A week of not buying everything I want

Wow, is it difficult to not shop online constantly when you live in the US and work for Amazon?!

It's what the company I work for does best. Not just them but every online company in the US.

I can order everything online and have it delivered to my home with the only human inconvenience being dealing with my delivery guy (I joke):

• Instant groceries via Prime Now and Instacart, if I'm unwilling to wait a day for Amazon Fresh, Safeway and QFC;
• Christmas trees and people to pick up those Christmas trees when done;
• Petrol/Gas for your car;
• A massage at home;
• Organic tampons;
• Furniture. Yes, every single piece of furniture you can imagine; and
• Anything else you can imagine.

We live in the future and I want my flying car!

You think I joke, but I have pre-ordered two Star Trek: TOS Bluetooth® Communicators. One for my sister and one for myself.

We live in a time when you can get anything you want. My smartphone is more powerful than the computer that landed man on the moon. My speakers hear my commands and turn my house lights on and off , read me the news and tell me the weather or time if I'm too lazy to lift up my so smartphone.

It is so easy to buy. It takes a level of mindfulness to wake up after a goodnight's sleep and cancel that order of plastic garden flamingos. Yes, that happened last week.

People joke that we once had arguments about facts and now google (with a small 'g') everything and Snopes it on the spot. I extend on that and say that we have a conversation and can act on every whim and buy any damn thing we want.

But do we need those things?

This week, I have decided to not by anything that I do not NEED. When I say need, it must be essential to my survival or maintaining my basic standard of living.

In the spirit of a good Amazonian, I decided to keep a Wish List of A Week of Wants and refuse to buy anything that didn't go under the banner of essential.

I'm not saying I will buy them in a week but I am keeping a list of everything I would have purchased given the chance.

This will be both informative and confronting.

Would you face your inner consumer and not be disgusted?

Realisations

Everywhere

I see you everywhere.

Every bike rider who sweeps passed on the street turns my head. The confident ones, no matter their colour, make me double take to see if it is you.

When my apartment is buzzed, I answer and wait to hear that it is you. It never is. There is a gasp of hope and anticipation and then a thump as my heart is bitch slapped by reality.

You are gone.

That is OK.

I'd rather you be happy.

I lie in bed and close my eyes and imagine you sleeping next to me. With my insomnia, I used to watch you sleep. Your eyelids would flutter and you'd sigh at whatever you were dreaming. I'd kiss you and like the kissing ninja you are, you'd kiss me back mid-sleep as if you saw me coming every time. Those were the moments I spent with you that you didn't spend with me, consciously.

For all the drama and the pain that you caused, I will confirm that it was worth it.

Thank you for the ride of my life. Thank you for the first true love of my life.

I'd change nothing. Nothing.

Now, go do amazing things and know I love you.

Stoopid immune system.

Mirror, Mirror

I sat at dinner with my two closest Seattle friends, Vanessa and Candace. We spoke of many things but one thing resonated with them. I know this because they both mentioned it in days to come. To me, it was a passing comment but to them it seemed more. I realised that I had said something so true and personal that most people won't admit it... out loud, at least.

That however is my signature stupidity/charm.

I am a mirror.

It is a social skill and helps me build rapport faster than any other skill.

People think mirrors are out to mirror behaviour and that it is insincere. That is not the case.

Being a mirror is a great social skill. However, it is not about giving up who you are to satisfy the audience No. It so is not.

Being a mirror is about understanding the level of authenticity and emotional investment that each individual needs. Not about giving up who you are.

Some people need to connect intimately, some superficially. Some need to fall in love and others need to emotionally bounce off you and boost their ego. We walk in and out of the lives of people to give them what they need. That's a good way to see the world.

Recently, I felt a lot of emotion for an amazing man. He didn't want a relationship but needed support. I gave him that and we are no longer friends. That challenged me because I fell in love a little. My sadness is warranted because I helped him and thought we wanted the same thing but I was mistaken. I needed to remember that sometimes we give and don't receive and that is ok. We walk in and out of people's lives but mirrors carry a massive weight.

We know what you need and we give it because we care about you. Most people don't get that.

Sitting with two mirrors at dinner, I realised I am not alone. We find each other to help carry the weight that is thrust on us. I'm grateful to you two, Nessy and Candy. Even when those we carry for don't ever realise it.

Leave it better than when you found it

I will always post too many quotes, too many pictures of cats doing cat things, too many shots of food as I make people wait to eat, too many posts of shoes and possibly too many photos of myself. You will hear my happiness most of the time but sometimes my sadness, my contemplation, my exasperation and my wonder. There will be inane questions and tipsy checkins. Maybe shallow ponderings and epics revelations. Some days I will make you cringe and other days I will make you smile.

Either way, this is me. We do this once. Just once. Really, only once. I shall do it my way. If you can live with that then... good. If not, so be it. I gave up on cool when I was 12 years old and have been happy ever since. Now, I just want to be kind to myself and those I care about. Let everything be what it is and be ok with that. Own my choices and their consequences. Live the best life I can while treading carefully.

That is me.

Something Broke

At the beginning of August, I was mugged. Violently and viciously.

I sat on a cold hospital emergency department bed for six hours trying to stay awake as they observed my concussion. As a kid, I remember having a concussion but that isn't what I remember. It happened when I high-sided on a push bike. There was this almost eternal moment as my body flew over the handle bars and in to the concrete, face first. That's what I remember. Not the details of the concussion but the details of the accident that caused it.

The whole mugging thing was very different to that childhood bike accident. It is remembered the other way around.

Since the mugger ran up behind me, I had no idea that it was coming. There was no anticipation and the associated fear flashbacks that come with that. It happened so fast that even as he pushed me to my knees and slammed my face in to the ground, I didn't have time to put my hands out to stop myself. 

One second I was standing. The next I was wiping blood out of my eyes.

In the 20-30 seconds it took the first person to come to my aid, my emotions ran from shock to terror and then to anger. Not anger as I thought I had known once or twice in my life but an irrational overwhelming anger that made me scream, swear like  a potty mouth and attack my attacker.

I hope to never feel that level of anger ever again in my life. It was accompanied by thoughts including telling myself that if he was going to rape me that he would have to knock me unconscious and I would fight him until he knocked me out. Luckily, it didn't come to that.

Fighting him was not a rational or aware thought. It was fight or flight and I couldn't get up off the ground with him standing on my stomach and pulling at my bag. In my normal mind, I would have let him take it but in this case I used his holding the bag as leverage to kick the hell out of him.

The oddest part of all of this is that I feel mortal. I always have but now I feel a raw kind of mortal. And I don't want to die because someone else decides it or because I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time or because of some disease. I want to die when I choose to.

I have never felt more sure of anything before. No one chooses how I live and no one chooses how I die.

Many Things

I've been through many things in my life.

It is true that there are many people who walk a simpler path and that I bring on certain situations upon myself.

It took me many years to work out why this might be the case. I looked to discrimination based on many of the minority groups I am in but that only explained the disadvantage. I looked to my choices to see if I was making bad ones on purpose. It wasn't a self destructive streak and years of therapy made me accept that.

Finally, I realised that things happen in my life because I choose to participate. I dive in to life head first. I fall in love. I take a chance. I change my situation to adopt an oppirtunity.

Some people die young and are not buried until they are old.

That will not be me.

I will not look towards the winter of my life with dread. I will not exist in the summer of my life and hope for moments of spring. No, each season will be the best that I can have and have the best of me that I can give.

Maybe that means I fall on my arse regularly but I also experience an overall level of happiness and contentment that a lot of people don't.

For now, I shall continue on this path. Yes, despite the downs. Always for the ups.

How music soothes my savage beast

Tonight, my mother listened to my current Spotify Starred list. We danced to Pharrel Williams and bopped to Christina Aguilera. She even had to take in John Legend croning All of Me which I call his song. You know... "Love your curves and all your edges. All your perfect imperfections."

The point was that we connected through music.

I told her about what music does for me. Instead of being sad, she was happy that I have music. She understands.

To me, music is a state.
To me, music is the tempo of happiness.
To me, music is salvation.

In my moments of deepest loneliness and sadness, I have tunes. They rescue me. They pick me up off the couch and twirl me around the room.

There is so much that I wouldn't survive if there weren't sounds to get me through. So I constantly look backward, forward and to now for the words and beats to represent me. I keep finding them. That preserves me.

Sometimes, I dread the day when music ceases to sing to me. When it stops explaining me to others.

The moments when I share a kiss with a perfect man, to a woman proclaiming that she asks that god accepts her man in heaven when the day comes.

May there always be music.

Forgiveness

I grew up in a home that had some religious people and others who weren't. I am not religious but have no gripe with anyone who is. At least not based on their religion.

One concept that I noticed always popping up was forgiveness for others and for yourself. Not in a god granting forgiveness way but more in an accept what has happened and let go of the pain you carry way. Like putting down a weight you've been carrying while walking backwards on shale in 4" stiletto heels.

Last night, I wrote two blog posts: One wallowing in the self pity of heart break; and the other forgiving myself and forgiving someone who had hurt me.

Even now, I speak in the past tense because it feels like it is behind me. There will be moments of sadness but nothing so terrible that I cry.

I re-read them both and posted the one I thought represented me most sincerely. It was the latter.

It felt better to express that emotion than the sinking sadness alternate.

Today, I walked in to the workplace and felt free. For the first time in two months, I did not feel stressed, guilty, annoyed, sad or afraid. Especially, not afraid.

I've been feeling a strange mix of fear and sadness but today felt like it had a long time ago when I just felt happy and content.

I achieved so much at work, caught up with colleagues and friends, ticked off most of my to do list, connected with new people and felt a genuine sense of belonging that I'd misplaced.

Damana is back. All hail the Warrior Goddess reborn from the ashes.

Selfishness is a side effect

I sat down with my boss today and received an insight that changed the entire way I see a situation and how I will approach it from now on.

Instead of thinking I was the cause of a situation, I can now accept that what I'm experiencing has nothing to do with me.

Without giving any detail, all I can say is that it was a "well duh!" moment.

Often I look to myself to understand why something adverse is happening to me. Other times, I'm just completely selfish and think the world revolves around me :)

Talking to people is a good way to understand a situation when I've come up with no reasons of my own. Must remember that.

Why I Run

The last six months have seen me start jogging again. It does involve a lot of walking but I run more now than I ever did before. Even on those cold mornings and dark wet evenings, I run.

I run because it makes my heart beat fast. Then I need to breathe. All I can think about is breathing. The rest of the world disappears and so do the thoughts in my head.

I run to stop thinking.

Stop thinking of the words written, those long ago peripheral glances and the silence. The deafening, wounding unending silence that feeds my pensive sadness.

There is an odd point when running where I feel myself coming up to the final few metres and my body is begging to stop but my brain doesn't want to. My brain doesn't want to because then it will start thinking again and that never ends well. Too much introspection is never a good thing.

So I keep on running.

Thank you for being my friends

This last seven days has seen me lean on my closest friends and on my family to get through the challenges. My support network is amazing and if I don't say it enough: Thank you.

Thank you to Allison Carleton for being my voice of reason and for giving me sanctuary in every storm.

Thank you to Bernarda Maia for never letting me apologise for who I am and always offering to help me bury the bodies.

Thank you to Taylor-Trina Kadiba for being my loyal, loving and always supportive sister. You are my best friend.

Thank you to Candace Wong for making me laugh when I wanted to cry, usually at her but also at myself.

Thank you to Ola Kl for reminding me that I am awesome even when I don't feel like I am. And for making it ok to have You're So Vain as my life soundtrack.

Thank you to Bruce Cartland for tolerating my stupidity and always lifting me up.

Thank you to Evelyn Moreno for showing empathy and letting me be myself.

Thank you to Janet Wong for being endlessly kind and sincerely celebrating and sharing every achievement with me for my entire career.

And although we are not facebook friends, thank you to my boss who kicks my arse at the right times and sits and shows compassion when it counts.

Thanks to everyone else for always being kind. It counts whether it is in cyberspace or meatspace. I am honoured and humbled.

Benefit of the Doubt

I have been good at giving people the benefit of the doubt lately. No matter the situation, I have been able to find it in myself to look through the anger or negativity or coldness and see that there is a person feeling something behind that aggression.

Not everything makes sense to me. The recent events have left me sad that my privacy could be so violated and then those around me think ill of me.

Sometimes, you can't control what is happening to your life and you just have to accept it. This is one of those times.

The cruel words. The false accusations. Being discarded and rejected as if I did something wrong, has been a learning experience. It is most well learnt when you realise that neither you nor the person angry with you did anything wrong. Someone else just kicked you both.

Oh well, I never expected more than friendship from my friend. I got much less and it all wrapped in blame.

Life is teaching me something. I'm learning. Somehow however, it feels like I strayed in to the wrong lecture room of life this day.

Now to move on.

Always feel compassion but move on.

Comfortably Numb

It has been a long time since I shared the workings of my mind and what state I hold after recovering from clinical depression.

I still speak about my depression without shame or discomfort although I often see that in the eyes of those listening. It is still not understood that depression is an illness and not something that anyone would choose.

I would no longer consider myself someone who is suffering depression. It is something that I sometimes fear returning but I don't see myself ever returning to those dire straights. There are now too many tools under my belt to allow that regression.

There is however something very different to me now that never existed before my illness. I have a higher pain tolerance. I am happy but there is an undercurrent of chronic pain that exists as part of who I am now. My pain threshold does not allow it to overwhelm me but like chronic back pain, it is something I have learnt to live with. Unlike chronic back pain though, there are no pain killers or anti-inflammatories that will ease the constant ache. And no, antidepressants are not my friend because I am not depressed. This is an ingrained hurt that is laced between the atoms that make me. It can not be separated. It can not be dispersed.

I described my life recently to a friend as though I live on a super yacht that is my current happiness. This yacht is sailing on a giant lake of pain where at no point you can see all the edges. There is a thin film of sadness that reflects pretty colours and is often left in my yacht's happiness wake. However awful that may sound, it is a state that I understand and survive in quite happily... if not relatively.

Recently, I experienced immense happiness. Not just happiness but a spark of hope. Hope is something that was beaten out of me a long time ago and although I hold optimism in life and the future, I do not hope for more than what I am gifted with now... which is a lot.

Today that happiness fizzled and whisked away in the wind. I was left on my yacht on the lake, relatively happy.

The problem with this is that relativity has shifted. From the joy of beautiful hope to a sweet pensive sadness and down to what now feels like a comfortable numbness.

There are still endless reasons to smile. There are still reasons to be optimistic. There are still great moments to be sailed. The problem is, the numbness leaves me feeling it all as if I were floating outside my body watching someone else pilot me. Being John Malcovich with me as the puppet.

A part of me knows that the numbness will recede and I will sail my yacht of happiness again but the yacht will feel smaller and the pain lake bigger and the oily film of sadness slicker and thicker.

This all makes me wonder why I'd ever attempt or accept a happy state again if it ever presented itself because when it rejected me and left me floating unmoored, the vessel I travel in will be smaller.

I shall ponder this as I ponder many things, all the while feeling comfortably numb.

Sand

Each day, I grasp life in my hand and try to make sure I do it right. That I don't fuck it up and in doing so, do the best I can be.

Yesterday, I let the sand run through my fingers.

I let things be what they are. Accept that what is, is. Accept that what will be, will be. Que sera sera.

And today, life feels better. So much better. Coated in chocolate better.

Sometimes, it is best just to let it go. Let the sand run through your fingers.

Dark and Lovely

Characters. There is an album that I remember from when I was in my formative years. It really did shape me in ways. Stevie Wonder can do that to you. He changes the way you think. Music does.

If you have not heard it then you should take the trip, and it is a trip.

There is not a song on this album that can't teach you something.

Life is too short

When I was very young... when my age was just a single digit, I heard about how many books were in my school library. My school wasn't very big and I knew there were bigger libraries in the world and so many more books. Of course, not all books are worth reading but even if only 20% of them were and it took me a week to read each one... well, I'd never live long enough to read all the books I wanted to read.

I lay in bed and wept.

Now I am older and I have read so many more books but still they keep writing more that I need to read. There is non-fiction to go along with all the fiction that is still out there.

So, I don't watch television or movies much. And there is much much more time but still not enough.

So I lay in bed and weep.

Getting Back Up Again

It is raining in Canberra as I write this. Having grown up in the tropics, rain to me is warm and welcoming. It washes away the day and pushes back the heat. This feels like the right time to sit down and take in the last few months.

As one of the most stressful episodes of my life comes to an end, I am learning to accept that I can survive pretty much anything that life throws at me. I can survive it and not fall apart.

The thing is that surviving doesn't mean that I prospered during that time. It doesn't mean I felt happy every second. It doesn't mean I smiled and was thankful for what got me there.

There is a powerful myth in our society that dictates that happiness is something we must feel 100% of the time and if we aren't then something is wrong. That is wrong and causes a lot of self-doubt when people have a bad time. They tend to think that any emotion that isn't under-pinned by happiness is a fractured and bruised existence.

Feeling other emotions is not a failing. It is life. It is normal.

As long as there is a general happiness and more good moments than bad then I am satisfied that my life is going well.

In July, I experienced something that no woman should ever have to face. I found myself in a position that I never expected and realised that those who were obliged to protect me were unwilling to do so. That shook my view of work and life and people, in general.

The following weeks saw me slow my life down and finally stand still, in some hope that everything would stop spinning. The weeks lead to months and I didn't start working again until one week ago.

It isn't easy for anyone to not work for that long but if I hadn't had that time to rest and recover, I wouldn't be so energised and ecstatic about what I find myself doing now. Burn-out from over work and the horror of July meant that I spent weeks at my parent's house sleeping and trying to get my brain going again.

It wasn't like when I had severe clinical depression. It was nothing like that actually. There were shitty moments but it never felt so hopeless like falling in to a bottomless pit. It was tough though and there were nights for months where I slept with the lights on in my bedroom or didn't sleep until the Sun came up. For some reason, day time seemed safer. That or I was becoming a vampire. I do sparkle.

Anyone who has been through really bad patches will tell you that being in a rut isn't the most horrible part. The being in it part is something you can accept as what you are going through. It is falling in and climbing out that are the most challenging moments. No, not moments. Moments are short and fleeting. These are periods of time and everything slows down like when you stack a push bike and see the ground coming at you.

Right now, I am climbing out. Back at work and thriving as part of a real team where I feel I belong. I'm not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week which leaves me 20 more hours for life that the last job didn't. Yeah, no more 240 hour months.

Restabilising takes time. My new routine is being established. My old friends and new colleagues and awesome family and wonderful social circle are helping me bound back to a semblance of a normal life. Soon it will actually be a normal life. Accepting that I am no longer tripping on every tree root as I run blindly from the wolves is not as easy as I'd hoped. I keep checking for the wolves when a granny with a chin walks by. Sometimes, I even lose it and say I'll just give up and not participate anymore but I wake up the next day and I do.

So, I'm getting there. There are so many people I have to take aside and thank for holding my head above water. There are others who don't deserve to be mentioned or even to have a thought wasted on them. They don't matter. Only the good ones do.

And I'm a good one too. Just one who is trying to get the rhythm back in my life.

Gasp

I look for you. Not in a search light kind of way. More in a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan kind of way. The way that you know only happens in movies. That moment when she's searching a bookshelf and extracts a book to see him on the other side.

It's lame. It's even nuts because you aren't even in the same world as me. That doesn't seem to stop me from looking in to the crowd in an eatery or looking at the opposing escalator for your shoes and your knees and then.. oh no, that's someone else.

Sometimes, I sit on a seat and wait for you to pass by. You are walking another street in another place in another town, somewhere. You may even walk passed me and I don't see you because I'm staring in to the faceless crowd and looking for you in another time. A time when you would have smiled right up to your crows feet to see me.

That's the thing though. Even if it was a scene of only you, I won't ever see you again. You don't exist. Too much has passed. Too much is broken. It is so unfixable that for you to ever live again would involve time travel and amnesia and Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and fiction.

I think I'll keep looking for you. I hope to never be disappointed and actually see you. That would so ruin the feeling of the quick gasp before it's evident that it's not you.

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