the politics of terminology

Now Playing: Someone New by Hozier (would things be easier if there was a right way? Honey, there is no right way)

I use the word 'partner' to refer to people with whom I've had non platonic relationships with, and it drives people batshit.

The word 'partner' has been associated with the queer community for a long time, when gendered words like boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife either weren't allowed to be used, didn't accurately describe a relationship, or uncomfortably enforced patriarchal, heteronormative, cissexist standards on queer relationships. It's also gaining popularity in the upper echelons of the professional and academic world, especially by professional women, because it's a more egalitarian and less...personal word? It stops one's private life from interfering with public matters.

I like the word 'partner' for several reasons. Firstly, I get judged...a lot...by how I conduct my personal life, so the word 'partner' is a neutral element in what can be quite an emotive discussion; much to my mother's chagrin, I don't have boyfriends. Millennials are great at the non-traditional. 'Partners' is an easy way to refer to a group of people who are or were important to me, but in very different ways; it's a shorthand for referring to all the weird and wonderful things you get up to in your teens and twenties. I also like divorcing relationships from my gender and sexuality, and from the genders and sexualities of the people I have relationships with. I like the gender neutrality of the word 'partner'; I don't want people to make assumptions about my sexuality or the gender of my partners through use of gendered language, because, like many people, my sexuality and experiences of attraction are somewhat separate things right now, and that's okay, but I'm proud of my identity nonetheless.

The word 'partner' is like the word 'relationship' - we define its meaning. People associate the word 'partner' with really serious relationships, but in the context of the study of human sexuality, which is my background, the word usually refers to the people you've had sex with, as in 'sexual partners'. 'Relationship' is sort of the same; any human interaction is a relationship, but we euphemistically use it to refer to a specific kind of ideal, idealized relationship that we bar people who exist outside of the sexual and romantic ideal from using the word. But when we alter words so that people cannot use them, when we limit the lexicon and vocabulary to people because they aren't straight, or they aren't cis, or they aren't in specific kinds of relationships that we deem worthy of the words 'partner' or 'relationships', we ultimately disempower a huge portion of the population from adequately explaining, discussing, and thinking about their experiences of sexuality and human interaction.

Nobody, including myself, has objected to the way in which my partners have referred to me or to my relationships with them; this has included the extremely hurtful way in which my abuser and my assailant has talked about me to other people. Because I've never been in an 'official', serious, long term relationship, my partners usually use more euphemistic or vague terms to refer to me; usually like 'this girl', 'my girl', 'one of my girls', etc. I tried doing this once - I used to refer to a few guys as 'my boys' and let me tell you, shit hit the fan. I don't know whether guys are not used to being referred to as 'boy' in the same way that women are called 'girl' long after childhood and often in a sexual context, or because I used it as a collective and they wanted to be special, or people were uncomfortable with my casual, non-platonic association with people with penises...God knows. But that was definitely a double standard.

People also object to the words 'partner' or 'relationships' because even though they are quite...neutral words, they are associated, especially by younger people, with things that are committed and serious and everything we're allergic to; but I resent that. I think it's a stupid stereotype that women are somehow overly attached to people, especially men, and that we can't relate to men in ways that aren't whiny and clingy, when in reality women get attached to things in the exact same way that all other people do. It's a strange mix of archaic notions of gender, slut shaming, single bashing...whatever. I'm tired of it. I have relationships with partners and nobody's going to change how I discuss them.

Speaking of discussing, people seem uncomfortable with women talking about lovers past, present, and future as a whole; men are constantly encouraged to talk about that broad that they pulled last Friday night, but women are supposed to be very hush hush about these kinds of things. I should know. My abuser was very keen that I did not talk about our abusive relationship.

When I say I'm a writer, I don't mean that I have published books or that I am making any living through writing (or anything at all, really, at the moment). Being a writer is a frame of mind; and it is the profound, life-changing knowledge that words carry omnipotent power. Every day we, as individuals and as communities, define the words that define us; but when we exclude or barre people from engaging in this intellectual activity, because they are insufficiently male, or straight, or whatever, we erase from history huge parts of the human experience, and we disempower people by preventing them from making sense of their own lives and to participate in this exercise of empathy. In my short life I have loved and lost, I have hurt and been hurt. I have woken up next to beautiful people and cried myself to sleep. And I will keep writing and talking about it, because my experiences are valid and even though I live in a world where my colour and femaleness and queerness is not respected or valued, I exist, and my existence is important, and my words are magic.

a very abstract ache.

I'm watching two TV shows where the average hookup rate is about 4 per minute per person, and I'm gonna be honest with you, it's not sitting well with me.

I'm twenty, I live in a shoebox, and I'm alone. Not the fun adventure times drunk yolo single of my undergrad, but like...'sometimes I don't see another human being for days on end' kind of alone. So I'm alone, with memories, and nostalgia, and a very abstract ache.

Canberra is a city of lost souls; almost everyone here is from somewhere else. There are three kinds of people - the moths that are drawn to the fire of the country's politics, or ANU, and the people who are running away (usually from Sydney, who is Canberra's older, sassier, vastly more interesting, but sort of druggie cousin). Canberra is the capital in the same way that Washington DC is America's capital; it serves a purpose, but people are at the end of the day gonna go to New York. So as much as I feel like a provincial hopeful lighting out for the big city, Canberra is not a big city; it's a small, quiet place with lots of space for reflection, which often means endless existential crises.

By far the most useless exercise that I must constantly refrain from is 'what if'. What if I had stayed at home. What if I had been happy being there with my parents like they wish I was. What would my life been like if I'd become a Perth mum instead of a Canberra nobody. It's not a healthy train of thought, because the ram has touched the wall, all the bridges have been burned to the ground and Caesar has properly crossed the Rubicon. But still, I wonder. Because I am afraid.

hurt in this world.

Now Playing: Not About Angels by Birdy (we know full well there's just time, so is it wrong to dance this line?)

I actually really love living alone. I'm strange and weird and kind of neurotic and I'm a big fan of casual nudity and odd sleeping hours, so living alone suits me.

What I'm not loving so much is the silence.

Fortunately, I have unlimited internet, and a phone that requires its own CPR machine to stay functioning (it turns out when your PC fucks itself and takes your iTunes down with it, switching phones is quite a challenge) but can be propped up almost anywhere and rigged to my trusty bluetooth speaker, so I've been watching a looot of YouTube; when I'm doing laundry, when I'm doing dishes, when I'm attempting to fix dinner...in the shower (sandwich bag tied to a coat hanger, ladies. Instant aquatic entertainment). I've always watched a lot of YouTube; I'm a huge fan of online video, even more so given that the TV that came with my room is apparently for ornamental purposes only. And so, even though I'm alone, in my room, too poor to indulge my love of DFTBA merchandise, I feel more connected to my beloved nerdfighter community than ever.

But I do disagree with John Green on one small thing.

In my favourite John Green book, The Fault in Our Stars, Augustus Waters says 'you don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world. But you do have some say in who hurts you.' And I absolutely don't agree with that.

When I was in high school I visited the chaplain a lot; I wasn't Christian, but I was depressed, and so we had a shared goal in seeking a higher power. And she used to warn me against my casual habit of falling hard and fast for shitty, smelly teenage boys - she told me that we're like pieces of paper, and when you stick together and then try to pull apart, the paper rips and you leave some part of you behind.

My chaplain was a lovely lady, but that's crazy.

When I was fourteen I had my third heart surgery; it was the most minor of all my surgeries to date, just a 45 minute procedure to replace my pacemaker, but it was the most traumatic, given that I was old enough to understand and comprehend and be genuinely afraid. A few days after the surgery, I was at home. My head was swimming with drugs and I'd lost a lot of weight, but I was so bloated that my belly swelled out in front of me like some monstrous pregnancy. The muscles in my chest and stomach had been cut so I couldn't stand properly, so I limped around like a crochety old lady. I was in a lot of pain and I smelled of blood and sweat and piss and I just wasn't feeling my best.

There was a sticker over my surgical cut - people think of surgical scars as neat, tidy incisions but in the days after surgery they're just a mess of congealed blood and pus. I slowly pulled the sticker off, ripping off some skin and hair. I'd never felt quite as bad as then; the trauma and stress of hospital, even routine management of a congenital condition that sucks, but does leave you relatively able-bodied, does weird things to your body and brain and the relationship between the two. I thought of how much my body had been manipulated and played around, and how I had literally no say in the matter - for children's surgeries children have absolutely no say in what happens to them, but fourteen is a little old to be considered fully a child. It was pain and suffering I just had to endure - not because it was part of being human, but because it was part of being me.

And then I healed. You watch your body go through trauma and then you watch it heal again; not entirely, but a scar means that the hurt is over. And then, in locker rooms and at the beach and in bedrooms, I watched as people took in my scars, smile, and say that I was beautiful. I try not to make a habit of extracting my worth from the opinions of others, but it was just evidence that you can move on from being the fourteen year old who was flayed on an operating table, and you can move on from being a...piece of paper who had ripped and left half of itself on another piece of paper.

But you don't have any say in the matter. Pain is as inevitable as life or death or taxes. I think it's natural to want to assert some autonomy over the cruel inevitability of the universe, especially when you're young or sick or afraid, but in my experience, pain and the people who inflict it don't particularly care about you or your opinions. But that's not the part that matters. The part that matters is that you move on, from broken to healed, from victim to survivor. You may not have had any say in the people or circumstances that caused you pain, but you also have people and circumstances that can help you rise above it. We are not weak for our demons, and we certainly can't pick and choose them. But we are brave for overcoming them, for knowing that the only way out is through.

Okay? Okay.

On Monogamy

Now Playing: Youth by Daughter (we are the reckless, we are the wild youth)

Six weeks before I left Perth, I started a new relationship.

It didn't make any sense, but I don't think relationships, especially when you're young, need to make sense. You just meet wonderful people and have wonderful times and it doesn't need to make more sense than that.

I'm also a big believer in the short term relationship. Forever is an incorrect concept, and I think it's stupid and dangerous when people as young as I am try to imagine the partners they will want decades down the road. I've always had fleeting relationships with profoundly unsuitable people, but I've always relished in that incompatibility, that disconnect, the inevitable doom. It gives me wonderful bravado, to experiment in the sandboxen that these teen and early twenties relationships inevitably are.

I don't believe in monogamy. I oscillate wildly between deluded optimism and crushing cynicism and I go with the latter on this one. I realized how incompatible I was with monogamy in the same way frat boys give up on the concept of respecting women; sexual incompatibility - not just with each other, but with society. I don't know much, but I know me, and I know sex, and I know that monogamy is artificial and difficult and, for a lot of people, a zero sum game.

And so, naturally, I entered into a monogamous relationship.

I was cured of the cultural obsession with monogamy when I was a young undergrad. I was seventeen, I had vaginismus, I was smart and aggressively feminist, I loved sex, and I was a sexual assault and emotional abuse survivor. I had wonderful, healthy, fleeting encounters with people allergic to commitment, but who were also the sweetest, kindest people I had ever met. And I realized that obsessing over the sex lives of men who had not in any way committed themselves to me detracted from the happiness and pleasure of the moment, the moments that existed when two human beings collided and the other people of our past, present and future didn't matter. I learned to stop obsessing over what they were doing when I wasn't there, because another girl being there yesterday didn't detract from the fact that today we were drinking beer or playing video games or sleeping in a messy tangle of limbs and sweat and bodies and that I had a heavy head resting on my shoulder, mumbling endearingly and incoherently. And I learned that although we weren't the best of friends, didn't stay in contact, drifted apart, stopped sleeping together and even really seeing each other, these people were important and those moments were special, even though, for them and for me, there were other people in the picture and there was never any 'future'. I learned to love unconditionally and imperfectly and in the moment.

The people who had hurt me in the past believed in all the patriarchal institutions of heterosexual interactions, which naturally resulted in one cheating on his monogamous partner and using that conflict to hurt me, and the other having no qualms about sexual assault or shattering the illusions of a very naive girl. My immoral, slutty, non-monogamous friends and partners and encounters were flawed, imperfect people who sometimes did immature or even downright cruel things. But their respect for the human condition allowed us to understand each other more complexly, to forgive, and to live in the moment. That's what my slutty, smutty undergrad meant to me.

I did not enjoy monogamy, but I enjoyed the person I was being monogamous with. I didn't feel the need to go out and fuck indiscriminately, but being told that I had to be committed sat uncomfortably on me. I think it made our relationship more intimate than a six week relationship before you fly out really should have been, and the juxtaposition of intense intimacy and the looming plane ticket was probably more angst than was strictly necessary. But I genuinely enjoyed our time together, and I don't regret any of it.

It was interesting regulating my behaviour in ways I wasn't used to. I did not go clubbing during those six weeks, which was a post-semester ritual of mine - but I associated clubbing so intensely with beautiful strangers and blue hours that I didn't trust myself to not slip up. I found myself getting angry and frustrated when our schedules didn't sync up - because even though I was not having nearly as much sex as people imagined I was when I was single, it was weird having one person, but only one person, that I was allowed to sleep with.

But it was also comforting. It was comfortable. It was, after all, a social norm, albeit one that gets broken more often than it is honoured. There was a degree of intimacy and security that I never had before, and people started treating me differently. I had finally achieved what women were supposed to achieve - to con a man into promising not to fuck around - after years of being off the rails. And I'll admit, it was nice, even if people assumed that I was the one who had insisted on the monogamy.

And then it fell apart.

It was a very minor indiscretion, but for someone who was not really invested in monogamy the degree of the fuck up didn't matter to me. I was hurt and angry and jealous, things that I hadn't felt for a long time, emotions that I associated with a younger, stupider self. I was angry that I, the person who did not believe in monogamy, had nonetheless made a solid effort to honour something that was important to my partner, but had been let down by the person who adamantly insisted on the monogamy. And I felt like a failure, because in the narrative of monogamy I was possibly at greater fault than him.

And then I felt this overwhelming urge to keep it all together. This was the last time I would see him and I was not strong enough to make a grand gesture and refuse to see him, because I wanted to. And I didn't even think that what he did was particularly immoral or wrong or unforgivable because, again, I didn't believe in monogamy. But I pushed this confusing train of thought to one side and went to my going away party together, the perfect couple, with nobody none the wiser that the hickeys on his neck were not from me. I wanted to have it all, and for those few short hours, I did. I had the perfect partner and I was surrounded by friends and we were all young and beautiful in a heartbreakingly fleeting way. I had an offer to the best school in the country, but I was still in my hometown where I was loved. I had it all, but I was not happy. Because in that moment, next to my lapsed monogamous partner and friends that I was going to lose, I was more aware than ever that 'having it all', like all social delusions, was an illusion.

I think people cling to monogamy because we're told that it provides security; but that is a myth. I was abused and assaulted by two men who believed most ardently in monogamy and failed spectacularly at it. Security in a relationship is completely removed from exclusivity - a 'monogamous' man can still cheat on you, and anyone can leave you, monogamous or not. The fact that we were sleeping with other people didn't change the affection that drove people to carry me when my feet hurt or walk home with me, hand in hand, or for me to force feed water to a tequila-addled boy or text a former fling when he was depressed. And this indiscretion didn't change the fact that my partner was there for me when I needed him, which was all I ever wanted; and I think that's what we all want, which is why we blindly pursue monogamy, but I just don't think that's the answer.

Monogamy has been one of many failed experiments for me, but it has allowed me to see people and relationships more complexly. I understand now why people are so invested in monogamy and so genuinely perplexed when it fails. I did enjoy the comfort and security, but I also felt like it manufactured unnecessary pain, and that it was set up for failure. I don't enjoy feeling like a failure, or feeling like you're dating a failure, when until recently you didn't consider failure to be that, but millennia of patriarchal heteronormativity is making you second guess yourself. And I had reached a point when I was relatively free of that particular brand of paranoia and indulging in paranoia was not good for me or my mental health.

But the biggest thing I learned was forgiveness. Forgiving myself for not being perfect, or the perfect person to spend six weeks with. Forgiving my partner for not being perfect. Forgiving indiscretions and imperfect worldviews. Forgiving that we met in our early twenties (or, in my case, my late teens) and not as older, wiser, kinder people who knew what they wanted in life and from themselves and from other people; I had to forgive that we met as stupid thoughtless kids who could pretty much only agree that sex is fun and that we should have a lot of it. I had to forgive that we met in December and not November and so our relationship was six weeks and not twelve. I had to forgive myself for leaving, not just him but my life and everything I have ever known; an endeavour that was equal parts survival and a selfish delusion of grandeur. I had to forgive the astonishing number of times we managed to hurt each other in a very short space of time, and I have to forgive myself for missing him and missing home when I should be basking in the privilege of being an honours student at a world class university and having to do dishes for the first time in my life.

I really dislike the idea that every relationship that isn't forever is a failure; I was never aiming for forever. The thing that I learned was not that monogamy is not my cup of tea, because I already knew that. But the reason I indulge in fleeting relationships is because I think you become a better person, the more you recklessly and wholeheartedly live and love. When life and love is big and fat and swells until you can hardly bear it; when you've lived through abuse and assault and mental illness and physical pain, you learn to appreciate living large and loving big, in spite of the circumstances. And I really...I really was happy, and I'm glad that I had such a wonderful last summer. I'm grateful to have met people who made me happy, and I hope I made them happy, if only for a little while. That's all that matters.

I will be okay. He will be okay. And that's all I need right now.

Never Grow Up: A Letter to Nineteen Year Old Me

Now Playing: Out of the Woods by Taylor Swift (she lost him, but she found herself, and somehow that was everything) 

So this letter is more than a month late! Moving will do that to you.

Dearest Nineteen,

I'm writing this in a computer lab on campus at ANU. It's weird.

Dearest Nineteen, you've had a pretty good year. Uni was pretty okay. You have new experiences - playing a Jacobean villain on stage, meeting a pretty bricklayer with a thick Leeds accent on a sweaty dance floor on your birthday - and the demons, I think, sometimes sleep quietly for a while.

People may have started taking you a bit more seriously, but nothing is going to make that charming peacock-infested institution of yours take you and yours seriously. Your final year of uni is like skating on thin ice and, as you always do, you run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Sometimes I wonder at your courage, dearest Nineteen. Now I am all alone in the little room you fought so hard for, and sometimes I don't feel very brave at all. But I keep on keeping on, because I know this is all you ever wanted, and it's all I've ever wanted, too. It's tough, sometimes. But you're very lucky, and all that luck and hard work weighs on you, stays your hand, makes you bite your tongue every time you want to ask to go home.

Your friends are taking paths that you never dreamed of taking, but they're happy, and I wish them well. And then you meet someone, dearest Nineteen, just before you leave, too late to change your mind. He's beautiful and sweet and kind, and for the first time in your life you consider the life you're giving up and leaving behind. You have a wonderful summer together, and now when I close my eyes I remember the warm summer air at King's Park, or the city lights from the balcony. Growing up isn't always about making good or bad choices, doing the wrong or right thing. It's about taking a path, which by definition means you cannot take other paths, and sometimes those paths have pretty hometown boys and a comfortable life that you never really wanted, but is tempting you nonetheless. I'm not saying anything was definitely going to happen with this boy, but he represented everything you're letting go in a profoundly heartbreaking way; I know you don't think you're going to miss Perth, but you do, every day, especially now that life is hard and scary and full of uncertainty. Leaving him is one of the hardest things you'll ever do, but you'll do it, because you made hard choices about which path to take. I hope we made the right choice. I have no regrets, but I'll admit that I go back to December all the time.

Dearest Nineteen, the year ahead is hard, and who knows where it will take us. But it's also new, and exciting, and you'll be happy. I promise.

Love,
Just Twenty.

loving recklessly

People often ask me if I've been in love and, honestly, I don't know. We conceptualize love as the happily ever after, even if it fractures. But it never gets there..what is it?

Sometimes I wonder if I fall in love with ideas, instead of people. This is dangerous and stupid and ultimately disrespectful, but I think it happens, anyway, because I'm young and I'm searching for something as much as I would like to find someone. There were people who represented security or safety or adventure or danger, and sometimes I wonder if the thrill was the thing I couldn't live without, but the person was rather interchangeable. It's a horrible thought, huh?

Here's the thing. I think I love big. I have fat love; I can feel it swell. We treat love like a finite resource, or something that is easily spoiled, but I can't see it that way. I love so many people in so many different ways. I loved all the people I've slept with, for example, in my own way. I don't know if you could call any of it 'in love', but it was love.

Love, for me, is the refuge of innocence. It is the place I go to when I am shattered, when the world ends and you feel like an empty shell with everything that you've ever had snatched away from you. The standard narrative is that the angry, bitter, scorned woman becomes hard and cold and closed, but I can't do that. I was not made hard, but I was made strong. Loving recklessly is my last innocence; it is something I cling to even when all is lost. We live in a world where women lose everything when they give up or give in to something or someone; when they first fall in love, or when they first get their heart broken, or when they lose their virginity. But innocence, I think, has to endure all these trivial things.

keepin' it real

Now Playing: Work by Iggy Azalea (Valley Girls giving blowjobs for Louboutins, what you call that? Head over heels?)

I'm not going to lie, I'm having an existential crisis.

Anyone who tells you they didn't have the OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE nervous breakdown at some point in their mid twenties has amnesia or is a liar; and I'm having that, right now. I really...don't know what I'm doing.

School was just an endless drudge to graduation. Even my undergrad was just an endless drudge to graduation, because I come from a family and I live in a world where a bachelor's degree means diddly squat and will do diddly squat for you in the Real World. But now, as an honours student, the torture is very much voluntary. Or is it?

I left a life behind, in Perth. It was a quiet, suburban, secure life of homey comforts and hometown boys. A couple of my friends went down that path, and I wish them well; and half of me wonders if I should have joined them. There's a lot of security in knowing you'll get a job when you graduate and you'll have someone to come home to. I don't have that. And I wonder sometimes if I'll ever have that. I left that kind of security behind, because I found it suffocating, like clothes that just don't fit you. I remember the last day, in Perth, knowing that things weren't going to be the same again, and it was scary; part of me just wanted to get a degree in a field where there was a labour shortage and date boys who can find your house without a GPS. But part of me had always, always wanted to leave and never look back, and that's the path I took. Growing up isn't always about making the right choices, or even having choices that are necessarily better than others. Going through one door means closing others and sometimes when I am sad and lonely and overwhelmed I start to think about what's behind all those doors I locked.

But at the same time, I really didn't feel like I had much of a choice, coming here. I finished my degree in early November; I spent three months doing absolutely nothing. I had a job that provided, at best, pocket money. There's no career for arts graduates like me, at least not in Perth, at least without a bit more work. Graduation, for the baby boomers, for the people who burned our earth to the ground whilst wagging our fingers at us, because we've never had it so good, was the end. For me, it was the end of childhood, the end of knowing what I was doing, and the beginning of...what? Joining the Centrelink queue?

Now I wake up every day with more work than I could ever possibly finish. I've become a hermit; for the first time in my life I've become that idiot locked in her room all day, every day, reading. My friends message me once a fortnight or so to check that I'm still alive.

To be clear, I have a *very* cushy life. My parents are paying my fees and I have a nice room on campus. I'm doing what I love and although this week I had to not buy chicken because I spent all my money on books, I'm doing okay. But after this, what next? I can't stay in lovely, but tiny apartments on university campuses, paying rather than getting paid to study, for the rest of my life, at my parents' expense. I've never really worried about money, and I still don't, but it used to be that if you went down this path eventually you would be secure; the reason my mother was adamant my sister and I would be educated was so we'd have security in life. But now, we are both college graduates and although we have gone down different paths it is not just difficult in the character-building sense of the term, but completely dim. My work is important. It is valuable. People who have the jobs that I want to have always recognised my talents. But talent isn't enough in this world, anymore.

Sometimes uncertainty stretches before me like the ocean. It's not enough now to have a bachelor's, or a master's, or even a PhD. Our parents and grandparents didn't live in a world where you can get a doctorate and end up a taxi driver; but we do. Not just in academia, but in almost every industry young people are struggling. We are being priced out of jobs, of getting a house, of starting a family with any degree of security. In some ways, I'm here, as a student, when I could be getting a job, because I have nowhere else to go. My generous parents will pay for me to move interstate and study, but they won't pay for me to sit at home and stare at the ceiling, which is what I'd be doing in Perth. And after all this study, and after all this money, will I have anything to show for it? I left one uni because it was pinching pennies and now I've moved to the most prestigious university in the country and I still don't know if good marks are going to save me. My mother came to Australia as a very poor international student; but I don't think it ever occurred to her that failure could still happen even if she didn't actually fail anything.

Our generation is spoiled, sure. We take things like running water and having an internet connection and not dying of dysentery for granted. But whilst my grandmothers could never dream of going to university because of, you know, poverty and the patriarchy, I couldn't dream of paying for university without my parents' financial assistance, because university isn't as simple as getting in to whatever moneymaking empire was down the road - sometimes you're like me, exiled from your hometown because your uni decides that actually giving you an education is no longer financially viable, in spite of the exorbitant fees we have to pay. There are not many people who have parents who can foot the bill for a sudden change of address; things that are becoming increasingly necessary in this day and age. It's not enough to have a university degree, because people who have barely passed high school also have university degrees. I think it was really telling that, when I tried to apply for Youth Allowance, my eligibility was judged on my parents' wealth; whether or not my parents were willing to share that wealth with me. We live in a world where we're constantly badgering young people to stop freeloading, but then we're put through a system where we're judged not by what we have, but who were apparently freeloading on. It makes no goddamn sense.

I now live less than 10 minutes away from parliament, from the fat cats who make these rules. And I imagine, as a baby boomer, it's easy to think that young people today have it so good. But we don't live in the 'started from the bottom now we here' world of yesteryear. Hard work and an unfailing spirit just isn't enough. Soon, hopefully, I will be one of the most educated people at any point in history. It means a lot to me that I live in a time and place where a queer woman of colour can receive a decent education. But what will I have to show for it?

waiting

Now Playing: Recover by Chvrches (and if I recover will you be my comfort, or it can be over, or we can just leave it here)

I had the most horrifying dream last night, and it was horrifying because, in some ways, it was real.

(I very rarely dream, and when I do, they're almost always lucid dreams)

The gist of it, because I know accounts of other people's dreams are boring, is that I had agreed to meet someone at a certain place to do a certain thing, and they weren't there, and I couldn't contact them, and even though in the moment I knew it was just a dream I still could feel the panic rising in my chest until I could taste it in the back of my throat.

I woke up with a nosebleed, which was scary.

This may sound..,stupid, but I am deathly afraid of waiting. The kind of waiting where you're alone, in a public place, or you're with a group of people and they all know you're expecting someone to show. The kind of waiting that stretches to an uncomfortable period of time, with no message or apology or heads up about traffic or broken down cars or whatever. Just endless, endless uncertainty.

I have anxiety, and my anxiety stems largely from my abusive relationship and yes, my abuser was in the habit of doing this to me, a lot. I remember distinctly begging him to just send me a quick message that he was going to be late and I would happily wait for any amount of time, but every time he point blank refused. I was crazy. I was always so demanding and neurotic. I genuinely thought I was being a terrible, selfish person for asking him to send, like, a three word text every time he was like an hour late, which was 90% of the time.

I am not any more or less impatient than any other person; and I'm not particularly picky about weird social etiquette; if anything, I am in the annoying habit of sometimes being a little too easygoing. But I don't think it's too much to ask of people to send a heads up to someone they claim to care about who is waiting and waiting and waiting, on the verge of a panic attack - I have more than once burst into tears waiting for people.

I'm getting better at insisting on being treated like an actual human being, but to this day I still can't get people to not fucking do that, and I really don't understand the lack of kindness or care that can justify it. I think we have romanticized mental illness so much, especially young women with mental illness, that when the inconvenient things about mental illness arise - like having your sanity hinging on a text from someone who claims to care about you - people don't want to know. And I'm still not great at navigating and validating my own feelings, to insist that what I feel is valid and that my safety is important because a long time ago, in my younger and more vulnerable years, someone I cared about who claimed to care about me convinced me that standing up for myself was colossally self-obsessed. And that is a difficult bone to break.

breaking broken bones

Now Playing: Breathe by Taylor Swift ft. Colbie Callait (never a clean break, no one here to save me)

I've been thinking a lot lately about how sometimes, when a broken bone sets wrong, you have to break it again to set it properly.

I've never been great at goodbyes. As much as I get bored and restless and unsatisfied I'm always scared of leaving, of moving on, of having my normal shift into something different and unfamiliar. It feels, to me, as painful and as unnatural as breaking bones. But sometimes you just have to.

The first time I thought about this was towards the end of my abusive relationship, when I knew something was wrong but I was too afraid to leave. I wasn't happy, but I wore the familiarity of my situation like a blanket. To leave was to break away from something and someone who was hugely important to me. I was a wreck when we met, and then I praised his kindness for putting me back together, but my 'together' was crooked and awkward and never quite worked out well for me. When he left he broke me again. But now I walk on my own two feet.

Leaving home was breaking more bones. I wasn't happy in Perth, I had never been happy in Perth, and I knew I would never be happy in Perth - especially as my university began to close up shop, when walking in to class every day meant being told, repeatedly, to my face, that I had no future. I spent my entire undergrad being perpetually mocked and ridiculed for my studies, for what was important to me, and as soon as I could feel the thin ice of uni start to crack underneath me, I started applying to leave without a second thought. I never thought I would look back, really, but in the end I did. My life in Perth was dysfunctional and my career opportunities were bleak, but it was home. It was comforting. And when you know things will never be the same again, even if that 'same' isn't so great...I feel like the natural instinct is to try and keep things the way things are. Leaving wasn't euphoric or freeing; it was scary and it felt profoundly wrong.

I haven't moved to Utopia; there are things here that are wrong and stupid and profoundly weird, just like in any other place. But the community of thinkers and dreamers and believers here is something that I've never experienced before; people who are generous with their time and knowledge. You don't feel like you're living on borrowed time or at the whim of politicians and money-strapped bureaucrats who take one look at you and think 'why are we giving you this dangerous, useless knowledge?'. When you are a queer mixed-heritage woman of colour, a sense of legitimacy is always craved but hardly ever found but maybe I have found some here.

I have good days and bad days. I swing, like Sylvia Plath, between 'joyous positive and despairing negative'. But I always think of how much I had been forced to hobble through Perth. The pain of breaking broken bones is nothing compared to the prospect of limping through life. Broken bones heal. Soon I will fly.

electrical staplers & blue neighbourhoods

Now Playing: Sad Beautiful Tragic by Taylor Swift (we wake in lonely beds in different cities)

I live in Canberra, now, which I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around.

I'm doing Honours in Gender, Sexuality & Culture at the Australian National University, which is not something I thought I would be doing this time last year, but at the same time, I feel like I've been working my whole life to get here.

Moving and growing up and chasing your dreams is not quite as euphoric as they make it out to be in the movies.

I have never liked Perth; it felt suffocating and limited and painfully banal. But living in Perth taught me how to love the little things in life, to find happiness in things that are thoroughly unextraordinary. I learned to love flawed places and have flawed relationships with flawed people and I'm grateful for that.

Living at home was comforting. It was safe. It was that sigh of relief when you got home, took your shoes off, and poured yourself a cold drink. I never valued familiarity more than in my last six weeks at home, in the fresh beachy breeze that I still miss. I miss the city lights and the cold midnight air at King's Park. And I grew really attached, you know, in the last hurrah in my blue neighbourhood. But in the end, in spite of those homey comforts and suburban pleasures, Perth never fails to fail you.

I live alone in my own little place, now, and I can sometimes feel sleeping demons stir, and come out to play. It is difficult to motivate myself to keep on keeping on, sometimes; to push myself not just in academics, but in becoming a healthier and happier person in spite of the people I have left behind. Living by yourself makes you think about love, and longing, and belonging; I've really been pushing myself into practicing self-care, which is a challenge in itself, but I'm getting there. When you miss home it's easy to feel like you belonged somewhere or to someone, but emotions run high when big, stressful changes happen and I think you just have to be gentle with yourself. There will be times when you know one of your friends is sick and you find yourself crying into a pillow 3000 kilometres away from them not just because you can't help them, but because their pain has become as unbearable as your own; and I'll never hold that against anyone. But there are kinds of pain that I will hold you to account for. I think sometimes when someone hurts you, or their absence hurts you, you can start to imagine them as less than human, with less than human feelings; when you take someone you cared for and start treating them like a toy. I don't think there is anything I can't endure, but I'm starting to teach myself that there are some things I shouldn't endure.

I have spent...I don't know, a solid decade swearing at staplers. I just don't have the upper body strength to push a piece of metal through more than about two pieces of paper, and staplers in Perth are a particularly odious beast - difficult to come by, easy to break, constantly demanding refills. Well, my friends, I've moved to a place with electrical staplers - click, click, boom. And that's what moving is about; it's about accepting and embracing both the freedom and the loneliness of living on your own. It's about wondering if you have cooked the chicken properly, and if you haven't, if said chicken is going to kill you. And sometimes it's about closing a few doors because you know, in your heart, they will lead nowhere. But it's also about realizing that there are electrical staplers in this world, and your life is better for knowing about their existence. It encourages hope.