"think about puppies and Richmond"

It's late. I've just snuggled down into my nice warm bed after an evening of making burgers for a bustling Chapel St and I am feeling pretty good about life. Then it happens.

A single shot rings out through the night, the noise echoing and bouncing off the buildings around my house.

In the 3 seconds that followed that moment I went from calmly going to sleep to almost crying, feeling like shaky jelly and breathing rapidly and shallowly. The ONLY thing I can think is that somebody just got shot. 

Just earlier, as I had been walking home, I had seen some people loitering for an oddly long amount of time on my street, at the time I was able to dismiss it.

As I heard what I only assumed could be a gunshot, my anxiety helpfully jumped to one conclusion; The loitering men had been waiting for someone. That someone had arrived. That someone had died. 

Deep down I knew that there was a chance that my anxiety might be in the drivers seat, but I was pretty convinced that my assessment was spot on.

Now I was faced with a dilemma! If I get up and look out my window and it was just my anxiety, then I have let my anxiety best me.

If I look out my window and I was right, then I will be faced with one of my worst nightmares, dealing with finding a dead body.

If I don't look out the window and I was right, then I have relinquished an opportunity to potentially save someones life, and I will wake up the next morning to discover my suspicions were true and I slept the whole night while they lay out there.

By this point I am panicking. If I get up, I lose, if I stay in bed, I lose. The only hope I had was to stay in bed and somehow successfully determine that my anxiety was in control and there was no dead body.

Anxiety is a monster, it can simultaneously convince me that my thoughts are reality but fill me with shame at the thought of voicing those thoughts to someone else, because they are so obviously ridiculous.

My only chance to escape the drain of fearful panic that I was being sucked into was to just talk to someone in the hope that they could pull me out of the sink.

I have friend, he is one of my best friends. He has no time for crying and his preferred medicine is a teaspoon of cement. Although he cares and he really tries, I am not sure he has a full grasp on my 'anxiety thing.' But I trust him, and he was probably awake.

"All it takes is the sound of a single gunshot to send my joyfully dormant anxiety spiralling out of control." 

My message was dispatched to his phone and I was left shakily staring at the screen, praying that he was still awake. The response came almost immediately and it was just one sentence.

"It wasn't a gunshot."

With that one sentence he reached into the sink, grabbed my hand and pulled me out. The grip that anxiety had on my heart, my throat and my thoughts dissolved. 

Of course it wasn't a gunshot.

Anxiety is scary. It gets me from the inside. Sometimes its slow boils me. I'm fine and I'm fine and I'm fine and then I'm not and I realise that I haven't been fine in a long time. Sometimes, like tonight, it attacks me. It's an overwhelming assault and all the tools and strategies that I hold to deal with it clamour to the floor as I desperately try to pry its grip from my neck to keep breathing. I am so thankful that my friends and family hear me when I yell, or cry, or whisper, or silently wave for help. When I am not strong enough they help wrench away anxiety's control over me.

World Wizard Day

Its world autism day today! I like days like this because social media often becomes aswell with many and varied stories of autism. For most of the year I feel like the autism narrative is one working from a deficit model. That when we read about stories of achievement, success or hilarity, they are in spite of autism, or perhaps because of it.
On days like today, however, when we open ourselves up for a conversation about autism, so many more stories come flowing in and begin to chip away at the problematic assumptions that have collectively been made about people on the autism spectrum.

My sister is on the autism spectrum. I could talk for 87 hours about it. About the good things and the hard things, about how frustrating it can be and how wonderful she is.  sometimes I worry that all of these stories I have turn her into my aspie sister. She's not. She's my sister. And she has aspergers. But thats not everything.

I want to tell you a story, and I want a sentence that links it to what I have said. I can't think of a way to articulate it properly but it is along the lines of "lets celebrate world autism day by celebrating the people in our lives who are on the autism spectrum, but lets not celebrate their autism, lets just celebrate other randomly excellent or hilarious things about them." HA! I tricked myself into articulating it. Ok, story time..

Rewind the clock approximately 15 years and one day. The Gun* and I share a bedroom. Its not ideal. She is on the brink of puberty and I am a repulsively and unapologetically filthy child.
As a child I was a spectacularly deep sleeper. Alarm clocks had no power over me, their pathetic beeping attempts to wake me were just incorporated into my dreams as a siren or a bomb. Unfortunately, this deep sleeping also affected my ability to go to the toilet. Rather than wake up, I would simply recognise a need to pee and, in the course of my dream, find my way to a toilet to relieve myself. It was only once I realised that I couldn't hear the splash back of the toilet, and I was greeted with a warm sensation, that I would realise that I had yet again dream peed. It wasn't like I had no control, I would go to the toilet, I just wouldn't go to the actual toilet, and it was therein my problem lied**. Now, I'm not saying this happened all the time, but it definitely happened more than never. You can imagine the repulsion of my sister at having to share a room with not only her little sister, but her little sisters urine too.
So its April 1st at some point near the turn of the millennium. I wake up in the morning blissfully unaware of the culturally acceptable day long free pass for bullying that occurs annually. I get out of bed and resume frolicking in the loungroom. several minutes pass and I hear an almighty roar from the bedroom. The Gun is standing by my bed pointing an accusing finger at a wet patch in the middle and hurling a stream of disapproval. "thats DISGUSTING! I can't believe you wet the bed AGAIN! you are SO GROSS, when will you learn?!"
I am utterly bewildered. But I didn't wet the bed. My pants were dry and I didn't recall having gone to the toilet in my dream. Normally when I wet the bed I would wake up straight away and this time I had just gone about my day as normal. I voiced my confusion to the Gun, and she just responded with flawless logic. "The bed is wet, the bed is yours and you have previously wet the bed. Clearly, you wet the bed last night." I furiously patted myself down wondering how it was possible that my pants were still dry, but I couldn't argue with that logic so I just accepted it as fact. In that moment, if you had hooked me up to a lie detecter and asked me if I thought I had wet the bed, I would've said yes, and the machine would have believed me.
"AHAHAHA!! april fools! When you got out of bed I snuck into the kitchen and got a cup of water to pour onto your bed and you thought you wet the bed!"

The prank was well thought out and well acted out and Mum applauded her creativity and impeccable yet terrifying ability to gaslight people, however was unimpressed with the now wet mattress so the Gun had to drag the mattress out into the lounge room to air out and dry while I was sat down and explained what the heck aprils fools meant (and in hindsight it wouldn't've hurt to explain what gas lighting was while they were at it.)
It was by far the best April fools I have ever fallen victim to, rivalled only by this years prank. But thats a story for another time, maybe 15 years time.




*My sisters pseudonym. Named after the Flemington Bull action Rifle, which is too long to say.

**go back and finish the other story and then when your done come down and read this little tangent..
To this day whenever I go to the toilet either just before bed or having just woken up, I have a set of procedures in place to avoid accidentally using dream toilets. I am not allowed to pee with my eyes shut. I have to be able to feel something cold, whether its a tiled floor, or the outside of the toilet bowl. I have to be able to vividly recall my entire walk to the bathroom. I have to do all of these things before I start peeing, and if I can't do any ones of these things then I have to try and wake myself up before I am allowed to pee. It might sound crazy but the other day I was awake and I was about to go to the toilet and I thought "gee I don't really recall walking to the toilet. So I touched the outside of the porcelain bowl and it was WARM AND SOFT! I set off the alarm bells and awoke from a dream. thats right ladies and gentlemen, the system's in place for a reason and it is a good system because its been at least 10 years since i've wet the bed.

Can I pay less rent for my house's great location? I'm only allowed to appreciate it during the day.

"Women, if you want to be safe, stay at home. Except that you are more likely to be killed at home by someone who claims they love you, so don't stay at home. Make sure you don't have a boyfriend because he's the most likely person to kill you, but don't go out without your boyfriend because you need someone to protect you. 

Don't show too much skin or laugh too loud or dance too much, but come on love give us a smile. Carry your keys and your phone at all times and make sure you run far enough to burn off all those calories but don't do it in public and for gods sake don't run in shorts, that's just asking for trouble. Public transport is dangerous, but so are taxis and walking and driving on your own and did I mention that staying at home is really risky, so don't do any of those things ok?

Men, just carry on as you were, this is not your problem ok?" - Jane Gilmore 

Security footage is going to look odd in this laundromat

*Let's just all assume that I am aware of the myriad of privilege I am about to display.*

I have too many clothes. It's a problem that's been plaguing me recently because my room has been messy because there is physically not enough space for all the clothing- and I have the biggest room in the house!
I have tried sorting through my clothes and throwing away the stuff I don't wear or that I don't like, but I love it all and I wear it all!
Not to worry though, tonight I figured out the solution. I washed everything I owned, because procrastination, amirate?  (it took more than an hours pay at the laundromat)
When it came time to dry it, I flipped off the environment and decided to tumble dry it all. Here is where my ingenious plan comes into action..

I put the dryer on the hot setting and let the clothes participate in a survival of the fittest. If you can't handle the hot setting, you don't deserve to- nor will you probably stand up to the task of- being worn by me. this is where we separate the durable from the high maintenance, the long lasting from the once-offs, the worthy from the pathetic.

I am excited to see who makes the cut, and while I want them all to survive, I know there will be casualties.

Jenna marbles can drunk apply fake eyelashes better than I can sober.

Ok, so there is something that has really bothered me for awhile, and tonight I decided to try and photograph it out.

Every guy that I ever talk to says that they think women look better without make-up on.

First of all i'd like to start by acknowledging that I will not be addressing the larger issue that is guys assuming make-up is worn by women for the visual pleasure of men. Get me started on that at a later date.

Here is this particular issue I have with the above bolded statement. It's not true! they don't think women look better with no makeup on. They think women look better with jussstt enough makeup that they can't perceive it but it makes our skin lovely and smooth. This profoundly bothers me.
Maybe later i'll talk about the unachievable beauty standards of women, and the fact that we have to make it seem effortless, but for tonight I will leave you with two pictures: The first picture shows how guys want us to look versus the apparent monstrosity that is getting dolled up. The second picture is how I actually look without makeup on. Try and tell me I am hotter in the second picture. I dare you.
And someone please appreciate how well I drew that black line on my face with liquid eyeliner.

Don't stress, my self esteem hasn't taken a massive hit from these photos, nor do I think I should feel ashamed to leave the house looking like I do in the second picture.