The last couple of weeks have been punctuated by both soaring highs and crashing lows. I've had moments of pure, unbridled bliss and I've also had a couple of the most severe and terrifying panic attacks of my life. I've started a dozen post drafts but not managed to hit publish on any because my mind is a jumble of thoughts and feelings that work against one another and leave me with the fallout- a strange feeling of loss, or perhaps the very opposite? I'm not quite sure. I feel like I'm floating around in a whirl of confusion but I'm also finding myself with a much clearer direction and desire to achieve.

There is actually a lot of wonderful little things happening in my world that I've wanted to share, but in between those times my anxiety has been high and I've found myself prefering to fill silence with the voices of others rather than my own. Tom got a new job for the summer and has had a couple of interviews for really exciting graduate positions. It's too soon still to know what he'll do and where we might be next year, but I'm just so damn proud of him and have learnt so much from watching him work towards his dreams throughout honours and this painful job-seeking process. I find myself more driven simply by knowing I have him by my side and reminding myself of the drive he shows even, no, especially, when things feel like too much.  

I've been working on a few little creative projects (pressing flowers, making succulent houses) and planning DIY gifts and decorations for Christmas. We put up our 'tree' (excuse the poor iPhone photo) for this year and downloaded hilarious carols albums from the liked of Boys II Men and Mariah Carey. I tested a recipe for Christmas cookies and brought the final product into work for my regulars to judge. My day to day has been full of little joys such as these; my feelings of overwhelm have sprung from within my own head, not in response to external stressors. 

Most importantly, though, I've finally started on the path towards a dream of mine and can see both hard work and great reward in my future. My dad has been helping from afar and he has helped me to gain much more confidence in my ability to reach my own goals.

So why am I writing today? I don't know. Nothing has changed, I'm still feeling that paradoxical pang of bliss and overwhelming fear. It's about to reach 37 degrees , I'm standing in a lonely shop with no customers and I have a mountain of dishes to attack when I get home. But today, for some strange reason, these little monotonies of daily life are what makes me feel human and whole. I haven't served a customer in half an hour and yet I'm feeling more connected to the rest of the world and less like the stranger in a crowd.

ps. It hit 39 degrees this afternoon, which for those of you playing at home on the other side of the globe is 102 Fahrenheit. I have no words to explain the hate I feel for the sun right now. 

unravelling

I have spent my time since school calling myself a student, keeping menial entry-level jobs to 'support myself through Uni'.  enrolling every other semester in subjects of which I would inevitably drop out. Whilst other people not attending University were seeking office jobs, I continued to strive for a life I wasn't ready to lead. Study requires a level of self-determination and discipline I was not willing to give, I just didn't realise this at the time.

The last five years haven't been entirely wasted, but this is one hurdle that has haunted me throughout. I am content with where I am, and yet I crave for that life I had expected to have by this time, for the milestones I had expected to have reached. I had assumed that by this time I'd be donning the cap and gown, not attending orientation week alongside others the age of my baby sister. It is hard at these times not to feel a pang of regret. These years have seen me both the incapacitated victim and the heroic conquerer of my own anxiety. These are my stories, these are my achievements. They are just so very different to the achievements I thought I'd have. I had hurdles that I could never have expected and would never have wished upon myself. I failed to achieve all that I planned, and I've succeeded in areas I hadn't prepared for. Life is like that. Life is unpredictable.

I often find that I think of myself in the past as another person entirely. We may share many of the same memories, but our lives and our motivations are different. The past is another country and she who inhabits it lacks the wisdom that I have garnered by the benefit of her experiences there. I know her well, but she can only dream of me. The future Georgia I will never meet knows me better than she knows herself. The three of us are sisters, estranged by time but intrinsically linked through memories and blood and the words we leave behind as a trail of evidence.

There are times where I become angry with my younger self. Frustrated that her selfish, hedonistic lifestyle did not bestow upon me the life I had expected for this time of my life. I think about those semesters of University that went by marked only with a new set of Withdraw Fails on the academic transcript we share. I lament how her actions then have to affect me so greatly now; she feels like an estranged little sister and yet her actions directly influence the very composition of my days. Her decisions were made with priorities that are not always aligned with my own.

It is harrowing and humbling that one must learn to make decisions for two versions of oneself. I choose to start University next year because I do not wish to feel this anguish at my (now present, then past) self in the future. It feels as though I've had to learn some hard truths that I had always thought were innate. The division between the present and the future are not so distinct. The Georgia of the future is vulnerable to the present, so I must protect her with the decisions that I make. She is older and wiser than me, but her wisdom is defined by my experiences.

I've got the message already!

As if I haven't already been given enough wake-up calls urging me to start pushing myself harder, I have been sent yet another great kick in the pants to get a move on. In an interview for a second entry-level hospitality position, I was told that an employer pays a seventeen-year-old something like 35% less to do the same work as a twenty-two-year-old like myself. How can I compete? And why am I still in a position where I need to?

It dawned on me for the seven hundredth time that this is not how or where I saw myself five years out of high school.

I have spent my time since school calling myself a student, keeping menial entry-level jobs to 'support myself through Uni'.  enrolling every other semester in subjects of which I would invariably drop out.

Now this is not to say that I am not happy with where I am. I love my life, but things might be a whole lot easier if I were finishing my first undergraduate degree at twenty-two, not starting it.

There are times where I am really frustrated with selfish hedonist that was younger me. I lament how her actions have to affect me now; she feels like an estranged little sister and yet her actions directly influence the composition of my days. My reality. Her decisions were made with priorities that are not always aligned with my own.

Life and death. [Day two]

Circles

I'm struggling to disassociate Charlie from the limp, lifeless body he left behind in my lap. I want to to file that memory away in a different place from the memories I keep of his life. I want the Charlie in my memory to always be that beautiful dog sleeping at the end of my bed, following me around the house, running to greet me at the door. I want to remember him as the odd mix of wise old man and perpetual puppy that he was since he could fit in my hand and would steal my socks to keep in a pile in the backyard.

But this last memory is still so fresh.

Watching the vet inject that bright green fluid into his veins and feeling his breath quicken and then ... stop. Blinking away my tears because he deserved for his last moments to be seen and known, not lost in the blur of hot salty tears and grief.

Mum told me that she could never have another pet. She couldn't handle the pain of saying goodbye. That goodbye felt like poison surging through every part of my body, but I know that this brief period in which the pain is strongest is nothing to the years of joy and love he brought to my life. I haven't lived in the same house as him for over eighteen months; I feel guilty for the moments I almost forget that he is gone. But I don't see him in this house. I see him at the end of my old double bed, not the queen I share with Tom. I see him trying to sneak out of the front gate at my Mum's house, not under our Magnolia tree. And I feel the warmth of his body as I hold him for the very last time. As I say goodbye.

bridging the gap

Buffy: I thought it was gonna be like in the movies -- you know, inspirational music, a montage: me sharpening my pencil, me reading, writing, falling asleep on a big pile of books with my glasses all crooked, 'cause in my montage, I have glasses. But real life is slow, and it's starting to hurt my occipital lobe.

The past couple of weeks have seen me obsessively contemplating a return to University in the new year. I say obsessively because I have become consumed by the prospect. Previous attempts at higher education have not been particularly successful endeavours for me, and I am torn by my desire to start right away and my fear that I’m not quite ready.

I have always carried with me a highly romanticised idea of University. I think this, more than anything, even more than the problems I've encountered with mental health, is the reason I've not yet managed to complete an undergraduate degree. Because real life is slow and, well, real. Real life is more than just that series of stills I've carried around in my head in which I am balancing a coffee atop a pile of books, sitting wholly immersed in a big important text, participating in intellectual debate about the influences that brought about the Russian Revolution. No, real life demands you complete the required readings and attend the less inspiring lectures also. In real life, you work hard and curse the whole system and write into the earliest hours of the morning and give yourself a headache from the computer glare. In real life, things don't always feel like a sunny day at the park. 

I have been my own worst enemy when it comes to my education. I want so badly to be that person in my head, but I've been unwilling to do the work that comes with that reality. I’ve been waiting for some sort of shortcut or loophole, but the life I want doesn’t come that easily and in the past I haven’t proven to be up for the challenge.

Tom and I have been talking about me going back to Uni next year. I am paradoxically fuelled by excitement and paralysed by overwhelming waves of fear. I do not entirely trust myself to do what needs to be done. I haven’t in the past proven willing or able to make the journey in my impatience to reach the destination. 

But I think I’m ready, finally, to accept the work and the stress and the struggle that comes with my romanticised view of University. I want to work hard. I want to prove to myself that I'm capable of achieving my goals. I don't want to let fear get in my way any more. 

secrets and solitude

Here's a little something I wrote a long time ago. Time passes and she feels like an old lost friend, but this is a story about myself.



"I just think we should distance ourselves from her." She took a considered sip of her cappuccino, careful not to tamper with the perfect froth sitting on top, placed the cup back on it's saucer and turned to the group. "What do you think?" She was not looking for a consensus, rather daring someone to object.

And so it was that I lost every friend I had made at school, without my even knowing. 

I was seventeen years old when I suffered the worst of my bullying. The teasing of my Primary years proved to be nothing when I later encountered the ripple effect of a simple say-so from the leader of a crowd. 

I returned daily to the cafe where my ostracism was decided. It was a beautiful place to sit quietly. In the middle of the most commercial and plastic part of the city I had found a sanctuary. This place was a storey above the noise of it's surrounding shopping Mecca. High ceilings and white walls lined with furniture and an endless supply of caffeine and cake. I would nurse the same coffee for hours with a notebook balanced on my knee and a watchful eye looking out for those I still foolishly believed friends. I was not there for myself, I was there in the hope that I might bring back the days I had only glimpsed, of a friendship forged over coffee cups and ashtrays on a balcony above the hubbub of the city. Hindsight proves that a wide berth had been forged around this shop in the daily activities of these former friends. My presence rendered their once-regular a no-go zone. But I wasn't to learn of this for many months yet, and thus I created my new lonely home with company, not solitude, in mind. 

"I collect people." She nodded to the surrounding group of contrived eccentrics. "I have an artist friend, an actor, a singer, a couple of  dancers and now," she had looked to me, "I will have a writer." She rattled off the list like a proud mother, as if their creative achievements might in some way be attributed to her. Perhaps she wished herself their muse. Perhaps she was just like me, trying to prove to herself that she had value. 

before the fall, or, the words I left behind on Friday night

I'm sitting in the office at work. I was due to start half an hour ago, but my shift has been delayed indefinitely because it's so quiet here. Everyone's decided to go home and hide from the rain. It's where I'd like to be. There are others that I could sit with, but I'm just not feeling up to human contact so I'm soaking up as much alone time as I can before putting on my happy bartender face. We're so broke at the moment but I keep thinking to myself that I'd be quite happy if my shift were cancelled entirely. I don't know why I feel this way, I guess it's been a heavy and stressful week in it's own mundane way. I would probably benefit from a good long cry about nothing in particular. But instead I'll put on a happy face and play fight with G when he gets in. They're all there, within sight. I can see but I'm not really here. They don't see me. There is a wall between us all.

Back in a flash, I promise. We're taking a much needed day off tomorrow, after which I'm looking forward to getting back into my old rhythm. Blogging very much included. I've missed this space in the last week. Time has passed so slowly, it feels like so much longer.