The Final Truth

* Trigger Warning: I am going to talk very seriously about eating disorders. These are my experiences and some might find the descriptions of emotions hard to deal with. Oh and also I swear 🙂 *

This is a hard subject for me to write about, but I have been inspired by another blogger’s honesty and felt it was time for some of my own.

In High School (and some of Primary School) bullies had me convinced I was fat and ugly, I was very good at hiding how much that affected me mentally. No one knew exactly how much I struggled because as it turns out I am an ace at bottling my emotions. Eventually I attempted to stop eating to lose weight convinced if I just lost weight I would be beautiful and the bullying would stop and when I found that too difficult I became bulimic. No one knew I had this problem, I was scarily good at hiding it and in fact managed to hide it in a family of 5 for many months.

Sometime later my best friend who I didn’t get to see often because she moved 40 minutes away was hospitalised because her organs were shutting down due to anorexia, seeing her that ill made me do some serious thinking. I knew about bulimics and had stupidly talked myself into believing that I wasn’t one because bulimics threw up everything and I only made myself sick if I ate something naughty. Seeing my friend hospitalised and being told she might not come out scared me good and I decided to make myself stop.

And I did stop. My girlfriend got better and we have since talked about our experiences, until recently she was one of two people that knew I ever had a problem.

The thing about this kind of illness is that the mental battle doesn’t ever completely disappear. To this day I know she struggles with it sometimes. So do I.

I have been on the infertility journey for four years come this New Year’s Eve, for most of that time I have managed to keep my shit together, but every time I go and see a doctor or a specialist and get told I need to lose weight and that I am not doing enough or working hard enough it sparks a battle I have to work very hard not to succumb to.

Do I over indulge in my everyday life, hell yes, and if I am truly honest it happens too often. To be even more honest *deep breath* I have recently come to believe that I think (particularly in the past) that some of my overindulgence is to prove I am okay. I know this sounds so stupid but it is sometimes almost a test, like “I can totally eat this cheesecake without having a war in my head”. Not all of it is this way and I think it is subconscious, I am not even positive as to whether this is true (mix this with being an emotional eater and I think you really have something); it is just a thought that has been circling for a while now. It is possible it started off this way (pretty sure that part is true), but has now just become my lifestyle, habits that I now need to go back and break.

For me it was also about control. As a teenager I felt so out of control of every aspect of my life, I couldn’t even succeed in controlling my eating, but I could control whether it stayed in my body.

This brings me to why I am bringing this up now. I had not made myself sick for many, many years, over a decade in fact without a relapse. Then the constant and intense pressure from the specialist started, if I do not lose 10kgs I will not be put forward for IVF.

Just to be clear, if I cannot lose 10kgs you guys, I might never have a biological child. Which means my parents and T’s wouldn’t get grandbabies from us and T will never be a father. That is a fuck ton of pressure to carry around with you constantly, every day and with every food and activity choice you make. Slowly but surely the little wars started going on in my head again, the wars got longer and the devil on my shoulder started to gain ground. Still I thought I had everything under control. Then I started to feel as though T wasn’t as serious and dedicated to having a child as I was. I felt like I had to have surgery to get my ovaries drilled and he couldn’t even commit to the nights we were supposed to have sex because his work kept calling him up. The prospect of the needles and complete invasiveness that is IVF had me terrified and I just felt that I had absolutely no control over anything.

Then one day… the devil one a battle.

A couple of weeks later he won another one.

The worst part about it was the complete relief I felt afterwards, then I felt ashamed for feeling so relieved. I was at a crossroads, I could see the two roads in front of me and I needed to make a decision.

One night cinched the deal.

T and I were supposed to have happy time that night, but once again something kept him away so I was left waiting in bed trying to stay awake. Instead of being mad at his work or at him for not telling them to call someone else I turned on myself and after berating myself with stupid friggen stuff that in reality was for the most part untrue or greatly exaggerated I felt a very strong urge come over me. I knew this was the moment. So I made a decision.

I held my body in a tight foetal position with tears running down my face until T showed up. It took a long time for me to get out what was going on. I danced all around the subject. Started with telling him how I felt about his commitment to trying for a baby and his priorities in regards to work. Then my feelings of complete terror surrounding going through IVF (the fear is real guys, I don’t know why, perhaps it is fear of the unknown, but sometimes it is paralysing which is ridiculous. I think I feel like IVF is our Hail Mary pass and if that doesn’t work it’s all over). Then finally I took a deep breath breathe and I told him.

I told my partner of 8 years (husband for 4) that I had been bulimic on and off for a very long time as a teen and that I felt it coming back. I told him everything you guys, what brought on episodes, the fact that I had already succumbed twice in a few weeks and that I was pretty fearful of the road I was heading down.

Then I started sobbing and asked him if he thought less of me, he said of course he didn’t. Then I begged him not to tell my Mum because I was ashamed (ahh fuck it now I am crying). This is ridiculous because my parents would never judge me for this, but I didn’t want to let them down. I also didn’t want to feel like everyone was watching me looking for signs of it worsening. For anyone who has suffered with mental illness or eating disorders (and I am sure many other illnesses) you know exactly what I am talking about.

I made a deal to talk to T when I started having these feelings to try and cut them off before they become all-consuming to the point where I lose another battle.

Interestingly since I have told him the one big thing about me that I have never shared I have not had one instance of being even close to relapsing. I feel as though knowing that even in this we are facing the battle together has made me stronger.

Addition:
I actually wrote this post 2 days ago and once I finished writing it I realised I should speak to my Mum so held off posting it until I had. She was okay and we talked about strategies to help me and everything. I feel better for being able to talk to her, but I really hadn’t wanted to add to her worries.

Another year…

Well another year has passed me by, this morning I woke up “older”.

I find myself reflecting on what I have achieved since I turned 30 last year and at first I was disappointed because Husby and I were expecting me to be all knocked up with swollen ankles by now and that has not happened. I don’t know why I thought this was the year, I guess you just always fill yourself with hope as much as you try not to, but I must say I prefer hope to despair 🙂

So in order to keep myself positive today I am going to concentrate on achievements and things to be grateful for (also as you all know, I love lists). I have also been listening to my favourite happy song:

• T and I have managed to save enough money to build our own house, we are lucky enough that my parents have allowed us to live with them until the house is being built so we can uber save 🙂 Whilst building has been delayed 2.5 months at this stage which means we won’t be in before Christmas, but it does mean we have saved a lot more money which is great – hey this silver lining thing works a treat 🙂
• I have 2 perfect nephews and 2 perfect nieces who love spending time with their Aunty – even when she is not spoiling them 🙂 Ahh being the favourite Aunt is such a burden.
• I am working as a Librarian, my chosen vocation – there are a lot of us out there not so lucky.
• I got a new car this year, and not just new for me… brand spanking new! I have never done this before and T and I have worked hard to get to a place where we could afford to do this.
• T and my parents don’t mind me singing my ass off all over the house at random times. Apparently my outbursts have been likened to an episode of Glee, personally I think it is completely normal when my mother tells my nephew that “A is for Apple, B is for Banana” to break into singing “ABC” by the Jackson 5

Oh… right *sheepish grin* *sings quietly* shake it, shake it baby *shimmying shoulders*

All in all, new house, new car, new job, great family, great marriage… guess I am doing pretty well really 🙂

Dr. Evil

*Warning: we are still talking about lady parts 🙂

Who would have thought that my girl junk would give me posting fodder? You all seemed to enjoy my post from yesterday so I thought I would share with you what happened last night.

Yesterday the issue raised its Hulk-like head again, queue huge sigh from me because I knew I should probably go to the Docs, but I finished work at 6pm and as much as I know it is a natural part of life I really didn’t want to go and talk about my baby cannon with some random person. So I spent some time talking myself into it and off I went armed only with my somewhat rehearsed speech for the Doc and an ebook recommended to me by a really great blogger (I don’t know if she would be happy to be pinged in a post about pink bits so I will leave her alone for now LOL).

I asked for first available and silently promised myself that whoever it was I wouldn’t see them again. Husby came along for moral support… seriously I need to buy that guy a cape! Aaannnd I waited.

*Side note: waiting is not overly fun in general, but it is so much worse when you really don’t want to do whatever it is you are waiting for.

My name gets called and off went to the room. I stroll in as casually as I can, it was a pretty awesome performance if I do say so myself. All is going well, the Doc asks how he can help me and I start my speech… all good, I didn’t even stammer, I noticed a strange reaction when I said the word “vagina” his eyes slightly widened and he was blinking rapidly. I think back over what I had said, no everything was fine, why is he looking like a deer in headlights? The dude would easily be over 50… surely this is not his first cave of wonders expedition.

He wrote me out a script for a broad spectrum antibiotic, I have had this antibiotic before… for ear infections, so I was quite aware of just how broad it was. He then gave me a prescription for an over the counter cream, here I was thinking over the counter meant you didn’t need a prescription, but apparently I was mistaken. Then he asked if there was anything else he could help me with.

Umm… wait a minute… did we miss a pretty big step here? How about a physical examination? You have just prescribed me medication and aren’t even sure what the issue is. So instead of being a good little girl and running to the pharmacy with my little pieces of paper I decided to ask,

“Uhh are you going to give me a physical examination at all?” he held both hands up as if warding me off, dude wtf? My growler isn’t going to attack you.

“No, no, no” he said, “if you want a physical examination you must come in when a female doctor or nurse is on duty” pretty sure my jaw dropped open a little bit at this statement. I won’t lie I was pretty shocked and kind of annoyed because I had prepped down there as if I was visiting the gyno.

“You are not going to give me a physical examination because I am female?”

“No, you must be examined by a female doctor or nurse, I cannot examine you”

Why the hell not? WTF am I paying you for Dr. Evil? I have been examined by males at this practice previously, what changed? This is total gender discrimination. If my Husband’s balls were swollen I bet you would be all eager to get up in his shit.

 

No, I did not say any of that, I sooooo wanted to, but I didn’t. I said okay and took my little slips of paper to the chemist and got the prescriptions filled, including the cream which the chemist informed me I didn’t need a prescription for… oh fancy that. I then had to stand there in front of other customers while she gave me a lecture on how to properly administer cream to my front-butt. Awesome… because this night hasn’t been embarrassing enough.

I was quietly simmering away about Dr. Evil’s refusal to provide me with proper medical treatment because I am a woman. Husby was not trying to engage me in conversation so I guess the look on my face said everything – I should mention that it didn’t help Dr. Evil’s case that he also told me I should try to lose weight. Oh really? Because I don’t think that anytime I catch a glance of myself in the mirror, truly quality Doctoring right there matey.

It’s not like this happens dude, I know what I look like!

On the way back through the surgery I suddenly stopped and said to Hubby, “I am just going to talk to the receptionist quickly”,

“Hun just leave it alone, we’ll go to another Doctor”

“No I won’t I want to confirm that is the rule of the practice because if it is I won’t be coming back and I will be spreading the news to all my local friends too” I approached the receptionist who is always completely lovely, I did feel a little bad that I had to put her in an awkward position.

“Hi, I have a bit of a sensitive question for you, one of your Doctors just informed me that male Doctors of this practice are not able to provide females with physical examinations and I just wanted to check the accuracy of that” she was already shaking her head by the time I was halfway through the sentence.

“No, that is not correct, that is a personal choice by the Doctor not a rule of the practice” ahh so Dr. Evil is just a douche (hahaha douche get it).

I did suggest that they have a sign up or just not send female patients to this “Doctor” because I felt discriminated against and horrible about myself and I certainly felt that I received sub-standard treatment. She apologised and I quickly assured her that it was not her problem.

Let me be very opinionated for a second here… I do not care what his reasoning was for denying me half decent medical attention (even a cursory glance would have been passable). I don’t want to hear his reasons because as far as I am concerned there should be no reason that any Doctor should ever refuse someone medical attention. If he doesn’t want to examine women then he has two choices…

1. He market himself as only taking male patients
2. He gives up his profession and takes on something more suitable

If your personal opinions or beliefs or whatever are going to impede your ability to do your job in a significant way then you should not be in your profession. 

My curly haired Adonis

Warning: Some people might find this post uncomfortable to read because it is about lady parts 🙂

The other day I reached a new level of love and appreciation for my Husby, during the day I had a very slight itch in my nether regions, but it died off and so I never thought about stopping on the way home to consult a Pharmacist.

It’s very cold here at the moment and due to the fact it was a chilly 2 degrees outside I put the electric blanket on 30 minutes before we went to bed so it would be toasty warm for us. Now I am not sure why the delicious warms aggravated the situation [and I don’t care why it happened as long as it never happens again], but for some reason it did and all of a sudden I was in significant pain and itching like crazy. I have had thrush before, but this was like the Hulk version – seriously, bad (but not green, I must emphasise that NOTHING was green!

Completely mean, but DEFINITELY NOT GREEN!

I tried to manage it on my own with some Googling (yes the web doctor thinks I have cancer) and an ice pack – yes an ice pack… in 2 degree weather. What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was hoping with all my being that my twinkle cave would get frostbite and fall off. The ice calmed the itching slightly, but the pain was still horrible.

Queue my superhero checking out my lady flower to give his expert opinion of “I think it looks normal”, my response of, “trust me this is not normal, it has to be Hulk thrush or something”. He asked if I had a cream or medication for it, I replied sarcastically that of course I kept a stash of beaver cream for exactly this situation (I feel quite bad about this now, but at the time I had little patience). He calmly started Googling, I tried telling him I had already done that and tried everything, he ignored me which just added to my muffin pain fuelled rage, “What are you doing? Please tell me you are not playing a fucking game right now!” he shook his head no. So I ignored him for a bit and just lay there clutching an ice pack to my crotch feeling ridiculous, in pain, exposed (well obviously) and vulnerable.

Then I realised Husby was getting dressed, “what are you doing?? Where are you going?”

“I found a 24 hour chemist” he replied (at this point it was 12.30am), “I am going to go get some stuff to help”

“Wha…what?” I stuttered, “Where is it?”

“It’s about a 35 minute drive, I’ll be as quick as I can” he went to walk out of the room.

“Wait” I said, “Really? Are you seriously going to go to a pharmacy 30 minutes away at 1am and buy me vagina medicine?” he shrugged and replied,

“Sure, why not? That’s how I roll” he laughed and walked out the door.

I was left mystified as I realised I had the best Husby ever created, many of my girlfriends Husbands won’t even buy tampons at the supermarket and here is my curly haired Adonis off into the dark of night seeking a cure for my punaani’s ills. He came back an hour later triumphantly clutching antihistamines and thrush cream, I am not sure what the antihistamines were for, but they knocked me out for a couple of hours which was nice and the cream felt like when you put aloe vera onto sun burn…. I could almost hear the sizzle as my map of Tasmania cooled.

Best. Husband. Ever. 

Bum vs. Bottom

So I picked my (almost 3 year old) nephew up from preschool the other day, this is not an overly often occurrence, but it is close to home and he loves when I do so sometimes I pick him up on the way home from work and let him once again show me everything about his school. This day I decided to do it because it had been a long ass day and I could really use some Hendrix sized hugs, turns out I picked the right day. I come in the door and hear him bellow out my name and see a streak of toddler as he comes tearing across the room and flings himself into my arms. After a freaking amaze balls hug I put him down and he pulls me over to the fish tank chattering on about the fish and the shark (toy) and the fish flowers (tank plants) etc.. Here’s the interesting thing about my nephew, he was slow to learn to talk, but now he loves talking to anyone who will listen… at home; apparently at school he doesn’t say much of anything and when he does he gives one word answers, it’s something we are working on at home and with the teachers and we think it is either a shy or confidence thing. Well… not this day… His teacher came up to me as he was dragging me around the room showing me different things and asked to speak to me. She said that Hendrix had spoken a whole sentence with her extremely clearly today, “that’s fantastic” I said, his teacher looked uncomfortable Teacher – “Um yes it is, and we are so glad that he is starting to feel comfortable talking around us here at school so we don’t want to discourage that, but the sentence he said wasn’t the best thing he could have chosen” uh-oh Me – “Oh, okay, what did he say?” Teacher – “We were sitting on the floor and I was playing with some coloured balls with him and I put one behind my back and said to him ‘where is the red ball?’ He pointed at my back and I brought it back out and said, ‘you’re right, here it is!’ He then put the green ball behind his back and I asked him where the green ball was and he pointed and said, ‘up Hendrix bum’, he then pulled it out from behind his back with a smile and exclaimed ‘here it is’”

Apparently green ball went caving
http://clubpenguin.wikia.com/

Me – Simultaneously horrified and trying desperately not to laugh “Oh my god, I am so sorry I don’t know where he got that from” Teacher – “Look I think it was done really innocently, I don’t think he even meant it as rude because there was no cheekiness in it. The thing is that we don’t encourage the use of the word ‘bum’ at school anyway so…” Me – “I’ll talk to his parents” Out of the mouths of babes… Between my two brothers I have 2 nieces and 2 nephews, both parent pairs have brought them up referring to their bum as a bum rather than a bottom. I was always brought up to say bottom, but my Mum and Nan were all about the young lady manners. I do not feel that the word ‘Bum’ is rude and it is an acceptable term in Australia for bottom which is considered more English, where do you stand on the Bum vs. Bottom debate?

I have no problem with a good bum 🙂
http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/

…but some just prefer Bottom
Original pic from http://cheerybeggar.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/the-wisdom-ofnick-bottom/

                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please also feel free to share when your tots mouths have landed you in hot or embarrassing water 🙂

Roaring laughter daily prompt

Relationship potholes – Baggage check

Daily Prompt from the Daily post:

We all have complicated histories. When was the last time your past experiences informed a major decision you’ve made?

Just over seven years ago I met my Husband and we became friends, at the time I had just started seeing another guy. We had gone on a few dates and he was a really nice guy (let’s call him David), he had a great job and earned incredibly good money (approx. 90K p.a.). After about a month I had realised that whenever I went out with David he usually managed to find a poker machine at some point in the night and spend a bit of time there. This was a serious red flag for me as the last two men I had dated had hidden their poker machine love for some time into the relationship, but then two days after they had been paid they were out of money and looking for permanent loans from their girlfriend AKA me.

http://cheezburger.com/6608324096

I had already been aware that my attraction to my new friend was steadily growing and I didn’t feel that was fair on David, so I had some thinking to do.

After the experience of my last two relationships I had serious baggage when it came to any kind of gambling, I had just seen too much of my money go into that coin slot and even when my ex’s won they didn’t pay me back the money I had loaned them.

The worst experience was one night my then boyfriend said he was going to the bar to get a beer, I asked if he could get me a coke while he was there, he then asked me for some money to pay for it. I only had a $50 on me so I gave him that and off he went. Lines at bars can be really long so it wasn’t until the time reached 45 minutes that I started to worry, I went looking for him and found him at the poker machines, he handed me my drink and I looked at it in dismay, because the pokie area was also the smoking area, my drink had gathered some friends in the form of cigarette ash. I pointed this out to him, he suggested I get a new one as it was only $2, I asked for my change so I could and he looked at me surprised and said, “Oh did you want the change?” Now quite aggravated I replied,

“Well I assume you used my money for your beer too so that was $4, my ash coke was $2, that’s $44 change… naturally I would want $44 in change”

“I don’t have the change” he said

“Why? What happened to it?” I asked. He gestured to the poker machine that had only $5 credit left on it, “you put MY money into a poker machine?” by this point I was raising my voice.

http://www.theguardian.com/

“Well, yeah. Is that a problem? It was just change” I was completely shocked and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t in the least contrite.

“Are you kidding me? How could you think it was okay to put someone else’s money in a poker machine? Part of that ‘change’ was supposed to pay for a taxi home from the train station. I now have to walk two kilometres home in the dark! Does that sound like a problem to you?” He then had the audacity to get made and said,

“I thought we were going by the whole ‘what’s mine is yours’ thing, I’m so sorry that $44 is more important to you than your partner having fun” at that point in my life I was stupid, insecure, young and naïve. I was stupid enough to believe it was a mistake because he’d had quite a bit to drink and that it wouldn’t happen again. I am cringing right now because I can’t believe HOW STUPID I WAS!!!!!

http://sabotagetimes.com/

I learnt a huge and harsh lesson from that relationship and I was determined to never make the same mistake again. So when David started showing a penchant for gambling alarms were screaming in my head. I decided I didn’t want to risk it and broke it off with him. We parted amicably and still interact on Facebook, it turned out he didn’t have a problem with gambling so I felt bad for judging him prematurely, but at the time I couldn’t see past my past experiences.

Silver lining for both of us though – eventually I started dating my Husband after we both realised being friends wasn’t enough for us and David went on to meet a lovely lady who he is now engaged to.

So everything (luckily) ended up happy sparkle time 🙂

http://www.reactiongifs.com/

What a hot mess!

You hope for many things when you go through those first stages of setting up your blog, you hope it is a spicy hot roaring success, you hope no one boos you and you desperately hope that you don’t suck at it! Let’s be honest here… you want Tucker Max level fame. You want a blook, you want your blook turned into a movie… you pretty much wish for the stars because, well… why wouldn’t you?!

I am always interested in who visits my blog and how they find me so I check out my stats page generally once a day. So today as per normal I head on over to my stats page, generally my viewings don’t go up until later in the day as most of my readers are still asleep when it is lunchtime in Australia 🙂 so I wasn’t really expecting much… I was actually going to look at yesterday’s results. But before I could click on yesterday’s stats I got a little shock that I found under the “Search engine terms” area, please see screen shot below:

Umm… sorry… WHAT?!

What the… WHAT?!?!

First of all… YUCK! Why is someone looking for that? Who wants to look at anything cut open.

Second of all… Wait… how the hell did they get to my blog by Googling that?!?!

So you know what I had to do right?

Seriously, it had to be done

I had to! I had to know how and more importantly WHY that search brought them to my blog as I know I have not written about “smelly cysts” in… well… EVER!

So I hit the search button because at this point I certainly was not feeling lucky and held my breath. The results came back – 669,000 okay so that is not that high for a Google search, but maybe it was a fluke and I am buried way back in the results somewhere. Skim page one… SAFE! YES! Skim page two… SAaaa…oh shit. There I am… smack in the middle of page two.

Oh my god you guys!

The title that comes up really does not make things any better, no silver lining to be found in that unfortunate title at all. Just so I am quite clear… I do not roll with “grungy smelly cysts”. Grungy, smelly musicians… yes, but the smell is created by a fun day at a festival – not cysts.

What a hot (apparently smelly) mess! I am pretty much freaking out and thinking

http://moonflowerlights.tumblr.com/

So what do I do? I mean I am not about to delete all that content (which ranges across a few different posts) because I was happy with that content, so what should I do?

Then I realised that the only reason someone would be Googling “grungy smelly cysts” is probably if you had one and if you did have one you would probably be a bit sad.

So the only appropriate thing to do would be to write a post with a bunch of references to “grungy smelly cysts” so that my blog hopefully makes it to page one of the results next time someone Googles it 🙂 Let me know if I succeed if you dare to try it haha.

 

Loosely inspired by The Daily Post’s Ring of Fire challenge. I happened to be reading it just before I found this and got inspired 🙂

Finding myself in the Red Centre

Recently I read a piece called “The top 10 tips I’ve learned from minimalists”  on the blog The ExtraOrdinary Simple Life by Lara Blair. This post discussed how to find the parts of a minimalist lifestyle that work for you and provided some great tips on putting them into practice.

After having a comments discussion with the author regarding single socks and their attack on the minimalist lifestyle and the zen of the human race in general (it made complete sense to us and I may blog about it at a later date) I discovered a comment written by All thoughts work outdoors, part of which really struck a chord with me. The paragraph that particularly caught my eye was as follows:

“I found that a simple, yet very powerful tool for decluttering is to reevaluate one’s social life. A lot of people hang onto stuff because they wanna be prepared for any social situation, be acceptable to anybody and everybody who will judge them. But when you get hard-core-honest about who you really want to spend your life on, you’ll find it’s the ones who don’t give a rat’s ass if you have festive holiday napkins or the right hemline”. – All thought work outdoors, 2014

I loved this comment! I absolutely remember being this way, wanting to be acceptable to all, be a pleaser, I somehow believed that being part of the pack and being accepted and acceptable was vital to being happy. What the hell was I thinking?! How much time and energy I wasted being this way is quite scary to think about. When I was 18 I even drank the same drinks as my friends because lolly water alcoholic drinks were so in, they tasted like Bertie Botts’s every flavour beans, but they were in so I had to like them.

My wakeup call came when I moved to Ayers Rock at the age of 19, for those who haven’t been let me tell you, it’s hot, it’s arid, there is red sand everywhere and pretty much everything about it is not conducive to wearing make-up and sexy dresses. Basically it is about trying to stay comfortable and always being prepared for a sand storm and visits from unexpected wildlife 🙂 It was fabulous and I loved it! I learned so much and I met amazing people from all corners of the Earth and all walks of life, it was a completely unique experience that I value so much. Though I didn’t realise it at the time I now believe having this experience at that age really played a part in shaping who I am today.

http://www.discoveraustralia.com.au/northern_territory/ayers_rock.html

While I was living at the Rock at one point I had 3 jobs, I worked full time as an all-rounder for a tourism company (which pretty much means you need to be able to do anything), I was a guide on sunset champagne tours a couple of times a week and I ran Karaoke once a week. I didn’t feel overworked because we had so much play time as well, I explored all the amazing things the Red Centre had to offer, there were many times that I truly felt like I was being paid to be permanently on vacation.

When I moved back to Sydney at 21 I really didn’t understand the friends I had from High School anymore; I didn’t get wearing teeny tiny dresses to go out in 15 degree weather, I didn’t understand them wearing more make-up in one night than I saw in 2 years at the rock and I really didn’t understand these women I knew to be very intelligent giggling and flipping their hair in an effort to get male attention.

Did I feel out of place? Yup. Did I feel like the odd girl out because when I went out I mostly wore nice jeans, a pretty top and flats? Absolutely. Was I always on the outer edge of conversations with my old bosom buddy friends from school because I didn’t relate easily to them anymore? Hell yes! The above coupled with the fact that my grandfather passed away not long after I moved back had me in a pretty dark place; I would try to talk to my friends about how I felt about his passing and found that they just didn’t get it. None of them came to the funeral to support me and after a while I started getting comments like, “are you still sad?” (I don’t blame them for this really as I came to the realisation that none of them had dealt with the death of a loved one).

http://mediame.com/adblogarabia/never-feel-out-of-place/

So I trudged along, I still went out with the group, due to the alcohol education I had received living at the Rock I no longer drank lolly water, or anything else the girls were drinking… it was mostly beer for me at that stage. After a few months I discovered something thanks to a male friend of mine, one night whilst the girls were tearing up the dance floor and we were chatting he divulged that the girls in the group were really intimidated by me. I was shocked and asked why; he gave me the following reason:

• After school rather than go straight to Uni I had moved interstate, lived and survived on my own and thrived whilst holding down three jobs – all my friends were living the Uni life, some working casual in bars, the others living off the bank of Mum and Dad and they all lived at home.
• When I go out I have the confidence to wear whatever I am comfortable in and am happy to strike up conversation with pretty much anyone (pretty sure this came from 2 years in a town of 1500 people where you knew everyone so you talked to everyone) – the girls were nervous about approaching new people, particularly guys.
• I hold my alcohol really well and can keep up with most guys – thanks Ayers Rock alcohol education 🙂 Although I must say that this trait does run in the women of my family for some reason.
• Because I wear sensible shoes I can pretty much stay out all night without complaining of sore feet – no running around the streets in bare feet for me. It also means I appear to have more stamina.
• I am able to talk to guys easily, I can hold my own at the pool table and drink with them – What can I say they had a lot of pool tables at Ayers Rock and I like the game. Pretty rusty now though.

It was then I realised that the girls were having as much trouble relating to me as I was to them. By moving interstate and living/surviving on my own, working and paying bills I had matured significantly. In high school we were all having the same experiences and because my friends then went on to Uni even though they were at different Unis studying different subjects they were still having similar life experiences whereas my experiences were completely different. The fact that we were still making such efforts to relate to each other was quite admirable.

It seemed living there gave me the independence to grow into who I was removed from the variety of influences girls in the city have at that age. I am quite thankful for that now, it helped me discover who I was and I don’t spend as much time trying to impress people by behaving in any way that is unnatural to me. Take me as I am world 🙂

Standing on my own – http://www.flickr.com/photos/27999625@N08/2657563257/