Dear Diary

Dear Diary is the theme of this week's Sunday Scribbling.

I have kept diaries of sorts since I was perhaps 15 years old. I threw out my first ever diary due to its shamefully embarrassing and juvenile content, but I kept my second one, which just so happened to be a school project we had to do as part of our year 12 English curriculum. I doubt any teacher actually had a read of its content; it was written by a dopey 16 year old after all, but had anyone chanced a bit of a skim through, they might have been surprised, for I never said a word in the majority of my classes at school, and the diary content, in hindsight, is both riotously hilarious (though not deliberate) and tragic (perhaps melodramatic is a better word...or angst-riddled maybe).

It did pass my mind to share one of the more laughable moments in that second diary, but I refrained from doing so, instead I thought I would share this little tid bit. In hindsight I think perhaps I might have suffered a little of the old post natal depression in the aftermath of having my babies. I was quite depressed and despairing for quite a while afterward... then we moved to Canada and the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of support was almost unbearable. To make matters worse, I then endured Vancouver's wettest winter ever; a winter that just would not let up. The darkness, the lack of vitamin D and my already questionable mental state saw me plunge into a deep dark hole, one that I could not see my way out of......until I travelled by myself to Australia to attend my friend's wedding. It was the break I needed; the beginning of my turn around. You'll be happy to know that I am in a much better place these days.

This is a diary entry of my landing in Sydney after my "great escape". It is a bit of an emotional rant - I hope you can follow it:

2nd March 2006 – Sydney Australia - 27 degrees Celsius

What a tumultuous thirty-six hours. Talk about stress and serenity; life and death; darkness and light; turmoil and peace; sanity and insanity; warm and cold.

What would a numerologist say of this state of being; highs and lows and opposing thoughts, feelings and experiences?

I love my family, but my soul has been dying and I have felt like one of those ships lost in the Bermuda triangle – having mysteriously disappeared without a trace, with no hope of ever being seen again –soul off the radar.

Actually the red light is still flashing on the navigation screen. It signals that all is well; all is registering. Life and the vessel are following the straight path to its destiny. Perhaps the vessel might encounter a storm or undue turbulence, perhaps the people on board are a bit bored themselves; they might feel a bit uncomfortable for a while, but they know it isn’t for long; they know that there is an end to their suffering – they can generally count down the hours on one or two hands. So for them, it is mostly…. well, bearable. I don't know where I am going or how long it is going to take. It is as though I boarded a ship without an itinerary and have unwittingly boarded one that has simply been set adrift.

My dreams have stagnated and rot due to a lack of reflection. They fade away like the colour of a bright red t-shirt left for weeks to dry on the clothes line during a heatwave. The brilliant red grows duller and duller; the garment stiffens and becomes unshapely with each rain and scorching it gets, hanging there neglected and forgotten.

I really did have dreams once, but I don’t remember what they are now….
Actually I do remember, but the fire of possibility has long been extinguished, the winds that fanned the flames – exhausted. What remains is the ashen remnants of an idea.

Everything starts with an idea – sure, but passion, desire, inspiration, hope and opportunity are needed for an idea to sprout forth. Nourishment enables the idea to gather strength and strive toward its greatest potential. We all need a little visual progress from time to time. Don’t you think?

I often find myself sympathising with the jailbirds – the prisoners. I can’t think of a more debilitating place in which to gather hope for a better life; of believing deep down that one is a worthy human being, with talents and gifts to offer the world, but are prevented from achieving this end. I often feel that my life is as restricted, lonely and confined as a prisoner – but at least I can get into my car and roam. It is not my physicality that is being held prisoner as much as my mind. I am a slow thinker – considered no more clever than an ass, when I were at school. In reality however, I really just needed the time and freedom to think.... I am not at school anymore. I am at home, but I still need that time to collect my thoughts and arrange them on the blank pages of my mind. But today I am not at home. I have managed to escape.

Alone I took a plane to Sydney Australia from Vancouver Canada. I think I spent most of the journey in a state of shock; my mind was numb, confused and unaccustomed to peace. I felt paralysed during that flight, not knowing what to do with myself and this yet unrealised freedom. My mind only seemed to switch back on as I exited my plane - like a child's forgotten toy that had suddenly been gifted a fresh battery.

I have been away from my family for 24 hours now, and I have barely spoken to a soul; customs guy at the airport; train ticket girl and the waiter here, in this glorious cafe that I now find myself.

For the first time in ages...years, my mind is observing its surroundings; it is reflecting, absorbing and watching the energy that is this peripheral life with all its activity. I am enjoying the silence, the stillness, the ability to just be...uninterrupted within myself.

I feel free.

in the darkness....

I was thinking today, about a good friend I had in high school. She was adopted. I don't know why I started thinking about her really. We lost touch years ago. She undertook her latter high school years in a boarding school in the big city, and while we tried to maintain contact over that time, life took over, as it does. She moved, I moved, her parents moved and my parents moved....she could live in the next street for all I know. Nevertheless, we were good friends at the time. Her parents owned and ran a local motel, and I was invited regularly to stay over at her place; we were even allowed to stay in a motel room if one was vacant.

The motel was close to the local swimming pool. One summer we spent practically ever day at the pool (a fact you might find surprising if you had read the story, two posts back). This friend even invited me to stay with her at her Aunt's place in another town, over the winter break. Her Aunt owned a corner deli and we spent most of the week working in it, which was a huge novelty (for me anyway).

We did a lot together, this friend and I. I remember one night, creeping out from one of the motel rooms we were staying in and walking to the all night truck stop (roadhouse/diner/servo) for hot chips; scrambling over neighbourhood fences and into foreign backyards, then walking back through the local cemetery eating hot chips from a wrap of butcher paper, while trying to make out the inscriptions etched into the old leering Gothic style monuments. This friend was there for me during a difficult time in my life. She was funny and crazy; a risk taker and a bit unpredictable...a welcomed distraction, and just what I needed at the time.

Despite all this, I realised it was quite difficult to get to know this particular friend. There was somewhat of a wall that she placed around her that forbid one from really getting to know her. Humour was her best defense; whenever things go a bit intense or serious, whenever the deeper or the tougher question were raised, she expertly sidelined all and any expectations of a genuine or heartfelt response. Never did I learn her hearts crush, while we were at school together, although she told me of the her crush in her new school, he being at a safe, unlocatable and unidentifiable distance - a mere abstraction to me, a fictional character in a novel or a cartoon upon which to wonder and imagine, but never know.

One night however, when laying in our respective twin beds in the motel, darkness draped upon all forms, our voices rising up in the night, unencumbered by the intimidation and bounds of body language suggestions, my friend started talking about her adopted older sister and how, when her sister became upset with my friend, she would tell her that she wished she "had never chosen her" at the hospital/orphanage. I asked my friend when she had been told she was adopted and while wrapped in the safe shroud of night, she told me that she had always known. Her mother was unable to have children, and her birth story was that her parents took her older sister to choose a sibling, and her sister was said to have proudly chosen the prettiest baby in the establishment. My friend seemed happy to recount this story to me. It was a comfort to her; it made her feel loved and wanted, like she belonged for she was chosen.

On the back of this discussion; seizing the moment and perhaps being both rather insensitive and a little daft of age, I then asked my friend if she ever thought about her birth mother. "No", came the abrupt reply, a reply tinged with disappointment and hurt, "and I will never look for her. She gave me up. My parents are the only parents I know. They are the ones who love me. I never think about my birth family." And with that I felt a door close. Silence descended like a rock in a still pond - hard and fast, fanning ripples the only sign that something had occurred...I heard her muffled sobs in the darkness, and it broke my heart to think that I had brought this pain to the surface, for it seemed apparent that this was something that she had often mulled over in the private corners of her inner being. We never spoke of it again, and she seemed happy with that, but the conversation stuck with me, as has the memory of her quiet stifled tears and I have wondered about her and where she is today and whether there really is some part of her that seeks, and longs.

*Photo by Olivier Follmi - "A Tear of Coldness at 4200 Meters, Ladak".