(journey to the centre)

re: chestnut day

I hate being a host.

I always have.

It's not because I don't like to organise parties, or cook for them, or have people in my home. I like those parts of it.

What I hate is the hour or so before anyone arrives. The way I inevitably find myself filled with a kind of adolescent dread that no one will come. That no one likes me. That I will be left crying in the closet like Jennifer Garner in Suddenly Thirty (yes, I have seen it. I'm so ashamed) while every person I know goes off and does whatever they considered more fun than me.

It's an irrational, stupid fear. But for some reason it gets me every time.

I never ever have a party on my birthday for these reasons. Add birthday reflectiveness to this mix, and you have a lethal combination.

So you can imagine the state I was in yesterday at 2pm (two hours after the time the invitation loosely, relaxedly suggested) when not one person had arrived to come and harvest chestnuts with us.

I started drinking early. I sent some enquiring text messages. I made phone calls: My closest friends were on their way. That was the important thing.

But the question was out there.

Where was everyone else I invited?

The truth is, folks, I don't know where they were.

And the better part of me says I don't care.

After all, I'm no longer eighteen years old and drinking beer in a parents' garage. I'm no longer in my early twenties, running around the city at 3am or spending every night at poetry readings. We collect friends at all these different phases in our lives, but how many of them stay around beyond that one particular moment?

Do we even want them to?

It seems like such a cruel thing to do to sit down with yourself and ruthlessly cull friends as if they were daisy petals: This one stays, this one goes. But I've been feeling lately as if that's kinda where I'm at.

Perhaps it's something that needs to be done every few years.

Because yesterday afternoon - even if it sounds unbearably corny - the people that really mattered were there.

The people I really value in my life as it is and as I want it to be.

In the here and the now.

forgetting possibility

I understand that to complain about aging when I am only twenty-eight years old might be a little irritating to many readers.

Let me try and justify myself.

I know I'm still a young person. I know these are only the first of the wrinkles (and it's really just a few around my eyes at this stage). I know this whole aging thing is going to start coming at me thicker and faster as time passes and that I will look back in a few years or more and want to punch myself for even thinking I was starting to get old when I was only in my goddamn twenties. Look, I know that.

But the thing you have to remember is: I've never aged before.

This is it - the first time.

I used to be able to eat what I wanted, and never put weight on my stomach. I used to be able to stay out drinking until 4am and still function the next morning. My lips used to be red enough naturally to get away with not wearing lipstick. Smoking two packs of Peter Stuyvesants a day didn't matter before; I was going to quit when I got older.

It's kinda scary.

Really it is.

And last night I caught up with a couple that I haven't seen since I was about twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two.

At the most.

Actually, I ran into them in the supermarket a few weeks ago; turns out they did the Hills Exodus not long after we did. To be honest, I'm quite amazed that it's taken so long to cross paths with them - they only live about a kilometre up the road. But I thought to myself: there's probably a reason for that, and their phone number promptly found it's way into the loose papers in the bottom of the drawer.

But they called. And last night I went out with them for a drink.

These people haven't seen me since I stopped wearing platform sneakers and psychedelic print babydoll dresses. A time in my life that my friend Adam refers to as my Fitzroy's Darling phase. When I was running poetry events and doing festivals and was so convinced of my own immortal alternative coolness that I think it could have actually been considered a mental health issue.

Obviously, such things are no longer. And that's probably a good thing, of course. But last night, after a few five-dollar glasses of bad sparkling white, I couldn't help being a little nostalgic for those times.

Why?

It wasn't because I was thinner / less wrinkled / had redder lips / anything else I listed above.

No, it wasn't that.

This goes beyond my complaints about aging.

What I was nostalgic for was the sense of possibility I felt back then. When the future was some dark sparkling unknown, and all the decisions were for later. And none of them mattered because I was hovering in a warm blackness outside of time, filled with visions of all the different things I might still do.

That was the real freedom.

And so this afternoon, I wonder: When did that feeling go away?

And more to the point: why did it?

gone (drunken post #1)

Dear K.

Re: this.

I cried all the way home this afternoon, grieving our friendship.

Did you blow it off, every time I called? Did you say to yourself: Next week we'll catch up - Meg won't care? She knows how busy I am right now.

You were wrong. I didn't know.

Every time you broke plans with me and I told myself you were just tied up in your own world, what I was really thinking was: If she calls, she cares.

Yet you showed me, again and again, that you didn't.

Where were you when I needed you? Because I made plans with you, over and over and you just kept on saying: Meg, I am just really tired/busy/hung over tonight, and for some reason I was meant to accept that when the fact of the matter was:

I needed you, fuck K, I really needed you.

But you could not even find the time to be there. And everything, everything else in your life, was more important than me, even when I tried to make it right again.

And you know what?

It breaks my heart, but I'm not sure I can find a way to forgive that.

Love Meg x

photograph

I saw this photograph for the first time last night.

And it disturbs me.

Big time.

It is so much like a Bill Henson image.

Except it's me.

A very very messed up, eighteen-year-old me.

A me that I had forgotten.

evil step-mother

When I met T, my step-daughter was eight and my step-son was four. Now they are fourteen and ten.

Big kids. Easy to deal with.

But they always were.

In fact, I've always considered myself lucky in the whole step-department.

I heard so many horror stories growing up that I was determined from the beginning not to become the evil step-mother. Being younger, I considered myself an easy target for this. But the kids took to me pretty quickly, and I got along with their mother straight away, too - the last dregs of the break-up were long over by the time I came into the picture, and she was happily involved in a long-term relationship.

It was pretty neat and tidy, really.

But it feels less and less neat as time goes on.

Two years after I met them, their mother decided to move to the other side of the country with her partner and the kids.

Now, Australia is a big country.

To give you some idea: We are in the city on this map that is furthest South. They are in the city that is furthest north. There is approximately 3000 kilometers between us. That is over 18oo miles, or the distance between Denver and New York City, or Moscow and London.

It's a long fucking way.

I don't think I really understood the gravity of this at the time. We kind of knew we were powerless against the force of M's careful decision (and it was careful, I'll give her that). We just accepted it, telling ourselves that several good weeks a year was better than every second weekend in some ways.

The trouble is, the more I think about having/not having my own children, the angrier I get about this. Add an inexpliciably no-longer-fertile husband, an impending IVF cycle and many many dollars to the mix, and you have one pretty angry Meg.

On so many levels.

How do I feel about the fact that our maybechild will hardly ever have contact with their half-brother and sister? How do I feel about the fact that both the kids were accidents; that T. used to work and they didn't even really want him to? How do I feel about the fact that A, my step-son, really has no male role model, and the fact that he so clearly needs one? How can I avoid getting pissed off on principle that we have to pay for airfares for T. to go visit next month (Not me. Hell, we can't afford that!) instead of putting it toward IVF treatment? We were certainly not the ones who made the decision to move the kids to the other side of the country!

And how can M. have the nerve to get all touchy when we dare to broach the idea of S, my step-daughter, coming to live with us for a bit in a year or two? Is being far away from your children difficult or something? Yes. Well.

Look.

I could go on.

But I'm probably boring you enough already, and I'm sure I made my point:

That some things just fucking bite.

Grr.

embarrassing incident

My mother swears that she does not remember this incident.

But I do.

It was significant, after all: It was the original S.W.B.

And we all know how reliable a six-year-old's memory is.

The incident occurred while we were visiting a friend of my mother's, who lived in a block of flats. They had been inside drinking coffee, as I played outside at the bottom of the long car park. There was an old cement block incinerator in the small garden there, and I had been poking around in it; searching for what, I don’t know.

What I found was a pair of bloodied underpants in a paper bag.

I ran inside, waving the underpants in my hand and screeching.

Mum, you have to call the police! Someone’s been murdered! I found these in the incinerator!

My mother and her friend were shocked, and rightly so. As my mother forced me to dispose of the evidence and sent me off to wash my hands, I heard her friend say to her:

I think you’re going to have to have a little talk with Megan.

Now this sparked my interest. A Little Talk. I nagged my mother all the way home: What did she mean by a little talk? Are we going to have a little talk? What was the little talk going to be about? Could she give me any hints?

My mother said: Not now, Megan.

A week or so later, when my father and brother were “elsewhere”, my mother sat me down next to her on the couch. She placed a book on the coffee table in front of us. It was a big square hard-cover, and very innocuous – all pastel colours and dainty line-drawings.

We went through the book together. She was very patient and calm, slowly pointing out the ovaries and the fallopian tubes and the uterus, and carefully, methodically explaining what each one did.

When we were done, I said to her:

So, the blood comes out because you have to make room for the egg?

My mother sighed.

Yes, Meg, that’s more or less it.

I believed this until I was about fifteen years old.

Sad, huh?

patterns

I was sixteen, seventeen when I met D's parents.

Most of us have had a friend with parents like these. That for some reason you responded to, that made you lament loudly and musically to your own that  ........'s parents are diff-er-ent... They treat me like a real per-son...

D's parents were the first people to ever have real adult conversations with me.

His mother was a big Austrian woman. Big in every sense of the word: loud, loving, effusive, bossy. She had this huge laughing extended family that were just the same; that dished out hugs and insults and apple strudel to all the random teenagers who wandered in to their family events.

D's father was an accountant. A poetry-writing accountant. He was a quiet man by nature, a talker and an intellect. He lent me books, and showed me his haiku. He talked about philosophy with us when we were first discovering ideas, and never ever condescended. If our ideas were boring, he never said.

At the time, I remember my mother -- who was no doubt hurt somewhat by my infatuation with another family -- saying: Well, they probably aren't so perfect to D.

True of course.

But then, I went to D's father's 60th birthday a couple of years back. And I was still struck by the warmth of them: The way his father shook my husband's hand with real affection. The way his mother gave me the most crushingest hug, then clasped my hands and urged me to visit them soon.

And the speeches.

The telling of love. The bigness of it, the expansiveness. It's actually making me cry just to think about it: this family that is not afraid to tell each other how much they love one another.

Which I guess is at the core of it all.

Hey?

I've talked before about the Britishness of my temperament. The way I can't help but insist on self-containment most of the time, and have a hard time expressing my feelings in any way other than the written word. (The funny thing is that my even more British family seem to consider me some over-the-top kind of trouble-maker-slash-overreacter. Perhaps I am in comparison to them. Ha! I find this terribly ironic, given the lump that sits in my throat 90% of the time)

But I don't want to be like this. I never have. It's not me. It's just baggage.

And I don't want my own (possible) family to be like this. I want them to be warm, unafraid. I want them to feel like they can express their hurt, their anger, their happiness without having to dress it up in this constant cynicism.

T. tells me that our family will be whatever we want it to be. That my fears will never manifest because I will be just way too wary of them. I hope so. I try to trust in his influence at least; him being the warm, cheeky, expressive, playful, sensitive, creative, articulate outdoor type that he is. (I hope he's reading; he so frequently complains about my portrayal of him!)

Because I'm sure it must be a pattern, even if no one wants to talk about it. And whether I follow the pattern or rebel against it, it's still going to be there.

Moving through the generations like a needle and thread, loop upon ritual loop.

broken open

When I was sixteen, and part of this drama class cum freaky, emotionally dangerous cult ( but that's another story, innit?) I was asked to complete an activity where I drew a picture of my future.

The picture was of me on a farm, with a partner, a child, animals and a notebook and pen. It was a crayon-drawing, and completely rudimentary, but I hung onto it literally for years.

The strange thing is how little that vision changed.

Ten, fifteen years later, I still found myself wanting to be a good kind of hippy. To move to the mountains, keep chickens, make my own sourdough culture. To live creatively and resourcefully. To raise a child. Bake. Write.

Be happy. Be real.

It is a credit to my parents that for most of my life I have believed I am capable of doing anything I set my mind to. I was a sheltered kid in lots of ways. Nothing bad ever really happened to me. I was loved. I was good at school. I wasn't entirely unattractive. I was successful at most things I attempted. Princess Meg, right?

It was never difficult for me to believe in The Great Big Reason for things to happen, to believe that everything will always be ok in the end. I had my little red copy of Guide to the Advanced Soul, and it gave me every kind of answer I needed.

A week or two ago, I was in the car with my husband. I can't even remember what we were discussing. Something political, possibly.

Education and privatisation. Buying university places. Big issue in Australia.

Some way into it, and in far more context than I am about to give, he said something to the effect of: Hardship gives people the opportunity to grow. It was a fair argument at the time, but that did not change my reaction.

And that was to say this:

Hardship does not make people grow, T.  Hardship destroys people. It makes them weak. It wears them down so they are powerless.

Powerless.

And here is where I realised that something in me has broken.

Or broken open.

I'm not sure which.

yes, darling, a nice post will follow

I want this shirt.

Yep.

I am really grumpy with my husband today.

Like, really grumpy. In fact, this is a 24 hour binge of super-anger, which is rare for me. Usually I crack it for about two or three hours and then get bored.

Are we the only couple who has the same fight, over and over? Tell me we're not. Please.

Our standard fight usually begins with T. getting annoyed about my supposed laziness with the housework. His pet hate is the fact that I will not do it as soon as I get out of bed, which is his own personal preference, so by the time I get around to getting off my bum and waking up properly, he has already done it.

I am lazy. I will not deny that. I do love a sleep-in. They do get a little excessive.

However, I am not as lazy as he likes to believe.

Aside from being the main breadwinner (ie. supporting the fact that he chooses to work part-time), there are several areas that are my personal realm in this household. I cook, I do the washing, I take care of all the money stuff, I fill in all the forms (we are talking about a man who didn't do his taxes for ten years before he met me.)

No, I do not vaccum; no, I do not take out garbage; no, I do not often do the dishes. Yes, I am lazy with walking the dog. Yes, I am lazy with cleaning the bathroom.

But so is he. He never does anything thoroughly, for starters.

I actually think he enjoys playing the martyr, to be honest. I think he wills it on himself: Oh look, I do everything around here. What a hard life I have.

My mother used to do that (or I perceived that she did, anyway). I fucking hated it.

Anyway... Usually where this accusation of laziness goes is this:

I say: Get over it. You have been complaining about this for seven years. You're not Mr. Fucking Perfect, yourself, are you?

And then I fight back with a list of his crimes:

You play computer games more than you talk to your wife.You never want to go out with me socially and I always have to make excuses for you. You do not do any of the creative things you used to do when we met. You still smoke, and even still smoke in the house.

Etc. Etc. I could go on.

And it all goes back and forward, back and forward. It is predictable. It is tiresome. It is completely boring.

What frustrates me the most, I have to say, is that I would never even bring up any of that stuff if he didn't come out with these attacks. I -- as the better party to all this, of course (ahem) -- have actually learned to accept what is "wrong" with my husband and function around it. I love him anyway, despite his "flaws".

I don't know why he can't just be nice. Why cause conflict over something so petty as the housework?

Really?

So anyway, there you go. My first true bloggy husband whinge.

How liberating it is.

We should all do a little more husband-bagging, don't you think?

large irrational ventage

I had hoped that keeping a strong eye on it and getting out of the house for short bursts would keep the claustrophobia under control. Oh, how quickly I forget.

No, sadly it seems to have won. I am beat by claustrophobia. Mashed, squashed, sore.

Ouch.

It is 4:30 am currently, however. And it is dark and quiet and delicious, and for this moment, I almost feel like myself.

So take a big deep breath, Meg.

I remember being around sixteen, seventeen and absolutely heaping judgement on the step-parents of my friends for their inability to handle visits from their partner's children. I take it back. Take it all back.

(Given, that was just weekends. How I long for just weekends.)

The trouble is, we have no control. None. These children-cum-adolescents? Neither of us have any input into the way their behave or the people they are becoming. How could we, from the other side of the country?

So what I am left with in this house right now, essentially, is a complete lack of boundaries... God, we use that word at school - Boundaries. But that's how I am feeling the last week or so. I have that same tight, about-to-burst feeling in my throat. The same rising, uncomfortable pulse that I had in the classroom in my first year of teaching when I did not yet have any idea how to "control a class."

And it's small things that do it to me. Such as the fact that my step-daughter keeps saving email address and password on Hotmail on my laptop, so that I have to log out of her account before I check my email, when I myself am polite enough to keep the tick there in the do not remember box. Or the fact that my step-son, at the age of eleven, is still apparently incapable of getting his own breakfast or turning on his own shower. No, I don't mean he is too lazy to do it. I mean he just doesn't know what to do. His mother also never insisted he learn to ride a bicycle. So.

What the fuck? Really?

I find myself offering brief moments of comfort by telling myself: My child will know how to make his own breakfast. My child will not spend hours staring at screens of various sizes; he will play outside if it means I need to tie him to a tree. He will read if it means I have to lock him in his room.

Dammit.

(He will probably call his mother a controlling bitch, but thems the breaks, right?)

Add to this a visit from the (sperm-killing) inlaws and I am about to go insane.

Enough said.

Real life friends reading this? Please call and invite me to an urgent something.

No, an urgent anything.

God, please.

black and white cat

Dear Ben,

A few days have passed now since you suddenly disappeared.

We knew something was up right away. Usually you beg us for food all day long, miawing noisy figure eights around our ankles, whether you've eaten or not. But Tuesday night you didn't come back for dinner, and we haven't seen you since.

I called the vet on Wednesday afternoon, you know. I asked if anyone had brought in a black and white cat. They told me no.

Instead, they told me that one had been reported dead, out on the tourist road. You weren't there though. Maybe they took you away before we could find you, so as not to disturb the tourists on their way to Devonshire Tea and knick-knack buying.

Poor old Benji. I'm sorry we were so mean to you. I'm sorry for all the times we told you to go and play on the road. We didn't know you would. I mean, you never even went in the front yard. But still. You were just so annoying, you see. A. Really. Annoying. Cat.

I'm sorry you were second best for so long. When I first got you, I had just moved out of home, and you were so spoiled. You slept curled up in my neck for the first year, Benji, and followed my moods as I ran around drunken and crazy in the city, or else slumped depressively in my bed. When I first met T. you were so jealous, and in typical annoying Ben fashion, you pissed on my bed almost every night for the first couple of weeks, patiently waiting and planning your deed until we returned home from the movies. Very romantic of you.

At least in later years you discovered the bathtub.

Poor old Ben.

You seemed to tolerate Felix' insanity with nobility, mellowing out finally. When he died last year, just a month before Jasper was born, we realised you hadn't mellowed out at all. We had just been blaming all the squabbling on him. In reality, you still loved to sink your jaws, your sharp claws into live, juicy flesh.

And you did. Remember the time you leapt onto T's hand and punctured a vein, sending fountains of blood flying across the kitchen? Remember how you would loll, relaxed, on the hallway floor, waiting for me to walk past, then you would pounce, clasping my calf in a needle-sharp, vice-like grip? Or how about the three tiger-lines you put across Jasper's cheek last month?

Ah, the fun we had, Ben.

I'm sorry for not being sadder. I'm sorry for knocking you off my pumping chair all the time. I'm sorry for yelling at you for breaking open my blocks of chocolate, and for ignoring your relentless calls to go in / go out / go in / go out.

You were just so annoying.

To be remembered with fondness and exasperation.