At home each night, what I did more than anything else was read and read and read—books by Anaïs Nin, and Carl Jung, Julia Cameron and Andy Goldsworthy. All of my spare money was spent on either therapy, or books. I think I read every single word ever written by Australian author Stephanie Dowrick (most especially her classic, Intimacy and Solitude, which I read again and again). I cut out Leunig cartoons and pinned them to my diary. I did whatever I could to remind myself that I was not broken. It was okay to feel things. It was okay.
I took a while to adjust to my new small body size, to my new way of being treated in the world, to my thin skin. I did not tell anyone from my new life about my old life. I never talked about my weight, or my breakdown. For that first year, I mostly just listened. And slowly, over time, I worked out who my friends were, and I started taking tiny little chances, like saying ‘Hello’, and ‘Yes’ when they invited me for coffee, and a few of these people are still dear friends to this day. Even now, I’m not sure they know how unwell I’d been as I just didn’t talk about it, because every time I did, I felt like I was going backwards. I wanted the freedom of a new start, and I claimed it.
Even though I now fitted into clothes from regular shops, I discovered quite quickly that I didn’t really like modern clothes very much. Turns out, I liked old op-shop clothes. They suited both me and my budget. For the first time in my life, I was able to play around with my body, and what I wanted it to say. I wore tight cords and scarves wrapped around my head. I wore short dresses with stockings and boots. I dyed my hair red, dyed it blonde, then red again, and eventually at midnight with friends at a party where there may or may not have been alcohol involved I shaved it all off. My long blondish reddish hair, all gone. I felt as free as a bird. Just as it had when I was a small child, my body once again felt like a fun place to be.
That year, on campus, I decided to do extra classes in whatever I pleased. When interest sparked, I followed it. That’s how I ended up learning skills like basket-weaving, African dancing, jewellery design, puppeteering, felt making, herb propagation, body percussion, and slow cooking for beginners. And as time went on, I took more chances—chances with things that don’t seem so frightening now, but were then. Things like elevators, and planes, and escalators and mountains. I remember camping, walking with friends through dense bushland, heart beating jungle drums in my chest, Frank screaming at me that I would be bitten by a snake, by an ant, by a spider. And afterwards—look at that—I was still alive! With FAFL and FOF, prayer and hope, good fortune, good family, good friends and good food, I made my way through that most tender of years. The voice of grace reminded me that I didn’t need to have it all worked out. I didn’t have to be living some amazing life just yet. All I needed to do for now was start, and I had done that, by following my instincts and doing the things I love.
And can you guess the thing I still loved more than anything else? Singing, and writing songs, and recording them on tapes, and putting them under my bed for ‘later’.
It may surprise you, even concern you (as it did my parents), to know that during that first year at university I did get back together with Joffa.
I know, I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me. I know now, and I knew then.
But listen, his brother was sick.
Really sick. In hospital. Intensive care.
I could not not be there for him.
He needed me, and his need took me away from my own. And, to be honest, that was quite a relief.
I needed him too, I thought.
I was lonely. I missed him.
As always, it wasn’t like he was hiding who he was.
Yes, he had given up the drugs. That was no easy feat.
But he still did not have a job.
He still did not have a licence.
We were both still just twenty-one years old, nearly five years on from our first kiss.
When he said he wanted me back, I said yes.
I was not ready yet to live with the guilt of no, which I felt would be a betrayal at the very moment he needed me the most.
To not be with him in this moment would be, I thought, an act of cowardice, disloyalty.
Maybe this was what God had in mind the whole time, I told myself.
When it came to family, and to the people I loved, I was still very unclear of where I ended and where they began.
I put him above my own recovery.
I told myself that he was a part of my recovery.
And maybe that was true.
I did sleep better when he was next to me.
But it was a dangerous move.
I am amazed, sometimes, that it happened, and at other times I’m not surprised at all.
My way of loving Joffa had nearly ruined me. I had acted like a
