This Is It

I find The Advertiser Online, or Adelaide Now, to be an extremely depressing online newspaper. I used to read the physical paper, but now I follow local news through their website. Mum has a subscription, and we entered the password into my computer once, and it saved it. We now have no idea what the password is, but the computer automatically fills it, and every time I successfully log in, I thank Lady Luck.

I find the newspaper, or website, or whatever you want to call it, depressing because every day they have a story about someone who is dying of cancer or has been struck down by some horrible disease. It is literally every day, and it makes me question the newsworthiness of these stories.

Yes, they are so sad, and in my heart I believe that everyone’s story has immeasurable value and worth. And in some ways, they are raising awareness. But on the other side of that is this: it feels like it's as if the news itself is not bad enough, we now have to read these horrible stories that remind us all it could happen to us at any time.

The other day I read an article about a 30-year-old woman named Paige Footner. She is a paramedic as well as a trained circus artist. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but apparently she is a Cyr wheel performer, and she’s the only one in South Australia. She’s performed at festivals around the world. She was on her way to the Edinburgh Fringe in August when she went for a routine tinnitus check, and they discovered a brain tumour.

I think at 30, some people would say things like, “There can’t be a God if He allows someone so young to get so sick like that.” However, it’s cruel and merciless situations like this that affirm my belief in the God of the first testament of the Bible — Yahweh. He is a sick, twisted, and nasty motherfucker, and it would take someone like that to inflict this kind of burden on someone like this creative and obviously caring young woman.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t like to read these stories — but this one really caught my attention.

Paige talked about how paramedics have a "front row seat to people's choices and consequences of those". Something she said really struck a chord with me:

"We see people who work really hard their whole life and plan to go on this big trip when they retire, or they never chase their dreams that they've always wanted to."

"Then it's too late and they die with regrets or they get their health taken away."

She talked about when she first found out about her diagnosis:

"My first reaction was that I'm going to die and I've never found love before."

She then went on to say:

"I've never had a boyfriend and I'm very brave in terms of doing circus tricks, but I never told the boy I liked that I liked him."

She finished by saying:

"So I was going to die without love, intimacy — what every little girl dreams of when they're younger."

She said she was trying to use the experience to inspire people to live their life "fiercely and intensely while they still can." She then said the following things:

• "Tell the boy you like that you like him"

• "Try that hobby"

• "Don't leave things unsaid, especially if somebody's had a positive impact on your life"

• "Chase those dreams"

• "Go on those trips"

The article didn’t say what the prognosis is. It did say that her friends have rallied around her and have raised some money through a raffle. They also set up a GoFundMe page. I donated $50 — I would have liked to have donated more, but I’m currently broke.

I found Paige to be an incredibly inspiring person. I’m just about to turn 44, so she is 14 years younger than me — and she had her whole life together. In the same employment for five years, in a caring first responder profession. She expressed herself creatively through the circus arts, and she obviously has a strong support network around her — people who are trying to share the burden of her horrible diagnosis.

It makes me think I really have wasted my precious time here on earth.

I remember I mentioned to you about a psychologist I once saw. I was telling her about the letter I wrote to the judge. I had a tear streaming down my face as I looked out the window, and it was raining. I also told that psychologist about my life — about the eight schools, the 70 jobs, the seven university false starts — and she just looked at me and said:

“You obviously could do whatever you want in life. So what is stopping you?”

I didn’t know how to answer when she asked me why I still cared about the letter I wrote to the judge. I also didn’t know how to answer when she asked me what was stopping me from achieving any sort of success in life.

I think I nailed it the other day when I said: it’s the idea that you can always try again. You can always go back to uni. You can always try another job, meet another man. But there has to come a time when you go — this is it.

I sit here on the cusp of my 44th birthday thinking: I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. But the thing is, not only am I grown up, I’m nearly a senior citizen.

I have made so many mistakes in my life. I can’t tell you. It has literally just been one mistake after the next. If I really sat down and thought about it, it would make me very depressed. But there is this longing for something. I don’t want to fill a void, prove a point, be famous or even recognised - but I have this primal urge to do something meaningful. 

But if I could have it my way, I would go the rest of my life completely under the radar. Write under a pseudonym. Create art anonymously. Really, I would like that.

In some ways, that’s what I liked about Sydney. It’s so big, and you’re really just a number — a statistic. No one knows you or cares about you. But in the end, I found that to be a little bit cruel. My dad actually paid my rent for me when I was in Sydney, and he told my mother he felt sorry for me there — because I was all alone.

Anyway, no one knows me here in Adelaide, but it’s still a small city, and there really is six degrees of separation with everything.

In relation to this article about Paige — it is very inspiring, in the sense that it has made me think I do need to live more passionately and fiercely. But I didn’t just wake up the next morning and jump out of bed and feel like the haze of mediocrity had lifted from my soul.

I think it’s going to be a slow process.

I don’t want a profession. I don’t want to be 85 years old in a nursing home, and an agency carer knocks on my door and sits down for a chat. If they then asked me what I did for a living, I’m just going to say I volunteered with a pretty cool organisation. It’s the only thing I’ve ever felt proud to be a part of, and I love it so much. I’m going to do it until the day I die.

It’s a shame I threatened to sue them, but ultimately, it goes to show how much it means to me and I’m not sorry I stood up for myself.

So I’m going to tell this carer that I volunteered and that I travelled the world. That’s all I really want. I’m not an adventurous traveller, but I do want to see so many places. And I’m going to sit down and think about how I can make my travel dreams come true.

When Paige said she was going to die without love, intimacy, what every little girl dreams of when they’re younger, I can relate to that.

I have never been in love with a man. A few men have told me that they loved me, and I’ve said it back — but I never really meant it, and I really don’t think they did either. The closest I came to feeling that overwhelming giddiness was with the judge in Sydney. But thinking about that now, the judge was good — but not really that good. So, I have never been in love.

When you’re young, you think it’s just going to come to you. Maybe you’re walking down the street and you bump into some stranger and you look at each other and you just know.

I think a good place to meet someone is at work, because you see each other on your good days and your bad days. One place I would never want to meet someone is online. I don’t turn my nose up at it. On the contrary, I know people who have found love online. I just can’t do it because of my flaw. If I met a man on a dating website and we dated for a while, and then I told him about my flaw, he might sue the dating website for matching him with someone like me.

I also would like to meet someone organically. I know I’ve said that I simply can’t get involved with anyone but lately, I’ve been feeling like I wouldn’t mind it if I met someone.

They would have to be the nicest person in the world, kind, caring, it’s all I care about. I don’t care what they do for a living at all, if they are wealthy or on the bones of their arse. But if I could wish a man up, they would either be self-employed or retired, so we could travel whenever we want. 

I've recently discovered a new interest. Puppetry.

Ever since I decided to enrol in the course at the Media Makeup Academy, I’ve been thinking more deeply about all forms of special effects makeup, and when I combined that with my studies in animation, puppetry naturally came to mind.

I started thinking about all the puppets that have been part of my life — and I hadn’t even realised it. Shows like Sesame Street, The Muppets, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, and ALF were all part of my childhood. I even remember Hey Hey It’s Saturday — there was that puppet called Dickie Knee who’d pop up from the bottom of the screen.

But it’s not just the iconic puppets I find interesting — it’s the variety of forms: hand puppets, rod puppets, marionettes, full-body puppets, and those incredibly creepy ventriloquist dummies. I’m sure there are many more styles I haven’t even discovered yet.

There’s something deeply moving about the way we, as humans, physically animate an inanimate object. Puppetry has been around for thousands of years — one of the oldest forms of storytelling and ritual theatre in human history. I find that beautiful, magical, and incredibly fascinating. I want to learn more.

In my search, I came across Sue Harris, a professional puppeteer, educator, and storyteller who has been based in South Australia since 1978. She offers one-on-one mentorships, and she sounds like exactly the sort of person I’d love to learn from — and get to know.

Sue is known for using puppetry in therapeutic, educational, and community settings — including work with carers, prisoners, and children affected by trauma. But you know what I really love? She was a lecturer at UniSA from 1997 to 2016, teaching a course called World of Puppetry, and she’s also the author of a book titled A Special Place: Caring for a Parent with Alzheimer’s – The Journey.

She sounds like a truly beautiful person, and I’m planning to contact her — once I’m back into the rhythm of things — to ask if she might be willing to mentor me in puppetry.