I just finished reading a book by Jill Stark called Happy Never After. It was about her struggles with anxiety and depression. Some of this book was difficult for me to read. Her experience of anxiety was a lot like mine. Even more her experience with bullies and feeling friendless in high school resonated.

When I was in high school I had very few friends. I don’t know why, you’d need to ask those girls who said they didn’t want to be my friend. I cannot to this day explain to you why no one wanted to hang out with me.

Social media is on these occasions a blessing and a curse. I’m friends with a few people I went to high school with but I’m picky. I didn’t have a lot in common with those people then and perhaps less so now. Some of those who weren’t kind to me have messaged me to say they wonder what happened to me. I haven’t responded.

What happened to me is that I grew up. I went to uni and found people who had broader minds than them with their middle class snobbery. I found my people amongst book nerds and librarians. I found people who have accepted me with all my weirdness, just as I am.

But it hurt. Like only rejection can. It felt fundamental that somehow I’d been made wrong. And it made me scared too. Scared that what I was into was weird and stupid. That I was weird and stupid.

At 15 I wanted to kill myself because it got too much. No one liked me, I was a terrible person. These days that would trigger alarms and get you some help. This was the 90s and no one believed me. When I tried to talk about it, I just felt like I was disappointing people. so I pushed it aside and got on with things.

I went back to my high school for the first time a few weeks ago. Some friends and I snuck in. It looked exactly the same, with its white tower and 19th century English stately home vibe.

For a girl with a romantic heart such a school was the perfect place – it had a croquet lawn and history. Mostly, I just remember it being cold not just in the winter but cold and unkind. Ironic for a Christian School, where one should have expected generosity and acceptance.

The school format didn’t help with its English grammar school pretensions, ranked classes and prefects. Nothing is more irritating than being told what to do by a 17 year old with a little bit of power and a superior attitude.

Of course it wasn’t all bad. In the last two years things were mostly better or at least bearable. I made friends through the school play, a shared love of literature and there were some people who were genuinely kind.

But there was a cost – being scared of my own shadow, feeling like I didn’t deserve to occupy a place in the world and the need to be validated. When the opportunity arose, I had a completely inappropriate relationship with a man 15 years older than me. I was an adult but he was not kind and I was too naive to see he wasn’t perfect. It ended as one would expect.

About five years ago I got an invite to my 20 year high school reunion. You won’t be surprised to find out I didn’t go. I told the person who asked me, that I’d rather stick needles in my eye. Given the generally awful experience sitting around reminiscing about “the good times”, and feeling like I had to justify my life didn’t seem like a healthy choice.

I’ve now reached the end of this post, and I wonder why I’ve written this. It’s water under a very distant bridge. I’m not that person anymore, as I’m sure the people I went to high school have changed too. But experiences shape you for good and bad.

The hole they created – still hurts sometimes. It’s a faint feeling that I’m still not in on the joke that everyone else gets. I sometimes feel physically awkward – like my body is weird and wrong. I have tried to be invisible and take up as small a space in the world as possible.

While this is a painful story to write, it’s also been joyous. I’m not unhappy. Your life is your life; you do the best you can, play the hand you have been given. I’ve been privileged and blessed. And I hope that this experience has made me more compassionate, with a heart for outsiders.

I’m still working on the forgiveness thing. I know Jesus was rejected and still loved but I’m not at that level of grace. Perhaps it’s also forgiveness for myself for not being whatever it is they needed. I was quiet, and did the right thing, to afraid of upsetting people. Rightly or wrongly, I was heavily influenced by my family. I was in no ways cool, I liked whimsy and romance and by their reckoning had poor taste in clothing or music. I was not brave enough to own that. I am now.

Jesus shines a light in dark places, he gathers up those who have been hurt. So perhaps in telling this story, in reckoning with the sadness  and sharing it, it stops being painful and the healing starts.

Post script… If you are experiencing difficulties or this post has triggered things for you please consider talking to your doctor or call these numbers

Lifeline: 13 11 14

Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some friends and I decided to sit down and think about what we wanted to do with our lives. We are going through some changes at work, and it seems to be a good time to do a check in. I’m not much of a planner so rather than a firm idea I was hoping to uncover some sense of not just wondering about aimlessly.

I hate the question where do you want to be in five years. Because the answer to that is always on the beach, with an endless supply of books and cocktails.

Here are the questions we talked about… I hope you find them useful if you too are asking yourself the question – what do I want to do with my life?

-How does this job fit into my life?
-What tasks inspire me/what tasks drain me?
-Am I progressing how I would imagine?
-What am I really passionate about and why?
-What does my dream job look like?
-Is my career allowing me to do what’s important?

The last question I think is the best and most useful one. Because in answering it, you need to think about where you career fits into your life.

Last week for reasons I can’t explain I got all nostalgic and looked up Bill Collins Wikipedia page. It was probably Saturday night and I was probably moaning about how they don’t show good movies on TV anymore.

Generally my tv watching goes like this – looks rubbish, really rubbish, super violent, boring, super scary, what even is that. Oh Carlton Heston great let’s watch that for a while.

Of course I know a lot of the classic Hollywood movies because as a kid I grew watching Bill Collins Golden Years of Hollywood on a Saturday night.

Saturday nights were pretty fun at our house. We made an 80s Aussie version of Pizza with a meat sauce base. It was delicious. We’d watch Hey Hey it’s Saturday and we were allowed to stay up a bit and watch a movie. Mum and Dad always said to get into our pyjamas and clean our teeth first – so they could carry us to bed if we fell asleep.

I think this is why we sometimes groaned at his long introductions because it meant we’d see less of the movie before falling asleep. But eventually the movie would start and we’d be transported to Casablanca or Paris after the war or the America during the Civil War.

This was how I came to love musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein movies were great. State Fair was a favourite. I could never stay awake for all of the Sound of Music. Watching Gene Kelly tap dance, inspired me at age of 16 to take it up for myself. After watching Roman Holiday I knew I was going to visit the mouth of truth if I ever made it to Rome.

Hitchcock Season was the best – I’ve never forgotten watching Rear Window for the first time. For obvious reasons, I was restricted to the not terrifying for little people movies, so no the Birds or Psycho, which I still have never seen.

One of the best things about Saturday night movies was having an intermission in the middle, where you could make a cup of milo and go to the toilet. Often this was also the cue for me to go to bed as the littlest. Until I was a teenager I’d seen half of some of the best films ever made from Hollywood’s golden age.

Nostalgia isn’t always a good thing, it gives you rose coloured glasses about what the world was like. What I remember mostly though was these movies were fun, violence happened but was not gory, men wore hats and were effortlessly cool, and Audrey Hepburn was the most gorgeous woman on the planet. Oh and there was usually a happy ending.

I’ve been a bit sick so there’s been a lot of lying and eating on my couch. I’ve come up with some rules about non-mess making couch eating.

Here are my rules for eating on couches…

1. Things in bowls – cereal, noodles, dessert, pasta but not soup. I like soup but getting it from the bowl on a spoon to my mouth without spilling any requires way to much hand eye coordination. Note also big bowls are better than small ones.

2. Things on plates – anything that does not require a knife or fork. Also not eggs because those things are messy.

The best thing to eat on a couch though is anything out of the care package your parents bring you after you decide that you have had enough of trying to be an adult and tell them you’re sick. And then the call and say – what do you need?

Last night I got home to find that someone had ripped some of the grasses I’d recently planted out of my rockery. Not the nice expensive ones mind, the crappy tube stock ones that are worth less that $20. But they didn’t steal them, they just left them behind – an act of stupidity and vandalism.

My first reaction was shock, I mean who does that. I’m not sure I was angry;  annoyed and concerned mostly. Concerned that this will be a pattern now, annoyed that I need to think of upping security to stop morons who have nothing better to do.

I don’t think I want security cameras. I’ve installed an alarm but security cameras seem like a step too far. Like developing a siege mentality where you think the world is out to get you. I’m considering a fence but not sure if this is something I want to do right now.

Even better than any of these measures is asking my bible study group to pray for God’s protection over my house and garden. For non-believers this probably seems a bit weird but is quite a normal thing for Christians to ask for prayers for all sorts of things that are going on in their lives.

I’ve replanted the grasses but God knows whether they’ll be any good now. And it might take me a while to be at ease about the whole thing too. It’s not a pleasant feeling to know someone has been wandering on your property and vandalising it. But mum said grasses are hardy… So I guess I can be too.

 

 

 

I’ve been a bit busy over the long weekend to write anything proper for #BlogJune. Between sorting out my garden, cleaning the house and spending large portions of yesterday following the #classic100 on twitter. It’s been full on… Mozart was robbed, robbed, I say.

Social media is both a blessing and curse. It lets you enjoy the fun of the classic 100 countdown but also is a massive waste of time. I’ve been reading this book called Happy Never After and it talks about the dopamine hit from social media; how it’s actually designed to make you care about how many likes, follows, shares, retweets etc.

I’ve noticed this myself, particularly on twitter. When I post something that gets liked I feel the need to refresh the app to see how it’s going. It’s unhealthy but no doubt taps into our need to be recognised, or liked or some such.

Of course it’s not all bad…  I talk to my friends on messenger apps and today I used Youtube to find out how to remove a halogen globe from my ceiling fan. But the mindless scrolling isn’t a great and when I feel the need to reach my iPad regularly even when doing other things – it’s not good.

I’ve installed software on my computer that allows me to block social media for a certain period of time. It’s called Cold Turkey, it’s really effective and a total pain in the arse. Once you have a block in place you can’t turn it off and you can’t delete the software. I accidentally put a block on for ten days once. Let’s just say I worked out how to delete the software but am now careful to not stuff it up again.

It’s a really effective tool for focussing on what you need to do. And by using it I’ve realised just how frequently I go to  Facebook or Twitter in the course of doing life stuff. When I’m writing something and stuck for a thought – I’ll go check twitter or Facebook, then come back start again. I’m almost doing it without thinking but with this blocker, I can’t access the site.  So now I’m trying to stay with what I’m doing but stop and gather my thoughts.

I need to work on getting the balance right. It’s a great tool to keep in touch with friends and family. One of the greatest things about social media is the world it opens up for you. I get most of my news now through social media and I couldn’t live without this. So I need it… But I don’t need to spend hours every day on it. And I certainly don’t need to wake up at 3am and think I’ll just check twitter as this will help me get back to sleep (an actual thing I did yesterday)