Mean Girls

Hyenas are ugly creatures, all teeth, razor like hair and let’s not forget they prey on the weak. They move in packs, laughing so loud that the sounds resonates anything but legitimacy. They have arched backs like their bones don’t quite fit their skin and it’s all about skin, how good people look in skin, how good they feel in their own skin. There is nothing honorable in a Hyena as they essentially spend their lives looking for the half dead, the depleted, the worm out, the weak.

We all know them, seen them, felt their bite, hell some of us have even been them.

They always move in packs of many – many unidentifiable faces molded into masses of humiliation, pain, and sequins. Ugliness beyond what any artist could smudge away. They come in every age and shape but all with the same qualities of sneering, ugliness, cruelty and fear.

Fear is what binds them, moves them forward, makes them do the unthinkable. Fear is the essence of the Hyena.

I know a story that isn’t story because it’s true, of an amazing woman who was fed to the Hyenas. She built a life of quality and walked into a room of quantity and became confused. She was weakened by a tough week, month, year just the sort of prey these scavengers love. She walked in with a smile and had it swiped from her own face.

I work with animals and the kind of confidence you can’t fake as they sense the sweat before it drips from your brow.

Self esteem is a wondrous thing, we all seek it, read about it, and learn ways to capture it but in the end submit to a life without it.

But I know a secret something I’ve learnt with the sewn on stripes of years, on my face, hands and heart.

Hyenas are scared stiff and all it takes is a BOO to scare them away.

This story about a girl that isn’t a story as it’s true is licking her wounds but one day, and I think one day soon, she will realise that those people with the blank faces and hearts were viscous because she possessed something they will never.

They will never know her humility; they will never match her intelligence, her grace, her kindness, her spirit. Their hollow logs will never be filled with the gooey love she possesses.

Animals and humans alike move in pack for protection. They think like the crowd in fear of not being the crowd, they move in synergy to confused, startle and distract from the fact that they have nothing to offer, think, say, give.

This blog is personal as it’s about someone I love, someone I wasn’t there to protect, instead I was stuck on the train station without a train. Yet all the harm, humiliation and hurt were dished to her with a purpose, with a lesson that I could never teach with mere well intended words.

There is a place where, if we are lucky, we belong. In this place we feel brave, strong, sexy, funny, complete.

Hyenas melt on contact in this place.

xxx

Speechless

Words make up so much of who we are.
Yet it’s so hard to rely on the words of others when we know ourselves how many we say that are untrue.
I try to say only what I believe yet fall short everyday to hide, protect, encourage, and deceive the ears that hear them.

I believe actions do speak louder than words yet I’m a person of very little action. We all are in some ways yet we all talk more than we need to.

In the last 24 hours I have talked, texted, typed many things to many people and meant only a few.
Yet I have relationships build only on words so perhaps they are my actions.
Surface relationships, obligation associations, acquaintances some call them. Yet I struggle with half way love, commitment, need.
I crave all or nothing
I want everything said, everything meant and followed through.

I rarely say everything I need to say, everything I mean, I rarely follow through.

I’m full of shit

Yet I think you all are too

But words can enchant, bewitch, soothe and change you. Some people wait all their lives to hear certain words said in certain ways. Certain words can also destroy you, make before and after moments that are forever stolen and never to have back. Lyrics can reduce you to tears; speeches can divide us, inspire us, and even seemingly change the world.

I have a dream….

But regardless of empty sounds we crave them, demand them, and wait for them yet the moments when we are speechless are the most powerful moments we ever have.

I’ve seen a few people around me let down by actions this week. In a week when nothing was said, not a word was exchanged, not a sound uttered. People were hurt, left out, cut out, and left behind.

Sticks and stones will break my bones…

But words are all I have.

I will not change and I dare say either will you.

The Luckiest People

I’m completely self obsessed. I’m incredibly conceitedly insecure. I’m surprised I have any time for anything else in my life. I’ve often been described as aloof, snobbish even autistic yet the shameful truth lies within my own self. I live within a fantasy world with magic mirrors that instead of producing an image of lovely escapism it blinds me with an even uglier truth or lie or something left of the middle. Reality has always been an issue for me – I’ve always escaped it, fudged it or missed entirely – I find that fuzzy line blurrier and furrier than most.

Yet in calm moments I have nothing but eyes and ears for you, only you.

I’ve persuaded people to believe things that even I don’t. I’ve allowed others to see the other side of the mountain even when it is nothing but a sheer cliff. I’ve empowered the weak, enraged the boring, and killed the romantic within.

I really should’ve been a politician.

But time ticks slowly for those that live within.

Last year I met a girl that needed and screamed it out to the world and the world came. I’ve always known that dreadful Barbara Streisand song had some god awful truth to it but the thought of needing anyone sickened me.

I now say “Yes” to everything and I’ve learnt that it is the same as me saying “I need you”.

Scary and a little awkward but a little less empty which is nice, warm even syrupy like a date pudding. Mmmm pudding.

I never believed in regret, I always believed that everything that happens moves us forward and teaches us something. The older I get the less I believe this as regret and the grief that follows it now sits on my hips like a 10 pound cake. I know that this moment, this very moment will go down with the thousands of other moments I have spent in my thirties as a time that I will grieve over, again… if it is possible to indeed grieve over grief. I’ve always describe my depression as a feeling like I was grieving for something I couldn’t remember, touch, describe.

I think I just did.

Words sound funny when you say them over and over and over again. They lose their impact, their power, their interest, their meaning. They just become silly little nonsense sounds that when heard people find them hard to take seriously.

Evette, Evette, Evette, evee, evee, evee, ev, ev, ev.

Nonsense

Evee needs people too.

Now that makes sense.

Damn Barbara Streisand.

How to create a killer

They stalk rather than walk, with lion like chests and piecing eyes. Their backs can be equal height with a young child’s throat yet they still remain one of the most popular breeds in our suburbs. The beauty of the German shepherd would rarely be disputed but their place in our homes and hearts needs to be.

It is foolish to believe that breeding alone can determine the disposition of a dog but it is ignorant to turn a blind eye to potentially dangerous breeds. Yet people with small minds and even smaller back yards sentence these beautiful beasts to a life of confined spaces, boredom, frustration and finally aggression. People in every suburb are making and keeping killers.

In the surgery 90% or even more of dog attacks are carried out by German shepherds. Dogs of all sizes are ripped apart by the jaws of this breed. I’m not bagging large dogs as I love giant breeds but they don’t mix with smaller yards. They need stimulation more than most breeds and our busy lives and small blocks just can’t provide this.

I can see a day in the not so distant future where councils will regulate dog size to yard size. I welcome this move and even tougher laws and hope the “do gooders” step aside and ……
This is turning into a lecture…

If you saw what I did this week you would understand my rant.

Human have a wonderful way of possessing things and destroying them. We consume the world with one overfed gulp and rarely look at the path of destruction we left behind. I’m tired of the takers, the ones that mix up privilege with rights. The gluttons that chomp their way through life, always hungry, always stuffed to the brim.

People adopt animals for more reasons that many may understand. The power of animals have re-written the medical textbooks and shaped our lives in extraordinary ways. Personally I can’t live without them; I ache for them more than I would ever for one of my own kind. I have many theories on why some love them too much and some too little but I can’t wrap my head around why people choose certain breeds and stifle their nature by their forced lifestyles. I cannot understand why some people choose to create a killer.

Soon another German shepherd will be destroyed because it has killed a cat, 2 chickens, and attacked a dog viciously threes times. It is less than 18 months old and maybe less than a month away from tearing out its owner throat. A large, beautiful dog was thrown into a tiny yard with nothing but a fence to look at. A large, beautiful dog was rarely given exercise and went stir crazy. A large, beautiful dog become a killer right in that family’s backyard.

If you are judging the family right now you need to caste your eyes to your neighbors, the house down the street, the house where you hate walking past because the reaction from the stir crazy dog makes you shit yourself everyday. This is going on in more households than you may realise.

You ask these people if they would cut off the hands of a talented painter, remove the voice box of gifted soloist, crush the legs of a sprinter and they would always say no of course not. Instead they just take a living, breathing thing of beauty and place it in a space they control and lock away its instincts, beat its nature down, and turn it into pure rage.

Unfortunately we are only allowed to put down the dogs.

The 6 year old Queen

When I read her words I’m ashamed. I feel petty, stupid, ungrateful and healthy. I remember her as a kid – blonde hair and fat shiny cheeks standing near the oval with my next door neighbour, smiling, watching like a 6 year old queen. Her name stuck in my head like a tumor as did that day – one of the few days her health allowed her to come to school.

I was stunned she remembered me as that memory was mine.

There are very few people that stop you in your tracks – I know she is that person for an extraordinary amount of people. I also know she would be silently cringing to read this blog which just makes us walk further into her light.

I know very little about her disease and I also ask very little which either makes me thoughtless or a relief. My only memory of her as a child was her golden hair and fat cheeks so it’s hard to associate her with the pain of her illness.

We never talk about her health – I guess the subject is very tiring for her yet I follow her blogs like a bloodhound and I inhale every word.

A blonde bombshell with the wisdom of 150 years or more.

Life isn’t about comparing luck (good or bad) – maybe this is why Christmas songs about poverty piss me off so much. I know there is uncontainable pain out there and yes I could do more (there is always more to do) but I don’t want to sit with people I love and feel guilty (don’t fuck with my Christmas!).

I came back into her life last year when mine was hanging by a thread.

She tied a safety knot in that thread and allowed me to my pain.

Some of my closest friends have not shown me that dignity

Friends with juvenile teeth have made me feel less, further away than before.

If you stride towards completeness and your knees go weak with bravery you must save this page to your favourites. I’m not talking about a moaning string of words, an empty page of pain, these words on these pages will change who you are as they are written by someone that lost too much yet still came out too whole.

http://chasingawaysaltwater.blogspot.com/

I lost my mind and thank god I did.

I use to dress every morning in my lovely skirts and high heels and walk to the train station to go to my well paid government job and psych myself up to jump in front of the train.

Every morning I rose with the same thought.

I used to think that our lives were divided into three areas – job, family/friends and love. I also used to think that it was impossible even greedy to have all three sections running smoothly. If things were great in the love department, then work usually sucked and so forth.

I was wrong on two levels. Firstly there are, and should be more, than three sections to your life and secondly the toxic waste of one area can leak, and usually does, into the others areas contaminating them.

We spend the majority of our lives at work so when work doesn’t go well we overcompensate in other areas. We dig holes and try to fill them with dirt from other piles in the hope that we can ignore the huge mountain building up behind us.

I know this; I’ve done this too many times.

After my breakdown I looked around at what was left and saw lots of space. I lost my job, my boyfriend, some friends, my apartment, my sanity yet in the strangest way it gave me permission to move.

I see people everyday that cannot move within their own lives. They have tied up their lives with so many expectations, so many restrictions, so many financial responsibilities that they cannot move even sideways.

I know this; I’ve done this too many times

In the past 6 months I have been building up a life that is very different than the one I lost. In fact all that I had then that I don’t have now is money and that urge to jump in front of a train.

I lost everything in order to find something that mattered.

Everyday my life is filled with quality which surely is the meaning of life.

I don’t have a lot of money yet I don’t wake up wanting to throw up because I have to face another day at a job that makes me miserable.

I guess by now you will know I am talking to you.
I say it with love as I’ve been there.

I’m not going to say that life is too short to do the things that you don’t like because the fact is life is long and painful and miserable when you do something you hate.

You light up every room you walk into so don’t let them take that from you, don’t let them take that from us.

xxx

In the name of the Father

I’ve attempted to write this blog so many times and I keep hitting the delete button. Nothing is coming out right, everything seems uneasy; the words on the paper are just not sitting right with me.

Appropriately I’m trying to write about my Father.

My father left when I was10 yet I don’t have many memories of him before that. I imagine he was at work or something as I struggle to visualise him within my childhood home. I don’t even remember being particularly fazed when he left in fact I even recall thinking how lucky I was that I only had one parent to answer to.

When I was growing up my father was forced to make an effort with his children which slowly whittled down to one hour a year – another thing that didn’t bother me as time with this awkward man was like pulling teeth.

My brother harbored an anger towards him that to this day still surprises me. I never felt that sort of passion but I did develop a growing discomfort toward my lack of relationship with him. In my mid twenties I started to build a bridge and extend a hand of friendship towards my father. He seemed surprised, maybe a little chuffed but if truth be told a little reluctant to allow me into his life.

My father’s father died at war before he was born so who taught my father to be a father?

This question rang in my ears a lot when I was growing up and now I simply file it away as another excuse for him to not be there.

Even absent Fathers can teach you so much.

My father taught me that nothing lasts forever but it’s OK that it doesn’t.
I learnt that its takes a lot a bravery to be a dad and he just didn’t have the courage and that’s OK too.
I learnt that I’m a lot like my father and I’m too tired to fight those traits anymore.
I learnt that blood actually isn’t thicker than water and that water can be gooey and warm and everything you need.
I learnt that I search for my father’s faults in other men and I probably always will and that this isn’t fair or OK.
I learnt that my mother was everything he never could be and I’m very lucky even blessed to be of her blood and this makes it all OK in the end.

Last year when I walking the thin line between life and death my father didn’t pick up the phone, drive to see me, or even send an email.

I thought about all the effort I put in to try and build a friendship and I realised that it was what I wanted and not him. That he wanted to leave this life behind and it was just me who was trying to pull him back which in the end wasn’t right or OK. I was so hurt that he didn’t care when I was sick but then I found peace and the discomfort just left.
I feel at peace for the first Father’s Day since I was ten. I can walk away knowing I did everything I could yet I still lost him anyway.

And for the first time for me that’s OK.