When I discovered that most women develop hemorrhoids because of childbirth, it absolutely confirmed my decision to never have children – as if my own childhood wasn’t enough of a reason (which it was!).
So at forty five, I thought I was unlikely to feel the pain and discomfort of them for at least another few decades. Wrong!
How do I know what a hemorrhoids is or looks like? Well lucky ol’ me got to see some pretty big ones on the derriere of an ex-boyfriend. I had to ‘treat’ them for him as he was physically unable to treat them. Told you I was lucky.
So tonight, as I was hoiking tens of kilos of dog food and washing powder off trolleys and onto shelves, I felt a very uncomfortable niggle in my nether regions. After a few hours of consideration as to what was causing the discomfort, I realised the all-to-embarrassing fact . . . I had grapes growing out me bum!
This of course led to another few hours of deliberation as to how the actually fuck I got them, as I can tell you (even though you may not want to know) that I do NOT strain when I am on the lavatory. Either it comes out or it stays in. I’m not putting any pressure on the situation.
After some serious deliberation as to what made the dastardly bubbles appear, I realised that the only pressure I had put my body under – in the general vicinity if you get my meaning – was a normal session of self-pleasure that I had immersed myself in last night.
For those of you who don’t get it – I masturbated last night.
Now this is a VERY normal thing for both boys and girls to do, although I only learned this reality as an adult. I personally don’t get the whole taboo surrounding it, and I’m certainly not going to go without a good orgasm now and then just because I don’t have actual sex.
So my question is – is this going to happen again?!?
OR, more to the point . .
How do I avoid this happening again???
I wish I had a photo to show you of this time in my life,
but,
even though my Mum had a camera in my youth the truth is we couldn’t afford
to get the photos processed ($13 for 24 photos back in the 80’s!).
.
.
When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, I used to go to an underage disco in Perth. It was located right in the middle of Perth. Teens from the whole Perth metro area were welcome. I am completely unaware if it was privately owned or run by the Perth City Council. A decade before computers became prevalent and twenty years before the age of the internet, I can’t find any record of it.
I use to go with my best friend, B.
Music was such an escape for me back as a teenager. Like it is for so many young people. But mine was a different form of escapism from the norm – I was less enamoured with the words as I was with the melody. Actually, it was the beat that I was addicted to.
.
.
I’ve talked before about how I feel music in my marrow. I feel it right inside of me. Deep. As a teenager who was exposed to a poisonous anti-male upbringing and with little or no love being shown towards me (or my siblings), who had no redeemable physical or intellectual features with which to excel in life and as a youth who was ‘plain’ to say the least . . . . music became my safe place.
Such a beautiful and remarkable safe place.
I LOVE listening to music.
But I LOVE dancing to music even more.
Now, I’m not a pretty dancer. I get right into it – if you know what I mean. I throw my body around in perfect tempo with the rhythm and beats of music. Quite often head down concentrating the efforts of my arms and limbs, to perfectly synch with the next beat that I know is coming. My torso is always moving, either swaying, twitching or convulsing. I told you – the music gets right into my marrow. Into the nucleus of every cell.
Unfortunately, this expenditure of energy does produce some fairly unattractive results . . . . . mainly a sweaty, red-faced girl. Can you imagine it?!? Not pretty, is it? It’s just one of those unfortunate inherited traits, where the red-headed Irishman/convict of my past, shows itself with utter regularity, whenever I am energetic.
.
.
Put this together with a frenetic and not-altogether-scary vision of the contortions I make while dancing, and perhaps you can begin to see why boys never rushed to my side.
Being a ‘normal’ adolescent, I wanted to be attractive to boys. For boys to ‘like’ me. It wasn’t until a particularly nasty comment from one of my sisters in my mid 20’s, that I begun to become self-conscious of how I danced. I begun to care what I looked like rather than how I felt when I was immersed in dancing. But in my teens, I was oblivious.
My unattractive state while I moved was made even more glaring by my beautiful girlfriend, who was just swaying to the beat. Can I paint you a picture? Long, long auburn hair, thick as Rapunzel’s. Thick and dark lashes on cat-like brown yes. High cheek bones and a smattering of freckles. She already had a budding hourglass figure and developed boobs wayyyyyy before me. Long legs and slightly taller than average, my girlfriend was a boy-magnet. In fact, they swarmed.
.
.
Looking back now I can see that this difference in our physical selves and how we were perceived by the opposite gender, had a profound effect on our friendship over the coming decades. Not by design, envy or malice, purely because of human nature.
What do I mean?. After only a few visits (a few Saturdays in a row), a young deaf guy called M, started to really fancy B. As I said, she always had boys around her but there must have been something about him that she particularly found interesting. Thankfully, the 1980’s were still innocent enough days, where a bit of snogging was the ‘most’ that could happen at an underage even. Well for the majority of kids anyway.
B’s Mum was usually the one who picked us up at the end of the evenings, as (I now realise) mine wouldn’t have been in a state to drive. I was always so embarrassed and apologetic to B’s Mum that she had to be the one to pick us up. I fretted and felt so painfully guilty. I remember one night she was a bit snappy and seemed annoyed at having to pick us up. From that night on, I was always so anxious to be on time whenever she was picking us up.
.
.
Another night that sticks on the tracks of my memory train, is a Saturday only a few weeks later, that we went to Angels. B & her beau M, were dragging their feet even though the music had stopped and lights were on. I was just so anxious to not keep B’s Mum waiting. But B had other priorities and of course we never treat our own Mum’s how we treat others, do we? She was happy to make her Mum wait.
It seems weird doesn’t it!?! The three strongest memories I have of those juvenile hedonistic dance nights are
* how beautiful my girlfriend looked when she danced
* how unattractive I was compared to my girlfriend
* a severe anxiety at making other people wait for me, even when the situation is controlled by others.
My strongest memory isn’t of my own love and joy of dancing. That’s a bit sad wouldn’t you say? And what of my girlfriend B?
She is as remarkably beautiful a woman, wife and mother as she was as a teenager.
.
.
Lastly, I just had to share this utter classic from the 80’s.
If this video clip doesn’t make you fucking lose it laughing – then your soul is dead. I’m sorry, but it’s true!
Lots of people get hayfever.
It’s a buggar of a thing that is more debilitating than we like to give credit to.
I am not unique in suffering from it nor are my symptoms unusual in sufferers. However, some of the symptoms that manifest aren’t talked about very much in general public – you know like on the antihistamine ads on the telly – and I need to do something about that.
Now I do exhibit the normal list of identified complaints such as itchy eyes, tickled nose, sneezing, hives and irritated soft palate (roof of my mouth),
BUT,
I also suffer from less talked about maladies of the condition, that I am aware others suffer from. Some of them are absolute rippers, too!
The absolute worst of which is when my inner ear canal gets irritated and itchy. I swear it is an amazingly surreal situation to have an itch in a place you cannot scratch.
Not that I don’t give it a red hot ‘go’.
I have tried to gain some relief by poking around in my ear with a number of items, the least dangerous being my little finger and the least intelligent being a toothpick. But that’s not all . . . how about a letter opener, cotton buds, bobby pins and a wooden skewer!?! Are you starting to see how irritating it must be to have this particular hayfever malady?
To be honest with you though, I am utterly grateful to live in a country that supplies cheap and easy-to-access antihistamines and to live in a part of the country that isn’t a total dust bowl.
How passionate are you? Is there some fire burning in you on a deep level about an issue that is really important to you. A social issue? A wrong that you need to right?
I do, although I don’t know anybody who is aware of it.
I want to permanently change the Foster Care system in Australia so that it is a world leader in the care and nurturing of children who are at risk.
If you ask me how I’m going to do this – I can’t tell you why.
‘Cause I just don’t know.
If you ask me how long it will take – I’m not going to be able to say.
‘Cause I have no idea.
Then I saw this story about an ‘Everyman’ in rural India – a dude called Dashrath Manjhi – who ploughed fields (by hand!!!) to make a living,
and,
he also spent twenty two years to cut a highway through a mountain.
Why?
To link his poor and isolated village with the more affluent and advanced village on the other side of the mountain.
How?
With a hammer and chisel!
No shit!
.
.
And it makes me look at my hidden passion, and reaffirms that I need not place a timeline on my goal to make change. I can chip away at it. Moving one obstacle at a time, and I can be flexible as to how to attack the next stage of the process. I don’t have to look at the enormity of my task, I can simply look at making an impact in any way that I can.
Instead of seeing the mountain, I am going to see the highway.
I have spoken before about my desire to re-work my existence from Depression, loss, envy and regret, to a new outlook of Gratitude and Kindness. It’s not a journey I am embarking on with haphazard attitude – I work on it EVERY day.
* When I hang out a load of washing – I compile a Gratitude list.
* When someone is cracking the shits, at me – I consider how kindness from me, would alter their perspective.
* When I am driving to my boring part-time job – I compile a Gratitude list.
* When I start my part-time job of an evening, I buy donuts or peanut biscuits (so frickin’ yummy) to share with my co-workers a couple of hours into our shift (it goes down an absolute treat, let me tell you).
So just as a stone plonking into a puddle, causes first a small ripple, which becomes a second bigger ripple and then a third larger ripple, and so on and so on . . . I am planning to have the same effect on my life and my psyche.
I am decidedly NOT a fan of Winter.
Never have been.
Never will be.
Living in a mostly-uninsulated fibro house on stilts doesn’t help the issue.
It gets bloody cold in my little purple house.
But, I am on a path to remedying that particular issue!
At this time of the year as the days are getting vastly shorter and the evening cool sets in at about 4pm, I start to get a little ‘melancholy’. I am aware of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and other forms of the Winter Blues and recognise that with my history of Depression – I am susceptible. I know to keep an eye out for certain symptoms.
However, even armed with knowledge of what may come and experience of the past, I will be exposed to the unavoidable despair. That’s just how it is – I can’t avoid it.
So I am going to spend a little time in the coming days – this week in particular – to try to build a plan. A plan to deal with the cold and the short days and the sunless daylight and the rain and the wind and did I mention the cold? I really REALLY dislike being cold.
If you have any tips on how to better deal with the inevitable cool seasons, please, please let me know.
I am starting tonight, by moving my bed and tucking a blanket across the foot of the bed. Snuggly toes do make me feel a heck of a lot happier.
Next is going to be insulation in the new walls of my new kitchen – BOY! Is that a story you have to hear.
Although my life has been far from idyllic, it certainly hasn’t been the trial that so many others on this planet suffer through.
I am genuinely grateful for that. However, I do have, and have had for nearly thirty years, a mental illness that has robbed my of my ability to view my life and life in general, in a true and clear manner. My vision of the world has been tinted with scratches and murky dark clouds. Clouds that became physical burdens often.
But I never stopped trying to find a solution to this situation – to the reality of my life. I kept trying and trying to find peace and maybe a speckle of happiness. I look at other sources outside my mind to generate calm and discover different points of view. I’ve heard this described as bravery or courage. To not succumb to the darkness.
I don’t think that’s what it is.
Although I no longer wake, disappointed to still be alive – the truth is I don’t really have any passion for life. I have been banished from my nephews’ lives, my mother only remembers me when she needs something and all but a couple of friends have found my journey through Depression to be exhausting to the point of abandonment. Losing Horatio, then Jack ten months ago was in a way, the final straw in my connectivity to this world.
While I have a deep awareness of ‘Why’, it doesn’t alleviate the sting of the reality.
So, without a purpose or person or reason to ‘live’ I just muddle forward. I am building a website from scratch in the belief that one day it will provide a substantial income. I try to learn something new every day. I am building a kitchen, from the floor up. I have started a long-since dead practice of taking “Afternoon Adventures“. I Create something EVERY day. I blog. I watch. I view. I read.
Although there is no ‘happiness’ in my life I can claim to be ‘happi-er‘. And this is a grand victory against previous hopeless moments.
God – there is this thing about beautiful music that just saturates my nerve endings and seeps into my marrow.
.
Quite simply – I ADORE listening to music.
.
.
I am always on the hunt for the kind of haunting music that makes me want to move. Even if it just to sway my arms.
But sometimes I have to jump.
Rage through the rooms in my little purple house.
I bounce and spin and kick.
I ADORE dancing to music.
.
.
The ethereal melody of a song that stops time.
Stops you from leaving the car when you reach your destination so you can hear the song finish on the radio.
Stops you from getting out of your chair as the songs concludes on your pc.
Stops you from starting your day as a song runs through to the finish on the Sunday morning music video show.
.
.
Music that catches your breath and then leaves your body in one gasping sigh as the last note fades.
I am so grateful that I live in a country where I am able and free to listen to music that I love.
No hindrance.
No law.
No censorship.
I am so grateful that I am allowed to immerse myself in whatever construction of notes & chords I choose.
One of the most surprising aspects of my nighttime job filling shelves, is the things I see as I open and unload cartons and boxes of supermarket fodder. Every now and then I learn something and then sometimes I see a thing that makes me laugh out aloud.
Guffaw even!
.
Only two or three people in the life-cycle of this carton, will see this message.
.
I mean how would you react if you open a box and saw this for the first time?
Wouldn’t you have a chuckle as well?!?
Someone with a sense of humour designed this carton!
.
One night I came across this ‘imaginative’ spelling. What’s weird about this sight, is that there is VERY little opportunity for someone to write on a carton once it leaves the central supermarket warehouse.
Where this blue script originated from, is anyone’s guess.
Pretty sure “Baroken” isn’t a word!
.
Then every now and then you come across an empty container that should in fact be full of (usually) food. Tins of soup, boxes of biscuits, bags of rice. There’s a sneaky stowaway from time to time.
Sealed and ready to sell – except it’s completely empty!
.
But the biggest surprise I have received during my nightly chores, was the image of the identified rice quarantine area within New South Wales, Australia.
Say what???
Many packaging types have the Quarantine label
.
Have you even heard of this?
.
I never expected an education while doing Nightfill.
So despite the dreary and repetitive nature of the job, I am grateful that I am given glimpses of humour and quirky surprises throughout each week. I know that it means that cutting open box may hold my next ‘wow’ moment.
pialosophy 