Hail simplicity

My friends, a long overdue update. 

As I celebrate 10 years of freedom, life is very different.

Even a one degree shift in trajectory can have mighty outcomes. And my shift was much more than that.

I write this from my kitchen table, in the late autumn sun. Two big dogs snoring at my feet, one black and one white. My life a fairytale, living in a house on a hill with its own forest, a wild garden outside, full of flowers and herbs and the proud sound of hens laying eggs. Down in the paddock there are four milking goats, wanting to be fed apples and stroked and loved.

I share my life with my husband, a gentle artist, poet, a philosophical and curious mind. 

My brother lives next door, my mother down the road by sea. We eat pancakes together every Sunday and watch the waves shimmer with light from my mother's balcony. That is who my father is now. Light on the ocean.

The years between writing have not always been easy, but they have been rich. And I have never missed the poppy. She grows in my garden and I let her grow where she likes, grateful we are both free. She helped me in her own way, but the lessons were hard and often cruel and I have no wish to repeat them. 

It is all very wholesome and if you had told me this would be my future, at one point I would have railed against it all. The satisfaction of simple joys would have been impossible to believe in. 

But here I am, proving myself wrong.

Alive, free. Happy.

Yes the world is mad and dark and I can feel it crumbling, everything that we know. But that has happened within myself before, so I can trust in the process now. For some reason it has to be this way and that is the great mystery at work.

I think of all those who struggle. But not with pity. Knowing that they will find their way, in their own time, in their own way. To them I send the vibration of love and magic.

To you, I send the vibration of love and magic.

Thank you for caring about me all of these years. May the goodness return to you a thousandfold.

 

A hello from many years later

I had long forgotten about this blog. So you probably have too.

But if anyone should happen to wonder and wander and stumble across it, this is a hello from four years into the future.

Where I am still free. Still no opiates wanted or needed. No pharmaceuticals. No medications. Freedom!

But life does not always go as planned, even on the other side of drug addiction. 

I used to write about motherhood. A dream and longing, that lay in sparkly promise for the Tui who could be free from drugs. 

It seems Mother Nature has other ideas for me. 

I can feel my heart sighing as I write this. The doctors in their ignorance have not been kind to my body, and now say it is unlikely I will ever conceive. 

The dream of children kept me going through the darkest times, so perhaps they do exist, in another plane. Maybe we are just separated in this life.

And then, there are also miracles. This journey has taught me that. 

It has also taught me not to trust doctors, their advice, their interventions, their diagnoses. If I had continued on that path I would still be leaking blood and salty tears onto the bathroom floor, trying to find a vein. Instead I have learnt to trust in Nature and her wisdom.

I no longer work in advertising, crafting half truths to feed a corrupt system. 

May it all come crashing down. May all beings be free.

I live simply, try my best and offer care to others as I can. I give time to the secrets of valley mist and cloud, friendships with insects, and the whispered messages of plants.  

Deepest thanks to iboga and the magic and mystery and great love of the universe.

And thank you to you for witnessing my journey.

Squeaky clean

I had been floating along below the surface for years.

I hated being on methadone. I hated using every day.
The only thing I hated more, was not using.

I thought it was going to be like that forever. I know the stats. No one ever gets - and stays - clean.

Then I heard about ibogaine, an extract from the iboga plant, a natural hallucinogenic used to treat addiction. It was rumoured to virtually eliminate all the withdrawal symptoms while restoring healthy brain chemistry. Nothing does that.

I was out of options, so I held my breath and jumped.

The trip was like a lucid dream, with incredible detail. It showed me what I've been doing wrong, what I need to do to be happy, and how I belong in this mad world.

In less than 24 hours it had rinsed me clean of all drugs and filled me with a natural high that makes heroin seem like nothing.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew it had worked.

The empty ache inside me was gone.

The world was so beautiful. Is so beautiful. I just couldn't see it before.

I'm going to be okay now.

Thanks for sticking by me.

Here to there

Artist: Aurel Schmidt

My favourite part of the day is walking to work. Everyday, I take the same route.

Everyday, my work heels rub and my bag carves into my shoulder, heavy with laptop and books and clutter. So while others march past, I wander. 

Past dark, closed shops with mannequins pinned into loud frocks, expensive price tags hidden. Past sleeping nightclubs, men in overalls hosing off the pavement (probably vomit from the night before). Down past the market, yawning and stretching in the throes of waking up. The familiar stomach-turning smells from the fishmongers, bloody carcasses swinging from great hooks, shop workers unlocking padlocks and rolling up screens. 

Sometimes I stand in line for a coffee, the barista young and awkward, tall with shaggy dark hair and fumbling hands. If I was 17, I'd be in love. Then past the entrance to a tiny, hidden park, just a patch of grass really. It feels old. The way graveyards feel. I pass the same old man with a young boy, the same kid overtakes me on his skateboard. We run to a routine. 

This used to be the poor part of town. Now it's one of the most expensive parts of the country. Most of the houses aren't big, but they have character. Wooden villas all versions of each other, lovingly detailed by builders who used to care. Most are picture perfect, but there are still some with peeling paint and rusty fences. 

You can tell a lot about someone from their garden. Most are trimmed green handkerchiefs of grass. One has an old car on cinderblocks; their curtains are always closed. One has sculpted trees like bobble heads, everything in that garden is creepily symmetrical and immaculate. My favourites have flowers winding through the fences, overgrown gardens and big leafy trees. It's the flowers that slow me down. 

Blood red, velvety roses the size of saucers, delicate creamy orbs, sprays of small fragrant petals, gentle purple and geometric ones, pure white lilies as soft as skin, with stamen so large and erect and luridly yellow they seem faintly obscene. I stop for each of them. Mostly, I don't know the names. That doesn't

matter.

Everyday, they remind me there's beauty all around me, I just have to look.

Stil kicking

I see your comments and I read them. It makes me feel like I should keep telling my story, even if I wish I had a better one to tell. Thanks.

Welcome home

Damp like you wish your wife's panties were. Damp like the cave between a fatty's rolls. Damp like the towel on the end of your bed. Damp. Damp. Damp.

The jackets in my closet, leather heels, cowboy boots, the cushions on the couch, the curtains, mould like black lace is creeping between them, all over them. Invading my house from the inside. Black splotches are stretching over the ceiling. Like storm clouds heavy with rain.

Or the black billow that streams from the smokestack at the hospital. That's where they burn the diseased body parts, the amputated limbs, cancerous growths, cysts with teeth and tufts of hair in them, the unwanted fetuses and the beloved ones gone bad. It's like the hospital's flag, flying high over the city, so even in the park where life should be picturesque, you can see it.

I chase the mould with an armful of cleaning products and a bucket of hot water that quickly turns textured and blackened. I can smell it.

We've moved out of our bedroom and into the lounge. The mould is still there, but the air isn't thick with it. Our bedroom is unusable.

It's a beautiful old bungalow. But what can you do? Legally, the landlords don't have to do a damn thing.

The walls are thin. Our next door neighbour is in his 30s, tall and spindly, a crop of orange hair, he lives alone, slams his door, stomps around the house. I hear him yelling into the phone at night. He's perpetually angry. His anger seeps through the walls.

One time he screamed through the wall "shut up you fucking cunt" because I went to the bathroom. I think he might be mad. His mother pays his rent, cooks for him and cleans his house. She doesn't live with him, but she spends several hours there each day. She is angry too. She stands on the front porch and glares at me.

Two months ago, I awoke to a blood-chilling scream. It was coming from the flat through the wall. My boyfriend leapt out of bed, grabbed a baseball bat and ran underpant-clad next door.

The angry neighbour had woken up to a man dressed in black and wearing a balaclava, standing in his bedroom beside his bed, watching him as he slept. Like an ominous shadow. When he woke, the man turned and walked out of his room. Thinking maybe he was dreaming, he followed him, down the hall, towards the back door, through the kitchen. The man stopped, and turned. When he screamed, the man took a step towards him.

That was when my boyfriend came crashing around the corner and the man took off. They chased him down the street. But the man had a bicycle hidden in the long grass at the corner. He jumped on it, and was gone.

The street was quiet. Despite the yells, no one else had come to help. The police didn't even turn up.

After that, the next door neighbour stopped shouting abuse through the wall. But he still lies about us to the landlords. He still listens with his ear to the wall.

The 6 month lease is almost up. I can't wait to move.

I'm looking for sunshine.

Not quite dead

I'm not slashed of throat, formaldahyded, or scattered to the howling winds. 

I'm still out there, here, somewhere, my legs climbing stairs, hands typing inane ad copy for brand giants. Still smoking cigs on the balcony on level 11. Still waiting for him to deliver my "lunch". 

As soon as I see his car, I'm triple pressing the elevator button, willing the doors to open. Hands trembling, forehead wet. Stomach being gnawed by rats. Skidding through the foyer in heels. I lean through his car window, he gives me a banana, a nectarine, and a syringe full of drugs.

Sometimes, in the elevator on the way up, eyes on the lights as they ding though the floors, I'll rest my stupid head on the cool aluminum walls with relief, sometimes I'll do a mental little wriggly alone-dance. I hate myself for this happiness. This compulsive need. But I just can't seem to stop, it's in me now, it's got me, this need that means enough to lie for. To live a double life for. 

Truer than any true love. My very cells are love-sick until their daily kiss. My selfish, parasitic lover is oblivious. The only lover you know for certain will never leave you. Til death do us part as they say. That is his break up routine. So very fucking loyal.

Once in the office bathroom, by the bulb that doesn't shine bright enough, when I see that glorious rosy plume of blood, that is the moment I work until 8pm for. The reason I give my dealer more than my landlord. The reason the dealer always gets paid, the landlord, if he's lucky. Bowed head, bloody wrists. Another droplet hits the floor. The colour sweeps back through my cheeks, my eyes are clearer, like make-up on a mannequin. A polished apple, rotten and dead inside. 

Mr Anonymous & friends

Mostly, I delete them. Sometimes I leave them. But the comments are clear, although he has never met me, Mr Anonymous loathes me. Wants me to overdose and die. In fact, a few years back, he even left a comment pretending I HAD died.

Let clear something up. I am pathetic, I suck, being a junky sucks, it is a waste of life. I agree.

I don't think anyone plans on becoming an addict, let alone dreams of being one as a child. It is scary, lonely. Something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

And I'm sure I dislike myself much more than you, Mr Anonymous, ever could.

Still, I don't understand why you care so much about someone you find so pathetic. So, please fill up the comments and let me know. I'm interested.



PS
I know I'm not special, everywhere on the internet, anywhere you can post anonymously, there are hellishly mean comments. That is the internet. What people do when anonymous is a real reflection of humanity. It's eye-opening and actually pretty fucking depressing.