Month: August 2017

memory

There are only so many words to describe a place you have never thought to describe before. It’s just a place in your mind where you know everything, where you know where to step to avoid rolling your ankle, where you know where to sit to get the optimal view of a sunset. It’s on a slight hill in the very corner of our five acre property, we have the pile of branches from old trees that have since died, the wood we use for kindling in our fireplace in the winter time. Side-stepping kangaroo poo to get to the spot on the pile of bricks. I have never been sure as to why we have the pile of bricks – about 1 metre high – but it has always been there. You can only sit in one spot without them all uncomfortably moving; right on the edge. It looks right into the neighbours property, where they seem to have endless land — their house is on the other side of the hill, so I can only see the few trees and many sheep. As an avid lover of a sunset, I have watched the sun settle as the day turns into night many times, and it always provides my favourite setting. The grass is dead, branches are strewn everywhere. I sit just in front of the barbed wire fence that protects our property; long since it has worked as an electric fence. There is a timber pole just near the pile of bricks, with the wire wrapped tightly around, continuing on to the next property; the only sign of where our properties end and the next one begins.

moment

I’m standing here, in the very place I was describing from memory mere hours before. I am surprised at how well I was able to describe it; hardly anything I am noticing that I had not already described. The only noticeable difference is another pile of bricks, right next to the aforementioned pile. These bricks are not placed together, rather thrown together, a dark grey pile of rubble.

The air smells crisp and the wind is strong, biting my skin, telling me to go inside. The sun is setting, an orangey pink hue mixed with dark gray. The remnants of the day.

I’ve never been sure
how to describe your being
whether you are
the sun, lighting the sky
the moon, guiding the night
or the stars
the most awe-inspiring sight

maybe you are all —
the trees, bristling in the wind
the air surrounding my skin

you are nothing
but you are everything
you are every reminder
that I am alive

Hey ma.

I was staring in the mirror before, searching for any piece of you that I could find. Whether I had your nose, your eyes, your smile. I stared for so long that my vision went blurry (though that may have been because I haven’t been wearing my glasses enough lately… at least I know I got the shit eyesight from you, thanks ma). I watched a tear trickle down my face and for a moment I hated that it was only my own, sad face staring back at me.

In the years since you left, I’ve become more emotional, wittier, weirder (if that’s possible), stronger and more aware of who I am and what I’m here to be. In a way, I’ve become more like you. I think each of us, in turn, have stolen a piece of your personality and wrapped it in our hearts to guard for the rest of our lives. The moment we are all together is the moment you are truly with us, as if you never left; Kaarin’s zest for life, Monique’s quick wit, Caden’s deepseated love for his family, and Yvette, your little baby, her attitude most definitely comes from you.

1461 days.

Parts of you have begun to fade from my memory. I no longer wake up confused from a dream with you, thinking you are still here. I am used to it now. Sometimes that hurts the most. Painful memories plague my mind, like the moments I couldn’t be what you needed. Words we should never have said to each other. Moments we took for granted.
There’s so many things I wish I had have talked to you about, asked you about; guidance no one else can give but you.

I’ve never wanted to be defined by the loss of you. But it’s hard not to be when you are the reason I’ve come to be who I am. My proudest moments are when I’m told that I remind others of you.

35,064 hours.

The last words you spoke to me were in no way profound, inspirational, or in anyone else’s eyes, the right words. All those nights sat up with just you and me and nothing else, with our hot chocolates and six marshmallows (each), are what I’ll forever cherish most.
“Kel, can you make me a hot chocolate?” will always be the most important words.

Telling people you were my best friend doesn’t do it enough justice. Trying to get people to understand the reason I am so all-encompassing when it comes to love and life, because of you, is near impossible. The reason I give it all or nothing is because I know what the right kind of love entails. You taught it to us and I search for it everywhere — sometimes in the wrong places, sometimes in the unexpected.

The most important thing the loss of you has taught me is the appreciation for life. I have no shame in exclaiming that I fucking love life; despite it all, despite the pain and the anguish and the shitty, shitty days — every day is a day I am glad to be alive. That laughing as loud and as awkward as I want, dancing like a giraffe on steroids, making people laugh and making people feel, will only enhance life. 

2,103,840 minutes.

It’s hard to comprehend that it’s been four years since I spoke to you. Since I heard you laugh, since you held me in your arms. It’s been four years of not being able to ask your advice, call you, just see you right there in front of me. You are but a memory, but my strongest, most prominent, most important, most loved.

Lost.

For my 19th birthday, I was gifted a beautiful pair of Amethyst gold earrings. Naturally, I lost one of the pair one whole day after I was given them. I was fucking devastated. I noticed it was lost at my brothers 18th party, so I literally began a search party at the party. We eventually gave up, and I’ve never found it again.

It’s been four years.

I still have the single earring sitting in my bathroom, a beacon of hope; hope that, someday, maybe the other one will turn up again.

I have spent the last few days sleeping a lot more than is typically healthy, no doubt due to my shocking diet and lack of exercise. My dreams have been a lot more realistic than usual (normally my dreams involve axe-wielding murderers in the house and being best friends with Dylan McKay from 90210), and I’ve been remembering them more so when I wake up.

During one of my sleeps on this (incredibly fucking lazy) Sunday, I dreamt of my Mumma. I don’t recall what we had been doing, I just remember being in her presence. As I was in limbo between my dream world and the real world, I was saying goodbye as some tears fell out of my eyes. She pressed the earring into my hand, and told me she loved me.
“You found it!”
“I’ve always had the other one,” she said, as she held her hand to her chest and showed me her necklace, made with the stone from the earring.

It’s been four years.

Four years since I lost my earring, four years since I lost my mum.

I may never find the other half of the set, but I can always adapt what I have, to become something new. Something just as beautiful. Something just as special.

Said earring is now a gorgeous new necklace, resting on my chest.

It’s okay. We’re all friends here. It’s a safe space. The big wide web.

Sadness. Happiness. Exhaustion. Anger. It’s all part and parcel of being on the self-love train.

We all know I have an incredible emotional range. It’s no secret, nor do I ever intend it to be. I ain’t no Kristen Stewart. Though today was a bit of a whirlwind even for my standards.

I’ve been feeling a bit more down and out than usual lately, especially since I’ve been putting on a happier face than normal because of my launch of artworks, mug designs, novel writing and uni. These are all really exciting things and I am really very happy about them. As we all know, though, happiness is just as much a feeling as sadness is, and it can be fleeting.

I’ve been trying to chalk it down to this time of the month (not the lady time of the month…..though it is that too, haha lol, soz for sharing). It’s mum’s anniversary next week, and as much of a mindfuck as it is to think that we’ve lived four years without her by our side, I can’t base it solely on that.

I just simply feel sad.

I woke up earlier than usual today and went for coffee with one of my newest and very quickly one of my favourite galfriends. Business chat, life chat, it was all very exciting and I was on a buzz from both good vibes and coffee.

I then saw one of my closest and best gals for another coffee. More buzz, secret-beach-location-scouting, even more happy vibes, I left on a high. I was feeling so fucking good about myself and the people I surround myself with.

I drove home with my music blasting, dancing like a fuckwit, just absolutely loving the shit out of everything.

I got home and realised I hadn’t actually eaten anything all day. It was 1:30pm and I was fuelled purely by coffee. What an idiot, right? So I ate as much avocado on toast as my heart desired and attempted a nap.

Of course my body wasn’t going to take a nap so easily because I was BUZZING on caffeine and my body was sick from the mistreatment. Sorry body. I promise I won’t do it again.

If you were lucky enough to watch my instagram (@rackoool) and/or snapchat story (or receive my fucking funny ass snapchats), you will have seen that I was at the height of my weird – which is pretty bloody weird.

And then the come down.

I felt unnaturally sad. I started crying for no reason, and as much as I usually would pass that off for nothing, it’s not. I cry a lot, sure, but I don’t cry for no reason. Even if my reason is that I dropped MY BLOODY BLUEBERRIES, I still have a reason.

I wallowed in self pity for a while, laid down in bed and stared at the wall. I just felt… flat. Flat and empty and sad and shit. Shockingly shit. I got my pen and journal out to write but I literally couldn’t think, it was just ‘I feel sad,’ going through my head over and over again.

Of course, because google has the answer to EVERYTHING and I feel the need to google literally every little thing, (see history: dark brown earwax, how often should i floss, poetry definition, can i eat mouldy avocado), I googled ‘is it okay to feel sad for no reason.’ okay and then I read all this dumb shit about peoples opinions, (one saying that you can’t seek happiness within yourself; UH WRONG DUMBO) and came across one sentence that said, ‘sadness is a completely natural human emotion.’ 

I was instantly cured.
Okay, well, I wasn’t cured, but it made me feel better.

(After this, I came across a tinder bae’s Facebook profile who is INDEED a first grade football player who HAS A GIRLFRIEND and was USING A FAKE NAME. Cue ANGRY ME because fuck that asshole [I feel the need to clarify that nothing actually happened with us so I was not the other woman, thank the bloody lord].)

(Angry me also thought of the possibility that I was catfished, so that made me laugh.)

See what I mean? Whirlwind.

I just feel like so often in this day and age, people stress ‘happiness’ too much, and ‘loving yourself’ and all that bullshit, forgetting that a huuuge chunk of loving yourself is allowing yourself to feel emotions. ALL THE EMOTIONS. Allowing yourself to cry and allowing yourself to throw a plate at a wall to vent anger (trust me, it works).

The only reason I wrote this was to get the message across to those who wallow in their own pain and try to shut it out – it’s cool to feel your feelings, man.
It ain’t weak to speak.

Rupi Kaur’s ‘poetry’.

It takes me back to when Fifty Shades took off, women everywhere running to the bookstore to get a taste of this slight erotica phenomenon. I had read it, and truthfully, cringed my way through it. I was 18, not quite sexually experienced and not particularly inclined to be. Yet the whole idea seemed a bit far fetched for me. I ended up finishing the series because I genuinely fell for the love story (ha, classic). But I talked to one of my male friends and he was strongly opinionated about the matter – “the author was not a real writer – she just got a pen and a book and wrote her fantasy.”

??

What constitutes that as NOT being a writer? Sure, many people alike didn’t enjoy her style of writing or the topics she was writing about – but isn’t a large basis of novel writing, experience and fantasy, blended perfectly together to make a whole different world?

I mean, what would I know? He’s studying something practical now and I’m forging my path to be a writer.

Needless to say, we didn’t have that much in common and said friendship did not stand the test of time. (Or the test of fuckboyery).

I feel it’s the same for Rupi Kaur. We’ll put aside the allegations of copyright, as that has not been proven and is a matter in its own right.

I just want
To talk about
The style in which
She writes
Her poems

I was very inclined to buy her book because I had always enjoyed her quotes on Instagram. I had picked it up, stared at it for about two minutes straight, and put it back on the shelf. Then I sat down on the floor, opened it up, and read.

I had always particularly liked her quote on selfish people. It just struck a cord…or twenty. 

Maybe two or three more poems stuck out to me throughout the entire book.
Not enough so to remember them now.

So I will admit that I was glad I didn’t spend the $15 or so just for a pretty book. But I will also admit that I have posted her quotes on Instagram. I am not here to be all high and mighty and say ‘her writing is shit.’ Because I don’t think that at all. I just think we all have different opinions of what is a good piece of poetry/writing.

On the one hand, a lot of her poems do nothing for me. On the other, they seem to have had an incredible effect on thousands of women.

A poem is defined as a piece of writing in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by particular attention to diction (sometimes involving rhyme), rhythm, and imagery.

Can it count
if her diction
is
By hitting enter
Mid sentence

I oftentimes read peoples comments on social media (need to stop fucking doing that) and notice that they are picking at her style of writing because it’s not what poetry is in their experience. If they saw a few long words, strung together in some sort of rhyme, void of any real meaning; they would probably accept that as poetry. Because it rhymes.

Some people just need the words in front of them to make them feel as if they are not alone. The people who have made Rupi an incredibly successful writer, are the ones who are typically unable to articulate their thoughts and find relief when they scroll past her instagram photos on a Wednesday afternoon after a shitty day at work. Ah. I feel that shit in my soul.

I’m the same, but I find my solace in novels. Immersing myself in a completely different world, following every problem and solution. In her own special way, she’s allowing the reader to fill in the blanks.
I think a large part of her success comes from where she has come from, the adversity she has faced and she has still risen above it all. (Am I allowed to say that?)

We may not
Agree
With her style
But the wonderful thing
About life
Is
No one gives a fuck
In the end

Let her write
Her poems
Let women enjoy
Her poems

And stop
Putting out
So much hate

But most of all…how the fuck do you say her last name?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Another episode of One Tree Hill, another set of feelings to feel. Haley’s mum passed away from the same cancer my mum had, so obviously it brought back an old batch of feelz I usually set aside for certain times of the year.

I’m not going to say to stop feeling sorry for yourself. I’m going to say to limit feeling sorry for yourself. I’ll tell you to stop. Stop what you’re doing and look out into the world. Watch every single person that walks past you.

Go to a coffee shop, sit by the bar with the glass window and look out at all the people running to catch a train. All the girls with one too many shopping bags. All the couples too in love to care. Then you’ll see it — a bit of yourself — in everyone. And somehow, sitting alone in a coffee shop had never felt so good.

You can watch all these people and make up stories for each one. That woman in her business clothes who can run a little too well in heels, running after a taxi, running after her work, running from her mind. She throws herself into her work because she doesn’t want to face what life is throwing at her. She’s just hanging by a thread.

That little kid who’s laughing with the old man, the old man watching in wonder at the pure innocence and happiness in his grandchild. You look a little closer at the man’s face, whose heart is breaking at not being able to see his grandbaby grow up, the man whose been told he only has months to live.

The couple totally and completely in love. Still in their honeymoon phase, before they know everything about each other, before they’ve learnt the bad things; only the good. They have spent their past few weeks in isolation, getting lost in one another, slowly letting themselves fall for each other. Feeling things they had never felt before, feeling things they had blocked out for a long time. The girl only holding back a little, not quite letting her wall get broken down, because she’s still hurt from her trust being broken last time.

The young woman with a brand new puppy, trying to replace a love she lost some time ago.

The man whose just lost his child, the child whose just lost their mum, the wife whose just lost her husband, the sisters who just put down their dog.

I’m all for crying, for feeling your feelings, for not blocking yourself out. But stop. Stare. Listen. And realise. You are not alone, and you do not suffer alone. Feel sorry for yourself. But not only yourself. You are not the only one struggling. You are not the only one who has lost a friend, a parent, a sibling, a pet.

Don’t forget about your pain. But don’t forget about others’ pain, either.

I’m sitting here, writing an assignment for one of my units. It is the beginning of week one and I am already writing an assignment for one of my units. I am back to uni and I am one of those guys. A nerd, mature age student.

It’s a fairly easy, straightforward assignment in which I have to focus on the particular industry I want to work in when I graduate. (Book industry? Publishing industry?? Writing industry??? What does an author even fall under?)

I’m focusing on my strengths and weaknesses and the words are pouring so freely from my hands that I’ve long since gone over the word count. I stopped and stared at how easily I have been able to identify the good and not so good parts of my personality, my work ethic and just, simply, myself. I acknowledge the fact that some people are not so lucky to be so in tune with themselves, often in denial of their downfalls, or even, sadly, their positives.

It’s like I know that I wear my heart on my sleeve and that is both positive and negative. I know I am incredibly emotional but I have long since come to accept it, even like it, rather than ignore and pretend that I’m ‘cool,’ (newsflash: it’s not cool to pretend you don’t have feelings). I remember being in high school, and friends would tell me that my problem was that I cared too much, that I needed to care less, that I would live a much happier life if I stopped giving a fuck. I never quite got there. I never gave a fuck when it came to being who I am, but still haven’t quite learnt not caring about those who don’t care about me. Ah, all in due time.

Mum told me the thing that she loved but scared her the most was that I was so trusting. She admired my ability to ~only~ see the absolute best in people but didn’t want it to end in me being hurt. (Spoiler alert: I get hurt).

I know that sometimes I don’t put near enough effort into people who put effort into me, but I also completely understand that adulthood gets in the way. Life gets in the way.

For this unit, we had to do a personality test (which you may have done in Psychology in high school, but should totally do again, here.) You know when you read something and it’s so scarily spot on, that you’re like ‘yo did u get in my head to write this?’ That happened. Again, and again. And again.

Favourite part:

If they are not careful, Mediators can lose themselves in their quest for good and neglect the day-to-day upkeep that life demands. Mediators often drift into deep thought, enjoying contemplating the hypothetical and the philosophical more than any other personality type. Left unchecked, Mediators may start to lose touch, withdrawing into “hermit mode”, and it can take a great deal of energy from their friends or partner to bring them back to the real world.

Luckily, like the flowers in spring, Mediator’s affection, creativity, altruism and idealism will always come back, rewarding them and those they love perhaps not with logic and utility, but with a world view that inspires compassion, kindness and beauty wherever they go.

Some people may not agree with the summation of my personality, they may not think that that is what, or who, I am. And they may think personality tests are absolutely bullshit. But the coolest thing? They don’t know me like I know me.

So you may say, ‘that’s wrong’, or ‘my opinion of you is different so I’m right’, or ‘fuck me she likes to talk about herself,’ but my strongest strength is that I know myself inside out and I’m happy, and quite proud, of who I’ve come to be.

I’m giving you all an assignment. You can be a nerd, like me, and get right to it right this moment; you can be a procrastinator, and do it whenever you remember; you can completely ignore this and get on with your life.

Sit down, make a cup of tea, and write your strengths and weaknesses. Actually probably make the cup of tea first…unless you have a lil slave sister like I do (luv u Yvette).

Don’t scold yourself for your weaknesses or pretend they’re not there. Vow to work on them and get so comfortable with them that when someone asks what your weaknesses are, you can proudly say,

‘I make a shit cup of tea. But I make a killer margarita. Let’s get drunk.’

 

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