And in a heartbeat, I was 45. I still can't quite believe how old I am now. I don't necessarily think 45 is old in terms of a lifespan, but it is certainly not young, and there are expectations about where a person should be by my age, what they should be doing and who they should be with. I don't remotely live up to any of those expectations, and the longer I've gone without making any progress, the deeper I have felt totally and utterly inadequate.
45 is a significant birthday. They say it's when a mid-life crisis really begins, and I am in one. A crisis, that is. But the good thing about a crisis is that it suggests there can be some sort of resolution. If there was no resolution, it wouldn't be a crisis; it would simply be reality.
When I was thinking about this yesterday, before the clock ticked over, I realised I've already done one thing people in a mid-life crisis do, and that's buy a new car. Even though my car is an older car and didn't cost me an arm and a leg, it's still a car with character, and my Beetle makes a statement. Now I just need to get myself a toy boy and change careers.
But I never really had a career to begin with. I've just been jumping all over the place my entire life. I have been offered this new job, but I just have this feeling it's not going to work out. I still need to apply for a police check, and training apparently starts in three weeks. My last police check took more than three weeks to come back, and while it came back clear, I'm worried the same thing could happen again.
If it works out with that job, I'm going to spend my last couple of thousand dollars and stay in a nice hotel in town, which is close to the office. I'll do that for the five-day training period, which runs from 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday, for just one week. After that, it shifts to night shift, which I will be able to manage.
But it's not going to work out that way. I know it. I'm not going to be overly disappointed, though. Later today, I am going to apply for a job at the Centre, which is something I really want, and I think I've put together a competitive application. If I could just get a few days a week there, I think it would make all the difference to my life, both financially and personally.
Something that has defined my life is that I've always been an outsider. I have never fit in anywhere I've studied, worked or socialised. The main reason for that is that I was always the new girl at school, at work I was always the new girl who was just passing through, and I was always someone joining an already established friendship group.
But the thing is, I was an outsider long before all of that. Below you can see a photo of me as a child. I'm dressed up in what looks like a witch's costume, but if you look closer, I actually think it's a wizard's outfit. Whatever it is, I love that it's magical, and I'm sure it was for a dress-up day or Halloween.
I also lied to the police about seeing two people having sex in the back of a car that used to park behind the school every lunchtime. In reality, it was the cleaning lady from a neighbouring school eating her lunch in her car. That completely destroyed my credibility, and later, when a friend's father really did expose himself to me and my friend, people struggled to believe me.
My friend's dad exposing himself to me and Rachel was a major life event for me. The exposure itself wasn't so bad, but the way everything unravelled afterwards was extremely upsetting.
I remember this man's face as he had his penis lying out of his boxer shorts for all of us, including his daughter, to see. I looked right at him, and he smiled at me. I remember everything about him.
After I saw his penis, I went to the master bedroom and asked the mother if I could go home. She told me that I couldn't because my parents were going to be out that night. I am certain my parents wouldn't have minded coming to pick me up if they knew what was going on, but I went back to the room and lay back down in my sleeping bag.
I wasn't scared. I was confused. But I will never forget that man's face, and years later it came back to impact my life in another way.
I feel real, genuine, deep-seated shame over those events of my young childhood. Back when I used to think that I might meet someone and get married, I used to wonder how I could possibly tell someone about those things without them being disgusted by me or ashamed of me themselves.
I think the shame began when my family and I were up at my dad's farm and Mum and I were in the kitchen. She told me she knew that I had been flashing myself to the boys on the benches next to the classrooms. Then she went on to say what a dirty girl I was and how badly I had embarrassed her and my father.
It was a devastating thing for me as a young kid to hear my mother say those things. But the thing that got me the most was that she knew all that time, acted like everything was normal and didn't tell me until then. I hate it when people do that. Even to this day, I don't respond well to it.
One thing I find interesting about my life's journey is that I didn't become overly promiscuous or particularly enjoy the company of different men. I think with a hyper-sexualised childhood like I had, there was a real risk of that happening, but something I didn't ever do was grow into having healthy relationships with men.
I'm now 45 years old, and I've never been in love. I think it would be so much harder to find love at 45 because not only do I need to lose weight, but I look haggard and old. It's funny, back in 2013 I wrote a letter to Mark Griffin and told him that if I ever had of had a child, and that child was a daughter, I would have called her Sue. My reason was that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I thought it was funny to use legal terminology as a name. But the thing is, back then I was only 31 years old. I could still have had a child, yet I was already writing as though that possibility had passed me by.
But at 45, I sit here and think, no, I can't have a child, but I also don't think I could possibly fall in love. Not only am I older and not as aesthetically pleasing, but no one could love someone who started off life like that. I've done a lot of things I'm ashamed of as an adult, but nothing compares to those years as a hyper-sexualised little brat.
I talk about being alone a lot, but I'm not really alone. I have this beautiful friend, Maureen, who is in her early twenties. I call her Maureen for the purposes of this blog, but she's actually from Iran, and "Maureen" is probably the least Iranian name I could have come up with.
Like Hussein, she was also my tutor. She tutored me in maths and physics when I was doing a course called the University Preparatory Program at what was then the University of Adelaide. We are so close now, and I love her like she was my own daughter. She's moved to Brisbane to do another university course, but we talk all the time.
On Friday, I received an Express Post package from her and inside was a wrapped birthday present. I told her I wasn't going to open it until today, so we waited up until 12:00am on WhatsApp together and then I opened it. It was a beautiful edition of Frankenstein with special artwork throughout the book.
I love Frankenstein. I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I can relate to the monster because of the way society reacts to how he looks. It is one of my favourite books.
My favourite quote comes from Robert Walton's letters at the beginning of the novel, when he is consumed by his ambition to explore the Arctic and reach places no one has reached before. He says:
“What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?” - Robert Walton
I was so grateful for the book, and I am so grateful to have this beautiful young woman in my life. She is so smart, so funny, and she has a bit of attitude too, which I like. It made me feel that even if no one else wishes me a happy birthday today, I'm glad I got to start it with her.
It all goes past so quickly. I remember it in flashes. One minute I'm belting out a song with my childhood band, the Teacups. The next, I'm living with a bunch of apprentice butchers in Alice Springs. Then I wake up to a view of Mount Kilimanjaro every morning. Then I'm standing face to face with a criminal, administering an oath in court. And then I find myself at 45, sitting in front of my computer at 3:32am, reflecting on a life that just flew past in a heartbeat.
There is literally no one else awake. This morning I have the heater on for the noise, but if I turned it off, I could hear a pin drop. And I hate the silence. The silence is deafening.
As I spend my life dodging the silence, I realise that for the past 13 years of my life, nothing has happened. I have simply existed and allowed more than a decade to go by without really doing anything. I cared for my father, which I wouldn't change. I never took care of his personal care, but I really just sat with him for years. When my sleep became really bad, some mornings I would take my doona upstairs and lie on the couch and sleep while he read the paper. Then I would properly get up and we would go for a walk or watch something on television.
When he went into a nursing home, I went to see him every day. He was never alone, and that is one thing I draw comfort from. I also became very good at communicating with people with dementia. I would always validate what he said and acknowledge his stories, which at the time were very real to him.
While Dad was in a nursing home, I studied at the University of Adelaide. First I did the University Preparatory Program, which I absolutely loved, and then I went on to creative writing. I switched to studying online, and then I started volunteering four days a week and gave up the study. I gave up the volunteer work, I looked for jobs, I couldn't sleep, I was sleep deprived, I tried to work, I couldn't manage it, and now I sit here early in the morning while the rest of the world sleeps and think about the fact that this is my mid-life crisis.
I hate it when someone reads a self-help book and all of a sudden they're full of beans and start unrealistically going about changing their life. I feel like it all ends in tears when you do it on a whim. But I'm going to make some drastic changes. I've decided to take one year to fix my life.
The first thing I need to do is lose weight. I gained a huge amount of weight back in 2013, and I haven't been able to shift it. I think it's part of the whole mindset I've been stuck in it's too big a task, therefore I won't do it. But I'm going to take it seriously and follow a structured weight-loss program. I have an appointment at the gym on Wednesday night, and I'm going to hire a trainer three times a week to start with. Then I will gradually start doing more myself. I am determined to do this. No quick fixes, just solid hard work and discipline. My life will be better if I lose weight, and this time I am determined to see it through.
I am going to care for Mum in whatever capacity is needed. Mum has been diagnosed with mild dementia, and she is very forgetful, but she's still here. She still has a good long-term memory, and her intelligence and humour are still completely intact. I am going to work my life around her, and as her needs change, I will change what I am doing to suit her.
I know I've been offered a job, but as I said, I don't think that's going to work out, so I am pinning all my hopes on the Centre. But if neither of those jobs works out, I will keep my eyes open for something that suits me.
More than anything, I want something to happen. Something exciting. I've been talking to Liam, and I hate the kind of stuff he says to me. When we were talking about my birthday, I told him I am now old, and he says stuff like, “You're not old to me.” That is actually a massive, backhanded compliment, but I think I've continued the conversation because, in some respects, I'm bored.
I actually like having someone to text while you're getting to know them. It can be fun, but I wish I was having this conversation with a single man. Not that I would be interested in anything, but it certainly makes life a bit more interesting.
I went through this period of my life where I was scared of getting bored. I remember I used to ask Mum all the time if she was bored or if she ever got bored. She told me she would never get bored. In my mind, I was thinking, what if I read all the books I want to read, watch all the TV series I want to watch, and then wake up one day with nothing to do? Nothing to think about?
I don't have that fear of being bored in general anymore, but I am bored. I don't want a man or new friends, but I would like to meet someone interesting to talk to.
The defining feature of my younger years was my revolting hyper-sexuality. And the defining feature of my adult years has been my unrequited love for a NSW District Court Judge.
I would say it was a milestone in my life when, one day in March 2011, I was standing in an anteroom between two courtrooms at the Downing Centre District Court. I was dressed like a secretary, with high heels and a face full of makeup, when the most beautiful creature I had ever seen stepped out of the lift alongside his gruff-looking male associate.
He was the spitting image of my friend's dad, who had exposed himself to me when I was a young child. When I first saw the Judge, I could see the father as clear as day in my mind, smiling at me. I was overwhelmed with emotion and desire directed at this Judge and spent the next three months dancing a dance with him that became obvious to so many of the other court staff. I interpreted his behaviour as paying me a lot of attention, and from my perspective, it seemed that he had a sexual interest in me. I knew that he didn't love me as I loved him, but I didn't care. I would have done anything he asked me to.
On the day I was let go from the Downing Centre, my heart literally broke into a million pieces. I felt humiliated and, most of all, devastated that I wouldn't get to see the Judge every day. The way it made me feel hit me like a tonne of bricks, and I don't think I ever really got over it.
I wrote the Judge the most insane letter I have ever written. I talked about Jesus, the Bali Nine and sperm making its way to fertilise an egg. Before that letter, I had imagined that the Judge thought of me in some sort of high regard, even if that regard was only sexual, and afterwards I imagined his opinion of me taking a massive dive.
I wrote hundreds, if not thousands, more letters to judges, courts, tribunals, police and anyone else to do with the law, all in an attempt to harness some sort of understanding of my own crimes. But if you stripped the whole situation back to its core, I simply loved him. I couldn't get over it, and I didn't know why.
When I was back in Adelaide, I was working on reception at a government healthcare facility when, one day, a nurse that worked there came up to reception. She was the spitting image of both the man who had exposed himself to me and the Judge himself. I found myself sexually attracted to her. I made my attraction fairly obvious in the way I behaved, and she didn't seem to mind. Nothing ever happened between us, and the fact that I compared her to two men takes nothing away from the feminine beauty she possessed.
Around that time, I had started taking some of the letters and oaths I was collecting from Supreme Courts around the world into work, and I showed a few of them to her. She asked me whether I wanted an oath from the Supreme Court of South Australia. I asked her why, and she told me that her father had been a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia. The coincidence was so extraordinary that it quite literally took my breath away.
I am now unable to engage with any current or former members of the judiciary, and that actually resulted in me receiving a criminal conviction.
I stopped loving the Judge years ago, but I remembered how I told a few other court officers that the Judge reminded me of Count Dracula, I later discovered that Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, had worked at Dublin Castle which became the Dublin District Court. Somehow, in my mind, judges, courts, Count Dracula and the Judge himself became intertwined. When I reread the book, I was mesmerised by so many of the quotes. The following reminded me of the Judge:
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” - Professor Abraham Van Helsing
For a very brief moment, I stopped and considered what it actually means that I experienced such deep, passionate, unbridled, unrequited love for a man who was 30 years older than me, but who also looked so much like the man who exposed himself to me as a young child. I'm sure there's something in it, but I'm not willing to explore it in clinical detail. Sometimes I quietly think to myself just how uncanny the human condition really is.
I miss Nanny today. I would have called her in a couple of hours to wish her good morning, and she would have made me feel so old. I remember when I first started getting wrinkles and I would point them out to her, she would say things like, “What do you expect? You're 40 years old.”
But we would have gone out for dinner tonight with Mum, her granddaughter Rebecca and maybe her daughter Sharon. We did it every year.
Below you can see an old photo of Nanny and me.
It's hard to believe I am living my life without her. And without my dad. I lost them both within months of each other. It just all seemed to happen at once.
I am definitely in a mid-life crisis and things have to change. I've got one year to sort myself out and if I can't do it in a year, I'm going to give up. I want to lose weight, get a job, care for Mum, write as many letters as physically possible, get books bound for people I like, study something, write my book but most of all I want something to happen. Anything. Just something to make me feel like I am not chained up in a dungeon of boredom.
The first book I wrote was a bit of a mess. It jumped around, and I hate the tone I wrote it in, but surprisingly, some of it made a bit of sense. I wanted the title of that book to be Comfortably Numb because that is one of my favourite songs by Pink Floyd.
At the time, I thought I could relate to the lyrics, but then, just a couple of years later, it felt as though the lyrics could have been written about me and a particular experience I had.
