Tracy in The Dark

“No Dadda today,” Daniel said as I strapped him into his car seat.  I looked at him.  This was the second time he had said that.

“Sweetheart  –” I began.

“No Dadda today!” Daniel said again, half in order, half request.  I snapped the buckle shut, looked at my boy.

~

“Chris, how often do you leave Daniel with Tracy?” I had asked, when collecting Daniel.  It was the opportunity I had been waiting for – Tracy was not around.

“Why?” Chris asked defensively.

I had learned over the months that if I had a concern regarding Daniel, I had to broach it carefully with Chris, tactfully.  I had learned that his temper needed to be managed and I had to be calm, gentle, placating.   If I angered Chris by questioning Daniel’s mood upon his return to me – or even wanted to know what they had done together, Chris was susceptible to tantrums.  He might handle Daniel roughly to demonstrate he is in charge – to see pain and anxiety rip through me, then storm off down the walkway of the block of flats, Daniel looking at me over Chris’ shoulder, me feeling anxiety, concern, helplessness.  He might sneer or laugh at me for my fears “groundless”, humiliating me in front of Tracy, regarding me as soft, brainless – “You make him a Mama’s Boy!”  He might raise his voice, have me cringe lest neighbours complain and Daniel and me be looked upon as trouble in the otherwise peaceful community.

I wished so badly that I could discuss Daniel with Chris and not be met with defence and guardedness – rather, equal concern.  But I could not, and inside me burned embers hell hot, of anxiety.  Daily I burned deep within where the child in me still cowered, trembled at raised voices, pleaded to not be the cause of a man’s ire.

~

“Mum has to work, darling,” I said.  I have to make money (how to explain that to a child?) so we can buy things we need and want – and pay rent!”

I had left my job as actor at the Police Academy and was working normal hours in a small office.  The boss often had an open Penthouse magazine on his desk when he called me in for some reason or other.  He repulsed me.  I was conflicted whether to tell him to put it away, or resist saying so in case he got some bizarre pleasure out of me acknowledging the breasts and long legs laid open before him.

Daniel was not persuaded.  He told me again he did not want Dadda today.

~

“Because, well, I don’t know Tracy”, I had told Chris.

What would Chris say if I told him that when I was putting Daniel to bed the other night and turned off the light, he began panicking and crying “Tracy in the dark!  Tracy in the dark!”  I had snapped on the light immediately and ask ‘What?’  But Daniel would say no more, just whimpered, “Tracy in the dark…” as if that explained itself to me.

Could Chris handle to know this, or would he think I was making it up?  What if he told Tracy and she got upset, and took it out on Daniel?  This is what broken people do to get at others, isn’t it:  harm children or animals? Could I risk this potential side effect of me telling Chris why I wanted to know how often he left Daniel with Tracy?

Tracy, a former battered wife who took beating after beating, but when her husband broke their son’s nose – then she left.  Tracy, who Chris planned to take custody of Daniel with once Daniel was out of nappies, “Because we got a house, dog, fence, and you got nothing.”  Tracy, who told me she knew Chris was having an affair when he met me (and I thought we were starting a relationship), and who forgave his disloyal character “Because he’s been hurt by love”, she’d said, pouring a cup of tea, watching the steam rising.  Tracy:  someone I had no right to sum up, or judge.

~

I looked at Daniel’s eyes in the rear vision mirror as I drove.  They were troubled:  where was he going?  Where was Mum taking him?

“We’re off to child care, sweetheart!” I said, cheerfully.  “Lots of fun with your friends!”  Daniel’s eyes turned from gazing out the window to meeting mine in the rear vision mirror.

I had done well to leave the job I loved, in favour of normal hours.  This way, Daniel could be placed in child care instead of with Chris.

But Chris now had established rights as Daniel’s father; a pattern, though haphazard, of seeing Daniel.  He did not pay for Daniel’s food, keep or wellbeing – I still needed to construct a response to his appeal against the backpay due to “achieve” that – but he had established rights because when Daniel was born I felt that a father has rights to see their child, bond, assist in raising them.  With that idealism, I had availed Daniel to Chris from the very first moment he expressed interest in Daniel – one week after his birth when Chris rang out of the blue near 11 p.m., arrived with a feng shui chart he had drawn up about Daniel and told me I had born him a lucky child “right time and day – not perfect, but very good.”

I had accepted Chris’ bruised fruit offerings, allowed him to display Daniel to his various female accompaniments as they went out for a night on the town (he was not shy to say); I had accepted $100 once, thinking, “That’s not how it’s done:  you don’t indulge in hours of fun at thee casino then give to your child what’s left, or lucky left”, my lips speaking nothing, knowing I would be called ungrateful.

I had flung the door open to Daniel’s father for no greater reason than because he was Daniel’s father, and I did not know how to close it again – or no, hold it only ajar, stand guarding the entrance, allowing Chris to pass our threshold only if he followed my rules.  With Chris’ intention to have custody of Daniel, I feared going to the courts in case they forced me to hand Daniel over even more than I was now, with growing reservation, doing.

“No Dadda today” Daniel said, meeting my eyes in the rear view.

“Daniel,” I said, “Dadda wants to see you.  He wants to have fun with you!  I have to let him pick you up from child care, sweetheart – but then Mama will come and get you.” 

Daniel did not respond.  I repeated, “Then I’ll come and get you.” 

He looked away.

~

“Don’t know Tracy, don’t know Tracy.  You don’t have to know Tracy.  She my girlfriend!” Chris retorted.

“Chris…”  I had to tell him.  “Daniel seems to be afraid of the dark – because of Tracy.”

“Lots of kids afraid of the dark!  Why blame Tracy?!”

He was irritated with me, did not want this conversation.  He didn’t like it when I had concerns about Daniel.  I was pure annoyance to Chris.

“No, just – how often do you leave Daniel with her?  And Karen?  Why do you say you want Daniel but then leave him with your sister or your girlfriend?”

“You just jealous, that’s all!”

Oh no, not that argument: I wasn’t a woman of thought, opinion or concern:  I was dismissible jealousy.

“Chris, I’m not jealous,” I said.  How could I explain to him there was no way in the world I wished to partner him, as I realized his character more and more every day.

“They got opposing energies, that’s all,” he then offered.

“What?”

“Just a bit of different.  We all different energies – opposing energies.”

“Chris, it’s not an energy thing.  Daniel cried out ‘Tracy in the dark!’ when I was putting him to bed.  What does that mean?  What’s he saying?”

Chris looked at Daniel, annoyed.  He looked at Daniel as if he were the reason for this hassle of a discussion.

“I don’t know!  He make it up!” Chris said.

Tears came to my eyes.  I felt like I had no say what Chris did with Daniel when he had time with him.  I felt the horror of not knowing.  I felt powerless, engulfed in sadness, fear.

“I don’t want you to leave Daniel with Tracy,” I said through my tears.  Daniel in my arms, put his hand to my face, wet his hand with my tears, looked at me curiously.

“You want I help you, you don’t want I leave Daniel with Tracy!”

I couldn’t believe I had vocalized that:  I had actually made a rule.  It would probably offend Tracy, but Daniel was my child and I didn’t want him in her company any more.  I didn’t want to offend Tracy.  Surely she was facing issues from what she had escaped from, but I just didn’t want Daniel with her.

“Yes I want help but no, I don’t want you to leave Daniel with Tracy,”  I said.  Daniel was patting the wet of my face against my cheek.  I shifted him to my other hip.  “Don’t say it unkindly.  Just, if you want time with Daniel I don’t want you suddenly going off because of an appointment.  Make your appointments when you don’t have Daniel.”

Chris began steering me toward the door.  He did that whenever I reached his limit of tolerance – which was so, so low.  He didn’t want to talk with me any more.  He wanted us gone – me and my teary face and Daniel who didn’t keep his mouth shut.

“OK, OK, I not leave Daniel with Tracy” he said, opening the wire of his front door.

“Do you mean that?” I asked, incredulous.  Had I actually established a boundary?

“Yeah yeah I mean it,” Chris said. 

As his body moved forward on me backing out of his front door, I saw Phong, Tracy’s son, in the shadows of the house in the background.  I hadn’t known he was there.  I wondered what he would tell his Mum, how he would say it.  I wondered what he knew.

Minutes later, Daniel and me were driving away from Tracy’s house, Chris behind us.  I did not trust what he had said, but felt I should learn trust.  It’s just that, Chris had an awful habit of delivering words to you, wrapped in what you wish.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

I, Deserter

The letter from the government, I did not want to open.

I paused, let the sun breathe on me a few moments more, let the slight waft of breeze from the ocean ruffle gently the plant life around me a few moments more, let peace remain a few moments more.  I then opened the letter.

‘Application for Review of a Child Support Assessment’, I read in black and white.  Behind that page was several more, being Chris’ argument against the backpay which had gathered in dollars and cents as he stalled through the Courts, aiming incredibly for the impossible:  to not be declared Daniel’s father.

“She could have been with anybody,” I could still hear him say to the Magistrate, but had introduced Daniel to his family only weeks earlier as his son, and begged I tell them that I was his wife.  I had looked around the courtroom, had felt crimson Catholic shame tinge my face.  Indeed, I could have been with the local football team.

 .

“Already paid,” was Chris’ defence.  What?  How?

‘Television – $100’ I hadn’t asked for a television!  Chris just came up with it one day. Was that “child support”?

‘Washing machine – $80’  That old washing machine he gave us that day I giggled so much -  I was grateful for it, though it broke soon after, and cost me to repair.  Can that be “child support” when food is what was needed that week, and shelter; support toward Daniel’s shelter?

‘Babysitter’ – how could Chris paying his sister to look after Daniel when he said he would have Daniel, be child support?  It wasn’t my fault he handed Daniel along rather than kept his word.  And surely that was “sharing responsibility”?  

I did not understand.  Did Chris have a valid argument?  Had the effort and stress in bringing us to this day been made futile by Chris’ neatly compiled Plan B?  I felt gutted.  

‘Chinese medicine and doctor for when Daniel was sick’.  But I took Daniel to the doctor when he was sick too!  It was part of “caring for Daniel”, not child support… was it?  I did not know.  ‘Baby capsule, bottle, clothing nappies…’   

Then I read, 

“On September 22^nd to the 27^th of September the mother disappeared during this time the father has had full care of Daniel and paid for everything in this time, the mother did not tell any one where she was which caused anguish to the father and the child.”

I was mortified.  Chris had let the Department know of my breakdown.  What would they think of me now, how would the Department treat me now, having deserted Daniel to his father.  Is leaving a baby with their father for a few days deserting them?

I felt so ashamed, outed as incompetent – not competent enough to keep going through sleep deprivation, crying publicly without reason and randomly, Daniel crying, Daniel grizzling, responsibility, weight, weight, weight of need upon you, alone.  What was Chris’ purpose in stating this?  To say he paid for Daniel singlehandedly a few days and it had been a draining experience?  I knew that!!! 

I felt deep despair in recall of that time, just on a year ago.  I had one night spoke out to Chris my intention to pursue child support, as his “I’ll pay what I can when I can” wasn’t happening and although I had trusted his word, I realised it was not trustworthy.  In his rage that followed, Chris spat, “I’ll piss off! You’ll see!”  He then became uncontactable for a month, unavailable, absent – not there for Daniel for a whole month. 

Alone in the west of Australia, no friends with children, no meaningful friendships, no mother/dead, no father/his name cut bad memories through my mind, no family at hand/all east of Australia, besides which they were strangers to me.  Zombie-like, undernourished, depressed cold dark and reverberating, I handed Daniel to Chris when Chris rang out of the blue, suddenly available.  And I did not pick him up for three days – it wasn’t five.

As Daniel babbled about the newspaper laid out before him, I lay back on the concrete driveway and looked up at the brilliant skies of sunny Western Australia.  Heaviness descended upon me, fatigue, and sadness.  If Chris was this dedicated to not surrendering to Daniel what Daniel actually needed and Chris was capable of paying, perhaps I should just let him so be.  My energy had been eaten by the financial wrangle this past year, like tiny pincers of negativity tearing away at my qi, daily.

With looking for work, trying to stay buoyant for Daniel, manage life – washing, shopping, cleaning – and cleaning the yoga room on top of all that, let alone I wasn’t sure Daniel was in good hands when left with Chris so I had to work that out, perhaps it was better to apply my energy to daily life, not the argument of money.  Money was so hollow, so nothing compared to all that mattered.  

Yet, so necessary.  

Without money we may have to move to a less prosperous suburb than I had born Daniel into, eat less quality food, less food, live poorer: less everything.  To not be at loggerheads with Chris, Daniel and me could step down in circumstances and just focus on us, on survival – like hundreds of thousands of women who began to fight for the best for their child, had lain down their guns in the face of such kind of men.  

Money has no soul.

Copyright
Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

To lead some kind of a Way

To be touched against your will leaves an imprint, ugly.  I think it is not simple pleasure to the perpetrator.  I think it is a sinister ego which seeks to leave an imprint on another person.  Ugly.

Chris was still touching me when I went to collect Daniel from him after my work at the Police Academy.  It is that which I had instant recall of when I heard his voice on the phone:  his hand sliding down my buttock cheek, patting me, his exploded chest proud and manly, feeling good about it all – and in front of his girlfriend who accepted him sleeping around “because he’s been hurt by love”, as she told me.

When I resign from the job, I would be leaving having to collect Daniel from Chris (largely).  For this I felt better inside. I didn’t want to leave the job.  It was a magnificent break into acting, but it was not sustainable in my life.  Still, I wished upon the natural outrage that some women have at being touched without invitation; I wished I could shout at Chris, “Get your hands off me!” and glare at him, rather than shrink deeper into myself when he does it, as I do.  Childhoods are so accountable.

.

“What do you mean I’ve won tattslotto?” I asked Chris on the other end of the phone.  It was a strange way to start a conversation.

“Dada”, Daniel said.  I nodded, and stroked the top of his head, my fingertips feeling softly his silken locks.  Chris was quiet.  I was quiet.

“Huh,” he said. “You don’t got a letter?”

“No, what letter?” I was really beginning to wonder now – especially as I hadn’t entered tattslotto lately.

“I have to pay.”  Oh.

He must have received notice from the Child Support Agency that he is not only liable for Daniel’s life, being his parent, but for having stalled the proceedings so long that he now owed backpay.  I wondered how much.  Chris laughed again, but a snide, unkind laugh.

“There – there – you got your way.  You happy now?”

“Chris, I didn’t get ‘my way’,” I said gently, trying to help him understand.  “You’re Daniel’s father. You are responsible for Daniel.  He’s going to cost money as he grows.  We all did.  We are his parents.”  I paused, then couldn’t help myself, “You’re responsible for your daughter too, you realize?”

“Not the daughter!  Not the daughter!  I told you not go to the courts!”  There was true nastiness in his voice.  I felt deeply bad inside.  I felt guilty.  How cruel of me, to have forced Chris to face his responsibility to our beautiful son, I felt, but conflictingly I also felt the opposite:  not cruel:  normal:  it’s called consequence of actions.

.

I cannot forget that night I lay back on his bed and allowed his plunge into me;  allowed because I felt sorry for him and he kept asking and pushing.  Pushing, pushing…‘allowed’.  I didn’t want to live, I was fine to die:  sure, use my body.  Have fun.  Getting pregnant was not possible, me having premature menopause.  Sure, I thought when he said he could hold back his semen – had mastery over his semen.  Yeah, sure, don’t wear a condom – don’t let me spoil your pleasure of my body.  And laying back thus, surrendering to the will of man more powerful than me, my boy Daniel came into being.  What, this life.

“Chris, whatever it is you have to pay, it’s because you avoided it so long.  If you faced – “

“Got your way! Got your way!,” he cut in, and then hung up.

I looked at Daniel at my feet, looking up at me.  No-one had ever looked up at me before in my life.  It was frightening having to lead some kind of a way.

.

I began to unpack the pram, place the groceries in the kitchen, wash out Daniel’s bottle.  All the while, thinking.  Perhaps I had got ‘my way’ without even knowing my way this lifetime:  I “got” a baby boy, to become a man.  I got love.  I loved Daniel with all the rays of my heart.  I could not have guessed as a little girl that one day my heart would explode but remain together, and would amplify a love from me so overwhelming that even I was left to wonder in near disbelief, how amazing was its enormity, my love for my boy.

I didn’t have a child with my husband over our nine years of togetherness.  I did not want to.  I couldn’t.  I wouldn’t.  Then I left the marriage – and here is Daniel.  Was that ‘my way’ this life?  Without meaning to – for life itself meant to – had I ‘got my way’:  the way to learn to love, which I had not ever felt through childhood – either loved, or loving to any person in my life.  Closed about age six, I did.  Was this ‘my way’, this love I had discovered through the human being descended to my womb?

I did not know my way this life, but absolutely certain nor did Chris.

.

“Meoooooowwwwwww”, called sleek black Pathos at our front wire door.  Us having arrived home from our walk to the shops and our venture with the Firemen, meant to Pathos some cool white milk was due.  He willed his way too.

.

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Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

How wonderful men could be

“Sweet Daniel,

This is my final week of late shift, because it takes me away from you too much.  I told them I cannot do nights any more.   I love you so dearly.  I don’t like picking you up in the night, dropping you in the middle of the day.

You’re awake!  Surely not.  Please, you must sleep.  I have to type before I go to work.

Here is another finger painting by you, done at the pool crèche – and a couple of wild pen-to-paper expressions by you, 16 ½ months.

Love, your Mama xxxxx“

.

The Police recruits may have to train at night too, but I decided to tell the agency I could not be available nights any more.  I was sorry to alter my agreement of availability but I needed to make a decision for Daniel’s benefit.  I was not enjoying the number of times I rang Chris when I left work to ask if he had Daniel, or he left him with his sister Karen or girlfriend Tracy, to find that Daniel was not with him.  What’s that in the back ground?  People talking?  Is he at a restaurant again?  When people are not up-front with you, you can only guess from what you know of them.

.

Time gave way to days, a month.  Soon would be another year.  I decided I couldn’t continue being an actor for recruits at the Academy.  As I walked up the hill of Stirling Highway, pushing the stroller, my backpack laden and bulging with groceries, I made the decision I would find another job.  If I had a normal office job, I could have Daniel regularly in child care.  The child health nurse had said again and again that routine is important to our young, but again and again I failed at living a life routine.

Daniel said ‘fuck’ the other day.  I didn’t know where he got it from.  As a parent, I had to tell him it was a ‘bad word’ – or not a nice word, really.  I had to begin conditioning Daniel that ‘fuck’ is offensive.    It is but not, to my view.    It can be very expressive.  But it is not expressive in a child; that’s just disturbing.

Chris doesn’t swear, I know; Tracy I do not know, her son Phong I do not know, his sister Aunty Karen I do not know.  I wasn’t knowing enough of who Daniel was with and I was trying to trust and believe everyone had Daniel’s best interests at heart like I did.  But I just wanted to know.  I needed to know.

I guess ‘fuck’ isn’t that abnormal.  Maybe there was an argument in one of the households – maybe that was it.

.

As we reached the crest of the hill where the Claremont Fire Station stood, I stopped to take off my backpack and retrieve a drink for Daniel and me.  I squatted alongside his pusher and for a moment there was silence between us but for gulps of cool water, and relief.  I looked into Daniel’s beautiful brown eyes and saw an intensity of some kind, that fascinated me.  Wherefrom our young spring, I just do not know.

“There!” Daniel said, leaning as far forward in the stroller as the safety belt would allow.  “There!” he said again, his arms outreaching to me and his head looking toward the fire station.   Its enormous garage doors were open, showing a cool and semi-dark interior.  I could see two Firemen talking to each other, one holding a drink.

“Oh no, sweetheart.  They’re busy.  They’re men at work.”

Daniel began agitating to be freed from his restraint.  I hesitated, but thought that maybe as we had only a short way left to walk, I would let him out so he could use some energy.  He climbed over the railing and moved in the direction of the open fire station.

“No, Daniel!  Busy!” I said.

In my difficulty of repositioning the backpack and standing up, Daniel had already begun toddling off into the fire station, seeking out what he wanted in the world as if life were that simple.

I watched as the Firemen noticed Daniel wander into their garage.  Only one part of me wanted to call him back, with the other part of me also desiring an adventure, a diversion.  Perhaps Daniel could let me into a world I would never normally enter.  I decided to test the potential for an experience.

“Sorry!” I said, calling out to the Firemen and pushing the stroller in their direction.  Daniel, now under cover of the fire station, paused a second.  Standing in the presence of enormous fire trucks and two men in uniforms, my boy finally had hesitation.

“That’s all right” one of the men said, the two walking toward Daniel and me.  I met them just inside the entrance.  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I wondered if my body was physically betraying my secret titillation.

“He’s – we’ve never seen the doors open before,” I said.  They smiled.  “We often walk past but, you know.”

“You live around here?” one of the Firemen asked.

“Yes,” I said. 

Daniel, seemingly a 50 foot descent from the centre of the action, wanted up.  I picked him up and held him on my hip, facing the Firemen.  I suddenly felt not like a woman any more, but a mother.  My sense of flirt retracted and my face reddened.  I wasn’t ashamed of Daniel, but felt inferior, being “a single mother” as Stuart had so nastily pointed out was what I would “be”, “with a screaming kid hangin’ off ya”, before he left me, Stuart did, my lover of two years.  I turned for us to leave.

“Has he ever been on a fire truck before?”

“What?  Oh, no!” I said, still red but sort of smiling.

“Does he want to?”

I couldn’t believe it.  “Yes!  He’d love it!” I said, knocking back a sob in my throat.  I don’t know why, but I felt sad that they were so nice.  It was difficult to accept.

“Do you want to go on the fire truck, Daniel?” I asked my boy on my hip, and he beamed delightedly.  Daniel’s legs started kicking and his arms waving, and the men and me all laughed.

.

It was some half hour later that Daniel and me left the company of the Firemen.  For no reason than that we were passing by, these men had given us an experience you would normally pay for.  I was overwhelmingly grateful how kind these men had been to my son, how wonderful men could be.

One had a wedding ring, but the other did not.  The other ventured into conversation which seemed to angle at my availability, my inclination to share my phone number.  But I felt too inferior, and so did not bite.  I felt he did not know what he was getting into – “a single mother”.  And I felt not as together as them in their uniforms, with their stable job, their lives in order.  I felt he was probably only curious to taste me as James had done those years ago before throwing me back in the water, for there are so many fish in the sea.  He couldn’t have been serious, I decided.  He couldn’t actually like me.  I had to be kidding myself – they were only passing time.

.

The Firemen behind us as we continued our way down Stirling Highway, I wished I had the self esteem to believe a man could, ever, possibly, like me.

.

I caught the phone, but only after almost tripping on the chair alongside my writing desk on which it rested.

“Hello?”

“Huh,” Chris said.

I didn’t know what that meant, and said nothing.  Daniel looked up at me, curious who was on the phone.

“Yes… Chris?”

“You won tattslotto,” he said. 

By Chris’ voice, I could almost see his sneer.  Then he laughed.  He had this thing, laughing at you when something was not funny.

.

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Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

It.

Some days are so painful in my head, inescapably.  I wake up and know the day will be anguish, mental.  I brace to face existence aka life.

A demon clinging since childhood, it grins when I rouse from dreams, my departures.  Unpredictably it crawls into my room and under my covers as I sleep.  I never know when I am to be afflicted.  It claws down my face when I wake. I shut my eyes tight and wish it were not so. I open them again, and see sunshine.  But I feel bleak, hopeless, empty, sad.

Mum had electric shock treatment in a room somewhere down some hallways of some old mental institution.  But it did not stop her suicide.  Dad was electrocuted for ‘treatment’ too.  But still he was manic and depressive; still he viciously emotionally, psychologically abused us.  Seethed.  Seethed he did, like a demon personified.  White spittle always in the corners of his foaming mouth when he bludgeoned us with words that crushed my endeavouring spirit.  His spittle landed on my face, and burned.

My sister the schizophrenic; my sister not a schizophrenic but ever giving to professionals who counsel and counsel, for decades now; my other sister surrendered:  it’s easier to be a victim of our childhood, accept the benefits and call it a day, your life.  But I don’t know my sisters three, and they don’t know me. We are all strangers.  Same family, same orphanage, different planets in the universe.  Not a thread connects us, but blood.  And that has worn thin.

I don’t know, but what I see.

 

Today I cannot see light, life or beauty.  ‘It’ has come for me again.  ‘It’ sinks its teeth like a Rottweiler into my jugular and sucks the life from me, rendering the sun dull, perfume of roses putrid, the laughter between sisters in the streets a shard of no recall that slices down my wrist and draws blood tears.

I peep from under the covers, listen a moment to Daniel’s Angelic breaths in his cot.  I see the sun trying to force its way through a crack in the curtains.  If I fling them open, it will flood me with its glory, beauty, warmth, comfort.  And still I will feel void, lost on this Earth, sad beyond repair.  I know this even before I get up and do it.  But I get up and do it, because I must be victor of my mind, not victim.

Standing beneath the sun’s shine, bare feet on soft carpet, I listen more as my son takes breaths of life in my universe, his tiny heart keeping beat his tiny life.  I don’t want to move, to start today’s momentum, only to use all my energy to the point of exhaustion again – laughing gaily, crying.   But it is only a matter of time – will I be granted minutes or an hour – before I must do; before he wakes.  I must make Daniel and me food, I must get us out the door, I must have us doing something. 

My sister Wendy said in a letter that I should be still more.  She said I don’t need to exhaust myself propelling Daniel and me into activities daily.  But she knows nothing.  She doesn’t have a child.  She doesn’t understand their need and need and need of you, and I have never even been able to keep a pot plant alive – and how you have to keep giving the only way you know, because if you don’t then they cry and you hate to see them rejected by your need to be alone.

And besides, I must keep us active and moving even when it draws from me my last dregs of energy because if I still, then ‘it’ creeps over.  ‘It’ waits in corners of my life, I wanted to tell Wendy but could not; and if I still, ‘it’ crawls into my lap, this sadness from my past, and ‘it’ wants me to stroke its head and comfort it and indulge it.  But I can’t I can’t – I have to keep my energy for Daniel and me.

He catches me, he does, my new witness to Self.  He catches me on days like these staring at a crack in the wall, or a clump of weeds, or a paw print Pathos has so profoundly left in the leafy garden of our Cottesloe flats.  This boy so young sees me as I truly am, though try to hide me I do.  I try to hide ‘it’. I try and be victor of my mind not victim.  But always, he catches me.

~

Chris said he would still care for Daniel so I could work but he wasn’t going to promise to have Daniel any more.  He said that I was silly and over-cautious and he would leave Daniel with his sister Karen or with his girl friend Tracy when he wanted to, and he didn’t need to tell me.  I said that I had a right to know where Daniel would be and he said to trust him.  And I said but I was disturbed that he smacked Daniel for not standing up in the shower that time when Daniel was physically not capable of standing yet and Chris said “that was last year,” and I said “but I don’t want you forcing him to stare at the wall in a corner to teach him focus and obedience like you say you’ll do if Daniel ‘needs it’” and Chris laughed at me, and I said “but why do you say you want to see Daniel and then you palm him off” and he said, and I said, and he said.  Then Chris told me, “I have to go now” and I was dismissed again.

And I can hear the care taker sweeping the leaves on the path outside my flat.

Chris didn’t give back my number 5 top.  He said it was still in the wash.  I am finding it hard to believe him.

Daniel moved in his cot and I froze.  The day was going to have to start; I was going to have to live today.  Please, please don’t wake yet Daniel.  Please don’t wake yet, Daniel.

Milk stirred in my bosom, wept.  Daniel woke.

Standing barefoot on the carpet, staring at nothing nowhere in mental turmoil:  my son caught me, again.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

Just, fine.

Gidday, Subbers!

The next chapter of my novel, is but a breath away.

Where we are at in the telling, for new readers – & by the way: thanks heaps! you’re reading a true life, as told by the Lifer –

is I am in a new job as an actor at the Police Academy, Maylands, Western Australia.  My job description is to be a citizen “of sorts”, for the rookies to learn how to “deal with”.  Here’s a link to my last chapter reading, if you missed it (and didn’t mean to! ha ha ).

Chris, who promised to take care of Daniel, has lifted our son from my hands so that I can work, sure, but he has placed him in other hands beyond my control.  Whereas I thought Daniel would be cared for mainly by Chris, as I (naively) took Chris at his word, as time counts down to consciousness, I realize that Daniel is left mainly with either Chris’ girlfriend Tracey and her son Phong, or with Chris’ sister Karen.  This wasn’t what we agreed.

There are no signs of abuse.

Daniel runs to me earnestly with a big smile on his face when I come to collect him.  Is that a sign of abuse?

~ ` ~

In aside, The James Diary continues to want to live.  In acknowledgement of this enduring will, it shall be given publication on true hard copy by approximately May 2013.  Pre-purchase continues available through Paypal, by inputting nandd333@hotmail.com at the ‘Send Money’ tab.

~ My most enormous thanks ~ to those who have pre-purchased a copy. I am honoured. Truly, you cannot imagine how honoured.  Your purchase is secure: you will receive that signed copy in the mail.

From thinking I am nothing in my teens: bulimic, self-hating and “shit on” almost daily by my father, to see your tentative interest in the something I have past created but kept hidden under my mattress for so many years, for it was “just words, after all; and we’ve all lived; and other people have experienced alike and you’re not special; who do you think you are, you little snot” and on and on, as childhoods can be wont to do - from thinking I am not worth the effort of a next breath, to having Aunty Uta encourage me so much re publishingThe James Diary (and backing that by buying a copy!) and Aussie Emu …well, I decided to “just do it”, put it out there.

Oh, and re The James Diary, I decided to write “1” and “39” on the first and last signed copies sold.  The significance of this is explained in my debut post on the book.  Is that good, do you reckon?  I don’t know, I just get these ideas…but I like it.  Please let me know if you would not like that.

Once all 39 signed copies are sold (paid for, marked to receive a copy), I will do a post naming [and shaming – ha ha!] you all – those 39 first buyers of The James Diary.  

Subbers,and those who have put their money where their mouth is:  thank you for your belief that my words be worthy of reading; would sufficiently engage.

.

In re-reading The James Diary, before handing across to publishers, I have been reminded of the poems I wrote here and there.  Well, I use the word ‘poems’ loosely. I don’t write what I was taught in school a poem is, so I’m not even going there.

For the purposes of this post though, may I share with you a ‘poem’ lifted from The James Diary, before my next chapter re Daniel’s early life?

Copyright, Noeleen

My closer folk who know I was born on 3 March, know Mum suicided on 5 March.

I made this video in 2010, a little over a year before I tried – I tried so damned hard – to murder my Self.  My son saved my life.

This video says “I didn’t do it“, and urges you to take charge and not be a victim of all you have suffered before this very day that you are there now and reading this.  Then a year later, I did attempt it, and if I were not discovered in time, I would have accomplished it.

How many, then, die but could have been saved?

This video is a bit of a perfect example of both the MANIC of manic-depression (or bipolar as we call it these days) and the endurance of an individual – for strong as my message is, and hard as I tried to remain upright and forward moving, I fell deep, deeper, deeper into darkness, blindness.  I actually worked every day through it too – 9-5, mental mental 9-5…

At this time, I could not even think sufficiently  to know at the core of my heart how my ‘accomplishing’ self-murder would affect my son.  See the little girl on the left of the b/w photograph?  She doesn’t know her Mum’s going to die soon.

My anti-suicide message is strong and urgent.  

I plan to bring this video to light every year in memorial of my Mother (r.i.p.).  I also plan to be more spiritually advanced , personally accomplished, each year that I do.

Life is possible.  

Try something today you have not tried before.  

One year from now, You could be looking back at this – perhaps as you are blogging your own heart out, and You could be knowing (not hoping, wishing) that life can be joy.

Sincerely,

N’n.

Copyright, Noeleen

(Latest Subscribers, in case you don’t yet realise:

My son and me are grown beyond this time I am writing this novel about – this time of when he was infant, and I wrote tearfully in journals as I had no-one to talk to, no-one.  No-one.  We have survived it all, yes, but I write to reach those ‘still there’.   I care truly about you and your child, for you are humans being and this time near killed us, and I don’t want same to kill you.  Life is possible, and it’s better than death [we can do death later]). 

A chapter reading by the author: Chapter Gullible

Woohee!  

My mac is back!  My life is back!

Off track.

My ‘puter had a stack & the guys out the back

didn’t know what

but cleaned out the lot.

Final theory : “May be a corrupt file“.

“Life?”

“File.”

“Phile…”

And flashbacks brought the tear that drove me here

and nothing mattered again but to speak aloud, to yell and beat

upon the hearts with no conscience meter.

Paeda.

Thank you for coming by WordsFallFromMyEyes.  And they have.  Still do.

Below is a video reading, with asides, of the chapter far below.  

The chapter is in print for beautiful people like LadyWithATruck, Carrie, who can’t get video on their contraption.

Long live

life lived love.

~

“Beloved Daniel, my son,

It is near midday.  You’re asleep in your cot.  We had a big morning, including going to the pool where first I put you in the crèche, do laps, then come out and get you and we play together.  In the car on the way home you babbled animatedly with some authority on whatever it is you were on about.  By your tone, as we drove the sunny streets of Perth, you seemed to be giving a dissertation on something which, I have to confess, was completely beyond my comprehension.

…

We then hung the washing and I chased you, giggling, all the way up the path to our door.  When I put you to bed you didn’t want to sleep and cried a bit, because it was so much fun being up with mama.

Anyway, I knew you were tired and visited you three times, calming you, before I didn’t return.  After about two minutes of protest this last time, you’ve finally crashed.” 

.

It was clear the cop was a rookie.  He looked scared in the eyes when I asked why the fuck should I get into his paddy wagon; I hadn’t done anything wrong.  He looked briefly at his partner, who jumped at the opportunity to assert herself and told me in manner of order, “Because you’re under arrest!  Now get in the wagon!”

“What am I under arrest for?  He was ASKING for it!  HE assaulted ME!  How come you’re not arresting HIM?”

With no tolerance for civil questioning, let alone disobedience, the female Officer physically forced me into the rear of the police wagon.  When the lock clunked shut behind me, I was hit by a deluge of claustrophobia.  I didn’t see that coming.

“LET ME OUT!” I screamed with all of the rage and rampant recall of all that was wrong with my life.  I heard the two officers close their doors, and the ignition start. 

“I’m a royal subject of the Queen Mother’s Tongue of England!  LET ME OUT!  LET ME OUT!” I screamed, for continuum.

“The other night your daddy and me took you to the beach playground.  I like the man who is your daddy, but not entirely.  I didn’t feel comfortable with him as I do with others, feeling that we are on a different wavelength.

When we first met he was a blessing to my jaded spirit for we swapped massage giving, and ate well and went to the pictures, but slowly I came to realize an arrogance and a surfaceness and showmanship I don’t like a bit, but yet his spirit I do respect.

We are not enemies, your father and me, and we will together always do good, do our joint best, for you.“

.

The Officers were doing a good job of ignoring me, and the drive was brief before we arrived at the police station. 

When they unlocked the rear of the paddy wagon, I made sure to eye the Officers each with insolence, before duly stepping out, punk boots stomping on the pavement.  The heavy pounding of my feet was near enough to hit the beat, then playing in some dingy basement bar deep in England’s dark night, spiked hairdos of clef-stompers spraying sweat across the concrete walls.

I was led into the police station, the recruit assessor shadowing us, watching all our conduct and ticking boxes addressing The Law.

“A letter came to say the results of DNA tests came through.  We have to see that lady at the Child Support Unit again.  The letter says, ‘Please arrange an appointment to see Ms Soper, when convenient, to arrange to receive your copy of the report.’ 

It annoys me that the doctor didn’t simply give me a copy of the report with the letter he sent.  Why are the people the centre of an action always swept to the perimeter of an action when you involve professionals?  I mean, I am your Mother: I paid half for the tests: I deserve a copy of the results outright.  It’s just annoying.”

.

Waiting in the police station to be processed, I began to feel bored.  I looked at my arresting officers and they seemed to be stuck on some paperwork issue.  Another recruit had joined in their concern and they were fumbling and questioning each other about the “right” thing to do.  The assessor remained in the background, watching them, but I could see irritation alive in his expression.  It was like invisible ants were running all over his face, twitching his muscles.

I looked at other recruits behind the station desk.  They were sort of tripping over each other trying to look busy.  I could see they were all a bit lost.  My job as an actor was to be real, to give them an experience in dealing with the public.  I began to consider:  how many assaulting teens would wait quietly on the bench like I was?  A thought crossed my mind on how to shake things up.  But dare I? 

What I like about being me is that more often than not in life, I dare. 

“I rang your father to ask if he would sign a concession that you are his son, now that the results prove it.  If he did this, it would avoid us going to court, but he would not sign admittance that you are his son.  So we must go to court.  

How can he bother – why does he bother – to string along the inevitable (being ‘made’ to support you) like this?  chris is avoiding financial responsibility of you, just like every other man.  Why he won’t contribute is so purely selfish.

Everyone protects their money.  And yet then he takes me to a Mother’s Day breakfast with his family and girlfriend, openly saying you are his son..?  I do these things occasionally – get together – because I believe it’s important for you to see your mum and dad together.  Things are not perfect in the reality, but I will make well of ill – you’ll see.

The DNA tests prove you are unique.  You are totally unique.  There is no-one else in the world even like you.  You’re just unique.” 

.

Sitting on the bench in the front of the police station, waiting to be processed, I took a few deep breaths, quietly.  I then imagined I had been on drugs that day, and they were wearing off.  I was feeling agitated.  It was time for more drugs.  Time to get out of this shit-hole and get back to my life.  What was I there for, what was I waiting for?  WAITING!  These guys were keeping ME waiting! 

“I could have claimed money from your dad for nine months of pregnancy plus all the way to now but I will not.  I can’t, really, for it is work who supplied you with all those gifts in the baby shower.  I cannot pretend we never received that avalanche of goodwill, and claim I bought them, and claim it as due from your father. It feels too wrong in my heart, and as such, not possible for me to do. 

I am exhausted sometimes.  Other times I feel great.  We have great times together, Daniel.

You walk very fast.  You look very proud and sure. 

I am tired now.  Here are more papers about your life. 

Love, xxx Mama”

 

With my last deep yoga breath I screamed with all the energy I had banked up against the dam, simultaneously standing up, squaring my shoulders and eyeing my arresting officers, “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WAITING FOR?????”

The whole population of the police station froze.  Even the other actors on the bench, after jolting, looked up at me in horror – and froze.  I was afraid of what effect I had had, but I could not back out now.

“WHAT THE FUCK AM I WAITING FOR????”

I screamed again, intoning demand that the officers answer me.

“I’VE GOT A LIFE, YA KNOW.  I GOT THINGS TA DO PEOPLE TA SEE! 

AN YOU GOT ME JUST SITTING HERE LIKE A

FUCKING DUCK

WAITING TO BE SHOT DOWN BY YOUR FUCKING PAPER PLANES!”

No-one knew what to do.  Even I didn’t know what to do.  I wouldn’t make a run for it, because I wasn’t sure if anyone really would.  It would just complicate things for them when they were finally caught.

The assessor was the first to move.  I was enormously relieved.

“Go on!  That’s a fair question!” he barked at his recruits.  “Why is she waiting?  You’re standing there debating over Form A or Form B and you’ve got a live one on the bench there ready to do God knows what!  Get her into the cells!  Now!”

The male Officer jumped into action, practically dived over the counter, and took me by the wrist to the recruits at another desk, ink pads at the ready, forms in order.  They with command told me how to present my thumb, roll it without pressing too hard, inside the square – not smart-arsed on the line of the square, guiding me.  I mumbled a bit under my breath during the process, while the rest of the recruits recovered their senses and everyone was suddenly genuinely busy keeping law and order there in the little cubicle at Maylands Police Academy, Western Australia.

.

Life appeared to be going well.  I was fully enjoying my casual working hours, Chris seemed to be maintaining his responsibility as Daniel’s other parent/carer, and Daniel seemed well when I collected him alternatively from Chris or from his sister Karen.

Daniel’s aunty, Karen, gave me written reports of Daniel’s food intake and bowel movements.  I found this sweet, going the extra yard.

“12.30pm Poo

1:00pm Sleep

2.30pm Pea and potato and pork meant porrich one bowl”

I noticed she headed the page with Daniel’s first name but his father’s last name.  It appeared either Aunty Karen did not accept Daniel was born into my name, or Chris had maintained his charade that he and I were married and Daniel was our beloved son, together.  I thought this was a charade Chris wanted to present only on that first day we together met his family when Daniel was newborn.  I had told him on that day I could not answer the question “Are you Chris’ wife?” dishonestly, so no-one better ask me (despite his earnestness I say we are married).  I don’t know why, I thought it was a convenience to Chris he lent to that day.  I did not imagine he would carry it into the future.

I was conscious that when Chris – for instance, on Mother’s Day – was seated at yum cha with Tracy his mistress on one side and me his… what did he call me?… on the other side, that he must look so well set, in his family’s eyes.  Yet, I attended these occasions so Daniel could hear his father’s tongue amongst his family, be amongst his kin, and see his father and me not in argument but accordance.  We were after all the leaders of his life.  We were the beacons lighting Daniel’s way.

Within, however, remained an unsettling.  Was I, allowing Chris to present in “his” world this illusion of prosperity, as fool I thought Tracy to be, allowing Chris to meander through various women’s lives and most intimate walls while he remained “promised” to her?

 

 Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

but thanks Etsy the clef pic 

& thanks especial to

Des Hicowe’s student film ‘Mere Mortals‘

- for the  aside shots I’ve aired,

which lent comment to where I was at

upon a time,

once.

Life is good, when you choose well

It was four days before Chris visited to say that he would support Daniel’s potential for prosperity (by enabling me to work with full reward) by taking care of his child.  He was not shy about delivering his decision/choice with magnanimity.  I was glad that Tracy and Phong were with him on the visit, so I knew it had been discussed.

Daniel and me in life’s ocean, a buoy cast in our direction…

.

I would actually be earning money from acting!  I had earned erratically as an extra in TV commercials,  feature films, and doing voice-overs, but this would be steady, regular acting work.  My agent never put me forward for acting:  I found this (and voiceover) all by myself!

AND I would be hired again and again, casually, as each influx of police recruits arrived.  I saw a glimmer of the potential life has to be living joy, when you work in the field of your natural talents, bypassing the zombie hordes on trains and buses heading for those static environs.

.

“But”, Chris went on, as he placed on our kitchen bench a tin of stale biscuits from the Fremantle markets where he worked, “I can’t all the time.” 

I knew the biscuits would be stale (once his offering was cobwebbed) for I had accepted Chris’ terms of fatherhood – that he would give “what I can when I can (so pursuing child support legally isn’t necessary)” – soon after Daniel’s birth.  I had accepted his word to be of honour, because that’s how I endeavoured in life.  Of course:  not perfect at being am I, human.

.

Beyond my marriage, I had borrowed several thousand dollars from my male boss for me to travel overseas, simply on the strength of my word in a contract which he left me to write up, and he signed.  He was okay for me to seal my promise of repayment by a handshake, but I know how associations can change in time and I did not want anything misunderstood.  I’ve learned pieces of paper can hold truths which our memories have lapsed.

When I discovered pregnancy I put my dreams of travel away and gave my boss his money back without prompt.  Kept working.

.

When I’d left the marriage, divorcing was not necessary because we together knew we were no longer a union and it did not matter, any Establishment’s decree.  I divorced eventually only so that my son would bear my surname. 

That the courts took their sweet time and Daniel was born when he was, is of little consequence to me:  I provided my surname for Daniel’s birth certificate because he was my son, not the son of my marriage four years previous – and not the son of his father who had not demonstrated sufficient loyalty to the soul so imminent, and then present in our lives, to be honoured by being named as father.  Pieces of paper also bear illusions which hearts have already endorsed; hence are overruled in this world so material.

I knew that to a male (“knew” from what I had been taught of men) that it would be like being let off the hook, to not be named on a child’s birth certificate.  However, after long thought I still decided that Chris was not worthy to be so named, and so however it came across to the man I did not care:  I was doing what was aright according to my heart.

.

Just as years previous a male thespian had given to my hands the money needed to leave my marriage and place bond on a bedsitter on my word that I would repay it (which doing was my first priority upon first pay cheque outside the marriage), so when Chris said he would give to his son what he could when he could, I readily accepted it, believed it:  giving your word (and standing by it)  was normal to me.

It was a slow and, to my heart deeply, deeply offending realization that Chris’ offerings were mere donations to Daniel not of what Daniel needed, but what patrons of the market had rejected from dawn through to dusk.  And his donations, he delivered 80% of the time with a woman at side, be it his partner of two years or those he was not shy to introduce as his (latest) “friend”, on their way to dinner or the casino – his favourite outings.

I developed a habit of receiving Chris’ donations, commenting “thank you”, then rifling through them for anything worthy of, or needed by, our son.  I then binned the rest.

Deepened, the blue of my eyes.

.

But this was good:  this would be good:  me working casually, and Daniel being with his father.  Chris would surely fall to love Daniel, if he didn’t already.  I could not tell whether Chris loved Daniel – and who was I to gauge/judge that?  I thought (fancied) I saw a father trying earnestly to honour his son’s life, needs.

“What do you mean ‘not all the time’?” I asked, Daniel in my arms sedately – not struggling to be with Dadda, but keeping an eye on Dadda.

“My sister Karen take care of Daniel when I have feng shui appointment.”


“Daniel’s aunty…your sister Karen?  Where does she live?  Is she married?  Does she have children?”

“Too many questions.  I pay her $4 an hour and she willing to have my son.  You don’t need a worry.”

“$4 an hour??!” (so little…)

“She take care all the kids $4 an hour,” Chris stated.  “I pay, I pay:  don’t worry.”

It seemed a decent arrangement that if Chris couldn’t take care of Daniel when he’d given word he would, then he pay for a carer, but…

“Why can’t you make feng shui appointments when you don’t have Daniel?  And what other kids does she care for?  Does she have children?”

Daniel wanted to get down, so I let him.  How many of this tone of conversation had we had in front of him, how many more would we have?  What did Daniel understand, I wondered.  What words did he know certainly?  What did he think?

“You don’t understand my work.  I go when they call.  I take the opportunity.”

“I understand you needing to work, but can’t you choose appointments when you don’t have Daniel, or around him at least?  You’re freelance.”

“He’ll sleep with us,” Tracy offered in persuasion.  Chris always seemed to bring Tracy when he had need to negotiate with me, leaving me with the distinct impression, usually, that he had in fact negotiated me.

Phong, I noticed, had taken up position in the chair at my desk.  He was completely bored of all our company, of his position in life, I could see.  And troubled.

“Karen teach him Chinese,” Chris said.


“Oh!  That’s fantastic!” I said.  “That would be fantastic!  Daniel can be bilingual!”

“Yeah, yeah, see.  It all work out.”

.

I set with Chris the times and days, and secretly hoped he would not make feng shui appointments on those days – or if he did, they would only be a few hours at the most.

Karen lived “in the sticks” – the outer suburbs, I learned – and coincidentally nearby where my ex husband David’s mother had helped us to obtain a mortgage.  Having established a house and just working on a front fence, a Labrador (like he had when a kid) was what would be next before which, it was expected, “By then she should be ready to have children”…

Daniel didn’t know what was being negotiated in our little home, but by the time Chris, Tracy and Phong left, after Mum dumped the biscuits and bruised fruit into the bin, by the time we were on the floor in his toy room being together, Mum seemed happy enough.  And Daniel sensed all was well with the world, today.

Life is good, when you choose well.

.

.

Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

What goes UP must come DOWN – if you drag it down, kick it & stomp on its Happy Head

AN ASIDE…Of today.

.

It is just that edge of perverse, when you shop for poison.  Yet, one man’s pen is the other woman’s poison, so that which I bought myself last night without appetite for it, without desire, wholly knowing what it would do to the physical being that is me – it wouldn’t be poison to a l l.

.

Like smoking cigarettes,

like eating so excessively you make yourself sick,

like choosing relationships that corrode you, as you thought no one could, how your father did, again

and again and again.

.

Like pouring that liquid down your throat, it bubbles in your belly, burns to death all good in its path to the liver,

to damage to kill to destroy, you.

You.

Rather like a like on a Facebook page, it is false comfort.

.

I have been doing extremely well, because I found another passion.  No – NO: my son re-presented that passion to me.  It is in both our blood.  I was doing it before he fired in my womb.   And like Sifu Gawain Sue said to me at purple belt, “Martial arts is to be practiced everywhere, every day;  not just here in the dojo”, and l realized I’d been practicing it for many years, long before I entered the dojo…

.

Sorry, I’m being cryptic.  I don’t mean to be:  Daniel gave me a one month pass to his dojo, to practice BJJ, muay thai, fundamentals (core strength training) – anything I like, for a month.

“But don’t you want to spend it on one of your friends?”

“You can have it, Mum.”

His response did not address my question, but it answered my veiled question.  My son still loves me, though our years brought me to my weakest moment in my whole life.

.

I’m rambling, but I need to get this off my chest before I can write freely again:

Been doing good.  Really good.  Felt good. 

Was feeling stronger. 

Was feeling power return to my life

as I did martial arts again at my son’s dojo. 

Was doing good at work too

–coping with the stress better,

not just coming home and drinking, hating whereat I had lost myself. 

Daniel was feeling good, his Mum being better

- and better and better.

Then, I got up. 

I went to the shop. 

I bought some poison. 

I drank the poison. 

I blacked out. 

I woke up. 

It was today.

Self-sabotage. 

The echoes of voices past

(you may not be happy, you may NOT be well).

I was doing SO well, I HAD to kill it.  I HAD to poison it.  “Don’t think your shit don’t stink.”  “Yes dad.”

.

I realize (now) that I am having a hard time letting go of “her” – the other me, the me that has been fallen, struggling, aching, breaking for decades.  

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?

I am actually having difficulty

in embracing the wellness

that the last week suggested

could be my life.

I felt good for one week, ONE week I tell you, and then I drenched it in alcohol. Drowned her.   Every step forward I had edged myself last week, I drowned back to square one last night.  Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.

Is she dragging me back, or am I holding on to the broken her, absurdly afraid of allowing happiness, so accustomed am I to its opposite?   Get away healthy, well, fighting you:  YOU are not allowed to BE.

.

I guess I’m speaking this aloud, Subbers – I’m sharing now because there is a sub-theme running with this whole novel that you are unwittingly privy to… besides which, I don’t know many people in this Melbourne town and, well yes, this blog is something of an outlet to a fairly reclusive writer like me. 

.

The main theme is Daniel and me living beyond what hell we went through, and the sub-theme is me here and now trying to get beyond way much else within, still haunting, still struggling, still holding me down and stomping on my happy head, when my happy head dares to rise.  

Boots like dad’s.

Ah, pathetic, we humans can be.

Or not.

.

.

.

One of the videos from my blog VodkaWasMyMuse, which I let drop to focus on the novel this year, to put closure to the novel this year, to blossom forward.  I guess I’ve dragged this out to remind myself after bludgeoning my wellness so repulsively,

sigh,

yesterday is SO passé.

 
Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

A Decision, Two Lives and a Consequence

With no son to fill every nook and cranny of my time, I was confronted by my life when I closed the door behind me in the flat.

It loomed in the structure of the large wooden desk I’d told my husband would be the desk I “write my first novel on”.  Breathing a solid, grounded aura, the tree felled in man’s pursuit to contain its beauty in our homes, stood facing me when I walked into the lounge.   My words littered its surface in scraps and “novels” started, thoughts inspired and captured but never carried through.  Snatches of The Novel of life through my eyes, that dad had laughed at me for conceiving at 16, lay splayed across the desktop, barren.

I touched dust on the desk’s surface, opened my orange folder, ‘CONVULSIONS of THOUGHT’:

First

you loved me

because I hated you.

Then

you hated me

because I loved you.

- and I turned away.

~

Daniel’s toys were a mess so I put my bag and keys down, and attended to his play corner.  As always, the impulse to set his toys up in animated poses took me to lay them out in ways which I intended to lead into inspired play.  I sat each of his stuffed toys in a large circle, and in the centre of the circle I placed the little xylophone.  I then got my Barbie and sat her at the xylophone, propping a drum stick under her shoulder so she sort of held it along her arm.  I stood fluffy white Teddy on the peripheral, leaning him against weird soft toy I didn’t know the genus of, and turned Barbie’s smiling face to look toward him.  Teddy didn’t have much expression on his face, and to me his beady eyes were just a bit cool, so I cheered him up by placing one of Daniel’s little cotton caps on his head.  It lent Teddy at least a nuance of cute.

.

I leaned two books against each other so they created a shelter, and placed a tea-towel over it so it looked like a tent.  All this while my thoughts were on Daniel, and my plans to leave our flat for another, hopefully in the same area.   When we moved from 445 Stirling Highway to 452 Stirling Highway, me pushing my bed on wheels down the main street and Des from theatre days and a few others helping with the boxes, I had no wish to go through the labour and expense of moving again so soon.  However, since the hauntings – even though they had ceased, what if they started again; drained me again, weakened me, sucking my energy out in the middle of the night, leaving me a shell too afraid to sleep, to rest, to allow my spirit to fly home amongst the stars?  Just the fact whatever it was had been, was enough to unsettle me.  I was glad it was gone, but I didn’t want to hang around where it had been, in case it revisited.  I always was a one to leave ‘good gone bad’ first.

It seems, though doesn’t it,
only a matter of time

before good fruit,

goes bad?

After tidying Daniel’s play corner, I had nothing left in me.  I took off my boots and jeans, unsnipped my bra and slipped it out the arm holes of my t-shirt, lit a candle under some essential oils, and turned off the light.  I dropped my body back onto the bed, catching a rift on the stream of dreams, and was carried along on a gentle current to unconsciousness.

~

The shrill tone of the phone ringing shook me awake.  I opened my eyes to realize a new day had broken, again.  We never know upon how many more days, will our eyes open.

I stumbled to the phone on my writing desk, and offered a groggy hello to the receiver.

“Is that Noeleen?”

“Yes, it is.”

We respond so instantly to such a question.  I used to answer the phone, “Hello, this is Noeleen”, but during the two years post marriage that Stuart the P.I. was my lover, he encouraged me to change that habit.  “You don’t know how easy it is to identify people – you just did the text book easy”, he once said to me.  I was mystified at this other level of life – just the concept someone could be telephoning my number simply to confirm that it was indeed myself who lived at that address.  Stuart had me rethink my apparently guileless ways, but the only advices I retained as habits was to hold my car key sticking out from my second and third fingers in a fist, ready to poke an attacker’s eye out, and answering the phone without identifying myself.

“It’s Barbara”, the woman said.

“Oh Barbara!  Hi!”

I rubbed my eyes and alerted my mind.  It was the woman who had auditioned and accepted me late last year, to be an actor for recruits at the Police Academy.  I knew work was due to commence around about now, but it was a bit past the expected date and I thought, defeatedly, they’d gone with someone else.  It was a dream to act for money – act and write!

.

“Are you still available for the assignment with the first load of recruits?”

“Oh yes! Yes!  I mean… um, how many days, when?”

“The first week is three days work, where the recruits get used to dealing with – being assertive with strangers, members of the public.  They usually go with this skit where you’re waiting at a bus stop and another actor comes along, they ask if you’ve got a cigarette, you say no, they get aggressive, you’re frightened bla bla.  A patrol car sees the action, stops, gets out.  The other actor is told not to run, but to say they weren’t doing anything wrong.  The recruits have to decide if there is enough in what you both say to lay charges, or just warn the other guy and have him move off.”

“Wow, that’s – that’s just – I love it!”

“Good yeah, okay.  So the week after that is four days work.  Can you do it?”

I was petrified.  Could I do it?  Of course I could do it, but Daniel – what would I do with Daniel?  So far, he had only had ‘a day’ in child care here and there.  Could he do three days – four?   Is it too soon for me to go back to work casually?  What do other mothers do?  I know no other mothers… NO, what do mothers without backup support do?  Do the majority stay home on a pension and go just a little bit crazy as all of your energy drains away, or step out independently, and come home with a pay packet?

My nonresponse brought Barbara to nudge, “We need to know, love.  We’ve gotta get going.”

“When do you need me to start?  I mean, not tomorrow or anything, heh?”

“No, Wednesday in two weeks.  It’s a contract.  You need to commit.”

“I can”, I said, with a gulp.  It was best not to cut the opportunity off, but to string it along while I worked things out.  I would lose my reputation for reliability if I couldn’t work things out and had to cancel suddenly, but I was willing to take that risk.  They’d never call me again… but that’s fine, I would take the risk.  I would just take this opportunity – if I can – and see what happens.

“Great”, Barbara said, and then told me what was expected of me – including learning people’s profiles, so I could be that person and answer questions police recruits asked.

.

Oh, to be creative – and paid for it.  To be an earning mother, supporting my little family.  I had no ambitions but creative, and as I lived my life, my creative desires were relegated to mere hobbies.  With no ambition to race back to working full time as a court reporter or anything else that involved closed walls and air conditioning, it seemed perfect to take bit jobs as they came up.  But for cleaning Tom’s yoga room, Daniel and me remained one step above the gutter, swallowing pride in receipt of the government’s fantasy of how many dollars a week supports a mother and child.

I was astonished this great opportunity to act for money regularly – assignments would be spaced throughout the year; that it should come now.  Why does life do that?  When I was single and on an agent’s books for TV commercials and being background to main actors in feature films, I only got the small jobs they obviously deemed me capable of.  I guess they believed in me only as much as I believed in myself, for I had never been one of those loud actors devouring space as I waded through a room, talking loudly so that other creatives turned their heads (hoping directors happened to be present) and desk girls looked up.  I was more one to ring or drop in, ask how opportunities were and hear “Busy, busy, busy!”

“Well, voice-over’s my main love!” I’d smile as if I loved them absolutely.  They’d call me. 

Ah, of course.   They never placed me for voiceover.   

The voiceover work I did get, I sourced myself – just like this little beauty – I had sourced this one by myself, from the grapevine.

I was DELIGHTED but not, all in one.

~

The problem with being a woman standing alone in a flat

in a life throughout which you have deflected closeness with people –  before and after marriage -

and so having no-one close, a confidant,

and having spent the last three years convincing your sisters and father over east that you’re happy on the opposite side of the country -

not just because of the stunning beaches but, you know, “I’m only a suburb away from Mum’s grave”,

besides which you have

NEVER

talked in sisterly intimacy with a

single

one of them –

one’s psychiatric problems do not lend themselves to spillage of your own problems;

another is opposite to you in every facet from the literal extremes of arriving at a night club and screaming into the crowd, “LET’S MAKE SOME NOISE!”, giggling hysterically with your buddies – to sipping tea while listening to classical music;

and the other starves of information about the family she has seceded from, pummeling you (when she’s talking to you) in demand to know juiciness of details of kin, so that it becomes natural to completely hide the reality of your life from her;

is that

when you need to make decisions about the welfare of your first child, your only child,

it distresses in the clarity

that you stand alone.

Utterly.

It’s then you talk to the walls, the cat, and pace about inside your flat.

.

I paced up and down after the phone call.  I felt fresh, wonderfully slept, felt like I wanted to run into the sunshine and let it drench me.  Life was good!  Life could be good!  Imagine Daniel’s mum being a regular actor for the Police Academy – that being my job:  casual assignments as required.  I liked it!

But should I do it?  Would Daniel be best at day care – or, what if, would maybe Chris take him?  Could that be the start of something good – a strengthening of bond and relationship between them?

I made a cup of coffee.  I opened my front door to let in the warmth of the day, through the flywire.  I washed the dishes, walked about thinking madly – how, how – and cleaning up absentmindedly.

.

Daniel likes the child care centre – he has instant play mates, whereas we don’t know anyone with babies.  It’s good for him, and he knows it’s a day of fun and variety when I drop him off.  And Mum comes back happier!  But the cost – it would take an enormous bite from my earnings.  At the same time as earning a day’s pay, I’d pay a day to child care.

Or then, just imagine if Chris took Daniel three days one week and four the next.  He’s so proud taking him around here and there, isn’t he?  What if Daniel began to learn Chinese by association?  That would be fantastic!

It’s just a two week assignment.  I don’t have to say yes to more assignments – even one would be a great experience.  I wonder if I could swear at the police – ha, imagine screaming like a wild child, “Leave me the fuck alone!” (and getting away with it).  Is that an offence, would the recruit decide?  I’ve heard that spitting at police is assault.  Is spitting at a person assault?  What if I spat on an actor – would the police recruits arrest me?

It was all so weird and wonderful, exciting, new, and such a challenge having no script to follow but just a theme to follow.  It was – my gosh, I had to work it out, just had to work it out.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

The One Called Out

By April the 6^th, the year following Daniel’s birth, his feet had become big enough for shoes.    Our excursion to the supermarket to buy his first pair, was momentous.

.

Had truly my own feet once been so little that not a shoe in the world fit them?  Had truly I once been so keen and proud as Daniel, holding the shopping bag containing his first pair of sandals, walking alongside the pram up Stirling Highway, Cottesloe with the all the posture of a dog carrying a thick, roasted thigh bone?

.

I decided on impulse to stop in at the park just before our apartment block, with the hope that Daniel would expend sufficient energy to drop to sleep when we got home.   Necessary as it was for the young to have boundless energy by which to force through their sprouting inquiring minds, burgeoning personalities, budding grasp of life, it seemed a rotten misalignment of energies that just as I was fatiguing of my existence, a sprite should appear on my calendar, to announce itself into my life, to challenge my attempted surrender to the commonality of non-accomplishment.

.

Daniel’s eyes sparkled as we turned the corner toward the playground and he ran ahead to not miss a millisecond of opportunity to play.  I had to call him back and temper him, as he began to ascend the rungs of the ladder to the enormous slide, still holding the bag with his new sandals in it.  How it could not cross his mind that there was danger in climbing some 12 rungs alone, I did not understand.  The only instinct of danger I had ever witnessed in his little being was the first time we were atop the slide and he clung to my thigh as I positioned myself to seated.  For just one moment while I was not sturdily behind him, fear betrayed his spirit; but which innate wisdom lapsed to abandonment as we whizzed down the slippery incline.

.

Daniel obediently, but impatiently, doubled back to watch me settle our belongings under a tree.  He allowed me to steal the bag with sandals from his possession, on the understanding I would nestle that proof he was growing up safely beneath his blanket with the other valuables – my purse and keys.

.

I joined Daniel as he ran to the foot of the slide and stood watch as he scaled the structure with all the confidence of a lemming off a cliff.  When he had made his way to the top, I stood ready to catch him should he fall, until he sat and allowed gravity to pull him pink feet first down to the ground.  With giggles erupting abundantly like champagne on new year’s eve, he ran to the back of the slide to climb it again.

.

There were other kids at the slide, and I had to teach Daniel to wait his turn, during which it did not escape my notice that the two other babes about Daniel’s age were each under heavy guard of doting parents.  I felt overwhelmingly that the other parents were viewing me in their peripheral with horror at my carelessness.  I did not think I was careless, but conceded I was perhaps daring with Daniel.  However, we had been down the slide together often before and he was ready to go it alone.  I felt, perhaps dumbly, that if he believed he could go it alone, I should at least allow him to try.

.

Despite my logic, albeit of timorous conviction, I felt inferior to the other parents who were playing with their children so much more carefully.  As Daniel made climb after slide after run back to the ladder, an anxiety began to creep over me.  While on the surface I exclaimed approval and encouragement to Daniel, I began to need urgently to go home – to no longer be under the covert stares of perfect parents.

.

Over time, as Daniel tirelessly repeated his excursion, I began to wonder how I could end it.  I as his mother should be of such authority that he ceases fun at my command, and come.   I did not usually have difficulty with him, but as I grilled hotter and hotter in the company of mothers who had girl friends in support, or their own mothers – and one seemed to be there with her father – I began to panic that Daniel would cause a scene, thus cementing the evidence of my flawed parenting.  It was all of the reason I had not joined a mothers’ club – so that my inability to be a sound parent could not be witnessed, judged, whispered of behind my back, looked down upon, reproached in thoughts, agreed upon by the other mothers… also to not be rejected from the group, excluded as of not good standing in our positions of mother and child.

The anxiety went from nibbling at my toes to running all over my body like fire ants biting me at every doubt, fear, perception of inferiority.

“Daniel!” I suddenly said as he stood behind a little boy making his way up the ladder.  Daniel, together with the other kids in line, turned to look at me with surprise.

“Daniel, it’s time to go.”  I said it as if acting, as if I was acting as a mother.  “You can have this slide, and then two more, and then we have to go.”

.

The other children looked from my face to Daniel’s, to see how The One Called Out would react.  Such a call from a parent can often preface a tantrum, or resistance of some kind which can be interesting to watch – mouths agape, some dribbling, eyes wide at the entertainment.  Daniel’s eyes flickered with comprehension at what I’d said, and then turned back to the slide.  He made his way up the ladder surely as a fireman, slid down, and rushed back to where I stood, two other children now in line.

“That was really fast!” I said, cheerfully.  “Two more, and we go!’

Daniel didn’t respond, just waited in line, and I flitted a quick look at a mother gently pushing her child on the swing.  She wasn’t looking at me, but I was sure she could hear me.  I was sure she was ready to watch me dragging a screaming Daniel from the playground, kicking, red-faced.  I had never had to drag Daniel screaming from any place – he was an extraordinarily wonderfully behaved boy – but that mattered nothing against my fear of being a spectacle of an incompetent parent.

.

When finally Daniel had his last slide, as he ran to the back of the line, I turned and said, “Three!  OK!  Time to go now!”  He ceased his stride and looked at me.  For one second I saw indecision on Daniel’s face, into the very centre of which I fired my only ammunition:  “We’ve got to get home so you can wear your new sandals!”

.

As one boy clambered up the ladder, his turn to slide disintegrating the interest value of Daniel and me, or potential thereof, a little girl stepped forward, her head turned to accommodate a fixated stare at us both.  I looked at her and said, “He got his first pair of shoes today – sandals!” with a big smile on my face.  Daniel took a couple of steps towards me.  “I see your feet are big enough for sandals,” I said to the little girl, and she looked down at her feet that were, indeed, big enough for sandals.  Daniel looked at them too.

“Well, now Daniel is all grown up, he’s able to wear sandals too.”

At these words, Daniel had closed the gap between us.  I turned toward our pram, waving to the little girl.  “Bye!” I said.  The girl said nothing.  They seldom do, which is one of the reasons I don’t really get on with children.  The only way I know how to be with children is animated and smiley.  I think that is how you have to relate to children (or you fail to relate).

.

But for the times I have wept in Daniel’s company, unable to hold on any longer, waiting for him to fall asleep before I allow my secret of deep sadness its necessary expression – but for those times, I am usually overly jolly, sort of hyper-happy.  I just don’t know any other way to be, but facade.

.

We successfully departed the park without any scene, and although I would never see any of those other mothers again, I was relieved that blessed Daniel was of such manageable temperament.  I had felt grateful again and again and again since his birth, all the while fearing what I had heard called ‘the terrible twos’.  I didn’t know what I would do then, but bear it.  Of so, so much in life we have no choice but to grit our teeth and bear it – and of that, I was well practiced.

.

When finally Daniel’s energy conceded it needed rejuvenation – but only on its terms; i.e. by way of a 40 minute nap, as it turned out, I wrote in my journal:

Today your feet became big enough to wear sandals and you walked around and around and around.

I tried to instil pride in you by patting your cheeks, your shoulders, smiling and comparing the sandals on our feet. 

“Now you have sandals, just like Mama.”

Yes, you were proud.

I love you.  xxxN

                          MAMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50