Home is where... where you put the stuff you love?

The biggest life shift this year has been finding, setting up and residing in a share house. It's a freaking awesome homey, hippie house but it did require quite a bit of blood, sweat and tears to set up. The rental market is BRUTAL, especially if you're a student with a stopgap casual job. Noone seems to care that its a superfun job. Several Saturdays vanished in a haze of tottering between rental inspections - pretty sure one real estate agent thought i was stalking him, I saw his bewildered expression when I turned up to wander around yet another house with an air dazed hopefulness. Perhaps if I smiled sweetly someone will give me their house to have my sedate uni student parties in. Heh.

The hardest part: knowing my name is on the lease. I'm really quite attached to my ass and now it is on the line if ANYTHING happens to this beautiful house, or if one of my housemates skips town.Getting appliances and everything that a house needs was kinda annoying but also a life altering experience. Did you know there is such a thing as an avocado slicer, which looks NOTHING like a knife? Whoa.

The funnest part: living with friends is like a permanent sleepover where you don't have to get cold feet getting to your own bed! Walking to uni is through a magical forest (no, really, its like Narnia) and along a creek.

Plunging in

Heh. So I haven't posted in several years and the spammers have been trying to squat on it presumably with intention of getting their clammy paws on it but its mine, MINE g'damit! This tiny little piece of the websphere with my favourite colours recording some of my favourite rants. Chances are no one reads it anymore but whatevs :D

Anyway, I have the writing bug again! I suspect it bit me because I updated google reader and began to systematically follow my favourite blogs again. 

The craziness began on the road. 

So I'm in the car, being driven back from Melbourne. Phone rings, honours supervisor's number comes up. 

Panic attack. 

There may or may not have been some terrified throwing of the phone onto the next seat and putting a pillow on top of it. 

Ahem. 

Fast forward through 2 hours of rumination (The university loves me, it loves me not, but maybe it does love me, oh god it definitely doesn't love me) and l refuse to call back. The Boy, no stranger to these tormented mental journeys waits patiently for some sanity to return. 'You can make concrete plans once you know' he says. Annoyingly rational. Then, finally I am ready. Yes, I can handle the rejection. It will be okay. 

And the phone line is faulty when I returned the call. Of course, right? Of blooming course.

Anyway 12 hours later I found out I got in! Hooray! 

A celebratory evening of friends, wine, pasta and Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog ensued. 

Struggle Town

So,

Sat down to write this essay which is overdue by more days than I want to count, I realised some useful facts.

(a) Facebook stalker skills can, to a certain extent be used for proper research. No, really its not just justification, its that honing in on a target thing.

(b) There is always some marvelous chappie who, several decades previously, spent time amalgamating research into a single wonderful journal article that enables you to write 3,000 words on a topic and sound like you've read many dozen articles.

God bless his soul.

May he rest in peace.

And have large amounts of good karma.

'Heartless'

I'm not the crying sort, find it rather unhelpful and pointless in most situations. This book had tears streaming down till 3am. Simple, straightforward language expressing emotions raw like skin scraping against rough concrete. The certainty based on rationality with which I approach life in general was given a severe shaking, casually churned over a few times and tossed back onto the floor. Heart wrenching helplessness. How is it that 'real' life never makes me feel like this?

A fleeting half second of doubt. Should I have walked away from him? Perhaps it was good, better than I realised and the fault was with me, and my inability to be still. But sanity reigned. Even amongst emotional chaos and racing thoughts my gut reassures me I am where I want to be. Where I should be. And so is he. Moving more swiftly than expected towards a type of happiness and contentment we could never get from each other. So much chemistry dissolving, dissolved into nothingness. Or perhaps transformed into another form of energy, more stable, softer, less demanding.

After several years of long distance his voice is the most familiar, most Him to me. Deep and warm and comforting, even now when he isn't mine anymore. I used to lose focus on the words and just let the feelings wash over me, snuggle into the security offered. A lot has changed, there are things we cannot say anymore, there are things we cannot say just yet. Ten minutes of small talk can still calm me down. We are where we should be.

Where do you go to hide?

I'm not unhappy very often. About a year ago that statement would have been quite different, sadness was often overwhelming for about a year. Looking back, I'd say it was entirely about coping skills. This time last year I'd stay in bed for a week, today I wore a pretty dress and pigtails and after an hour of meeting happy people and laughing with them, the world is my personal, pearl filled little oyster :) 8 hours of studying later life is so much more doable! 

It scares me sometimes because its almost entirely the people who make my life so happy. Not  only close friends but also acquaintances who share titbits about their lives in lively snatches of conversation, random shopkeepers who will give me rubber bands for free because they want to share in my urge to wear pigtails, total strangers who make jokes when the buses are half an hour late because everyone is equally annoyed and really, you might as well laugh. It's an odd sense of community in big city. Is that an Aussie thing? Because my experience of the States[LA and San Francisco] was that it was comparatively quite cold and alienating. SF not as much, but nowhere near as warm and welcoming as Melbourne.

This weekend was horrible. I was completely stressed out and felt like everything was out of my control. But, for once, instead of panicking, well, instead of only panicking, I sat down at 3am and wrote a looong detailed e mail to S, love of my life, keeper of my soul, which had, in a point system everything that was bothering me and why. It was such a catharsis. While writing I could hear her voice in my head, comforting, like a proper red rice and curry meal. By then end of it I was more than ready to attack all the situations, which I did. She laughed her ass off at how I answered all my own questions and anxieties but using all the things she would have and in a strange way did, say.  

So thats where I run to. To S, to people, to patches of grass in the sun and pigtails. Sometimes I forget that overcoming panic actually is about strategy. And warmth.

Let's go dance under the streetlights

"Some people, its a pity,

They go all their lives and never know,

How to love or let love go"

- Rob Thomas, Streetcorner Symphony

That knowing when to let go stuff, it gets so complicated. 

When is something broken enough to leave before it is so completely shattered that it leaves little shards of itself embeded in you forever? 

Life can be so sweet, on the sunny side of the street

So during one of my Psyc labs this week, we had to fill out yet another tedious questionnaire about the meaning of life. Anyway, while trying to choose a number to represent how I felt about my search for meaning, it dawned on me that I'm no longer particularly fussed about having a purpose/ some driving force/ greater meaning to my life. I used to be quite horribly tormented by it, i.e. it would delay my sleep by sometimes an hour *gasp* - I jest, you know what I mean.

Doing horrible commerce subjects and walking out of classes with a far deeper understanding of Pink Floyd's brick in the wall analogy than I would wish on even people I dislike, there was a constant feeling of unease. This is back when everything was mapped out in with a large amount of certainty: internship -> part time job -> grad job -> career. All I had to do was plod along accordingly, which I was doing with a restlessness under the skin, between organs somewhere deeper than scratch-able depth.

Now, I haven't a clue where my life is headed, got a weeiiirrd combination of degrees that may or may not work out and may or may not be able to get me hired at the end, and I've never felt more secure about life in general and self in particular.

I haven't really found Purpose in my life, but I'm finding the present too enjoyably satisfying to be looking for it as such. It'll turn up one day when I least expect it and surprise me. Or maybe not turn up at all and that might actually be okay!