All posts in Introspectives

Whereby she doth appear to be off her rocker.

by admin on April 15, 2012 in , , , with No comments

Dear Grandma Chris,

It is hard to believe that a year has passed since I first decided to write you a letter on my birthday. It seems a little bit, well, nuts, to write to someone who doesn’t exist anymore. But because you were the only person who ever consistently remembered (or cared about) my birthday, and this week being forever associated with the beginning of the end for you…Oh, and the divorce being final in 2 weeks too … it is inevitable that I will struggle emotionally.

And boy, am I struggling.

So, even though I am sure the fact that I am writing to a ghost is kind of crazy, I don’t care. Because it’s the only way I can really process it all – to talk to you as if you are here.

For the sake of accuracy, we probably wouldn’t be having a deep and meaningful conversation. I’d probably be refusing your offer of food for the 8th time (Seriously, no, I just ate and am not hungry… no, I don’t want you to cook me a meal. And no, that is not code for “I just want cake”. Or biscuits. Or lasagna. I am just not hungry!)

I’d also probably try to explain to you that the political rhetoric you heard on talkback radio was more complex than it seems, and watch you rant about something that you had clearly gotten the wrong end of the stick about, with me trying hard not to laugh.

Because you and I both know that if I dared to smirk at you, even affectionately, I’d be in big trouble. I’d be yelled at, held responsible for every other member of my family and everything else they had ever done… and… well… yeah.

Don’t laugh at Grandma when she’s been watching Today Tonight, because she may tell you to fuck off and change her phone number.

Ah, the eggshells.

Right now, I kind of miss them. Because I get it now. You just held me to a different standard to the others: you cared what I thought of you. And it hurt you when you thought I was judging you. I wasn’t. You’re just piss funny when you’re angry.

It is only as I grow up and experience the complexities of adult life, relationships, love, decisions… and make my own complex decisions (and mistakes), that I have started to realise: love is not as simple as I thought.

Now I am the one who needs to be talked down from my own simplistic ideas about what it means. Because not only can people hurt you and love you at the same time, sometimes they hurt you because they love you.

Heh, the irony. I’m the one who got the wrong end of the stick this time and bought into rhetoric.

I recently made the decision to leave the kids in Perth and move to Sydney. The plan is to visit frequently and bring Angus back on alternate months (and the older 2 for school holidays), but because that is dependent on a steady flow of WA work (which is proving harder than we thought it would be)… it has been really tough.

Every day, I hope that I made the right decision.

You always appear in a dream to me, with the answer to a dilemma. If I need to find a solution, or a direction, or make a decision (I know it’s not really you – it’s just a representation of my subconscious trying to communicate important things I need to stop and listen to…), you are there to make me listen… and you told me to pursue this.

I hope you’re right.

Last year, I was at a point where I was actively dating, getting “the marriage” out of my system, and had my fair share of hurt. Well, needless to say, I continue to be baffled about men and this year, I am going to just… wash over that issue completely and just say that I understand the complexities of love. And that is all I am going to say on that subject…

Anyway, so, it’s my 33rd birthday. I know 33 is not old, but to be honest I feel kind of old and tired… mostly because I am not too good when I feel like I am in flux, because of my anxiety issues. I can’t help but feel like… I am back where I was at 16. And at least, back then, I had you to fall back on. Now, I am on my own, in a new place. It is terrifying. It is stressful. And I frequently struggle with the overwhelming feelings of failure that go with everything that has happened.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there were times in the last few months where I have, quite seriously, and quite clinically, considered ending it. Don’t worry, I won’t. Because fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it…) I am also stubborn. And proud. And would never, ever, do that to my children. So, I am stuck here, having to fight.

Damn.

Looks like there’s a bit more of you in me than I care to admit. You know, having no choice but to… just keep swimming. Let the shit roll over me and to just keep moving forward and trying to see the positives and the lessons in everything. And I will. And like the grief that I felt would never end when you died, it will get easier. I just have to put one foot in front of the other.

Wouldn’t hurt to feel loved for a bit, though, even if it was by being stuffed with food and told off for smirking.

I miss you. I love you. And I hope that next year, things are a little better.

High five St Peter for me,

Téa

Acceptance.

by admin on November 18, 2010 in , , with No comments

I have had to do a lot of thinking lately. Some reflections have been conscious and voluntary, others have been somewhat forced on me… but this really is a time of major growth and personal reflection and I am at a real turning point in my life… where I really am aware that decisions I make now will impact the rest of my life.

It took some time to end my marriage, primarily because I thought I was the broken one. That somehow if I tried harder, that somehow if I just worked longer hours and poured all I had into things, tried to modify myself to fit… that I could somehow force it. The assumption that the way I felt was all about my attitude and laziness and was somehow my fault and was even fixable was a naive view, but still, I held it. That the failure of my marriage was my fault.

I tried really hard. Both of us tried really, really hard and both of us are good people who just worked too hard at something that was simply a matter of incompatibility. I didn’t cheat. He didn’t cheat. Nothing happened. In fact, it was the day I said, out loud, that I wasn’t happy and we needed to separate, calmly, that I knew that this was for real. It took me a long time, after 2 years of relentless, clusterfuck-style life-shock after epic life-shock that I came out the other side and realised that I was a different person.

I am on my own for the first time in my life. The first time in my life. I lived alone for about 8 months when Jason and I broke up in 2000, and I dated, and lived alone, but for the first time ever, I am truly on my own. And by this, I mean, responsible for myself with no-one to back me up or bail me out.

It’s scary.

And it’s weird.

Because I realised, with a fairly crushing and overwhelming force, that I have some pretty significant deficits as a functioning adult. I am injury prone, reckless and forgetful and I had absolutely no idea to what extent that was till I actually had to live with consequences, and without someone in the background, constantly making sure that I remembered things, or reminded me when I was being reckless, or could remind me of the time (I have no concept of time). In the few weeks I have been out on my own, I have cut myself, bruised myself, locked myself out of my house, lost my temper from mess, lost my temper from workload & juggling… and you get the idea.

I have always been so vocal about my independence… how I am A type. How I am a “high achiever”, how I can do it all, etc etc. And now, I realise that no-one can truly do it all without someone in the background making sure that it happens. There is no such thing as a self-made person.

I have ADHD. I have gone through a crapload of testing. I have gone through a crapload of medication trial and error. I have crippling autoimmune disease and a suspected blood clotting disorder. My autoimmune disease has some symptoms similar to MS, especially around cognitive function and clumsiness. I used to be a functioning person. Used to be an athlete. Used to… well… used to do a lot of things.

The ADHD stuff really is an umbrella for so much in my life and I have realised that I am not coping well with the everyday pressures of being on my own. Jason used to do things like plug my phone in to make it was charged. He would make sure I had my car keys or the house keys. He would make sure I remembered to set alarms, take medications. He would walk in at 11pm and tell me the time so I knew. He would clean up after the kids so that I wouldn’t be stressed out about disorganisation when I am already struggling to pay attention. I quite literally had a little fairy that would follow me around to make sure I didn’t kill myself.

I didn’t realise I even had these deficits in functioning until I was on my own and had to take full responsibility for my own life. My phone is never charged, I forget to set my alarm, or I accidentally leave my phone on silent when I set it. I am easily sitting up till 5 & 6am, with no concept about the passage of time. I am good at getting my work done, of course, but I am still in some ways struggling with the overwhelming amount of small bullshit tasks I didn’t even realise… I was being propped up.

That 8 months where I lived alone? I had a bad flu, fell asleep on my lounge room floor in front of the heater and my blanket caught fire. I lost 3 wallets and locked myself out twice. And tonight, I rang my ex and I told him that I acknowledge and appreciate the “fairy godmother” role he played without me even knowing. I also made it clear that it didn’t mean I was going back, but a mere acknowledgement that I understand.

So now, I have to put strategies in place to overcome these things. I have an ADHD diagnosis. I have health problems that prelude me from being able to be this A type person I always thought I was… so I need to come to a point of acceptance and say “hey, this is what I need to do to function”. I also need to stop seeing my ADHD issues, and my physical limitations of “becoming crippled” as a failure.

They aren’t failures, per se. They are facts of life that I need to acknowledge and work with. I need to take drugs for the rest of my life. There is no way around it. There is no point getting upset about it because it WILL NOT CHANGE. I will never be able to run a marathon or swim to Rottnest. I will never be able to go to Medical School and I need to accept it as a fact and let go. I will never be able to fully cope with the structures of the world around me because of the way I process information.

I need to accept that I am a good person. I am not a failure and my marriage ending was no-one’s fault.

I will need to accept that I cannot do it alone.

I will need to accept that I need to put strategies in place to help me achieve the things that “normal” people take for granted.

I will need to accept that I am a human being, not a robot. And that if I continue to push myself to my limits, I will die a premature, painful death.

I will need to accept that I need to be more controlled and rigid in the activities I choose. I need to learn to manage my time and my finances more effectively.

I also need to accept that even in spite of all of these strategies, in spite of all the drugs, in spite of all my best efforts… that sometimes… I will STILL fuck up. The strategies I put in place can help it to happen less often, but I will still fuck up. And I am not a failure for it.

And I need to stop being angry about being sick. I need to stop being angry about the almost $900 a month in non-PBS medications I need to take to function. It is what it is. I can take it, or not take it, but there is not point in complaining and stressing about it. I cannot afford it, but I need to find a way to work with it. And, when I need to take 2 days off because I am unwell, despite even the best of treatments, I need to be kind to myself and not let clients bully me.

I need to learn to accept my body and work within the parameters of my disordered view of my body and appearance.

I need to be more assertive and learn to say no… even when I want to do things, or give time, or offer… I keep doing it at the expense of my health, my finances (way too much free or discounted work which is stopping), my time with my children and ultimately, my life. And it just can’t happen anymore.

So, this week, I am working on getting stuff done. Allocating time for everything. Setting alarms. Filling my Calendar to the brim, everything, even the meals I forget to eat, scheduled. In the hope that I can train myself to function and leave time in it for me to actually live rather than exist. My expenses are incredible right now and I’ll be honest, I don’t know where the future lies. Child support, medication, debts & rent alone are insane. But, rather than complaining about it, I can’t change it, so I’ll need to start rolling with it, moving to accept that I need to earn $2000 per WEEK before I even start to do anything fun… and get on with finding the best way to do it.

A big ol' virtual swear jar and the online identity crisis.

by admin on February 17, 2010 in , , , , , with No comments

I have been reflecting quite a bit lately about various things – my online persona, the way I represent myself on social media… how my empassioned and yet foul-mouthed rant about the Internet filter got so much attention… the whole “being in business and trying to get into Medical School” sort of thing… and I have had a bit of a realisation, of sorts.

My online persona is quite at odds with who I am as a person “in real life”. I find it quite shocking when people are surprised that I am quite refined, and sometimes even a little bit reserved in a real life situation… particularly at things like conferences or meetings… or anything else that basically isn’t me hanging out with my closest friends having a rant.

When I was in my 20′s, I built this persona around being… I dunno… a little bit fierce. Saying all those things that would give me some sort of weird Indie cred for saying the word “cunt”, or using the word “fuck” more than use the words “I” or “and”. I built an online identity for being snarky, and taking the piss out of basically anything, because, well… THAT’S WHAT THE INTERNET DOES. THe whole internet was my closest personal friends and we are all at a party where Téa said funny shit.

The internet has changed, somewhat, since I was a lass. We used to join forums, with usernames, that were a pseudonym for various aspects of our personality. not to say it was necessarily a misrepresentation or falsity; but more… it was understood that your “username” was just one aspect of the person.

I think it’s changing. With Facebook having our real names and our real friends and our families and children and mothers and cats on there, our online identities are very much becoming quite literal public representations of a whole person.

At some point “Tealou” the snarky sweary irreverent bloggy person became synonymous with Téa Brennan the mother, the business owner, the friend, the future doctor.

Our online names are now fused with our offline lives in a way that is only just starting to become apparent, and I think that us early-adopters are having the hardest time with it.

I am proud of, and unapologetic about, the content that I have produced over the years. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and reading back on blogs, usenet posts, tweets etc are really all just a moment in time record of my account of history. But, by the same token, at 31 years old, I have started to self reflect and wonder where it is going and what it all means.

I had friends over the other night, and one of my friends was talking to me and made a comment how my language was much less colourful that night. I was a little taken aback, because he’s a fairly recent friend-acquisition and doesn’t have the whole “Tealou persona” thing, where I can say things and people generally understand what I mean.

My answer to him made me really think for days, because I said to him that the whole swearing thing? I do it a) when I am feeling uncomfortable in social situations and b) that I have built this thing over a number of years that people have almost come to expect it of me.

It was at that moment, when I said it, that I realised that I wasn’t really that Tealou person anymore. I mean sure, I am funny. Sure, I swear. Sure, I can also be a bit of a dickhead and overshare. But it is such a small part of who I am that it has occurred to me that people actually HAVE come to expect me to perform a certain role.

It took a couple of very public Re-Tweets & public blog scrutiny to realise that not everyone gets the 3-dimensional me, with that persona history, that early-internet-adopter-safety-of-relative-anonymity thing, that 95% of things I say online are in jest thing…

You know, I am actually a really, really smart person. I am also quite a generous person and will help anyone out who needs it. I am a good and loyal friend and a really good mother to my children. I love them dearly and I love my friends and absolutely don’t show them how much I appreciate them enough. I am actually very shy. I have low self-confidence and make jokes when I am hurting. I work really hard and am also not terribly arrogant. I love my husband.

I think that my persona, in some ways, has diminished a lot of my strongest qualities, and it is for that reason I have decided to tone it down a bit language-wise. Not be so… confrontational and actually try to listen more.

Now of course, it doesn’t mean that I am going to change, or be fake-nice, or not swear at all. But I have decided that the “online persona” of my twenties is at a major disconnect with who I am as a person.

For those who have been on the web for a long time, how are you dealing with growing up online? Has there ever been a point where you have questioned your online identity?