Vulnerability.

It’s important to note, the journey and stages of grief are not linear. Neither is this. Neither am I. True turbulent chaos is not an aspiration…just reality.

During a conversation this evening I was reminded that next week is Mental Health Awareness Week. I cracked a joke and suggested that given I’ve reached peak mental illness, I could do a Q&A at work. So self-effacing dark humour continues to be my armour. Somethings do never change.

But it immediately made me think of you. I was 19 when we met. Is that right? I thought I’d write about you and share it with someone I love, as an expression of complete vulnerability. So now I’m lying in bed writing this – a love letter to you. A lament.

And fuck, do you know what? I just looked at the date. (Un)happy anniversary, girl with the radio in her head, with the leopard print eyes. I knew there had to be a reason I’d spent the day vibrating, breathless and feeling like I’d been kicked in the solar plexus beyond the push and pull of waves I’ve been drowning in. I’m still learning to swim, all flailing limbs and desperate gasping. They haven’t sunk this ship yet, I’m sure you’ve been pleased to observe. My anchor is twisted and heavy with barnacles, seaweed and other detritus that seems hellbent of tipping the keel until it hits the ocean floor…but fuck it. I learned to be my own skipper. It’s been rough because if I’m honest, I’m no captain. But the seas have been navigated – hardly elegantly, but we’re yet to capsize. Go, me – right?

So many years have passed now, it’s hard to remember things accurately. I worry sometimes that the recesses of my brain will eventually forget how to conjure your face from the deep because of my failing, ageing memory…but it hasn’t happened yet.

I was 21 when you died. That year in December, I turned 22. Ethan turned 1 that October, too young to even remember how alabaster your skin was, how you smelt after the rainfall, how your Ween tattoo looked like it was the imprint of a leftover club entry stamp on the inside of your wrist.

In September I sat in a Kodak kiosk inside St Luke’s mall and cried as I asked the store clerk for help changing the aspect ratio on a self-service print machine from 6×4 to a larger format. That poor store clerk, he looked so bewildered when he saw my lip quiver and my chest heave. I had to explain I’msosorrymybestfrienddiedandthesepicturesareofher…just like that. Without punctuation, no care, an exaltation. I really wanted your parents to have the pictures of you playing guitar on the deck of the Basque St flat (surely that place was condemned after you moved back in with mum and dad?), and of you and Garrett sitting on the stairs of his apartment building on Queen St. Right before I’d taken that picture, you’d come barrelling down the hill wearing the worst fitting, synthetic wig that was teased to all hell by your Howe St flatmate…the fledgling Drag Queen? I wonder what happened to them. All of them…actually, that’s a lie. I don’t think about any of them at all. Just, you. And Robyn, Clive, Alice…no, not Alice now. Elliot? I’m not sure, their name is fluid. I’m rolling with it but I can’t check my Instagram account because I deactivated it. Selfishly I want to keep some things for myself…that and I can’t bear to see how wonderful life is. I’ve wrapped myself in the safety of this old building, over a century indeed and a stones throw from the house you took your last breath in. I can see it I swear if I stand on my toes and stretch out my neck from my bedroom balcony. But I don’t look.

Sixteen fucking years I’ve counted out and time doesn’t heal a fucking thing. All it means is distance from a time where I sustained a wound that ripped a gash into my soul that never healed. Or it did, but into gnarled tissue, silvered and delicate like the Caesarian scar slashed across my entire torso, easily torn with the slightest wrong movement.

2006 was the year I stood beside you, held your hand and said goodbye to Jono. We drank cups of tea from those weird brown coffee cups they have in every teachers lounge and balled our hands into fists as Eddie wailed profusely and the funeral home played Yanni as the casket was wheeled into place in the chapel. 2006 was the year my baby collected a single year and I haphazardly raised him with the help of an army of lesbians and tried to make a family with a man who hated me and treated me with disdain in equal measures.

2006 was the year I met my now husband. We started a band, he helped me flee a toxic living situation and I learned to drive stick.

2006 was the year I begged my best friends parents for forgiveness as I confessed our collected sins, sat with her mum as she read and digested the coroners reports, the toxicology report on my lunch break.

2006 was the year my best friend died, my colleague died, HR sent a mass email to let everyone know and Wayne and AnnMarie watched as I turned into a vision, a horror, a waking fucking nightmare.

2006 was the year I forgot you fucking died and called your mobile to ask if you wanted to go to the fucking mall on a Thursday night. Your mum saw my call and asked if I called to hear your voicemail. I lied and said yes. I hung up after 4 rings when my lizard brain kicked in and said, “She died, remember you idiot?”.

I lied because I couldn’t bear to tell the truth. I forgot? What the fuck is wrong with me?!

She had the number disconnected after that call.

The night after you died, Brodie gently sang songs to me and played the guitar. Tyler, Ariana and Paulene clawed desperately at my pieces as they fell apart and tried to put them back together in places they would never ever fit again.

2006 was the year my best friend died.

Do you hear me? I miss you.

Protected: The concept of fair.

Funeral Music

Link to Spotify Playlist.

Dreaming with a Broken Heart – John Mayer (Continuum)

Blood Red River – Beth Orton (Central Reservation)

Lovesong – The Cure (Disintegration)

To Build A Home – The Cinematic Orchestra (Ma Fleur)

Love, You Should’ve Come Over – Jeff Buckley (Grace)

Godspeed – Frank Ocean (Blonde)

I Know It’s Over – The Smiths (The Queen is Dead)

Tear Drop – Massive Attack (Mezzanine)

Songbird – Fleetwood Mac (Rumours)

Fields of Gold – Eva Cassidy (Songbird)

Gone Too Soon – Michael Jackson (Dangerous)

Mania. I imagine it presents itself differently in everyone.

For me it’s the complete disorganisation of thought that I so desperately hate. I revert to completing the tasks that I know how to do as an expert without thinking, so that I don’t have to try to create the order I crave and need because I feel woefully unable to do so. On days like this I’m completely out of control and I cannot stand it.

Today is manic. I can’t sit still. My fingers ache. My entire body feels like it’s on fire and I keep agonising about all the things I need to do that just cannot find motivation to do. Everything is so heavy.

I managed to drag myself to work and back, without really thinking about it at all. I got out of bed, showered and got dressed. Auto-pilot.

I painted my face with horrendously expensive makeup to cover up the sins of a life well travelled, to hide the reality of my tired and ageing jowls. I brushed the tangles out of my hair, laced my shoes and hefted my backpack on, racing down the stairs into the brisk morning air.

I watched as my body carried itself to the train and departed the station like I’ve done every working day for the last six months. Today I’m a passenger on this journey. I have no control of what is happening here.

I walked from the platform to the lunch bar I frequent every morning, greeted the barista warmly as I do every day and sat amongst the freight trucks willing the sun to warm the chill that I haven’t been able to shift for what has seemed months on end.

People made jokes. I laughed. I told some of my own. I put headphones on and drowned out the sound of other people going about the same day as I, with Jeff Buckley’s ‘Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin‘ on repeat to quell the sensation of lightning splintering from every nerve ending. Again and again.

On days like this, I feel like I’m drowning. But today I carried myself home.

Home enveloped me in it’s arms and let me cry about everything and nothing. About the words that I can’t express, the truths that I can’t share, the horrors that will never escape my lips but remained trapped like prisoners – not for safe keeping, but for safety.

Home walked with me down the filthy city streets and got ice cream.

Home stroked and wiped the tears from my face and told me that the world wasn’t all bad.

I’m glad I made it home today.

As an empathetic person, I allow myself to develop strong emotional connections with people. I make no excuses or apologies for it. If anything, it’s allowed me to experience closeness with a spectrum of different men and women and afforded me deep relationships with many.

There are seldom situations where I won’t just say what I’m thinking – this often leads to me saying things that are out of context, a bit weird, misinterpreted or illogical.

It’s lead to me jeopardising employment, friendships – you name it, I’ve said something stupid that was ultimately limiting in some way. But it’s how I wish people would interact with me. I often feel like when I’m down in the weeds with people talking about big and meaningful things, we’re on the precipice of great discoveries about one another, but we’ll remain teetering there because the truth – well the truth is so much more complicated.

I spew out words that have little thought or construction applied, meaning often they don’t make a lot of sense as they’re charged little ions that sting on impact. So, I’ve been working on that.

I’ve been working on channelling my thoughts, speaking less about things that I don’t really comprehend – admittedly there’s so much in the world that I don’t – I’m not sure whether that has improved the way I interact with people, or stilted my ability to be fundamentally honest and myself. I’m not even sure if there has been a discernable difference noticed by the people that grace my life day-to-day.

Is it really a flaw to be empathetic? The dictionary defines empathy as the ‘ability to understand and share the feelings of another’ – on face value, I would have assumed that this is a good thing. But the adverse side effect of being intensely and stupidly sensitive is the on-going and ever-present internal dialogue that goes on and on in quiet spaces. Just strings of interwoven, not-really-connected streams of consciousness that echo through my bones, constantly leaving me shivering against their reverberation.

Like when recently, someone I met asked me if I did stand up.

‘Comedy?’ I asked curiously, as he nodded excitedly – I’ve definitely never done stand up, but have prided myself in finding humour in every tragedy. I responded that I thought the reasons that I used self-deprecating comedy was as a defense mechanism. If I make fun of myself for my very, glaringly obvious flaws – I’ll beat you to the punchline. It always hurts way less when you make fun of yourself about things you know are your shortcomings, than if someone else does it for you.

Being a ‘funny’ girl definitely stems from my experience as a strange, extroverted tomboy, growing up surrounded by beautiful, statuesque girls. My sister was a child model and one of my closest friends a jazz dancer, ethereal and athletic. When I was little, my mum enrolled my older sister and I in modelling classes as she was too shy to attend these classes alone, a precocious 11 year old.

If you’ve ever felt like a square peg in a round hole, you’ll have some semblance of an idea of how I felt, knobbly knees and chubby thighs rolling up to strut down a catwalk with other little girls, whose hearts were set on being the face on the next ‘Dolly’ magazine. I use this memory often to remind myself that I am a dork and will continue to be a dork because all I remember thinking about was how cool it was that I’d inherited my grandfather’s record player, and how excited I was to go home and crate-dig in amongst my mum’s own collection. Oh, and rollerblading.

I really don’t know whether there is a point to me even telling anyone about this, but I constantly feel this need to explain myself and justify my existence. It’s as if I’m arguing all the fucking time with no one – just listen – I deserve to be here, my presence means something. I really want to contribute. It’s all I want.

Do you ever wonder if people will show up for your funeral? Several years ago, I got a message request from an acquaintance of an old boyfriend on Facebook to tell me she was so happy I was still alive. Cool – thanks, I guess?

I was super confused, but came to learn that there were a tonne of people who thought I’d died in a horrific car accident that happened in their neighbourhood. The associated media only divulged that the passenger in the car, whose name was Charli, died on impact. Go figure.

But here’s the thing – I didn’t die. But not a single one of the scores of people who thought I was dead reached out to my family to send their condolences. They mourned me, in their own ways I suppose, but never actually made any efforts to attend the funeral I didn’t have. You cannot make this stuff up.

In summary;

If I say something to you that makes no sense, ask me to elaborate;
Don’t dance around subjects – if you want to tell me I’m an asshole, go right ahead. Will it impact me? 100%, I’ll probably recall the conversation for years and it will haunt me forever. Will I be able to cope with it better than your inauthenticity? Absolutely.
If I die prematurely and you and I shared anything – please come to my funeral.

This is a love letter to my closest friends.

It won’t seem like it at first, but stay the course.

Life is morbid; it’s a series of traumas – some small, short and sharp; some so poignant and altering that they cut you off at the knees, immediately cauterising the wounds so you continue breathing even though you wish you hadn’t. We have no choice but to collect these experiences like tiny treasures we don’t want, hoisted on our backs like our most valuable possessions. We keep these in chests, with many locks interwoven in heavy chains, down deep.

Some of us are lucky enough to bear witness to these tiny treasures and are able to continue to tell our stories.

I share anecdotes often, based on my collected treasures. They’ve been branded into my psyche and occassionally the resulting burns scab up and itch. It’s when they itch so terribly that the load becomes unbearable, I speak out the trauma so it leaves temporarily, escaping from my lips and into the atmosphere, dissipating like smoke in the air.

The people closest to me know that my most successful coping strategies are…well, them. I talk about my treasure. About the things that brandish blades into my oesophagus, the things the bury themselves into my temples and furrow deep behind my eyes.

About the feelings of abandonment. About the hurt that I’ve caused through reckless words, careless actions and bouts of mania – and the guilt. There’s always guilt, whether reasonably applied or not; since I was small, I’ve carried the sins of those that came before me even though I know I have never had any ownership – eventually those that came before will die and I continue to live in the hope that the guilt will be buried with them.

About the day more than a decade ago, I found out my closest friend had died.

About the faltering relationships I once held so close as a child, that have been irreparably damaged.

This is salvation. This is reprieve.

And in that there is lightness. I discovered through many years of being medicated and being in therapy that the most effective way to deal with the itch was to talk.

And I talk a lot. I make this assertion knowing that every single person that walks a similar journey has different coping mechanisms.

They’ve shifted the burden from the hip I carry mine on, to their shoulders to even out the weight of it all – this is perfectly acceptable, I don’t pass judgement on those whose coping strategies differ from mine.

I’m grateful for the safety that enraptures me when I’m hand-in-hand with my friends as they delve mindlessly down the path of the labyrinth that is me, to find the chest where the treasures are kept – because I asked them to accompany me on an odyssey.

I am grateful for those that ventured down, down, down with me where my treasures reside, braving the ghouls that hide in the darkest parts of me looking for excuses to start wars, to pick the locks and let the treasure tumble unceremoniously to the floor.

I’m grateful that once the chains are untangled and the locks are discarded and set aside, and the lid groans angrily as its lifted and the treasures are discovered, exposed and shared – that they stay.

That they stay and help me heave the treasures back into the chest, wiping beads of sweat from their brows and smile while I return the chains and locks to their rightful places.

That they stay and drag me screaming back from oblivion to the fire to warm my cold, dead hands.

That they stay and crawl with me towards the tendrils of eternal sunshine.

I love you.

I am forever grateful that you will always help me to find the light.

My brain is full today. My heart aches today. I’m carrying the weight and burden of the hurt currently being experienced by so many people that I love truly and I need to place it somewhere.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been inspired to write anything; I mean, I don’t even know if inspired is the right term, because it’s not a sparkling desire to share anything with anyone in particular.

Right now it’s just a fervent need to get out the things that are floating around in my head late on a Saturday afternoon, to put them in some logical order and give them meaning.

At present, they’re just independent words in multi-coloured san serif fonts bouncing around the chasm that is me.

Someone I’ve known for a long time told me last night that by his estimation, I was 99% neutral good, and the remaining 1% of my character that is chaotic evil was nullified by this. This in itself to me is kinda strange conceptually, but it’s caused me to do some pretty intense thinking since.

But. It’s the 1% that keeps me up at night. It’s the 1% that stops me from believing I’m a good person. It’s the 1% that has me staring into space, agonising about everything.

I realise in writing that, I’m exposing myself as an incredibly and highly-emotional person. I used to think that this was a character flaw, but I realise now that this is what makes me human and is a distinctive part of my ego or self. It’s why I initiate conversation with people when I feel their energy shift. I recognise darkness in others as its so familiar and know that in these times, all we need is the suggestion of a shaft of light to echo through the black. These conversations are usually cumbersome words, spilling over each other and falling into the atmosphere, spoken in stilted phrasing and with nervous hesitation.

So you know – I see you’re broken. We recognise each other. I understand that you are pulling back the curtain, to let me understand how your machinations work. I understand you are vulnerable. I see you. I hear you.

Willingly, I carry your grief like ghosts. I haul them around with me, like they’re chained at my wrists and at my ankles. They follow me from room to room, house to house, haunting every single space I occupy.

These ghosts are the 1%.

They’re hurt, shame, disgust, apathy, remorse.

They’re agony, grief, guilt and resentment.

They’re hate, self-loathing, disregard and torture.

They follow me like shadows settling at dusk.

I feel like most people have a story to share about having their heart broken, shattered into a million pieces so much so that it’s a physical sensation, one that feels like all the nerve endings in your fingertips are exposed. It’s raw and visceral, like a persistent cat scratch, or the dull thud of a clenched fist taking shape, pummelling your internal organs like minced meat.

In my lifetime, I’ve felt this only twice. Bitterness at being left behind? That’s not heartbreak, not at least in the way I think about it . Your muscles twitching and flexing in anger at the thought of someone you thought was faithful to you – who wasn’t? No, that’s not it either.

The first time I had my heart crushed? I was 14 years old. Being a teenager was gut wrenching for me, a distant memory I visit infrequently because the very thought of the precocious, inspired little girl I was who imagined the entire world was within her grasp, but knew she didn’t deserve it? Even thinking back on it now, the lack of self worth and constant comparisons to other more beautiful creatures that graced the backdrop of my life is palpable. I looked to others to tell me that I was worth something, anything, and now when I think about that time in my life I’m angry at myself for ever being that…pathetic.

In any case, when I was 13 and in high school, I encountered a boy that would change my life and the way I would move through this world forever. I remember seeing him across a crowded block, shuffling from side to side waiting impatiently outside his English class as the schools’ bell rang out through the courtyard, signalling the end of lunch.

I’d recently enrolled at the school, after being frozen out of my previous college – but that’s an entirely different story. Relevant to the person I am today, but one less filled with heartbreak and with humour and irony.

As I was making my way to my science class with a bevy of new girlfriends, I looked up and noticed him immediately. He had a shock of the most amazing natural hair, that billowed out from his furrowed brow highlighted with teasings of auburn and blonde. I remember with curiosity asking my classmate who he was, and she told me his name with the distain in her voice loud and clear. I presumed this was because he was some kind of teenage lothario who really should be avoided for the sake of sanity.

But I couldn’t look away – and for further clarification, I was a 13 year old girl surging with hormones and ideals about love and romance.

As it goes in high school, the rumour mill began to fly thick and fast. My memory is hazy of that time, but I believe I wrote a note to him that said something along the line of wanting to get to know him better. I bravely handed the note to a trusted friend, who passed it along during a period where they shared a class together.

And then? I waited. And waited.

The embarrassment of knowing I had let this boy into my innermost thoughts was excruciating, and I took every opportunity to avoid him in the corridors, dashing into the bathroom when I saw his friends pass by. I would forever be known by them as the sad new girl who had a crush on their friend and the thought of facing any one them was excruciating.

After school everyday, I would make my way to the local depot to alight a bus home. The depot was the local hotspot for kids after school who wanted to socialise into dusk, meaning it was becoming more difficult to avoid the boy and his friends as more time passed. My friends told me I was overreacting and dragged me along with them to the depot, despite my protests that I could alight at a different stop by walking a little further from the school.

My anxiety reached new peaks one day as I saw him and his ever present best friend milling about in the local takeaway bar, waiting on an afternoon tea of deep fried treats. It was all I could do not to run screaming from where I stood, so instead? I checked the bus schedule and hid around the corner until the time came for me to dash into the safety of my carriage to freedom.

One of my friends came to find me and coax me back to the area outside the library overlooking the depot, where the rest of the girls sat in a huddled semi circle discussing the intricacies of high school life, boys they liked and just general musings. I told him I couldn’t bear it, and he laughed and told me I was being dramatic.

And then it happened.

Across the street from where I’d secreted myself away, the boy and his friend had been hiding behind a panel van. Unfortunately, they hadn’t seen the driver return and the van unceremoniously drove away from the spot where it had been parked, leaving the two boys huddling and exposed.

I thought I would die. They’d been spying on us! I convinced myself that I’d become this huge joke between him and his friends, and they’d been watching and laughing at me, knobbled knees jutting out from my awkward tartan school uniform. The weirdo who runs to the bus as it arrives.

“Oh my god, they’re coming over!”, my friend exclaimed. I wanted the ground to cave in and swallow me up whole. Even thinking about this whole scenario now is cringe inducing, like recalling a scene from a made-for-television movie. I froze.

“Hi”…I heard an uneven, stammering voice.

“So, I got your note.”

Again, I willed the earth to hear me and collapse beneath me. I looked up from my shoes – I had been staring at intently for some time – and came face to face with the object of my affections.

“Oh, yeah”. I bit the inside of my lip, which is something even more than 20 years later I still do when I’m nervous.

There was an exchange between our friends, both jovially encouraging us both to further discuss the situation in which we’d found ourselves in.

“So, I ah – I was wondering if you’d maybe, like, umm…” he managed to spit out. I could feel my face my face flushing a bright rouge, the heat working it’s way down my body like an all enveloping rash.

“Aren’t you going to give her your number?!,” my friend exclaimed, frustrated at the length of time we’d been standing in front of each other, both awkwardly pulling at our own clothes as some sort of refuge.

“Oh yeah, give her your number…”, his friend muttered, paper and pen at the ready.

He scribbled on the back of a textbook page, folded it over carefully and handed it to me dutifully.

“You can call me if you want to?”, he said as a half-statement, half-question. I remember saying thank you and watching them through lowered eyes walk away from the spot, where I still stood frozen, cemented to the sidewalk.

I remember the elation I felt at the fact that there was, or potentially would be some reciprocated feelings to my overbearing (and obsessive) teenage lust. He might not necessarily know me enough to like anything about me, but he knew enough that he was intrigued by me and wanted to know more. That feeling, even now as an adult and encountering other people who are interested to know me, even platonically, is incomparable.

And the rest? Well, it’s long buried. I did call him and we shared hours and hours on the phone, but for months at school we would observe each other across courtyards in quiet reverence. Talking on the telephone was easy, but fronting up to each other in person remained difficult for sometime. He eventually asked me to be his girlfriend and I accepted, ecstatically. He was everything I knew I wanted then.

But time is cruel, and so is high school. We experienced many firsts together; I can’t speak for him and say that I was his first love, but he was definitely mine. We wrote each other long love letters, that were never about anything in particular. I spent evenings in his home with his family long past my curfew, to the chagrin of my mother – I just so desperately wanted to occupy the same space as he.

But so did many other women, which would eventually be our downfall. My relationship with this boy played out like an incredibly far fetched episode of a tele-novella, which lead to some of the most painful, heartbreak I will ever know. The details aren’t important to understanding the story, but for years I held on to the memories of our initial courtship, hoping like hell we could one day get back there. We were both too young to fully comprehend so much of what we did and said, that the unfortunate part is that rekindling never happened.

Thankfully my story didn’t end with the death of my first love and neither did his.

I moved across an ocean at 18 to learn how to be a person without his name being uttered in the same breath as mine and to break the bonds that he had over me, for no other reason except I loved him with all of the naivety of a 13 year old girl.

I met other people who enjoyed my company, men and women. I shared many things with them that shaped my view of the world, and taught so much about who I was as a person – without him.

Most of the people that are in my life now? They don’t even know he exists. He is apart of a chapter of my life that I penned and shelved away in the depths of my archive many, many years ago.

He is now married happily to a stunningly beautiful woman and has had many children. I am now married with one son, refusing still to grow up to maintain some of the childlike joy that I had before I had my heart stomped into obliteration.

And for the most part? I’m happy. I’m fulfilled, blessed and loved. My heart is still a huge open wound, but as an empath I fear this will never change.

But even so? I’m not sure that I’d want it to.

Lazarus.

Artist Credit: David Flores

It’s been a long time since I’ve had the motivation to put figurative pen to paper, or even figured I had anything worthwhile to talk about.

I forgot that blogging had a therapeutic element to it for me, a place where I can express my thoughts and feelings about the world in which I’m moving through where people can be drawn to if interested, or repelled away from because the sentiments in my writings are either lost on them or just a singular point of view that they don’t share.

I worry often when I write that I expose too much of my own naivety, my own insecurities – because so many people I encounter assume that the representation of me as a person in my professional life is someone who moves through the world self-assuredly, unapologetically and confidently.

Ironically, the aforementioned adjectives are not descriptive words that I would ever attribute to myself, at least not in my current state of existence.

If I had to translate my own self-valuation into words, I would use ‘awkward’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘hot-headed’. This is not to say that I’m not trying to become the perception that some people have of me, it’s simply that these are the things that speak the loudest to me when I traverse the ugly parts of my personality, unwittingly. My brain often goes to these places in moments of quiet, of which I have allowed myself tonnes of in the last six months. For the purposes of my own survival through debilitating anxiety and depression, getting to know myself intimately has become necessity.

I think these thoughts have hampered my ability to do this thing that I love so much; write. I haven’t written music in years, convincing myself that I had nothing of note to offer the world poetically. I’ve had the beginnings of a fictional novel becoming less and less topical and relevant on my desktop for about 4 years, fearing that by self-publishing what I think is a decent piece of writing will be slammed relentlessly by the rest of the far-more-talented world. I convince myself constantly that all of these creative ventures I have attempted aren’t good enough by any stretch of the imagination, so I move on to Netflix marathons and Pinterest boards, packed full of DIY projects that I know I will never have the motivation to attempt or talent to complete, leaving most projects unfinished.

But, I digress. This is current me, all wrapped up in ill-fitting clothes. These are all things that I want to change about myself. I don’t know what it is about 2018, but I feel…different. Like the winds of change have come through and swept me up on their laurels, to push me violently into uncomfortable experiences and out of the status quo that is me.

The beginning of this year began tragically for my family, with the loss of my paternal uncle to MND and the end of mourning for my cousins’ son. A week prior, my youngest brother got married to his long time girlfriend and we got to celebrate the beginnings of the newest chapter of their lives together. My sister announced her long-awaited pregnancy at Christmas, elating my parents and siblings with the addition and extension of our family. Two colleagues lost their lives unexpectedly. I reunited with my mother, after an uncomfortable and extended silence.

The juxtaposition of these happenings and experiences speaks so much to the uncertainties of life as it exists for all of us. During all of this, I felt like a passive observer, on the outskirts of everything happening around me – unhelpful, more than anything. Useless. I think this may have been behind my significant desire to change how I move through the world, less aggressively and with the type of kindness that I have lacked in the last 30 years on the planet. Watching how quickly things can go from celebratory to grief-stricken has been so transformative, and made me want to be more thoughtful about how I interact with other people.

I want to start reading voraciously, like I did when I was a precocious child; I want to tell my friends every time that I think kind thoughts about them and share them, even at the expense of us both being uncomfortable; I want to watch awful gaming walk-throughs with my son and listen intently as he describes what is happening on-screen and see the joy in his face that Mum is taking an interest in his passions.

I just want so desperately to be better than I am today – I know that’s probably what every person wants whose not a complete narcissist, but I really can’t articulate that any better. So I guess this new attempt at keeping record of my life, this new blog, will be a place where I can come and explain my rationale for my decisions.

All I can hope is that my words, regardless of what they are, are received with the positive intent and love that I mean them to be.

x C

Wandering in Waikiki

Upon arriving in Waikiki, we collected our baggage and made our way outside of the terminal to locate the SpeediShuttles desk.

Before departing Auckland, I called the hotel to enquire as to whether they would be able to book our airport transfer to the resort for us. Unfortunately they couldn’t, but directed me to SpeediShuttle.

SpeediShuttleis a privately owned Hawaii based company. The company began operations in 1999 on Maui and has since grown to become the leading provider of ground transportation shuttle services in the state and the largest fleet of Mercedes Benz passenger shuttles in all of North America.

ethan — *Ethan wishing he’d slept on the plane (Honolulu Airport)*

The concierge was easy to find, and after checking in with her she mentioned that she was still waiting and attempting to locate another group of passengers before we could take off. After a 20 minute wait (with Ethan trying not to pass out from exhaustion), we were ushered across the street and into an air conditioned Mercedes – with wifi!

Our resort was the first stop after a 20 minute drive through morning traffic, we arrived at just after 7.30am to perform pre-registration.

Pre-registration is check-in before your room is available. Fortunately the resort Aqua Palms did offer pre-registration, meaning that we were able to check our bags and head out to breakfast. I did attempt an early check-in, however the guest right before me had asked for the same thing and managed to swipe the last available suite.

This meant that check-in for us would not be until 3pm however the concierge did suggest that we call back around midday to see whether any suites had become available. The entire process of pre-registration took about 20mins and after changing our clothes in the lobby restroom, brushing teeth and cleaning ourselves up as best we could, we decided to go foraging for breakfast.

Fortunately there was an IHOP restaurant directly next door to the resort.

The International House of Pancakes is an American multinational casual family restaurant chain thats specialises in and serves breakfast. It is owned by DineEquity, with 99% of the restaurants run by independent franchisees in North America.

We were seated inside the restaurant, and given laminated menus to peruse.

Now these menus are huge. They include pancakes in different stack values, flavour combinations, breakfast ‘entrees’ (hot tip: they’re not entrees, they’re entire meals), omelettes, french toast, waffles and both sweet and savoury crepes.

I ordered a breakfast of eggs over easy (fried on both sides, but the yolk stays runny – “over” refers to flipping the egg, and “easy” refers to the doneness of the yolk), with a couple of slices of bacon and a 2-stack of traditional pancakes.

Christian ordered a full stack of pancakes and Ethan a stack of red velvet pancakes, which if I’m not mistaken were just regular pancakes with cocoa powder and red food dye added.

On the table were a raft of flavoured syrups – strawberry, blueberry, butter pecan, boysenberry and all pancakes were served with a dollop of whipped butter.

Now, personally? I didn’t think IHOP was anything to write home about, but the restaurant doesn’t really pretend to be anything that it isn’t; it’s a simple, yet clearly hugely effective dining experience where the food is exactly what you would come to expect at a chain that offers up breakfast items – and the food arrived lightening fast.

Our server whose name was Heather, was a petite softly spoken girl whose face seemed to be permanently etched with a smile. She wore a frangipani in her hair (known locally as Plumeria) and sauntered to our table, delicately balancing a huge tray of food above her slight wrist – it was impressive.

In terms of the bill, it was fairly inexpensive for a sit down restaurant, however when ordering or purchasing items in the United States, it pays to bear in mind that the price is not actually the price. In New Zealand, Goods & Services Tax or what we commonly refer to as GST, is included in listed prices in stores therefore advertised prices are what you will expect to pay when you come to checkout.

In the United States, federal, state and city tax percentages differ from state to state, therefore something that I purchased in Hawaii at CVS (a local pharmacy chain) that had a listed price of $3.99 cost $4.17 at checkout, however the same item in Los Angeles would cost $4.34 when taking into consideration state, county and city sales tax despite being listed in national sales advertising as $3.99.

Christian and I had decided that the first server who we got in the US was going to get a big tip. This was purely based on the fact that upon researching the average hourly rate for a server or waitress in the US, I discovered this equates more often than not to no more than $2-3 per hour.

We decided to give Heather a $40 USD tip (the equivalent of $58.76 NZD today) and watched her excitedly as she cashed out our table at the till. She blushed a furious pink, and she looked over to our table with a huge smile reaching broadly across her face.

After breakfast, we decided to jump on the hotels free shuttle, and make our way to the nearby Ala Moana Center.

The Ala Moana Center is a mall on steroids, a premier international and local shopping destination with over 340 shops and restaurants. It boasts high end clothing, beauty and electronic stores, all in a beautiful open-air setting filled with lush tropical landscaping and koi ponds.

We wandered around aimlessly, desperately attempting to whittle away time to midday. We entered the department store Macy’s and I was impressed by the MAC, Urban Decay and Benefit makeup counters. I filed through a number of sales racks, however the tag prices weren’t the impressive deals that I had heard so much about online and from other visitors to the center.

We walked further into the center and I found the Sephora! Christian and Ethan sighed audibly and found a bench seat outside the store to wait. I promised I wouldn’t be long as I had in mind the items that I wanted to purchase.

The first stop in store was the Too Faced counter, where I picked up the ‘Better than Sex’ mascara for $23 USD – I’ve tried to find this mascara for sale locally in New Zealand and can confirm that online NZ beauty store LaFemme Beauty do offer it for sale – however it is often sold out.

Beside the Too Faced counter was the Kat Von D counter – I have been an avid user of KvD products for the last 3 years and love her Immortal Lash mascara, Everlasting Lipstick and Lock It foundation. I picked up the KvD Alchemist palette for $32 USD and her original Lolita everlasting lipstick for $20 USD. The local Sephora online store in New Zealand doesn’t currently offer the Alchemist palette and the lipstick runs at a cost of $30 NZD + shipping (orders over $55 NZD attract free shipping, but I have heard that the shipping time for orders from the NZ Sephora store is horrendous).

I also picked up the Milk Makeup Hero Salve, and a Tarte Tarlette Tease palette before returning to my weary travellers who were leaned up against one another drifting in and out of consciousness. I made a call to the hotel and was directed to the bookings to enquire as to whether there was a room available for check in.

I had booked a twin room, however there was only a room with a fold out couch available at the time I enquired about an early check in. I asked Christian if he would mind, and both the boys looked at me through desperately exhausted eyes that I accepted the room and we made our way back to the meeting point to catch the return trip of the complimentary bus.

The driver arrived and let the guest alight the bus, while she ducked out for a cigarette. I joined her, as there were signs everywhere noting that smoking wasn’t permitted anywhere on the site of the mall. She chuckled and said it was fine as long I wasn’t anywhere near an entry point to the mall and we lit up and shot the shit for ten minutes. I asked her about her job and where she lived on the island, making small talk. She explained to me that the company she worked for drove a number of passenger vehicles on the island and she didn’t really enjoy the route because it was repetitive but tips from tourists were a bonus; however it wasn’t really enough to stave off the boredom of a 13 hour shift.

I learned from this conversation that she was running late to schedule, meaning that the coach that was supposed to be 30 minutes behind her had almost caught up. She explained that this was due to the fact that rosters didn’t take into account meal or bathroom breaks.

Coming from New Zealand I was shocked by this, based on the stringent laws I know we have regarding driving regulations, particularly when driving heavy or passenger vehicles. This kind of work expectation I would imagine would lead to significant potential driver fatigue, putting both the driver of the vehicle and its’ passengers in danger. This is something that I have noted whilst here in the US; employment laws exist generally to protect and support the employer, as opposed to serving both employee and employer alike. It’s difficult to get vacation time – most people I told that I had planned to be in the US just shy of a month were surprised that I would be entitled to have my job back upon my return to my home country. And not just surprised; I’d go so far as to say they were amazed.

We returned to the resort after a short trip via coach and tipped the driver, before retrieving our luggage from the concierge and collecting our key cards. Christian eagerly turned the television on to CNN and we all fell asleep for several hours. After showering, we left the resort again via a double decker bus (costing a mere $2 USD per person for a single trip) and travelled back to the Ala Moana Center to have dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is a themed restaurant, based solely on the film Forrest Gump. The first of its kind was opened in Monterey, California in 1996 and since then they have expanded the business to 43 locations, 2 of which are located in Japan and 1 in Hong Kong.

The restaurant was heaving with guests, and we waited 15 minutes to be seated.

After being greeted by Monica, a Midwest transplant who’d moved to Honolulu to study Earth Sciences. She was warm, bubbly and engaged us in conversation, recommending popular dishes and her own personal faves.

We perused the menus and Ethan noted there were some specialty bottomless frosty drinks with keepsake cups on offer. He eyed them excitedly and asked if he could order one as a souvenir.

I relented, and ordered one for myself as well. The cups had battery packs in the bottom, with buttons that activated flashing coloured lights in the base. As obnoxious as they were, we both happily enjoyed our icy treats.

Ethan settled on shrimp mac ‘n cheese (an American staple) to start and a burger with fries.