Month: July 2017

So I’m reading a book. (Haha, I swear I have thought processes outside of books and TV shows) (cause there are movies too).

It’s called ‘Before I Go,’ by Colleen Oakley – it’s her debut novel and so far it’s a ripper.

“Daisy is 27-years-old and has only months to live. And, each day, she’s finding her way through her lists of what needs to be done…Her major worry is what her wonderful, charming husband, Jack, will do without her. It’s this fear that keeps her up at night, until she stumbles upon the obvious solution. She knows that he won’t take care of himself so Daisy has to do it for him: she has to find him another wife…As she searches with singular determination for the right woman, she begins to realise that her plan to ensure Jack’s happiness is much more complicated than she expected…Life-affirming, authentic, funny and heartbreakingly beautiful, Before I Go is all about love..”

I think I may possibly actually have a condition in which I actively search for movies, TV shows or books that will make me cry. ?? Why, you ask, why do you want to make yourself cry? Especially because you already cry so easily at mere every day activities? That is a good question, I answer, but I can’t put into words the way words have an effect on me. I like — nay, love — when something resonates so deep, the words that my veins are filled with are linked together. These little joinings of letters that understand me right down to my very bone.

So I’m reading it. I’ve already laughed quite a lot and cried quite a bit, and I’m only up to page 116.

“I nod, struck by the kindness in her eyes. Even though I search for it, pity is nowhere to be found, and it makes me like her even more.”

Here we are. The reason I hurriedly put the book down and picked up my laptop, as if I was going to forget the words that had run through my head, the memories that jumped up; the ones that had been peacefully waiting in the corners, waiting their turn, waiting to be remembered.

Pity.

P I T Y.

Pity.

I hate pity. I have endured enough pity for one lifetime and I know the pity has not stopped for the lifetime to come. I give as much as I get, though, and for that I am sorry.

It’s this awkward little sparkle in peoples’ eyes when you tell them of an unfortunate situation your family has found themselves in. It’s when my friends would admit to their battle with mental illness. It’s when I would be standing with mum, and she would be wearing a scarf on her head, and people would watch with their brows slightly furrowed and their mouth slightly sad. It’s when I shaved my head and people would ask, did you shave it for cancer? And I would answer, yes, and some would be game enough to ask why, so I’d tell them.

My mum passed.

It’s only hair.

Their eyes would go from a look of shock to pity to admiration in mere seconds. They would give this slight smile thinking they hadn’t shown it on their face.

Sorry guys, secret’s out. We can always spot the pity.

Feeling pity is normal. Feeling this slight, shameful, thank fuck it’s not me, is completely, utterly, boringly normal.

What I want to pick at is letting your pity shroud your curiosity, letting it shroud your interest in this person, letting it make you an awkward shell of the person you were had this person not told you that something shitty has happened in their life. My favourite people would be the ones that would ask me about her. Not what happened. Not when. But who she was as a person.

Second secret’s out!! Everyone has had something shitty happen in their life!!!

~Also stop the self pity for this very reason~

People are not defined by the sad, or the bad, or the shitty things that have happened, are happening or are soon to happen in their lives.

People are defined by their sheer determination to live life even through all the sad, bad and shitty.

Stop the pity. It’s shitty.

You know when you cry so hard that your throat, eyes and head hurt? But most of all your heart. You rock back and forth, holding yourself, while you make that god-awful sobbing sound as you try to take a breath. You just know that you’re pulling the ugliest face possible but you couldn’t care less because all that’s taking over your body is this heartache.

I sat down to write something but not entirely sure what. I just watched With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept – possibly one of the most heartbreaking TV show episodes in the history of the land ever to be recorded ever. I knew what was coming and I still started crying like a baby, Jimmy dealing with such demons that so many people go through day to day and an innocent life being taken due to spitefulness, jealousy and a soul full of hate. (inb4 it’s a tv show – I’m well aware it isn’t reality but that’s it, isn’t it? These things happen every day).

Is it a sign of weakness or strength that I can show my emotions so easily? (I actually googled this and apparently it’s a sign of being emotionally strong. Wut wuuut)

Do you believe in the afterlife?
Can you?

I’ve had moments when I felt like those I’ve lost have been right beside me. Their signature smell wafts past, I hear their laugh, I hear their voice. Fleeting moments. I used to try to grab onto them, frantically searching for where the smell came from, which part of my mind their voice came from. But now I’ve just come to appreciate it when it comes around.

I have been asked if I could go back in time, would I?

I’ve said multiple times that I’d trade anything to have mum back if only for a day.
But when I really thought about that question, I realised that I probably wouldn’t go back in time. As much as it breaks my heart to think and admit out loud, I wouldn’t.

Because I know I’d get so lost in my past that I would completely forget about my future.

I know you want some answers, but what is the right answer? Because there is no answer, just life. Just life.

One of the hardest things in life is accepting that it goes on. The world spins madly on. You wake up in the morning and it feels like the hardest thing you could ever do, to get up, get out and get on with it. You are so lost, and so confused, why is everyone still going on with their normal, day to day life? How? The world ended last night, so why is the sun shining again?

I wouldn’t go back in time because it’s not fair for the people who are with me now, to lose me to my past. I realise now that I don’t need to go back and have my mum tell me she loves me, because all I need to do is look at what I have, and who I am. Every beat of my heart is a beat telling me that she loves me.

And it’s about accepting that there is afterlife for us, too, because we had to learn to live a life we had never lived before. With a hole in our heart we probably won’t ever mend, but the ability to chuck a bandaid over it and keep on keepin on.

I just have to trust that, wherever they are, it’s finally okay for them.

I’ll obviously never know what comes after life, but I’ll put my whole heart into believing that there’s something more. That, right now, my mum has the calm, and happiness, that she always deserved. She’s sitting on the couch in that beautiful, colourful, vibrant dress she left our world in, that perfectly matched her personality.
She’s drinking a cup of tea and eating a block of chocolate and she’s got her pups sitting around her for a piece. (And in this place, dogs are allowed to eat chocolate, obviously).
She’s with her sister, Karin, and her brother, Glen. And after all the pain that the three of them endured in this lifetime, they are finally together again. Happy. Free.

 

One of my best gals and I can talk underwater about nothing and everything. We’ve had extensive conversations about cockroaches in our homes, to itchy legs after exercise, to boys and the need we don’t have for them.

We’re the token perpetually single friends and we’re fucking sick of being asked why we don’t have boyfriends.

I sat down and opened google – thinking, for once, maybe it would help to do a little research for this piece. I typed in ‘why don’t you have a boyfriend‘ – and the results were astonishing. Not in a good way. Post, after post, stating what habits are preventing you and what you need to change.
“20 reasons why…”
“5 reasons why…”
“Why am I single? quiz.”
“Take this quiz to find out why you don’t have a guy… And what it’ll take to get one.”

Like are you actually KIDDING?
Plain and simple, majority of the time I am being asked this question is because I am a female. Females are supposed to want to settle down. Just like females are supposed to have long hair. (Whoops, two strikes, one more and I’m out of the dating game 5eva.)

Amidst this ‘research’, I found an article that had a point saying, ‘Grow your hair out – the importance of not having short hair for communicating physical and mental stability.’
I don’t know if the pure anger I felt when I read that was because I felt personally attacked, (I genuinely wanted to punch the writer in the face, possibly proving their mental stability joust right), but seriously, the fuck? Do we still live in the 1800s?

Why don’t you have a boyfriend? Is it because you won’t follow ridiculous social conformities that the internet endorses?

I guess it gets to a point in someone’s life where people start to think, does she ever have a boyfriend? Imaginations run wild, people start to think up this wonderful little slutty life that you must live, where you can do, say, be what you want, all because you are single.

Frankly, my dear, if you cannot do, say, or be, what you want while you are in a relationship, you are doing it wrong and you should run for the hills now.

I’ve met very few people in life I could see something with. And, obviously, when I have met some people I’ve liked enough to keep around, they don’t see something with me. And don’t you understand how okay that is? Who wants someone who doesn’t fully, truly, heart-achingly want you back?

I have been blessed with the most incredible support system anyone could ever ask for; a close, funny, puts-each-other-first family, friends who know me inside and out and incredibly still want to hang out with me, mentors and everyday heroes who have helped the shy, must-hide-behind-mums-legs-at-all-times young girl blossom into the weird, outspoken, all-encompassing emotional love bucket she is today.

And I am proud to say that I didn’t need a man to help me come to this point in my life. And nor should you.

I cared once, that I was ‘the single one’. About 5-7 years ago. That was before I became so unapologetically comfortable in my own skin.

Living in Sydney for close to a year, people back home knew very little as to my love life (albeit knowing a lot from my insta-presence). I liked it that way. It was refreshing, going on a date, meeting someone out, talking to tinder baes, knowing they didn’t know people back home and word wouldn’t run around. But the moment I came back home and had a (fucking blast) weekend in Shorty’s, I was countlessly asked if I had a boyfriend loyally waiting for me back in Sydney. No, I laughed, waving them off, I don’t need a boyfriend.

But why?

Said galfriend of mine has had the same situations, particularly with loved-up couples within a certain group of hers. She constantly has people suggest ‘Oh, bae and I will find a single friend of his for you.’
She’ll laugh and say, ‘thanks, but no thanks,’ and sincerely mean it.
God forbid they take her seriously, though. Because how could you possibly be happy when you’re all alone?

We had a good laugh as we were going over old crushes of ours, or unrequited crushes (us being the unrequiters) from school days, and how different things were to be, had they ever worked out. How utterly glad we are that they didn’t.

Who’s to say we would have travelled the world as much as we have, even become as close as we have, if we had someone else taking up our time and attention?

And that, too, was a big point; we enjoy being selfish as fuck and doing whatever the hell we want (as long as our bank account allows us to). Plus the thought of someone joining us on our lazy Sundays, makeupless, pantsless, socially unacceptably stewing in our own grossness, is just too horrible to bare.

I think a big part about those who ask is that they know we’re actually secretly (not so secretly) hopeless romantics. We are also cynical critics. It probably also doesn’t help how ridiculously picky we are.

We are only 23 years old. We have a multitude of years to make the god-awful decision of who we spend the rest of our lives with.

We’re the token perpetually single friends and we’re fucking sick of being asked why we don’t have boyfriends.

Maybe we could ask you: why do you have a boyfriend? 

The day will come. For now, I think we’ll stick to the endless love that we find in each other, our books, and of course, dogs.

Good luck to our future suitors anyway. (Sassy gal emoji).

Until next time.
Your single gal, rack daddy