Sliding Doors

Sometimes I feel like I'm living the fractured splinter, the shard that cracked off a larger, better life when things went insane that hot afternoon.

It's as if there's another Lori walking around, parallel to me. I can see her, sometimes, a transparent ghost of woman.... she's happy. Smiling. She looks tired, she thinks she has it rough sometimes... she's ignorant.

But she has two children with her, and, about now, her belly might be starting to swell with a third. She might still live in the Purple House... maybe she's moved somewhere else by now, somewhere in the same friendly, manicured suburb but a house with more bedrooms, a bigger yard...

She still has a dog, just the one cat. She's probably got her daughter the bird her daddy promised her, and her son his fish. They're different too- her son happier, not so angry, more secure in himself, not so craving of male company; her daughter less serious and observant, both less attuned to the emotions of others.

This other Lori, she doesn't know herself as well as I do. She has anxiety attacks too, but it's because she's afraid of how she will cope when, inevitably, she loses someone she loves. Blissful ignorance- she trusts people, she believes that the world is good and everything will be OK. She's preparing her oldest child for school next year, going to playgroup, swimming lessons..... being normal. She follows me around unintentionally on days that should be happy, days I'm trying to focus and connect with my children; innocently, simply living her life, laughing and frenzied and so blissfully unaware of this side of life.

Her husband, he's with her. They argue and nothing's perfect... but he's there.

***

"An eternal optimist who trusts no one...? How does that work?"

My default setting is trust... I inherently believe that people are good.

I am proved wrong, over and over and over.

It's difficult to learn not to trust... It's never something I wanted to do. But it's so necessary.... every time I trust someone, show them how I ache and bleed, they hurt me.

***

The rose, Tony's rose... it died.

Where it was filled, covered with tiny green leaves and new shoots... a week or two later it was nothing but an ugly stick, default of life or greenery. I try to revive it, and I fail.

I'm not even surprised.

The Tony "Toz" Dwyer Shield

There's enough potential shame here to swallow a person whole.

I remember the suffocating shame that washed over me immediately After Tony did what he did... it felt crippling. I remember the morning After, at the local shops, early, and I bought a magazine while my friend got me cigarettes, just because this glossy piece of tat had a huge, black pair of sunglasses attached to it... and I needed to hide.

It was the most awful, ugly quicksand, a shame that burned my cheeks and slouched my posture and licked flames at everything I held close. And I raged desperately against it, pawing at a current that moved too quickly. I chose to take this awful truth I'd lived through and spread it wide and far– to scream out from the highest points I could find that I was not ashamed, that this was not something I would be ashamed of. I made the choice to approach every second of this with unflinching honesty, to tell the world, and, eventually, my babies; the truth– that the man I loved took his own life.

But that doesn't make him any less of a man.

There was a waiting silence on the fringes if my life... most of the people in Tony’s life would have been happy enough to grieve this quietly, to allow the method of his death to be diluted and ignored until, given a few years, it would be a story, unconfirmed fact and urban legend. The offer was there, unspoken in quiet declarations of “It wasn't really a suicide, just an accident...”

And I could have taken that silence and run with it. In the face of no resistance, it would have been easy.

But I would have lived the rest of my life in a screaming, silent glass house of agony, all the horror and pain I've written out over and over again on this blog stuck somewhere in my soul instead... thick black tar that would eventually solidify into a on oily bitterness, I possible to wash out of myself.

I could feel it closing in. From the suggestion that maybe we shouldn't tell anyone anything until we knew if he would live– we could pass it off as something other than a suicide attempt, perhaps; to the shocked reactions when I first posted what happened on a blogger’s forum, the suggestions that I should take it down (and an eternal thank you to Brenda from DP for allowing me to make that decision, and for taking steps to protect my privacy by moderating membership requests– beautifully handled, Lady B, and I am so grateful for your candor and love).

And so the choice became– yield. Give in to the sense of impending shame, hang my head. Lie– a heart attack, a car accident; but without that lie being my choice.

Live the rest of my life, suffocating.

Or the other– change the rules, change the game. Take full advantage of the fact that all bets were off, that my life had changed irrevocably. Blog it, write it down and publish it, every horrible ugly detail.

And decide for myself that there was no shame to be had here, not now, not ever.

There is no  shame in mental illness. No more than a broken ankle.

I don't feel that shame a lot anymore, and I'm eternally grateful that I allowed myself to make it a choice, and that I did what felt like the right thing to do. I still see that sense of embarrassment that I think I'm supposed to feel reflected in the slight drop of the eyelids of others when I tell them for the first time... those that haven't read my blog already, anyway.

That reflected shame always takes me by surprise, now. I rarely lie about how Tony died anymore, and when I do, I don't feel bad.

This Friday night, the 18th May 2012, there's something happening at the Military College, Duntroon, in the ACT. entry is a gold coin donation, and kick off is at 6:30pm.

It's just a rugby match.


But it's named after my husband. The Tony “Toz” Dwyer charity shield match. It will be a yearly event.

And fuck that stigma. Fuck any shame.

I couldn't be prouder.

To Darrell, who happened to come across my blog last year and made this amazing offer– thank you. I don't think I've filled expressed how honored and full of gratitude I am– nor have I told you how totally stoked Tony would have been, having something so bloke–y and man-orientated named after him.

If anyone's in the ACT and would like to come along, please do– I'll be there, come and find me and say hello.

If you're not in the area, you won't miss out, of course– I'll blog it all next week.

And I'll do it with my heart swelling with pride for the awesome man my husband was.

I see you, stigma, and I say– bite me.

Promiscuity

When it comes down to it.... could you fuck like a bloke? Say thanks, then walk away, as if it were a game of poker you happened to win, with no more emotional investment than that?

At what point does promiscuity become destructive? And who decides when it's empowering? Not paid, professional work where the women are in control; smiling, naked angels who take these silly men for all their worth. I mean strictly unpaid, and outside the umbrellic cover of a relationship– sex for pure carnal pleasure.

Am I even allowed to talk about the topic...? I've talked sex plenty before, but under that embracing cover of intimacy and monogamy. It feels almost ugly to think of the purity of motherhood ruined by hedonism. I feel almost as if this is, still, a sin... if social services knew what I did behind closed doors, when my time is my own and I'm responsible for no one but me, that they would take my children away, afraid of the influence of me on them, determined that what I may be showing them right them now, although they never actually see anything at all- mummy is a completely autonomous human to them; that all that will be damaging for them, not now, but in some far off adulthood that feels as shifting and malleable as the rest of the world.

Is sex a sin? Without any boundaries, and guiding factors... To put it as crudely as it feels, fucking just for the sake of it, simply for the purpose of getting off?

Less than fifty years ago, promiscuity in women was a diagnosable mental health problem, symptomatic of something much bigger. While it's no longer an exclusive factor fo diagnosis of anything, the stigma sticks, just like it always does... stains people like oil, clogging your pores with is viscousness and refusing to wipe away.

It's generally assumed that women who choose to sleep around have ’daddy issues’, that they're insecure or overtly confident; or that a lack of inhibitions and an extremely open mind can' t possibly coincide with a relationship that is monogamous, fulfilling and intimate beyond blurred levels of physicality.

Is it even possible to accept that a woman might have sex, just for the fun of it? As a hobby, as thrill, as a way of feeling (alive) good. Men can do it with very little exploration of the psychological reasons behind.... Women, not so much.


(Slut).

So... what am I saying here, what tiny secrets am I pouring into the confessional of my blog this time...? That relationships are difficult to the point of impossibility, and cause me far more harm than good, but I'm a sensual kind of person who misses sex? That I've discovered anonymous, somewhat kinky sex is right there with riding a motorbike in terms of feeling connected? That I am safe, always safe, in everything, that need to feel alive again tempered by a net of self preservation that no longer feels cloying but is a comfort, a reliable boundary, a buffer to allow me to feel alive again (don't lay down and die again....) while not worrying that this is going to far, too risky, but myself in danger?

Hell no. I'm not saying any of those things. This is all hypothetical, a story of what might happen to a widow in the sexual prime of her life (men, they peak at eighteen, women at thirty... where is the justice in that?!) who is emotionally incapable of a relationship.

But, as a women with a history of mental illness, I couldn't possibly tell you that. It might be misconstrued. As self destructive behavior. As the high pitch of a mania. As a desperate stretch for love, trying to fill a literal hole with something that is not tangible.

It might be any of those things too. As I said– where do we draw the line, and who gets to draw it? When is selective promiscuity destructive, and when is it empowering? Isn't the essence of empowerment taking back control, assessing your situation and finding a way to fulfill your own needs without a dependence on others...?

Nice girls simply don't do those kind of things. But, unsheathed, that's a social concept and nothing more.

We're all just creatures of simple, heated biology.

It's a very fine line... I can sit on both sides of it.