Trails and Tribulations: Life Inside an Inferno

On Sunday night, two weeks ago, I sat at the lookout 290m from my back door and watched the world as I know it burn. In my arms I cradled my two small sons, all of us wrapped up in a hoodie because it was unseasonably cold. It was the first day of summer. While other onlookers bustled around all excited energy and unnerving smiles, I couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down my face. I wasn’t afraid of my house burning to the ground, though of course that was a serious concern, nor was I particularly worried about the safety of my boys, sure that we were all just a car ride away from safer climes. I don’t know why it seems like a weird thing to say, but I was devastated to see Narrow Neck going up in flames, the place I feel the most free and at peace in the entire world. Narrow Neck plateau is a windy spur of land two streets away from my home in South Katoomba, that snakes its way between the Megalong and Jamison valleys towards Kanangra. And some very primal and important part of me is wrapped up in that piece of land and bush and sky and soil and I’m going to try my best to explain here, what that is. 

Running

I know that a lot of you are like, “Yuck! Running! You do running for fun? Yuck. Running.” Which you are totally entitled to think and I don’t even care when you say it to me, because running is my passion and it doesn’t have to be yours too. I think my adoration for running is best described by the Jason Isbell song, “Something To Love” which expounds the virtues of having something that you love that gets you through life. Much more articulate than I am, Isbell sings

I hope you find something to love
Something to do when you feel like giving up
A song to sing or a tale to tell
Something to love, it'll serve you well

For me, that is running. Of course when I started, it was hard. I’d run a few steps, stop and splutter, walk, hate that I was getting further from home, turn around intent on going back and then begrudgingly run a few more steps. But when I started running on trails, I knew I’d found my “something to love”. Finding my feet as a new mum, not too sure who I was anymore, this person bearing a huge burden of responsibility, I started running on trails near my home. With every step, the heaviness left my shoulders and as I found a rhythm, my feet pounded all my worries methodically into the dirt. As I went, the views opened up, the endorphins kicked in and I really knew life was worth living. Running in the bush in particular, is meditative for me. There is something about the ever-changing but static environment of my favourite trails, punctuated by my rhythmic footsteps, that sends me to a very calm and happy place. I set reminders in my phone to do certain runs at certain times to see certain things; the Waratahs near Mount Solitary in early spring, the Comesperma and Pomaderris on the path to Hanging Rock in October, the crazy array of fungi along any moist stairs in autumn, the glow worms littering the walls of canyons on summer nights, the water holes and rivers replete with water dragons and blissful refreshment for my sweaty skin in summer. While the landscape is constantly evolving, flowers cease blooming and new ones take their place, trees fall across trails and landslides claim paths, the bones of it all are always the same and I’ve come to rely upon their consistency to anchor me in rougher times. 

Narrow Neck

I started running on Narrow Neck about three years ago. I’d driven past the dirt road that led to the locked gate that marks its beginning so many times, and once I started trail running it was the first place I thought to go. I started out slow, like I was courting the trail, wanting to establish the good foundation of a lasting relationship. I eased into her baked sand path and iron-seamed rocks. The first time I parked at the locked gate at the top of her winding dirt road, I ran just three kilometres. The next time five and then six and seven. I felt like such an explorer, every run taking me around another bend and to a vista I’d never seen before. I wanted to savour the discovery of it. The first time I ran there, I made it to the stand of perfectly protected Eucalyptus oreades. Their bark was hanging down in ribbons, like slack cheerleader pom poms, refusing to cheer me on as I expended my energy, red in the face. The next time I made it down the steep hill and around the narrow bend, it was windy and I imagined falling down the escarpment. I perched on a rock and looked back at Katoomba, feeling like the world was mine. When I made it to the fire tower, it’s toilet and scrubby bush full of wailing black cockatoos I felt like a fucking warrior (and I got to pee in a toilet on a run, what a civilised experience). Like a good book, I couldn’t stand the thought of reaching the end, so I parceled it out to myself, only going occasionally, only going one or two kilometres further each time. When I passed the fire tower, knowing this was my penultimate exploratory run, the mist was so thick that there was no view, just Waratahs and Persoonias looming out of the fog like vivid red and green channel markers on a wide, dark river. And the first time I ran to the very end, I was listening to the audiobook of Dracula. I summitted the final rise, revealing the whole new world of the Wild Dog Ranges and Kanangra Boyd as Van Helsing was confronting Dracula. As they battled, my feet tumbled down the path towards my own destiny and I felt like I had come home, this place I had never been, already so familiar. 

Between that first run to the end and the next, I had grown and birthed another baby. A year and a half had elapsed and I felt like I was a different human to the one who ran it last time, but my evolution was inversely proportional to Narrow Neck’s same-ness. I was in a bit of a grumpy mood, having wanted to run naked under the full harvest moon, the night before. What a beautiful, earthy thing to do. But Nick had poo-pooed the notion deeming it “unsafe”. I don’t want to ever put an emoji in one of my blogs, but I’d insert the eye roll one here if I did. It was early morning when I finally ran, and I’d made it the ten kilometres to the end of the trail, before 8am. I was all alone, kilometres from anyone in the beautiful stillness of the morning, just me and the mountains. And there, lying on the path was the freshly dismembered leg and tail of a swamp wallaby. It didn’t even have flies on it yet, it was so new. I begrudgingly accepted that maybe Nick had been right about not running here naked and alone, due to the werewolves that were apparently out slaughtering wildlife under the full moon. 

And so sitting, watching this island of land, which has been the stage of my independence, where I run to cure the blues, to pour out my anger, to banish this ennui which settles on me unexpectedly, where I run to celebrate wins, or to bolster my happiest days, going up in smoke, was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Seeing those same leaves, who opened their stomata daily to turn my local carbon dioxide into beautiful clean oxygen, being incinerated, somehow magicking themselves into a poisonous smoke which made my children cough, was horrific.

Narrow Neck burnt for two weeks. Not one day passing without the sound of choppers overhead, the Huey’s making it feel particularly visceral, sounding like doom and Vietnam. Her trails still aren’t open, and won’t be for I don’t know how long, and I just wanted to tell you all out there in the ether that I love and miss her. That is all. Thank you for listening to my love letter to a pile of rocks and dirt, I hope you have something non-sentient in your life to love as much as I do her. 

My Favourite Porn

We all spend our lives trying to feel out the limits of “normal” and then do our best to live within those limits. But there are times when we realise that what we thought was normal, is in fact, really fucking weird. For example, when I was a kid every day without fail my dad would wake me up and tell me that while I was asleep he put me on the road and put yoghurt on my face and a truck ran over me. And every morning I would get upset at my nocturnal misadventure while my dad would chuckle to himself like the evil genius he is. Years later, of course, I realised that this is not only weird, but kind of fucked up. And since the moment I realised that not everyone’s dad woke them up with strange psychotic lies, I’m always trying to check myself before I wreck myself, my internal monologue constantly tapping me on the internal shoulder and whispering fretfully, “is this normal?!” And here is something that my internal voice has been flagging as “potentially odd” lately. Crying porn. So, there’s normal porn that gives you a sexy release and then I have laughing porn which is that thing where my friends fall over and I file it away in my non-sexual spank bank for later when I need a laugh, and then there’s crying porn. Crying porn is all the things I read, watch or file away for when I need the sweet release of a good cry. Don’t get weird about this though, it’s not crying in a sad way; just in a cathartic, in-touch-with-my-emotions, recreational sort of way. I know you came here to read something smutty, but SUCKED IN, this is a blog about tears and snot, suckerrrrrr. Anyway, please don’t leave.

Things I Watch

My favourite episodes of anything are the episodes where people die. I never watched Grey’s Anatomy but you better believe I watched that episode where that lady with the weird teeth stopped her boyfriend’s heart so he’d win a free heart and he accidentally died and they carry her in a ball gown through the hospital (that’s a weird show btw). I didn’t know who patrick was or what Offspring was but you’d also better believe I watched the episode where he died. And let’s not get started on The Walking Dead etc etc death episodes into eternity. Unfortunately, I’m not able to stop there at the faux death, and now this is going to get real dark, real fast and I’m sorry for it, but not sorry enough to stop writing. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage which meant that my subsequent pregnancies were riddled with the fear of pregnancy loss. So after I had both my respective kids safe in my arms, I sat down and YouTubed lots of videos of stillbirths. There was one particular vlogger who had been documenting her pregnancy from conception onwards and late in her pregnancy began documenting a trip to the hospital to check on diminished movements in utero. Devastatingly, her baby had passed away and she and her husband filmed his birth and their time with him before they laid him to rest. Why in the holy hell I’d want to watch this, I have no idea, but it made me feel safe and I cried a lot and so there’s one of my weird deep, dark secrets. Judge me if you must. 

Things I’ve Done

Have you ever cried so hard that you can’t breathe, you have incurable hiccups and long strings of snot course out of your nose and onto your shirt? I have. And strangely enough, when I hark back to any memory of doing this, it brings me to tears again, I have so much empathy for my past self. Think of this as me ruminating on an intimate memory and getting a crying boner about it. I had a bad day at work once. Like, a really bad day, which ended in me sitting alone in the car park with my forehead on the steering wheel, racked with sobs. Luckily, one of my friends appeared, concerned. Everyone else had gone home and I was just alone, bawling my eyes out in my car, a little bit pregnant and a lot devastated. While our friendship had always been one of those friendships where you’re more inclined to shake hands than hug or cheek-kiss as a greeting, I was so relieved to see him I managed to hiccup between wails “HOLD. ME.” He nodded bemused consent and I half fell out of the car to enter an awkward embrace. I sobbed snot all over him with reckless abandon, he just stood there and maybe he patted my head, I’m really not sure, such was my mental state. Eventually I released him from my vice-like Maz hysteria grip and went home, but every time I think of clinging to him in that moment of pure sorrow, I cry again. 

Things I’ve Read

I know that it is incredibly trite for a thirty-something year old mum with post natal depression to quote Sylvia Plath, but I’m going to do it anyway. In the Bell Jar, Plath talks about the notion of the fig tree, with a juicy fig on each branch, each fig representing an alternate life, all equally as appetising. From being a famous poet, to having a beautiful family, to travelling the world, “but choosing one meant losing all the rest”.  And this is the crux of my heartbreak. I love everything I have, but I will always wonder if there was something else in store for me which I would have loved more? Perhaps a little girl who looked just like me, who would love me as much as I love my mum. Or a solitary life living somewhere entirely different like rural Portugal, never tethered to anyone or anything. Maybe a partner who I could have loved above and beyond anyone I’ve ever met or dated before, that fairytale notion of a soulmate, with whom domesticity and petty arguments never crept into the relationship. This gets me every time, because this sort of impasse is at the core of who I am, always wanting something different, something better, even if I have the very best of everything. If I need to cry, this thought is like crying crack because I start crying at the people and things I’ll never experience and then continue the cry for being such a fucking asshole that I’m unhappy with my lot in life. 

So that’s my big bag of boohoos, friends. And if you have tried all these tricks and still can’t inspire yourself into floods of tears so you can admire how beautiful you are when you’re melancholy in the mirror (wait, what?! I don’t do that…) then try pulling a hair out of the inside of your nose. That works every time. 

Highway To Discomfort Zone

The last few weeks I’ve been languishing inside a pretty brutal bubble of anxiety. I’ve never experienced this feeling so intensely before and let me tell you, it’s not great. It feels like anything and everything I could possibly stress about, I’ve been gathering up and squirrelling away to ruminate on when everyone’s asleep and world is quiet. And it’s building into a huge pimple inside my soul, full of a fetid, anxious pus. But listen closely, because I’m about to pop that sucker and release all the things making me feel squirmy and uncomfortable into the world. Best put your anxiety pus raincoat on, kids.

My Body

I've recently lost some weight. I don’t think I look any different but I’ve been getting a lot of comments and WOAH does it make me uncomfortable. Comments about how I look seem to be falling into two categories; kind, and vaguely hostile. Now, it’s not that I don’t LOVE getting compliments, I’m here for compliments. My favourites being, in no particular order, that I’m smart, that I’m funny and that I’m mean, because all my life I’ve worked at these things and so I’m pleased when people notice. It’s just that compliments about my body and the way I look are new, and I have no idea what response I’m supposed to give. Do I self deprecate and say I don’t know how it’s happened or that it’s the result of breastfeeding? Or try and pass it off as how I looked before I had a baby (not the case because I was recently told at a wedding that the old “chubby Maz” we all grew up with has been replaced with a smaller version)? Or do I admit that I work out up to seven times a week and eat two disgusting cups of spinach for breakfast every day? And because of this confusion I end up giving all these answers and more in garbled and awkward exchanges, and thoroughly flustering the other person who just anticipated me saying “thanks”. Really, the truth is, I’ve suffered from a touch of post natal depression after having George, because having two kids means I am forever an adult now, and I’m having an issue dealing with that. One of the few things that makes me feel okay is absolutely smashing the shit out of myself at the gym, goading the fitness instructor in my parents’ exercise class into screaming in my face until I collapse with exhaustion, or running long distances alone in these here hills. I look at my body every morning and every night and in my mind I think “Oh look, my depression body is looking stronger!” but this isn’t something you can straight up say to people, and when I tried once it garnered a more awkward reaction than the self deprecation/workout regime/mumble list.

The other type of comment I keep getting is a sort of snarky observation about the weight I’ve lost, like I’ve done something wrong to my body. One time a woman I barely know said something to the effect of I shouldn’t have lost so much weight but also, how had I done it? And I just deadpanned to her “I’m having an affair” so I could watch her squirm. I was impressed with that comment and how clearly it illustrates that my sense of humour is mostly informed by Mad Magazine’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” but also, shut up and stop making me feel uncomfortable, weirdo.

Gardening

I am an all or nothing girl. I want to be the best, the most loved, the funniest, the fastest blah blah blah and if I can’t win those accolades, I will literally walk away and not try. Once, when I was a teenager playing in the finals of a basketball competition, it became apparent in the first quarter that we were outmatched and inevitably going to lose the game by a large margin. So I just stood down the offensive end of the court, letting them win. Sure, they could have their victory, but it’d be hollow as hell. And so goes the rest of my life, I have matured very little from 17. And at the moment, the thing I’m terrified of failing at is my job, gardening. Despite my mum’s best efforts, gently prodding me to start the garden at my new house, buying me the David Austin climbing rose I wanted so badly last year along with an endless parade of prayer plants and ferns for the house, I just watch them wither and die, because right now, I can’t engage in gardening. I’m so scared I’ll go back to work and not know what the fuck I’m doing, exposing to everyone that I’m a fraud. This fear is followed by the overwhelming feeling that I need to quit before I get hurt. I’m scared to get my feelings hurt by plants. Man, I’m lame. I literally keep deleting and reinstalling my instagram because photos of gardens instil such a cold dread in me that I keep totally melting down and throwing my phone across the room, the bile rising in my throat and my heart racing.

Douchebags

I’m a feminist. I want equality, I want to be afforded the same rights, and pants, as men. I sure as hell want to be able to speak more than 15% of the time without men thinking I’m speaking half the time (that’s an actual stat, friends. If women in a mixed-gender conversation speak 15% of the time, men perceive the gender contribution to be equal. If women speak 30% of the time, they are perceived as “dominating the discussion”, fucking women *eyeroll emoji*).  But anyway, I digress. I recently attended a feminist debate at Town Hall (it was terrible, I don’t want to go into it, luckily there was a Hungry Jacks and a conversational equal to escape to). And just before I left unimpressed, when the topic of college rape was being discussed, the woman in front of me turned around and seemingly addressing me, yelled “teach your sons not to rape!“ Uh, ok, THANKS LADY! As the mother of two sons I’ll start reining in the specific rape training I’ve been giving them. I’ll call Toys’R’Us and put a hold on that “Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego (So I Can Rape Her)?” board game I bought and I’ll throw out the copy of Goodnight Moon which, unlike the version you all know and love, is a rohypnol promotional item extolling the virtues of the drug to small children. The thing is, I’m pretty sure the dudes who commit these transgressions against women know what they’re doing is wrong, but do it anyway, because they just don’t give a shit. So maybe we’d be better off calling out the people who are deserving of such malice instead of the mothers of boys (and also, why is rape the mother’s fault?!) In particular, there is one type of guy who makes my skin crawl and in my current stressed state, I can spot them a mile off and am unable to conceal the look of disgust I get when I’m around them. I think of them as a “gropers”.

A groper is a specific type of guy who will constantly tell you how much he cares for the safety and wellbeing of women, he will say things like “I don’t even know HOW someone could EVER treat a woman badly, women are way better/more special/smarter than us men”. When in fact, they have no respect whatsoever for women and are just trying to sneak under the radar. I have met more incarnations of this dude than I have fingers and toes and let me tell you, while they proselytise the merits of feminism, when you pass out at a party they will put their hand down your top. You don’t even need to be passed out. Once I was in Rome and chatting to a guy in a hostel, telling him how much I missed my boyfriend back home. We were face to face, sitting on a balcony when his little creep hand began creeping under the front of my jumper. He got to my stomach when I whacked my hand on top of his, the fabric of my jumper separating us, trapping his hand against the skin of my belly. I shook his hand out from inside my clothes like a damn spider, looked witheringly at him and went to bed. I can also think of three people on my friends list who have, when I’ve been asleep somewhere, put their hands inside my clothes. I’m not sure what about my lifeless little body implied consent to them, but I can tell you these people weren’t weird, creepo strangers, they were my friends. Every time this has happened I’ve just played possum and pretended it wasn’t happening, and for whatever reason, I still feel incredibly ashamed of it. Like I’d done something wrong to encourage it. So if you’re reading this, and you’ve done this to me, firstly, please never mention it because it will MORTIFY me and you owe it to me to keep, at the very least, your words to yourself. But also, FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCKHEAD GO EAT A DICK I HOPE YOU GET HEAD LICE.

I’m generally a problem solver and usually if I wrote this sort of list of issues, I would pose solutions to them. But today I have no solutions, just anxiety, and this was just a brain dump to try and make it go away. But thank you to all my friends who have sat patiently on their birthdays, on their lunch breaks, into the late hours on their phones listening to me go on and on and those of you who just read this now. Your comfort is invaluable and I love you. And also, to anyone else out there who is being kept up at night, haunted by the the sight of neatly hedged photonias on your street, you’re not alone and I’m here if you need to chat.

The Lies I've Told Lately

I lie a lot, it’s how I get by. Once I lied to rail guards about my cat dying, telling them instead I was sobbing because my brother had just passed away. When I was a teenager I lied for a year about sponsoring a child, creating a name, identity and even making up a country from whence he came. It’s not like I lie about big things, just weird little lies that make life more exciting or get people off my case about shit. And here is a random sampling of the lies I’ve been telling lately.

That I’ve read that book/seen that show/listened to the lame podcast you recommended. Look, I know this is a popular meme, but I often lie about having read things. And seen things. And listened to things. There is this thing I like to think of as “friend homework”. It is when your friends recommend things to you like books and movies and shows and music, and unless you’re one of the very select few who’s taste matches mine, I’m going to hate whatever you recommend. But as a good friend I will persist and watch/listen/read it to placate you and demonstrate my love for you. But sometimes I run out of time to do all my friend homework as I’m, you know, living my fucking life, so I just pretend I’ve done it. This constantly results in me lying to your face and laughing along as you quote things. But look closely and you’ll see a glint of terror in my eyes as I wait to be found out. One time, I actually asked for a sci-fi book recommendation from a friend (I asked for it, how dumb am I?!) and he literally did me a choose-your-own-adventure chart which would lead me to the perfect book recommendation. And readers, let me tell you that this ended up with me buying and attempting to read literally THE WORST BOOK EVER. I don’t want to name it in case that friend reads this and I hurt his little heart, but it was a book about South African Neo-Nazis going back in time to the American Civil War and helping the South win by supplying their armies with Uzis. Fuck me dead. I tried so hard to read it but ended up just googling the ending and then had to do basically an hour long book club on it. I’ve never wanted to die more and have literally avoided that friend ever since, such was the awkwardness.

That I follow mostly sharks and nudibranchs on Instagram. This is just not true. I told a friend once that I follow heaps of sharks on Instagram because I wanted to seem eclectic and interesting when they were slagging off people following mostly celebrities which, hello, is me thoroughly. I go to bed to Kylie Jenner’s instagram and wake up to the cast of Vanderpump Rules because I am basic AF. Unfortunately, they pushed for more info about which specific accounts are the best. So I had to research the best shark accounts and now I legitimately follow a vast amount of shark accounts and actually am quite into them, so that worked out quite well in the end. But having not learnt my lesson I told the exact same lie again recently. While away on holiday, sitting in the creek at Crescent Head, the most amazing amount of nudibranchs just started floating down the stream. If you don’t know what a nudibranch is, look them up. They’re a group of soft-bodied, marine gastropod molluscs which shed their shells after their larval stage and come in a crazy array of colours. Anyway, everyone in the creek was like “oh! Look at these things” and I, forever wanting to be smarter than everyone else, was trying to convey that they were, in fact, nudibranchs. When asked how I knew, I said I mostly follow nudibranchs on Instagram. I don’t know why I thought this would give my knowledge credence when I literally hold a degree in biology, but same goes, and now I regularly look up and like nudibranch photos (there aren’t that many straight up nudibranch accounts, I don’t know why).

That I put my hair in the bin. When you’re pregnant you pretty much don’t shed any hair for the entirety of your pregnancy. This is why pregnant women often sport glorious manes of hair. But, about three months after your kid is born, all of that extra hair falls out. Practically an entire year of hair fall happens in about a month and it is gross and annoying. My family has been wrapped up in my hair for weeks now. If I ever go missing you will only have to follow the trail of hair and you’ll find me easily. And I’m always getting in trouble for it. Sure, no one wants a fine layer of hair gracing every surface of their house but I can’t help that. I keep getting told that when it falls out can I please put it in the bin. “Of course!” I reply passively aggressively, “What else would I be doing with it?!” But you better believe that there is a fucking HAIR MOUNTAIN living behind my couch. Because the bin is too far when I’ve already sat down and it’s not like I’m putting a ball of hair in my pocket for later.

That I wasn’t going to drug my child. Max hasn’t been sleeping well. Blah blah blah you know I hate talking about parenting, so cut to me googling how to sedate your kid. And it turns out Phenergan is your golden ticket, my friends. So in I trotted into the chemist and of course Phenergan isn’t on the shelves and of course you have to ask for it. After five minutes of mum and I standing there awkwardly with a back and forth, “I’ll ask” “No, I’ll ask” “No it’s ok, I’ll ask”, I eventually asked. With a very cynical look, the chemist asked me if my child had allergies, had I tried Zyrtec, what else had I tried? I managed to fumble through an array of lies about Max’s made up hives that wouldn’t go away and he was so itchy the poor little thing and nodded like it was interesting new news to me that it could make your three year old drowsy before snatching it from her hand and rapidly vacating the chemist. I haven’t used it yet, but it’s sitting on my kitchen counter like a souvenir I got at Lie Land.

So I’m sorry if I lied to you this week, or any week, but take comfort in the knowledge I do it to loved ones and strangers alike. But also please stop making my life hard and telling me to watch animated shows and read books whose titles begin with the words “The Girl...” because they suck massive balls. I’m sorry, but they do.

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.