What it's about, I'm about

Writer, lover, liver, lived.

I was given my first ever diary at age 10, by Aunty Rosalie (r.i.p.).  I took to the concept of recording my life immediately, & noted down important dates like Peter Criss’ birthday (from KISS).

The first months were fairly blank.  I had only just begun living with my father, before which I’d lived with an aunty & one (of 3) sisters, before which an orphanage, before which my original home with Mother, Father, sisters. That original home was splintered within its walls anyhow, but when Mum suicided when I was six, well, it completely shattered.

Living with my father, having not been with him so long, was joy at first.  But then began The Destruction of Me.  

My father was bipolar (aka MANIC depressive), which I never knew. On top of that, alcoholic.  On top of that, an arsehole. Yet, he was fun at times. Then so viciously cruel, hateful, damaging, unrelenting. Writing became my coping mechanism. I wagged days from school because I couldn’t bear to be amongst people, & I hated myself (my father instilling in me my uselessness, talentlessness, lack of value on Earth), & when I developed bulimia, well, that was just the icing on the cake (ha ha!).  Not a one at school could understand, so I didn’t want to be there.

I went extreme with exercise – walking & swimming, literally until I was so body-busted, I could only crawl into my bed, put the blanket over my head, & let the tirades of hate by my father flow over me.  I couldn’t help the vibrations sinking into my skin, me soaking up his words,however.  That’s the horror of abuse – no matter how hard shelled you become, pretending you feel nothing and nothing affects you – it still gets in.  We are human, after all.

I became seriously suicidal in teens (no-one ever knew; never saw counsellors etc) & contemplated it hard – how, how, HOW to do?  But when I crouched between parked cars in readiness to jump out, to die, I was stopped, always, by WHAT IF I was only maimed, & so there goes my good health for life? WHAT IF the driver suffers badly at my actions, how wrong of me.  WHAT IF – well, WHAT IF, when I left dad’s household…like, what could I be once freed from his domain/who am I, really/do I have a purpose?

So I didn’t suicide (FAIL).  But I remained suicidal after I left dad’s household at 17, bulimic, self-loathing, the wish to be an actor/news reader/writer/voice artist no longer alive in me – completely killed by the full belief I had not the ability; who was I kidding to think I had anything?  And I took to 9-5 work.

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It’s a long story, really, so jump past the marriage, my departure, 3 years single, when I met a man who I thought was different (you know that one, Ladies?) who might actually respect/like me.  My experiences with men, as you may imagine, had been 99% abuse-based.  But no, he actually had a girlfriend already.  So I left him, & went back to my lover of 2 years, a private investigator who came by at his convenience to enter me, spill, depart.  The few minutes grasping that man flesh, was all the love I could get in this world.

I wrote through it all, of course, and crammed all my writings into boxes, books, drawers.  Sometimes I ceremoniously burned my stuff by candles, or buried it at nearby Cottesloe, wishing to be read/heard by ‘someone…anyone’, and I remember once I put a pile of writing at an altar in a church, genuflected and walked away.  I just needed to deliver me ‘somewhere’.

When I found my ‘infertile’ body suddenly four months pregnant, it was traumatic.  To put it simply:  traumatic. I’d never held a baby before in my life; lived in a bedsitter; knew no-one with children; had night clubbing acquaintances not true close friends; had no family in the State of Western Australia (but my grandmother, approaching senility); had not close relationships with my sisters anyhow – could not tell them the truth of me: wanted to die, no boundaries, bulimic.

I looked into adopting out, but when the adoption counsellor was so ready to pass my baby into strangers’ hands “Because of mum’s suicide, dad’s abuse, alcoholism in the family, my tortured soul, depression” – I just couldn’t do it.  I mean, HOW can she be so ready to MAKE WORSE all the problems within me by helping me ‘offload’ my child, rather than actually helping me to COPE, TO EMBRACE, TO LEARN TO LIVE.  Having lost respect for her “way”, I never returned.

Yet, nor could I be a mother (especially having not grown up with a mother). So I decided to bear the life, then suicide. However, the life would want to know their mother – for sense of self.  So I began a journal.  I wrote to the child in my womb who I was, how they come about and then, after birth I could not abandon the child.  I therefore try.  And as I tried, I journaled.  And as it happens, I journaled abuse, my lack of boundaries, my inability to stand up against the father, etc and etc.

At one point it became clear to me that the only way to protect my child whom I loved, was to kill my child whom I loved.  The Courts failed us, the father certainly failed us.  

Therefore, my babe in my arms, I took us to a high place & in the night, alone, under the stars, prepared to jump us off.   

Suffice to say, something occurred under the stars that night in that place I had made the way of my son and me to, where he gripped me hard in the cool of the night as we got higher and higher, thinking he was holding onto me his rock for safety, yet it was I who was going to hurl us off the edge.  

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To write the story of the journey of my son & me to wellness, departure and personal strength, I have picked up the pen & begun many, many times.  But each time I did, I crumbled, fell depressed, & could not go near the subject. I had always been able to write my heart out, but this issue, I just could not articulate without sobbing, wetting the pages until they were mush that I screwed up, threw in the bin (FAIL).

Then, after nearly losing my life 2011 – solemnly literally, and by my own hand – I came out of hospital, then after recovery, in August 2011 I decided to face my lack of belief in self (‘yours is just another life; you’ve got nothing to offer the world’, ‘you can’t write; you’re talentless’, ‘who are you kidding you can inspire others?’) and face my dream:  to write a book inspirational, worthwhile, which would REACH ALL WHO NEED IT.

I decided to go public with my attempt.  To go public would be to call my own bluff.  I would blog my book, the first (imperfect) draft, and put it to the people to see if by any chance, I had anything to offer, really.  

I had never “blogged” before.  I expected because it was the internet I might get negatives from the world – but truly, no one could get me any more like dad had:  I was now impervious, as I had realised my own power.   In private, I collapse after each sad tell, but if per chance people were interested to hear further, then I would be motivated to take another step with it.  Chapter upon chapter, week upon week.

My readers, most especially my subscribers (I sort of feel a subscription is a vote of confidence in me getting this thing out, into the hands of other lives who need it) – they have been PIVOTAL, because of their feedback,

in me continuing chapter upon chapter.  I thank you, so truly.

If you have made it this far, to this last sentence:  I thank you, for reading.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel