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Crying in public
He looked like a frightened five-year-old that’d just been pricked with a pin. The closeness of passengers on a train journey means you can’t help but pay attention to the people around you, and the...
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The calm before the storm
“Baby, baby, did I ever tell you that I worked out where I went wrong” - The Calm Before The Storm, Pet Shop Boys I’m in Bowrall, New South Wales, for a work conference. It’s a country retreat,...
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Christmas is early this year
I didn’t really want to get out of bed on Wednesday after my Mum called at 6am to say Aunty Colleen had died. The bed was comfortable, my body was exhausted, and I had a beautiful view out of the...
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The plot thickens
Last week my father told me he’d reserved a plot at the cemetery for him and Mum. It made me uncomfortable, particularly when he went into detail about how it was such a nice spot. It will be next to...
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Stop the bus
“What time is bus?” He’d come seemingly out of nowhere, but I was too blinded by the heat and my own thoughts to pay attention to anything outside my peripheral vision. An older Italian man, probably...
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The good boss
Having been in employment situations before where my mental illness has been used against me, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about how I might be treated in a new job in a strange land....
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Help me make it through the night
Up at six. Back home at six. No energy. Fighting sleep all afternoon, despite sleeping all through the night. Hands shaking from too much coffee. Depressed about being lethargically depressed, I go...
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Letting go of the man you love
Stephen Rainbow had been with his partner Greg for over a decade when he lost him to cancer. "“A counsellor once said to me, ‘are you ready to let Greg go?’” he remembers. “I said absolutely not. I...
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Arrival
Airports are the one place where it is completely acceptable to show unabashed emotion without giving a shit who is around you. Airports and natural disasters. Quite a few similarities there, really,...
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What I did in the holidays
Thoughts of the future, and plans that stretch more than a month ahead frighten me. But daily happiness helps me sleep at night and wake in the morning with the thought that life is still worth living....
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This way up
Two bright orange stickers are emblazoned into the DNA of the corrugated cardboard, wrinkled from their passage back and forth to the laundry. One says “this way up”. Continue reading »
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Oceans away
I can still remember the night my grandfather, Snow, told us about being a driver during World War II in the battle of El Alamein. My cousin Mark, the closest thing I had to an older brother growing...
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Hang on, I’m not dead yet
Your heart stops beating, your brain stops working, it’s all over. That’s been our conventional understanding of death up until now, but new research has indicated that death is less of a plug being...
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The benzo diaries
It was 10am yesterday when my system panicked. I’d just had a very ordinary conversation with a work colleague, and as she left the office I was struck with an overwhelming urge to get out. Continue...
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Nothing will ever be the same
There are many situations in life where people are heard to use the phrase, “nothing will ever be the same”. Of course it won’t. The mistake we often make next is believing this is a bad thing....
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Mourning the loss of the son she never had
When Julie’s son came out to her at 15, she went into a state of grief. She was, she realised, mourning the loss of the son she never had. I can remember a distinct sense of tragedy and loss at home...
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