Sometimes we lose things that are really important to us. Later they may loose their significance and seem less of a loss. I lost two hours of typing last evening. It was a very emotional text. I was disturbed by new guests here, wanting to talk and me not feeling able to say, excuse me, im busy working. I need my own room, my own space to write. Two more days and i will be out of Levis little room and will have more space, have my own desk, will be able to feel cool wind on my face, not be in a stuffy room with a dog snuffling around.
At the time, loosing my writing was a great loss but in being forced to re write it, i know i will re-live it and it will be easier second time round.
I marvel how easy it will be with written copy to retype, and remember how it was when i didnt have a written record to copy, my brain simply forgot, or failed to register or refused to reconnect with the difficult emotions i felt, refused to write them again. I must rmember to save my work more often.
I think i am home. I think i may be ready to go walk about.
I no longer feel any urge to care about money or come home. I have been freed.
I am asked, where to next, and in honesty i cant say, i dont know. Yes, i will go to denmark, but from there? At this moment in time, I feel ready to rent my house and move with the wind.
I know that i am recording an umbrellaed australian journal and know that i am affected by my memories, by the many lessons i learned only to have since ignored. I am sure it will come to be about Australia rather than about my anxieties in the midst of separation from geoff but who knows.
It is interesting to note that whilst the subject of loneliness repeats itself over and over, i only write when alone. When in the company of others i have no words to say. Days pass by with no words. My thoughts are living, spoken, not written. Writing is my alter ego, my significant other, i need someone to talk to and in the absence of such, I write. How surprising then that i frequently talk about being alone.
There is no balance. Please take it as read that when fully engaged and in company there is no writing and therefore no halelujahs of security.
I have no idea who might be reading. Either reading this or my australian journal posts. It is not important. I write for me, i read for me, there is little in my life that I would not share, if asked. But i do wonder. I do wonder though about some of the future content of my australian material, how i will feel about sharing it, how easy it might be not to edit and sift it. What will be will be.
And there is so much i want to add, long long emails that need sifting and interspersing so the writing becomes grounded. My journals were my thoughts, my emails my experiences. Together i hope they will paint a picture but for now it is just my thoughts that i record.
My plans? I have no plans, i need no plans, my mission is clear, to be and to write.
But what if i brought everything down to that level, just wandered around until i found somewhere to be, to write. About what? I would have no words. My words only come from my angst. No that is untrue. My thoughts are enhanced by my angst but i have words nevertheless. Maybe if i work through my angst i may find words to write about something other than myself.
At school i wanted to be a journalist, my careers advisor told me i wasnt clever enough. or that was what i heard. I have no idea how that can actually have been said although it was said again later, when i went to teacher training college. It wasnt until i went to UEA, started my masters part time while teaching at Larkman, studying to move through the pay threshold to earn more to support us, that people started to look to me and suggest that i might be bright. I became very confused for i had no concept of myself as bright, didnt understand what others were saying, i felt just damaged and dowdy.
That careers officer changed the course of my life and i became lost, knew not what i wanted to do. All i had ever wanted to do was write. I think she meant you are fucking around at school, not working, your results dont look promising. If you want to be a journalist you need to stay on to take A levels and then go to university. That might have been constuctive advice. Or she might have said you can apply for a job as soon as you leave school, as a junior, and try to work your way up to becoming a reporter.
Instead, i was told i needed to be more realistic and choose something else. I dont recall any further careers advice, if any was offered, i probably didnt go. Later i wanted to grow things, to be self sufficient, to be a market gardener but i was afraid of slugs and snails and worms so didnt think i would manage that. I ended up doing the one thing i had always sworn i would never do and i dont think ive ever quite accepted myself for doing so.
My mother read my teenage diaries, i had written about running away from home at twelve, about my first experiences getting to kiss boys, normal teenage angst and of course my suicide attempt at fourteen, hospitalised for several days and banned from talking about it, so i wrote. I received a label. Borderline personality disorder. I felt so shamed, i wasnt even good enough to kill myself, couldnt even get that right.
I have no idea how long my mother had been reading my locked diaries. At fifteen i began to discover boys bodies a bit more intimately. She was furious, called me a slut, told me she had read my diaries and whilst i dont recall the punishment, for me, the eternal punishment was that i burned my diaries. How i would have loved to read them when carla and nicola were teenagers, try to understand the emotions i had been going through at the similar age. Such loss. And how i would love to treasure them now, return to that lost child and support and nurture her, tell her how beautiful she was and will be.
Had she taken time to ask me or talk to me it may have been so very different. I lost my virginity a few days before my sixteenth birthday, with a guy i barely knew. I was so angry at having been cast a slut for so many years that i was determined not to reach the legal age for sex and still be a virgin. It wasnt a good experience, how much do you actually know about all this, he asked. I don't, i said, that was my first time. I didnt see him again.
