Now you're just somebody that I used to know

There is a song bouncing off the walls at the moment by Gotye called Somebody that I used to know. My need to listen to it over and over again comes late at night at that time when it takes clenching teeth to keep my eyes open.

I was sitting at my work desk on the 22nd of September wondering what I'd forgotten to do. Did I miss someone's birthday? Did I have an appointment for a pedi or a massage? Was there a bill due?

I forgot it again. Even after toughening myself up a couple of weeks in advance for what would have been my fifth wedding anniversary or our 14th year together, I still forgot.

Right now, that seems to be a good thing but I can't lie. When I did remember, it ached. Ached through my entire body. Skin, organs, limbs and the split ends lying on the floor of my hairdresser's floor.

There may always be a pain there... where he used to be. Even now he's just somebody that I used to know.

Like the Lama Guy

Some days I feel all wise and shit. Some days I don't. In the last few days, I've worked out some major 42 stuff and feel a need to share it. This is me sharing.

A few of my good friends are single. They are mid-20s+. They spend a lot of time thinking of whether the last person they dated is their next relationship. They spend a lot of time wondering if they should read this in to that and that in to this.

Lately, I have been reminding them that spending time thinking of these things is a waste of time.

Do you remember the days when we were late teens and early 20s? We lived life planning a future for ourselves and having fun. If we met a person that we fancied, we would think about stuff like if they had time between classes to have coffee or if we'd bump in to them in town on the weekends.

It was not a stressful ponder about if they were "the one"; if the wanted children; if they managed money well.

This is not important when you first meet someone. Focus on if you like them and if they are fun or share interests. Over-thinking the future is not that useful. It interferes with other important things like if the person is rude to the waiter or for some horrible reason wears white dress shoes.

Enjoy life. Like yourself. Don't go looking for too much, too fast. That just sucks the joy out of life.

Trust Degraded

One of my New Year's Resolution was to be more open to different kinds of people in the world. To not judge and reject people because they failed to meet a set criteria for those I would associate with.

For the last three months, that attitude has seen an array of characters waltz in and out of my life. It has to be said that I have never made a more stupid of harmful resolution in my entire life.

It was a mistake.

I have been used, abused, fooled, embarrassed, humiliated, hurt and brutally re-educated by the lowest forms of life, crawling this pretty enough planet.

Men have told me all I want to hear and then turned on me. Women have gained my trust, only to betray it so easily.

Wow! What a seedy world there is underneathe that one that I inhabit. There be dragons.

Resolutions are a good idea because they give you a new set of rules by which to try new things and reform your life. They don't always work. It's not often they fail so miserably for me but I guess that happens.

My trust has been degraded but I am learning more about myself and the environment around me. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. It menas I will be less trusting but that is a good thing. Am I learning? Yes and no. Some of the things I am learning suck though and I wish I didn't have to suffer so much to gain the knowledge. Has this changed me for the better? Yes and no. I see that there is so much bad in the world but the contrast has made me appreciate the good.

For the record, this resolution has stopped dead. There will be no more accepting idiots for who they are and thinking they are deep-down good types. Nope, first impressions. Trust my instincts. Be less bleeding heart and more realistic.

The Truth Hurts but It Will Set You Free

There was a time when I could blame depression and all sorts of other things for the fact that I am over-weight. A BMI of 30 is not good for anyone.

I can talk about personality and inner beauty but once you are over 30 years old, you need to keep healthy.

Yes, I had a recent break-up with a guy who told me the truth about how fat I am. It hurt and I can't say I like him much for it but like all things in life, I take it as a lesson that I should learn from.

Suzi Edwards once said that you get to an age where you choose your bum or your face. I want to choose both.

Being healthy in my mind, makes me want to be healthy in all other ways.

So, today I am 75kg. I'm aiming for 70kg, at first.

Encourage me. Love me. Tell me it is possible. Don't let me forget that life is too important to waste on a large pack of fries with gravy.


PS I can lose weight but he will still be an asshole.

Accept It

People are always telling me that I will find someone who is right for me. Someone who will respect me and not be intimidated by my brains, success of flirty personality. They say he will treat me right and not lay a hand on me in anger. They say a lot of things.

My bestie Allison said that people say that because they think that is what I want to hear. The truth is that I don't want to hear that. Seriously.

For the first time in over a decade, I am truly happy. Each day, I get out of bed and look forward to an amazing life filled with meaning and love. That to me does not mean "a man" to complete me. In fact, I feel complete.

Every time someone tells me that I will find that person, I actually feel a little cr@ppy. I don't feel incomplete. There is so much love in my life. My loving family and my amazingly wonderful friends make me feel complete in that way. I have no doubt that people love me and that I am lovable beyond belief.

The thing is that I feel complete. There is nothing missing from my life. Nothing lacking. Nothing lost. If I found a great friend who I wanted to spend my whole life with then I would but I certainly don't need that.

Please don't tell me what I need to hear. Just accept that I'm happy and be happy for me. Please.

I love you all and appreciate your help. Love me for who I am.

Single Bright Female

2010 has been a bloody fantastic year for me. Yes, it's relative to the hell that was 2009 but I'll take what I can get. It was a very good year in so many ways. One of the ways I want to discuss is what it has been like to be single.

I won't lie. My first thought on starting all over again and being "alone" was not a happy green field filled with bunnies and butterflies. No sir, it was more a moment of terror that spanned a long few moments.

That was 2009. That's last decade, baby!

At the beginning of 2010, I decided on a new year's resolution that was only shared with a few select members of the Mana inner circle of awesomeness. That resolution was to spend one whole year on my own. I would not get in to relationships or look for love like a lost puppy.

This was implemented in several different ways including filling my time with the distractions of hobbies and habits that were chosen to switch my brain from Damana-in-a-couple mode to something else. What that was, I was quite willing to wait and see.

People told me the clock was ticking and some even called me passed it, at the ripe old age of 34. I ignored and kept on with my promise to myself that this year was the year that I would be my own person and find a way to be alone without being lonely.

My life then filled with time for good friends. It has been like being at university again - hanging out with my girlfriends, drinking a glass of wine and talking about life, the universe and everything. Those friendships were nurtured and have become a rock that I know I can lean on at any moment from now until... well, for ages anyway. They are what I call real friends. You know that saying... Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies. I have me some body movers although I'm sure Bernada and Kellie would not be happy if gunk got on their shoes.

There was time for family and observing the wonderful relationships between them and their significant others. Seeing how people can treat each other with respect, not hurt others and love through everything life throws at them. For better or worse; richer or poorer; and in sickness and health.

There were propositions for relationships - instantaneous; lasting; long since dead; casual; formal; odd; and often unwanted and unsolicited. These from possible princes; predators; punks; already taken partners; pretentious pricks; and an assortment of actually nice guys.

I said thank you but I'll pass this time.

Yes, I understand that they may never come around again. That love is important. That people are in different stages of their lives. That it seems nothing can make me happy.

The truth is that I found who I am this year. I don't know exactly what I want but I have a flaming good idea of what I don't want and some clues on the direction I am heading.

We each must be self-contained and able to identify the "me" in the throng of people or the intimacy of a relationship. My learning has brought me to understand who I am and who I would like to be. If being single is not my lot and a person walks in one day and rocks my world then I'll still have a strong sense of who Damana is. I won't lose her to the sum of a relationship, like I would have in the past.

Now that I can like me, other people can too.

You need not search for it

"There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path." — Siddhārtha Gautama

There is no more important thing a person can learn than that happiness is intrinsic. It is not the resulting effect of some other action or of a certain circumstance that you have wandered in to. It is not brought to you by others or kept there by following a set of rules laid forth for you.

Of course, there are things that can happen that will harsh your mellow. It's not as if people suffering disease or living in war torn countries can choose to be happy and the bad stuff goes away. I'm not a self-help guru with delusions of all the ills of the world being solved by a smile and some well-formed motivational sentences.

However, there is something to the idea of choosing to be happy when that choice is yours to make. Those of us living the privileged lives of the first world are most often able to make this choice for ourselves. Factors like mental illness, life pain and other baggage can bring you down but in the end the journey back to happiness starts as soon as you decide you are happy and that you shall accept no less.

I love the idea of a happy moment causing a smile and a smile causing a happy moment. They are interlinked and both are cause and reaction.

Be happy by making the decision to be happy :o) Trust me, it works.

Recover

Imagine if everything you ever did in your life amounted to nothing because for 6 months of your time on Earth negated it all.

At the beginning of last year, I was the sickest I have ever been in my life. If I'm granted no other wish while I live, may I have this one. The wish that I will never see as dark a time and feel as much pain in my soul as I did then.

Through it all, I tried to hang on to my work. Ines told me to work through it and that would help me focus and deal. Lindsay said that anti-depressants would take the edge off and I would then be able to cope. In the end, it was my mother who was right. She gave me a place to go and rest where my existence was peaceful and my soul had the time it needed to heal.

Coming back to Sydney has taken a strength that I never truly thought that I possessed. For all the years since I learned to read, I have lived in books with magical tales of amazing people who faced struggles that none of us would surely survive and they damn well survived them. My path to 2009 was quite a tranquil one. Life went as planned by my parents and then my ruling husband and I plodded along it sublimely happy.

Then reality struck. The hardships that I only read of came to visit. They stayed as unwelcome visitors and would not leave me. In the end, I packed up all my belongings and went away to the one home I knew I would always have. Over the last 9 months in Darwin, I have tried and failed and tried and succeeded and then tried and failed again. There was a point I reached when I realised that it was time to go and try again but in Sydney. Oh Sydney, the place where I did not only fail but watched the life I had wash down a vomit filled Surry Hills drain. There was no way in hell that I was going to let the past defeat me... to scare me away from the life I want and the way I wish to be. Who I am, I guess.

Today marks one week back in my old stomping grounds. In this manic city, it feels like a life time has passed in only 7 days. I've succeeded, celebrated, rejoiced, cried, been picked up, loved, hated, ignored, kicked and finally failed.

The option of running back to Darwin has entered my mind. Will I ever get a job and a chance to work again in this town? Will people forgive me for the horror that was my last six months living in Sydney, last year? Will anyone ever understand how hard it is to try again when you know you stuffed up big time?

If your life has fallen apart, really really fallen apart at one stage in your existence then you will understand what I am saying. All I want is a chance. A chance to stand on over a decade of proving I am a great engineer and a good person. A chance to make up for the time when I could hardly find the strength to get out of bed.

The problem with this world is that we are all pretending that we are ok. A lot of people aren't. I am one of the few lucky people to say that I have had the chance to truly get to know myself and like who I am. I'm not pretending to be ok because the truth is, I'm pretty damn well. Life will kick and trip me but I will persist. One day, I will be back at my best. That day is not far away.

The people - be they friends; employers; strangers; or whoever I meet - who give me a chance now will benefit from the even more amazing person I will be when I fully hit my stride again.

Those who choose not to take a chance and turn away are going to miss out. Life is there for the taking but it belongs to those of us who risk appearing ok and actually strive to be better than that.

On the cusp of this difficult week of adjustment and the good week that lies ahead, I will keep going on in a positive direction. Upward and onwards.

Stick around.

Starting Sydney

When you return to the place where it all went wrong, there is a very good chance that you can fall back in to old habits and watch it all go wrong again. The thing is that life is not something for me to watch happening to myself, like rubbernecking a multi-car pile up.

Last night, I celebrated my 34th birthday with a bunch of Sydney friends. It was a typical crazy night that leaves us with plenty of stories and much to deny. There were glamourous shoes on beautiful people, who were saying intelligent things in sophisticated accents. The French champagne flowed freely like the shouts of laughter in retort to someone's witty comment. The extroverts took their positions, claiming their audience and executing tried and true enchantments to hold the watchers captive.

When this is the world you are used to living in, it is very easy to collapse back in to your usual role. The one that people know and almost expect. The closest thing I can compare it to is getting dumped by a big wave, in to the hard sandy bottom of a beach. You can struggle and fight and push up and refuse to swallow the water but the wave is king and it is going to take you down with it. Slamming in to soft sand still hurts. Being winded is never nice. The wave takes you where it always takes you.

My friend Cathie McGinn said to me this morning... "I think you can live a new life in a familiar city." She does have a way with words. One of those people who you can blabber on and on to for five sentences with all the wrong punctuation and brain dump disorganisation of a forming thought and she will summarise succinctly in response. You know she isn't just listening to you but also hearing you.

My life is blessed with these sage like people who for some unknown reason are willing to spend time with me... this jagged little pill. I've always said that you can best judge a person by the company they keep. Your pedigree is the sum of the quality of your friends and the depth of your friendships with them.

To escape the wave and avoid getting sucked in and body slammed, this chapter of my life must be approached in a different way. No more talk of things "happening to me" but instead more talk of "making decisions". Less thinking of regrets and more living life in a way that leaves me respecting who I am.

These are 3 things that I vow to do to make life different:

1. Take life slowly. Absorb each moment and take from it only what is worthwhile and positive. Mistakes will be made. There will be failures but that is a normal part of the journey. Being mindful of each step will allow for better decisions and more favourable life outcomes.
   
   
2. Respect yourself and others. Give the same consideration to yourself as you do to others. Be aware of boundaries and limits with each different person. Actively show that people are important and valuable. Do not take anyone for granted. Set boundaries and limits for yourself and honour them.
   
   
3. Improve your mind. Spend more time reading, learning and listening. This life is short and there is so much to do and know. Chose carefully what you will spend your time absorbing and focus on goals that will bring you closer to a beautiful mind.

Wish me luck and remind me of this if I start surfing that wave again.

Alone

Don't be afraid of being alone. It is just hanging out with yourself.

Momentus Moments

When I arrived in Darwin, I unpacked all my computer gear first. Laptops, hard drives, routers, hubs, routers, modems, gaming consoles, hand-held games devices and everything else collected over years of geekiness. With that came the rats nest of cables for networks, power and machine to machine connectivity.

With all the spare time that I had ahead of me, I decided to sort stuff out and re-establish that level of order that only someone with OCD can truly understand. Before life went to poo, I was very ordered and organised. There was a place or everything and a moment for it all to exist in. Then

and... well, read all my previous posts if you missed it.

On Friday the 30th of July, I went upstairs, dug out and dusted off my Apple Time Capsule. For those who don't know, it's purpose is to act as a drive to backup my Mac every few hour or so. That way, if any of my devices fail then I have an easy to restore backup. In the past, it has saved my electronic soul on a few occasions. Setting up new machines has been a breezy dreamy chocolate-coated easy occasion.

Who cares? I do. There was this huge mental block there. Something that started when I arrived at my Mum's house and continued for a long seven months. I just didn't have the get up and go to get up and go and set the damn Time Capsule up. It seemed so hard and impossible at the best of times. Of course, I knew it would take me plugging in the power and an Ethernet cable and that was it. Oh yeah, and turning on the Time Machine software on my laptop. How hard is that?

With my past state of mind, it seemed heavier than a train to lift; tougher than a mountain to move; and harder than water to breathe.

I did it though.

Damn, that's a huge achievement. I celebrate all the good things that happen these days. This is one of those moments when it hits you

that you've changed... recovered... healed to the point of usefulness again. It has been a long time coming.


Take that depression! Take that ex-husband! Take that world!