Lost and Found


This year I got lost. I flew over the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and through several books, including Olive Kitteridge and Elders. I found my name carved in a tree.

I discovered Rebecca Solnit and Hanukkah donuts (which were much like these, but lemony) and drank too much wine and slept in whenever I could, sometimes because I was tired and sometimes because I just didn't want to have to deal with my day. I made new friends, and spent time with old ones.

I oscillated between writing and thinking and planning and cooking and wishing I didn't have to feed all these fricken carnivorous marsupials every day, but I fed them anyway, raw mince and calcium powder and vitamin drops. They, in turn, bit me and urinated and defecated and ejaculated on me and I wiped my hands on my jeans. All in the name of science.


In Malaysia, I tried fresh durian and roti chani. In Scotland, I learned to salt my porridge. At home, I topped pita bread pizzas with crisp green salad and tangy vinaigrette, and poured milk over cereal, and ground freshly-roasted beans for coffee. And in the evenings, Robbie made fires in the Weber on the deck and we sat outside - sometimes with Nelle and sometimes with friends - to watch the Brisbane sky darken and the fruit bats fly over, and when we were alone we talked about trips and renovations and ideas and our daughter. Stories I'd written and edited and submitted. Rejections. Existential crises. We laid next to each other in bed and watched people deal with kingdoms and zombies and surely that's more difficult than our everyday middle-class lives, right? 


I boxed the shit out of some heavy bags and did as much yoga as I remembered to and walked in the desert. One month, I had a massage a week. I got stressed and angry and got shingles in my mouth and my daughter watched too much TV. Good mother, bad mother. A funny bright spot on an MRI, the pinch of a long needle, the sting of mortality, relief. I had a short story printed in Christmas crackers


I chopped potatoes for roasting and danced in the kitchen to London Grammar and sometimes my daughter would dance with me but even if she didn't, I would. That's something. And you know that fuzzy feeling you have when you just wake up in the morning? Pushing your way through a muck, a haze, a softness, into the light and with some sadness leaving behind the imagined that you will never see again for the real, the very real ...

Well, that was 2014. Sometimes you need a year like that, a year of dreams, to prepare you for what's next.


And what's next?

The dreams will solidify, like clay left out in the dry air, formed and unformed and chalky in my hand. I'm going to write out my heart into science and short stories and essays and here, yes here. I'm going to stop worrying about whether I can be one thing or another thing and just do all these things, even the things that scare me. I'm going to push out, break out, crack open and live. Start seeing my real self in the mirror. Work towards strong. Experience individual moments. Carve my name somewhere. Taste my food, my world, my life.

That's my plan for 2015. What's yours?
Amanda xx

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