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OPENING A NEW DOOR

Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and we will have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship to an eight-week intensive writing course. I desperately want to do this course! It is prohibitively expensive, so I need that scholarship. An optional extra in today’s challenge was to do preparatory work for the application and I have just finished it. I found it eye-opening. I am starting to feel exploring this writing will lead me through a new door. I closed the music door, and have yet to find another one. I have a good feeling about this door.

WAR OF THE WORDS

In recent days, I have become entangled in numerous written altercations. Not attacks on me – but I have been made privy to conversations that have left people in my world feeling professionally or personally maligned. And it left me thinking how powerful the written word is, how easily misunderstood the written word is, and how dangerous it can be.

SILENCE

Suicide: It’s a dirty word… People are afraid of it. They don’t want to hear it. Or talk about it. We judge it – we judge ourselves for contemplating it, we judge others for talking about it. And those that go through with it? They receive the most judgement of all. Those most in need of our love and compassion, kindness and understanding – are the ones most likely to be criticised, judged and condemned.

NOT YOUR AVERAGE PATIENT

It is not every day you meet a woman with no ears and half a nose. Lucy Henry is not an average patient in the Emergency Department [ED], with her prominent scars from self-inflicted burns. She is one of the forty thousand patients that present at the Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department each year. This 35-year-old blonde is confident and comfortable in herself, despite the life-altering events of the past 13 years. As she relaxes on her sofa, with devoted dalmatian Lottie nearby, she speaks frankly about her experiences as a self-confessed “frequent flyer” in the emergency department.

TOO GOOD TO EAT

I have been bulimic, on and off, for 30 years – although I developed anorexic behaviours during a breakdown earlier this year, and was (ludicrously) thrilled to bits. But my disordered eating behaviours began way, way earlier than my 20s. In fact, I have no recollection – whatsoever – of having healthy eating thoughts and behaviours, or positive body image and self-esteem. I’m (supposed to be) all grown up now – so casting blame is pointless – I am old enough to take responsibility for my beliefs and actions. But life is rarely simple. Developing my eating disorder was like a jigsaw – a whole gamut of pieces came together to form disordered thinking and maladaptive behaviours. This is how my personal puzzle evolved.

REMEMBER

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death. It is seven years since she passed away after a ten-year battle with breast cancer. Every death anniversary – and I’ve collected a few dead people now – leaves me feeling very melancholy and reflective.

TRUTH

Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please,” later paraphrased as the journalists’ mantra, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story”. Google this phrase and you find yourself overwhelmed with quotes from every corner of the globe. Yet establishing the truth of this phrase alone is no mean feat. The quote first appears in Rudyard Kipling’s From Sea to Sea and other Sketches as part of an interview with Mark Twain. But is Mark Twain really the originator of the quote? Probably – but there is no way to know for sure. Only Mr Kipling and Mr Twain can be certain of the facts during that interview. As readers, we can only but trust that what we read is accurate.