Em

Hey all,

Excuse the short sabbatical. My mental health has not been fantastic, which unfortunatly has meant a few hospital over nighter's. One thing I have noticed when I am really not feeling like myself is that other peoples realities seem to jump out at you a whole lot clearer. Which makes for not only some interestingly sleepless nights but for a lot of summarising of what exactly I want/do not ever want in my life. So without further rambling, here is that list:

I DO want:
-To live in a place where i am safe and secure (at least most of the time)

We are the snails,
Slow in our approach, hindered by such a weight upon our shoulders.
Predators swoop upon us as we retreat inside our shells, silence, darkness, and for this we are labelled obedient.

Or perhaps we are the spiders silently twisting up and down a flimsy thread; foolishly hoping those we lust after will become tangled in our web, and for this we are labelled delicate.

Could we be the fantails? Beautifully formed, flitting graceful in and out of sight, watching, and adored for our beauty not our song.

Maybe we are the lizards, shrugging off old skin tempted by a new life, abandoning our memories of a harsh dry existence.

I have been staring at this page all day, writing and erasing, it seems that I just don't have many words today, so I will keep this short...

It is pretty sad when a (male) teacher stands in front of a class of 120 people and tells us that we women should feel so lucky that we are no longer second class citizens. We still are, and it’s still shitty. Oh shit, I actually vocalised that and now everyone is staring. Well fuck it, we are. Yeah I can get an education, but I have to make grades that are SO much better than the male students in my class so that when we both show up to a job interview they might even consider hiring me over him, but in this country, it’s unlikely. I might have a job, a job working behind a bar where I serve idiots who drive trucks that are too big for their families, don’t give a shit about the environment and think I should feel privileged that they even bother to pinch my ass every time I walk by. Sure I have the vote, but most of the time there are no women to vote for in the election now that we have lost (my dearly beloved!) Helen Clark. I can play sport but I can’t watch Women play it on television if there is men’s sport on which takes preference over it immediately. I don’t have to marry and have children but when I seek out healthcare such as asking for a hysterectomy due to chronic pain, I am denied because I am apparently giving up a womb that the world still might want to use.

I saw a show today where someone said that perfection is only measured within a frame of imperfection, and it made me think. I have recently started on a journey of trying to do a little more for myself, more counselling, more painting, more things to throw me off this path of dwelling on every little thing that has happened to me in the last decade, and I gotta tell you, it’s hard. It’s easy for me to blend in with the crowd and be the party girl, that’s what they call me, “they” being my friends, the people I work with, people at school. I am the girl who turns up to a test rottenly hung over and gets an A, and they all say they wish they could do that, but I wish for nothing more than to be able to turn up to a test without having to get drunk the night before because I am terrified that I wont get a perfect score. Somewhere over the years I have equated getting anything less than the “perfect” score as my abuser having some kind of control over that.

September is here, and that means it is spring time in New Zealand. I have not really spent much time in New Zealand over the last two years, and as much as I have tried to resist enjoying my time here, with the changing season I have also noticed myself starting to refer to it as home once again. Each day I have spent here since being back from overseas I have been making an effort to reconnect with this country and the people here who I left without looking back two years ago, especially the Women in my life.

When I left high school I made the mistake of moving out of home and finding a place with my best friend and her boyfriend. This may sound nice, but I now understand why people often tell you not to move in with friends, but that is a story for another day. Leaving home however was fantastic. I worked at the market everyday after school to save up enough cash to get out of the town I lived in and move myself into the city, hoping to disappear into a new life there but I guess the tides don’t change that fast, and I quickly found myself completely isolated, even though I was surrounded by thousands of people. So I left and went overseas.

I am currently in the midst of assignment madness at school, but wanted to pop in here to share a recent experience which I found quite interesting...

I have recently discovered that ex boyfriends sending you the lyrics to "Nothing compares to you" is just creepy, and a bit screwed up. Especially when you have a) have not seen the dude for a good 2 years (emphasis on GOOD), and b) I would rather stick my hand in a blender than revisit our relationship. This may sound harsh, but I am just way past being with someone simply because I am alone, I don't need a guy/girl in my life to complete it.

I'm sorry if this post is a bit personal, but it has been swirling in my head for weeks now, and is part of why I have been MIA, so here it is:

My big brother and I have always been good friends, despite what stood between us, namely our parents, and the fact that most of my life he lived at my Dad's house with my older sister and I lived with Our Mum. He is only three years older than me, so being so close in age we were always pretty close and I spent much of my childhood following behind him begging him to let me play (which now I realise must have been highly annoying, but what are younger sisters for?).

Me again.

So here's the thing... I have just entered into a new relationship with a guy I have known for a long time, a good friend of mine who I lost touch with for a few years and just met up with again recently. It is good, for once, it is really good. We get along great and all, and things have been going at the right pace for me and he is respectful of that... the problem is he is going to want to know why I am the way I am... e.g. abuse issues. I don’t want to talk to him about it. It is so not that I don’t trust him, because I really do, but every time I have done this with a guy in the past he has either been really put off by it, or he has started to abuse me just the same way as if that’s like a free pass to do so.

I am still alive, don't worry! Somehow I managed to survive the end of semester exams with my sanity in tact, and am feeling mighty glad they are finished but not so confident in the results! Oh well.

So here is the story with the whole Women's rep thing at school... They asked me to come back and do it, because a). they figured out that they HAD to have at least one Woman on the executive and b). the guys on the executive apparently can't handle it alone (haha is all I have to say!). So I am thinking about it, but here is the thing, and yes this is pretty pathetic of me, but the guys on the actual executive who are there already don't want a girl involved. I know, so screw them, but with all that is going on, as much as I desperatly want to go in there and show them I also do not feel like being in yet another toxic environment at a place I usually love going and find a lot of solice there.

I don't know how it ended up this way.
I have stamps in my passport I don't remember... I went to Seattle more than once? I am just a small town New Zealand girl; we are not supposed to go anywhere. We are supposed to marry some so and so from the fire service and have kids and work twice a week in the bowling club so that the eighty year old residents of the town have something to cling to during the winter.

I have a big backpack that sits in the corner of my room all year round staring me in the face. I don’t have an apron or the "what to expect when you are expecting" book. I don’t want to trade my stethoscope for a bib and a year’s supply of diapers. I don’t need to be in some meaningless marriage. I don’t need props for having dinner on the table when some husband comes home from work. I want to work. I want to burn stuff because I can't cook and I want to live on noodles and rum, as though I am 20 forever.

Somewhere over the last couple of years I earned myself the nickname "gypsy". I get it, I can't stay in one place, I like the rush of visiting a new city, standing in a crowd of a million people with the knowledge that not one of them knows anything about me, I like being invisible there, at least during the day, but then in the early hours of the morning in some run down hostel I always end up laying awake wondering how I can stop the feeling of isolation from ripping me apart. I don't get it.

Being alone has been a norm for me since I was a kid, I was always the loner in my family, and it seems to me that the more I expressed myself, and stood up for myself, the more isolated I became, some of that I cherish and some of it I hate. Feminism is one of those things, it can be isolating, it can be hard to express for fear of isolation, for me anyway. Especially in a community which supports abuse against women and pretty much encourages silence. In lots of ways I love it because it is an instant separator between me and them. People who I don't want to know or befriend or even try to convince that I have a voice in this damn community and I should be able to use it when I want to, and how I want to.

Just lately I have been trying to perform a whole bunch of turn around's in my life, I guess an easier way to say that is I have been reviewing my flaw's (which sounds terrible, but it has been anything but, more therapeutic than anything else). One thing that has come out of this is that I am at my best, happiest and most inspired when I am not living in New Zealand, and was at my most happiest when I moved to Canada for a whole year, even though that also involved a whole lot of regrouping and dealing with the stuff I left behind, which was not a lot of fun, but it was necessary to say the least.

This: http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/canterbury/news/article.cfm?l_id=121&objectid=10569808

Makes me feel completely ill. How can that be justice?? He raped little girl's, but oh he is a model prisoner so off he goes?? Our justice system sucks. I can't wait to get out of here.

I have had an an odd relationship with (who once was) my best friend since we met. We met when we were like 7, because she was new at school and I was assigned to show her around and be her friend. It worked, we became inseparable. We grew up together, both of us had big issues at home, I never really told her any of mine, but she knew I had some, where she told me everything and often we would escape to the park or library and not come home for hours after dark. I lived with her for a while, with her and her boyfriend, and my boyfriend Nick who stayed with us often but didn’t actually live with us, this is where things went wrong. One of my first posts here at the AGA was about my escaping that house. I remember being so glad to leave and be safe and away from all of those people. Then I went to Canada and to Asia and decided to come back to New Zealand and go back to school, and being back in my old city lead me to meeting up with my friend again.

This morning was one of those mornings where I woke up in a really good mood, my mother was on the "up" last night (so I didnt have my usual monday of her crying on the floor and throwing things at me), but after about ten minutes in my first class I was feeling pretty damn down and out about living in this country. We were discussing how different people identify themselves in certain cultural groups, whether that is ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, whatever, and how we as nurses need to be aware of this in our practice. Awesome, that part is great and I understand, here was where it got a bit pear shaped for me....