notes; january

Deborah Levy says that if we write our lives as we feel them, we’ll never write anything boring.

I heard writer Deborah Levy say in an interview recently that if we write our lives as we feel them, we’ll never write anything boring. So last night, I lit all the candles in my bedroom, put on a record, and sat down to write about my life as I feel it.

I have been thinking about the fact that during my childhood, I was visible in the places I wanted to be invisible, and invisible in the places I wanted to be seen. And about how much of my adult life has been about trying, desperately, to reverse that, and often overcompensating. Trying to take up space, telling myself I am worthy to, crawling home ashamed that I went too far.

~

Sometimes I am invited to parties and I want to ask the host if there will be flashing lights because flashing lights give me panic attacks but I don’t want to Make A Big Deal about something seemingly innocuous because Everyone Gets Triggered These Days.

~

Numbers from 2025: 2 bundt cakes (one pistachio and rose water, one butter and orange). 1 batch of chocolate caramel slice. 1 times crying in the cinema (We Live in Time). 6 books read (Catching the Light by Joanna Horton, Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson, The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, Motherhood by Sheila Heti). 1 baby jumper knitted. 5 consecutive days without shitting.

~

When I was 12 years old, the Church convinced parents like mine that little girls wouldn’t need to line up at school for the HPV vaccine. They were assured that if they raised their daughters in a Christ-centred home, they would never practice sex before marriage and therefore, would never be exposed to the virus.

Despite the compelling story, this negated the spiritual agency of the child and it failed to account for the risks of sexual abuse. (By this age, it is likely I had already contracted the virus, but that is beside the point.)

Last year I lay on my back and sucked on a green whistle while a gynecologist pried me open like a packet of chips and scraped out HPV cells that were deemed ‘high risk’. She opened a plastic envelope with a hormonal uterine device and wedged it in my cervix while she was there. I paid the $1500 fee and left feeling like my body had, once again, been invaded.

~

The day after the cells were scraped and the device inserted, I sat in my therapist’s office in Sydney and cried because the next time I will have the device removed will be the time I decide to start trying for a baby.

“I think I always hoped I would accidentally fall pregnant,” I sobbed. “Because then I wouldn’t have to make the decision.”

~

Why don’t doctors make the poking and prodding of our most vulnerable body parts a little softer? Why must the light be so harsh, the voice so clinical, the textures and sounds so devoid of tenderness? I want to be asked: what can I do to make this experience more comfortable for you? I want to learn how to verbalise my answer.

~

Standing on the shore that afternoon felt like I was being carried to bed after a long drive, head lolling against the warm arm of a parent. BP was watching the swift parrots feast on blossoms through his binoculars, the water was lapping gently at my feet.

~

The youngest of the Little Women follows me out to the car.

“Look at my undies!” she says, lifting her patterned nighty. “It has a sun and some birds on it!”

“That’s very fun,” I tell her, ushering a wooden chair into the back seat.

“Do you have undies on?” she asks me.

“Yes, but only boring black ones,” I say, turning to her.

“Why don’t you have fun undies on? You should get some fun undies,” she says, resolutely.

Later, I scroll through Bonds’ Adults Undies online but I can’t find anything fun enough.

~

I have been visited by the Queen of Swords twice this month.

The first time, she stood at the door, arms folded, peering through the glass. She told me without speaking that she wouldn’t let anyone inside.

The second time, she sat beside me in the car. I tried to reach for her but my hand fell through the sky. She was looking out the window, she did not speak, but she was there.

~

“If I had my time again, I’d be a lesbian,” she says, throwing her hand out in front of her. “My husband is useless, honestly.”

I look up from my book to find the woman speaking and see two of them.

The other woman laughs.

“You think you have three kids but you actually have four. One is just a giant man-child. I actually preferred it when he was away for work, I got things done. There was less to do.”

I get off the train and walk to a meeting in town.

“How are you?” I ask the receptionist, placing my bag on the floor.

“Four years since my divorce today! Best decision I ever made!”

~

My therapist tells me I need to find a somatic way of processing my rage. So I have taken to throwing myself in the pool, knees pressed to my chest, a great big exhale as I tumble into the water.

~

Last week, I lay on my bed and yelled into my pillow: I WANT TO BE AN ARTIST. My hand was frantically sketching ideas in a notepad, with a force that didn’t feel like my own. I think my rage is making commandments of me.

~

Notes in my iPhone (scribed by Siri while driving):

• more visual arts practice roasted peaches tennis

• does my faceID grow old with me

• self-sabotaging gives you the ability to control the outcome

• gratitude that I left Christianity before TikTok became a thing

• make mars bars slice

• please let me make my life beautiful

~

I went for a walk with an ex-boyfriend once and he told me about a dream he had after I broke up with him. He was a little boy playing on a swing set and he fell off and broke his wrist and I, in my adult body, turned my back on him.

“That wasn’t me,” I told him. “That was your mother.”

~

I spent a lot of my years lamenting the ways that my friends/lovers/family would not be enough for me. I didn’t spend enough time reflecting on the ways that I would not be enough for them.

~

Things on my ‘100 Things in 2025’ list inspired by Sal (and Jess): pat a donkey, catch a fish, paint a canvas, get a kitten, get my nose pierced, take tennis lessons, no Coca-Cola for one week, no therapy for three months, spin a ball of wool, read a fantasy series, swim two kilometers, run ten.

~

I sit in the middle of a clearing overlooking Roaring Beach in Tasmania and I ask the trees what they want to teach me. I close my eyes and let myself cry and then pick up my pen and start writing.

Every version of you belongs here.

I walk up to the dead tree, the only one in the circle of trees I am surrounded by. I touch the dry and brittle branches.

My soul is weary, my heart is warm, and despite a sense of trepidation about the year ahead, I am so glad to be here.