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!

Okay, so lets spice things up, lets get a bit controversial. I recently had the horrible experience of being harassed by an an ex-friend via facebook, who hyjacked my friends request to spew abuse at me. She is one of a number of people that I have felt that I needed to dis-attach myself from on account of mental illness. Let me explain….

Allow me firstly to say that I believe that mental illness is a terrible, terrible thing, and to express that I do have absolute sympathy for people who are unfortunate enough to suffer from any form of psychological disorder. I also want to make it very clear that I myself have a mental illness - depression - and have struggled with this throughout my life from the age of about 10 - and I am not talking undiagnosed “down in the dumps mood stuff” I am talking the whole shebang, including psychiatrist appointments, medication and thoughts of suicide.

Throughout my life I have made a number of friendships with people who have had a variety of mental illnesses ranging from anorexia nervosa to borderline personality disorder. My previous jobs involved working in close contact with people with mental illness and a number of my family members have also had mental health problems that continue to this day.

Mental illness, from my perspective is a cruel beast that takes a person over. With depression its morbid thoughts, apathy and neediness, or at least this was my experience. Looking back at the times when I have been at my most low, I can see that I was an incredible burden on those around me, and I feel deep regret that I had to expose the people that I loved to such an awful side of myself. I would, quite literally lie in bed for days, running negative thought patterns over and over inside my head. I hated people, but I needed people, I was scared to be alone, yet I felt unworthy of human contact.  I couldn’t function to people’s expectations - be happy, be optimistic, be hopeful, I could have lied, but that required energy that I just had no desire to expend. I quite literally sat there and let the world function around me, allowing myself to suffocate in a thick blanket of self indulgent misery - and that is what I think mental illness does - it makes you completely self centred and self focused.

I  first felt the sting of mental illness in another person during the HSC. My friend attempted suicide the day of our exam. In a class of three, her failure to turn up was pretty obvious. She had made attempts before, including a particularly cruel time when she blithely informed me that she had taken 100 Panadol on our walk home from school before trying to make me swear that I would not tell anyone. This was intensely hurtful - and as a supportive friend, I felt I had no choice but to tell, and was then accused of betraying her. Anyway, as I sat in the exam, my mind was reeling. the dialogue ran somewhat along these lines:

“She isn’t here… maybe she’s late….I hope she’s late, oh god, maybe she’s done something stupid… I’m her friend, I should tell someone, but I’m in my final exam, what can I do? Am I being stupid? Maybe I’m just paranoid?”

I was of course, distracted. My exam was crap, but you can’t get any consideration for these sorts of things. I went home to “the phone call” and realised that after a month of increasingly morbid dreams of my friend and graveyards, inability to sleep and inability to eat, that I had no choice but to pull away to preserve my own sanity, which at this point was hanging by a thread. At this point, parents stepped in and I was promptly taken to the psychiatrist and put on meds… thus her illness fuelled my illness. A friend contacted me, years later to tell me that they were sickened by my actions, and to tell me that the girl would never forgive me for betraying her in her time of need — as my so called friend put it “she can’t believe you put the HSC before her”. This was particularly harsh as I gave her all I could, to the point where I put my own health on the line. I think that helping someone to the point of becoming depressed should account for something.

Go forward a few years and it is the same saga.  This time, my friend has borderline personality disorder and decides that she wants to become a sex worker in a low grade brothel. Her behaviour slowly becomes increasingly irratic to the point where she is running along Newcastle station naked for kicks and self mutilating. She has a small child. As her friend, I researched her illness, helped her as much as I could, and tried to accept her decisions. I was there for the late night phone calls, the crying, the irratic mood swings. At one point I couldn’t contact her for 3 days, and was in tears, frantically calling every number I knew, scared that her little girl was alone in the house with her dead mummy. She absorbed my life and I found myself thinking of her constantly. The old black shadow - depression - slowly started creeping back into my life as I struggled to juggle my own life and another person’s plate of problems. Finally, a phone call, she was locked in her room. There was blood, there was broken glass…. I could hear her daughter pounding at the door with her tiny fists. She was going to do it this time…. she couldn’t take it, it was too much…. I’m crying, pleading, trying to keep her talking…. finally someone came, and she was institutionalised for two weeks. How do you come down from something like that? She had help, I didn’t. I cried a lot, was quiet a lot, thought way too much and finally concluded that I couldn’t help her. I left her safe, the alarm bells had gone off big time, and I realized that I had to jump ship. Again, I faced a barrage of criticism, but how much energy can you expend on another person?

Third time is a charm they say. Two years later and it’s the same damn path. Me a wreck and someone else to hate me for my lack of “sympathy”. But it’s not a lack of sympathy, my heart bleeds for these people, it’s that I just cannot do it. I’ve been there and it’s too close to home… patterns enforce patterns and it’s like a trigger, if I’m there for them, it’s like I fill their sanity bucket directly out of my own.

When I was depressed it was a very quiet, silent thing. I didn’t rely on friends. My best friend didn’t even know. I turned to a very small group of people who I felt had an obligation to care for me, family and my hubby, with the recognition that if they were in the same position I would give them my full support and care. Within the fog of misery there was one thing that stuck firm to me… the concept that I would not subject this on others. Sure there was shame there, but mostly I wanted to protect those around me, because I didn’t think it was their responsibility to care for me. I recognised that mental illness changed me, and there were times when I wanted the support, but who was I to impose my misery on someone else? That was what the psychiatrist and the councellors were for.

I know that people will think that I am selfish, and will pass judgment on my views about this. All I can say in response to this is that we are all different and if someone can juggle a friend with mental illness and maintain a happy and sane life, then they are a truly amazing person. It is brutal to pull away from someone who is grasping at you, but at the same time, it is just as brutal to damage yourself when people love and care for you. How could I dedicate myself to another human being when my husband had to deal with the aftereffects on me? To me this is a no brainer.

I don’t know how I would have reacted, had I relied on my friends when I have had my worst bouts of depression if they had pulled away. I imagine that I would not have dealt well. It hurts to be rejected, no matter how valid the reasons. I’d like to think though, that after the episode had passed, that I could understand their reasoning and appreciate that they had to do what they had to do — I was going to write forgive them, but that implies a sense of wrongness that I don’t think is warranted.

A person I know just had a baby. A little girl, and really really cute. I’m trying to be happy, but in all honesty I’m not. I guess you are wondering why this is the case and to tell you the truth I don’t know if I can actually conceptualise it myself, but all I can say is the whole thing has just caused a huge barrage of emotions in me, most of which are pretty confronting.

You see, I’m on a pinnacle of a career. Not just a job, but a profession. I am passionate about law, and I am glad that I did the degree, but it’s scary because I am skirting the “career woman” line and I know that there is going to be the inevitable decision of job vs child. More and more I am confronted with people my age settling down and doing the kid thing, trading in their suits for dribble cloths and seemingly perfectly happy. There is that part of me that aches to have a kid, but then I don’t want to lose myself and what I have achieved… I think that the whole work/life balance is a bit of a cop out. It’s a bullshit concept. You can’t give yourself to both. There is always going to be a trade off and all you can hope is that you can juggle it enough that in 20 years your child turns out reasonably functional and still wants to talk to you.

All of my previous jobs to date have asked the inevitable baby question in interviews and it is pretty clear that if I don’t present myself as a completely career focused guppy that I won’t get the job…. so I laugh it off, saying that I have a cat and that’s enough, but you know, every time I do it I hate a part of myself for doing it.

My hubby and I have had the baby talk, hell, we were having the baby talk within the first 6 months of our relationship. We’ve been married 4 years now, and we even have a list of baby names in my hubby’s electronic organiser ( I know, where did I meet such a commitment-orientated guy?). At Christmas we got the first tentative comment about it from my hubby’s family and I have to say that I do have a small collection of toys for the potential baby.  We keep saying soon and setting times to try, but it keeps being pushed back by life and probably my issues on it. I’m a planner by nature and I can’t come at the idea of not being prepared (financially, mentally) and this is another potential reason for putting it off….

I  look at the baby pictures that are constantly posted on facebook and the like and I actually feel very separated from it - there is that part of me that feels that I am giving in to the passive female stereotype by having kids, and I do resent that whole “my kid is my world” sentiment. Of course your child is important, but tying back to the whole thing of not losing myself I don’t want to be one of those inane people who just talks, lives and breathes their babies….I want to be me, with baby, not baby with me, if you get what I mean.

So I am looking at a parenthood that involves a working mum, creches and day care, possibly nannies, and I know that I am going to cop flack for that from some circles, including my parents.  I’m also facing a future of very tough choices, career setbacks, feeling torn between two worlds, guilt and anxiety for the choices that I will make. Of course there will be the rewarding aspects, but it sucks that women can’t have it all, that I can’t just balance these two worlds in some kind of perfect synchronisity. Sometimes I think that if I just didn’t think so much and just had kids and stayed at home, then the whole thing would be tons easier and I could just accept that as my lot in life until I died of the sheer boredom and lack of stimulation.

Amazing the feelings that one little bundle of joy can stir up!

I have changed the look of the blog, because I thought it needed “pretty-fying”… can people read it? is it user friendly? let me know—– little h:)

So, recently a very cool thing happened. I got a job. For those of you who know me outside the confines of my little blog box, you would appreciate how much this means. Having no job was suckful in the extreme! I whinged, I whined, I cried, ranted and raved. I lusted after every clothing of item I saw and had an amazing meltdown in a clothing store when I realised that I couldn’t buy anything. What made the whole thing infinitely worse is that I live in an area of conspicuous consumption…. we are talking designer clothes on designer clothes. I would wait at the traffic lights next to some girl literally dripping with hyper expensive clothing and salivate (at the clothes, not the girl of course!)

My new job is a full on proper law job…. I get a business card, which sent me into a state of delirious pleasure and a nice desk, and a funky leather chair (yes, I am made happy by very small things!)

My co-workers are nice (i.e not raving psychopathic lunatics), they are Macedonian, so I am being exposed to the pleasures of Baklava, Macedonian cakes and good coffee. I travel quite a bit to get to the firm, but the train ride is actually pretty good…. at least for now!

The place I work is filled with ethic people. I like this. It’s shabby, but it has great food and you can buy your whole lunch for $5 - less if you buy it after 2pm. There are lots of delis, bakeries and coffee houses, lots of people smoking and sitting at cafes and the main street smells like freshly baked bread! I will state here that I am the only blonde I have seen so far which feels a little weird, but I can just pretend I am on holiday overseas, right?

There are some funny things though. There is a Japanese takeaway called “carrot” - I find this infinitely bemusing! I also passed a store that sold life size statues of white tigers carrying cubs, and gold plated zebra figurines (mmm classy!) People’s fashions are alos a bit interesting. I saw one woman wearing pants with leopard spots and little cutesy dogs all over them…. matched with a pink jumper it was not a good look!

I think I have fallen in love with every little ethnic grandma and grandpa…. and I have been fed enough food to last the next 10 years!

I’ll keep you all posted — I think there will be a fair few stories coming from this place!

little h

I have a gripe. After years and years I have realised a few home truths about myself and one of these is that I am always destined to have crazy hair.

I don’t mean crazy in a chic way, or even crazy in a cool way. I mean crazy in that “just crawled through a hedge look”. Now, where I used to live this was not so much of a problem. Summers were hot enough for hats and winters were cold enough for beanies, so I just got by pretending that I had a constant case of hat-head. But now, in the big city, I am surrounded by people with hair like I have never seen before. I am talking veritable waterfalls of straight, styled locks that seem to defeat forces of nature - come wind, rain, hail or shine, these people retain their perfect tresses, whilst I alone remain cursed by the hair gods to always have the kind of hair that pidgeons eye off in that “home sweet home” kind of way.

Since I have been here I have had three separate hairstyles. The first was doomed from the moment the hairdresser said to me “Would you prefer red or white wine?”. High on hairspray fumes, and happy from the alcohol I merrily pointed at a picture of Michelle Williams in the complementary “Woman’s Day” magazine and slurred out “sscmake me boodiful….”.

Snip, snip, snip. Man… she was getting excited. I stared bemused at the ever increasing pile of clippings accumulating around my chair. Then she said something about layers, and I though, hell, I like layers. I like layer cakes, I like layer fashion… a second glass of wine was placed before me, and before I knew it, I had been layered.

Flash back now 21 years ago…. I’m a little chub with big blue eyes and hair that would put Shirley Temple to shame. Flat topped with curls all around, more often than not topped with some monsterous bow. When I was but a wee child, this was a great look, but then so was fluro orange bike pants and leg warmers.

My future self looked in the mirror and realised that in my chemical addled and alcohol fuzzed state I had let my hair be cut into a hideousness I could not have imagined… a curly, wavy, kinky hideousness!

I was ugly!!!

I stared at the Magazine, tears welling. You bitch, Michelle Williams! I thought. You look so smug there in your photo with your tres chic haircut. Of course you wouldn’t get your hair cut by some not-so-distant relative of Edward Scissorhands with Parkinsons!

At this point, numbness was setting in, and it wasn’t the alcohol. I paid the exorbitant charge and left never to return again.

The second cut was an attempt to correct the first. I found an even more expensive hairdressers, one which had lots of pretty pictures of people with amazing hair. This hairdressers was a wine free zone and It gave me a good vibe. That was until I met my hairdresser. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hi, you must be Mayumi, my hairdresser”

Hairdresser: “Haroo. Me Mayumi”

Me: “I’ve brought a picture of how I want my hair”

Hairdresser: “engrish no good. You wrant layers??”

Mayumi was Japanese. I was doomed. I had learnt Japanese… wayyyy back, but in the ensuing panic I realised that the only words I remembered were all the rude, unmentionable ones. I would have to get through to her what I wanted, but damn it, I have always sucked at charades and I didn’t have that much hair left - we were talking a margin of error of centimetres at most!

Mayumi smiled at me. She picked up the scissors. I waved the cut out of the exact hair I wanted at her, begging her to comprehend. She looked at the picture, nodded and got me another magazine. It was at that moment that I realised that I could remember a single word from all those japanese lessons. It was a word that might even be useful! I looked up at Mayumi and begged her : “please give me a kawaii haircut”

Kawaii/ kar wai ee/ def: cute, but not the Australian use of the word cute. If only I had realised this!

Mayumi nodded vigorously “ah, kawaii, kawaii!!” She brightened, picked up her scissors and set to work…. 20 minutes later and I had transformed into a poodle in a Shirley temple lookalike pagant.

I am now onto the third haircut…. I spend hours each morning taming it into the appearance of normal hair. The bathroom is a jungle of electrical cords to dryers, curlers, straighteners and random wild beasts that bite you (oh wait, that’s the cat!) for 5 seconds I achieve hair perfection, but as soon as I step outside, instant hedge.

I tell you, at this rate, I’m gonna convert to Islam just for the headscarf!