As You Wish

This makes me teary now.

I Will Try

Omniscience and then Null

I once knew everything you thought or I was able to ask for it.

You handed it up on a plate and I plated mine up on hand.

You bled for me. I did not drop a single platelet.

You wanted to understand and I wanted to explain it all to you.

Then it stopped and not because of anything I could control.

You took away that access like it had never been there.

You boarded up the windows and put that part of you back in a box on the shelf.

You didn't want to understand but I still wanted to explain.

And I see you five days of seven.

And I look down like I have done something wrong but I haven't.

And I wonder what you think and imagine only the worst possible things.

You don't care to understand and the apathy shows clearly.

I once knew everything you thought but now I don't.

You no longer know I exist and maybe I don't.

You wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire and I am.

I want to understand but I never will.

Curvy: How one man's lust made me see myself as fat

Curvy. Voluptuous. Hourglass. Buxom. Luscious. Curvaceous.

They were all words a recent boyfriend used to describe me. He lusted after curves and it was all he ever cared about when we were together or apart. It was almost an obsession and one he proclaimed was my most alluring characteristic.

For all the people who have called me a narcissist, I have never really thought of myself as being physically beautiful. For me, beauty is about your soul. It is your kindness and compassion. It is having a mind like a steal trap and always improving it. It is an ability to express your thoughts and convey real emotions. It is about authenticity and sincerity in actions and words.

Yes, it can be dressed up with a fit body, nice clothes or makeup but without a solid baseline, none of that makes you beautiful. People see through the socially acceptable beauty that is but skin deep. That makes that kind of attraction fleeting. Although I appreciate an attractive person, I do not crave them if they have no more than that.

This man I was seeing is quite amazing with words. He can convey in a paragraph more than most men I've known could say in a novel, with one of the great Russians writing on their behalf. He could paint a picture with words, that hastened your beating heart or restarted a stalled one.

The problem was that instead of focussing on any of the things I care about improving in myself, he pointed only at those curves. He would write to me each night about them and lay with me for hours, always concerned with them. Those bits and bumps that most women work hard to hide or exercise and diet away.

Now, some men act as though them accepting you aren't a supermodel is them doing you a favour. This was in that vein but a little more insincere. With him, it was as if nothing else about me existed and if I were any other women with any other brain or talent or soul that it would not matter.

After a while, I started to become very self-conscious of my curvy parts. Words like voluptuous and buxom made me think of tavern wenches in old stories where drunken men with little to no inhibitions would hit on anything in a skirt.

Before him, I always thought I was ok with a need to exercise more and lay off the cheese but now I feel more aware and a little alarmed at my curvy physical nature. What before was a part of who I am but not that important, makes me feel bulgy and awkward.

He has gone now, on to curvier pastures but his legacy lingers. It will take me some time to work my way back to being confident with who I am and in knowing that I am not the sum of my fatty bits. As I move away from that continuous maths view of curves back to my discrete maths underlying building blocks of the world view, I will ignore those men who focus on that aspect of me.

Even if I was a supermodel or whatever some guy's exact physical type is, I'd still rather be loved or lusted after for the other parts of me that I think are quite special and wonderful. Not the aspect but the attitude. Not the shapely shapefulness but the happy happiness beneath my smile. Not the fat or skinny parts but the thinking and speaking parts.

We must all find that beauty inside us and not let anyone break that with their obsession. If we don't then we are held to the standards of others and will only disappoint.

This is why I will always ask: Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?

With Oils and Spoils

I painted you a picture but not with pigments. It was crafted and planned and utterly wasted since it goes unheard. There weren't haystacks of lilies or sunflowers whipped in frenzy. There weren't blocks or legends or shapes carved from stone.

It seems that all I have are words.

So the canvas was spotless. The stone was a solid block. My tools were not tangible. My creation does not pose. Everything I said was lost with no repose.

And life goes forward like a stream of tweets with only the last ten read.
And life goes forward like a wedding once the wedding guests are fed.
And life goes forward like the doggerel that is pulsing through my head.

With the message being I wrote it, only because you exist. A message that doesn't do feelings because that is not what I do. Maybe a message that will sink in and see me safely through.

Resolutions and Mixed Tapes

Let me tell you story. You must of course agree to believe that this happened to a friend of a friend of mine, or I shall refuse to continue. OK? OK.

There was a girl who lived a life blessed with love, beauty, friends, words, brilliance, sunshine, great legs and the prettiest face. She walked a privileged path that consisted of blissful moments and first world problems.

She sat alone on the night of the last day before the last day of the year. It had been an amazing year of lessons learnt, treasures earnt and friendships burnt... down to the ground like a pyre. Adele smashed away in the background saying sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead. She listened and sniggered. She had learnt that the past is the past and if you can take something or anything or a smidge of a story from it then you'd done OK. OK?

We were born and raised in a summer haze, Adele continued. This time she smiled because we were. The sun has always shone on us.

For all the ups and ups and downs and crashes and grey bits, life was pretty damn good.

She is 35 years old. She is smiling. She looks to tomorrow and likes the way the plans are laid. She likes that the grey bits are hazy and unwritten. She is good with life.; good with the people she loves; good with the future; and good with the results of the choices she has made.

Now let it play out.

Nothing compares

No worries or cares

Regrets and mistakes

They are memories made

Break it

You're walking down a leafy sunny street in the middle of the holidays. Most people are eating lunch with their families and aren't out and about. Those you do see nod and smile. They aren't friends but you have seen them around and they do the nodding thing and you do the nodding thing.

There is an actual friend-type person that you are on the path to running in to. It's a planned rendezvous. A tryst of sorts.

You keep asking yourself "What makes a friend?" How does that label get assigned and attached and maintained? Songs tell you a friend is someone who walks in to your house like they live there but the police will do that in cop shows you see on TV so it doesn't quite sit right. Others give analogies of gardens and tending flowers but your vivid imagination extends that to weeds and barren soil and other parts of the analogy where worms turn the soil to better it but are still icky.

This person that has been placed in your line will soon be in your sight. The thing with sight is that you don't always see what is in front of you. There is a plumish hue when he appears. As if the sun is setting in his stead. There is a warmth that you feel when you see photos of people having picnics. Not that cuddly corny warmth but the feeling of the sun on your skin, even when all you are doing is looking.

You call him an actual friend but your actual friends sigh and roll their eyes when he ultimately emerges in the conversation. Those are the deep and meaningful talks resulting from too many ciders and an unyielding urge to tell someone or anyone or maybe an actual friend, about him.

It is nothing new to you that he controls the entirety of who you are when you two are "us". At first it seemed like he was leading you in a tango. Sexy and strong and dominant and all the time caring that you are ok. He will look after you, so you follow.

You aren't sure when but the dance became more like a fight. You both wrestled and he slapped you. He loved it. You broke a little. Then you danced again.

Each time, you saw the glow as he approached and forgot the darkness when he left. Always thinking he brought the sunshine with him when he came and realising he brought nothing but the darkness which he left with you when he'd gone.

This will be another crossing of paths. Maybe a paving of cow paths. It always happens and starts to feel like that is what happens. You cringe. That should paint you a sign. That should bend the neon tubes that illuminate a Vegas like detour but you will tread the road.

He comes and talks and it wouldn't matter if you are there. You are inconsequential. Did you want a coffee? My shout. He talks through you and you feel the sound reverberate over and around and fizzily through your particles. What once felt like a buzz, now feels like a zap.

He leaves and there you are again walking through an empty suburb with trees. Yes, trees. There are people. They are strangers. There is sun in your eyes and you sneeze. Everyone is locked in their house with families that they tolerate. You wonder why it is getting so dark.

Break it. Break it so it is so broken that it can never be fixed again. Break the trees and their damn streaming rays of star light. Break the path you walked over and over again. Break your shoes that you walked it in. Break your rose coloured glasses and throw the jagged lenses in the street so car tyres will be punctured. Break it all.

Then start again.

Who you are

I write to you but I don't think you read it. It could be because I don't know who you are. Maybe you read it and wonder who it is that I write to but never think it is you because of course, I don't know who you are.

Please Enter

A Promise

I shan't ever look for you again in my dreams.

He doubts my source

Today he told me on the phone that pain only initiates the art and that my beautiful words then flow afterwards.

He is wrong.

When a passionate emotion owns me (beit pain or lust or love or hate or exhaustion), it drives every word I write. There is no eloquence in starting a sentence with it and ending it with another.

It is his way of living with the bump in joy he causes me. Bump down. Bump up. All cause.

I write it. I feel it as I write. It is good.

If you read this and feel the ride then say. Tell him, he is wrong.

Absense

I stopped writing when I found you.

It took a long time to work out why I stopped writing. It wasn't you. Don't flatter yourself. My drivers are intrinsic.

It was the lack of pain.

The pain gave me a certain kind of agony that no one else can know but someone who knows exactly how to explain their feelings. If you have the words to describe it then you should be able to solve it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Sometimes seeing something with clarity only means that you can watch in instant replay, the person who stabs your naked body repeatedly while you float above it feeling the knife as it slices your soul. Bleeding nothing but the essence of who you are.

Pain leads to art. Pain leads to music... paintings... drawings... words of whim... words of wisdom. Pain is truth. Truth is pain. There is nothing more honest that the rare raw bruised feeling that life leaves you with after you've stood and fought or loved or represented and then lost.

A friend once told me that there is no losing in life. That life is not a competition. Any true perfectionist will explain to you that losing is a game against yourself. It is the motivation to be more than you are and then the inability to reach an _apparently_ unattainable goal. Try tell the perfectionist that they can not reach that apple and they will make you sit in a comfortable chair as they prove you wrong.

The words come from the tearing of your being. They are the beauty you can only show when the lights are out, the vodka has been poured and the world has forgotten you.

I'm getting harder on the inside

My smile travels to my eyes but not my heart anymore.

Style

Accept it as me

Tonight, I sit am sitting here writing and writing and tweeting and blogging and just writing. There is so much beauty in it. There is beauty in pain. The agony of the soul is a paintbrush.

There are times when I am happy and slightly lost. I don't quite know what to do with it.

Then there are moments when I reach for happiness and it's just out of reach. It eludes me and then I realise that I'm not really trying. Maybe there has to be a little hurt to make it worth trying. Maybe one day I will find another driver. Until then, I think I'll make the most of the pain and try to let it make the most of me.

Don't be sorry for me. Smile at that fact that I accepted the fragility of me. The beauty that is a broken Damana. A star that burns it's hottest, right before it implodes.

Accept it as me.

You exist

Get your freak on

As I muddy the waters between depression and recovered, the insights in to what goes on in a depressed person's head abound.

Today is a great example of a day that I would have described as "fragile", before I learnt to cope with the negative thoughts. Instead, I realise my brain is hyper-sensitive to the body language of people around me. It takes a small look and interprets it in the worst way possible.

There was a moment a few years ago in Pitt St Mall when I was bumped by a gigantic handbag that a lady was carrying. She turned back and spoke a sincere sorry. There was no malice. It was an accident and no harm came from it. I walked on to work, one block away in the centre of Sydney CBD. It was a typical work day and the place was full of suits, shoppers and buskers.

Once inside the sanctuary of some huge financial institution, I sprinted for the ladies bathroom. There, I locked myself in a stall and cried like I did the day I was born. Maybe I was gulping for air. Maybe I was lost in the self-torture that convinced me that woman with the bag hated me.

Although irrational, it felt true. I was certain that life could not possibly improve and that I would never recover from her bagging me.

Years have passed since that day. Nothing feels that dire these days. Most things are quite funny and leave me in tears of silliness. They are lighter tears that carry you through a moment that could break a lesser Mana.

Today, I'm dressed in cool comic book tights and a flowing white top proclaiming in black ink and rhinestones, my love for shoes. The knee high velvet black boots complete the outfit with a nice upper cut.

In my usual Surry Hills scene, I'd fit in with all the other people who simply don't. I'd walk passed people and admire their comic book tees or purple suede boots on funky jeans, with great haircuts.

In Darwin, I'm a freak. People stare. Teenage girls mumble "oh my god". Mothers pull their children from my path.

You can't say I fit in here. It's not great to be looked at constantly but I must honour who I am and what I want to express. To blend in to Darwin, like all the others would be like a silent death... a drowning.

Does it hurt when people see me this way? Does it make me angry? Do I withdraw and cry?

Nope. I keep on keeping on.

I plan for the next time when I'll get my freak on.

Winning

For the regular readers... yes, Mum, Dad and Candace, you will remember that I had a little issue recently with a crazed stalker bogan. He shall not be named here. That's mainly because he hasn't quite worked out how to spell his own name.

Anyway, I was at a stage where I wanted to get a domestic violence order again him. I was told this would stop the harassment from him and his satanic harem of skanks, who wanted to tell me to leave him alone. They aren't the smartest because I wasn't actually having anything to do with him, which is why he sent them after me. Ahh, bogan genius did not peak at the invention of thongs as formal wear.

I nearly got the restraining order, even knowing that he'd love the attention.

Then one of my besties, Cathie asked me a question that changed the way I saw this situation and every one to follow.

Do you want to win or do you want to be happy?

I wanted to be rid of him and happy. Winning may be important to drug-fueled cocaine snorting washed up TV stars but I knew that wasn't what I wanted. No more drama with someone I wished I'd never made the mistake of stopping to talk to. No more death threats in the mail. No more sentences made of single syllable words. No more.

So yes, I chose to do nothing but ignore and endure. Luckily for me, people with small brains are easily bored and wander off to upset someone else's life.

When someone is making your life hard, ask Cathie's question.

Mea Maxima Culpa

It is days like this that make me stop and reflect.

Today is Good Friday. There are many reasons that it is good. Not many of them are religious to me. I don't mind people believing in a higher power but it simply is not my thing. Maybe science beat it out of me. Maybe I've never had a moment where I needed to believe so much in something more that the moment came and claimed me.

So, my main thoughts today focused on why things feels so good at the moment. On why I am content. Why life is full on wins for me and nothing seems to knock me down.

The other day, an acquaintance said to me "Prozac nation" and I giggled in response. Not at the fact that this person put down my inhuman positivity and happiness to prescribed SSRIs but at the fact that I'm no longer on anti-depressants. There was no need to tell them that. Let them believe that true happiness is not possible without chemical assistance. It's a little like someone believing in Santa. You don't want to break their heart and tell them that it is possible without rebalancing your brain via a Pfizer cocktail.

Then that means that I'm happy, even if I don't have a quarter acre block to house via mortgage, my 2.3 children with my hypertension driven same sex partner. Am I insane?

Not anymore apparently.

It all comes down to one thing. Look at the past and compare it to now. Look at the biggest mistake you ever made and see how you recovered. Take in the downs and compare it to the stability found now, in purely existing.

I am healthy, especially my mind. I have family who are my rock. I have friends who actually rock. I have a job I love.

I don't live with a man who strips me back to my bones and lathers on the salt. I don't work with people who push me down to gain vertical ground. I don't have frenemies who cut me back at every progression forward.

Life is good. I have learnt from my mistakes. I have grown from the lessons. The scars that once ran raw are healed and reinforced with emotional titanium.

There is only beauty now. There is only happiness.

If you accept the biggest mistake you ever made and take something from it, then you will be fine. No, that is not true. You will be brilliant.

Acta est fabula.

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.