this old town, he played four, he played .. wait. Town? I mean man!

When you step outside, you can feel the sun sucking the moisture from your flesh. Even your hair feels hot enough to boil water, stinging your hands as you run them through it. The wind roars past your body, its furnace-temperatures searing your skin and flinging dust into eyes dried up like sandpaper.

Tarred roads melt under the onslaught of a Central West Summer sun where the mere thought of having to step outside to buy groceries results in thousands of simultaneous phone calls to the local take away shops - and an hour long wait for a hamburger.

Sometimes, it’s even too hot for the locusts and crickets who do small, lazy jumps, barely avoiding a quick death beneath your shoes.

Dirt clings to the sweat that coats the webbing between your big toe and the one beside it, drying to form an unsightly, black crumble which only becomes apparent once you kick your thongs off your feet. Underarm sweat mixes with deodorant to form a sticky paste that stains shirts but does little to combat the smell being generated by heat and movement. T-Shirts cling to backs and under-boobs and shorts get stuck in bums, riding up to reveal patterns that seating has left in the backs of exposed thighs.

In my office, small goose bumps cover my arms, the result of the arctic winds emanating from the air-conditioner. It is the reason I keep a cardigan over the back of my chair. It’s a harsh adjustment from 40 degrees outside to the chilly 22 swirling around my desk.

The view out my window is distorted by almost-invisible waves of heat, rising off the iron roof below. A discarded can of spray paint sends a sharp glint of sunlight against the wall of the next building and I worry each day that it will explode in a shower of dried up paint chips and flame. I walked onto the roof and got the last one, falling for the story my co-workers fed me about their own successful roof-treks.
It wasn’t until I was halfway out, the thin iron that was my only support softly bending beneath my feet, that I looked up and saw them laughing hysterically at my gullibility. Apparently nobody else is as stupid as me, to walk onto the two-storey roof of a 100 (and something) year old building with nothing to save them but their reflexes - Reflexes of a cat (that is blind, deaf, and unable to eat solid food anymore)!

On days like this, I spend my work hours dreaming about the blue sparkle of my parents’ pool and that delicious instant where the cool water touches your sun-scorched skin and pulls the breath from your lungs. I dream about the way the seams of the inflatable pool pony scratches against your sunburn, and its smell as you press your nose into the soft, warm plastic to blow it up a little more.

Every outdoor excursion is put off until the sun begins to set behind gum trees standing still as stone when the furnace winds have abated and left us with an oppressive heat-blanket, thick and exhausting. The outdoor jobs that can’t be put off wring childish tears from adult eyes at the unfairness of having to leave air-conditioned comfort and whole families flinch as the tempers of even the most patient parents suddenly get much, much shorter.

Eventually the sun starts saying goodbye, apologising for its rude intensity with spectacular sunsets; splashes of mauve and pink and peach and red setting fire to the stray wisps of cloud dotting the sky. Temperatures begin to drop as salads are tossed and sausages are left to sizzle on barbecues that feel cooler than the steering wheel did at 4pm. As the food hits the outdoor setting, the mozzies begin their attack; a couple of scouts to begin with, followed by the larger army.

With full bellies and sunburn sting, chairs are pushed back from tables and dishwashers stacked; the sharp “ting, ting, ting” of cutlery scraping bread crusts and sauce-piles into garbage bins breaks through the cicada-songs and satisfied sighs are released, along with those full bellies from their trousers.

Cold showers give late-night respite before switching on the fan and pulling up the blankets. One foot stays in, the other sticks out to evenly distribute your body’s temperature. Tomorrow we wake, and do it all again, until Summer’s stinging sun gives way to Autumn’s cardigan call and its promises of flannelette pyjamas and steaming bowls of soup.

Intense weather - that's just how this town rolls.

Never forgotten

Addiction is a strange disease.

It’s something that belongs to other people. To the men and women who have dirty hair and unwashed clothes, asking for money when you walk out of the shopping centre. The ones talking to themselves. The ones you glare at in disgust, or step away from in fear.

“Normal” people don’t have time for addicts. It’s their own fault. They choose to live this way.

Nobody chooses the life of an addict. People make stupid decisions for any number of reasons. Some follow the crowd, others are trying to find themselves. Some are born into it, just following mum and dad’s footsteps, continuing a life as adults that was all they knew as children.

Addiction isn’t solely the disease of the poor, but it certainly spends more time in their homes than in more affluent households.

The responsibility of the addiction begins with the addict, however, the drug of choice, whichever drug that may be, is more powerful than the human willpower and the chemical reaction within the body betrays the user, taking the drug from a want, to a need.

Addiction takes away an addict’s choice. When your body and your mind cannot rest without it, you will do all you can to survive, and unfortunately, for an addict, surviving means using. What is life with the pain of withdrawal? With the drug in their life, they sacrifice everything, but.. by now, everything else is gone, and the only friend left in the world who understands is the drug, so you might as well stay with it.

By the time the addiction takes hold to a point where an addict needs to stop, quite often they don’t have the financial means or a support network to help them climb out of that hole. Their selfish actions have forced loved ones away, they’ve lost them jobs, houses, children. Very few addicts crawl out of their addiction to rebuild their life. I don’t condemn those who don’t make it out alive.

I don’t even condemn those who do make it out, and then go back. Addiction never leaves you, and when you can't regain the precious things you lost due to your addiction, who can blame you for giving into it for good?

My addiction has been ugly. It has been everything you see in movies, or read in books. I have been covered in my own body’s rejection of alcohol, lying on my bathroom floor alone, hoping to never wake up, actually thinking that I’ll never wake up. I’ve been that girl at the bar who you just want to kill. I’ve been the angry, violent girl who smashes glasses on the floor because the bar is closed. I’ve slept with people whose names I didn’t ask for and I’ve put myself in more dangerous situations than I can count, simply to have just one more drink. I became a stranger to myself, all in the name of my next mouthful, cos sometimes, that’s all I could afford. And those are just the nights I remember. For every binge I can recall, there are 5 more that are just a blur of faces and emotions, mostly shame.

I know what it is to chase oblivion to the point where consequences no longer hold any meaning.

I’m luckier than I can express to have somehow retained that final drop of fear that simply wouldn’t allow me to give all of myself to my addiction. My love for, and from, my family and friends kept me tied to reality and that’s what allowed the fear to remain with me, despite the escalation of my addiction.

I knew my toes were brushing rock bottom and if I stood there, even for just a moment, I wouldn’t be able to climb back up. If I even let my heels drop, I’d drag all my loved ones down there with me, scratching their bodies up as I used them to claw my way out.

No matter what I do in my life, I will never lose my family. I suppose, if I was threatening the safety (mental, emotional or physical) of my siblings they’d give me an ultimatum, but it certainly wasn’t any fear of losing them that kept me somewhat on the straight and narrow. It was the fear of disappointing and hurting them that forced me to have my moments of sobriety and it was those moments of sobriety, where I would lay in my bed for 12 straight hours, staring at walls or ceilings, wetting my pillow with constant, silent tears, that kept me in the real world, forcing me to assess just what the fcking fck I was doing with my life.


Do you know how strange it feels to walk to work one Friday morning and avoid eye contact with a disgusting junkie, trying to ask for money, only to BE that disgusting junkie the following day, after a binge? The first time someone grabbed their child’s hand, as I was weaving my way home on a Saturday morning was one of the most horrifying moments of my life.

I wasn’t asking for money, but I was everything else that all those junkies I’ve glared at and treated like sh.it are. To the world, I looked just like them: drunk at midday, unable to speak coherently, shaking from the 17 cans of red bull I’d had with my vodka. Me. The girl who always made my mother laugh with the stupid faces and dances I’d do in the kitchen. The girl who writes all her thoughts and fears and feelings for the world to see because they are too big to understand when they are invisible inside me. The girl who had a good job with a respectable company. The girl who lived in an apartment overlooking Darling Harbour – none of that meant anything because I was, at that point in time, just another junkie on the streets of Sydney.

Each one of us is capable of making mistakes, even many mistakes, repeated over and over. Each one of us wants to be forgiven for our mistakes. Sometimes, these people coming towards us will never be forgiven by the people they love. Their lives are hard enough without strangers constantly reminding them of where they have gone wrong.

I’m honestly not asking for some kind of Save the Junkies revolution and I'm aware that they need to save themselves, there's very little anyone else can do if an addict doesn't want to face life without their drug.

I just want people to understand that addicts don’t choose the life they live. The addiction chooses it for them and none of us have any idea where life is going to lead us. Until humans stop making mistakes altogether, each one of us is a potential addict of some kind, and the next time you spit on someone or mutter horrible things as you walk past, just remember that there is every chance in the world that one day you might find yourself in the agonising position of watching someone you love get stolen from you by their mistakes and you’ll be wishing the people who walk past and call them names would understand that they were not always like this. They just took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost.

News has come to me twice in the last six months of two people who were once bright stars in my life, both of whom got lost in the needle.

Whatever else they were, they were people who loved, laughed, cried and shared themselves with people who are now mourning their loss. Their addiction wasn’t all they were, but it took all they had.

I will love and miss all they were, and all they will never be.

the final two

The one thing I hate about having a job, is working out what to wear to work every day. After spending the last week in my bikini and one pair of short-shorts or another, I am not sure I'm going to be able to handle the return to skirts and pants and collared shirts that the onset of 2011 heralds.

Outside my window, the grass is a moving blanket of grasshoppers, locusts and butterflies. They careen into your legs when you walk past, aggravating the red welts the mosquitos left you with the night before. My skin permanently smells of chlorine, Aerogard and dog cuddles and feels just a little too tight for my body.

I have two more days of freedom left to me and panic attacks are dancing in my chest; two more days to swim, two more days to stare out the window at nothing until my eyes stop focussing and just hang there, chillin', two more days to walk around in thongs and shorts and two more days of using my fingers as a hairbrush.

There are also only two more days of raiding my parents' fridge for Christmas/New Year leftovers. There's nothing quite like opening the door to the coldest place in the house, feeling the frozen air swirl across your bare thighs while you reach in and lift open the ham bag, trying to steal a slice before someone catches you. It's a talent you have to build on each year, trying to get the bag open without upsetting the cling-wrapped leftovers dishes, stacked Tetris-like on top of jars of pickles and cranberry sauce, but it's a talent I perfected many years ago, back when overeating had no affect on my waistline whatsoever.

This year, things have changed and that extra bowl of "sick of Christmas leftovers so lets make curry" has resulted in a rather unsightly bulge over the top of my shorts.

In two more days, I will have to fit back into my size 6 work skirt and I am not entirely sure that is going to happen. I need to do a trial run of my work clothes in case I need to fall back on my unwashed fat clothes, but putting those work clothes on is just the final nail in Summer's coffin, and I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye yet.

In true Bri style, my plans to make 2011 the year I get organised will be broken just a couple of days in, thanks to the strongest talent I possess: the ability to pretend things aren't happening, until I have no choice but to acknowledge them. Just you watch, I will make these holidays last until the very minute I have to leave the house for work in an unwashed fat skirt and a shirt with a bulging button hole where my boobs have miraculously grown.

Until then, it's me and my messy hair, out to get the most of these last days of freedom. I wonder if I can convince mum to make another trifle?

the self-inflicted suffocation

They always come on at night when the house is silent except for Sid’s steady breathing next to my ear.
The random drunk memories with that sticky, drowny, tar-like feeling of guilt and remorse that cling to them.
They avalanche all over me and soon I’m suffocating in so much regret and self-hatred.

I can’t say them out loud when the sun is awake. These memories are meant for a padlocked box in the least visited corner of my mind but if they are ever to escape, it will be in darkness, hidden in small paper envelopes for strangers to find. I’d prefer strangers to know them, if anyone must, than the people who make my world bright.

There are some I will never tell, the ones that dig into my flesh and break apart; little sharp splinters that worm their way in and are far too much trouble to remove. I know they will rot and fester if left inside but they will only be removed when there is nobody there to see what happens when I dig them out.

It almost feels that I don’t want to be sober as such, I just don’t want to be drunk and sad. I don’t think there’s a place in that middle ground for me, though. I’m either dry as stone, or drowning. Is it because I’m greedy and selfish and never satisfied? I want more, more, more of that feeling and it doesn’t matter who gets trampled under my feet, as long as I get what I want.

Until the next day, when I wake up and need their forgiveness. Need it so badly that I feel my heart and soul breaking until they give it. And they do every time, despite the mess I make and the harm I inflict. I don’t remember that harm so I can’t feel as bad as I should. But they remember. Every knife-edge word, every scathing look, every fall and stumble, and the booze-addled ‘truths’ that fall from my lips in the moments where my eyes are rolling in my head and I don’t know my own name.
Dirt has more self-esteem than I do in the days that follow a binge. There isn’t a crack in the wall small enough for me to hide in or a room dark enough for me to disappear into.

Some people collect stamps or snow globes but I collect guilt and bad memories. I get tired of feeling bad about things that I could prevent if I would just get some self-discipline and do the right thing. I’m sick of saying sorry, because I know how hollow it seems after the thousandth time, but every time it happens, I am sorry. More sorry than I felt the last time, more panicked; it’s harder to breathe through the overwhelming guilt than it was last week because I know that with every wrong step I take, the ice is getting thinner. I don’t have many steps left before it disappears from under me and I’m alone and sinking.

And with every single hangover comes the desire to disappear from everyone’s world. Not die in some Suicidal Spectacular, just quietly slip away where nobody knows me, where there’s nobody to hurt or disappoint or ruin. Just like moving to Melbourne. Only eventually I will run out of cities and I don’t speak a foreign language so that limits my affordable foreign options significantly.

But it doesn’t count them out. Not entirely.

hourglass

i haven't been here for awhile.

the furnishings are dusty and dull with age and disuse.

i feel dusty and dull with age and disuse, but perhaps it's just this little town.

i am back home. the town i grew up in.

the boyfriend none of you met has come with me and we're slowly curling at the edges like leaves discarded from their tree, crunching under the feet of those who pass us by.

this town is a rut, broken only by visits to the pub. there is no other form of nightly entertainment. the cinema closed down and it's never had a bowling alley, or shopping that stays open past midday on saturday. what a silly move for an alcohol junkie to make.

we return to melbourne in two days for a ten day ghost tour of our old haunts. he'll come back with me, but not in his heart. i don't blame him. mine isn't here either.

mine is scattered to the wind; rarely able to settle in one place for too long and i fear it has taken off again, to float around searching for something new, something shiny to set its sights on. only, i know it isn't doing that. it's sitting in a corner, staring at nothing. it's still in its pyjamas at midday, while chores remain unfinished. chores remain unstarted, for that matter.

everything has lost its lustre and the world is a boring, browny grey; a faded wood colour, not even pretty in its weathered beauty. just old. old and brown and so very slow to die.

i've given up on having dreams, on anything that requires motivation. leave me with my heart alone in the corner, i don't have the energy to care about anything. i don't want to care about anything. life is just a big old hassle, everything its own chore to tick off the list.

and i guess i'd best get started ticking.

kissing your shadow

i cut a hole in the floor beneath my bed to hide all the bottles i'd filled with the hair i cut off while you sleep. tiny pieces here and there, you never notice but my bottles do. i hear them clinking at night.

when you cut your fingernails, i pluck them out of the ashtray. i'm writing you a love letter with them. so far it says "i'm sorry i stole your key and made my own copy but it's winter now and you started keeping the curtains closed". i need more fingernails.

ah, i wish you knew about our first date. it was the time we went to the carnival and you went on that ride seven times that night. it was hard, always getting the carriage behind you without you seeing me and calling the cops.

i can't wait until you move in with me. the basement is almost set up, i'm just waiting on those chains to arrive from the hospital. i had to tell them they were for an art project and i couldn't find them anywhere else. they needed the money anyway.

i like the shirt you chose this morning, did you know the last time you wore it was to dinner with your girlfriend three weeks ago? i remember because it's the night i drowned that kitten i found on the street.

i felt bad later but the name tag said "laurie" and i hate your girlfriend's name.

now i'm going home to cook the same meal you are cooking. it's as though we're dining together. soon enough we will be and i won't have to walk so far in the cold to find out what we're having.

i'll see you at bedtime.

xox

self portrait

She loses her breath in the shower when her head is submerged in water. It's like she drowns for a moment and in that moment her soul is etched across her face.

That's what happens when your body thinks it's dying. Your soul shows itself to whoever is there in the hope that someone can save it.

Her soul looks like broken hearts stitched up with mismatched coloured string, slowly stretching their way to coming undone. It makes me wonder why she fights so hard when the water stops her breath.

Those are the nights that her eyes look like Winter; grey and desolate and bone-piercingly cold. She clutches me in her sleep, twitching like a junkie and now I tell my coworkers that I bought a kitten. They've stopped asking about the scratches.

In the morning she will wake exhausted, the corpse of my devilish woman with her alcohol smile. In the evening she will drown again just to know the feeling of being alive.

I think she needs a hobby.