Book Review: Harley in the Sky

I picked up Akemi Dawn Bowman's Harley in the Sky purely for its cover when I last hit the library. I've always been interested in the circus. My first attempt at a dissertation having been a discussion of the circus in art and literature, and a good number of my tattoos are circus-based. I was slightly put off by the review that indicated the presence of mental health discussion, but I was too drawn in by the blurb to put it down. 

Protagonist Harley's parents run Teatro della Notte, a circus and dining experience in Vegas. She has long been obsessed with the big-top and is determined to become a performer. A dedicated aerialist, she argues with her parent's over their insistence that she attend a local college instead ofwith the thought of being an aerialist, her parent's insistence that she attend college instead of pursuing her dream of being mentored by the lead performer. After many failed attempts at convincing them, she steals her father's sheet music as payment and runs away to join Maison du Mystère. A rival, travelling circus.

When Harley arrives at the circus she is met with animosity from the lead act Maggie, who refuses to mentor her as Simon, the circus' owner, had promised. Determined to make her way into the troupe she befriends her roommates, ignores Maggie's attempts at making her a social parier and practises night after night with Violinist Vas' company. Eventually, the two of them are asked to choreograph a closing act and Harley achieves her dreams of performing, only for Simon to replace her. 

This is where the subject of Harley's mental health comes into play, and as someone with borderline personality disorder, I found the text surprisingly relatable. The text touches upon Harley's rotating obsessions and impulsions that lead her to hyper-focus on an ever-moving list of topics, with Harley describing the all-consuming euphoria she feels when she finds something that makes her happy. References to the month of November are sprinkled throughout the text before the depressive period she experiences after she leaves Maison du Mystère, and it is revealed that she previously expressed a desire to commit suicide. 

Harley and Vas' conversations about her mental health are where my own opinion differs. Harley expresses a desire to not be given a diagnosis and reiterates that she's happy not knowing what her mental illness may be because it doesn't change the outcome. My own experience was polar opposite, and I wanted nothing more than to be told what was wrong with me in an attempt to fix myself. I thought that a name would lead to a pill that could solve all my problems. It didn't.

After her depressive period that leads to her swearing off the circus, Harley re-discovers her love of being an aerialist, discusses her options with her parent and finally performs at Teatro della Notte. It's not the dream headlining role that she'd pictured, but it is a magnificent step forward towards her goals. 

Another topic that the novel discusses is the feeling of not belonging. Of not knowing who you are. Born to two bi-racial parents, Harley finds herself stuck between each area of her heritage and not knowing where she really fits in. This feeling is reiterated through her experience trying to make friends when she first joined the circus, and although it doesn't fully explain or discuss all aspects of her heritage, it succeeds in discussing how a multi-racial person may find it difficult to fit in with differing cultures. 

As a text, Harley in the Sky is one of the better novels I've read in a while. I've been rinsing through my local library's teen-fiction section and it was refreshing to read something that didn't involve a car accident or coma. As someone whose artistic interest began during the Impressionist period, I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants and I'm looking forward to finding other texts about circus performance. 

You'd also like it if you enjoyed the live-action version of Dumbo. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess

Excuses Excuses

 

Mondays are hard for me drinking-wise. I have the day off and I live opposite a bar and bottleshop so it's easy for me to run across the street and grab a bottle of wine. Staying sober is important to me every day, but I know that today will be difficult. 

Last week I tried to justify my day drinking by telling myself that if I only drink one day a week, that's okay. That it's better than drinking every day. That of course was just an excuse to tell myself that it was okay to drink. That it was okay to put away two bottles of wine when it obviously wasn't. 

The other excuse I made last week was when I went dancing on Saturday night. I love live music, it's the happiest I ever feel and I went to listen to the band that plays my bar. I started off by telling myself that I would only drink soda water. Then, when I left, I told myself I had to go back to the bar because I couldn't get an Uber home. Then I told myself that it was okay to have a drink because it was cheaper to buy a pint than have a soda water. The next day I told myself it was totally fine because I remembered most of what happened the night before and that I hadn't drank at my bar after work. 

You see the pattern here. 

This morning I joined a Zoom AA meeting that I really didn't connect with. I was finally ready to share and it just seemed to be one person talking. When someone else finally did chime in I still didn't feel able to connect. I was telling myself that by leaving I was making excuses, but on this occasion my thoughts were valid. I could have stayed in the meeting and I am determined to stop making excuses, but in this instance, I don't think I was. There is another meeting I can join in an hour that I feel I will be able to connect to more. I'm hoping I can connect to more. Although by leaving the meeting I was, technically, making an excuse in this instance I feel as if it was justified. 

In getting sober I am trying to differentiate between what my addict brain is saying and what my actual brain is saying. Everyone moves forward differently and trying to work out what is me lying to myself and what is actually good for me is going to be difficult to separate. I guess this is just part of my journey. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess 

Kindness

I came home from getting dick-faced at work and passing out in a friend's car early last May to my landlord telling me my room was no longer available. I had to move out at the end of the month. Not the greatest news to receive at 7 in the morning but you know these things happen. 

My problem is that I panic move. After living in a squat and being homeless a couple of times the second I find out I need to leave I'm packing my things and moving someone new. I ended up living with a guy and his daughter around the corner from my previous home. In what can only be described as what happens when a single guy explodes after his partner leaves him. 

Seriously, it was infested with ants, there was chicken poop everywhere and the front door was held open by a yellow shoe. No idea where this shoe came from, but it was our version of safety. 

When I was living with this guy and his daughter he took me to a house party where I met Tommy. I also relapsed on cocaine, passed out on his bed and called in sick to work the next day to have mediocre sex with a guy who cut his finger open and tried to fix it with sellotape. 

Have you ever been fingered by someone with their hands covered in tape? Not pleasant. 

This guy and I ended up messaging for a month and hooking up again when he got back from a work trip. He eventually ended up stealing $750 from my wallet and supplying me with enough cocaine to get me back in a full-blown relapse. The latter part wasn't his fault but the first really, really was. 

Unsurprisingly things with us ended and aside from a couple of times when he's come into work I haven't seen him much. We're not BFFs, we're not even friends, but I'm civil to him. 

Whilst I understandably do not care for this man, I very much care for his dog. She's an XL Bully named Rosie and the canine equivalent of the blonde cheerleader who dies first in a slasher movie. Nothing is going on between those ears and I love her. 

When I was involved with the guy, I met his friend Gary. When we first met, he was unconscious with an empty bag of blows stuck to his back, but we'd already chatted on Bumble beforehand. He's a nice guy, but nothing really came of our Snap-chat back-and-forth. 

Obviously, this was until I got wasted at work and I messaged him for a hookup. Gary was living in a granny flat under Tommy's house at the time and he picked me up to sneak me in for sex, a movie and a really good plate of cheesy chips. 

It wasn't just me he snuck in though. Knowing how much I missed Rosie, he brought her in for me to see her without Tommy knowing. She was only there for a few minutes but seeing her made me happier than I had been in a long time. He knew that I'd missed her and I couldn't have been happier to see her gorgeous face again. He didn't have to do it, there was no real reason for him to do it, but he knew that seeing her would make me happy. 

I have a tendency to surround myself with shitty people because that's what I think I deserve. I forgive people way too quickly because I don't think I should be treated with kindness. That night though Garry really did treat me with kindness. He knew that seeing Rosie would make me happy and that letting me see her, or even be in his apartment, would piss his friend off. He did something selfless just for me, and it's without a doubt the kindest thing anyone has done since I arrived in Australia. 

Maybe I don't always surround myself with shitty people after all. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess

Friday Forts

When the pandemic happened, life stopped. I could still work for a small portion of it because I worked hospitality but other than that I was locked down like the rest of the world. Before the doors closed I had a job as a magazine's managing editor, which was a great opportunity for me, but it didn't last. 

During lockdown and my time in Canada, I scored some more writing jobs, but my addiction put a stop to that. Without realising at the time my drinking and drug use affected my work and I lost multiple contracts. Since then I feel like my writing career has disappeared, and that it never really existed in the first place. 

I worked as a writer, in-house and freelance, before I started travelling and even had a freelance contract when I first arrived in Toronto. After that ended I went back into hospitality. When I was away it wasn't as easy for me to find work and I kind of gave up.

I love my job. I'm a duty manager at a local bar and although the hours are unreliable I really enjoy it, but I feel like my career as a writer is slipping away. Other than my blog I haven't written anything since I lived in Toronto. Constant rejection is difficult to handle and I've lost my ability to do it. I don't have the thick skin that I used to. A rejection email doesn't kill you, but my confidence is so low that now I don't even bother putting the effort in because I automatically assume that I'm going to fail. It all boils down to low self-esteem and making excuses and I'm struggling to rejig my thoughts. 

My goal is to find a remote job that I can do around my work as a bartender so that I can write and still have work while I go on my trip in September. I have 5 and a half months to reach my goal. I know where to look, what to do and how to find what I want, I just need to stop making excuses and do it. 

Getting sober is going to be a long journey and I didn't realize how much it would affect every area of my life. I feel as if I'm starting my life over, and it's really fucking scary. 

Doable, but scary

Stay safe on the road

Jess 

Monday musings.

Sometimes I think there's no point in me writing anything because no one reads what I have to say. I don't use Facebook anymore because my self-esteem is too low to repeatedly have to look at pictures of people I know getting engaged/promoted/pregnant, I don't make my own images so I can't post on Instagram and I don't really use Twitter that much. But I could. 

My current paid job is as a duty manager at the local bar. I really like my job, and I'm good at it. But I want to write. Writing is what I want to do, but pleading to companies to let me write for them makes me feel even more insecure. But I also have to stop using my insecurities as a reason to not do something. 

Right now I'm struggling to leave the house. Not in an agrophobic way, but because I just don't want to. I don't really have any friends in Darwin and so I have no one to spend any time with during the day. The only option I can see is going to work for a drink, but I don't want to drink. I want a sober group of friends, I want a sober community and if I got off my ass and went to AA meetings I could have that. I'm just making excuses. I'm good at making excuses for why I don't do things. I blame my BPD, I blame my insecurities and I blame my cocaine addiction when I should also be blaming my drinking. I hate myself so much right now, but it's difficult for me to find a reason now I'm not doing cocaine. I hate myself because I drink, but I can't do that anymore. 

I've lost a lot of friends because of my drinking and I know this. One of the people I've lost is someone who tried to get me fired but I feel like I can't be angry at that because I screwed up with my drinking. I feel like I can't be upset with someone for doing something when I've done something myself. I feel that I have to constantly apologise as I'm moving forward, and then I feel bad for wanting an apology myself. I feel like I don't have that right and that, once again, I'm making excuses. 

I'm taking myself out today, heading to a movie and then to buy new sheets after my friend worked in them as a sex worker. She also covered them in fag burns. My argument for not doing this was that I've smoked crack before, and so I can sleep on burn-covered sheets. But I don't have to sleep on ruined sheets. Once again I'm making excuses for not doing something. So today I have to leave the house, buy new sheets and stay sober. 

Three things. Not so hard.

Stay safe on the road

Jess

That girl

I have a friend, let's call him Ted, who is lovely but is the only person I know with a bigger ego than me. 

Seriously, this guy has some balls on him. 

We were having a conversation the other day about his new girlfriend. A "woodland water nymph" called Autumn, who's description I couldn't reply to straight away because I wanted to vomit. I'm sure she's lovely, but I'm also sure she isn't a character from Hercules. 

He was talking about how he was worried he had offended another girl he was seeing, polygamy being his previous preference, and at first I reminded him that it wasn't his job to police other people's emotions. You can't control how other people feel. 

An ironic statement coming from me because I can't even control how I feel. 

Anyway, he was saying she got upset because she saw that he'd changed his relationship status to "In a relationship" on Facebook. Yes, that's right, in 2025 he managed to upset someone via his relationship status. Incase it wasn't abundantly clear, this man is a millennial. 

As I said at first, I was on his sid,e but when he began to tell me the full story, I realised that he had reason to feel bad about himself. He'd been a total dick. He told me how he'd discussed his "boundaries" with her. Not having to see her every time she was in town, not "presenting" as a couple and other things that I've buried in my subconscious because I was so offended on this woman's behalf. Yes it's perfectly acceptable to set boundaries, no it was absolutely none of my business, but as a fellow woman I felt she deserved better.

I've been in this situation many, many times before. An old friend of mine broke my heart when I asked him to be my valentine and he told me he had a girlfriend. He told me he'd known I liked me for a while and should have been more careful about how "couply" we were acting. This man knew about my condition more than most, and yet for some reason chose to manipulate my emotions. 

Tedd told me that when he discussed these boundaries with this woman, she was okay with it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that she shouldn't have been. As someone with cripplingly low self-esteem who's argument for staying with her ex was that "he doesn't hit me" like a previous boyfriend had, I know what it's like to hide your feelings about a particular situation. If she didn't care she wouldn't have been upset about his status, and if he'd care about her he would have told her about the aforementioned "woodland water nymph". It's one thing to not care, but it's a very different thing to act like you care when you don't. 

Situationships are rife within society and I've been in my fair share. A particularly denial-rich one of mine involved me taking my "fwb" to a dinner party and meeting his friends. Throughout the three years we were together, he repeatedly told me he didn't have feelings for me and I repeatedly stayed in these bizarre situations where we acted like a couple. I don't honestly know if I was happy at the time, but I know I wasn't overly jazzed when he randomly ended things because he got a girlfriend. I wasn't his one, I was the one for now. 

Moving forward, I'm determined to learn from these mistakes, especially after I allowed my most recent boyfriend to keep me a secret. Unless someone wants to shower me in love and tell the world that we're together, I'm not going to enter into a relationship with them. No more excuses, no more accommodations, I deserve to be with someone who loves me to the nth degree, and I'm not going to settle until I find someone who does. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess

Friday Favourites

I wanted to go to the gym this afternoon, but given that my lungs have decided that breathing is too mainstream and my asthma is acting up, I'm at home writing instead. This is a good use of my time, because I haven't been putting fingers to keys much lately. 

It's been 11 weeks since the start of the year and I'll be the first to admit that most of the posts I have written have been me complaining about my godawful relationship, feeling like I'm not at the right place in my life and my mother. Today I decided to try something different and write about the good things that have happened. 

The gym 

My relationship with exercise is shaky at best. I have distinct memories of my mother dragging me to the doctor after she found me desperately working out at 6 in the morning to burn off 500 calories before my day started. Size zero was a big thing in the noughties. Since then I've struggled with the amount of time I can exercise. Being embarrassed about not being able to stay for too long, or worried about how much time I have left in the day to get to work or run errands. Now I'm forcing myself into the mindset of "Just go". It doesn't matter how long I'm there for or how long the people around me are there for, what matters is that I'm making the effort to show up even for a little while. Which is better than not going at all. 

And the iced coffee I treat myself to as a reward for going isn't too bad either. 

Reading

By my last count I have read 13 books this year, working on an average of one a week. Most of them have been from the library but I've picked up a couple from Thriftbooks too. They've mostly been teen fiction because it's easy for me to read and I don't always enjoy heavy plots and dense writing. My favourite so far has been You'd be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow. It documents a girl whose brother returns from rehab for opiate addiction after a fatal car accident and how she is tasked with looking after him and preventing him from relapsing. After he goes missing, and she finally locates him, he returns to rehab.

As an addict, the book hit very close to home and the author did an amazing job at describing not only the likelihood of addicts relapsing, but that relapses aren't always the final step. I am lucky to now be just over 100 days clean from cocaine, but that was after a period of using again. I'm still working on getting sober. It was a beautiful text that shows how people around you have an influence over how you recover, and not just if they're the ones giving you access to drugs. 

Bills and savings

This month I achieved something I've been wanting to do for the past 3 years. I paid off my credit card. There have been periods since I started using it when the balance has hit close to zero but they never lasted long, and I got caught in the endless cycle of paying minimum payments and interest. The money was being paid but the balance wasn't going down. 

This February I finally managed to pay it off and it was one of the best feelings ever. I told everyone I saw that day. Since then I've actually been able to put some savings away and I'm slowly moving towards reaching the goal I have set myself for the trip I'm planning on taking in September. For the first time in years not only have I been able to save, but I am finally debt free. 

Invisible Boys

I picked up a copy of Invisble Boys by Holden Sheppard in Syndey and a series based on the novel was recently released on Stan. To say it broke me would be an understatement. The story of four boys living in a small town in Western Australia and the different journeys they face with addressing their own sexuality was expertly executed. Bees, the episode where a prominent member of the cast writes a letter to another protagonist, was a perfect example of how one character can dominate an entire episode without overloading the viewer with their presence, and I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the finale because I know how the text ends. Although the series isn't a word-for-word copy of the novel, it bends the story line in a way that fits the period and is a beautiful example of how being gay isn't always an adventure in rainbow flags and parades. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess

Time

A guest is staying in the hotel attached to my bar at the moment from Germany. Just outside Cologne. I told him about how much I love Berlin and he told me a story about how he stayed there when David Bowie released Heroes. He jokingly called my experience "Berline Light". Apparently it's his son's favourite place too. I had to agree.

When I was with Jerren, I thought I wanted to settle down. To be in a stable relationship and live a life where I finished work, came home to a cooked meal and had what I can only describe as boring but enjoyable sex day in day out. There's nothing wrong with this for some people, but my craving for excitement never went away. 

I've had an exciting life. Travelling the world, meeting great people and experiencing things some can only dream of. As I've gotten older I've been feeling like I have to let go of this. That wanting an exciting life is childish and I should be letting go of the life I really want. I feel too old to enjoy who I am and what I want and I need to realise that this isn't the case. I can have the life I want, I don't have to calm down, change who I am or let go of what I want. 

I've written a lot about craving excitement. About wanting to live my life how I wanted but being scared that my chance is over. That I couldn't do it anymore, that I wasn't allowed. When you travel a lot, people think it's a life of chasing waterfalls, dancing in storms and screaming from the top of your lungs out the windows of cars on road trips with your friends. For some people this is the case, but for me it's mostly been stress about money, visas and losing friends that move on to new places. I am so scared of having to move back to England that I'm ruining the time I have here. I am so scared of living the life I want because I don't want it to end. For so many years I couldn't even fathom the idea that I'd have a future. Everything was black. But now I no longer want to die and I want to have a future. I may be indifferent to living, but I haven't wanted to commit suicide in a very long time. I know exactly what I want, I want the exciting life I've had before, and I'm scared that I'm too old to have it. 

Ridiculous right? I can put a rapist in prison, but I'm terrified of fighting for the life that I want. 

I didn't work this hard to just exist. I didn't work this hard to be constantly afraid of debts. Of money. Of aging. Of not being loved. I might not know exactly how to get to the life I want, but I sure as hell know that I have to do something to get away from the life I have now. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess 

Marching forward

Last month was a wash out. With the parole review, breaking up with Jerren and a bout of mania that I'm still struggling with, nothing really went the way I wanted it to. And all the progress I made throughout January seemed to go by the wayside. Jerren is back now, I'm refocused on my sobriety and I've started taking some new meds that should hopefully help with my mood swings. 

Whether they do or not remains to be seen, but at least I'm trying. 

I need March to be different. In February I discovered that I have even less self-control than I thought. I am not a "just one drink" person. There is no type of alcohol I can have and put down. No pints of beer, no glasses of wine. If I start drinking, I don't stop, and I didn't make it more than three days without blackout drinking throughout the entire month. As a borderline I'm used to extremes and it's very clear to me that my all or nothing attitude applies to my drinking as well. I ended up eating too much, embarrassing myself, waking up ashamed and treating people in a way that really wasn't me. To keep my condition in check, I need to keep my drinking in check, and being completely sober is the only way I can do this. Especially with my new medication in the mix. 

I lost sight of my career goals last month too. As you can probably tell, I wasn't blogging as much and my motivation to write seemed to disappear. I read a lot, so I was still engaging with words regularly, but I wasn't writing my own. It boils down to the fact that I'm still feeling defeated by my career, and so I felt it was pointless to even try. But if I don't try I'm not going to make any progress. I also need to realise that writing things is not enough, if I want to be successful, I need to put my work out there. Applying for work and promoting my content is going to be my priority this month. 

Procrastination was also an issue. With problems with my relationship and the parole review taking over, I put off even the smallest of tasks until they built up and up and became overwhelming. Something simple like taking out the trash or doing the laundry became a mammoth task. If I take on tasks as they come, I can focus on what I really want.  

Whatever that may be.

Stay safe on the road

Jess