Through the deep, syrupy fog of sleep I wake to a piercing cry. If she could articulate it, the word would be “mum!”
“Mum I need you!”.
“Mum I’m alone!”
“Mum I’m hungry! My little tummy aches”.
I scoop her out of the cot, press her to me and groggily stumble towards the rocking chair. I settle us in, turn her body towards me and watch as even with closed eyes she finds my milk. She mumbles contentedly once the familiar, warm taste registers and she is instantly comforted. Safe and enveloped in the smells and tastes of her mum.
I stroke her hair, trying to make sense of the time on the clock through fuzzy eyes. I gaze down at her, taking in her sweetness, breathing her in, not wanting to miss a moment of her. Time seems to stand still, I stroke her cheek and listen to her nursing.
Song lyrics written by an old friend a lifetime ago come to mind “You and I have a world of our own baby, tonight”.
This moment belongs to her and I. How I wish I could bottle it. Tomorrow will come and she will be slightly older, slightly more independent and slightly closer to the child she will soon become. Forever pushing towards milestones that will build her into the woman I am excited to meet.
But for now, she is my baby, I am her security and comfort. So I’ll take a moment to savour this right now, breathe her in for just a little longer.
Grief as thick as molasses runs over my tongue and stings the back of my throat. My chest tightens and invisible tears are washed away by the spray off the shower head before they even truly exist. My body is wracked with sobs momentarily then stops. I push the feelings down as quickly as they emerge and take me. Terrified to look at them directly. Scared of what I might see.
There is pain greater than the sore and twisted back that I got used to waking to each morning. There is something more torturous than my sandpaper eyes scraping open for the tenth time that night to her tiny wails for comfort from my breast. It’s a searing numbness that has filled the absence of these things. It’s the loneliness that consumes the night time hours and fills all the spaces around me that are now so empty without her.
I feel a sort of tearing, a breaking off, from where she grew inside of me. An ending of something. A betrayal of a secret alliance that only we shared. My heart aches in a way it has never known to ache and I long to undo these things that I have done.
But instead I stuff the grief down, terrified of this divide that is growing between us. Longing to take her in my arms, carry her to bed and breathe her in once more. But instead I allow this place to fall silent. Dead. At night I grieve what is already gone.
I am sitting in Sheree’s living room, having my forth cup of tea for the day and eatting toast for lunch. It’s been a lovely day of buying bikes and generally enjoying having nowhere to go and nowhere to be, for the first time in almost twenty years.
I was listening to a podcast about community and connection, to other people and nature. The woman spoke about how indigenous people had, and still have in some cases, an ability to converse with their environment. That we all have this ability, but we have to be open and learn it. As I was thinking about this concept, a sense of fear and grief welled up inside me. Because as much as I know there would be profound messages of connection and joy, I knew there would also be messages of sadness and pain.
I learnt early on to shield myself from things that would make me sad. When I encountered a situation where people, animals or the environment was experiencing some type of pain, I felt compelled to do something about it. To fix it in some way. However, I figured out quite early, that in many situations, I couldn’t help, but I’d still feel their pain. I didn’t know how to process it, so I would numb the feelings with books, television or daydreaming. To be present, was to feel pain.
This strategy worked for a long time, until it didn’t. But that was for the best, I was forced to learn to deal with my own emotions, that they were like waves in the ocean, which rose and fell, never staying the same. However, what I haven’t yet confronted, is how to deal with other people’s pain, without letting it take me down. I created very effective walls to stop me feeling too much, when other people are hurting. I will help to fix the situation if I can, and if not I will retreat.
I talk about desiring to connect more deeply with people and the environment, but questions are then raised within me. Questions I don’t have answers for yet.
What happens if I take the walls down? Stop shutting people out?
What happens if I start being present and listening to what the environment is trying to tell us?
Will I be able to handle it?
I don’t want to drown in this world’s pain. But I know, that by shutting out the pain, I am also shutting out the joy and connection that I so deeply want in my life. This world is one of polarity. I can have it all, or none of it.
So I choose to have it all. The joy and the sadness, the freedom and the pain. It will be clumsy and I will fuck it up. I will take walls down, only to put them back up when I’m feeling things too intensely. But I’ll learn, and I’ll be living, connecting and loving in the way that I have only glimpsed, so far in my life. It’s why I’m doing this trip.
Until I travelled from Brisbane to Perth, I was largely ignorant of the beauty this country held. On this trip, I swam in natural hot springs in Moree and watched whales from a windy sea cliff at the Head of the Bight, as they sought safety in the warm waters below to have their calves. However, the story I wish to tell you about is about a small rock, on the Nullarbor Plains.
This rock had sat for many years, observing it’s surroundings, very little changing from day to day. It would chat with its fellow rocks about the weather, how cold or hot it currently was, before returning to its thoughts. In the distance it could hear noises, some deafening and others softer, rushing by at great speeds. The rock wished to see what made these noises but from where it sat, all it could see was sand and sky. Nothing had changed for the rock in a long time. It recalled with fondness the last time it had moved, some twenty years prior. A dingo running past, knocking the rock a few centimetres to the left. It had been an exhilarating day, everything looking different from the altered angle. But soon, the rock became accustomed to the view. It was still on the ground, you see, and believed that would never change.
Meanwhile somewhere across the country, a woman sat in an office, having conversations with her colleagues about the weather, commenting on how hot or cold the air-conditioning was that day, before turning back to stare at the computer in front of her. Outside her window she would see planes flying in and out of view, and she wondered what it would be like to be going somewhere, anywhere. The woman had dreamed for many years of leaving to go on an adventure but had always found a reason to stay. She found it difficult to part with the safety and comfort of the familiar. But the desire to travel never wavered, no matter how comfortable the woman felt.
One day, the woman knew it was her time to leave. Without fully understanding what shape her adventure would take, she packed up her car and took to the road. Before leaving, the woman had been warned about the perils of the Nullarbor Plains, by people who had never crossed it. As she approached the outskirts, she wondered what she would encounter. Would she be swerving to avoid kangaroos hopping onto the road? Would the car break down and she be stranded without another soul passing for days? Would desert people try to kill her? All of these scenarios whirled around her head as she started the long drive across the Nullarbor.
Hours passed, and then days. Nothing happened to the woman. Animals were rarely seen during the day, the car never stalled and the people she encountered were genuine and kind. The woman relaxed and started to enjoy the desert.
One day, with the car pulled over on the side of the road, the woman wandered a short way into the desert. While driving, her attention had been captured for some time by a path of rocks, running alongside the road. As she went to observe it closely, she noticed someone had built a rock pile.
The rock heard footsteps approaching its location. It excitedly wondered if it was another dingo, though they sounded too slow and heavy to be of the quick creature. The rock watched as the woman walked up to it, and tried to take in every detail to discuss later with its friends. They would be talking about this for months to come.
The feet came to a stop next to the rock.
The woman considered which rock to add to the pile, she wanted to leave a small mark of her presence in the Nullarbor. She spied a rock, flat and small, so unremarkable that she almost kept looking for another. But thinking better of it, she picked up the rock, placed it on top of the pile and then wandered back to the car, to continue on her journey.
As the rock flew through the air and was placed back down, it knew life would never be the same. From its higher vantage point it could now see what made the rushing noises, and understand life in a way it could never perceive of, from the ground. The rock settled in to its new home, ready to spend many years observing the desert, until something else came along to alter its view.
The woman thinks about that rock, from time to time, and wonders what other small shifts she may cause through her journey.
I spend time thinking about the young man with the neck tattoos who I see often on the beach front. He’s short and stocky with brown hair and a kind face. I see him morning and afternoon, just walking. He looks at me in a knowing way, a way far too familiar for strangers. I wonder if he looks at other women this way. I’ve seen him walk passed my house as I’ve left for a run with the baby, as he walks in front of us he continuously turns back trying to make eye contact and get my attention. I know he wants to start a conversation so I deliberately avoid his eyes. I picture the news headlines about my disappearance or murder. The papers stating how he was such a nice young man and how, I, his victim was somehow at fault for smiling at him or wishing him good morning. Surely I should have known he was mentally ill. The way he was walking, morning, afternoon, evening. Always walking.
When I run I listen for footsteps behind me, I search the faces of the men sitting in their cars, smoking, watching. I wonder at their intentions. I constantly wonder at men’s intentions. I do it almost subconsciously, it’s second nature to me.
I put in headphones and blast music to try and block the thoughts and fears but they still creep in. I don’t remember a day without the fear of what a man could do to me; could take from me without my permission. It’s like a stone in your shoe that you’ve just learnt to live with, but it’s always there, grinding into your subconscious day and night.
Ahead a man walks towards Matilda and I as I run. I saw him for the first time yesterday. He has a nice car and an angry face. He wears black glasses and storms up and down the path. I smile at him and say good morning and he grunts at me, angry and stares straight ahead, he wants me to know he’s angry, but I’m not sure why. In seconds I am lost in a world where he brings a gun to the waterfront. My heart begins to race as I try to think of ways I could save my baby girl. The sound of the gun fire, the anger and violence of men. The all consuming, insatiable anger of men. Maybe if I smile at him more next time, say good morning in a more cheerful way, then maybe I can tell the story of how being nice saved mine and Tillys lives. In this world it pays to be nice to men.
I wonder if my daughter will have these thoughts and fears also? And if so will it be my fault or is it the nature of women to fear men? To always be questioning their intentions?
And just like that, the nice young man with the neck tattoos and silver chain necklace passes me. He wishes me good morning, asks me how I am as I pass him by and the thoughts once again, begin to run rampant in my mind.
There was a stillness that hadn’t been there the day before when the wind tore through the trees and buffeted the pram with such a force that we were propelled backwards.
Today the trees had fallen still and there wasn’t a person or cloud in sight. It was so still in fact that if it wasn’t for the soft, rhythmic lapping of the salt water on the sandy shore one could almost have believed that they were alone in the world.
There wasn’t another person in sight in that moment. Just me and my little passenger, who would on occasion remind me of her presence with a small coo or a throaty growl.
The ocean glittered invitingly, the cool water crystal clear as far as the eye could see. I pictured myself wading through the ankle high water, cradling my daughter Matilda in my arms, another beautiful memory of our time alone in the world together.
The stillness was broken by the sound of my feet as I began to jog along the path, pushing my gurgling baby snuggled warm and cosy in the running pram. Wishing a good morning to the people as they got closer enough, when once they were just specks dotted along the horizon.
My legs churned strong, one, two three four, one two three four, my breathing falling into an easy pattern in and out, in and out. A gaggle of seagulls argued and squawked their greedy disapproval at one another from the grassy banks as I ran by. My heart felt steady within my chest.
I thought of the changes to my life this path had witnessed. Moving here pregnant but not showing. The afternoon walks with my husband and our then three dogs, tennis balls, sticks and sandy, wet, happy dogs. The bbq along the beach front with family and friends where the lovely, oily sausages came back up in a hurry, due to that very same pregnancy. A much longed for morning walk along the waterfront on my first day of maternity leave, the sky so many shades of orange and gold; my heart light & expectant, my body weary. The first walk with the baby, not yet two weeks old and the many walks to come with her held close to me in a carrier as friendly locals marvelled over a tiny foot or little baby hand that poked out.
I thought about the runs done too soon after giving birth, but done none the less. Tears streaming down my cheeks, exhausted, touched out and desperate for normalcy. Runs that meant I could walk back into the house and pick up my brand new baby and continue for another day. Runs, walks and chats with my sister and brother, discussing all manner of things big and small, plans made and kept along that same waterfront path. Moments passed and moments still to come.
Today I ran strong, new plans swirling through my head and nervous flutters in my stomach.
Letters to My Sister 