Liptember Day #1

As I mentioned in my last post, this September I am participating in Liptember. Wearing Liptember lipstick every day to raise money for the Centre for Womens Mental health and Lifeline.

Lipstick: W7 Liptember "Devils Darling"

Thank you so much to: Sharmini, Simon & Jess, Christine, Ben, Cha, Jess and Lora for donating bringing me to $380 so far!

You can read about my reasons for participating in liptember, or donate to my cause on my liptember profile page.

Ten Years Ago vs Last Week. Obligatory Liptember Shout-out.

When I was nineteen I wasn't a person. 

It wasn't long - maybe thirty seconds? Less than a minute I am sure. But I can still remember the looks on their faces - one holding an arm out to hold the other back.

"Let's wait for the next one. I think she's on drugs," one said. In one of those "whispers" that isn't really a whisper. And they didn't get into the lift. It isn't them not getting into the lift that bothers me, a decade later. It's that they didn't care that they heard what I said.

It was a whisper because that's not a polite or nice thing thing to say, but it was loud because I wasn't a person enough for them to care if I heard. I think that to them I wasn't a person enough for them to think I understood.

I don't remember what I looked like that day. I assume I was crying. Was I slumped on the floor? Likely. Was I drooling? Humming? Rocking? Where is the line between unacceptable and inhumanity?

I've been thinking about it a lot this week. 

Last Sunday I wasn't sure I was on the right side of that line. Terrified of the looks they might give me I pulled my shirt over my head and gave myself a slit through the collar to see out of. 

And of course I knew - I knew - that even if I was still skirting the wrong side of unacceptable before I was probably way over it now, behaving in one of the ways that makes people feel like they don't need to watch their volume before making fun of someone in public.

So I put my fingers in my ears and hummed all the way home. And I laughed in the street like a mad person is what I want to say. But don't want to say. Because I don't want that to be true because (I'm not like those people/I'm probably just faking anyhow/I don't want you to talk about me as if I'm not hearing you. As if I don't count)

And I didn't fall down and I didn't see or hear anyone laugh at me. And for me, that day. That was a win.

This September I am taking part in Liptember raising money for Women's Mental Health Research and Lifeline. I'll be taking selfies every day (which I try to do anyway) wearing my liptember lipstick and posting them to my whatmyhairdoes tumblr.

(Lifeline 13 11 14)

The Edge of Yesterday: Warning contains feelings about 2002 which was a really SHITTY year and also you've probably already heard me cry about this story

I went to see The Edge of Tomorrow last night. It made me think about the past and alternate realities and that sort of thing. But it was mostly the blog post I read this morning that sent me into a terrible time-loop of distress and self-loathing and I don't think there's a big alien to kill that will break me out of this one.

Sometimes you just gotta say the thing and let the other person deal with the thing. Working around someone’s terrible behavior while you grow to dislike them more and more and more isn’t actually kinder.

Captain Awkward

In 2001 I was at a party. I was trying to be… fun. 

You see - I had this problem where I felt really left out of my friendship group. And there were lots of reasonable reasons for this - we were in different year levels at school and so while they were busy with their final year of VCE I was floundering in mental illness and unemployment during the year off which was supposed to refresh me after my life-meltdown of year 12 and telling my mother and my therapist about my sexual abuse.

But it made sense, you know? They’d see each other at school and organise things there and they didn’t see me regularly so, quite naturally, we were drifting apart which made me sad, but not angry, because it was just a thing.

But I thought, maybe, if I were… fun and cool enough they would remember me next time they were having a party or going to the movies or hanging out and then maybe I would get invited to things more. And I wanted to be more fun. More ZANY.

I always wanted to be zany. It was sort of a ongoing struggle for me to… try and manifest some sort of personality. Everyone else had seemed to pick one up naturally at some point, but I felt like I’d missed out on mine. Everyone else seemed to be forming opinions and interests all over the place while the most I could manage was a distain for the Backstreet Boys and an obsession with the Barenaked Ladies.

And that’s probably not the only reason I would get drunk and say and do stupid shit. Or even maybe the biggest. I was fucking miserable, after all.

But there was a dude at this party who’d been someone that none of us had even liked when I’d last had classes with him - which was, admittedly, in 1997 before I skipped up a year. It was a reminder of how disconnected I was from my friends and I recall promising myself that I would put in more effort.

But as I was drunkenly making my way either to or from the toilet this dude pulled me aside and told me I should pull myself together and shouldn’t be so drunk and stupid because it was worrying and annoying and he… he told me that this was why people didn’t invite me to things. 

That wasn’t a kind thing to say. 

I didn’t believe him. This was, you remember, someone I had never considered to be my friend. I thought, that if what he was saying were true, someone would have mentioned it. Only in less mean words. Or something.

I think about it more now, than I did then.

So I tried harder to cling to my friendships - friendships are important, you know, and we’d been pals, the girls at least, since year 7. I started uni  in 2002 and had a pretty good first 6 months, even. I was meeting people* but, you know, that’s not the same as true friendship. The people that are there for the long haul through changing year levels and exams and VCE and all that.

Haha.

And at the end of 2002 I was invited to a Christmas party. I was VERY happy about that - I’d seen my friends even less than ever and everyone was always too busy when I’d invited them to do anything. So I went, and, unshaken in my strategy to be AWESOMELY FUN and MEMORABLE so that I wouldn’t be forgotten so often in the coming year.

I peaked early, as I generally did at parties. It seems more acceptable now that I’m in my thirties but even back in my raging teens I couldn’t really keep awake much past 10pm.

There was a designated “quiet room” though and I thought it would be nice to sit in the quiet room and be quiet for a while and catch up properly with my friends. There were a few people in the room already but soon after I joined them, they trickled out.

And closed the door.

I’d brought my boyfriend-at-the-time to the party so I wasn’t alone. But I saw him plenty often and was at the party to see my friends but no matter how many times I opened the door and tried to smile invitingly at the people who walked past… they just kept closing it so eventually I gave up and went to sleep.

It was not, I am fully aware, anyone else’s responsibility to check my behaviour or correct me or otherwise coach me into being a less irritating adult than I’d, I can reasonably assume, been a teenager.

Someone I didn’t like and who’d had enough to drink to feel it was appropriate to tell other people how to behave had told me I was annoying and that people didn’t like me the year before and I’d felt like that was mean. I guess what I am saying is that I don’t think that the people at this party were being kinder.

Especially when I heard later via someone who would still talk to me that a bunch of people were really mad at me for being horribly rude and taking up the quiet room the whole night. Yeah.

The next morning someone offered me a lift home. I asked multiple times if they were sure they didn’t mind - because, not being able to drive myself, I was often aware of my inability to reciprocate in kind with lifts. She assured me that it was and I was very grateful and I thanked her again as she dropped me off.

And she looked me in the eye and she said “It was so great to see you! I hope I’ll see you again soon!” and she left without inviting me to the New Years Eve party she was hosting three days later.

I don’t think that was kinder.

And I don’t know, I guess, how hurt I would have been if at point between 1996 and 2000 or whenever it was that my problems became too difficult for anyone else to deal with (No blame here, we were all teenagers and my problems were way too difficult for ME to deal with and I had therapists and shit) I’d been told “hey we don’t actually like you or want to be friends with you”. Because I guess they’d probably told me that a million times with attempted slow fades and spurned invitations and not inviting me to things. I just didn’t hear it. Heck, a dude did tell me with words and I just didn't believe him.

Every few years this happens. Something sparks it and I think about it again and even after years of not thinking about it it still hurts so much and I wish I knew how I could make it not do that. Not hurt. Not come back into my head. At least one of those things.

I really enjoyed the movie though! Even though the ending was silly.


* am still friends with these people. <3

Strictly Ballroom: the (wish it wasn't a) musical

Yesterday my friend Miss Fairchild and I went too see Strictly Ballroom: The Musical.

The show was glaringly flawed in many ways but I'm pretty sure I've never enjoyed a live show so much in my life (disclaimer: I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show so ymmv)

It was visually ... all the words I can think of to fit here seem too small. It was SO sparkly. SO colourful. Sparkly curtains, sparkly seats. The costumes were, I think, my favourite part.

The flow of the story seemed off too things seemed to happen in an order because they were following the movie, rather than creating a show that flowed smoothly.

The songs, apart from Time After Time (even Love is in the Air was disappointingly underused, only popping out for the bows, basically)... sucked. Unmemorable and/or incomprehensible there is no way I would buy or listen to the soundtrack. I kind of felt like... they should have just used pop songs instead of trying to write their own. Or just not made it a musical at all. That would have been way better.

And yet I loved it. I had so much fun! It's easy for me to sit here and think "oh it would have been so much better if..." but I wasn't involved in making it so... yeah. But even though parts of it sucked I am super glad it exists and that we saw it and I will probably be thinking about how much I enjoyed it and all the amazing costumes and sets for a really long time.

And this morning I've been looking at my list of barely started fan fiction projects in Google Docs, my Veronica Mars essay, my abandoned Read Along project here on this blog, my short lived "... and remembering that something doesn't have to be perfect to be worthwhile. It can be flawed and also enjoyable. Times approximately infinity if I am doing it for fun, on the internet, for free.

On the other hand for a long time I wasn't really starting anything and I think failing to finish things is a way better problem to have than not being able to start anything at all.