Thursday, May 20, 2010

Regression

Initially the weekend away was hard. I had already been away for three days on yr 12 camp and was tired. Tired physically from a lack of sleep and tired emotionally from having sufficient self control for three days and two nights to not tell thirty five 17 and 18 year old boys…

• To stop being fucking morons and kick the footy away from the windows.
• To stop being fucking morons and stop shooting arrows from the archery sets at the kangaroos
• To stop being fucking morons and get the hell off each other
• To stop being fucking morons and not put mattresses on the roof of the cabins
• To stop being fucking morons and not smash golf balls at the kangaroos
• To stop being fucking morons and stop doing dorm raids
• To stop being fucking morons and daring each other to touch the electric fence.
• To stop being fucking morons and stop “Ray”ing.

So I was feeling pretty a little sorry for myself and finding it difficult to gain a sense of ‘this too shall pass”. The last thing I wanted to do was re-pack and take off again for another 2 days. But, of course, when our gang of people go away and stay in dorm-like accommodation, there is giggle-fitting to be had and sad moments are likely to be replaced by the following moments:

1. The boys will all go into a separate room with a TV and pretend they live on planet beerfooty, which is in a different solar system to ours.

Meanwhile:

2. The girls will begin playing the drinking game “begetables” which is never played properly or finished because we just like to say the names of vegetables with our lips over our teeth and laugh at each other looking like toothless geriatrics.

3. The girls get the giggle-fits over geriatric renditions of “Bok Choy Bok Choy” and “Alfafa Sprouts Alfafa Sprouts”

4. The girls will play 80’s music, sing and do interpretive (and sometimes liturgical) dance moves. I am the exceptions to this. I maintain that I hate 80’s music, regardless of how many times I’m told I love it.

5. The girls will write a list of words that have sexual innuendos (Can you believe we’ve done this more than once? Where do those lists end up?)

6. The girls have some kind of wine and vodka-fueled emotional regression and get the giggle fits over naughty words.

7. The girls might play some sort of game that involves cards or physical challenges or throwing things or knocking things over (such as Jenga – I fucking hate that game) and that also requires screaming, cheering, creative abuse and sometimes shoving.

8. The girls come up with the next dress up theme for the next gathering

9. The girls get the giggle-fits remembering previous dress up themed parties

10. The girls finally join the boys when the footy is over and the boys are momentarily confused by the high pitched noise and arguments and scattered conversation interspersed with singing.

11. The drinking reaches its climax – most of the boys and girls have the “shit I’ve got to pump as much into me before I go to bed because that seems like a very sensible idea at this stage of the evening and I love waking up at 4am needing to go to the toilet but being even more pissed than when I went to bed and not being able to get out of my sleeping bag” mentality.

12. The girls yell their conversation at each other because the alcohol has made them deaf.

13. The girls get the giggle-fits. For pretty much no reason or any reason.

14. The fun starts. What is it about brushing your teeth with friends that reawakens the 17 year-old in you? We had dorm rooms and a big, communal bathroom.
There were lots of teachers there. If we were telling ourselves off at 2am we would have had to yell at ourselves:

• Stop being fucking morons and trying to fart everyone out of the bathroom
• Stop being fucking morons and singing at the top of your voice (with a mouth full of toothpaste) to test out the bathroom acoustics
• Stop being fucking morons and keep out of other people’s rooms – especially those who went to bed 2 hours earlier
• Stop being fucking morons and get the hell off each other
• Stop being fucking morons and remember where your own room is
• Stop being fucking morons and avoid thinking the kitchen is a legitimate option for sleeping when you still can’t find your room (which you had to walk past to get to the kitchen.)
• Stop being fucking morons and doing bed raids to confuse the shit out of the drunk person who’s bed you’re hiding in (Deeva..)
• Stop being fucking morons and laughing so hard you spit water all over the floor

Thank god I decided to go away for the weekend with friends to relax and get over the stress of school camp.

Momentary

Tobias Wolff reminded me today (From his memoir This Boy’s Life) that one good – or fabulous – thing that comes with experience (age..) is that you know you won’t be stuck in a moment of pain forever. He reflects on not being able to see past a present moment as an adolescent and being consumed by it. That then, in youthful bliss and intensity, we believe a moment of joy, heartache, pain, anger, will be always, is the whole world, will hold us in its bubble of intensity forming a barrier to everything else. Older, we know “this too shall pass”. This is sometimes sad, our moments are always building to the end, like a nice, long-lasting orgasm that only exists in the first place to be at its end, to be finished, over, gone. We know this as we get older, we try to grasp the significant flashes of our lives and hold onto them, aware that they slip through and past so quickly.

But I have relief knowing this too shall pass. It has been a saving grace. Lightning stabs of ‘what will give my life meaning now?’ have been crippling the last few weeks. Crippling and pretty destructive. But tonight I was reminded of one of the reasons to always get out of bed – the chance that today I might get a fit of the giggles.

After a weekend away with some excellent friends, I was complaining at work of sore abs due to “giggle-fitting” all Friday and Saturday night. I was told by a friend at work that the reason I was suffering was due to the fact that I have a “low giggling threshold” that is, I can be reduced to giggle-fitting pretty easily. I took it as a compliment at the time – it wasn’t really meant as one, but we take what we can – and figured it just meant that I have a good sense of humour. But I’ve thought about it tonight and realised it’s not as simple as that. I do have a really good sense of humour, but more so, I have really, really good friends (and my hubby is included in this group, he is ridiculously funny, or at least, ridiculous) who make me really, really happy.

As always, out of the eye of the storm it is easier to be a bit more philosophical. There are times when I feel I can’t breathe because my bubble of pain is sucking all the oxygen out of the air, suffocating and paralyzing me all at once. But in the back of my air starved brain I do know that “this too shall pass”, that if I can hold my breath, close my eyes and just get though this moment, this minute will tick over, another moment will come. And hopefully it will involve one of my amazing friends giving me a giggle-fit, where I laugh so hard I break the bad bubble and suck oxygen so deep into my lungs that I get dizzy. This gives my life meaning at the moment, that I have these moments of joy with my friends, that with them I have laughed so hard I have smashed my head into my glass, fallen off my chair, cried, been rendered speechless (a difficult task..) and at one stage last weekend, curled up into a ball on the floor where my whole moment was one, all encompassing, wonderful giggle bubble.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Freedom

The freedom is making me giddy.

Having to make the decision to stop trying to have a family sucked balls, but there has been this slow, creeping slither of freedom sliding up my limbs and through my blood. It’s nice. Nice to plan a holiday , nice to have sex because you’re horny (or hungover) rather than because you have to, because it’s the right time in your cycle, nice to consider the possibility of adventure. To consider a bigger picture. All without the threatening clouds of doctors and pregnancy and miscarriage and operations governing and spoiling absolutely everything.

But sometimes the freedom feels like it’s blurring my edges, like without the restrictions of dates, drugs and tests and hope and pain and disappointment drawing lines around me, I’m dissolving. That all this possibility is a bit too big, a bit abstract and that I’ve lost some of myself. I guess that’s direction. In the process of having to design a new picture of me, a new future, new goals, I’m a bit foggy, unsubstantial until I can figure out what will draw a new outline, make me solid again. And I wonder how long that will take, and how much of a jelly fish I’ll be by the time this possibility becomes a little more tangible.