, and a lot of that is: I fall hard and fast when I know it’s not right for me. Because, you know, sense.

Timing has a funny way of showing you there’s something better for you yet.
Trust the fuck out of it.

Just moments before I sat down to write this, I was cleaning out my room. A winter-clean, if you will. De-cluttering. Both my living space and my mind.

I came across a letter that I had completely forgotten I had ever written. Even looking at it, I can’t conjure up the memory of sitting down to write it. If it wasn’t unmistakably my handwriting, I would’ve thought it had been something misplaced.

It was so, incredibly fitting to come across it today. It read:

My dearest 23 year old me,
Please tell me you are happy. That not long after your 22nd birthday, you got the courage to change what was no longer making you happy. Maybe you’re not in a relationship yet but I hope you’ve found out how to love yourself again. That your heart doesn’t hurt anymore.
God I hope you’re happy. Cause I’m really, really not. I feel so fucking alone right now.

No matter where you are in life at the moment, things always change.

Living and breathing example.

Sincerely,
23 year old me.