I'm looking for music, happy tunes and happy words- and i love the guitar and piano when they kinda stroll together in a song then prance- just at the right moment when the voice floats in over the top of that and melts into it with pretty words, it makes me feel like the world is just ooozing with goodness.
If anyone knows those kinda songs, come on share with me bros.
Hehe... i woke up kinda hung over from binge talking. Dave n i got into all sorts of deep discussions and i told him about some stuff not many people know about me.
i've been thinking i'm gonna do a few special blogs to the kids soon- coz if i die like of some sudden unfortunate whatever people die of suddenly and unfortunately- i'd like them to know certain things. Just about who i am, who i was when they were born... who i became as we got to know each other...
But for tonight i might start with who i WAS before them... the way i think i was anyway, you can't be too sure of these things anymore. Memories are fickle and tend to be unreliable with age. Think of it as a prologue.
Kids, i was born in 1980- haha i know thats taking it RIGHT back. I was born in Vietnam, in Bac Lieu. Birthed by my grandmother. (My mums, mum was a midwife.) My mum was.... well she was- an enigma.
I can't remember being really little. I've only heard the stories of leaky boats and communist soldiers walking past us as we hid in the bushes, of pirates and refugee camps and how i was so sick on the Island when we arrived to be processed mum thought i was going to die and sold the bits of gold bracelets and necklaces she'd sewn into our clothes for medicine for me.
They told me stories of how the people at the camp would call me halfcast because of my light skin and light hair and carry me around. Dad told me stories of rats running across us as we slept and how he and the other men would catch them and throw them up against the walls to kill them. These were only stories and the only time i can remember feeling a little of that reality was when we went fishing on a little dingy years and years later and mum was terrified. She looked it. It took me a little while to realise what it would have reminded her of and how the look on her face was far away - and it struck me that i hardly knew her.
Anyway, i was always quiet as a kid because people were loud and despite the many exchanges of sounds, there were often many misunderstandings. People were bad at listening to each other i realised from a young age. I preferred to watch and read.
I remember being in Kindy and the teachers were talking to my mum one day and saying that they thought they were saying my name wrong, and i said no it's okay because they couldnt say Vien the way it sounds in Vietnamese so they broke it into Vee- N which was fine with me, but they asked me to ask my mum something and i burst into tears, because i just didn't want to talk anymore. Seriously. Emo right?
I remember that only because i remember the feeling really well, of just not wanting to say anything and everyone was staring at me and i just didn't know what to do being stuck there without a voice.
Hehe... in primary school i made very few real friends, i spent a lot of lunchtimes and recesses reading, and thinking kids were strange and silly.
My best memories of childhood were of Malabar street and our neighbours. Jane who lived in the house with the bell that was like an old maids bell. The kind that summoned you to dinner. Her house was blue and she was old with white hair and she always left a stool for us to ring her doorbell. She let me draw at her table and her husband Jim was always around but never said anything. She gave mum cakes from Sara Lee because her daughter worked at the factory. They had a dog that looked like Lassie and it ran away on one of their holidays one day, and then one year Jane died and i never spoke to Jim but felt bad for him being left all alone.
Next door to us, lived Mr Gilbert, who was the sweetest old man ever. He gave us his grandkids old toys, and a puppy one year and showed us how to look after it. He would let us sit in his boat in his back yard and light bonfires for us, and sing us songs at christmas time. Then he married a lady who looked like a witch. And she never invited us over.
Across the road lived Trevor and his mum and dad, and they had a pond with lizards and turtles. Dad sold old stereos that he got broken from Strathfield Car Radios- out of our Garage, and it was nice to always have people around.
Back then we were allowed to stay out til sunset, and sometimes we were left alone while our parents went to work and once to protest (that was the night the house flooded and i was up to my knees in water and it was scary but insanely fun all at once)- back in those days somehow it was okay to leave kids, because the neighbourhood watched out for each other and there was trust.
It's not the same anymore kids.
Anyway this wasn't meant to go back so far. But since it has i guess i should say, as kids we were poor, but happy. We had these memories of playing with our cousins, going to the markets early in the morning. Grilled cheese sandwiches still remind me of dad. And white vans sometimes bring back the memory of rainy days early mornings and how we all squeezed into cars or just bumped around in the Back of the van surrounded by speakers and stereos with the knobs that came off.
In highschool i found my voice, and a sense of humour and a bunch of friends different to those i usually hung with. When skipping school landed me in detention a mortified asian mum begged the Deputy principle for leniency and when failing she enrolled me into an all girls school.
Haha i made excellent friends, and for me, as the cliche goes- highschool was some of the best years of my life. They certainly were in retrospect the simplest.
After school i meandered - got into Uni without wanting to go to uni and in the confusion of finding a true path and adhering to expected routes- i lost myself.
And classically- on the outside i was a joker, a little out of touch a little insane... inside i was a mess of a lot of things. One day somewhere round 22-23 after transferring to a different uni course for the 3rd time- i lost it completely and quit just about everything. For a year and a half i pretended to go to uni - i got up, got dressed packed books- and caught the bus and train to anywhere and nowhere. I kept skeletal relationships and wanted to avoid everyone. When i try and explain it- it was just that the noise of what i was supposed to be for everyone else, made it hard to breathe, hard to hear what that screaming panic was trying to tell me.
I guess it presents as a depression. My boyfriend at the time pushed me to see counsellors and doctors and in his efforts to fix me, he broke me completely. Sometimes when you feel broken, the only thing you want or need to hear from the person you want most to accept you- is that you are just fine. Just the way you are. Even the shards of the person you are, are beautiful pieces of a puzzle that only needed to be put back together.
He had great intentions i'm sure. But all i heard was that i needed to be fixed, that i was not good enough yet. He always seemed to be up ahead- waiting for me to catch up. And i tried to make up the paces but never could get there.
It was a long process. I pushed people away. I shrank. I never slept and never stopped thinking. Mum told the doctor when my tear duct got infected from what he said was a blockage, that it was because i never used them, coz i never cried. I was the easy going one. Relaxed and quiet, quick with a smile and a shrug.
I remember nights where i could not breathe from the tears, how i dreaded the nighttimes and then the mornings even worse, because i hadn't slept and now i had to get up and pretend again that it was all okay.
When people started noticing that i never went out anymore- to avoid the confrontations- I went- just drove and got out sometimes to wander and often ended up listening to strangers tell me stories of their sad lives. Broken people attracted each other, and i spent the better part of that year and a half, with people who were more broken than me, who knew not to judge, who recognised one of their own. The homeless people, the drunks, the strung out weirdos people avoided on the streets. I would sit with them and they would tell me stories. More often than not just disjointed ramblings... i don't even know what it did for me. Just that it happened like that.
I remember very clearly - pulling the pieces of myself apart, trying not to think of the possibility that i wouldn't know how to piece them back together.
Sometimes i am terrified that i'll pass that onto my kids that unbearable sense of darkness, sometimes i think it was passed onto me...
I can remember telling myself i needed to stop. I remember telling myself it was time to get back out there. I forced it to a grind, and some days were good, some days not so much. But it was hard, and it was slow.
I believe though, everything prepares you for what is to come. When i came out of that period- i'd made my foundations stronger. The noise surrounding me had been turned down and i knew where that switch lay now.
I picked up the parts that were still there, and retaught myself how to be with people. To be interested in people, to be genuine again... to not blame anyone for the choices that were mine.
I don't know if anyone even noticed. But it didn't matter. I was back.
At 25 i let go one more time. Of relationships that no longer fit. Then of Mum, the one who i always watched with a mix of confusion and admiration and- sadness, in her i always saw personified what i felt. Cept she was held back by tradition, bordered by a sense of responsibility drilled into her and cemented. Inescapable.
Her official cause of death was heart failure. And it was apt. Her heart had failed her. After all the years of trying, it gave up and gave in... i had watched her all my life, sometimes voicing my concerns uncertainly, most of the time just watching anxiously. What i feared most was that i was like her. What i knew was that, i had more resources, more opportunities.... and if i couldnt help myself what hope was there of helping anyone.
Mum was amazing, but she never believed that. Never saw it in herself, i don't know if anyone told her enough while she was still around. I know since that night, noones said a bad word about her. It's sad that people wait til its too late.
It reinforced though- my views about regret. Not to have them, and if to have them, not to hold them. Regrets are wasted days.
Once - when we were kids, they took us swimming at the Georges River, and we were playing with boogie boards and somehow got swept out too far. My younger cousin in his panic - used mine and my other cousins heads to push down on in order to keep himself afloat.
I don't even know if anyone else remembers this. Or knows how close i was to drowning that day. When my uncle came out to pull the other two in, i sunk under and remember seeing the sun slipping away- and my chest stopped hurting - and another cliche i've lived- is, where they say your life flashes before your eyes- but its not really like that, random moments flashed in my mind- insignificant extremely random memories. And i felt nice for a split second, watching the sun move further from me- before an arm grabbed mine and suddenly there was air and river water going up and down my throat at once.
I didn't want to say anything about it then- because i was scared to get in trouble, the memory is really clear though, in my mind. The pain of not being able to breathe- then the quietness that was absolutely lovely.
I like the blogs that capture a moment of us. As we are, a photograph in text type.
This post is really a summary of little things that have led up to here. Of a me, i know is still in there, smiling at the person who wakes up and makes 3 bowls of breakfast, prepares lunches, answers to 'mum' and worries about how to go about doing the things that need to be done.
Sometimes i look back and i can hardly remember the details. But strangely enough, and i've never written it down like this before- these moments above are the things that i do remember most.
Before there was a They and i - there was just i.
To past lives and reincarnations. A nod and a smile.
Today they loved going to the movies with Aunty Vinnie.
Jace liked watching Kung Fu Panda when he woke up and reading 'Bertie and the Bear'.
I liked finding funny people that i don't know, who are just silly coz they can be, but at the same time are talented and are out there, testing out the waters, showing the world their stuff. And making me laugh.
This is just a random post - putting some weird stuff about me out there. Not even all grateful much. Haha but wait no it is- it relates!! All the things that i remember make me- Me, and i'm glad to be who i am today and if you dudes got issues with it then bite me coz i'm HARDCORE, like a rock- like concrete. Haha... night ya'll.
Hahaha yes its a bit lame, but so so funny. Cept for the last line about farting- thats just silly now.
Shhhh haters shhhhh. LoL
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