the big adventures of little h

I have realised that I do give alot of myself in my blog…. brief moment of fear that I am shattering illusions and having people know much more about me than they really want to know. I wonder whether people a) enjoy it, b) are freaked out by it c) find it helpful to understand me more, or d) find it completely self absorbed and are sick of it?

Now in complete self centredness I am going to post a message on facebook saying I have posted stuff on my blog so people read this message! Aghhh!

h.

So, I really should be doing something on a Sunday rather than writing my blog, but i figured I could write a short post which was inspired by the phone call I had with my dad last night.

I had told people that I met my dad for the first time in 16 odd years recently and that the whole thing had seemed so ordinary, which struck me as both very strange and very reassuring. It is surprising how years of fear can dissolve in a hug, and how normal the interaction was. The other thing that stuck me was how much I was actually longing for that father daughter interaction which was lacking in my life. Even though I had a “father substitute” it just wasn’t the same. A dad is something which i have only just realised is a very precious thing — there are few men in a girl’s life that can love them in a platonic way, and protect them in the same way that a dad protects his daughter. There’s that fierce almost animalistic need to protect and nurture unconditionally and to love unconditionally as well. My dad would love me the same if I were a pauper on the street than if I were a princess, and I know that - it is very good for the self esteem!

I think that maybe people take relationships a bit for granted. I hear stories about people who have these sort of lack lustre relationships with their parents and i feel a bit sad about the fact that both the parents and the children don’t really appreciate what they have. I have spent my whole life trying to fill the void that was left by my dad being absent in my life with teachers, family friends, grandpas and finally to some extent with my partner, and I know what it is like to have that ache of feeling like your parent doesn’t want you. I still have that feeling every day with my mum, and I have to say that having my father back in my life only reinforces quite how bizarre my mother’s behaviour is, and has in part made me decide to become officially estranged from her.

So, it might seem strange that here I am espousing about how great it is to have parents and how people should appreciate their parents and in the next line I am saying that I have thrown away my relationship with my mum, but I guess you would have to understand my “philosophy” on how relationships work to understand why i have chosen to do what I have done.

I believe that noone has a right to be respected simply because they are a parent. Parents are humans and they are falliable. If my parent tells me the sky is red, I am not going to say “yes” just because they want that. As with any relationship there has to be a give and take and people have to work on it. Of course there is the biology aspect, I love my parents because they are my parents, but they need to do more than just that. Conception is not enough, because, lets be honest, conception is pretty easy, and also is not something which I could have decided anyway. What creates respect is how they raise you, what values they have, attributes of them that you admire, whether they protect you, etc etc.

I can say I love my mother, but I don’t like her. This is very hard. I don’t respect her choices and I definitely don’t respect her view on life generally. She believes that the world is a hard place where you are going to get jipped and that you should be “toughened up” to face it. I believe that the world is a balance of good and bad things, but allover is generally a good place. I also believe that what you believe creates your reality, and for my mother, this has proven to be the case, she has no friends and is generally disliked. When I say I don’t agree with her views on life though it is actually deeper than that - I am frightened and concerned about them. She has views on men and sexuality that would curl your toes, and her views on relationships are almost pathological. In my view she is unhealthy to be around - you spend 5 minutes with her, and it’s like an infection, she drains the positivity away.

Perhaps you are wondering why I don’t try to help her, and I have to say that over the years I have tried on numerous occasions to do so. She will not accept any help, assistance or guidance. As far as she is concerned I am a child and am incapable of offering her help. I have to hear the crap, but I can’t assist. I have on a number of occasions said that she might benefit from seeing a counsellor, but she is phobic of mental illness and refuses to acknowledge that she has any problem. She is so phoblic of mental illness that when I was diagnosed with depression at 11 she refused to take me to my appointments and I had to go by bike. I had to hide my bike around the back of the surgery so that noone in the town knew that I was going and I wasn’t able to tell anyone. She actually told me that I should never tell my partner that I suffer from depression, and one day, part way through my sessions decided to pull me out of the appointments all together and take me off my medication cold turkey because she objected to the cost. Depression is related to a chemical imbalance in the brain and the medication needs to be taken for some 6 months after your symptoms disappear to ensure that your brain is receiving enough serotinin. If you stuff this up, then you risk relapsing, which I did in year 12. Anyhow, going off topic! Mum refuses help and I think she has a disorder. I would of course help if she would let me, but she refuses and I have to acknowledge that she is her own person and that has been the hardest part.

I think though, there comes a point, as I said with my blog about mental illness where you have to throw up your hands and say, “It’s your life, you have the choice, I have tried to help you, now I am walking away” This is very, very hard. I was brought up with a huge victim image of my mum. In my mind my mum was always the person being hurt and being abused, she was weak and I tried to protect her. Now I am realising that she was in fact the person who often instigated the abuse, and that she is prideful and stubborn enough to risk a black eye to make a point, but even more concerning she will goad someone into hurting her!

It hurts to walk away but she appears to gain some perverse pleasure from the Bold and the Beautiful-esk life she leads. She is very much the martyr and will talk endlessly about the fact that she is the only one who cares for my grandmother, when I think her presence is what drives other family members away. She derives pleasure from her status as a sufferer, and will vehermentlybitch to anyone in proximity about how I have left her all alone, and will blame everybody but herself - at the moment her scapegoat of choice is my partner, which is a total no go zone as far as I am concerned because he was the person who spent years fixing me up from all the years with her! That I am a functional human being is to a great extent due to his patience, counsel and wisdom and she should worship him for that!

Nonetheless, I feel scared to leave her — will her partner hurt her and I won’t be there to help? what if she commits suicide? what if something else bad happens? But i have realised something - these sorts of people, they don’t suicide - they just find other people to use. If she gets hurt by her partner, then I cannot control that in her life anymore than I can control it out of her life. She is the only person who controls her state of being. Her finger is on the button and all I can do is hope that underneath it all she actually is smart enough to not push the boundaries too far — that self preservation prevails.

What hurts me most though is that my sister is still very much in the world of mum as it were. She still feels like she has to help mum and protect her - she is our friggin mother! We are not her keepers! My sister exhausts herself thinking about mum and worrying about her without any appreciation from mum whatsoever - mum actually kicked her out of home at 14 because her new husband didn’t like my sister, and my sister then had years of vagrant-like existance, where she had no fixed home. She has dealt with being rejected by mum and yet still tries to help. I have to say she is a better person than me, who is much more cynical about the whole thing.

So, I guess I am currently having a stand off with mum. She needs to earn my respect by making some sensible actions - ie getting help, before she is going to be back in my life. She needs to respect my life choices, especially my partner, and she needs to take responsiblity for her own unhappiness and work towards changing it. She needs to respect me generally and realise that I am not going to necessarily agree with her, that I am my own person and that because of this, my views vary from hers. Until she does this, I can’t see her in my life for the forseeable future, which is very very sad, but I have to say that my life has never been more settled and peaceful since I stopped interacting with her.

Mmm, depressing post! Promise happier post soon!

H x

So, I have told everyone that I had a new job, but I didn’t elaborate… partially this is because the whole working situation is pretty depressing. When I emerged bright eyed and bushy tailed into the legal world, I pretty much thought that I would have it made, respect, money and interesting work. The reality is a bit of a divergence from that!

I have had the opportunity to talk with a fair number of “baby lawyers” since starting in the profession and the situation for starting lawyers seems to be pretty standard. After you have spent 5 years or so studying you then have to do college of law for an additional 16 weeks and then you have to do a work experience componant, which is another 16 weeks full time. There is alot of competition for work experience placements and as you can imagine, the firms like Minter Ellison and Gadens are the creme de la creme. what this means is that firms can pretty much dictate the conditions under which the almost-lawyers work. The work placement is normally unpaid and you end up doing the most mundane tasks. It really is a way of getting free labour and is exploited freely. the problem is that the almost-lawyers often operate under the impression that their hard work will pay off with a position in the firm once they are admitted, however this is not guaranteed and almost all advertisements for these positions state that nothing is guaranteed - why keep the newly admitted solicitor on when you can get another freeby?

so, after slaving away in your work placement you then pay about $700 to get yourself set up as a solicitor, that being for your admission fee and practicing certificate. You then start applying for positions, however most firms will only employ solicitors with 1+ post admission experience. I personally think this is really wrong as it means that these firms essentually capitalise on the training put in by another firm. So you keep applying and applying and getting more and more disheartened. Alot of solicitors actually settle for paralegal positions as a way of at least getting a foot in.

this brings us to the issue of salary. Once you are admitted, you expect a decent salary. Unfortunately there is no way of a newly admitted solicitor to determine what a decent salary is. There is no award wage for solicitors, no award at all in fact, and the wages are determined by individual firms. We work with no employment conditions, no protections and no reassurances. I guess everyone thinks that lawyers can fight these issues themselves and operate under an AWA-esk system, however, the large amount of solicitors being admitted and the relatively low amount of wor avaliable means that many solicitors will lower their standards in order to secure their positions and what this in turn means is that things like excessively long hours, no breaks and unrealistic work expectations become the norm. I actually found it near impossible to find out what I could expect as a decent starting salary, the Law Society of NSW gave me a mean starting salary of $51k, but said that solicitors were getting as little as $43k and as high as $65K in their starting year. Salaries also vary depending on whether you are in a small, medium or large firm, whether you are in private practice or work in house and whether the firm is urban or rural. very complicated!

When you do finally get a place in a firm, chances are you will be overworked and thrown in the deep end. Liability is something which is drummed into almost-lawyers and the prospect of having to actually do legal work, when you don’t necessarily know what you are doing is highly daunting. You are running to deadlines and this pressure, combined with long hours and a diet consisting of adrenalin and caffeine means that you are more likely to make silly mistakes. This in itself, in a supportive workplace would not be so bad, after all, people can do anything if they feel appreciated for it, but unfortunately there is such a high expectation of the workloads that will be undertaken by lawyers, spurned on by the brown nosing types that do literally live and breathe law and have no other life outside their offices, that the work being done is not appreciated.

It would be hard to understand as someone not in the profession quite what it is like to go from being a student to a lawyer. analogies are often pretty poor, but i guess the best way I can describe it is imagine that you have had about 20 driving lessons in a car, and you have a vague understanding of how to drive, but you aren’t feeling evry confident at all, and you still think you might stuff up. Imagine now that someone plonks you in a car on your own in peak hour sydney traffic. I know this seems extreme, but I kid you not, this is what it is like. on my first day at my current job, I was told to go to court and do a matter where the file was 15cm thick of documents and I had no idea at all. There was no one to help me either. I didn’t know how to find the court, what the procedures were, whether i was before a judge or a registrar, where I was supposed to stand, who I was acting for or what I had to say. It really is sink or swim.

The other thing that I have found about the legal profession is that there is a large amount of workplace bullying and harrasment. I have had three jobs in 6 months - in the first I faced bullying and sexual harrasment, and in my current job I am regularly belittled by my boss and bullied by my boss/coworkers. I am subject to unrealistic expectations and if i stuff up, I’m accountable. I literally get stomach cramps and diarrhoea each morning at the expectation of what will happen in the day. My boss has had me in tears so many times now, and I have come to the conclusion that it is better to simply admit fault, even when there isn’t any and move on, save hours of badgering. Is this gutless? yes, probably, but the fact is that trying to sort it out doesn’t get you anywhere and you are wasting time from doing the urgent stuff.

So, you ask, what then is good about the legal profession? there must be something that makes you stay? The fact is that being a lawyer is a profession that encourages you to feel good about yourself. It is elitist and it is very easy to comfortably fall into the “I am a lawyer and I am so great” mentality. Lawyers separate themselves from other people in society and exist in a world of pomp and ceremony. We are the champagne sippers of society and feel that we reside in its lofty eschallons. lawyers are bandied to by a number of other organisation in society too, we get discounted mortgages, special offers on health insurance, credit cards, gym memberships, hire cars and travel resorts. If you are asked what you work as and you say “lawyer” most of the time you engender respect from whoever questioned you and their attitude towards you changes. This still whigs me out and I often don’t tell people what I work as to avoid this, as it makes me feel uncomfortable.

So, you feel like you are special and there is also a sense of comraderie that comes from being a lawyer. I was once told that lawyers are notoriously horrible to each other and highly competative. I am in contact with many, many lawyers and barristers each day and I can say that I have found the great majority of people in the legal profession to be ethical, helpful and genuinely nice. There are some real bitches and bastards, but most of the time there is the recognition that even if you are on either side of a matter, the dispute is between the clients and the lawyers are just doing their job, and you can have crazy situations where in between playing hardnose about dates for compliance, lawyers are having a great natter about what they did on the weekend. I do feel proud to be a part of a community of sorts that is populated by such people, and I would feel sad not to have that community.

I guess the last thing is that lawyers often choose to get into law because they want to make a difference, either because they believe in giving back to society or they want to make a name for themselves. People don’t actually realise that lawyers are creating the laws that we live under every day. each time a lawyer makes a case that changes how a judge interprets a law, each time a new precedent is set, there is a lawyer behind it. Some lawyer had to put together the argument that made the issue be explored and that is pretty powerful. The other thing that people don’t realise is how much lobbying lawyers do and how much pro bono work is done as well. Because lawyers are in contact with the law and see its faults and inadequacies they are some of the major movers for change.

So, there is the legal profession in a very wordy nutshell. Of course this is just my observations, but as I say, I see alot of lawyers and I talk to alot of people, so I have taken some of the things others have said to me… I would be interested in what people think….

little h

Hello bloglets,

I have decided to reenter the world of the online blog for a couple of reasons:

1. firstly, because much has happened in the life of little h, and I feel the need to vent, gush, exclaim etc etc; &

2. I was asked to do so, which to me is the most wonderful compliment!!! People actually want to read my ramblings.

So, how to summarise my life without getting RSI? Months have passed and if this was a movie, pages would flutter off a calendar, leaves on trees would brown, snow would fall, blossoms would burst and birds would sing… yes, I have been a slack arse, but the fact is that I have been too busy living life to record it, which I guess is a positive?

So, dear bloglets when I last wrote I was working in a firm doing conveyancing and not much else, I had earnt the measly sum of $2000 for two months, and although I loved my boss and the work I was doing (not to mention all the lovely macedonian food! — Burek breaks!) It wasn’t filling the coppers, so to speak. One day, I just get this call, a firm in the city is hiring, did I want to come in? Feeling guilty as sin, I agreed to go to the firm for an interview after work, did the interview and snared the job, only problem was my new boss wanted an immediate start (such is the cutthroat world of law methinks). I told my old boss the next day, and promptly burst into tears. I LOVE my old boss. He is so lovely! He was hugging me even as I was saying I was leaving. Anyway, I haggled three days off the new employers since I felt I owed it to my old boss, and set off on a new adventure in a bright, shiny city firm…..

My new firm is right in the middle of the city, you can literally see major landmarks outside my window - I have a window because I am one of the most highly qualified people there - such is the corporate world when a windowseat is a prime location! I have been officially dubbed “agent h”. My job involves getting instructions from other firms at the last minute about court hearings that they can’t do and doing it for them at the last minute. I do every court and every kind of matter.

It is very difficult to describe the conditions I work in accurately. I literally get instructions scribbled on a sheet of paper handed to me as I am running to a different court, and I mean running! I do about 7 court appearences per day, and they can vary from in-and-out in 5 minutes ones to ones that can last 3 hours. I’m always running om adrenaline to the point where if I stop, I feel surreal! I work crazy hours with a group of equally crazy co-workers. I do some standard solicitor casework, but 90% of the work is agency.

So, you are probably thinking — that sounds horrible! Why would little h do this? Well, one reason is that it is a way to fast track legal experience. Most baby lawyers aren’t allowed near courtrooms, and if they see inside one in their first year they are grateful. Contrast this with the fact that I have done over 300 appearances already in 3 months. I get to do amazing networking - I’m always talking to other solicitors, barristers and court staff and my name is out there - I have been head hunted a few times too! The money is decent as well, which helps and I get to be centre of attention, which i have realised appeals to me quite alot!

I don’t know how long I will do it for, or how long I will be able to hack it, agency has a time limit because it really knocks you around. Somedays you feel crap and you just have to drag yourself to work and do it. Because you have no structure in your day, planning things like lunches with people is a nightmare and you can literally still be at work at 7.30 pm. I have to go into work by 8 at the latest to prepare for the 9.00am court matters too, so I am usually bedwards at 9.30pm at night so I can get enough sleep. I don’t exercise enough, eat well or regularly enough, or clean the house enough and it’s been only about 3 weeks since I have been able to face brekky in the morning because of butterflies and nasty morning bouts of upset tummies (and I mean really upset!).

So now with the new job and decent salary I have entered the adult world of high finance. We have updated our credit card and are arranging an appointment with a financial planner, we have got health insurance and are planning a UK holiday at the end of the year, and perhapes the most important thing is that little h, the author of “ovary blues” is officially off the pill in preparation for starting a little h family!

So, what made me change my mind? I guess people would be thinking that I would be even more in the corporate world  with the new job, but turning 26 was somewhat of a milestone for me, and made me reassess things a bit. I realised that I want to be a mummy and I would like to be one sooner rather than later. I am not looking forward to doing the whole “corporate mummy” thing, but I think it will be a necessity. With a career like mine, long times away can make your skills obsolete, and you really need to keep current. Also in all honesty the idea of staying home for years with a child terrifies me. I can’t even spend a day in the house without going nuts, and I am morbidly afraid of having less money for a long period of time… so now I am potentially faced with the “career woman/mother guilt conundrum” — on the plus side I have a great partner who is willing to take paternity leave and be a house hubby!

D day, or should I say B day (b for baby) is 27 October. That’s the day that we start officially trying. I know, how very guppy to plan it like that, but it’s actually practical — take note broody people, health insurance does not provide obstetrics (baby services) until you have been a member for 12 months. Personally, I wanted to have my baby in a private hospital with all the trimmings, and that is why we have to wait, so for the time being it is no pill for h (get my system in check) and not much fun for h’s hubby (or h who hates latex) until the 27th.

Mmmm… okay attention span is waning now, and I have a girly mag waiting for me. I am going to sign off bloglings but will write again soon, as I have only touched the tip of the little h adventures iceberg. Maybe I might do some more humourous stuff next time rather than factual???

little h x

Today I got a call from my little sister…. it was one of those sisterly warning calls, you know the “mum is really angry with you, thought you might want to know/build a barricade/move to Bolivia” type of calls… and you know what? I realized for the first time that I really didn’t care.

My relationship with my mum is complex, to say the least. My childhood memories of mum involve watching her hand rear baby birds she’d rescued and playing with play doh she’d made and dyed with beetroot juice. As a little kid, mum was my world, and I was always writing her love notes and cards addressed to “the world’s best mum”. I’d collect my pocket money and spend my life savings (about $1.50) on a gold plated locket and a hanky for mother’s day and have fond memories of her singing while she did the housework, and generally being a fun and loving mum.

Looking back on it though, there were issues. Mum didn’t ever come to any school plays or parent teacher nights (I was the sort of child that teachers loved to brag about)… mum was never a cuddly mum and would often tell me “get off me, you’re making me hot” or words to that effect, which as a kid, I just took at face value. I guess I just lived with it, and tried to make mum love me as much as I could by being a nice child, a good, well behaved child, although I knew my mum was different to other mums who sat proudly in the audience as their kids were on stage.

As I have gotten older, my relationship with my mum has deteriorated to the point where it is today — I don’t want to fight with her, not because I want the relationship, but because I quite simply do not want the confrontation. If she disowned me today, I would mourn not having a mum, but it would be the hypothetical dream mum in my head, not the actuality.

I have always wanted a mum who would be there for me, would talk to me about clothes and makeup and would tell me about the world and how to deal with it. The kind of mum that I could have coffee with and who I could turn to if I was in need of emotional support, who I could rely on. I guess I got this concept of the “ideal mum” from television, books and watching other people’s mums, and over time I have moderated it to something that is actually half realistic. I don’t mind a mum who fights with me, or nags me, I don’t even mind one that tries to control my life, but I just can’t handle the kind of cold rejection that I get from my mum all the time.

I haven’t spoken to my mum in over 4 months. This was sparked by her coming to stay at my house. She wanted to stay because she had a BBQ of a friend of hers in the city and she didn’t want to fork out for accommodation and she told me so. My hubby and I had just moved, our cat had just been attacked by huskies, and I was in the job from hell. The place was a mess and there were still boxes everywhere. I was barely able to function on minimum sleep and my hubby was away on a business trip. It had been 3 days of the cat and I scrounging for food (sardines on toast were the regular staple) and clothes piling up in the laundry. I was dubious about the idea, but my hubby, ever the optimist, thought it might be a good idea. He was so wrong!

Mum and dad arrived and the first thing they did was pull the house to pieces - nothing was good enough…. it was old, it was unclean, it was unfinished. We were living rent free in my in-laws house, literally 15 minutes from the CBD in prime location and all my parents could think about is the peeling paint.  I offered them my bed, with me willing to sleep in the unclad (but perfectly habitable attic) but they wouldn’t have a bar of it. I knew things were not going to be good as I saw my mum try to navigate the spiral staircase up to the attic— the look on her face said it all “I am not amused”.

As it happened, my parents arrived on the day of my grad — no, they didn’t come down especially, as I said they came down for the BBQ. I was excited at the prospect of them attending, since it was a big deal - we got dressed, with mum cursing all the while about not having a hair dryer and went to the hall where the grad was supposed to be done. I sat through the speeches and heard a million times “the parents should be congratulated as much as the students, because they have supported them through the course, emotionally, financially and in so many other ways”. I realized sitting there, that for me, that really hadn’t been the case, my parents hadn’t been there at all. I am financially independent, and have been for years, and I have never felt able to call them up for help emotionally. That burden unfortunately falls on my poor hubby.

We had the grad, and all the parents were congratulating their children. Parents were hugging their kids, giving them flowers and gift of jewelery,  people were taking professional photos, happy parents and happy kids, what I have always wanted, so tantalizingly close, yet so distant, and then came the utterance that brought it all home for me, when mum turned to me, angry and said:

“Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this course thing. I didn’t even know. You made me look like an idiot”. 

What can you say to that? How many times had I tried to reach out and connect? How many times do you just keep cutting yourself before you can’t bleed anymore. Her I was having one of those days in your life that you always remember - about to be a solicitor, and she says that, because, of course, it should all be about her.

My parents then proceeded to scoff all the hor d’evrs and drink as much champagne as they could lay their hands on. I had begged them to go out for dinner to celebrate, but mum didn’t see the point - too expensive, even though I had said I would pay. In the car driving away, I saw the happy families walking down the street to go to the various lovely restaurants for celebrationary dinners and I realized that this was an event that I could never get back, but one that had been deflated like a balloon. I didn’t even get professional pictures…. mum said they were too dear.

We went home, I put on my PJs and we had a normal dinner…. they cooked, making food I couldn’t eat - I have IBS. I called my hubby later that night in tears and told him how it had all panned out, and he assured me that he would be home in a couple of days, just hold on…. yeah, but he can’t remake the memories.

Throughout this time my cat, who had only just been un-hospitalised was convalescing in the laundry, with broken bones and lacerations. The vet had advised me to keep him as calm and still as possible, and he was happy to just lie around and be patted. Since her arrival mum had been fussing over him constantly, trying to move him around and generally refusing to comply with my desires that he be left alone to rest. At one point, after a few drinks she grabbed his bandaged paw just to make the point that “he can’t feel it!”…. working all day, I was stressed by the idea that she would be alone with him, but what could I do? at this point I should say that I had not advised her that the cat had cost thousands to fix up (he’s a moggie, but he’s my world) after she had advised me on hearing of his injuries to “put a value on it and don’t go higher than $300 or put him down” .  The cat is my baby and I just couldn’t do it… better to tell her stay obvious, but I was financially destitute.

So, I go to work one day, mum and dad are staying in. Same old crap at work, harassment and bullying…. I work until about 7 with no overtime and go to make the hour long trip home. I arrive home at 8 to find the house locked. My parents had my key and I was desperate to pee…. I needed to get in… thinking that they were inside (the lights were on) I hollered for a good 10 minutes before trying to call them. No answer on the mobile. At that point they pull up and get out of their car with an empty cat carrier. My mind was reeling…. my only thought was:

“My god, they’ve put him down!”

Now, when I get angry I get cold. Total ice queen. The voice gets low and controlled and I get a voice that my hubby has described as the “year 9 teacher voice”. This voice can reduce people into a quivering mess. I had never used it on my parents before, but at this point I had lost all rational thought - Where was he, and what had they done with him!!!!”

Turns out that they had had to take him to the vets. Mum had let him out of the laundry and had him on the lounge, playing with him, even though I had told her not to. Somehow (the lies get thicker here) the cat managed to fall off the couch and the fall caused the raw nerves in his bandaged leg to twinge. The poor cat went ballistic, shredding the bandage with his free legs to the point that he actually ripped out his nails. There was blood everywhere, and the cat was highly distressed. Mum and dad hadn’t called me (guilt?) and not knowing the vet apart from vague directions, had driven around for half an hour before finding the place. Mind you, this was after they had cleaned up the blood, for fear that I might come inside and find out what they had done. I was furious, and they knew it. They left the next day.

So apart from a SMS at Christmas, I have not contacted them since. This is just a single example of the years of crap that I have dealt with, and to tell you the truth I have struggled through my life without them and I really can’t see any reason to reestablish a connection. My mum doesn’t think she has a problem — she thinks it is me, and I am done with being the “good girl” and chasing her. My mum has said many times that in every relationship, she thinks there is a lover - who gives the affection and love, and a lovee who recieves that love. I am tired of being the lover, as it is a selfless task…. so it remains to be seen what happens when she finally gets angry enough to have it out with me. after all, what do I have to lose from speaking my mind?

– little h.

Okay, so I have the world’s nicest boss. Today, he brought me a happy meal as a random spontaneous thing… he even got a toy for me.

Last week he brought me food cooked by his mum for lunch. He is such a sweetie. Hoorah for lovely bosses:) the world needs more of them!

I love big tall men in the stations…. being quite diminutive myself, I stand behind these giants as they push their way through crowds…. kinda like having my own battering ram really!:)

You know how sometimes something really big happens in your life and you know it is going to have massive consequences but at the time the whole thing seems pretty ordinary? I got that feeling when I graduated (both times….yeah, I’m a sucker for punishment!) you feel nervous beforehand, but when you are actually doing it you realise it is pretty mundane, but it’s like a new stage in your life, an evolution.

Today I spoke to my real dad for the first time in over 16 years. Now, I reckon alot of you would be pretty surprised by this for two reasons - firstly because if you know me in the real world, you wouldn’t probably know that the guy that I call my dad is actually not my natural father, and I think that that actually sums it up for the readers who only know virtual little h.

Let me tell you the story. The beginning is that my mum and my natural father married very young. Looking at the situation through adult eyes, they weren’t compatable and their lives were pretty grim. They started off with pretty much nothing and they scraped together what they could. Me and my sister were born pretty early on, which probably added alot of pressure as well.

My childhood memories were yelling, shouting, mum packing me and my sister up and heading to Newcastle to stay with her parents while things cooled off. It was a scary time and as a little kid I didn’t really understand what was happening. My mum, who is prone to melodrama at the best of types would always be in hysterics and as such my sister and I would freak out too.

When I was 9, my dad came to school and took me out of class and told me that they were getting a divorce. I didn’t ever expect that that would happen. My world stopped. I remember the day clearly, especially as my dad took me into the girls toilets to get some toilet paper cause I was crying… funnily, I remember thinking that boys weren’t allowed in the girls toilet and that if he was allowed in, then everything was different, and of course it was.

We moved. Mum, my sister and me. I didn’t have my toys. I missed my strawberry quik coloured room and my barbies. We went to Nanas and it smelt funny. My grandpa had just died and I was scared of his ghost getting me in the night. Mum took us on car rides to theme parks on the weekends and slept all the rest of the time. We saw dad on the weekends, but they’d still fight when he’d pick us up. Dad would take us rollerskating and buy us bon bons, but my sister and I weren’t really happy.

Gradually the fighting got worse. Mum got a restraining order. She also got a boyfriend. They’d take us swimming after school and buy us beer battered fish. Her boyfriend became associated with ice cream spiders, sand and salt. Mum got happier and smiled more. Dad got angrier and asked strange questions about where the new man slept and then would get quiet. It wasn’t fun to see him anymore. Mum would always be cross when we got home too.

I don’t know when I decided, if you can call a nine year old’s choice an actual decision, not to see my real dad. There was pressure everywhere, from mum, from nana, from the new boyfriend. Even mum’s friend, my beloved “aunty” was against it. He was bad they said, he smoked and drank too much…. he hit your mum (a lie), he’s violent, he’s no good. Then the crush came. Dad got angry in the car. Said I was just like my mum and I was suddenly petrified— I’m like her. He hates her, he hurts her, now she’s not around, he’ll hurt me. My last words to him…. ” I love you dad, but I don’t want to see you anymore” were so final. I felt grown up, I felt like I had made a decision, The best decision, and mum was happy. The boyfriend, she said, could be your new dad. A better dad, and we can have a new family. So I tried to make it work — for mum.

My real dad was frantic. He called, he tried driving past the way I walked to school, he sent presents…. the more he tried, the more scared I got until the very thought of him made me feel sick enough to vomit. All the while I was fed a string of subtle misrepresentations and negativity. I became a virtual recluse, hiding away trying to avoid meeting him. Then the gifts stopped and I thought that he had forgotten me. That hurt too. There was no right answer. I wanted to feel loved, but I didn’t want a connection. Life passed like this until I was 18, and I left my hometown to go to Uni. It was liberating to not feel scared, but even so, I got a private number and tried to keep my whereabouts a secret, while at the same time, keeping a photo of him, which I looked at from time to time trying to see a family resemblance.

6 months ago, my quiet little life was disrupted by a thin, carefully addressed letter in a flowery patterned envelope, no return address. Two paragraphs that changed my life. He was proud/ he loved me/ he thought of me. By this point, my relationship with my mum was rocky, my stepfather was distant and disinterested and I was longing for a parental figure who would just simply care about what I did in my life and appreciate me. It came at the right time and I wrote back, an awkward, clumsy letter. Thus started a slow correspondence, with months in between of ramblings between two people who really didn’t know much about each other.

So, two days ago my sister - still in touch with my natural father all these years (to the detriment of our relationship) calls me and asks if he can call me. I was panicked. Calling and writing are very different…. writing was safe, impersonal. I could write what I wanted and not answer awkward questions. But a part of me, a very small hidden part wanted to take the step and move forward, which is what I did an hour or so ago.

How does it feel, you might think? Well, I was stressed beforehand, but slept surprisingly well last night. I was a little worried at work, but not more so that I would be for a job interview. The doubts were there — will he like me? will he ask questions that I don’t want to answer? will he be angry? but I kept pushing them down and got through the day. The actual call was hard for the first 5 minutes — a long lost voice can shock a little, but after a while it seemed so normal. We talked for about an hour, and promised to again.

I can’t say I love him in the whole sense at this stage. I love him for being my father and for the years of childhood that I had, cause there were happy memories there as well as bad. He is familiar, but a stranger at the same time, and it will take a while to learn to love and trust. Years have passed and our roles, that of father and daughter, have to be defined to suit our changed situations and needs. But we have time, and I think that we will sort things out. I guess that just leaves my issues with my mother, who encouraged the original separation and that is the area that I am really dreading……

People who have been in the same situation might find literature on the area useful. There is a phenomenon called “parental alienation syndrome”, whereby a parent either consciously or subconsciously (or both) influences a child to “decide” to cease contact with the other parent. There are also support groups for adult sufferers of the syndrome.

I’ll keep you all informed.

little h.

Today my life sucks. I say today, because I like to keep an optimistic perspective on things, but to tell you all the truth, I don’t know when things are gonna pick up to the point that things were prior to the grand city move.

For a while now I have been contemplating my reasons for moving to the big smoke in the first place, after all, my job in my old town was secure, my hubby had a job he liked, the rent was low… we had a pretty sweet existence, so why did I want to move?

Well, I guess the first thing is that I had always had this glorified image of the city, and being a lawyer and living some corporate lifestyle fantasy where I was able to sashay around in suits and have lunches paid for on the firm tab. I wanted to be one of those gorgeous north shore blondes that I see around me everyday who look like they don’t have a care in the world, with their gucci bags and their pearls and their perfect nails. I built my life in the country around this goal and worked and worked to try to achieve it. I think back to my calendar of last year, which I still have, with the little picture I drew of me, the cat and my hubby and a plane, saying “big move!!!!”. I was so excited.

The reality is that the city is hard, and city living is tough. Travel is cripplingly expensive. Groceries are dear, and the temptation to buy things is so much greater because there are so many things to tempt you. In the city, you travel for two hours a day, just to get to work. You pay $70 a fortnight in transport before you have even made a cent and then get home too exhausted to do anything, but you can’t afford takeout so you just have to try to scrounge up something moderately eatable. You are frequently lonely - you can be lonely on a full bus or a train. Surrounded by people, you can feel horribly isolated - that’s if you are lucky enough to be ignored. Otherwise you can have a freak stare at you for the whole ride, or if you are even more unlucky they’ll want to talk to you. In the city, people who don’t even care about you are always interested in the minorest details of your existence. If you have a sore foot and try to put a blister on it, you will have an audience. These people only stare because there is nothing else to do — there is so much dead time in the day.

When I get up, it’s dark. I scramble to get ready to catch the bus, then a train for one stop, then another train. I see homeless people regularly, and frequently have to fend them off as I am trying to make my way to work. People in stations are stupid, and encourage me to be a bitch as I pointedly tell them to “stand to the side of the escalator so people can pass” or “please let me through”. Often they need to be told numerous times. I often want to hit them.

My hubby travels further than I do and he often comes home really late at night. We are so tired we watch TV… gone are the days when we used to chat. If we do chat we feel stressed about all the things we aren’t doing and the fact that we will get to bed late and will be exhausted the next day. My hubby works maybe 4 jobs — I have lost track, just to keep us okay with the rent and the bills, while I have only pulled in $300 this month. We are literally counting our pennies and trying to make ends meet till the end of the fortnight and I can’t even bear to check out when the bills are due cause I want to vomit.

I need a car, but I won’t be getting one anytime soon. It will be dark at 5 soon and the prospect of walking down dark streets terrifies me. We pay an exorberant amount of rent to live at my hubby’s parents house, but are financially bound to do this as we don’t have the means to move…. this is vimes boots theory in practice here.

Being poor on the north shore is screwing with my brain. I feel constantly insecure. I feel conspicious, like an outsider. sometimes I feel resented. I went into ralph polo laurent a few days ago and could have cried for the way I was treated, and I remind you all at this point that I am a practicing solicitor. Yes, the harsh reality - I’m working for bugger all, my HECS debt is through the roof and I just simply want things to be easy… just for once! I just want to buy things and not feel guilty. I want to feel validated in my choice of degree, I want to feel good about a night out, buying dinner….

I want to scream at people that I am a person who deserves better. My family is completely uninterested in my plight, not that I would take their help anyhow. I am alone and I just have to deal, but sometimes the mask slips a little.

Like today.

Alright so today I am hating on the world. I have PMT and I feel like someone is wringing out my insides very slowly. I’m bloated and spotty and my rational brain has packed up for a weeks vacation. At times like this I know why I joined that group “I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head” it’s like nice, sweet little h has been hijacked by some ranting, raving chocoholic psychopath.

Today was slow…. I mean I was literally counting my paperclips (4 yellow, 8 pink, 2 green, 1 white and a random rubber band). Property contracts are not normally what I would call riveting stuff, but at least it would be doing something!

So, cause it was a new job I tried desperately not to look at facebook, which I had succeeded in doing for the past week (though not without noticable withdrawals - I was creating make believe friends status updates in my head) I asked for work and was told “tomorrow, tomorrow”, so I asked for a half hour early mark and hit the town…

Generally I love the CBD and the buzz of commuters heading home. The whole concept is new to a little country town girl like me and I still get the thrill of being “one of the crowd”. The stores are open till late, food is sold off cheap and there’s a real buzz of energy. If you are happy to be pushed by the general crowd, as I usually am, it’s great, some of my best exploration has occurred simply by allowing myself to be corralled down some mall or underground alleyway, but today the whole thing just pissed me off. There were too many cars, too many people, the traffic lights took too long and pretty soon I was willing to clobber whoever came within like, a metre of me.

I should at this point realised that I should have simply gone home, but the masochist in me decided that I should stick around and get thoroughly more miserable…. a massively overpriced dress later and I was roaming around in that dangerous daze, credit card in hand eyeing off stuff that I really did not need (I mean, who really needs a cow print handbag priced at $500?) fortunately my hubby called me at this point and rescued me from the funk. I went home, and a pack of tim tams and a bubble bath later and I was feeling much more me!

Note: Tim Tams - Aussie biscuits… they are divine, with chocolate biscuit with soft cream in between and then covered in more chocolate. They are made with golden syrup in the mix and the result is fantastic… there are a zillion varieties, including my favs, the honeycomb crunch. They beat the pants off oreos as far as I am concerned!