Since The Last Episode

This morning I woke up, and out of nowhere I just thought, “I’d really like to write a blog.” I don’t know exactly where it came from. The desire to write again (although I had no specific tale to tell)? To display who I am inside? To have my way of thinking make its mark on the internet? To see how far I’ve come? To be freer and better than I was before on my blog? To see if it really combats depression like I’ve heard writing about your feelings can? To create some pretty new web design? To feel like I was creating something tangible on my computer, some art, to show for my long days sitting in front of this machine? Definitely. All those things and more. But mainly, I just missed blogging.

The view from my bed while I thought about blogging again.

I used to have another blog. It was called The Harrington Files, and I was called something different then too. You can go visit it if you like. But it is a bit of a relic, and I think it’s best left that way. I thought about just continuing blogging on there, but the moment I started to think about doing the blog again, my thoughts turned to the giant folder of documents that I keep all my published and unpublished posts in. There were nearly 16 000 words lurking in there (in various confusing documents and iterations) that didn’t ever get published, and more than 174 000 that did. That’s 190 000 words. Let’s just call it 200 000 because I’m sure there is 10 000 words of crap lurking elsewhere. It’s a lot of history. And those 16 000 unpublished words are a heavy weight. To finish those posts, so they were able to be published, would probably require another 16 000 words, and a whole lot of headspace I just don’t have. I realised that I was never going to blog again with 16 000 words of ugly history – which I had moved past and did not want to relive, as well as the ‘duty’ to write 16 000 more – standing in my way. And for what? Why did it need to be written? For the sake of continuity? For the sake of my one reader? Surely not for my sake, when the whole thing weighed me down so badly I loathed the idea of doing it. I guess I thought that once I had started my blog, once I had written so much and so well, that I was now going to chronicle everything and one day publish an autobiography or something. But that dream fell down in a lot of ways. University let me down, people let me down, and I let myself down. And now that it’s been more than 5 years since I published something, and pretty much 4 since I wrote something, does it really matter? No, of course it doesn’t. I can never resurrect that continuity. I guess in a way my failure has freed me.

I am tempted, I must admit, to go back to the completed pages, the notes, the sketches of ideas, and just try to cobble together something to publish. Just to get it out there and be free of it. But would my perfectionist self ever let me settle? Ever let that kind of writing represent me? Probably not. Though I don’t know, now that I have a separate space here, if I dumped my old unfinished writing back on the blog it was intended for, it wouldn’t really be representing the me of now would it? But would anyone care to read say, 12 000 words about my break up and 8000 words of regular blog musings (from 4-5 years ago)? Maybe these people can just tell me if they’re interested. I can’t say that I am.

I’m a different person now. It’s been seven years since I started The Harrington Files. And amazingly, I am now pretty much the person I wanted to be when I started it.

The header for The Harrington Files.

It’s strange to think about that. The idea that I might have come to a point where the old teenage me would be pretty pleased with me. Of course, ideally, this future of mine would have involved singing with a band, but even in that department I have come a long way.

So here – to satisfy my need for continuity, and to serve as a recap of my life for the rare few who may have read The Harrington Files – I present to you:

Since The Last Episode: A List Of Everything Important That Has Happened In My Life In The Past 5 Years That I Could Remember

·         Five years have passed. For those playing at home, that’s 2010 to 2015.

·         I finished uni. Yes, I completed my Arts degree. In the last semester of my last year I took the ‘English Pre-Honours’ subject and ended up having a mental breakdown. The difficulty, the unnavigable pretension, and the utter, utter uselessness of that subject and the Honours program to follow literally broke my mind.

·         I got accepted into two Honours programs. English and Media.

·         I foolishly accepted my place in the Media Honours course lured by the idea that I might get to do something creative like making another music video. I quickly realised that the only thing they were going to let me do was write 15 000 of citations and the only reason I had to stay was because I couldn’t find a job and I needed the welfare payments.

·         I quit Honours.

·         I spent an entire year on unemployment benefits endlessly looking for a job, getting more and more despondent as time went on. I calculate I applied for 300 jobs that year. I got interviewed for three. And accepted for two.

·         I took a job as a web designer for a local escort agency. I was there for 11 months. And abused horribly, to the point where my employer told me if I were to die by their desk they would walk over my dead body without a care. I dealt with screaming, swearing, a lack of meal breaks and incalculable prejudice every day. Update: I hear they are now being investigated for tax fraud and the whole ship is sinking.

·         I was diagnosed with clinical depression and straightening of the cervical spine (‘military neck’). This diagnosis was vindicating and damning at the same time. I have been ‘of low mood’ since I was about 16 and I was told by a school counsellor that I was “too eloquent to be depressed.” He obviously hadn’t read any poetry.

·         I became partially disabled, that is, it was recognised that my working capacity was reduced by my ailments and I was no longer required to work full time (only part time) and I was put on a pseudo pension.

·         I attended psychotherapy and physiotherapy sessions.

·         I have mostly recovered. Clawing my way out of that hole has not been easy. My neck is still my problematic neck and always will be I think, but I have learnt what aggravates it and some techniques for managing the pain. Mainly wine. I’m not even kidding. A lot of the pain in my neck is muscle tension and stress, and a glass of wine seems to put that to rest. As for my depression, the therapy was pretty weak. I just never really felt challenged by it at all. I have always been able to think my way around any counsellor or therapist or friend that has tried to talk me out of my depression. I never went on any medication, I never wanted to. I was tempted because I had seen it work for some people, but I’ve also seen how it can effect others. Even the ones that it has worked for… sometimes it almost worked too well. I've known a couple of people who were depressed, and they always seemed to be cuttingly disillusioned with the world (something I can identify with), but once they started taking medication they became preachers of peace, love and tolerance with an almost evangelical bent. From Grumpy Cat to Nyan Cat overnight. It was very strange. It was like both their personalities became one with this indistinguishable pool of placidity and permissiveness. And I don’t know if they’ll ever be the same again if they come off the meds. It really does change your brain chemistry, and things like that I'm not sure you can ever undo. Not everyone I know on medication went like this. Some people it seems to have helped. But for someone who was already apprehensive about taking medication, and yet tempted to try anything to become happy, it just spun me out that you could become happy, the medication could work, but you might lose yourself in the process, you might ‘drink the KoolAid’ and become one with the placidity and permissiveness and maybe not even realise that the light had kind of gone out. I mean, I'm glad that they're happy, but I don't know what it is that makes them happy any more. To be honest, for me, the thing that has most helped with my depression has been exercise and retail therapy, both falling under the category of ‘giving me something to do.’ As well as making me concentrate on the moment and what brings me happiness rather than searching for meaning, or the meaning of life, or why on earth I became depressed. Because those things just tend to make my mood worse. Stressing about not having meaning and purpose and a job and earning power has brought me nothing but pain. They say eudaimonia (meaningful life) leads to better well-being than hedonia (pleasurable life), but for me this has not been the case.

·         My mother quit drinking. If you can believe that. She’s been sober for more than two years now, I think. And no, I don’t think she realised how horrible and abusive she was being to me, I think her wake up call was when the doctor told her she was going to get diabetes from all the sugar in the wine she was drinking. So now there are no more drunken tirades. Trust her to abolish those four years after I moved out. It has made her visits better though. Now they just feel boring and pointless. She’s a better person for having done it, sure. My grandmother thinks that quitting drinking pretty much renders my mother a saint. But it doesn’t nullify who she was, or the way she treated me and every bad deed she did before. It doesn’t mean that the drinking ‘made her a bad person’ – and now the liquor is gone she’s ‘herself’ again. She was always the same person. As I’ve always said, there is no other personality lurking in that bottle that you drink down and become, everything you are when you drink lives inside you when you are sober. As much as we like to ‘other’ it, as much as we like to say that ‘the alcohol made me do it’ – it’s bullshit. My mother is exactly the same calibre of person as she was when she was drinking. Just because she made one good decision and overcame one challenging obstacle, it does not mean that she is a good person now. And it kind of annoys me, I have every right to hate her, and she deserves my detestation, but now she presents as this totally middle of the road kind of human, she’s stopped smashing everything to bits and actually found some sort of willingness to learn new things and not be an arsehole – and it’s hard to hate someone who just kind of… takes up space. She still annoys me for sure, but I find myself actually taking to her, because now I can, and I did live with her for 17 years. I mean in no way that I have accepted her, or that I forgive her or ever will, but I don’t know, the fire has just kind of gone out.

·         My grandmother got even crazier. If you can believe that too. Yup. She’s now legally not right in the mind. Not insane per se, but in need of care. The frequency of decisions made entirely without logic, her demented non-sequiturs, her memory issues (the fact that she parked her car, lost it, reported it to the police as stolen, then when they found it (where she parked it) they dobbed her into the licencing authority who then in effect took away her driving licence), and the sheer amount of things she was asking me to help with meant that she needed a carer. I couldn’t get a job so…

·         I became my grandmother’s carer. I had to fill in a buttload of forms and there were medical tests and everything, and I didn’t think I was going to get it… but I am now my grandmother’s official full time government supported carer. It’s not a job I especially relish, but it’s really nice to not have to worry about the job hunt hamster wheel, and to get paid enough money to live on for doing what I was already doing. Having a ‘job’ and money has certainly helped with the depression.

·         I built a house. This was so long ago now I can hardly believe it never made it to the blog, but it seems it didn’t. I had a large wooden garden shed shell erected on the back of my grandmother’s block which I then painted, plastered, put the floor in, and built furniture for. I also helped plumb it and supply electricity to it. I later paved it, landscaped a garden, put up a gazebo and a pool. It was a fucking ordeal. Mostly because of my grandmother and (then still drinking) mother on my back, as well as the inevitable delays caused by the council and building permits, etc. I hated that cabin for a really long time because of what I went through to get it done, but in the end I came to find pride in it and appreciate its quaint charms. I still live there, and I have just begun a major renovation. I’ve made pelmets, hung curtains, painted the kitchen cupboards, replaced the pantry, wardrobe, dresser and bed, resealed the floor, put in a room divider, bought a new chair, and re-covered all my other chairs. Still left to do is replace the entire desk set up and bookshelf, build a collapsible couch, dig up the entire garden and put everything in pots and on tiered stands, create a new watering system, and build an outdoor shower. When I’m done I’ll publish my before and after photos here.

Photos of my house being built as well as the garden and renovation tools.

·         I left Damien. Who is now more often referred to as the Douche. This is a big part of why the blog stopped. I tried to write about it, and 12 000 words later, I was no closer to done than when I started. It was too much. Too much shit went on. It became kind of useless to explain it, particularly once it became so long, and so long ago. I moved on, I didn’t need the writing to work though the relationship anymore, in fact it was dragging me back into it, and I really doubted anyone else was going to be interested in hearing about it at such length, if at all. The long and short of it is this: I loved him, I loved him with a full dose of crazy and the kind of addiction to lust that only manifests with a partner who can never fully satisfy you. He was a dick. An absolutely juvenile, self-involved, repressed, petty creep who didn’t value me at all. We were utterly wrong for one another, mainly because I deserved someone with some emotional maturity and he deserved to rot. It’s harsh I know, if I talked through it I probably wouldn’t be so curt, but these days I couldn’t care less.

·         I slept with quite a few other people. Not all at once, not serially, and not immediately after I left Damien, but I had some fun. I made some mistakes, but I did what most people who have just become divested of their penetrative virginity do, I guess. I went and had more sex.

·         I started going out with Dorian. He was one of my teachers from uni. And yet there are only six and half years between us, as opposed to the 19 between me and Damien. He’s everything I wasn’t getting with the Douche. Like, exactly: he’s a mature, generous, uninhibited, broad-minded partner who values me more than I do myself. We’re totally right for one another, mainly because we both deserved a best friend who unreservedly loved us. No description of him could ever do him justice. He’s beautiful, witty, charming, urbane, funny, intelligent, kind, caring, generous, observant and thorough. One of the things that I like most about him (apart from how he makes me feel in bed!) is that when we talk about something, and I have a few different points to discuss, he picks up on every single one and thoughtfully addresses them. He keeps up with me intellectually and makes me feel important and cared for. He doesn’t run off at the mouth quite like I do, but he listens and he’s made some excellently perceptive and reassuring appraisals of the world, me, and my thoughts. I love him wholly and completely and healthily.

·         Dorian and I started living together. It just kind of happened. About three weeks after we got together, he just started spending all his time here. More than 4 years living in one room together. We deserve medals.

·         Dorian and I broke up, but in the end we more took a break and became more independent people. For better or worse. It was a difficult time where I made more than a few mistakes, but we both grew as people and came back together stronger in our relationship than ever.

·         We got engaged. On Valentine’s Day this year. While bathing in a hot spring. We’ve been talking about getting married for years. We’re having our wedding in September, and we’ve just started sending out the invites. We’ve got a 16 day honeymoon in Japan booked too. I’m so excited.

My engagement ring. 

·         I’m getting married. As much as I may have anticipated some of the things that have made my teenage self happy with who I am today, getting married was not one of them. I’m exceptionally happy, and there’s nothing I want to do more than spend the rest of my life with Dorian, but I always thought I was going to be too much of a free spirit. I was never going to find any sadness in ‘never having settled down’ if it came to that. I never pictured marriage in my adult life, a house, a car, a good job, travel – sure. But a string of intense, poetic and short-lived relationships with men and women of all persuasions, not a husband waiting for me at home. The fact that someone wants to marry my wild, crazy self and let me have everything I ever wanted, as being there with me and make it better, is amazing. I feel like I should feel like I’m an adult now that I’m getting married, but I don’t. I don’t think I ever will.

·         I started having polyamorous relationships. When I said I was a free spirit, and that Dorian was letting me have it all – I really meant it. I’m one of those bad bisexual (actually pansexual/omnisexual) people who give us a bad name, in that I do feel best when I have both a man and a woman in my life or – not to get too PC on you – both strongly masculine and strongly feminine sexual partners in my life. Dorian and I have an open relationship and we have shared our bed with a few people, as well as had a relationship lasting more than a year with a girl I shall call Allie, which dissolved, and we are currently dating a girl I shall call Marian. We met her on Tinder. He he he. Life is pretty damn good in this respect. It’s ruffled a few feathers here and there, and I can never tell my family, but I don’t mind. I really enjoy polyamory. I love the sex, let’s just be honest, I love taking new people to bed and discovering their bodies and having them discover mine. I love the female form. But I also like the far less racy aspects of it, like the sense of community and closeness. When all three of us come together to make dinner, when someone brings all their interests and favourite places and foods and house and family into our lives to discover. The opportunity to fully get close to someone as a person and as a couple. To not miss out on all that discovery and adventure. And also to give someone everything we have to give, love and food and sex and cuddles and places and things. As a pansexual woman engaged to be married in an open polyamorous relationship I am literally having my cake and eating it too.

·         I made some friends. Probably the most unbelievable thing on this list. I have friends now. They’re almost all Dorian’s friends that have become my friends, but quite recently I seem to have made one friend and two acquaintances all by myself! They’re all really cool people. It seems I wasn’t quite as broken as I thought I was. I was actually just hanging around with the wrong people. Who knew that shitty rural public primary/high schools were full of intolerant twats! Granted I still haven’t fully gotten over never having had a group of real friends for 19 solid years… and still think everyone must secretly hate me… but I think that’s understandable. One day I’ll actually feel like I have friends. On a side note, I never really stopped thinking about ‘that girl from high school that I try not to talk about’ or whatever I was calling her. I found her again on the internet, and I sent her a message, but she never replied. A few weeks later she posted a thing on Tumblr that was saying “everyone always leaves me” captioned with something like “but sometimes you have to leave someone because they are absolute poison” and I’m fairly sure that was directed at me. Sigh. I miss her so much. It’s been something like eight years since we spoke. If you’re reading this, I’m still sorry. Day by day I unearth new ways in which I was a fool. If you can find it in your heart, please talk to me.

The Neighborhood - Afraid 

·         I made backstage dinner for Amanda Palmer. And then again for the Dresden Dolls. It was pretty amazing. The first time I waited for weeks to hear back, thinking I had missed out, and then just two days before the show I found out I had been selected. I made about, I don’t know, 50 wraps with all different vegetarian fillings and they worked really well. I think I also made salsa and chips. We (Dorian and I) fed Amanda, and all the support acts and all the press and all the crew. The second time I approached them in the hope I could do it again even though the call hadn’t been put out, and lo and behold I got to make food for the Dolls too! This time I did a giant pesto mornay with baked vegetables and penne (so big I served it in an underbed storage tub) and sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce. We again had enough to feed Amanda, Brian, all the support acts, all the press and all the crew. Then we got to watch the entire show from on the stage! We were in the wings with a couple of techs and photographers. And Amanda thanked us from the stage. It was amazing.

The giant basil pasta mornay.

·         I became friends with quite a few of the musicians Amanda knows. Yes, since those nights I have kept in touch with pretty much all of them. I go to almost all their shows and have even seen them outside of gigs. It’s been pretty cool.

·         I started singing lessons again. Yeah, I thought I was done with all of that too. But for better or worse I haven’t given up yet. My new singing teacher is much better. More understanding, and can actually sing in my range with me, and doesn’t ask me to sing in the mezzo-soprano range because I am a girl and that’s how I should sing. I don’t have lessons very often, but it’s been a great confidence boost. We’re presently working on putting piano chords to one of the songs I wrote recently. It’s going fairly well apart from, as I anticipated, the fact I don’t write to any sort of time signature. But we’re both navigating the murky waters fairly well.

·         I went to the emergency room with tonsil related complications, twice. The first time, I’d had tonsillitis for days and days and my tonsils got so swollen that I could not physically swallow my dinner. I was quite upset and defeated by this and sorrowfully resigned myself to go to bed. Dorian said I needed to go to hospital and said we should take me to Emergency. I was reluctant at first, but I let him take me. I was in a bed 10 minutes after being triaged. My throat had swelled up so bad I had trouble speaking and ended up sounding quite English and drunk. They filled me full of three different kinds of antibiotics and basically said I could have any painkillers I would like. I said I didn’t want any. The doctor was stunned. He said in the 20 years he’s been working in the ER, this was the worst case of quinsy (peritonsillar abscess) he had ever seen (it was like a scene from a movie). He said if I was a full grown man, a Rugby player, who had a quarter of what I had, he would expect them to be crying their eyes out for morphine. He couldn’t believe I was talking and joking and refusing painkillers. But since I was, and since this was such a bad case, could he bring in some interns to see me? And so no less than SIX interns came by in two groups and pointed their torches into my throat and interviewed me, all of them amazed, all of them disgusted. Eventually they transferred me to the ENT hospital where I spent nearly three days until idiot nurses overdosed my drip and I ended up with a swollen stiff arm and more than a foot of air headed for my arm in the drip line, and I begged to be sent home. They wouldn’t remove my tonsils. The second time, I had been feeling a bit sick and queasy for a little while, figured I was getting the flu or something, and then ended up fainting for the first time in my life. Which was terrifying. I saw the darkness closing in on me from the edges of my vision, pressing and squeezing and suffocating me while my consciousness formed into a bright star in the centre of my vision like I was ‘going towards the light,’ until the darkness won and I fell down suddenly like a sack of potatoes, cracking my head on the dishrack and then the floor and proceeding to have a small seizure. The ambulance wouldn’t come. Dorian again drove me to the emergency room, and again I was in a bed very quickly. I had tonsillitis again. And a massive fever. I was fine otherwise. They gave me antibiotics. They agreed to put me on the waiting list to have my tonsils removed.   

·         I had my tonsils removed. It was the biggest and scariest thing I have ever done. General anaesthetic and surgery. I was so scared. I made them use a laryngeal mask instead of a regular tracheal tube as I didn’t want to damage my vocal cords, because I had heard tonsillectomy could improve your voice. It could also destroy it, but I had high hopes. I recovered from it really well, even though for some it is the worst pain they have ever experienced. Worse than childbirth, worse than kidney stones. And I did it all without pain killers, because I am allergic to morphine and codeine. Joy. I had a codeine derivative pain killer just to see how I would go (because I’d never experienced it myself, just been told by my mother that I reacted badly as a child) and it was a very bad decision. Far from being calming and pain relieving, I literally went mad. I couldn’t hold a thought for more than 3 seconds. “Fridge. Thursday. I like green. Do I have to. Keyboards. Ele-phant-ti-tis. Is there a reason? Whereabouts. Intrinsic. Exclamation points. I could do that. Do we go over here? I don’t know you. Under the table. Wrong. Left handed. Light beams. With maple syrup. It’s all going wrong.” Codeine. Not even once. After I had recovered I noticed my sense of taste had changed. A lot of your ability to taste bitterness can be located in the tonsils, and as mine were five times bigger than they ought to be, once they took them out bitter tastes were not nearly as overpowering. I started to appreciate rocket, dark chocolate, cider and coffee more. I used to have my coffee with three sugars, now I don’t have any. I continued to enjoy Vegemite, olives and citrus peel, but beer is still pretty vile.

·         My voice greatly improved. The tonsillectomy ordeal actually paid off. It took quite a few months to be able to sing again and then more for things to settle into my new sound, but gone was the inherently flat squished tone, and in its place I discovered a new richness and resonance I simply couldn’t access before. My tonsils had literally been in the way of my voice. Amazingly, as I get to know this new voice (and I’ve had it for a few years) I’m beginning to develop my own style. I seem to have an exceptionally low voice. I’m not even quite a contralto, my range seems to be most akin to a male tenor. I’ve got a dark dramatic swooping grand cabaret sort of voice, far from the fierce expressive yelling or soaring lyrical pop voices I desired as a teen and wrote songs to suit. Now that I’m writing songs for this voice, things seem to be going a lot better. The deeper, darker and further away from conventional female voices I go, the better things seem to sound. I actually sang a chorus of one of my songs for a friend in her car. Just totally a cappella. I’d given her a little bit of my basic primer, “I like to think I can sing.” “People have been pretty mean to me about my voice in the past.” “I don’t have much confidence.” “My voice is quite different.” And you know what her reaction was? “Holy shit! Your voice is amazing! I can’t believe anyone ever gave you shit about it! It’s all dark and soulful and smooth and unique. That was really good!” Yup. Someone said things like that about my voice. She’d never heard it before, and I hadn’t told her she’d destroy my soul if she said I sucked, and that was her reaction. Sometimes I feel like I am living in a parallel universe. That and my new singing teacher said I sung a vocal exercise on the piano with “perfect pitch.” Me, and the words “perfect pitch” in the same sentence, without any negative words!

·         I joined a choir. My singing teacher recommended it, and I had been considering it, and so far it’s been pretty good. Challenging, as most of the people there are early middle-aged mezzo soprano women, and the songs are in that range. There’s not terribly much built for me, because there are literally 2-4 men in each class of 20 women. But a few weeks ago I got to sing the Bass part for ‘Mad World’ and that was pretty rad. Just me and 3 men, felt like I was really adding a tangible richness to the song. It’s helping me recognise musical cues (which I suck at unless it’s a song with built in vocals) and to learn and improvise harmonies. I’ve been doing it every week for a month, and I think I’ll continue. Also there’s a cute girl there who made eyes at me and who has sat next to me twice now. We’ve made introductions and had a little chat. I don’t know if she’s into me, or is just looking for a friend, but either is cool by me.

·         I started making my own clothes and developed my own style. I had this certain top/dress thing in my wardrobe for a very long time, I bought it at Savers (an op shop chain) here in Melbourne just after I moved, about 6 years ago. It’s black and shaped liked a ladies boat neck capped sleeve t-shirt except it comes down to the first third of the thighs, like a mini dress. I call it a t-shirt dress. I only ever found one. I looked for years. Eventually I came across a men’s shirt with the words “i’m only wearing black until they invent a darker colour” printed on it. It was cheap, I loved it and it had a decent cut. The only problem was, it was too wide for me, and not a flattering shape. So I bought it anyway, in the men’s large, and then renovated it to match the original t-shirt dress. And thus my t-shirt dress empire was born.

T-shirt dresses.

Since then I have built my whole wardrobe around this look. I own only singlets and long sleeved tops for wearing under the t-shirt dresses when it’s cold, as well as leggings, cardigans and ankle boots; or shorts and sandals when it’s hot. There is literally nothing else in my wardrobe now apart from underwear. I gave up on pants. I do not own any pants. Fuck pants, man.

·         I invented a personal lubricant. Well not quite, there was a similar recipe online, but I took out some things and made up my own ratio of ingredients. It’s been amazing. It feels good, it smells amazing and it’s really good for your bits. Maybe one day I will put the full write up on here.

·         I tried to start my own business, selling that personal lubricant. It seemed like it could work really well. I wrote plans, I found suppliers, I bought equipment, I made samples. It got rejected from the business course. I vowed to do it anyway. I started a page, I gave out my samples. My grandmother got sick, I got busy and disillusioned. My ingredients expired. I realised the name was crap and renamed it something a bit better. It all fell by the wayside. Maybe one of these days I’ll order some more things and give it another go.

My lubricant samples.

·         I became an even better cook. My food tastes pretty damn good, and now it’s even better. I love cooking. I bought myself a super fancy waffle iron for my 24^th birthday (which by the way, my family got me BILLS for. $50 birthday money and $160 worth of bills!). The waffle iron was an expensive indulgence, but it’s been worth every cent. I fucking love waffles.

My cooking.

·         I gained and lost a lot of weight. My BMI went from 17.8 to 25.2 and then back to 21.5, just to give you an idea. I’d always been a very skinny athletic girl with a boyish figure, no boobs, tangible abs, decent shoulders and thighs. And I’d wondered what would happen if I put on some weight. Maybe I would get some boobs. And in the time between 19 and 22, I put on a lot of weight. This follows from the me being a good cook thing. I got boobs somewhat, but I also went from 31-25-33 to 36-30-40. I have since slimmed down a bit, and grown some boobs just purely through maturing (boobs! Suddenly at 23!) and I feel a lot happier with my body. I’ve been a bit too thin and a bit too plump, and now I’m in the middle (like the literal middle BMI value) and that’s good. My face has also changed a lot. I don’t find it hard to appreciate why people who knew me in high school don’t recognise me.

·         I changed my hair. I kept my hair short and dyed it bright orange for a good while. Then I dyed it black, and decided to let it grow out. I discovered that it had darkened a good 4 shades under the red dye (I hadn’t seen my real colour in more than 4 years). Now I’ve stopped dying and cutting it and am growing it out for the wedding because Dorian likes long hair. I hated it at first but now I’ve started to like it. I’m going to keep it long, but put the bright orange, strawberry blonde and auburn back in it in big chunky streaks. Then add a few plaits, twists, feathers, beads and extensions and have massive colourful texture rich gypsy hair.

My hair.

·         I got a tattoo. My first, on my wrist. I designed it myself. It didn’t come out quite as vivid as I’d hoped in the end. My body seems to destroy ink. But I’m very happy with it. I want more. It’s true that it’s addictive. I want to do both wrists 2 inches wide with blackwork and lace patterns. I’m dreaming. Maybe after my family is gone and I no longer have to hide it from my grandmother or worry about ever getting a job. Hahah.

My tattoo.

·         I got my motorcycle licence. So along with my tattoo I am officially a badass now. Not. I used to have an electric bicycle, but around here they’re limited to 200 watts of power, or basically 35kph. It didn’t have enough power to carry me up big hills. The only way I could get access to more power was by getting a motorcycle licence, so I took my FIVE tests (car learner’s, bike theory, bike learner practical, car provisional theory and bike provisional practical) and got my licence. I still can’t drive a car. I don’t know if I ever will be able to. I was learning, and I was OK at it, but there’s now no-one to teach me in a suitable car, so unless I want to pay for lessons I’m out of luck. And I’ve already got a vehicle that I can legally control and that I enjoy using. I love riding the bike and it does everything I need it to. I never have to pay for parking, it’s responsive and exciting, it carries all my shopping and people are generally pretty impressed by it when they’re not telling me I’m going to die. It’s actually a maxi-scooter, so I’m not that much of a badass, but it’s still pretty good looking.

A production photo of my bike.

·         I sort of acquired a religion. This is probably the strangest one on the list. Don’t worry, I haven’t joined some loopy Christian cult and I’m not going to start trying to talk to you about Je-sus. Actually quite the opposite. I’ve become a Satanist. Well, Satanism isn’t actually a religion, more of a philosophy; and it’s not really about Satan, and certainly not about ‘worshipping’ anything. I’m still pretty much an atheist. I’m sure that all sounds very confusing. Let me clarify by telling you what Satanism is and isn’t. It isn’t about killing babies, burning churches, and prostrating yourself to the almighty Dark Lord. It’s about the fact that man is an animal just like any other. It is about recognising that everyone has needs and desires and drives, and one should not feel guilt about these things. It is about truth, justice and gratification. It is about empowering yourself and achieving what you want through the power of myth, symbolism, and psychology, which is especially powerful on those easily given to thinking that the devil is real. This is what I love about Satanism, it’s a humanist philosophy rich with all the power, history and anthropomorphic mythos of established religions; but without any of the pretentious ego-denying bullshit. It gives me the power to be me, and fills that kind of ‘religion shaped hole’ that I sometimes felt when I didn’t believe in anything. It reinforces so many of the beliefs that I held already, it’s like Anton La Vey reached into my mind and asked me what annoyed me most about this world and then made a religion where most of the tenets were about crushing that shit like a bug whenever you saw it, and all the rest were about enjoying yourself without guilt and trying to be a better person. I recommend everyone immediately get themselves a copy of the Satanic Bible and become enlightened.

The Satanic Bible (get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or download this fairly good pdf)

·         I started making a tarot deck. A very long and difficult process I fear I will never finish. I’m putting all that knowledge of symbolism and the occult to good use. Maybe one day, if I ever finish, I’ll put it up here.

·         I went on holiday to London and Hong Kong. Finally. After the Douche tied me down to Melbourne and I never ended up going on exchange to London, I saved up all my money and went there with Dorian. It was bitterly cold. We went in the Icelandic cold snap that grounded all those planes. It was pretty, the cheese was amazing and the accents were pleasing. We also went to Hong Kong, it was also pretty, everything was delicious and it was heart-achingly efficient.

My holiday photos, London, Hong Kong by day and Hong Kong by night.

·         I started showing my face on the internet a lot more. I just, I don’t know. I stopped worrying about it so much. I’m 24. I don’t think my father is going to jump out of the woodwork and strangle me if my name gets printed in the paper like my mother used to tell me. And besides, nothing I ever put anywhere on the internet (save for friend’s only Facebook stuff and billing information) has my real name attached to it anyway. I don’t give out my address, I don’t let my name and address end up in the rubbish, and I don’t geo-tag my house in photos or check-ins. Melbourne is a big place, I look a lot different to how I did when I was very young, and to be honest my father is probably long dead. I don’t want him to own my freedom to show my face on the internet. I have a nice face and I’d like to use it.

My face.

·         I kind of didn’t grow up. I’m not exactly where I thought I would be. I have a cabin, not a house; a motorbike, not a car; I’m a carer living off the government, not a career woman with a fat savings account; I’m getting married, not ‘sowing my wild oats’; I’m going on holidays, not travelling the world no-holds-barred. But in a lot of ways I’ve made my teenage self proud. I got a tattoo and a motorbike and I have a lot of great sex and I hail Satan. I’ve got friends and a fiancé, I’ve mostly overcome my depression and I’m engaging my passions. What more could a girl ask for?

·         I started a new blog. And here we are! All 7000 words later! I hope you enjoyed it and bravo for getting to the end. If you’d like more ramblings like this please do come back soon for more. I don’t know what I’ll be writing about, but I’m sure I’ll find something.