Election Night

Hi everyone! Just a few thoughts from my weekend here, but as of today I won't be blogging again until at least the second week of October. My thesis is currently more than a full time job, and I just can't afford to be writing anything else. I hope you'll all come back when I start writing with some frequency again.

On Saturday, I got up very early and went to a local polling place to work for the Australian Electoral Commission. Australians had to vote on Saturday for a federal government (it's compulsory to vote here, at all levels of government) and the conservatives came crashing in.

It's a long day, working a polling booth. My job as a 2IC is a sort of catch all position, basically anything that the manager needs to palm off. I was working quite a small booth this time around, and my manager was up to the task, so the day could have been a lot worse. 

We don't have it perfect here. The Senate voting paper is ridiculously complicated, especially for people who don't speak English (my electorate and the one I was working in have a much higher number of non English speakers than most), and the turnout was much lower than it should have been. But as I lined up to vote on Friday afternoon at a pre-polling venue, I couldn't help but get choked up at what I was about to do.

We vote in peace, without harassment (unless you count party workers, which I don't - usually). The AEC is mostly a well oiled machine, with pencils and paper so no defective machines for us. Rarely do you have to wait more than half an hour to vote anywhere in the country. There are sausage sizzles and lamingtons on offer at little stalls at many venues, fundraisers for the local sporting team or school. 

As the sign on every voting screen said, your vote is a valuable thing. Democracy, for all its faults, is a beautiful thing. And even though I hate the administration who just came in, I still feel strongly that our system of government and the way people are elected is one of the best going. It is a privilege and a responsibility that I cherish, and I exercise my right to choose with pride.   

Some time soon I will vote overseas, perhaps in an embassy, while I'm on a fellowship or a research trip. I can't wait, just like the little kids who eagerly push their parents' votes into the overflowing ballot boxes every election day. I remember doing the same when I was little, and I still poke mine through gleefully. My vote matters, and it's a personal, beautiful thing. 

Great Expectations

It's probably pretty obvious by now I expect a lot of myself. I feel like all my life I've been this untapped potential and chronic underachiever - and I'm sick of it. 

I had a frustrating time yesterday as I got one of the marks back for the seminars I took as part of my Honours work. It was bad enough that I was really upset, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should ask for my second mark back so I could get all the upset over with in one day. 

So I asked the mentor for the second mark. It was slightly better, but still far short of what I wanted, nay needed for the overall mark I am seeking from this ridiculous exercise in self discipline and self doubt. I was right to get it all over with, and mourn what I can't fix. I woke up today ready to try again and make the thesis, which is worth 60% of the final mark, as good as it possibly can be. 

Look, they're not bad marks. My supervisor assured me that I'm in the top couple of percent of students with these marks, but still. It feels like a failure.

Expectations can cripple you. If you're a perfectionist and you want the best, sometimes you can paralyse yourself and not even start. The blank page is both frightening and exhilarating, because you know it probably won't be as good as in your head.

The trick is to start, to draft, to cut, and to believe that it can be better than you'd hoped. Over and over and over again. 

I leave you with this video of Dylan Moran talking about one's potential. I worry that he's right, the bastard:

Friend of Ours

Three and a half years ago L. and I held hands, lined up behind a woman we love as she wed her high school sweetheart. Yesterday we held hands again outside a tiny country town crematorium as our friend farewelled her stepfather, who died suddenly last week. 

We stood, cold with the wind against our backs, part of the huge crowd that couldn't fit inside the small building. The deceased had been a prison guard, his fellow officers making up much of the crowd; the young guard next to me would wipe her tears away and then adjust her dress hat every few minutes as the service wore on. This man was loved, you could feel it, this man who had told me all about his kids proudly as he blew up balloons for my friends' engagement party. Everyone wept quietly, brought undone as the children said their piece. I'm not sure anyone could have kept it together as his youngest daughter struggled through her short eulogy. 

I sing at a lot of funerals, and you never get used to them. It's not unusual for me to be moved to tears with the odd story, especially if the person who's left is clearly adored and missed. So often, though, it's not for the deceased that we cry, it's for the people left behind who are hurting. It's for the people we love who one day will leave us. And it's the sobering realisation that, one day, a few people might gather and mourn us too. 

Coming from as Catholic a background as I do, I'm always unsure of funeral etiquette for others. Catholics all go funerals a lot, because it's not just a celebration, it's a requiem, a chance to pray for the deceased. So if you know them at all, you go. I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing going into yesterday, but the moment our friend C. walked out of the church and saw us, the look on her face told me we had absolutely done the right thing, making the 3 hour trip down from Sydney. When she was able to break free of her family, we held her close and told her we loved her, which is what we had gone there to do.

We ended up at a workers' club for drinks that were filled to the brim and slopped down the side as we tried to budge our way through the crowded wake. L. and took turns looking after our friend and after her mother, who was doing pretty well all things considered. The crowd dwindled, and eventually it was just us and the immediate family ranged around, sipping drinks and trying to make each other eat. We made inappropriate jokes, we made plans to catch up when C.'s in Sydney next week, we talked about L.'s daughter's birthday party. 

My friendship with C. worries me from time to time - do we have enough in common to stay friends? Are we really close if we can sometimes go quite a long time without speaking? The answer was on C.'s face when she saw us, and how pleased she was to have us there as she tried to take care of everyone while trying to come to terms with her own grief. The petty, paranoid stuff ebbed away, and I am grateful that my presence meant something to her and made a shitty day a little bit better. No friendship is perfect, we're not close like girls on television shows, but we do have an intimacy that no one else can share. 

We take care of each other. Sooner or later there'll be different combinations of friends holding hands at different funerals, but that won't change. We have each others' backs. 

All The Pictures On The Wall

I'm currently immersed in writing hell, almost 4800 words into a 6000 word paper (whee!) so what you're getting from me is a bit of picture fluff....literally. 

I'm a committed and regular letter writer, and a lover of the medium. My plan for Masters is to use letters as my main source, lots of them, from lots of people. But a few years ago, when my life was a total mess and finding nice things to write about was difficult, I would occasionally fall back on an old writing trick of mine, where I would describe my surroundings. It came to me that there might be something interesting in talking about what I loved enough to put up on my wall. 

My parents wouldn't let me put posters up as a teenager, but eventually they stopped tearing them down and my tastes evolved, just a little. (I still kind of miss my Buffy poster that my mum destroyed....) When I first lived by myself it was mostly movie posters, but now it's swayed back to music, as I find the nicest and most interesting designs are being done for bands and solo artists. Having said that, I do have some art prints up there. 

So this is what I have my walls right now:

Oh, Chrissie. I had a clipped magazine article about The Pretenders that I'd nicked from the library that also didn't survive my mother's purge of '99, but here she is in a fabulous, wonderfully colourful poster I bought two years ago from a 2007 concert. I love it.

I wish I could link to the etsy seller from whom I purchased this, but she seems to have closed up shop. This is a 8 x5 inch card, and I don't know why I love it so much, or why it appeals to me, but I do and it does. It's also the most feminine design on my wall. 

(Hieronymus Bosch, 'Christ Carrying The Cross')

I think some of you know I have a thing for Bosch. No, not the power tools. Especially given some of the craziness in my head, this poster has a certain strength for me, and is especially relevant given the paper I am trying to write  at the moment. (Shuddup and forget about the damn thing for ten minutes!)

This image does not do the poster justice. It is this beautiful, thick paper and the design is shiny on the page. These guys are amazing live, so I like that this is a concert poster, albeit for a concert in the UK (Wembley, April 2009).

Hey look, it's Kyp Malone before he shaved his afro off! This is a much more modern design than most of the stuff I like, but the colours and silliness of it are very appealing. TV On The Radio are one of my favourite bands on the planet, can't live without'em.

The 'Writing Frankie' poster girl. I had this in my etsy favourites for about a year before I finally bought about a year ago. You can buy it here from a lovely lady in Finland. 

There's a positivity to this that I love.

Finally, apart from a two month calendar from my favourite magazine, there's a small square of paper with a definition of what a 90+ Honours result looks like. A 90+ result would mean that I have produced 'work demonstrating the highest level of accomplishment and intellectual autonomy that can be expected from an undergraduate student'. 

That's what I'm hoping, so it's back to the paper now.

What do you have on your walls?

Sister

I love how the really important conversations with my sister always seem to take place late at night as one of us reheats dinner while the other watches. We stand on either side of the tiny kitchen, the old wooden table that Dad's father made some forty years ago between us, and we talk, usually a talk that's been a long time coming. Last night it started just as a catch up, and her telling me about the work she has on a camp this coming week, and we made plans to have lunch when she gets back, a lunch we've been planning since she bailed on the Morrissey concert last year. (Bitch.)

On the spur of the moment, it just seemed like the right time to tell her about the scary health stuff that's been going on. She knows there's been stuff wrong (there's only so much you can hide when you live in the same house), but she doesn't know how bad. It took me a few goes to get the words out, mumbling some other rubbish first, and eventually came up with this:

'So I've had some stuff. Like, voices and psychosis. All new.'

'You haven't already had that for years?'

'What?'

'You've had that stuff for years, right?' 

'What? No! What's wrong with you?'

'What's wrong with me?'

'Yeah, fair call.'


We didn't talk about it much after that. She took the news calmly, and was really good about it, and promised not to tell my parents (I still don't know how to have that conversation). I feel better talking about it now with a bit of practice on a few friends and now that I am mostly certain schizophrenia isn't on the table. She was calm for me. The same way I am calm for her when she needs me to kill a spider or a cockroach. The same way she is calm for me when I have to get a needle or a blood test and she talks sense into me. 

This give and take is still kind of new for us. We've fought and scrambled our way to this strong support that's so good for both of us; we talk each other up and down as needed. It's a dynamic that runs the gamut from: 'How can you possibly think that? What is wrong with you?' to 'Oh my god, I thought exactly the same thing, you're in my head' and carrying on full conversations with movie and comedy quotes from people we love. We have three brothers, but they're not like us much. There are things that she and I share that no one else can.

Last week I read an touching series of interviews conducted with sets of sisters. The sister of Alison Bell, the actress, said something that cut through to my heart: 'The best thing about having a sister is that it's Alison.' 
It's a beautiful thought, and one that I believe too. The best thing about having a sister is that she's Clarence.* It's not always easy, but it's worth it, and it's the most important relationship in my life. 

She's not perfect, but she's my person. 


*her nickname

I Go To Sleep

I rarely do 'State of the Nation' posts, but this is a necessary anomaly. 

A few months ago I mentioned that I had been experiencing some really scary stuff, like hearing voices and psychosis, among other things. I've been in and out of hospital since December, but my contact with my specialist has been limited and I haven't been able to afford seeing her. My GP (or my regular doctor - I've no idea what you'd call her in the States or the UK) left her practice around the time I was getting ill, and I was only just able to track her down. However, she's now arranged with my specialist for me to see her under the same bulk billing practice that is used by most GPs, so the health care system at the federal level is looking after me. Thank Christ for socialised medicine and decent doctors who give a damn. 

The de Balzac line that 'our greatest fears lie in anticipation' rings very true where my health is concerned. Until now I have always been very proactive about my condition since I was diagnosed properly. I am compliant about taking my medications, and when I have the cash I see my specialist. I go to hospital when psychosis starts. I try and educate myself about things I can do to live better and reduce the severity of my symptoms. But even though most of the reason I haven't been seeing doctors of late is cash related, there's also a part of me that didn't want to be told I had schizophrenia. 

So here's the big news: it's almost certainly not schizophrenia. (Cue sigh of relief.) The bets are on the psychosis being triggered by my past trauma, even after all this time, and it's possible my diagnosis will now be Bipolar I, not II. This feels strange to me. For some time now I have joked that the definition of Bipolar II in the DSM-whatever should be accompanied by my photograph, but the psychosis changes things. I dunno. It might change again soon, who knows. 

I have a new medication to add to the mix, a little pill so tiny you can hardly believe that it's so important. If I sneezed I'd never find it. It has a sedative and calming effect and should help keep the psychosis at bay (please, yes) so I add it to the other medication I've been taking for a few years now. It's all at night, and the pills are dry and smooth in my fingers as I sip the water to wash them down. It's amazing how we can imbue such minute objects with such power, and it's not unusual for me to look at them with longing, hoping that their intricacies will help me through the next day and beyond. That they'll send me to sleep soon, and allow me to be at my best.

Here's hoping.

P.S. - Google Reader is soon to be no more, and given how infrequently I update the blog I'm asking those of you who read this when I do to either sign up with a service like BlogLovin', which I've just started using myself and quite like, or subscribe to the blog via e-mail at right. I do occasionally tweet that I've updated, but if you're a regular reader I'd be very grateful if you'd sign up so I don't have to do that - it makes me feel foolish. 

I just took my tablets so I'm going to bed now. 

All Fired Up

While it seems that some of the scariest things of these last months aren’t going away, it does seem that I’ve stumbled on a patch of relative calm and creativity. I had a major breakthrough on some horribly overdue research that I’m now assembling and then writing up, and if this holds for me then getting all my Honours work done by October is manageable. For the first time in months I am not consumed by blinding panic every time I think of all the work I have to do. I’m actually excited by the prospect of my work for the first time in ages, and I’m fighting my head well enough to get some shit done.

It’s a strange thing, getting something of your real self back after months of being so disconnected. While it’s not a terribly original analogy, it really is rather like the lights coming on inside your head. It’s thrilling, cracking something so resolutely and steadfastly infuriating as the work that’s been in front of me for months. I also like that I’ve been able to speak with people this last week or so and actually be able to play along and pass for a normal human being.

I was feeling well enough that I could run away to Canberra for the weekend just gone, a long arranged trip for a concert by one of my favourite Australian bands. I have lived with their music for more than fourteen years, and listening to these guys and seeing them live are memories of my teens that I don’t completely hate. It’s not simply nostalgia – they’re still releasing outstanding music – and I was looking forward to seeing them in a venue I haven’t been to before. I know most of the Sydney live music venues like the back of my hand and am a little bored with them, so the intimate microbrewery with great sound was a lovely surprise for this passionate gig goer, even if we were all dying of the heat by the end of the night (this sounds especially ridiculous given that we were on the very cusp of winter that night in Canberra, of all places). My friends and I got there after splitting some amazing dumplings and some even better beer, and for a few hours it really felt like someone else’s life. We were laughing and chatting and the Moz who’s in and out of hospital managed to stay in her cage for the night. One of the joys of live music is that it always wakes me up, and so it was on Friday night. I was present, and having a good time.

We stood and drank and tried to carry on a conversation despite the noise, waiting for the band to come onstage. The slightly older crowd, who would have been in their twenties when this band was at their peak, swayed and made out with one another, and I smiled, hoping that some of these couples had, in fact, gotten together all the way back when. Then there they were, and after a few songs I looked around, almost expecting to see my younger, thinner self, just singing along. But instead I saw my friends, who I love so much, and who welcome me into their home when I come to town. I looked back at the singer, wailing about time travel and times past, and it suddenly hit me that I’m so busy looking back and trying to work out my own past that I’m missing what’s in front of me right now.

This is probably self-evident to everyone but me. It makes complete sense that I study history; I'm certainly obsessed with my own past and what went wrong and what passed me by. Now I am missing what’s in front of me, and the truth is that even though a lot of the time I’m paralysed by my illness, I am doing my Honours work. I am doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing right now, at a university I love, and I am free. This work isn’t a burden, or something that someone else is demanding of me. It is my choice, and I am good at this. It’s research and it’s writing, and there’s creativity and imagination required of me in what I do. This is my vocation, and this time and place is mine.

So while I’m chained to a hospital bed more often than I would like, I am privileged enough to mostly do what keeps me alive and feeds my soul. I am doing what I love, and that sets me free.