Hands upon the wheel

As a child, I was always shocked by the silence of my friend’s houses.

There might be conversation, and the constant chatter of siblings. There might even be chaotic arguments between family members and blaring televisions hypnotising viewers with advertisements about the latest weight loss treatment or the coolest new toys that you needed to buy now, now, now.

But there was so rarely music playing.

Taking drives with friends’ parents elicited the same sense of surprise and a deep-seated sense of uneasiness; everything was so quiet, so ordered. There would be talk-back radio playing softly, or top 40 songs buzzing in the background, but music was never the focus for their parents.

My mother was different.

Our house was alive with music, with sounds, with dancing, with movement. Car trips with her would start with the cassette player clicking efficiently, the music picking up where it left off when she had last turned off the engine. We never had a CD player growing up – they were too expensive for us, so tapes and records were the mainstays in our house and in the car.

Each car trip would involve a careful selection, a finger running down the spines of much-loved cassettes, choosing the one to set the tone or suit the mood. We’d pull up to the lights in Mum’s Chrysler, parked next to a mini-van or safe-looking sedan, and from our car you’d hear pumping drums and wailing guitars and see the three of us singing or incorporating a variety of air-guitar and air-drum moves as Janis Joplin or Hendrix or Zeppelin or Cream played. Mum would laugh as the stern suburban ladies would glare reproachfully, and her car would squeal off from the lights once the green said go, go, go.

I often wonder if she was afraid of what lived in the silences.

By turning up the stereo, she could drown out the memories, dance away the trauma, and lose herself in the record’s crackle and pop. Her blue eyes would meet mine in a challenge, a demand, an entreaty, to get up, to join her, to turn the volume up until you could no longer resist moving your hips to the music and feel the bass vibrating through your body.

She wrapped the music around her, moving to its staccato rhythms, never stopping, never staying still for too long. She was always on the move, with the devil on her tail. If there’s an afterlife, she’s driving into lost horizons with one hand on the wheel and one hand reaching to turn the music up, up, up, blue eyes trained on the road and her slender fingers tapping to the beat.

Time

Gemma barely noticed as the rocks grazed the soft soles of her feet as she climbed to the top of the cliff.

She loved the feel of the salty ocean spray that covered the bare skin on her face, her arms, her porcelain pale legs. She was mesmerised by the crashing waves, the squawks of the seagulls, and the need to climb, high, higher, to the peak.

Chinaski padded along beside her, occasionally running ahead to nip at a passing fly or investigate some strongly scented bushes. His dark flank gleamed in the late afternoon sun as he trotted contentedly up the incline, his strong legs accustomed to these ambulatory afternoons.

Gemma moved single-mindedly up the cliff, her slight frame racing against the dying light of the day. It was a ritual, a tradition, and it wouldn’t change just because everything was different now.

“Come on, bud, let’s go,” she called to Chinaski, causing him to momentarily stop his sniffing and his moist brown eyes to dart towards her as she moved past him. He buried his head in the bushes before playfully dropping to the ground, grinding his shiny fur into the dirt and sand as he rolled from side to side.

Gemma smiled in spite of herself, stopping to rub that vulnerable pink belly before standing up and clapping her hands on her thighs to encourage him to continue the walk. He stayed on his back, paws up in the air for a minute, before rolling to his feet and bounding after her. Excited yaps filled the air as he raced past her, stopping only to run back and circle her twice, his wet nose nuzzling her thigh and snuffling at the bag hanging low off her shoulder, before heading back up the cliff.

“We’re nearly there, boy. Come on, now.” Gemma’s voice sounded husky, her throat ragged, as she willed them both up to the top.

Her hand ached from gripping the bag tightly, her fear of losing the contents causing her to clutch it to her the entire way up the rocky path.

The sun was sinking low on the horizon as she and Chinaski reached their spot at the top of the cliff. She inhaled deeply, the tang of the ocean air filling her lungs as she reached down to scratch Hank behind his velvety ears. She reached into the bag and pulled out the lightweight blanket, and spread it on the clearing, weighing it down with a water bottle and guiding the hound over to the blanket.

She only had a few minutes left, but she felt safe now. She had reached the spot and she knew what she needed to do. Closing her eyes, Gemma sighed and braced herself for what came next.

Reaching into the bag, she pulled out the final item.

Gazing up at the bruised purple sky, streaked with golden light, she carefully unscrewed the lid.

“It’s still our spot,” she whispered. Chinaski looked at her, a slight whimper a response to her unasked question.

Standing, Gemma carefully inched her way as close as she could to the side of the rocky outcrop. The slight breeze stilled, as if in preparation for what she had to do.

“I love you. Now and always.” Her words were loud in the sudden silence, resolute and firm.

With a final movement, she shook out the ashes into the stillness and watched as the fell below, drifting down to the water, some catching on the rocks, lodging themselves in the sandy cliff. Staring out as the sun continued its descent, she hugged her knees as images of her husband flitted through her mind. Chinaski nudged his nose into the crook between her head and her legs, his tongue catching the tears as they fell.

Smiling ruefully, she buried her face in his fur. It had been so many months since they had lost him, but now was the time to let it go.

She was ready.

One word to rule them all…

Fear.

Fear winds its icy tentacles around your heart, paralysing your movements and creating a maelstrom in your stomach. Fear comes to you in the night, boldly lifting the covers to crawl into bed with you and wrap itself around your body, pressing itself against you, sinking into you, permeating your skin with its intent and its need.

Fear makes you its lover, its slave, its submissive. It will whisper your most profound doubts to you, making sleep an elusive, half-remembered stranger.

Fear will still your hand when you want to act, fear will make you hold your tongue when you know you need to speak up, speak out, speak truthfully. Fear will make you drop your gaze and look away, from a crush, from a righteous fight, from an opportunity.

Fear will make you hesitate, until you miss your moment.

Fear will feed on you. It will prey on your weakness and your disquiet, gnawing away at you until you lose your grip. It will eat at you until you lose the fight.

Fear can rule you.

Fear can control your behaviour and warp your thoughts, if you let it.

Fear can be beaten back, little by little. Fear can be ignored. Fear can be quelled. You can kick it out of bed, turn your back to it and wrap the covers a little more tightly around your shoulders.

Slowly, slowly, you will act. You will speak up, speak out, speak truthfully. You will maintain eye contact and your spine will be straight as a rod.

The ice water in your veins will be replaced with fire, a fire burning so hot it scorches you if you stay still for too long.

Stay on the lookout, and don’t listen to late night whispers.

Advice I wish I’d followed

Don’t drink so much. It’s delicious and you want ALL OF THE BOOZE, but you don’t need it all at once.

Fear is bullshit. That little sucker will rule you if you let it, but don’t let it paralyse you.

Speak up. Your opinion is just as valid as everyone else’s, so don’t be a wimp.

Move more. A limber body leads to better sex. Oh, and it’s healthier too, or something.

Go after what you want. Don’t get stuck in a boring relationship or a mindless job just because it’s easier than trying.

Seriously. Put down the bottle. Just because you CAN drink everyone under the table, it doesn’t mean you should.

Books, blood, and bones

I write because it’s in my blood, in my bones, in the rhythm of my breath.

I write because it’s the way in which I feel I can share my story and make vital connections.

I write because I’ve avoided it for years; it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, the only thing I have felt that intense certainty about. From the age of four, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Words fascinate me, the spell they weave, their ability to enchant and delight, the way they can cut you to your very core.

I spent countless hours as a child retreating into books and diving headfirst into the escape offered by stories and characters with lives more interesting than mine, more stable than mine, less unsettling than mine.

My mother used to burst into my room when I was curled up with a book, and I would jump, startled, tense, while she yelled at me for being boring.

“Of course I get lumped with the daughter who just wants to sit around on her arse and read,” she’d say, exhaling grey plumes of cigarette smoke along with her scorn.

“Why don’t you go out with your friends? You’re 14, why are you even at home? You know what, you’d be better off in jail. You just sit in this box of a room and read all day, you may as well be in a cell.”

And she would storm out again, satiated for now. I would return to my book, wrapped up in words and Anywhere But Here, but I would still be smarting from the contempt cannonball.

Some parents would be pleased their teenager wasn’t out getting pregnant and arrested but my Mum would have killed for some excitement. She had spent her teen years living in a variety of juvenile detention centres, share houses and sleeping rough on the street. Jail came later, for her.

I remember she read her first book at the age of 35. She would get stoned and, heavy lidded, she would read me passages from The Lord of the Rings. She was so happy, so delighted to be lost in this amazingly detailed world. I was so pleased for her – what a discovery! Books are amazing, I’d tell her. They can take you anywhere.

Anywhere but here.

I write because it’s been building inside me for so long. I was blocked, for years, but it was deliberate. I could always find the words if I sat down and started, but I blocked their flow for fear of what would wind up on the page.

I’m not afraid anymore. Well, maybe a little.

But a little fear can be a good motivator.

Power in the word

In my family, logic and rationality were cause for narrow eyed suspicion. If you didn’t agree with their latest conspiracy theory, you were clearly Working Against Them and not to be trusted.

Reality was fractured and underlying mental illnesses were left undiagnosed.

The fallout from this is still being felt and writing about it and sharing stories with others is an effective way to process it all.

Writing about mental health and researching its causes and symptoms is a way to not only make sense of these experiences, but also to find the art in the story. It is a way for me to take all of these disparate threads, these bizarre interactions and half-submerged memories and create something new.

There’s power in that.

My mother died almost 17 years ago, but my brother is still here. Physically, at least.

His brain is broken; the damage is as irreparable as it is heartbreaking.

I hope that through writing about growing up in an environment so far left-of-centre and of walking the tightrope between sanity and the black cavernous despair on the other side, I might be able to make some sense of it and to find a way to help him.

Paranoiac bloodline

“Shh. Someone is listening.”

For as long as I can remember, my mother believed we were being watched. Someone was always around, listening in on the phone, driving by our house, or living in our roof. Spying on us, keeping tabs.

“Do you really think we’re alone here?”

My brother believed every word, and the two of them were vehement about hearing the ‘clicks’ on the landline phone. The receiver would be thrust into my hand for me and I would be commanded to listen, to hear, to finally agree that the clicks were there. They would both smirk triumphantly, secure in the belief that these clicks were evidence that our every word was being recorded.

All I ever heard was the dial tone.