Shitty Priorities?

I was planning on catching up with an old school friend on Friday night. She's cooking dinner and having a few mutual friends over and invited me last Saturday. I just realised my football team are playing on Friday night. I am too guileless to lie (and I can't be stuffed trying to keep in my head what lie I told whom) but perhaps I'm a little too honest :) This is the text message I sent:

Hey love i just realised its the footy on Fri nite so I am going to that - which is an awful but non negotiable fact about me and socialising in the winter months :) I am planning on catching up with Deb in the coming weeks so maybe we can catch up then if ur not too offended with my priorities :)

Her response included some kisses but also a reminder that my football team is down and out. Haha.

One thing I like about getting older - learning to make less apologies for the more unpalatable aspects of my personality, like shitty priorities :)

How about you. Would you text me back and say "shove your friendship up your bum"?

Advice from Friends

"Don't think about things that sap your confidence. If I had your qualities and talents my confidence would be sky high!!!"

This is a comment from one of my good friends Jane, who has qualities and talents of her own in abundance.

But she is right. I tend to dwell on certain things, on areas that relate to my area of greatest woundedness. Dwell on them over and over, as if thinking obsessively about them will give me control, or something.

It is such a difficulty to tear myself away from them, to look at the fabric where golden threads have shot through and changed everything, somehow, and to believe that one day I shall say the same about this area. Even though I know it is true. Even though I don't have a fucking clue.

All I know is when I live loved, it changes something about the way I see things. This comes easy to me in some ways. In others, I'm just a fucking mess, really. And my problem with this isn't because I want to be perfect, it's because I want to be whole, without the gaping hole. I do not want to live in the darkness because the light's beauty makes me cry.

I don't know how God does his stuff, his changing of people. Sometimes I doubt that she does it at all. Sometimes I even doubt that God is there at all, but it's all part of the mix. The times when I do believe God does her stuff, that he is in the midst of people, working from the inside out, this belief has accompanying it such a strong gut feel that somehow, even though I can't see it or touch it, I can't help but believe that this is how things are, underneath it all.

My most beloved friend of all, my cousin Andrea, with whom I have 30 years of impacted and compacted sharing and dreaming and creativity, messaged me last night about a comedian we both know of (and who I had a gigantic crush on, heh) who unfortunately has cancer. Saying she'd like to go to the benefit concert being held for him but didn't have the dosh at the moment. This message came on the tail end of a day where my mum had rung me in the morning to tell me that my great auntie Rene had died the day before, and in the evening to tell me that one of my other cousins was in hospital having an operation for bowel cancer and chemotherapy for liver cancer.

So it was one of those days, you know. And my response to my dear cousin Andrea was just full of all my own petty little concerns, my stupid illusory thoughts that I lack something when I don't, my inner questioning, my sadness that oases proved just that.

And in her kindness and gentleness she did not berate me for being a self-absorbed twit but came alongside me and gave me a cyber hug and shared out of her own experiences, and I honestly don't know what I would do without my friends. My lovely loving friends.

I flail myself around the house, impaled on my own shit, and in the midst of the flailing God creeps and it surprises me, sometimes. And other times I look across the chasm of laying down my flailing to begin to see, and I don't even believe there is anything to see.

These days really turned out nothing like I had planned. How long, dammit, does it take to stop reeling in some sense from that? Get over yourself, Susie Q, and get a giddy-up. The future is doing its beckoning. It's time to move out and move on and move forward, to find myself some community. To believe, somehow, as Julian said herself, that despite appearances all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Street Fighting Kids

N and E were fighting again two days ago. When I pulled up in my driveway, the insults were being hurled like stones from hard hurt faces as each rode their bike amongst a group of kids divided into two.

"You're just a black idiot," N yelled, her mouth pouting out in anger. "Black people are coming in and taking over this country." I wondered which relative's mouth she was speaking out of when she said that. The way she spoke it, it had that ring of repeat about it. N lives with her auntie, though her father lives and breathes in the next suburb. I do not know where her mother is. A long line of pain. Woundedness and a quick sharp tongue combine in a girl who is quick to take offence and quick to give it, her words often hurtful or careless.

When you're angry, especially when you're a kid, you'll hurl whatever ammo you've got. It's not so easy these days, however, with an African American in the White House and an Australian government that has at least made the symbolic gesture of saying sorry, to hurl those sorts of abuses with much effect.

"Yeah?" hurled back J in response. "What about you whiteys then? You think we come in and take over the country? You the ones who came and stole this country! Ever hear of the Aborigines?"

I think that's the biggest sentence I've heard J speak. He and E are of Ethiopian parentage, 11 and 10 respectively. I think they came here about five years ago. Bless his heart, after his retort to N he said in an aside to me, "Sorry. This isn't about you."

"Yeah," yelled E. "This is a black country!"

N yelled something in retreat. I could feel the hurt radiating off her like waves, like the green stuff that comes off Sims when they haven't had a shower. I wondered how much of this situation was N's fault, with her crackly exterior? Of course, it could never be one-sided, and most kids are nasty. I imagine E has a high bitch factor of her own going down. Still, I feel a particular empathy for N, irritating and occasionally hurtful though she can be. I pray for her. It's not long before boys and drugs and alcohol will rear their heads as convenient and particularly pleasurable possibilities for assuaging her pain.

I went out this afternoon to return and borrow some DVD's. N and E were sitting, something akin to side-by-side, in the gutter. This is how their relationship goes.

"They're talking to each other again," J offered from his bike, standing with the two little Indian kids who live in one of the houses round about.

I bought them a packet of Pods from Blockbuster. I seem to have this overwhelming urge to feed everything in the street that breathes. I was pleased with them, I told them, "For talking to each other even though you don't like each other." They looked quickly at each other when I said that, their smiles breaking out despite themselves.

"We haven't forgiven each other," E said.

"We just play with each other anyway, even without forgiving each other," N said.

I surmised that you have to have forgiven each other in some form to play with each other. Surely forgiveness doesn't mean you have to forget that you don't particularly trust each other, or even like each other all that much?

We pondered such philosophies in the late afternoon sun and agreed that people really suck sometimes. N had gone into the front yard of someone's house, and returned with some very small little sour oranges. We sucked on them and the Indian boy laughed at my face-making. We ate sour oranges and sweet chocolate Pods in the late afternoon sun.

Happy birthday ... to me :)

This kindergarten photo, age 4, is one of my favourite photos of myself ever. Can you guess which one is me? I was the same age Andrea's son Campbell just turned last Wednesday, and whose birthday we celebrated yesterday. I figure in a post where I am wishing myself a happy birthday, I may as well have a picture of myself as well :)

I have this picture sitting in my playroom. It is a reminder to myself that the same spirit of play I had then is still alive and well and willing and desperate to come out with a bit of coaxing. It has become more clarified to me over the past few weeks that the majority of the work I have been doing in art therapy this year is really just all about creating a place of safety within myself so I can do so. The past few weeks have reminded me about why my past requires me to do this. It's been such a massive year of growth for me. I'm excited about my future.

I love my family and friends and appreciate them even more the older I get. I have been reminded again lately that it is not a matter of luxury but of necessity to surround myself with people who are open to the two-way street of relationship, who energise me rather than drain me. Tomorrow I am meeting up (hopefully) with Andrea in the Dandenong Ranges after my art therapy session. I am going to my parents' tomorrow night, where I shall insist, with the barley rights that belong to the birthdayed, that we have Seven Stars chinese food for dinner. The night after I am getting together with my ex for some Mexican. Next weekend I plan to hijack a couple of friends so that we can go and see a band. I am grateful for all of those people.

Male fashions

This is my friend Comrad.

The sheltered workshop lets him out sometimes to go bike riding.

























This is my friend Mocca. He wears these shoes in public, to play indoor soccer.

No wonder we broke up.

Seriously, that bike helmet is ugly because it's functional and it just looks ugly. But those shoes - they don't have to look like that, but for some inexplicable reason they do. Even more inexplicably is the fact that someone bought them. Many men buy them. Have you noticed the proliferation of incessantly ugly men's shoes around? They look like Gremlinised bowling shoes on acid. Gross.

:D

Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

So how many of you feel generally misunderstood? I have been pondering it over the past few months and the conclusion I have reached is that I haven't generally felt "got", except by a select few group of people, since I was about 10 years old. It's probably the reason why I am drawn to write. I guess I'm just so used to feeling generally misunderstood now that it doesn't worry me as much as it used to. Growing up in my family, feeling like the only one whose aim was to live in reality instead of denial, has set the groundwork, I think, for being used to the general discomfort of people not getting me. But then again, perhaps all of us feel this way, perhaps it's part of the human condition to be painfully aware of the gap between our true selves and what the world sees on the outside. Only God can know us fully.

Most of us would say that the criteria for a good friend would be someone who "gets" you. I think the main reason why I am feeling relief that the romance-or-friendship-or-whatever-it-was is finished (never really started anyway, but is finished in my head, I guess I mean), is that for the majority of our communication I had the unsettling feeling that he didn't really understand me, nor was he in a place where he could try to. What a lonely feeling that is. (Edit: I think in that respect it was a two-way street. I couldn't understand him much of the time, nor did he allow me to).

Such a strong urge within us, to be understood. Surely some of the best, most loveliest moments are within relationships and friendships when you know the person you are speaking to "gets" you, yeah? Such a foundational issue. It reflects our God image, this desire to know and be known. It reminds me of the Trinity and the relationship that goes on within that most mysterious of things, a relationship that has always existed and from which all our relationships come.

My hope is for community out in the real world. Some fellow believers to hang with and be real with and see what God would have us do together. A few people that would "get" me. That sounds good to me.

Question for you: how understood do you feel in your life generally? Most bloggers seem to be the more introverted, introspective types and I wonder - is this why we are drawn to this medium? The more we feel people don't "get us" out there, the more we want to connect "in here"? So how about you? Are you "got", or do you have to work extra hard to get people to get you?