Just thinking about where I was in my life at the start of last year. So excited to start a degree in Film Production. It seemed like I was finally gonna study what I truly wanted to study, to get me where I really wanted to be. I was excited. Then TumourGate happened and I had to drop out. I was, at the time, hugely disappointed.
Now when I use Facebook I see posts from people I friended from that degree for group assignment purposes and retch at the idea of having to do assessment that requires me to stand up.
the further I get away from it and the more I think about it, the weirder it feels that a bit over a year ago I had a biopsy to figure out if I had fucking cancer
goddamn
pretty cool when you feel so ill that you can’t make it the 5 mins from the bus stop
without bursting into tears and having to sit sobbing in the gazebo within spitting distance of your house because you’ve been sick in one form or another for 7 months
i do not for the life of me know how people deal with serious chronic illnesses
i don’t even know what this (perpetual stomach ache, bloating, lethargy, going to the bathroom every half hour) is and it’s awful
i wish it were a thing where you could leave a body and transfer into a new one that isn’t burnt out. get rid of the gammy tumour leg and the digestive system that seems designed to destroy me from within and all the psychological issues that come with it
i’m just so fucking tired of not being able to function normally
Well that just happened
Fuck. :(
just had a serious thought
about posting my story about my tumour and how it forced me to quit my job and university and i have not been able to find work (seriously, brisbane, what the fuck) since april and i now have $20 and at least a couple hundred in debt and my laptop’s battery has died and no longer charges, and so trying to become some kind of horrible tumblr sensation where a few hundred people each donate me a dollar (kickstartaaaaaaa) and then i can start having, well, a life again and it’s one of those hooray the internet is nice stories
like so much of me is desperate enough to do that but i just don’t think i can
and no one would actually give me anything so whatever
and i guess this comes off as a subtle way of saying DO IT ANYWAY GIMME and i suppose in part it is but mostly it’s just getting the annoying thought of it out of my head
oh jesus christ
there’s no fucking escape is there
I am a sad sad sad sad sad sad sad man.
I do not know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, or whether or not there’s any purpose in doing it at all, yet I continue despite constant fruitlessness. But it’s not wrong to want the best for yourself, right? Especially when it’s the best for all involved? That much I know, at least. Why, then, am I the only one who can see that it is? I’m setting the goal but I’m the only one to commit.
i have an interview (i think?) in a couple of hours
for an internship with my city’s international film festival
please let me get it please. PRAY. FOR. MOJO.
I wish I hadn’t started my previous (and only) relationship so young. I wasn’t fully out of the closet at the time and when I look back, that sole fact stands out as the reason everything went wrong down the line. I was still so ill at ease with myself that it took me until quite recently to reconcile a lot of feeling I have about it. But my problem was that when faced with proper commitment and intimacy, I freaked out. It’s not that I wasn’t in love with him - I was, and still am - it’s simply that I didn’t know what to do about it. So as I tried to stay in the shallow end, he tried to pull me into the deep end, and when I became too afraid I’d simply get out of the pool, to use this painful analogy a little more. That would last a very brief amount of time, because we could rarely resist our emotional and physical chemistry. And then it would cycle all the way back around. It was my fault entirely, all of it, and I hate myself for it. Because even though we both want to be together, I did too much damage and lost his trust. It’s the most idiotic, self-absorbed, painful thing I’ve ever done. And now he’s moved on and is with someone else, and try as I might, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a shame to feel hurt and helpless as well as alone. I don’t know if I can move on. For various reasons, it was a big deal to become so comfortable with someone once before. I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll end up together anyway…although I’m sure lots of people think that, and perhaps I’m naive for doing so myself, it being my first relationship and whatnot, but sometimes that kind of connection is hard to deny. It’s as strong as it ever was months and months later. But the feeling of inevitability is hard to live with when you can’t grasp it in the moment. If we’d met now, or even a year ago rather than two and a half, things would be so different. I wish I hadn’t been so idiotic and immature then.
The last time I got hit on in a non-gross way
by a man out in the open was at the opening night of the Queer Film Festival back in April. I was standing with a group of friends - including my sister - introduced himself and asked to buy me a drink. It was bizarrely forward. I’d seen him looking at me and I’d made eye contact once, which I thought like, no way is that cause for approach. In any case, I was minding my own business and all of a sudden there was this weirdly familiar, taller-than-me dude standing next to me asking to buy me a drink. Considering the only other couple of times that’s happened - I don’t know if I’m unapproachable? I don’t think I would be - it’s been by gross people, and my self-esteem was low at the time, so I was like, “Yeah, okay!”
The dude was pleasant. He was up from Sydney and with a friend of his (which made it weird, like, he asked to buy me a drink and I went to the bathroom, came back, and he was chatting to his friend so all of a sudden I couldn’t tell if they were trying to just befriend me or if the one guy was hitting on me or if both were or if maybe I was being sussed out to join a cult). I think he might have been a teacher? Or like, studying to be one? I don’t really remember because he was a bit bland. To his credit, he liked The Simpsons and could quote it to some degree.
He asked where was good to go out in Brisbane, and I told him about the four dedicated places there are for homos. At no point was I flirty or anything, but nor was he really. Apparently his name was David, I just remembered that. In any case, a friend saw that I was kinda floundering, most likely because of the pointed looks I was making about it, and we all kinda suddenly bailed for a gay bar. He knew where we were going, but my sister and her friend were left behind talking to him. He asked her what his chances were, and she said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t bother.” Which was true. I was never interested, but he was gentlemanly, and who am I to turn down free booze?
So we got to The Wickham and we were chatting at a table outside, when suddenly, David and his nameless friend turn up! And come over to us. Augh. Come on, man? Cue twenty minutes of heinously awkward conversation. I went out to be with my friends in the first place, and I left to go to a bar with my friends so I could hang out with them, and despite a sage warning not to, he came after me anyway.
Admittedly, I felt bad. He wasn’t mean or particularly ugly (just a little bit). He gangled too much, where I like some meat on dem bones. I felt bad because I took the free drink from the guy - he asked if I wanted another and I was un-dickish enough to say no - and kinda maybe led him on a little bit.
But sometimes you just stop feeling bad really easily. Because finally, after they left and I mistakenly, without thinking, gave him my real phone number, I realised that I did the right thing. Doo-doo-doo! My phone buzzed and emitted its familiar tri-tone notification. I looked at the preview of the message on my screen. I saw nothing but the individual use of the letter ‘u’. I put the phone down. I no longer felt bad.
