Change Has Come

baby i have changed
and he knows it, as he sits alone – for once
having made plans
too proud to share
he feels my perpetual pain for the very first time
he has his revenge the next day
leaving me dishevelled and bleary eyed
frantic
as he watches the hobbit

baby i have numbed
i need to race across the road to feel
to drink alcohol and smoke weed
tempt fate, destiny

baby i have changed
i listen to linkin park – dubstepped
the xx
skylar grey croons me
and i just want to go home
if only i knew where it was

some stones rolling downhill do gather detritus

[December 17, 2012]

i am drawn to him just as he is to me, completely aware that the tension between us would be obvious to anyone happening to glance our way …Dave 3 steps down from the landing i stand upon, unlit cigarette in between my fingers, as i tell him i cannot come down and join him as he smokes a joint … he holds his hand to his heart as though i am physically hurting him before he turns and walks down.

i am in a tizzy but nothing close to as being confused as when Mark calls me from the airport: he is here, he is waiting for his dad to pick him up, he needs to buy a dongle, get an internet connection, his old one is disconnected, can we meet up tomorrow?

hardly an hour passes by before Dave asks me if i’ve left work, and i tell him that Mark just called me. i read his anger in between the lines of the texts he composes, even as i disguise my bewilderment, before he runs off to play his next set.

Riff needs to talk and he tells me about his one regret in life as we wait for my bus, in his car, both very well aware that he has made me terribly late. he asks me about Mark, not that he knows his name, not that Dave does, not that Riff knows about Dave.

Mark texts me and we fall into a familiar pattern, as though the past year was a mere sabbatical agreed upon by both parties, and now there is only the initial awkwardness to get through.

i have so many questions to demand answers for, yet i know that i will not get them during my lunch hour tomorrow – it will be filled with awkward small talk and inanities.

my life is either barren or insanely complicated, no middle ground, nothing mediocre, only extremes. and this time i am afraid that i have pulled others into my sphere and i do not know how to handle hurting – even inadvertantly – someone else, people i care about, whether they are true or not, whether they deserve it or not.

Riff’s words ring nonstop in my head – all anything wants from you is a good fuck with the hottest girl, to claim that ultimate notch in their leather belts. and suddenly i do not know if i can trust anyone, Riff included. perhaps i should have chosen silence, to stay in my shell, instead of burrowing out and sharing.

Here a perv, there a paedophile, everywhere a degenerate

Why does the world glory in violence against women?

I wore a dress to work the other day, forgetting that I had to take the bus home. So I stayed late so the bus wouldn’t be crowded and no one could slip a hand under my skirt unnoticed. Not that anyone would do anything even if they could see. I walked to the bus stop in fear, took my seat still afraid. When the intoxicated man next to me tried to brush my thigh with his I calmly asked him to move away, brandishing my little black umbrella as a weapon, even though I was scared. I feigned nonchalance and confidence until I got home safe, collapsed into a heap and cried.

By the age of 9, at least 3 of my classmates had admitted to having been sexually abused, in a class of less than 20.
By the age of 10 I realised that I had joined them.
My mother made me promise not to tell anyone, so my much older ‘cousin’ would continue to pop in every once in a while, though much less frequently and though he never touched me again. He was welcomed warmly, even let into the room I was hiding in so he could bid goodbye cos he was moving overseas.

When the man I was married off to with the flourish of a signature on my father’s part and with no one having asked me what I thought went beyond the psychological and the fists in the wall and pushed me to the ground my parents watched as though I was a cockroach that had just been stepped on, struggling to move even as white blood gushed out.

My father continued to be abusive until I was able to stand up on my own 2 feet with a baby in tow.

When I finally found that Mark was even a worse jerk that the kitschy autobiography he wrote everyone stood in line to pounce on the vulnerable woman.
My friend tried to get me drunk.
My boss tried to blackmail me into sleeping with him.
A colleague forced himself upon me.
Everyone could see but no one did anything.

And yet I know that compared to so many other women all over the world I am actually much better off.

People keep telling me that I am strong, surprised that I haven’t lost my sanity yet, and they don’t even know one half of it.

No one bats an eyelid when a guy tries to grope me in the bus. They only look at me funny when I hit him with an umbrella.

Policemen wolf whistle and tell me that I look sexy. Do they expect me to troop in and report an attack after that?

Could I have my friend back, please?

[Nov 24, 2012]

I sit, hunched as always, listening to music off Being Human. It’s been 2.5 hours since I texted Dave and he hasn’t replied. I miss him. I wish I was talking to him. I wish I was curled up around him and he was making me laugh. I wonder what that would feel like, his arms around me.

It is highly unlikely he is asleep. So he is probably just avoiding me. Like he did all day at work. Taking his heart and running as fast as he can.

I wish I was a little high and telling him about the dream I had last week. When it was open-mic and he was singing and I was right there showing my support; when he finished his set he grabbed me and surprised me with a deep kiss.

I imagine him wearing that t-shirt I adore on him, holding me tight against the wind, and just enjoying the beautiful landscape in silence.

I wish i hadn’t crushed on him, I wish he hadn’t fallen for me. I wish we could still be friends the way we used to, not be afraid of our special connection, laughing about silly things, talking about our lives, talking on the phone with cigarettes hanging from our lips.

We could never work out, even if our feelings were exactly the same. The timing is all wrong. Like Benjamin Button and Daisy.

I just want my friend back.

3 weeks

It’s been 3 weeks since i wrote last, 3 weeks since i’ve runaway, if only in my mind
I’ve done some spring cleaning, mowed down some weeds but left the roots intact
‘Cos i don’t ever seem to have the strength to deal with the facts
But at least i don’t cry no more, even though it hurts so much
And I wish for the hot tears to flow and relief, after the wracking sobs have passed.
I’ve kept it all to myself, not a soul have I told
If I scream loud enough that I am happy do you think it’ll become the truth?
The hunger pangs have left me, the gastritis doesn’t hurt as much
I climbed a roof and watched the stars, but sooner than later I had to come down
My only friend has left me ‘cos he’s got his defences up
Riff’s been too much to handle with his controlling stance
I’m always looking lost and forlorn
Wondering why the hell I continue to bother to go on
I almost drank a bunch of pills
Not that Mark will ever know
He’s too busy worrying about the lack of a manicure
I walk and I walk til my ass goes flat, fake beats earphones firmly in place
I keep on trying, I keep on fighting, but the dark still swirls about my fate

Maybe it’s not you, maybe it’s me

[Nov 18, 2012]

I’ve always fought for Wallace, over Ellis; Aubyn I said was pure and relevant

Trainspotting gave me such shivers that I’m yet to watch it; the movie lies in my hard drive unopened

You always thought that Ellis was the best; I thought he was too over the top, too much show and affect

I always thought I was running from your heroin past, your idolatry of Renton, the selfish manipulative that you proved yourself to be

But perhaps, it was more me than you

[At least if you took away the drugs and the cheating.]

The loneliness, the meaninglessness that my life has always been

Purposelessness

The shallowness that hurts

Each pluck of string reverberation within my soul inflicting hurt

Maybe baby I’m running away from a confrontation with me

My true self – an empty shell,

Reflecting like a mirror at me

A Walking I Will Go

[Nov 13, 2012]

I walked all the way home today, from work. 13.7 km according to the receipt from the cab I took 2 weeks ago. Partly for a lark – can I do this? course I can. Partly cos I had a headache and a walk would help while the bus ride would only make it so much worse. And partly cos I had eaten too much festivities junk. Besides I was feeling better after 9 days of continuous fever and headaches and I wanted to put to use at least some of my muscles which – like clockwork – had lost considerable volume once I got sick.

I kept up an ok pace through about half the distance. And as I walked under the first flyover I realised that I was feeling good. Yes I still didn’t have compatible earphones so no pumping music pumping in my ears, but I had managed to tune out of reality nevertheless.

And while I don’t usually let myself dream or rather fantasise romantic notions – sets you up for a fall it does – I imagined myself getting married, my hair long and wavy and not frizzy in the least, shining black, falling to my waist, wearing a white dress, long and simple, smiling, a face lit up with genuine joy, holding a bouquet of white flowers – roses? canna lilies? tulips? – maybe a white orchid in my hair, rings secure on my finger, surrounded a few close friends, my baby girl so tall and so much older. Couldn’t picture the groom though — my velvety eyed Royal Gardner days are long over.

And then a refreshing breeze teased – blowing fresh across the face, stopping, picking up again, halting, breeze, still … it felt right out of a page of R.K. Narayan’s The English Teacher.

People pointed and stared and wolf whistled and teased … but I got home in 2 hours, the same time as it would have taken the bus, with swollen feet and hands – and a plastic ring stuck on a finger – to a feeling of satisfaction and hot tea. I knew of course I would regret it the next day, a sudden bout of exertion was not what the doctor ordered, but still …

I should do that more often. Yes, the second flyover is scary to walk under but it is compensated by the fact that I get to walk on the bridge and watch the lights play over the still surface waters of the river. And as soon as I get new earphones, I can tune out the perverts for the most part, and pick up the pace even perhaps.

To Know is not (necessarily) to Believe

[Nov 7, 2012]

so do you cook for your daughter and husband?
For a moment I am tempted to let it go, uncorrected, suddenly feeling weary of the awkward explanation even though I have mouthed the words so many times.
actually, I’m divorced … I make breakfast, my mom makes her lunch ‘cos I have to come to work
someone has to be a total idiot to let a woman like you go
thank you

I may have been told this, by people I don’t know well and those that I do, in different variations, many times. So I do know it.
But I am yet to believe it.
And only when I actually believe it will I be able to make good choices.
How could I even begin to get there without completely getting over him? Without letting him go from my heart?
This man who would put a woman through such unimaginable hell.
This man who took a broken shell fixed with glue and tape and struck it down with a sledgehammer, repeatedly, until there was nothing but powder scattering into the wind.

there ain’t no day like ma birth-day

[Nov 2, 2012]

I was going to take off the horrid red nail polish I had chosen to wear 2 days ago, made even more garish by the middle fingers painted black. But I’m not going to anymore. It’s the perfect shade of fugly to take me into the day – my birthday that is, the day before Guy Fawkes day.

I left early because I couldn’t bear the uneasiness that enveloped me like a halo. So I walked and walked and walked – about 6 km – until I hurt too much – my torso, not my legs, strange enough.

On the way, distracted and depressed, I almost walked into a train and barely escaped with life and limb, but walking away with unfeigned nonchalance. [yeah i almost died; so what!]

I don’t like my birthdays, they are never cheery affairs. They are like new year’s eve, whence you assess the year past, and my last one has been spectacularly fucked up. Not to mention not even my mother remembers it, never mind anyone else.

It reminds me this time that the only person I can talk to at least about some things, I only see depicted upon a computer screen.

I am so afraid of being unacknowledged that I genuinely do hope that at least my psychopathic stalker would remember and send me a creepy card with my name written in glitter; so I can count at least one entity that did remember.

I am indeed nobody’s princess.

***

[Nov 3, 2012]

It’s 22 hours left for that darned 4th, and I have already cried a year’s worth of tears in a few hours alone.

It’s 22 hours to the day I had given myself as the deadline, but I am now forced to acknowledge what I knew very well even then, that I will continue to wait rather than break, always the pathetic fool up for being taken for a ride.

I have no one and nothing; I must start from scratch and alone, if at all.

I am old, older than my years, and cranky.

I have no cigarettes; I must wait for dawn.

I am afraid of being so very alone, even as I am, even as I have always been. One would think 27 years on, one would be used to it by now. But nay, I go on and on, hoping for some kind of love, that which I never had. Dreaming, dreaming, of being loved, and cherished and being content.

Our dreams are as good as it gets

Missing: pride; since Feb 2; reward negotiable

[October 31, 2012]

‘Pride goes before a fall’ my mommy used to say to me often when I  was a kid. She considered me to be quite proud, intentionally or involuntarily mistaking my refusal to back down from my ‘alien’ beliefs to be pride. Perhaps it did indeed have elements of pride and arrogance, considering that I chose to hold on to them, though not in a negative way.

And just last month Rif had told me that when everything else fails and you are alone, pride was all you had left – pride for all the shit that you have gone through and beaten down, pride in having built your life and everything else in it yourself, pride that you are alive and not dead. That pride, said Rif, was to be honoured, and not disgraced.

*

I’m taking the bus home, squashed in the throng of odorous humanity that, like me, is trying to get home after work, when Dam Dam squeezes himself through. I am trying to retrieve my hand holding my phone from the tangled mass of arms trying to grab hold of anything solid above my head when I feel eyes on me. He nods his head to the side and smiles that look of innocence of his.

The realisation that my life has taken a most pathetic turn hits me once more. I travel home like a KFC chicken – claw cuffed, unwashed and with no room to move or breathe – in a chicken farm. What a steep fall indeed from never having to take the bus except for a lark.

And then, a lesson in the speed of modern communications ensues.

Sub, having being corrected  via text in his assumption that I had changed my number – by the look of innocence himself – calls me, and calls me, and calls me … a never ending litany of ringing.

I imagine that the news of  my sighting, as though of the elusive Nessie, has spread, making for interesting dinner conversation at the hot house, except that no one wants to violently fuck Nessie until she is nothing but scattered bones.

From text to old fashioned talk and then leisurely Facebook chats for desert – rehashing their former abuse with their dicks hard and their fingers bloody. A lone text is sent off to the Psycho and a tweet is composed … and another. A phone call back for filling in of detail and by the time I get home a vicious and gleeful rant on a narcissist bog — in MS Psycho font.