Love = Cholera?

If I know one thing about life, it’s that people who whinge all the time are boring. I was reminded of this recently by a friend who, in response to my own continual whining, wasn’t overly encouraging but instead told me that no one wants to hear depressing shit all the time and she is correct AF. Generally, I have a rule in friendships of 70/30. I need 70% of my interactions with my friends to be fun and light and laughing and enjoying ourselves. The other 30% of the time, sure, you can complain and cry and I will give you solace, but any more than that and I am BORED. It literally doesn’t matter how legitimate the reason is, constant sadness is lame. I once had a friend who would call me at 3AM TO TALK ABOUT HER BOYFRIEND’S SMOKING AND HOW IT BOTHERED HER and I am terrified of becoming her, so myopic in my own pain that I disregard everyone else. So just quickly, to make sure I’m not becoming too self absorbed; if it’s your birthday today or tomorrow or yesterday, happy birthday, if you’ve just had a baby, well done, if you got a promotion, go you, and if you do feel sad, I hope you feel better soon. And continuing in my new tradition I started just then of not being overly negative and focusing on others, I want to bring in 2019 ruminating on the happiest thing I can think of, which is love. I’ve been reading the (little bit depressing) Love In The Time Of Cholera and reflecting on all the love affairs I’ve had in my own life and, without the permission of the people who are the other half of these love affairs, would like to share some of the intimate details of a few of the loves which changed me.

Nicole

I think we often overlook the love affairs we have with our friends, but female friendship to me is the elixir of life, so let me regale you with the tale of one of my best ones. When I was 25, living in the inner west, I joined a local basketball team. And while I spent more time on the bench than on the court, I found one of those rare friendships that probably come along only once or twice in your life (if you’re lucky).

Nicole and I locked eyes across a crowded basketball court during training, behind the back of the furiously screaming coach who didn’t seem to understand that this was a social league and not the WNBA. And oh, it was love at first smirk. Beyond the very angry man yelling at us, and between punishment push ups, we bonded over the fact we both had incredibly long hair. This may be all fierce and sassy in life, but in basketball it means your ponytail whips around and ends up stuck beneath your sweaty armpit, jerking your head onto your shoulder as you run. When it comes to basketball I look permanently furious and Nicole looks all lanky and leapy, so the addition of the side-cocked heads truly made us look like pros.

I don’t know how it progressed so quickly, but we fell into friendship lust hard and fast. Maybe it was because I told her I used to do magic (ie. I used to, and maybe still do, cast magic spells to manifest the things I want) and she incorrectly believed that I once had a career as a magician. Whatever it was that did it, out relationship progressed so quickly that before we’d even spent a day alone together, we were off on a romantic getaway to Darwin and Bali, just the two of us. We frollicked in waterfalls, we told each other our deepest secrets, we snuck up on each other in the pool pretending to be crocodiles, we went and got couples massages, during one of which Nicole, timidly, asked me “Uh, Maz? Are they massaging your boobs”? “No, how come?” “Because they’re massaging mine very gently” And I was delighted at her sexual assault at the hands of a 14 year old Balinese girl. One day we ventured out to a super rough beach, completely unpatroled, where I got dumped worse than I’ve ever been dumped in my life. I was thrown around in the shallow surf until I was sure I’d drown, eventually washing up onshore sitting upright, facing up the beach, my hair sandy, hanging in my face like I was some sort of deep sea monster. Nicole laughed so hard at me I thought she might choke, without any attempt to check I was ok and make sure I was neither traumatised nor a potential victim of dry drowning. And I knew then that I loved her.

Nicole is that friend I could literally call and tell her I had murdered someone in cold blood, with no motive and she would help me dispose of the body and compliment me on what a good murderer I am. I can (and do) call her anytime, sobbing, asking why anyone would ever love me and she will remind me that it’s because I may not be a better person than most people, but I am funny. To this day, any time I poo my pants, I can’t wait to call Nicole and tell her. Very early in my pregnancy with George, I woke up on a day we were meant to go to a BBQ at a friend’s house and couldn’t. Stop. Vomiting. “This is it,” I thought “I have hyperemesis gravidardum”, the condition where you vomit day and night throughout your pregnancy. Because I was convinced it was pregnancy related spewing and nothing more, we went to the BBQ where I lay on the couch and alternately slept and spewed until it was time to go home. At the halfway point home, the urge to vomit up my guts came again, and I made Nick pull over at a truck stop. Luckily I got out of the car, because as I did two things became apparent, this wasn’t hyperemesis, this was gastro, and I was most definitely about to shit my pants. As my stomach muscles clenched to eject the can of coke in my belly, I also pooped my pants worse than anyone has ever pooped their pants before. An old man was standing by his car metres away and I screamed at him to get back in his car. Nick tried to get out to help me and I screamed at him too, to get back in the fucking car. He threw me a raincoat to replace the dress I’d been wearing, and I had to leave my undies and shoes in a pile by the road. And the whole time, all I could think was that I couldn’t wait to tell Nicole. I’m publishing this anecdote here because I know public admissions of shitting oneself will bring her joy.

Nicole is one of the only friends I will always answer the phone to, and never hang up without telling her I love her. What would a girl be without a ratbag of a friend to tell her most fucked up thoughts and stories to? If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.

George

I found out I was pregnant with George on a Wednesday. I was bored and did a cheap pregnancy test out of the bulk lot of 50 I’d bought on eBay. It was way too early to test, I’d been pregnant for less than two weeks, but up came that second line. “Oh fuck, I hope it’s not twins” was my only thought. Why was the line so strong when I was barely even pregnant? Why did it feel so much less exciting than last time I’d been pregnant? Why had this happened so fast and I hadn’t even properly appreciated my last alcoholic beverage for the better part of the year? I rushed to tell Nick, who looked as underwhelmed as I felt. And so began my conflicted pregnancy. Physically it was a great, low maintenance pregnancy, but emotionally I actively regretted being pregnant again almost immediately, as the realisation of what it actually mean dawned on me. Juggling children, sleepless nights, resenting my husband’s very existence...

Maybe I had a little bit of postnatal anxiety with my first kid, or maybe it’s something no one talks about so I didn’t anticipate it, but I was scared of Max when he was born and I didn’t properly love until he was talking. But George. Oh, George. Because of George I’m going to do something I rarely do, and that’s talk publicly about loving my kids.

The second George was born, I loved him fiercely. The midwife placed him on my chest as a new day dawned after a night of labouring, and he was just so little, existing in a bubble of his own light, and it felt like I’d been waiting for him forever. I’d dreaded his birth, horrified by the thought of all the things that could go wrong. I even stopped mid-push while delivering him to ask if I was tearing (I was, but they basically just told me to shut up and keep going), but George turned out to be my little soul mate. I can’t bear to be apart from him for more than five minutes. My arms ache to hold him when he’s asleep or being held by another family member or friend. I love his fat belly and how soft his skin is. And I love how much he needs me. The thing that I’ve always wanted more than anything in the world, that threads itself through practically everything I do, is the need to be loved and adored. And a baby fulfils this need to a phenomenal extent. They literally need you to live.

I love that George’s two innocuous first names, when put together, make a hilarious and ridiculous name, “George Michael” (of either Wham! or Arrested Development fame, depending on your generation) and I call him this more than I call him anything else. It’s so weird and delightful to say out loud to a small human. My little baby George Michael. I love when people say he’s cute because, yeah mate, of course he’s cute, he’s like a tiny little version of me. When I fantasize about leaving my family, I always take George with me. This love was a shock to me, but it’s like a delicious little nut (a pistachio, not a hazelnut, because they’re disgusting) that I keep in my pocket everywhere I go, happy in the knowledge I’m privy to something special.

Marion 

You know before when I said that I didn’t want to be myopic and wanted to acknowledge those around me? Well, I’ve done that bit now, so prepare for some A grade myopia in this run down of how much I love me some me. Is it possible to have self esteem that’s too high? Well, I think that’s me. I’ve always had horrible amounts of faith in myself and been my own biggest cheerleader. I was raised just to do the things you want to do and don’t think about it, blindly believing it’ll always work out. It’s why I do weird things that seem unrealistic, always sure I’ll succeed. It’s how I ended up working in television with only a science degree and no experience, because I thought “I like TV. I should work in TV” and pursued it doggedly, knowing that they’d be lucky to have me. My unbridled confidence is probably also why I’ve never been interviewed for a job I haven’t got. It’s also, mortifyingly, why I used to send anonymous letters to people I had crushes on, feeling like they needed to know that they were lucky enough to have my attention (even if they didn’t know specifically who I was). Throughout high school my best friend and I would talk, secretly, about how we were for sure the most attractive people we knew. Even now, I hope to god that I’m just unphotogenic, because I look in the mirror before I go out and tell myself “Damn, girl! You looking good. Especially for having a baby 14 weeks ago. You’re killing it!” And then, someone takes a candid shot of me, and I am horrified at how imperfect I am. am also pretty fucking hilarious. If I want to lift my spirits I will literally read my own writing. I know that’s the worst, but I get my own sense of humour more than anyone in the world, so why wouldn’t I find me the funniest person I know? There are a couple of little comedy nuggets which I’ve come up with and have only ever said to like, one or two people (and they haven’t found them funny) but I almost piss myself when I think about them. For example, I have been waiting for years for someone to ask me what my favourite animal is, so I can deadpan that it’s flies. I literally think that I could drop the mike after saying that. I could shuffle off this mortal coil and be totally ok with it, because that is GOLD. 

Anyway, I’ve just reread the above and am mildly horrified at my narcissism, but will leave it there because 2019 is the year of self love and I figure you, reader, either love me and feel me enough to have read this far, or you gave up two paragraphs ago, rendering that whole brain dump void anyway.

Reflecting on these loves I realise that the course of true love definitely never ran smoothly, more likely to be peppered with bouts of diarrhoea and mild feelings of horror. Gabriel García Márquez was completely correct when he wrote “the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera”, but I wouldn’t swap that feverish, dehydrated, crapping yourself, stomach achey feeling for anything.