Distraction

For a few years in my life recently, I would spend a lot of time distracting myself with activities and people so that I wouldn't have to think about all the awful stuff that had been my past life.

I made friends and spent wonderful moments with them. I still do.

I tried hobbies and developed life long skills that have extended who I am by leaps and bounds.

I read a few books and now have a library in my head and so many more to read.

The other day while waiting for some close friends to turn up to drinks at the Hyatt Graden Moet Bar, I was left with some time to myself. They were all about 30 minutes late and as usual, I was on time or early as usual.

I grabbed a glass of bubbly, a glass of water and then spent 25 minutes setting up my new phone that work gave me.

When everyone turned up, I was happy to show off my new phone and get right back in to people time.

The revealing moment though was that it is no longer about distracting myself from the horrors of reliving the past in my head. The moments alone are no longer lonely. I don't need to be distracted.

This is a huge thing. A big realisation. A giant step forward for Mana-kind.

A little bit of egg

I think it is funny that people think I am going to fall apart every time I say something crap happened in my life. One thing you should understand about me is that I'm an extrovert and articulating my thoughts lets me process them. That is why I write and talk and then feel better about it all.

Yes, I once fell apart so badly that I thought I would never put myself together and go down in the annals of history as another Humpty Dumpty. But I was sick then and am not now. Maybe Humpty was just depressed. I mean seriously, who sits on a wall when they are oddly shaped and unsuited for such things?

Like I always say and do, participate and take chances but never put so much of yourself in to anything that if it fails you will be lost. Life is far too short for long term sulking. Life is wonderful :)

6 months later

She had been in town for well over a year now and was a people collector. She had this magnetism that sucked people in and then she sealed it with her charm and that amazing smile. As he rounded the railing towards the down escalator, she caught his eye. It wasn't the way that a pretty girl catches a man's eye. No, it was the way you see someone in the corner of your eye and do a double take because you recognise them. This was an instant, faster than a blink of an eye. And the way he recognised her was different to running in to a friend. Time seemed to slow down. He remembered the way she smells. The way she'd breathe on his neck when she massaged his shoulders.

He didn't miss a step and strode on to the escalator.

She was air kissing a friend hello as she gave a wink and waved another goodbye. He didn't know if they were friends or colleagues or acquaintances? She had this outward consistency with people. The smile similar in every case. The message sincere, all the way up to her eyes. He never knew how she had the energy to give that to every person she came across. He did too but he kept the number of people much lower. Much much lower.

Before he was half way down the escalator, she had twirled around on those ridiculously high heels and was headed for the exit. There was a bounce in her step. He remembered that playful gait that always resulted in her bumping against him as she talked without a breath about many things, when they went for walks. He knew when she was happy. She was right now.

There was a day more than a year ago when he saw a her walking in the distance and he pulled up next to her in her stiletto over the knee boots and said "nice shoes" in his most casual voice. She didn't smile but said "hello" that time. He wondered what she would say this time. Much more had passed under the bridge since then. He left her. She had tried to convince him to stay but he left her anyway.

As he reached the bottom of the escalator and stepped off, he watched her happily skip away.

Collector

I collect memories of moments, to tell you at the end of the day.

There is no end of the day with you there anymore to hear me tell them.

I just keep collecting them.

A Hurricane Meets a Drizzle

The Healing

Alternate Universe Theory

The other day, I posted this on facebook...

The world seems a little odd when I'm the emotionally stable one in a relationship or the less dramatic friend in a friendship or the person less likely to pike on an appointment.
It is possible that I have entered an alternate universe.

... and boy, does it feel true.

There was a massive revelation to myself at this point. It was that every time some speed bump happens in life, I've been looking to myself as the cause. Always wondering what I did wrong this time and searching for a way to fix it.

The revelation is that I am not often the cause of the drama these days. I have my moments. I'll always be the centre of some kind of attention but now I realise that others cause it too. Not just me or at least not me every single time.

What a fantastic way to start the year. Yes, sometimes I am a right diva. No, I am not always the troubled soul.

Yay, me!

I don't draw the curtain

It is probably best I live on the top floor of my eight story building because I never draw the curtains closed. I have never really seen the point to it.

In the day, I like the cleansing sunlight. In the night, I like the calming dark. The dawn brings me slowly to wake and the dusk shares a glass of wine.

Maybe my opposing neighbours know too much about me. Maybe. Who cares?

Does it indicate something about a person when they like to control what is let in and what is kept out?

Even if no one ever looks in due to fences or trees or lack of interest. Maybe the closing is to commit to complete dark or complete light. A binary setting. A semaphore even, with the half open - half closed option.

Then there are those see through curtains that let you leave the curtain open but cut the insight. What does that mean. Is that making it all about hiding or is it all about light?

Maybe curtains aren't the eyes to the soul but I'm starting to think that it is reflective of how much some are willing to share and how much some couldn't care less.

I don't draw the curtains.

Some love never dies

Sweetie,

When I left home, I went to you. I remember that you weren't always cold. There were nights when you were so warm that neither of us slept a wink.

In 2006 we were at our happiest. My 30th birthday. Dancing lessons. A wedding. So many friends.

And then something broke.

Sydney came between us. My depression didn't help. You weren't there for me but then again... maybe I left you and that added to me breaking. You were always there. I mean, you existed but we were not together. Both alive and breathing but not together. Maybe there were days when we saw each other again or reconnected. Hell! There were entire weekends. It didn't stop the separation though.

When it got bad, I felt you had gone forever and that nothing could ever change the memories that then pained me so much. My escape to Darwin or my exile to the north was necessary. You were thousands of miles away and didn't so much as show you cared.

I spoke of other loves, of Darwin and Sydney and places that you weren't.

In 2011, when I thought I'd healed, I ventured back to the start. To that cold place. Us. It was not until 2012 that the memories were rewritten and you no longer made me cry. In fact, I could think of you and smile.

Sometimes I still hate you. Sometimes I still can't stand how cold you get. Sometimes I smile because we knew each other so well and that is coming back.

Thank you for coming back in to my life.

Thank you, Canberra. I am glad I am here and that we are back together.

Yours for now,

Mana

The Dragons Meet

Yes, today is the first day of 2013. A new year.

We are however still in the Chinese year of the Water Dragon.

I was born in the August, 1976. That is the year of the Fire Dragon. It is an extremely lucky sign to be born under. Every 12 years, there is a year of the Dragon and I amuse myself with how lucky I will be that year.

Now, I'm not saying I believe that I am one of twelve types of people. Leos never believe in that stuff :)

What I am saying is that since I believe it is my year and that my year will be full of luck, that gives me a positive view of the year. Maybe I subconsciously approach it in a different way that makes me a little bolder (yes, it is possible). Then I boldly go where no Mana has gone before.

As a Fire Dragon in the year of the Water Dragon, I knew it would get steamy and it did.

The year was full of winning moments. There was so much propulsion that many things happened that I had to stop and take in later.

Today as I sat in the Jolly Mont Centre waiting with a good friend catching a Murray's bus home after visiting me in Canberra, I joked about being easily amused by silly jokes and small wins. I said that I would always be happy because it didn't take much to make me so.

That is a key to happiness. Not needing something giant or overly important or drop dead hilarious to make your day. Laughing at myself and wonderful little moments is a sign that this dragon has enjoyed the steamy year.

In the upcoming year of the Water Snake, I shall let my Fire Dragon embrace the eel like year which is said to be the best year in which to start again.

I choose to start a new chapter and make it the best one so far.

Bring it!

Don't listen to a word I say

I've been quite good with my New Years resolutions over the past two years so I am stating my next one.

This year's was to be mentally stable supported by having a stable job and a stable home. I've smashed that! :)

In 2013, I want to live a life with self respect and unwavering respect for those around me - be it friends, work mates or boyfriends.

There is a quote that says "Character is who you are when no one is watching."

That is driving my new year.

What is your NY's Resolution?

Whiplash

There are so many people who I have interacted with lately who are a whirlpool of inconsistencies. They say one thing. They do another. They think they think but they really just apply logic to their emotional responses.

For all my flaws (and they are vast), I have one thing going for me. I am quite self-aware. Yes, I still do stupid stuff but I have the skills to sit down and work out why I really did what I did. Sometimes it takes seconds, sometimes hours and sometimes years. In the end though, I can attribute my actions or my emerging feelings to real human reasons.

Maybe I fear something so I figuratively hit it with a stick. Sometimes I resist something due to a trigger and it takes me a long time to realise the trigger is something that I've hit before many times. Sometimes I cry and although I think it is out of sadness, it is out of anger or joy or confusion.

Logical people are the worst. They make a decision quickly and attribute their actions to that very rational reason. Often, logical people are hyper-rational in an attempt to control the loss of control that emotional reaction has.

Lots of things are lower level. They come from our lizard brain (yes, yes, I know that's not biologically true) but they can be tempered with mindfulness.

Mindfulness is not about controlling your emotions or thoughts of responses. It is about taking in the whole situation and slowing down until you're dodging bullets in a Matrix like fashion. Then you can work out what is what and who is who and why is when. Sometimes, you don't work it out and just ride the wave until it takes you to your destination.

Rather than applying reason where there is none or even the wrong reason to an action and giving someone interacting with you whiplash, take a step back and try to work out why. Most often, it isn't the worst assumption possible that is driving it. Often it is a small thing or a nothing that has blown in to a huge thing.

Sometimes we are just grumpy and it has nothing to do with anything. We just are.

Try to align your thoughts, your words and your actions with their real sources and don't make up are good reason for your bad behaviour.

Sometimes we just behave badly.

Why your lack of delusion limits you

There is something that all amazing people have in common. No matter how normal they look or how sensible they act, they all have a slightly delusional side.

Optimism is a human state that propels us to want for more and truly believe it possible. One of the toughest things about being depressed is that you see the world in its raw reality, ignoring its wonderful possibilities. I see pessimists in a similar way but they don't give up trying like those suffering depression. They instead go on suffering reality for all the ordinary averageness and vanilla moments.

Now, really extraordinary people believe in things that have not been achieved successfully so far or even thought of as possible before. They aren't just optimists who believe in succeeding. They believe in achieving what everybody else thinks is just plain nuts so why even try.

Often people don't understand them but get swept up in their dreams. Often people don't believe them and snigger loudly at first and then sigh quietly when the dream becomes reality.

I surround myself with people who I've now realised dream bigger than they are allowed. Often, without asking permission or giving apology. The thing is, they succeed.

Children are a great example of people who haven't been told they can't yet so they just do and do well. Adults on the other hand are constantly aware of and restate their limitations with "I can't" and "I don't" or "I would but" statements. Adults live within their bounds and achieve what their limits allow them. The limits society set for them or they for themselves or their partner or their boss in their job.

Once you grasp the idea that there is nothing that can not be achieved then you are free to be great.

As It Seems

By Lily Kershaw

Well I knew
What I didn't want to know
And I saw
Where I didn't want to go
So I took the path less traveled on
And I'll let my stories be whispered
When I'm gone...

When I'm gone
When I'm gone
When I'm gone

Well in this life you must find something to live for
Cause when the darkness comes a callin'
You'll go back to where you were before
Cause this life is as
Fragile as a dream, and
Nothing's ever really
As it seems...

As it seems
As it seems
As it seems

Well I lost my innocence when in I let him dive
But the way that he looked at me
Made me feel alive
And now I know
Nothin' at all
But the release that comes when you're
In mid fall...

In mid fall
In mid fall
In mid fall


Cause in this life you must find something to live for
Cause when the darkness comes a callin'
You'll go back to where you were before
Cause this life is as
Fragile as a dream, and
Nothing's ever really
As it seems...

As it seems
As it seems
As it seems

One sided conversations

On my last night of a work trip in Auckland, I sat alone at a table in a restaurant. Beside me were a retired couple. Both Australians who had moved to New Zealand to be with one of their two daughters who had given them grandchildren. They'd spent several years of their retirement on the Sunshine Coast and finally gave in to the call of the grey babysitters.

Old couples are cute. They obviously know each other well and have stuck around for the long haul. I don't have flash forwards to my own life of aged coupledom or wish for that for myself. In fact, I am of the belief that I will always be young and beautiful... even at my current 36.

Those couples are comforting though. To know that people can persist through the good and bad and even the boring to come out the otherside together without one of them deserting is healing for me.

The wife was the one who told me their life story. The husband didn't make eye contact with me and spent most of his time staring out the window. This I understand. Not everyone is an extroverted puppy like me, who longs to connect with people... with anyone. She was though.

What irked me about the whole situation was that as the courses of their degustation dinner were served, she discussed each one in detail. She referred to how it should be done according to Master Chef or how you'd achieve a running creamy egg after baking it for two hours on 65 degrees Celsius.

He said nothing. He grunted once in a while during moments of scoffing food. He looked out the window a lot.

He did not share her passion. He didn't even humour her.

At that moment, I knew that I'd hate to sit in a restaurant savouring food and longing to discuss its nuances while my life long partner showed little to no interest.

Not saying he is a bad person or unloving or anything like that. For her to stay with him until death do they part, he must be something wonderful to her.

It was just that when the sum of your life is almost calculated and you are double checking numbers and reconciling the steps that get you there, I'd hope that the person across from you is at least in conscious attendance.

May I never share my passion and receive only a grunt.

Don't drive angry

There is a fantastic scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray's character is committing suicide for the umpteenth time and he lets the groundhog drive the car over a cliff. He casually says "Don't drive angry."



It is such a simple scene and wrapped in so much humour that you laugh it off without a second thought.

As someone who has watched that movie more than twenty times, it is poignant. It has meaning beyond a navigator guiding a rodent.

Life is this journey that you have to take. A road trip that you are destined to drive. An excursion that you must go on because you've been told to.

Awful stuff happens. Awesome stuff happens. Sometimes you don't want to participate. Sometimes you want to punch someone. Ok, maybe that is just me.

Bill Murray has it right when he says "don't drive angry."

Do not live an angry life. Do not hold contempt for others. Let it go and enjoy the new moments.

Malachy McCourt was right when saying "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

Let the things that have been done, be done. Enjoy the rest.

Lengthening My Attention Span

Over the years and particularly through my depression, my ability to concentrate became almost non-existent.

I worked out a while ago now that multitasking is a fallacy. You end up doing twice as much stuff but half as well. For me, focussing on a task and ignoring interruptions has resulted in higher quality work and more enjoyment for me in doing it.

People will often hear me talk about mindfulness and being aware of and involved in each moment as it happens. I've been reading a lot of books exploring existentialism that encourage the idea of authenticity of experience.

For me, mindfulness and authenticity are a result of participating in the experience and savouring the moment as it envelops you. It is like a perfect kiss where you breathe each other in and kiss each other back.

What I have worked out in the last six months is that to truly appreciate life and live it in the best way I possibly can, I must pay attention to the parts and not live it in an event driven way where I follow the distraction to... well, distraction.

Even while writing this, I have flicked to Facebook several times to see what my latest notification is and then Twitter to mock the way I can't focus. I have a long way to go.

These are my current methods for lengthening my attention span and they are working:

Read 20 pages of a book every day

Reading has been the most successful mechanism for lengthening my attention span. At first I could read only 1-2 pages before feeling sleepy. Now I can read 10-15 before I start to wonder what else I could be doing. Fiction is the most successful thing for me to read but I'm trying non-fiction from time to time.

Spend time without my phone

Great ideas come to people in the shower because they are not distracting their mind with anything. They have time to think. These are called gap moments and we spend so much time filling them with distractions that we are losing the ability to think of nothing and let thoughts emerge. When I am standing in a line or waiting to meet a friend, I no longer use my phone as a distraction. I actually stare in to space or mini-meditate while doing nothing much.

Give people with you all your attention

Nothing bugs me more than being with someone who will take a phone call in my presence. If someone is with me and in the same room then they get my priority. Some person who calls me on a whim is not going to trump my present company. I will often take the call and say I am busy and will call them back or I hit a button that texts them and says I'm busy right now but will respond soon. Giving attention to the person I am with shows respect for the time they are giving me. I wouldn't spin my chair around and join another table in a cafe mid-sentence so why would I take a call and put the here-right-now person last.

These are just some of the skills that are helping me rebuild and hone my mind so that it is the bright little spark it was in my mid-20s.

If you have any other suggestions that work for you, please do tell me.

R U OK?

A lot of people are new to my life and they don't know anything more than the smiley faced girl with the tendency to talk too loud, talk about the awesomeness of cats and giggle at life often.

I wasn't always her.

I am here today because people asked me if I was OK and cared enough to listen.

That is not an exaggeration. In fact, it is such an understatement that I should really explain it.

This blog exists to explain it and to document a journey through the depths of depression that left me without solid memories of a time that although I'd rather forget, I know remembering will stop from happening again.

One day, if you get a chance, take a read. Between early 2009 and late 2011, my black dog held on and didn't let go. It is no longer dominant but it will always be here.

Without the kindness of my family, my friends and sometimes complete strangers online and in person, nothing of me would remain. Kind and gentle words are all your need to take someone from believing no one cares to knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Some people were quite actively unkind. Some were unfeeling, without empathy. Some told me to hide it and never speak its name. Some were fair weather friends. They don't matter now, though it shattered me at the time. Apathy or avoidance of the temporarily weak means that they lost someone who came through the cloud as a strong, wonderful, happy and understanding person.

Writing what I wrote and the comments I got online and in real life, showed me that I was not only in what seemed like a lonely struggle to not drown in everyday life. A lot of people experience the same thing and like having cancer, it is not a choice that you can just unchoose.

On the recommendation of a friend, I took photos of myself and events in my life and recorded them publically on flickr. The transformation in that time from opaque sadness to true honest happiness is visible. The events of my life that I recorded and have little to no memory of because of the effects of my deep clinical depression are there for me to form memories around now, now that I am ok.

R U OK?

Working Everywhere

My last job and my new job have involved a lot of travel.

People look at me with eyes full of sadness and pity and ask why I am made to travel so much.

That makes me feel like I'm some sort of abused little girl who is forced to live a life against her will.

I do realise that other people may hate the idea of it but for me, seeing new places and getting the chance to work in them and hang out with locals is exciting. Eating foods I don't get at home and in places that seem so magical to me is exciting. Smelling salt air or polluted air or hotel air is all exciting to me.

It's true that I have a tolerance for about one week of travel that can be stretched to two weeks if I must but it is not forced or suffered and painful to me.

As someone who was tied down for so long, the bounce in my step as I close the door of my apartment and head off on a new adventure lifts my soul.

Until it stops feeling that way, I will travel as long as there is demand for my skills and I want something from it.

Do not pity me. I'm drinking champagne in another country while I do my job well and take in the culture.

My life doesn't suck.

PS. Vietnam in early August.

Nothing is planned but

I don't believe in fate. To be fatalistic to me, is to be a non-participant.

We aren't meant to sit on the couch and choose the easiest option. We aren't meant to wait for something to come and and solve a persistent issue or make us thinner or have our perfect partner appear!

Damn no!

We are supposed to get out there and get involved.

Walk for miles if you need better thighs. Read a book or five if you need a better brain. Talk to people who take you outside of your comfort zone if you want to meet someone awesome.

I've lived in too many cities where you can't see the stars. I have never waited for guidance. I've gone out there and screwed up with the best of them.

Don't wait for life to happen to you.

You are missing important moments.

This is not a bank ad.