//Talk About Love//
A kind of therapy. Text therapy maybe? Part diary? I'm not sure but it's a kind of game, and interactive story.
[[click the links to different pages->parents]]I know that a bunch of theories say that it comes from your upbringing. Your enviroment, the love your parent's showed you etc etc
But how do we know?
My parent's met at university, I think? They're kind of vague about it, I guess because it's a bit taboo. My [[mum->mum]] was a student and my [[dad->dad]] was a [[lecturer.->fridge magnets]] Then when she handed in her last essay for the class they went on their first date. I don't know who asked who.my mother is very likeable.
When she was younger she was very pretty and people called her Barbie because she's got natural bottle-blonde hair. Now her hair is bottled natural-blonde. She's always saying that she got saggy and didn't realise.
Mum is smart, she sometimes doesn't act it or flaunt it or whatever, mostly because my dad likes to be the smartest, but I know that she went to uni young and was in the top of the class and she did her masters while looking after all of us, while being [[moved around->moving]]. She thinks she's dumb because she's bad at maths.
Sometimes I think I'm dumb because I'm [[bad at maths]].
Mum likes to [[read]], she loves it. She usually reads in bed but she has to wake up really early to get the train to work on time so she's always tired and sometimes falls asleep while reading.
Actually, that's something that pisses me of a bit at the moment. My [[dad]] doesn't work anymore and naps twice a day yet in the evening he's always ALWAYS complains that he's tired and worn out. So my mum ends up having to do half the housework/child rearing stuff in the evening by herself and can't get into bed until midnight usually. God that annoys me. my dad is I suppose, [[complicated?->divorce]] I think he's a bit hypocrytical, can't see past the tip of his nose, blind to his flaws, stubbon but my mum and sisters think I'm like him so maybe the half-dislike of him is misdirected.
Maybe I don't like myself or at least the parts of myself I see in him.
He was [[away->moving]] a lot when I was a baby.
I am close to my mum and drifting away from my dad.we had these fridge poetry/notice word magnets and my mum made a bunch of really weird but funny one liners. "I think therfore I vaccum" "I know because I am the cook" "sleep with the lecturer"
get up and [[read]] those little lines on the fridge, a code? A message? What was she trying to say?I moved a lot as a kid.
It was always because of some new job my dad had, at a university somewhere. I was born in [[Fern Tree Gully->ferntree gully]], moved to [[Vietnam->vietnam]], then [[Perth->perth]], then [[Armidale, New South Wales->nsw]] and now our family live in [[Riddells Creek->rc]].
It always surprises me to meet people who have lived in one place, one house their entire life. surrealIt is really only fairly recently that I found out my dad had been [[divorced.->family issues]] I didn't know he had been married before until I was going through old photo albums and one titled "honeymoon" had pictures of my dad and someone who wasn't my mum.
He was very tight lipped about it when I asked him and I had to ask mum about it. I still don't know much about it, how long, when, the woman's name even.my [[mum]] says my dad has family issues that she's been working very hard on.
All of his [[siblings]] have been divorced so I don't know if it's something in the water or what.
I don't like my dad's side of the family. It's part of why I want to change my last name. Not the only reason, but one.
My dad doesn't like it and won't talk about it when I bring it up.
At the moment he's ajusting to being a stay at home dad. He's not used to it, doesn't like having to drive people places, tired all the time. I was born in Fern Tree Gully. I know I was concieved while my parent's hid in the basment of their house from a bush fire outside. I know I was born during a thunderstorm with the ambilical cord around my neck. I know I was so excited about getting a sister. I've been told these things.
I remember seeing my cousin, [[Gemma]] just a few months older, almost everyday. We went to kinder together. I remember the sand pit, the lamp shade with painted ducks, the straight-jacket made for me, and stubbing my toe on a nail and it bled and I cried.
I remember when my dad was home we would read books about the human body and dinosaurs and space. I ate "baby breakie" for years until the instant oat brand stop being sold. There were wood floors and brick walls and bush. I don't remember the weather or the temperature or the actual moving.I was very young in vietnam. I had white blond hair and stuck out except at my international school. The expats would lunch together and I met [[Jarrah]]. We had big stone figures in the back yard and people peed on the street walls. Tamlyn didn't learn to walk for a very long time and I pulled out so much of my hair I was half bald. A bat lived outside my window. The MSG in the food made me have fever dreams and my hands shake.I don't remember much about Perth. Frogs in the pool, a boy called Max who knocked his front teeth out, saying a prayer before lunch at school. My [[dad]] doesn't like religionI most remember NSW
It's the most recent and, up until now, I lived there the longest. I had close friends, there was only one class per year level at my school. My friends Becky, [[Steph->steph]], Henry, Mirrin, Alice, Liam, [[George->george]], William, William's dog: Jet.
My [[brother->siblings]] was born.
We shined our shoes with frozen leaves before uniform inspection. Our religion teacher was actually called Miss Angel and lived at the bottom of the [[school->porn]] property. We had horse riding lessons and learnt the hand signals for music pitches, solmization.
Our house was down a long dirt road and the man next door farmed sheep. On sundays we would walk an hour to the petrol station/corner store to buy milk for pancakes. We shook the dried up wild poppies for the seeds and sprinkled them on our bread. My bedroom had no heating and in winter it would get so cold a glass of water on a bedside table would freeze over in the night. There was horse fever. Nettles in our socks. Our goat ate bad grass and died. We rescued turtles from the road and put them in the damn.
Christmas holidays we would pack up the car and drive all day to stay weeks at [[Grandma]] and Granddad's house.When we moved I refused to call it home, I said "our house" for months. Russell was a baby. I hated the primary school. The girls were clique-y and I had never really had that, [[nsw]] didn't have cliques.
I didn't like my teacher that first year. I would try to read at lunchtime and she would take away my books, not give them back until the end of the day. My maths scores dropped majorly.
The second year was better, I liked my teacher, he was young and enthusiastic. I started to make some friends, a clique based on a game we played. It turned toxic real quick when the [[leader->Shaylee]] claimed it was always all real and kicked me out after I miss stepped. They kind of gave me a chance to explain it away but I didn't, I started sneaking into the tiny library portable at lunch instead.
I cut off my hair. It had been long, really long, and browny-blonde and lots of people said that it was beautiful, my best feature etc etc. When I came to school with it chin length everyone was very shocked.
The third and final year I was at Riddells Creek Primary School we put on a play, the first one ever. A Midsummer Night's Dream (kids version). I was Puck one night and Titania the other.
Not so much anymore but even up until recently people would stop me in town and talk about that play.
It was the best thing that happened tome at that school.Steph was a girl in my class. She had black curly hair and she would giggle all the time, tiny, pale, giggly. We were friends, like we were all friends in the class. Too small for enemies or major fights, family dynamic.
I went to her house one day, after school? Or was it the weekend? Maybe we played outside because we had a [[bath]]. Little bodies, little girls.
Anyway she peed in it.
I was shrieking, she was giggling.George had [[curly black hair->steph]]. He was kind of the anxious type, soft spoken. Gentle, he raised chicks to chickens and looked after them. Once I went to his house before school, he showed me his hutch and gave me an egg. I tried to keep it warm and hatch it but it went off instead.
He slept over and we shared the queen bed in the spare room, I don't remember anything else about him. It's all slipped away.my grandma is wonderful. she was a special ed teacher. her [[father->dad]] owned a barber's shop and presured her to leave school early to work there. She decided to finish school and go to teacher's college and work as a teacher. Her mother, Old Grandma, was a tailoress.
Grandma makes quilts and clothes and toys and pillows etc. She has a cupboard full of porcalin dolls that she made. Her playroom books are mostly [[fairytales->read]] and she has a box of He-Man action figures.
Her garden is beautiful.
She was very young when she got [[married->divorce]] and secretly I think her looks improved with age. Some people look better old but I might be biased.I don't remember meeting Jarrah. I don't really remember not knowing Jarrah although it's been a long, long time since I've seen him.
I know we met in Vietnam, both expat kids at the international school and our mums are both aussie but his dad is american. Works for the goverment or something?
We were really, really close. Like [[take baths together close->bath]].
He lives in America now, has for a while. I haven't seen him in years. Aparently there was drama a few years ago because he was smoking weed and had a pregnancy scare with his girlfriend.
He looks different now from what I've seen on facebook. Weird, like a man.my cousin Gemma was my best friend for a long time, we grew up together. Went to the same kinder, lived walking distance away in those hills and thin roads that run on the edge. [[mum]] walking me over the hill to see her.
she's a red head
her house is always a huge mess and her bedroom is tiny
she does calisthenics
The two of us are very close with our [[grandma->Grandma]].
Talking about her, trying to describe her, I realise I don't actually know her that well.
That's really sadI am bad at maths.
I wasn't always bad at maths. In my first few NAPLANs I scored really high, much higher than average but now I struggle a lot with simple maths like addition, subtraction and multiplication. The only time I did well in maths at high school was algebra.
When I was in primary school my [[dad]] would make me sit with him after dinner and try and get me to learn my times tables and I would try most of the time and cry most of the time. [[My dad is not very patient, really.->family issues]] My [[Grandma]] says it doesn't matter, not realy. My [[mum]] says she's bad at maths too, whispered like a guilty secret.Here's the thing about baths. They're lovely, warm, safe relaxed. I love, love, love baths. I don't mind bathing with other people, not really friends anymore, not like I used to, but often with my siblings.
But I am also very, very self concious of [[my body]]. I am also very afraid of [[sex]]. I bathed with boys, [[Jarrah]], cousins; and girls, [[Gemma]], [[steph]] etc.
[[Mae]] asked me to have a bath with her once. I was so scared. I was so so scared, I asked her not to touch me, I curled up, tight as a ball at one end. We kind of talked but not much. It was probably disapointing for her, it was awful for me.Shaylee.
She had [[red hair->Gemma]] and was the class artist. She liked to draw wolves.
I thought she was so cool, my first [[crush]], and I wanted to impress her so I started drawing a lot. I practiced, copied her style.
In the end, I liked the drawing more than I liked her.I did "date" people in [[primary school->rc]]. Not at high school.
Primary school dating was basically asking someone to go out with you and then hanging out sometimes. Boys would ask me out and I would just say yes. Yes, I'll go out with you. Jai, little kid who lived with his grandmother, we worked in the school veggie patch together with her. Nick, would pass me notes in class and I would be too embaressed to read them.
I liked Shaylee and then Bonnie.
Bonnie was had red hair as well. Tough, wanted to get a six pack, difficult to be friends with, one of the boys. She said to me once that her step dad perved on her in the shower. She shouted and wore work boots to school, same as me. She wasn't at school for a couple of weeks after she tried to hang herself with a hula hoop in the bathrooms.I have always loved to read. From as soon as I learnt how, aparently I would cry having to do my readers as a little kid but I loved being read to. Always before bed, couldn't sleep without a story. Emily Rodda, Linda Chapman then The Secret Garden, The Silver Brumby over and over, a children's encylopedia. Adult books: Mao's Last Dancer would be carried with me through primary school even though I'd read it eight times or something. My [[grandma's->Grandma]] fairytales and choose your own adventure books from the 80s, rotting He-Man comics. Hills End, The Water Babies, Anne of Green Gables, The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, The Far Away Tree, Black Beauty, they seem inbeded in me. Seeing those books and I remember lying in the sun after school, reading until dinnertime without stopping. I would cry hysterically if it got taken away, I wanted to stay there - "I like it better than here! You don't understand! I want to read!" Reading in class, a book a day sometimes, reading to the very last page late at night. Read at breakfast, read in class, read rather than talk to anyone.
I have always been obsessive. And an escapist.I was never really self concious as a young kid. I had no fashion sense. I liked to wear black and red (only) lycra. Or grey and black stripes. Grey and black stripped anything. I wore the primary-school-uniform-green trackies and polar fleece with a plain white Target stretch tee and pullon work boots to [[Riddells Creek Primary School->rc]]. Everyday.
When puberty hit it was still fine, mostly. I knew what was going to happen but I didn't really connect the dots to myself. When I started to get [[boobs->porn]] I cried. I stood in front of the mirror and cried hysterically to my mum that I didn't want them, I didn't like it, can I get rid of them?! I bumped into things constantly, my new hips bruised up. I hated it, I hated having to go bra shopping for the first time and insisted on the plainest crop top that would flatten my chest as much as possible. I got my period and it was painful and gross. But I wasn't embarressed. I was never embaressed by it, I was uncomfortable, I hated it, I wanted it to go away, opt out. But I was not embaressed.I am very uncomfortable with sexuality.
It's [[childish->my body]], I know. And it's silly to be really. There was never any shame about sex in our house, I never had 'the talk' because it was always open. Discussion, books avaliable on the shelf (The Encyclopedia of Love & Sex, Loving Touch), no hidden bodies or anything like that.
I am still afraid. I am still panicked.
The first time I saw [[porn]] was from a boy at school.I dated this girl called Mae. First proper relationship, first time dating since primary school. She would say all the time that she wanted it "to work, to be an [[adult relationship->sex]]". I liked her. I don't know if I was 'in love' but I don't know if she was either.
She broke up with me, she said that I was too distant, that I didn't talk about my feelings enough, didn't talk to her.
I found out at a party that she had been writing letters to some guy she went to school with, that she still liked him, that he would make a great [[father->dad]].
She had a bit of a thing about children. She was always planning for her future [[kids->siblings]].
Sometimes when I kissed her/she kissed me I felt so nauseaus I thought I would be sick. It wasn't that I didn't like her or didn't like the kiss. I don't know what it was.One day in the [[library->read]] at my school in [[NSW->nsw]] a boy from one of the older year levels called me over to the computer he was on. I don't remember how I knew him/how well I knew him/if I knew him.
He was grinning and said something like "this girl got her boyfriend's email wrong and is sending me websites instead. Have a look" and he showed me the websites and it was porn. Very explicit, girls choking, throwing up, raw meat, bruises. It was the kind of repulsive where you don't know what to do or how to look away.I have 2 sisters and a brother. We all started blonde, like my [[mum]]. My sisters are growing up now, snarky, bitchy, insercure, witty, smart. My brother is still little, 10, baby of the family, barely knows how to tie his shoes, adores my [[dad]].
At the moment there always seems to be tension bubbling beneath everything. Dad is learning how to be [[stay at home->family issues]], my mum trying to diffuse situations while being opinionated, Tamlyn trying to get through year 11, Brennah practicing constantly: ballet, calisthenics, maths and freaking out with stress, Russell escaping everything to his iPad and games.
I don't know where I fit in, I can be pretty un-self-aware at times. I suppose I'm absent, then come in and try and control things with disregard for the "usual rules", shouts of "you're not mum!", "don't tell me what to do!" etc. I think maybe I'm a control freak in my heart despite my attempts to let go. I want to be a good big sister, cool, collected, role model, selfless but I'm not really, even when I pretend.