Buy a Lady a Drink Sailor?

Won't you kiss me on the mouth and love me like a sailor?

Wednesday morning, a day that would turn out to be my last day of employment, a guy walked into my bar and very, very unsubtly hit on me. I may be insecure, but even I know that when someone asks if you're going somewhere with your partner, they're trying to find out if you're single. He asked me for my number and we arranged to meet that night.

I didn't feel great at the start of the date. Not because of him, but because of the hideously uncomfortable dress I was safety pinned into. I'm not overly sure why I bought it if I'm honest, other than the fact that it cost about $4. It was too tight, made my boobs hang out in a most unattractive fashion, and if I wasn't wearing shorts underneath, it would have shown far too many levels of coochie. Alas, I wanted to look cute, and without my good bra, my favourite dress doesn't look right, so I fastened myself into this one and called it a day. 

Thankfully, I am completely incapable of lying, and so I told him I was in agony and needed to take all my clothes off. I don't think any straight man would have said no to that, and so we hopped into an Uber and headed back to mine. One six-pack of beer and an ex-boyfriend's T-shirt later, I was happy. 

We also ordered pizza. I don't know if you've ever had an orgasm interrupted by Uber Eats, but it was one of the most frustrating moments of my life. Made slightly funny by the fact that they messaged me asking if I was coming. 

Yes, Mr delivery driver, yes, I was. But you put a pause on that. 

The details of my orgasm, however, are irrelevant. What is relevant is him. 

Have you ever kissed anyone in a way that didn't make you want to fuck them? Not right away, anyway. I didn't want to fuck him yet, and I didn't just want to touch him; I wanted to hold him. To have him in my arms as close to me as physically possible. His voice is so calming, he could read me bedtime stories. Lying on him as he spoke and feeling his words reverberate through his chest made the night blissful. Whether it was him, quitting my job or both, my heart felt open that night, and I kept thinking about the things about myself that I've missed. My love of words, my love of art, my love of music. There was something about him that made me look back on who I used to be, but not in the negative way I do when I think about my time as an addict. I was looking back on the things that make me happy that have slipped out of my life with time and age. Photography, painting, drawing. Things that I haven't played around with since college, but that are still somewhere inside me. 

My condition means that I'm never going to feel the way other people do; it's impossible. I've always thought this meant I wasn't allowed to feel as happy and relaxed as I wanted to, and instead that I had to force myself into a life I thought I should have, rather than what I wanted. Something about that night changed this, though, and I was able to relax for the first time in a long, long time. 

When I meet someone, I fall hard. I want to spend every moment I can with them, and sometimes end up moving in within a couple of days. It's very lesbian, very Uhaul, and very ironic given that I've only ever been in relationships with men. That can't happen this time.

The reason that can't happen is that he's a fisherman and left for high tide yesterday morning. He won't be back until the end of August. There's no way of thing can move too fast because he isn't here; he's miles and miles away in the ocean. A place I'm not. A place I cannot be. 

That doesn't mean the insecurities won't creep in. I've never really worried about people I'm with wanting to be with other people, even when boyfriends were cheating on me right under my nose. What I do worry about is people going off me, of my coming on too strong and scaring people away. I don't want to worry about that this time, though. He's on a boat in the middle of the ocean. What's the worst that's going to happen? He stops messaging me back? It's not like I'm going to run into him anytime soon. 

Like I said, he's coming back at the end of the month and we've made plans to see each other again. When we talked about his previous dating life, he talked about it being difficult to be in any kind of relationship with someone when he's at sea because of how much you can really trust someone to wait for you. But as my friend Irena in Toronto, whose husband lives in Japan, once said, It doesn't matter how far away someone is; if you care about them, you care about them. Distance is just distance. 

He hasn't asked me to wait for him; I don't know if he ever would. But he has told me he wants to see me again, and I feel the same. I haven't been as brave as I know I can be lately, and so I've decided to be brave again. I want to wait for him. I'm going to wait for him. It feels good to wait for him. 

I don't think he's going to mind 

Stay safe on the road

J

Nan, Grandad and Mamma Odie

That ain't gonna make you happy now, did it make you happy then?

The Princess and the Frog is one of my Mum's favourite Disney movies. There's a bit at the end when Dotty is dancing with Prince Naveen's brother, Ralphie, who is six and a half. She says that she's waited long enough for her prince, so she might as well keep waiting for him to grow up and be with him. 

Creepy, and ever so slightly Twilight Breaking Dawn, but cute in a Disney movie way. 

It's one of my Mumma's favourites because a similar thing happened at my nan and grandad's wedding. My grandad and his brother have different dads, a big deal for the 40s/50s. At their wedding, all my Nan's friends kept saying my Grandad was really handsome and asked her if he had a brother. Nan had to tell them that yes, he did. But he was four. 

I'm thinking about the movie this morning because of the song Dig a Little Deeper. I made the mistake of weighing myself the other day and automatically got sucked back into my obsession with losing weight. Thinking I should starve myself, basing my workouts on calories burned and googling how to order Ozempic online. I even spent a questionable amount of time looking for pro-anorexia websites, my source of inspiration when I was younger. Unfortunately, or fortunately, these don't really exist anymore, but it didn't stop me from looking.

At one of the highs of my addiction, I was 3 stone lighter than I am now. I would run out of work in the middle of the day to weigh myself and lived on a steady diet of coffee and cocaine. Kate Moss would have been proud of me, but I wasn't. Even at my thinnest, I still wasn't thin enough. For some reason, in my teen years, I convinced myself that I needed to weigh 120lbs, partly due to Bridget Jones' Diary and partly due to Lyndsey Lohan for some reason. Despite the fact that other than Mean Girls and The Parent Trap, I've never been much of a fan of. 

And when she got put on tag and Chanel created an entire line of ankle bags inspired by her, which was fucking iconic. 

I never reached this exact goal weight; I was always a pound or two off, but when I was as close as could be, I still wasn't thin enough. Even when I essentially had what I wanted, I still wasn't happy. 

Regardless of how far down the rabbit hole of my eating disorder I may return throughout my life, I'm never going to be truly happy if I lose that much weight again. There's no such thing as "thin" for me. I wasn't happy at that weight, so what's the point in trying to reach that unhealthy goal again?

The same thing can be said for my job. I'm struggling at the moment and spent a good half an hour the other day crying in bed, cuddling Hastings Bear. I didn't quite cry myself to sleep, but I was pretty damn close. I need a break from hospitality. Bar work in general is quite draining, but being classed as a casual worker only makes it worse. My boss can fire me at any moment, and she has control over whether or not I can pay my bills each week, by the number of hours she gives me. 

I had a job that was going to sponsor me for my permanent residency, and I lost it. I had initially reached out to marketing companies to look for writing jobs, and after extensive correspondence and a lot of waiting, I was finally offered a job as a personal assistant. I didn't want to be a personal assistant. I'm not a personal assistant, but I was determined to find a job that would allow me to stay in Australia long term. I'm a writer, I've always been a writer, and I will always be a writer. Entering into a career path that didn't make me happy was never going to make me happy, regardless of whether they sponsored me or not. And three years is a long time to not be doing what you want. As Charlotte said in the Sex and the City movie when she revealed she was pregnant, nobody gets everything they want, and this is true. But I'm allowed to have some of the things that I want. I've worked this hard for this long, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. 

Although unlike Charlotte, I haven't shit myself this year. And that's always a bonus. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess 

xXx 

Pride, Shakespeare and Cinderella

“The tears shall drown the wind, I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which o’er leaps itself and falls on the other”

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7. 

Hubris may have been Macbeth's hamartia in the Scottish play, but it certainly isn't mine. When you have such cripplingly low self esteem it's hard to feel proud of yourself, or any positive emotion for that matter. After I put the man that raped me in prison people told me that they were proud of me, but those people fade away and leave your life aren't your friends anymore. The low self-esteem, however, stays. 

Last week, I threw my back out. I have a trapped nerve in my spine, and I've thrown it out maybe 4 times in my life. Normally, I end up in the hospital, but as a recovering addict who is also self-aware, that wasn't an option this time. As much as I may want the good painkillers, I can't be trusted with them. The second they're in my possession, they get split, crushed and shoved up my nose with the enthusiasm of a child tasting sugar for the first time. It's good that I've developed this self-awareness and know what I can and cannot do, but the over-the-counter painkillers really weren't cutting it that first night. 

Thursday night and the following day were the worst. I spent two upsettingly long periods of time lying on the bathroom floor, unable to move, dragging myself back to bed like a paralyzed worm, deep breathing through the pain. 

I even wrote myself a little song to the tune of The workout song from Cinderella to jiffy myself along, it went something like this. 

You can do it, you can do it

You can get back into bed. 

You can get up off the floor now, 

So nod your pretty head. 

It kind of helped. 

Anyway, I decided that this time I was determined to move around as soon as I could, and I actually managed to do it. Even though I ended up trying to pick a packet of mortadella ham up off the floor with my toes while trying to make a ham and cheese toastie, I got up and walked around my room when I could. Even if it was just to flick the kettle on. I have never been more thankful for the size of my apartment than I have been these past 7 days. By Sunday, I was able to return to work for a few hours, and today I even made it to the gym. It was only for half an hour, but seeing as I'm still in a great deal of pain, I was actually proud of myself. 

An alien emotion, I can tell you. 

Someone also told me they were proud of me the other day for taking my medication. I thought it was kind of silly at first. I don't do anything, I just pop pills to function. My life would be a hell of a lot easier if I didn't have to, but BPD is just something I live with. I asked him what he meant, and he said he was proud of me for taking action to treat and manage my condition when so many people don't and just give in to their mental health problems. I've always just seen taking my medication as something I have to do; I never really thought of it in any other way. I know the whole point of working on my self-esteem is to improve the way I feel about myself and not base my feelings on other people's opinions, but being shown another way I could feel proud has allowed me to feel better on its own. It's not as if I've run a marathon towards my goal of feeling better about myself, but I've managed a short 100m sprint at least. 

I'm also proud of myself for not ordering take out and eating the food I have at home. But that's more because GYG had a $10 burrito deal last month and I ate more Mexican food in one sitting than anyone ever should. $10 burritos or not. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess 

xXx

Procrastination

I give up too easily. I procrastinate, quit, and don't put nearly as much effort into the things that are important to me as I should. My writing is a good example of this. No one reads my writing, other than a friend I met in Toronto which came as a huge surprise to me, and so I often see no point in doing it. 

This is also the case with applying for writing jobs. I tell myself there aren't any, that there's no point in me sending any applications off, and I hit a wall when it comes to writing cover letters. There really is nothing that confuses me more than the idea of writing to someone to ask them to let you write for them. It's kind of like washing your hair only to blow dry it. Frustrating, demoralizing and time-consuming. 

As I said, procrastination is also a problem of mine, especially with writing jobs. At 33 I feel like I'm too old to be the writer that I want to be now, even though that's not even remotely true. If 33 is too old do you what I want with my life and my nan died at 94, what the fuck am I meant to do with the next 61 years? I can't stay as a bartender, my bones won't make it that long. 

I once read a tweet that described a woman asking her mum if she was too old to go back to University, only for her mum to tell her that she'd be four years older in the time it would take her to do her degree regardless of what she decided to do with the time. We never get younger, however much it may upset us, and so there's no point in wasting the time ahead of me because I feel like I'm too old. 

At the start of the year, I did well to write every day, producing and posting content each morning and even going so far as to promote it on social media, which I never do. Not only do I often not see the point in writing if no one is going to read what I have to say, but I don't see the point in promoting it either. Ridiculous I know. How am I meant to reach people with my writing if no one knows that I have written anything? But my brain gets stuck in this cycle of negativity. 

I do love what I do, I'm a great bartender, but I can't stay in hospitality for the rest of my life. I'd like to work in the industry alongside writing, but I can't be a bartender forever. Especially not in the place where I currently work. There is no opportunity for growth or promotion there and certain members of staff of very toxic. Still desperately begging for hours the same way I was when I was 17 doesn't help either. I feel like a failure, and despite all of my achievements I primarily focus on the bad. An inferiority complex my mum once called it. Slightly offensive but undoubtedly true. 

It's very important to get out of this mindset I know, and it's also important for me to focus on my life outside of work. Bartending might (almost) pay the bills but I don't want it to become my entire identity. I see this happening with people I work with and it's very sad to see. Going to the gym and not drinking at work on my time off is helping, but I need to add to the list of things that make me happy outside of the bar. Taking into account the average amount of hours I work and sleep I have 82 hours a week to fill with things that make me happy, and writing is one of those things. 

As of tomorrow, I'm going to go back to writing every day. I have a lot of ideas for posts, articles and pieces that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. No one else is going to put these words onto paper for me, so it's time I stopped wasting my time and did it myself. 

Stay safe on the road

Jess

xXx