Haz Booze
I got a pirate ship.
Last night I had a birthday party (you can see some of the results on today’s twittertales.wordpress.com blog). I was afraid that, since it was an occasion at which I was socially required to be happy, I’d freak out. Instead, I enjoyed myself. In part, this was because of one crucial act on my part: I invited the extraverts.
Normally when I feel like seeing some humans, I invite over my nerdy introverted friends – they’re “safe” people (few people are – some of them, actually, are so shy I don’t dare see them one on one) and my house is a safe place. And, to be perfectly honest, they generally leave early.
There were three basic social groups:
The introverts (who I invited lots in advance so they’d turn out in force), Bible Study (aka “the arguing group” as it’s more accurately known), and people from ballroom dancing. And my parents. The extraverts brought an infusion of energy that intraverts just don’t. No-one got drunk, and no-one was excessively loud or innappropriate (. . . excessively innappropriate, I mean – my Bible Study group is deeply sick). I picked extraverts who are interesting (one of them refers to herself as “Black Bob” in the third person) and who radiate (for want of a less wanky term) positive energy. The mix was about two-thirds intraverts and one-third extraverts.
The night was full of cocktails, mocktails and smoothies and I’d bought a vast amount of liquor, mixers and fruit. The best cocktail was butterscotch schnapps and fake Baileys (it just can’t be beaten); the best mocktail was a mint dulep (with freshly-squeezed lemon and orange juice, and fresh mint leaves); and the best smoothie was either chocolate blueberry or a mix of pineapple, mango, banana and strawberry.
I learnt that: Triple sec is poor man’s cointreau, and pomegranite doesn’t play well with others.
And I was given huge amounts of chocolate and lollies and books, more brightly-coloured alcohol, and a plush dromedary for my cats to kill horribly. And a pirate ship to join (and lead) my growing fleet. The wheel and winch actually turn, and the cannons actually fire tiny cannonballs.
This is the most party-like party I’ve had (or attended) in years, and I enjoyed myself from beginning to end (deeply unusual). I was so pleased (and presumably tipsy) that when my partner and I had our God time, I prayed aloud for the first time in over six months. (Praying aloud is hard, because prayer is so personal; because prayer sounds so silly; and because I was so angry for so much of last year. I’ve only recently been able to read out chapters of the Bible without crying.)
For the moment, I LIKE people.
Pregnant Pause
No, I’m not.
Eating (relatively) healthily has made me think about my future children a lot more – mainly because they’re an inspiring reason for me to practise being healthy. (If I’m not healthy, what chance do they have?)
One thing I like about marriage is that I’ve literally given my life to one person. All my big decisions are his big decisions too. All the good and bad things that happen to me happen to him (and vice versa). It bothers me that so much of my happiness hangs on him (is there anything less reliable than a human being?) Then again, I’ve always liked risk-taking. And I suspect I’d find my happiness again eventually if he suddenly vanished.
I love the idea of becoming a mother – is there anything more frightening, more important, or more overwhelming? As a storyteller, how could I resist? As a human heart, how could I turn away from the opportunity to pour everything I have into someone who is me-and-my-partner-but-also-different?
The cynical part of me thinks the urge to procreate is biological – nothing else. The opposite side of me thinks the urge to have children comes from an unfulfilled capacity to love more deeply. I’m pretty sure both are true.
There are a lot of frightening aspects – how will we cope financially? Will I be a horrible mum (being mentally ill can’t help)? What about all the pain in the world? What if something goes horribly wrong? What about the pain for me when they’re rejected or injured or unhappy?
I treasure the newlywed status of having no children. But I also treasure the sense of anticipation my partner and I share. What will I look like pregnant? How will this change the way we see the world? What will he or she smell like the first time I see my own child? What will they be like when they grow up?
Each month we celebrate our anniversary by doing something special – going out to dinner, having a picnic, seeing a movie, etc. This month we’re borrowing my 4-year old nephew and taking him to Questacon.
We need all the practice we can get.
Had a great title, but forgot it
One of the things that has changed since I married is that I’ll almost definitely have kids one day. (When I had a two-month engagement, a lot of people thought I’d be having kids about 6 months after the wedding, which both amused and disturbed me – like so much in life.)
Watching “Torchwood” (written by seriously depressed types with an urge to convince the world how depressing it truly is), and the various horrible things that could, perhaps, happen to my kids some day (except, probably, for the alien bits) made me realise that I DON’T want to keep my kids safe. Not as a first priority, anyway. I want to teach them that they can handle anything. Absolutely anything. Death, murder, assault, broken hearts, debt, mental illness, their own worst failures - anything.
Of course, I’ll probably panic and lock them in a padded room from birth.
But the sentiment is there.
Paranoia Girl is so right
I emotionally crashed on Tueday. It was Australia Day, so my partner and I chose to celebrate our anniversary mainly on that day, with our traditional picnic, plus seeing “Sherlock Holmes” (which I reviewed over at http://twittertales.wordpress.com) and going and eating Chinese for dinner.
I freaked out for no reason around 11am, and stayed freaked out all day, unable to make basic decisions or generally enjoy the enjoyableness of the day. It sucked a lot.
But, setting aside my mentalness, I feel pretty good. My renewed peacefulness and excitement about God is still there (under the public crying and urges to pull out my own eyeballs). Today I bought loads of brightly-coloured booze for my birthday, and also didn’t eat my usual pile of chocolate. I had a milo, which is practically fasting for me. I keep a careful eye on my drinking, because (clearly) I have an addictive personality. Thus far, however, I can use small amounts of alcohol (like one or two standard drinks – strictly AFTER work) as a substitute for large amounts of lollies (like 300 grams).
Just now I wrote a short story (a tad desperately, since I REALLY need to finish a twittertale ready for February 1, and it isn’t happening). It’s not a happy tale (it’s white trash crime), but finishing a new story always makes me feel good, which generally leads to more writing.
I’m gonna go attempt a 7-day twittertale, just to buy myself some time.
First – more booze. (I predict a problem in the future. . . but it IS really good for switching off my editor side.)
Cloudy with a chance of mental illness
On Sunday I had a religious experience. It was very strange and happiness-inducing and rather awkward to fit into the middle of life’s usual mundanity. It’s frightening how much God means to me, while also being reassuring (partly because God is the only possible constant in life, and partly because much of my self-identity is tied to Him).
It’s creepy because. . . because I felt (and still feel) so darn happy. I’ve got nowhere much to go but down. (So you see my sunny optimism lasted the experience.) I’m also aware the happiness is a side effect of seeing God (however briefly – fear is another common side effect, but that’s a topic for another day). It’s not the main effect. So am I really completely changed? Or is this as real as a change in meds? And am I going to crash and burn? How badly?
I spent two years searching for God at about the same time as I hit puberty (my family is Christian, but I realised quite clearly that if I was going to be Christian, I needed to meet God for myself). Those were by far the worst two years of my life, even though I was pretty sure I’d eventually find Him. Searching for God really highlights how horrible life is without at least the occasional glimpse of him. It’s much worse than unrequited love, and much worse than being mentally ill.
But when I was twelve, suddenly He was there, and He was obvious, and He’d been there all along. He was so OBVIOUS, and a lot of the time He still is (even if I hate his guts).
Those two years of pain are precious to me, because if God gets silent for long periods, I now know it’s not forever. But I still think of that age (I found Him at about twelve) as when I was at my spiritual best. I wanted to become a full-time aid worker to Indonesia, and nothing – really nothing; I thought boys were a foolish distraction from what really mattered – meant anything to me if it didn’t have anything to do with major world-changing God stuff.
For the last six months, I’ve been unable to read the Bible aloud or pray aloud or go to church, because I’ve been too angry at God. I’d just cry with rage every time. It was sort of okay; I knew it was an emotional place, not a real one, and that when I was able to see clearly God would be there and the relief would be exquisite.
I haven’t fundamentally changed since my days as a God-obsessed twelve-year old. While being concerned about not becoming one of those deeply irritating “Christian” types (you know exactly what I mean), I’m so pleased that God is still everything to me. Maybe that was the main point of Sunday’s experience. All the badness of the last few years happened without making a dent in who I am.
If I could internalise the concept that I’m everything to Him – then I’d REALLY be getting somewhere.
Wedding Belle
My partner and I married a year ago today.
We’ve lasted a year, which seems like a good start – although mostly it seems like not very long at all. I certainly don’t have the hang of it yet. (Maybe this time NEXT year. . .)
Overwhelmingly, marriage is easier than I expected. The first couple of months were scary, it’s true, but overall my partner has proved (again) that he is good at everything. His worst fault is his forgetfulness, the flip side of his very valuable calm. (He has ADD, and I have an anxiety disorder - which actually works pretty well in combination.)
Probably the things that will always need careful negotiation (one partner constantly giving in is bad) are how to deal with living together (where do you live? who cleans? how clean? where does stuff go? what happens with buying and preparing food?) and how to deal with finances. For me, the most important thing was that the house has to be tidy all the time (it helps me remember things, and lets me feel safe), and my partner had to do a reasonable amount of regular cleaning without being told (a mother-child relationship is never attractive). He’s got a LOT tidier over the last year, and I’m starting to get a bit messier (which is good). Our money isn’t great, but we do have savings now, which is pretty good considering I can only earn around $15,000 a year. He buys less stuff than he used to, and when he wants something enough to mention it I pretty much always agree that our budget can handle it – even if my spending habits pre-marriage were dedicated to survival (rent and bills, then petrol, then social obligations and minimal writing expenses, then food – nothing else).
Our home is a safe place for me, and I’ve never felt the panicky urge to get out (as in so many other share houses). Surprisingly, sharing a room has been quite easy – mostly because we are extremely respectful of each other (and he has his own extra room next door for all his messy/useless/old crap, which was a genius move on our part).
Before we married, I lived in a tiny flat that had fungus issues, poisonous water, and a leaking toilet. I was no longer able to support myself (with or without government benefits), because my mental illness robbed me of my self-control. In Jane Austen’s day, a woman needed to marry to gain her independence. That has been true for me as well.
I hate being financially dependent, and I struggle daily with my lack of novel publication, but marriage has given me a physical and metaphorical safe place where I can recover from the years that came before this, and grow back into being a reasonable sort of human. The worst part of our marriage is my mental illness, which blocks my positive emotions, limits my movements, and basically makes me selfish and inflexible (and also violent, it turns out. Since we now live together, he doesn’t get to miss seeing my worst moments, either). Fortunately my partner never questions me when I say I can’t do something, and is always gracious about instantly helping me in any way I ask.
Violence is never acceptable in any relationship, and (although I never hurt or intimidated him) if it happens again I’ll continue switching medication until it stops for good. He doesn’t think it’s serious, but I do. That’s a line I never thought I’d cross, and I will never accept in my marriage or anyone else’s. For any reason. But I *think* it’s over now I’ve switched contraceptive meds.
I was discussing fairy tales with a student the other day, and realised that there really is a little bit of truth in the idea of having a wedding at the end, followed by “happily ever after”.
Once you’re married, that’s it. Your old life is over, and a new one has begun. Whether it’s happy or not depends largely on who you are and how smart you are about communicating your heartfelt needs, and on finding happiness outside of your partner (who can never meet all your needs). But I think we’re biologically designed to devote our life and body to one person, and it takes a special person to be happily single.
I don’t see our marriage as permanent, though. Divorce isn’t an option (unless someone cheats or turns abusive), but this relationship is a gift. Our lives and marriage could change drastically or end at any moment. Next year might be just like this year, or it could be completely different. Nothing bad has happened to us yet, so I hope we can still treat each other well and support each other when something goes wrong. For now, though, “happily ever after” is quite a good description of married life.
I can’t imagine myself being able to survive marriage with anyone else.
PS a highly appropriate quote from the sleep talkin’ man: “Yeah, falling in love is WONDERFUL. Especially when it’s with me.”
Sigh of a ninja
It’s 3am and I can’t sleep. This makes me want to eat chocolate.
I wish I could write more gooder.
Warning: Secure Your Chair Before Reading
Go and look at this blog. Just do it. But be advised a lot of it is somewhat inappropriate for children.
It’ll take you thirty seconds to realise how good it is. Just go.
http://sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/
“Avatar” Review
It’s like how everyone else is saying: the plot ain’t new, and it ain’t much, and the film should probably be shorter – but it’s sooooo pretty you just don’t care.
Personally I’m not big on special effects. I really like good writing. So I went in with very low expectations. And it was so pretty I loved it. There were even some neat things done with the writing – good characterisation (not super subtle, but it was enough for me to care about those I was meant to care about), and I really liked the way several of the minor characters evolved during the film. The pace is a little slower than we’re used to from American films (not that it was actually slow), but it suited the film.
But mostly, it was SO pretty. The 3D effects made everything more real and more beautiful. I didn’t believe pretty things could keep me entertained for three hours, but it turns out they can. And I liked the acting and characterisation of the hero.
I honestly do recommend seeing it.
Remaining China Photos
Here at last, is the chair skating photo:
If you visit Tianenmen Square, you’ll probably walk through the Forbidden City on the same day (which is called a city with good reason). Behind the Forbidden City is “The Mound” – an artificial hill in an otherwise flat landscape. I didn’t go that day, but apparently it’s the best place to stand to see Beijing. This is the view back over the Forbidden City:
