All that glitters

Tam and I share something powerful in common – each of us is the big sister in our family. Further, both of us are the black sheep big sister. Tough gig, let me tell you.
Tam and I are the kind of big sisters that when the question ‘do you have brothers and sisters?’ is raised, it seems even perfect strangers are more likely to assume straight away ‘you are the eldest, aren’t you’.
Well, hot damn yes! We are the eldest. And let us tell you something, because we know it all.
I have quick, ample, and sensationally applicable advice to give people. So does Tam. Being the eldest also means you have a tendency to be, well, I like to say direct. Others would hover between ‘confrontational’ and ‘a Bitch’, but let us not mince words.
Being the eldest, and always right, and also being direct has instilled in me a great belief that everyone else should be direct too.
One of my favourite pieces of advice dished out with merry fanfare is ‘you can’t keep it all in, it will give you cancer’. That is, if you have a problem, it will only be resolved by you facing it head on. If someone is giving you the shits, you need to let them know. You need to let it all out, you need to free yourself. This is the only path to true, pure happiness.
I am a huge believer in getting things off my chest, and anyone who has met me would testify to my loud-mouthedness and glittering extroversion. I confront when I have a problem and let it all out, because as I repeatedly say ‘you can’t keep it all in, it will give you cancer’.
Though, I never talk about my depression with anyone, or the problems with the medication. I never talk about being bullied at primary school, and high school, and college and the acidic anxiety that now courses my veins in every single human interaction. I never talk about the laying awake at night or the cutting and I never talk about the paralysing fear that I am just damn not good enough.
Let me say this for advice – there is a down side to always being right.
Two weeks ago I found out I have cervical cancer.
I can’t bring myself to say the C-word out aloud. And I can’t bring myself to cry in front of anyone.
I am fortunate for the fact that the cervical c-word achieves its task much at the pace of a snail. A Spanish snail – siestas and everything – and it looks like it hasn’t reached my glands and of course I am young, and the surgery should remove all the nasties.
The hippie in me says this is the universe giving me a warning. Do it now or never do it. Not an ultimatum, more an illustration. My body rejects my lifestyle. I used to write. I wasn’t a prodigy, but I could write. I haven’t written anything in two years. Not one single piece of work since I started being a commercial lawyer. I used to be fit, healthy. I’ve gained fifteen kilos since finishing college and now have a c-word issue. I am paralysed by fear and it is poisoning me.
I am crowded by so many expectations that I can’t sort out which are mine, and mine alone. I feel like I should have the mortgage, the steady relationship, the status job, the income, work the long hours, bill, bill, bill. But that never used to be me. If my eighteen year old self met my twenty five year old self in street, she would bitch-slap me. No doubt.
But do I still want what she wants? Everyone wants to be writer. Everyone wants to move to New York. Everyone thinks they can do stand-up comedy and rock the stage and what on earth gives me any more right to success than everybody else? I’m not better than everybody else. I’m not extraordinarily talented or experienced. And that angry little man voice in the back of my head snarls: “So give it up. You won’t make it. You know you won’t make it. Just stick your head down at the job you have and let go of those fanciful dreams”.
Most days I believe that gnarly old man. He states his piece with unnerving conviction and I cannot fathom how to overcome his reason.
Because what he says is true. I’m not good enough.
There were certain flowers in my garden that used to be fabulous and beautiful but now they have all wizened and died. There used to be rich, fertile soil that could grow any seed into a nurtured, bright and shockingly beautiful wonder harbouring all number of exotic and enchanting wildlife, but now the soil is cracked, barren and deserted.
I still feel like I have to be achieving something, working towards one goal in a linear progression.
But what is that one goal? My thinking is blurred and coloured by bad experiences.
I had my first massage just the other day and my charming Chinese masseuse balked at the “very bad, very deep, very long time, very very bad” tense twists in my body. Way to make a girl feel relaxed.
The famous Tam has also recently moved into my apartment and I had to clear out the spare room for her. As part of my clean’n’cull process I came across all my old diaries. In every single entry in every single book I rationalise killing myself and reading back over my own handwriting, the swirling handwriting that has hardly changed since I was eleven, and I realised it all is very bad, very deep, very long time, very very bad and it’s time to stop punishing myself over this.
It’s time to draw the line in the sand and look at all the boxes and suitcases and piles and piles of the past I have been lugging around with me these last twenty five years and it is time to clean and cull.
I’m packing a new suitcase.
And I’m packing light.
Because, let’s face it, you can barely get anywhere with more than hand luggage these days anyway. But more than that, the future has so many new, positive experiences for me to embrace and I now refuse to break my back carrying the old ones around with me.
They can stay there on the platform. I’m leaving them behind.
And yes, someone really should alert the authorities because those really are dangerous bags without people and I hope no-one ever, anywhere, picks them up.
I will take my hand luggage (it has my plays, books, scripts, my amazing family and friends – and some fabulous shoes and dresses for good measure – it has my pen, it has my paper and it has my hope) and I am getting the next train out of Forlorn Station.
With no regrets.
And no more tarnish, from now on all that glitters will be gold.
Love Queen B.