She's not dead - she's just frozen I think !

Hello! It's nice to have a sequestered slab of cyber-cement to which I can carve my thoughts whenever I feel the need. I'm glad I decided to keep this blog, even if I don't get the chance to update it as often as one would like. Thank you for putting up with my inconsistency, it's very sweet and I value my readership greatly - all three of you!

You'll be pleased to know that on a whole, my life is doing wonderful things and the positive momentum has seen that I'm back at school for the first time in ten years, with a University degree (Bachelor of Social Work) due in the next three.

Even though I was accepted into University the first time from just an interview and my Japanese marks at high school, I never quite mastered the transition from supervised student at high school into an independent and focused academic adult, which you are expected to be at University. For many reasons, the main one being that I was still adjusting to life on my own terms, away from the insanity of my upbringing, my first attempt at tertiary study was a miserable and shameful disaster, that stained my academic record for the next decade with indelible failure.

Last year, I found it very hard for any institution to have faith in me as a student, given that all my previous academic history, (and due to my stubborn streak there were many incomplete attempts ; several courses, some correspondence, Japanese, Counselling, Teaching.) worked against me.
Predictably, every single attempt to "clear my name" if you will, was self sabotaged by myself and my lustful urge to skip class. I wouldn't be found at the shopping mall, trying on tacky chemist make-up and I wouldn't be round at a friends house, watching dvd's and munching down popcorn. No, you would always find me in the same place and that would be in bed.

Maybe it was my then undiagnosed Hep C, which was eating spoonfuls of healthy liver at the time, or it may have been the demanding upkeep of a heroin addled, bipolar lifestyle, but I couldn't get to all of the classes for longer than a month nor pick up the books that I'd bought with every intention on making good with my academic past. Some days I felt I deserved a little break, other days I came up with much more inventive excuses, so I skipped classes often and told myself that I would make up the time... another time. But that time never came.

I still remember waking up every morning of my first year of University, with a heavy sensation across my chest, as if all of life's paperwork, and worries that come along with it, had accumulated in my sleep and buried me alive. Somewhere under all the"failed to appear" notices, overdue bills, incomplete exams and disconnection warnings that had started to fill up my letterbox, was a very anxious girl that knew she was only making it harder for herself to return to class, but the mere thought of postponing that day was frightfully delicious. Of course, my life only gets better when I decide things cannot possibly be any worse, but back when I was 19 and feeling invincible, I managed to turn a life of potential into a nightmare addiction and I perhaps should have seen the writing on the wall when I fled University life in disgrace, there was no way I would not feel the reprecussions of that decision in my mind, because frankly put, I am quite an intelligent girl. In fact, out of all of my friends, I am perhaps the most passionate about academia and yet I was to spend the next ten years trying desperately to win back my seat within the system.

I'll always be able to recall the shock and shame of those days where I had to let the anxiety dominate my life rather than plan for some imagined day when I would be calm, peaceful and content. I guess my brain didn't want to buy what my heart was trying to sell it. One day in particular, which still features in my nightmares ( not that it is a gruesome or fearful memory but I find we often dream of fears we never dared to declare in our waking moments.)

It was nearing the end of year, not when the Uni bar is full to the brim with happy drunks that toast the end of another year of bull busting study but instead that strangely quiet period before exam week, the calm before the storm I guess. The student's lounge was unusually vacant, and a few plucky first years were trying out the pool tables for the time, the eerie clicking of balls echoing around the empty hall that was usually a swell of students. I felt very uneasy about this time of year, and not just because all the sensible students were busy cramming their minds with caffeine, but I had a horrible notion that cramming itself was not really learning, I wagered private bets with myself that even the most dedicated student will most likely never recall most of what is learnt in those early years of adulthood. As I was not one of the latter, I decided today was perhaps the right time to approach the Dean with a tentative request to defer my studies (in retrospect, this was a mistake of gargantuan proportions of course, but I was boldly going where no student was supposed to go and at that precise moment, I had to believe it would work.)

As the Dean's office was attached to the very last classroom on the very last block, I quickly surmised that I would need to discreetly make my way past the classrooms, with my head bent slightly downwards whilst striding forward, my trousered legs snapping like scissors and the whole time I would keep my gaze connected to the footpath flashing before me. This worked for a couple of blocks, until I developed a stitch thus my gait looked stilted and odd. I decided for the last block to employ a stealth approach and I was actually creeping past a classroom and for some reason I looked directly in the windows. What I saw wasn't anything untoward, it was a standard class being taught by a stern looking professor up the front, and the students were littered around the classroom, fervently taking notes of everything he said. Even though the students had their backs facing me, I felt a jolt of recognition when I saw them and instinctively bolted to the closest cover, quite sure that anyone watching would think I was some kind of weird peeping tom that got off on spying on crusty old professors and escort me off the premises. Oh, it wasn't the first time I'd nearly been busted absconding from class, but it was the first time I'd realised, with a shock, how severe my problem had become. You see, I couldn't place the teacher at first glance, but now shock waves were radiating the images back to me. I saw myself on Orientation Week, red cheeked and wet behind the ears, bustling into that same classroom with a mountain of new books, hungry to learn. I now recalled, with painfully sharp detail, that I started missing weeks at first, to which he was sympathetic to my excuses as long as I made up the hours, to which they started to pile up and up and up until the units started to fail all by themselves. I felt humiliated by my own absence and dreaded whenever Sir called upon me in class to give my opinion, because very often I was not equipped with the knowledge and had to own up to such, which always seemed to take forever, like he was taking some secret pleasure in prolonging my academic agony. Perhaps to his relief and definitely to mine, I was pardoned for personal reasons for eight weeks and when I returned, I just wasn't the student I thought I could be. Keeping up with my extensions and excuses was a full-time job, I knew I could scrape by with my existing Japanese for the first year, but in order to stay within the University itself I had to physically be present in class for a undisclosed percentage of time and I was always skirting around the danger zone and teachers did their best to warn me. I now know it's my focus that is required and that I must "allow myself" to achieve things.

I say "allow" without flinching because up until the last twelve months, I never believed that I was deserving of good things like a University Degree, that just didn't happen to "people like me". The only disconnect was, I didn't actually feel like this "person like me" and that's why I never truly gave up and believed it couldn't be done. I was just lost, but I wasn't dead.

I know people sell a lot of books by bleating on about a bad childhood, which attracts the mirth of accomplished writers that I know, but this blog is not a commercial for that kind of book and I'm not trying to explain or justify myself to anyone reading. The facts are that I had a tough time but that I am rebuilding what never got built the first time. Cynical thoughts aside, I think our childhood is the foundation on which we are built as people and personalities, and some people have had access to better materials than others. Like me, some need major renovations for many years later, but after that is completed (and I am going to share how I did it) I do agree that you have to 'bloody get on with it.' But by then, you have to shout with joy "Gladly!!!"

In order to be a better student now, and leave my truancy behind me, I had to figure out what I was running from, what was I afraid of becoming if I did stick with my schooling. I thought it was a fear of becoming TOO rich and successful (good lord, reality stick please - now bash me with it thanks!) but of course this was just a skewed take on a common fear amoung us of failing to live up to our own expectations. When I was small, I was made to feel that I was a nuisance to people and a lot of my personal dreams and aspirations were snuffed out, along with the child I was, because The Stepmother had other ideas for the role I was to play. I was now to be a new child of a new marriage or else I could find another home that would take me, which at six years old was an appalling thought to actualise. I learnt to have very small expectations of people or risk being hurt and dissapointed, or even abandoned. Because I had to lower expectations of everyone else, it went across the board and allowed me to secretly believe that I wasn't good enough to have big expectations come true.

I was lost for a long time, my personality and my essence, was "put on ice", and it's only very recently I realised that I was perpetually grieving (and medicating this grief with heroin) when instead I should've been celebrating the reclamation and growth of the person I wanted to be, not what someone tells me I am. I kept stalling this reclaimation because I didn't want to face the hurt that had been hidden all those years back, when the "I" turned into "She".

This year, I've chosen childcare for the interim "pathway to uni" period, because I've always enjoyed children (on toast?) and they also enjoy my childlike nature. I was accepted into a split degree (tafe and uni) at the eleventh hour and the cherry on top is that my course for this year is entirely paid for, thank you Mr Rudd!

In case you're wondering (or snooping if you bother to) I've managed to keep clean now for a record 15months, which is the longest time in ten years that I have abstained from using heroin.

Wow, that's the first time I've plainly stated such statistics and I get a small thrill from the directness of numbers - as they never lie. I've learnt recently that it's better to face the brutalities of your life in a bold, unglamourous language that forces the speaker to look at the "meaty stuff" and address it, sometimes very plainly indeed. I can't hide anymore. Don't want to, and that is true recovery for you because you simply cannot allow any secrets, even the ones you tell yourself to get through to the next moment, because it could be that dark secret that winds up in your arm and all of a sudden you have tricked yourself into thinking that you have tricked yourself. Complicated I know, but an addict will know exactly what I mean.

I'm told by my teachers (suspiciously no longer in childcare mind you) that in Early Childhood you never have to grow up - but I will keep you posted on that. To be honest, there is nothing wrong with growing up, it can be the best thing to ever happen to you. I'm told by my teachers (suspiciously no longer in childcare mind you) that in Early Childhood you never have to grow up - but I will keep you posted on that. To be honest, there is nothing wrong with growing up, it can be the best thing to ever happen to you.

HG