Transgender rights are human rights

Transgender rights are human rights

This was going to go into my newsletter but it can’t wait till Friday.

There was an anti-trans rights / right wing demonstration over the weekend in Melbourne where people decided to give the n*zi salute. In a show of solidarity, the Transgender Pride Flag was raised over Parliament in Victoria this afternoon, Tuesday.

When a (not always needing to be on the extreme side) right-wing politician is pointing at either refugees or LGBTQIA+ equality issues, they’re using them as diversion tactics. Because they know they’re losing ground and quickly.

[This is better explained than I can by listening to Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail with Bernie Saunders. He explains that younger voters are worried about the cost of living, and wanting a different system. For some people, they are going to have a lower standard of living than their parents. He says, “It turns out, for a whole lot of reasons, the younger generation is the most anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-xenophobic, anti-homophobic generation.”]

Have you noticed how quickly they’ve been able to rush through legislation in the USA? But it isn’t for anything useful like gun control or even background checks. All that restricting people from gender-affirming medication does is penalise amongst others, the Intersex branch of the rainbow. There are more than 30 recognised Intersex variations – that is a lot of people that are going to be without the support and care they need, if they could get access in the first place. 

Fighting for equality and safe spaces for our Transgender family members is not diminishing the first, second or third waves of the feminist movements. It’s building on the battles fought for voting rights, banking rights and equality.

Gender affirming care is a big umbrella, across multiple specialities. 

What if you were born without a uterus? Or like me, have had it removed surgically? I am officially no longer a woman. Because only people who menstruate are women; according to the world’s leading geneticist – yes her.

What do you do if your uterus lining migrates all over your abdomen? While treatment for endometriosis isn’t great, being able to get a prescription for the contraceptive pill maybe could mitigate some of your symptoms.

Removing access to gender-affirming care, including the contraceptive pill (which is also a medical aid and I will not be taking questions), means that everyone struggles to get access to safe medical treatment.

If you’re not getting angry, you’re not paying attention.

Ministry of Sounds

Ministry of Sounds

Another in my series of living with ADHD, and not really realising it. Link for part one, Returning to Self and link for part two, I’ll Tumble 4 Ya. This one is a hot mess of sounds, time awareness and bruises.

I remember driving out of Doncaster Shopping Town, our son was still in his car seat with a five point harness, so not very old. He was cross, he was ratty, he was over shopping, people, lights and noise and his general demeanour in turn had set me off. I was sat at the traffic lights, also ratty, also over people, lights and noise so I did what I do to cope.

I put on some music really loud.

Our son started crying louder. I turned it up so I couldn’t hear him.

3.2km later (I’ve just looked it up), I had to pull into a garage at the roundabout, I was also now crying. I stopped the car in a parking bay and got into the backseat next to him. I undid his car seat and we sat with each other. Me apologising for putting the music on and upsetting him more.

In my late teens and early twenties I discovered clubbing. I went out to dance. From 9pm to 1am, two or three nights a week, I was on the floor. I didn’t care if I was the only one dancing, unusual for me not being worried about being up and visible. The music and the clubs I went to were a safe haven. The music pounding in my chest, took all thoughts away from me.

The bouncers knew me by name, I’d go clubbing with P and later E. Whoever I was with, it meant we’d be pulled out of the queue and fast-tracked in. The taxi company P and I used would also send a car out quicker to us at the end of the night, because they knew we were only 8 minutes up the road from the club and were sober. A quick turnaround and an easy job.

Every so often you get a song that lifts everyone and is the song of the season. If you’re lucky, its a great tune and will stay on the DJs radar, this is a song I listen to almost daily and I still love.

Bonus points if you knew what it was going to be before the link opened up 😉

It was a total floor-filler, the entire dancefloor wafting around in the middle of the song, waiting for the beat to drop and then we’d all go crazy. That song is my everything. It’s my starting ritual. It’s my mood changer when the world has gone to hell in a hand basket (hence the daily play). It’s my pep talk. I honestly can’t tell you how much I love it.

I’m going to do a playlist on Spotify, watch this space.

Rarely, I can also use it for a burst to get me through and give me one spare spoon for the day. If I do use it for that, I know I will need to get to bed earlier and sleep later as I’ll be useless in the morning. Life-style-tip, having batch-cooked and running a pantry saves me; because when I’m totally fried, it is very rare that we as a family won’t have something to grab and go for lunch or to nuke when we’re home in the evening for dinner.

Saltwater came out just as my heyday of clubbing in Eastbourne was coming to an end. In those days, we didn’t have the Spotify, so would you believe, I never knew what it was bluddy called! In a pub in deepest Wiltshire, I was behind the bar, on a walk around collecting glasses, the DJ put it on so he could have a pee-break. Crossing the dance floor, I asked him ‘What is this called?’ From the next morning, first via Napster.

Around the same time; we worked it out it was within the same month, the husband walked across a dancefloor in a pub in Townsville to ask the same question. About as far away from Wiltshire you can get. He still loves it too.

I was in Coles supermarket in the town we used to live in before we moved to Regional Victoria. I got to the tills and freaked out, leaving my shopping behind. I took our son and just bolted to the car. I thought I was having a panic attack, or extreme anxiety. Nope, I was again overstimulated, overwhelmed and overambitious about what I needed to get done.

The husband and I were both working full time, our wee man was in nursery full time. However, I wasn’t being paid for nearly six months of the year as the child care rebate cap (subsidising care for working parents), mostly being that around each January if you work full time you will hit the ceiling of what is paid to the centre. Leaving you to pay everything. Which means, my entire take-home wages went on fees from January through the end of June. I’d get a tax rebate at the end of the financial year, we’d pay some off what we’d had to put on the credit card. Wash and repeat for six years.

The husband was trying to keep it all together at his work, heading into the city from our suburb, getting up and onto a train before our son was awake. Our son was also picking up every single bug going, if he woke up poorly, I would be the one that had to stay home. When my six months trial period came up, the aforementioned eejit said ‘I don’t know if you’re suitable, you’ve not been in for a full week since you started.’ I had hysterics, took advice and offered to extend my trial period out for another six months to show that I was. There is more I could say here, but we’re going to leave it for now.

Being employed for over six months did mean I was able to access the EAP, (Employee Assistance Program). The Monday after the Coles trip the weekend before, I called the EAP from a meeting room. I said that I was having problems with my son. Reader, I wasn’t, I was in full flight mode and just pegged it out of Coles because my body told me too. My clearest memory was carrying him out like a surfboard when I shot out of Coles, I had put all my focus on us leaving. At the meeting, I was met with someone armed and ready to give me parenting advice. Not to talk me through having a meltdown myself, which is what happened.

From there I did get some regular counselling, but that eejit? I had to work late to go to appointments, even if they were over my lunch break. Did I mention disdain and disregard is something to look forward to working through with ADHD too?

You have permission to rest.
You are not responsible for fixing everything that is broken. You do not have to try and make everyone happy. For now, take time for you. It's time to replenish.

Learning to rest and recuperate is the hardest lesson I’m learning.

Writing about what I’ve been like my whole life, has taken me back to through time and place really clearly. I know we’re all struggling with time as a concept since 2019, it really has become more nebulous the world over. But that is what it is like for me, all the time. No pun intended. Whenever I’m going ‘home’, that is basically where I’m sleeping tonight. If I’m your guest wing, that’s home.

My sense of place and time is truly up the wahoo. If I say ‘A few weeks ago’, that could mean anything from about 2010 onwards. I’ll say ‘You remember!’ to the husband, and he’ll give me a blank look. I then have to go on a breadcrumb trail through people, places and things to get to where my brain is, leading him on a journey that I’ve just leapt to in my head.

My brain also fires off so quickly, I can forget what I’m doing, while I’m doing it. You know when you get up to go into the kitchen and forget why you’re there? That is me, daily. I live by lists, lists of lists, post-it notes, notes in my phone, a pad by my bed for when I wake up at 2am remembering something. I carry a note pad in my pocket at work so if I’m away from my desk I can pull it out. I can be found standing staring into space, pad and pen in hand, as by the time I’ve got them ready – I’ve forgotten what I’ve meant to remember. It is also my superpower though, as I can read a room and organise the shizzle out of anything because of what I’ve learned to do to organise myself.

I also didn’t realise until the past few weeks unconsciously since I’ve been in the workforce and flying a desk, I’ve set my day up by constantly drinking gallons of tea and water. Which means, I have to get up and away from my desk for a break. That was another 2am revelation that made me sit bolt up right in bed.

As I’m not aware of what is around me, I will walk into things. Fall over things. Drop things. I crash into people in the city, and not just because they walk so fricking slowly either. I am covered in bruises from walking into my desk; walking into walls or worktops; either opening the car door onto myself, or shutting the door onto my leg as my brain hasn’t yet got my leg in the car, before on autopilot it’s told me to shut the door.

If something is not in front of me, it does not exist. I love my bibelots as Georgie calls them, but if I have too many things around me, I get a bit lost. It’s great though, because I know when we go through the boxes of things in the garage over Easter, I’m going to see lots of things I’ve forgotten I had. As soon as I see it, I’ll remember. But seriously, the amount of

This has gone on a bit long so I’m going to leave you with a shining moment of ADHD glory. Every so often when I’m overstimulated and fretting about things, I will need ‘order and method’. Aside from buying a new notebook (the possibilities of them are endless. I can go into hyperdrive and go through the house on a purge and donate heaps of things to charity.

I used to live in a town with a fantastic second-hand bookshop. I’d take bags of books in, rummage around and come home with bags of different books #Bliss. One day I saw a book and thought excitedly, ‘I’ve not read that in ages!’ On the bus on the way home reviewing my bountiful haul, I opened the book up and saw my name in it.

I’ll tumble 4 ya

I’ll tumble 4 ya

With thanks to Culture Club for the music, and the title of this post. Tumble turns are what you do at the end of the pool. This is the second in a series of posts talking about my late ADHD diagnosis, today I’m concentrating on swimming. Before we start there is a mild content warning with some of my other MH diagnoses. I don’t discuss anything, but the words are there.

I started swimming over the Easter holidays when I was 9 and my brother was 7. We lived in a seaside town, during the summer, we lived on the beach. Mum and Dad wanted us safe in and by the water. This was an intensive course, with lessons every day during the school holidays. Edit – Mum said I was 7 and my brother 5 years old.

On the first day, I’m in the first group. Water makes sense to my body; I just slide through it. If any of you have read Ian Thorpe’s autobiography, This Is Me! he describes what it feels like to ‘catch’ a perfect stroke. The water feels different in your hand, over your skin, when you get it right. Each stroke you try and replicate it, sometimes more easily than others.

Before the first week of my swimming lessons had ended, I was taken aside by one of the teachers, who was the wife of the coach at a local swimming club. I was asked to demonstrate what I could do after four and a bit days of lessons, about 2 hours total. I still remember showing her, over 40 years later; she pulled me out my lesson, to the middle of the pool (that I would later teach in for years). I remember how proud I was I could do something effortlessly, see previous post about not being able to do anything quite right…

That club told my parents they thought I was a future backstroke Olympian. From there on in, I was being coached and guided towards that. I was swimming training, land training. When I got to my early teens, I began lifting weights under supervision, and was given a diet to follow with ratios of proteins to carbohydrates. I had special warm up program to follow at galas. And because people were telling me to do it, I just did it.

Which is another way ASD presents differently with Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB). Because we as a society, have had it ingrained to pat little girls on the head. Telling them to sit down, be quiet, don’t fuss – there, there, there. And it is also partly why ADHD and ASD are mis-diagnosed for years in AFAB, because we don’t present like Assigned Male At Birth, and what a lot of the out-of-date schemas for diagnosis rely on. We don’t bounce around in chairs or charge around in the playground. Instead, we sit with our hands in our laps, bouncing our ankles, twiddling our hair, and in my case, biting my nails.

When I was 10 or 11, I was flying at swimming. And I mean flying, competing against people 8-10 years older than me and beating them. I was invested in this, simply because I enjoyed being in the water. It was a safe space for me. I can remember one Saturday morning, watching my brother’s swimming lesson. I was sat on the pool deck, next to Mum, sitting on a wooden bench in full sun, wiggling as the bench was scratchy under my butt. The urge to jump in, clothes and all was intense. It was a real yearning. The water made sense to my body, still does. Also, as I had to concentrate on constantly improving my stroke, focussing on what my body was doing, my mind was relatively quiet.

The constant raising of my heartbeat also squirted enough dopamine into my bloodstream to help me concentrate at school. I hate to imagine what my life would have been like if I didn’t have swimming as a framework to hang it on.

The only other time my mind was silent, as I said in my previous post, was when I was reading voraciously. Reading by my nightlight if I was ‘this close’ to finishing a book, waking up fuzzy headed and grumpy the next morning.

One day, I was maybe 11 years old. I was pulled aside after a training session and got told that I needed to give another child the backstroke, because that was the only stroke she had. I was told, I was such a good all-rounder, that I could afford to give it to her. What this means is in swimming galas, I wouldn’t be the first choice to swim backstroke for the club in my age group, this other girl was being put in to races instead of me. Even though I was faster.

Remember, I was predicted to be a future Olympic champion, that disappeared. I don’t know what happened for this decision, maybe her parents talked to the coach. Mum and Dad moved my brother and I to another club.

That rejection hit hard. I got in the pool, and it was like I’d forgotten how to swim it. From there on in, I managed to get through individual medley races, but I felt like I was thrashing around, not getting anywhere. My only explanation is that my muscle memory had switched off with the trauma response.

It wasn’t until I was pregnant with our son, who I had at 36, and I found myself in an outdoor pool doing laps before work. It was a beautiful morning, I thought to myself, ‘I want to look at the clouds.’ I suddenly found my stroke again, because there was no pressure on me.

Before I was diagnosed with ADHD these were my diagnoses.

  • IBS, I also have coeliac disease, so the symptoms do cross over, but IBS is really exacerbated when your system is on fire with cortisol.
  • Generalised Anxiety Disorder
  • Complex Anxiety Disorder
  • Complex PTSD
  • Trauma
  • Depression
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Body Dysmorphia

It is really hard living in your skin, just hanging out, taking up space with the carbon form that carries your soul around. But your soul is wrong, different, odd, strange, quirky (if you’re lucky).

It’s really hard constantly being told you’re not worthy. That you don’t belong. Being bullied day in, day out at school. That you look just like a boy. That you look wrong with short hair, that you don’t like wearing dresses to parties. That you’d rather be colouring in, reading, cross-stitching, patchworking until your eyes give out. That people don’t understand that you’re happiest in water; be that at the beach, or in the pool. Water gives you something that is lacking across your life, and you’re proud of what you can do with it. During the summer holidays, you will float on your back and watch clouds go by until you get called out the sea to go home, to be able to do it all over again the next day.

I’m going to blow smoke up my butt here. I am a really good swimming teacher. I have taught thousands of people either to swim or to improve their strokes, because I can explain to them what the water feels like when they’re doing it right. And can give them shortcuts to help them find it when they’re doing it wrong. I love teaching adults, particularly people who have feared water their whole life. I am loudly enthusiastic even when people learn how to stand up for the first time. In my lessons I would encourage all of them to cheer each other on. The joy it gives everyone in the lesson when someone starts kicking and moving is beautiful.

Back in 2002 or 2003, I was rebooking a swimming school for the new term. Phones were ringing off the hook, people queueing out the door. I stood working the computer, taking details of the people queuing up, one customer came up and said ‘I’ve been told I need to book in with Emily’, I said ‘That’s me!’ At another pool, another child talked about me so much, her pregnant aunt called her new daughter Emily.

But living with ADHD can mean rejection sensitive dysphoria, an extreme reaction to an outcome that other people wouldn’t worry over. This is what I had when I was told I wouldn’t be swimming backstroke anymore. This has also happened numerous times at work; as we’re concentrating on swimming, I’ll share this story then we’ll close, as I’ve rattled on long enough.

At one leisure centre, I was covering a lesson for another teacher who’d called in sick. These were tiny tots who hadn’t met me before, as at this pool I specialised in the school classes, as I could handle lots of children in one lesson. A couple of parents didn’t like what I was doing, only as I was different to their normal teacher, they stood on the poolside to watch me. The children hadn’t met me before, I’d got them all sitting on the steps to the pool playing with toys, blowing bubbles and a few games, just improving their water confidence to ease them into the lesson. When I stopped the lesson to ask the parents to go back to the viewing gallery, they called the Duty Manager out instead saying that I didn’t know what I was doing. We went back and forth a bit on that I’d been teaching for at least 10 years now and I did know what I was doing. The DM came onto poolside and backed them up – ignoring the policy. My reaction isn’t one I’m proud of; I got out the pool in tears and left him to sort them all out.

Because I knew, (know), I am a good teacher, my pride was hurt as I wasn’t listened to, let alone backed up by the DM doing his job.

A sense of hubris is always fun to live with too. When we know we’re good; we can be insufferable.

Not long after that, I stopped teaching swimming and never got back into it. It was like the backstroke thing all over again, it felt like it was taken away from me. Instead of me being able to give it up when I was done. RSD is what I think I’ve been living with as part of my ADHD, not some of the other labels I’ve picked up along my travels. Particularly when RSD ruminates, it can present as anxiety and depression, spiralling down further as your brain believes its’ thoughts. Remember, you are not your thoughts, you are thinking your thoughts.

But there’s more on that in my next post.

Returning to self

Returning to self

This is the first in a series of blog posts about my recent ADHD diagnosis. I wrote most of it in one sitting, and kind of reached a natural pause (more like screeching to a halt), but here I am concentrating on school.

When you don’t fit in, other people’s social norms become layered on top of you. By reacting to their behaviour towards you, you stop doing (or curtail) what makes you, you. As Oh says in Home, “The true is, among Boov, I do not fit in, I fit out.”

Becoming homogenised into ‘acceptable’ is hard work. It is draining, soul destroying, and it breaks you. The moment you either blurt out something that you want to share; or if your outside of school / work / social group hobbies are a bit different to everyone else – life gets harder again. The layers of pain, shame and bewilderment take ages to scour off, if you can.

I didn’t want Barbies, I wanted the electronic Battleship. I didn’t really know what to do with the dolls, but I changed their clothes along with everyone else. At home, I loved building houses from Lego, would fully furnish them with itty bitty furniture. I also oved reading, but they were the wrong books.

I lived inside Swallows & Amazons, being handed the first one to read when I was 7 years old and had exhausted all the books at my grandparents. We lived there for nearly a year while our house was being renovated, as I moved up to Junior School. Over that year, my reading increased from ‘Oooooh!’ to voracious.

Instead of playing in the playground all the books other children had read, or recreated from what was watched on TV the night before, I wanted to be Captain Nancy Blackett. I tried to explain the plots of the books to my friends at school but was met with blank faces. Excluded from the group while they played keeping house. I tried to play Swallows & Amazons with my younger brother, but he’d not read them, and wasn’t interested in boats.

From memory, I only managed to persuade him to play this with me once, we were on holiday in Great Gransden, an old tree had fallen down at the back of one of the fields on the campsite. In my head it was my boat, I borrowed three of the poles from the windbreak and rowed all over the lake. Our Dad took a photo of us, my brother sat before one of the poles stuffed into the tree as a mast, I’m wielding the other two poles like oars, my face split from ear to ear in a grin.

(I’d still love to learn to sail. I’ll put that on the list for next year, I’ve got enough on my list for this year).

I was happy enough though, because I had John, Susan, Titty, Roger, the Swallows, and Peggy and Nancy from the Amazon to keep me company. In my mind I sailed from one side of the lake to the other, built campfires, boiled a kettle for tea, and had picnics of bread and marmalade.

This sailing knowledge came in useful one day, when we had an incursion with actors putting on a play, when one of them asked what the zig-zagging against the wind to sail was called, I blurted out ‘Tacking’ before anyone else.

Excluded from the group, know-it-all.                               

The girls played different games, guessing our favourite colours, what colour our bedrooms were painted, our middle names. By calling letters out, we’d move forward on a paving stone until we got to the other side of a courtyard to win. I didn’t have many letters in my name, and they were surprisingly easy to not be called out. Over and over again, I’d be last, laughed at. So I started adding in middle names to move forward.

‘That’s not right, you’re a liar!’

Excluded from the group.

Or when Uptown Girl was massive, friends of mine sang the song in the playground. Excitedly, having grown up on Billy Joel, I asked them to sing other songs of his. They were all right there in my head, my parents had them on LP, with cassettes for the car, then days of days, slowly brought all his albums on CDs to play. But I was met with blank faces again, because why would they want to sing anything from The Stranger or Glass Houses? They only knew a couple of songs from An Innocent Man.

Excluded from the group again, weirdo.

To this day, I hold swathes of song lyrics in my head. I can sing musicals from memory, It would drive my brother mad when I’d listen to songs on the radio, taping the top 40 onto cassette to listen to through the week, by Tuesday I’d have all the songs ready to sing along to. ‘How do you learn them so quickly?’ Particularly in the days of the Music Factory of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, sometimes I’d only need to hear the song once or twice and it was there.

I also used to be able to hear a song and play it back on the recorder and sight-read music and play it accurately and consistently. Now, I don’t think I can even read music off the page. One day we had a performance at school, I wore a pink jumpsuit, (Hey, it was the 80s! I loved it though, it buttoned up like a shirt), not knowing I needed to be in uniform. Instead, I was shoved into the changing rooms and told to swapped clothes with Joelle. I stood in her school dress, crimson with embarrassment and tried to concentrate on playing.

When I got to Senior school, my recorder playing, (both the normal or descant, and the larger tenor version), was expected to be converted to clarinet. I was excited to learn this new instrument, but when it arrived, I hated the feel of the reed against my lip. I wanted to carry on noodling around with the recorder, but there wasn’t a place for that either in lessons or in the orchestra. So, I stopped playing altogether. Poor Mum and Dad, they would have heard all sorts of music from my bedroom, for it to stop completely.

Sweet Valley High books were all the rage by the time I got to Senior school. I didn’t particularly like them, but needing to fit in, I read them. I could read a book in a day and retain the basic, formulaic plots. Being able to talk about them meant I did fit in, but the waiting list at the library was long and we didn’t have much money to buy them. So, I stole them. Walking out of WH Smiths with bags of them. In a fit of overwhelm one day, I threw my entire bedroom contents over the banister and down the stairs.

I can remember Dad asking, ‘Where did she get the money to buy these?’ None of us wanting to address the elephant in the room. I didn’t have the money. But what I wanted or needed to fit in, I would take.

I hate this about myself.

I know now after doing more research into ADHD, impulse control is a massive indicator. The list of things I stole in my teens and early twenties is wide, varied and long. I’m not excusing my behaviour. I’m trying to understand it.

I’d be asked to do something, by the time I’d got to where I needed to do the thing, I’d have forgotten about the thing.

If I have no interest in something, I’d rather not do it. At all.

See barefoot bowls, no thank you. I don’t know if this is a legacy of being bullied because of my feet, or a legacy of being an absolute klutz with any type of ball.

Or going to see Cats when I wanted to see Starlight Express? I’m not going on the excursion at all, even though I respect democracy and we all voted on it; I know would make it miserable for everyone else.

This was really hard to manage at school. I wanted to study the period of history from the Tudors to Victorians, instead of Modern World History at GCSE, because I’d done the 20th Century to death and was bored of it. But as there were only 8 of us who wanted to study it, the school couldn’t put it on as an elective exam.

Simple solution. I didn’t study, at all. I relied on my prior knowledge to scrape a C when I was predicted an A, pissing the teacher off good and proper.

I would question teachers, ask them things over and over to explain something that didn’t make sense. Trigonometry and percentages are a closed book. I can do percentages only if I look up on google how to do them, every time. My maths teacher would explain things the same way over and over, I didn’t understand how he explained it. But he wouldn’t change the lesson so I could understand it. Instead, he shouted and humiliated me for not getting it, when everyone else did.

When I was taught how to teach swimming, I was taught that I would need to show some people how to do the strokes, I would have to describe how to do the strokes and I would have to assist some people to do the strokes. Some people need a mixture of all three to learn something new.

I was in trouble a lot for being disruptive and talkative in class, I’d do the work set for an hour in 15 minutes, ask for more to do but not be given anything. I would make a lesson last an hour, my speed and ability to absorb information slowing down. There’s nothing like a once-labelled gifted child being struck into inaction with perfection paralysis, or unable to start something altogether, because as we progressed through school we couldn’t learn at our own speed.

At times, I would be put on ‘report’ where I’d have to carry a card around with me. The teachers would initial the card, but only if I’d behaved, in their lesson. If I handed my homework in, I’d get another initial, but I’d forget to do my homework.

Sometimes I’d also forget the card, and the length of being on report would be extended out. Or I’d leave the card in a pocket in my uniform, it would get washed, and it would be extended out again. I’d go into detention to do my homework, then lie to my parents to say I’d missed the bus home.

I struggled to fit in. I’d work out the current trend, hop on it, it would change, I’d be excluded again. I was bullied for my height, my feet, my hair being short. For swimming, for not dancing; for laughing too loud; for being too loud; for when I was having fun playing; it was the wrong kind of fun. I liked the wrong kind of music.

I was bullied for having zero spatial awareness with any ball sports at school. Be that field events from athletics, tennis, hockey or netball. In netball, I was parked at Goal Defence as I was so tall, I would just stand there and block everything. One game I mishandled the ball, dislocated and broke a finger. The teacher watched me pull it back into place (not recommended) but didn’t send me to the medical room. Particularly frustrating as two minutes after it happened, someone got the ball bounced off the ground into their tummy, burst into tears and was despatched to the medical room. Maybe it’s because I didn’t cry, I just looked down and thought ‘That’s an interesting angle.’ After hours at emergency waiting for an x-ray, I had it taped to another finger for weeks. Going into school with it swollen and purple the next day. Dad was furious.

I was a preternaturally gifted swimmer, there’s more on that coming in another blog post, but because I was so good, the teachers expected it to cross over to other sports. Not for me it doesn’t. I’m so clumsy I’m still covered in bruises, and it was at the GP suggestion to assist with my brother and I’s coordination issues, we went swimming in the first place.

I have no poker face to hide my emotions, my face will tell you what I’m thinking, even if my mouth doesn’t. There is nothing like the look of disdain across my fizzog for something I do not want to do. I can’t fake it for politeness. Let it be known, I do try, but then I spiral into anxiety. Which presents as a short temper, which if I can’t wind down, ramps up to aggression, or paralysis. Fight, flight, freeze – or disruption, disenchantment, disconnect and defiance.

A month off for good behaviour

A month off for good behaviour

Muji pen held in left hand over a blank page in a notebook. There is a vase of dried flower and a coffee cup on the wooden table too.
Right pen, wrong hand.

As I wound up last year’s newsletters, (sign up here). I let you all know I was taking a month off. Partly as I was travelling to the UK with our son, but also because I needed to time away to think about what I want to do. Last year was huge.

I spent time on the plane contemplating my navel. Listening to audiobooks and podcasts, working through exercises I’d saved up for the 14 hour flight from Australia to Dubai, (and back). This thinking and journaling, along with the counselling and therapy I’ve been in, means I am feeling closer to who I am at my core and more sure of who I am than ever before.

Look out world, I’ve clicked over to 48 and am out of effs to give.

me

Mind you, what this looks like on the other side of the trip and settling back into ‘normal’ life remains to be seen. All I know is since I landed back in Australia with Mr A, my head has cleared from all the worry, preparation and logistics of the trip. I’ve said to a couple of people this week, it feels like I’m standing in a field of opportunity.

I continue to take my alcohol sobriety and recovery seriously. I’ve worked so hard on it, this week I bid farewell to my specific alcohol counsellor, but I will continue with my therapy sessions. After my family, recovery will always be my main focus, so you can expect random #SoberLiving posts on here and on the ‘gram.

I still want to finish (as yet untitled) next book; but after meeting up with a friend in the UK who also writes, I know my main writing priority is to complete the screenplay for One Last Hundred Chances. I was talking with Emily (yes another one), I said to her, that even if the screenplay changes, I owe it to the survivors who shared their stories with me that they are honoured appropriately.

I’ve also been thinking about an ADHD parenting blog. So many people are living with this neurodiverse superpower in their families. We’re also seeing more people being diagnosed as adults, finding an explanation for their life idiosyncrasies. My testing starts on Monday, 6 February. It’s a very new idea, I’m not sure what the blog looks like; if it’s an offshoot of eegrant.com as a sister site, or vertical embedded into it. I’ll work it out.

Lastly, I’ve joined a reading challenge that I want to complete this year, 52 books in 52 weeks. There are prompts online for you to choose from, I’m going to do a round up the last week of each month of what I’ve read or listened to.

What I’ve learned by giving myself room, is that when my head is not full of ‘stuff’ and I am free to wander around in there, the ‘stuff’ that comes out, is pretty good and worth something to others. Also, getting off my phone? Well, the hours that open up in the day are amazing, (no sh!t sherlock). I’ll post more about the trip another time, this was to let you know about what I’ve been up to and where we’re at.

Picture credit: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.