Is it possible to grieve continuously at a nearly subconscious level? Each day apon waking I ask myself this very question. The waves of sadness that engulf and threaten to strangle me on occasion make me feel that actually it must be. How do you remain happy in a desolate and depressing landscape?How do you stay true to your roots and true to who you really are as a person, the essence of you, when all around you are so alien, so intrinsically different to you? Or are they? These thoughts have plagued me for around 4 years now. I fear this deep well of aching distress will eventually be the death of me, one way or another, whether by my own hand or by manifestation of an illness so severe that I will be allowed back to the cocoon from which I was violently ripped four years ago, because who could deny you a dying wish when faced with the option?

My name is Ariel Hornsby and this is my story.

Shall we begin at the beginning? I was born to lovely parents in a lovely city, one that experiences all seasons on any given day, my favourite being winter. My love of cold weather would come to work against me in my later years although I was never to know this when I was born. My parents were young motorcycle riding beat hipsters and they did love each other very much, however love is never usually enough and especially so when you are 26 and 23 years old respectfully and found with the task of a sad and crying infant terrified of being alone. My mother lost her own mother during my gestation, which must have been a truly awful thing which I can now not even fathom, having as I do such a beautiful bond and friendship with my mum. My father had emmigrated from an asian nation when he was very young, having lost his father by his fathers own hand, when my Dad was only 9.This no doubt has led to my fathers love of being around a large family of friends at all times, and a celebration of life lived to extremes wherever possible, to always feel alive and involved and engaged by life's experiences. And so they loved but it was not enough. My Dad loved a lot of people at the one time and this did not help the marriage in any way. By the time I was six my parents had finally officially decided to go their separate ways, but somehow did this together. I never felt unloved by either of them and I only ever witnessed one argument to my knowledge. My parents decided to make a tree change, along with a few of their friends from this gloriously hip, grey city. They climbed into their kombis, fiats, and onto BSA Bantam and Matchless and Honda motorcycles, and took to the hills. They found themselves at The Aquarius Festival in Nimbin, Northern NSW in 1978. This was a time of great change and excitement and Nimbin then was a small dairy farming community that truthfully was really not prepared for the onslaught of thousands of half naked long haired freewheeling dope smoking lovers of freedom and free thinking.

Around this time my parents bought into a shared property of approximately 240 acres, no electricity, beautiful hills, mountains and creeks surrounding. A share cost around $2000 and bought you a house site and a share in a community of like minded people- all interested in building their own homes, growing their own vegies, bringing their kids up in a lush,clean and green environment, using solar power, carpooling, having community meals and generally leaving a small footprint on the earth. This was in 1978, way before being green was considered a cool new way of thinking. I cannot express what a huge impact this upbringing has had on my life. When I was two years old, my parents were part of a growing number of environmental activists, perhaps partly by design and partly by being in the right place at the right time.They had moved to this wonderous lush rainforested land, and all of a sudden found it being threatened by a traditionally redneck profession, logging. In this case, old growth logging. Loggers were proposing to chop down trees in Terania Creek, in what is now known as Nightcap National Park. Horrifying for the new hippie settlers who felt they had found paradise, they decided to fight against this decision. They and a few hundred of their new found friends. It remains an historical win for the environment, the stopping of the logging of Terania Creek. I am immensley proud of my parents and their peers, and feel special and blessed at having been present at this protest in 1978, at the ripe age of 2 years old. I have a copy of the DVD "Give trees a chance", the documentary of this amazing event, and watch it whenever I am feeling homesick, and sit and wait for the scenes I am in, and cry into my vegan hot chocolate as I see the fresh little me, unencumbered by the world and all it's evils, and I feel so devastatingly and horrendously sad that I do not still live near the rainforest that I helped to save. I hate myself most days for not having the guts to leave my life and go back to where I feel I belong, but more of that later. It feels so important and real to watch these scenes of people actively standing up for what they feel is important, and to hell with your fucked up job or stupid mortage or bills. I hate that my life is not that free, that I am not able to just camp in the forest for a few weeks to help change the face of history. When I rewatch this film, I feel a failure for not being true to myself and my ideals and passions. I feel I am living a half life, one in which I am a pretend character, acting out a person's life that does not resemble how I feel at all.

Although I was one of maybe only 2 brown skinned people in the valley, I never really noticed this at all, growing up as I did in such a cocoon of acceptance. This became clear to me one morning on the way home from school.

I was about eight years old. Seated on my little bush school bus, traveling to my hand built mudbrick home on a commune named ‘Rainbow Falls Co-op’. I lived here with my mum and now my stepfather. A short walk up a dirt road embraced by spectacular gumtrees and the song of birds, is my Dad’s house. There are ten shareholders on this 240 acre parcel of paradise. This is the community I previously mentioned, where once a week all the shareholders and their families gather in the ‘community building’ (or ‘the comeeelding’ as one of my little sisters in later years would call it) for a communal meal. Each family would take turns to cook a meal for everyone each week. It was such a beautiful and idyllic way to grow up and a place I felt completely safe and respected and nurtured, and a place that makes me feel this way still.

Back to the day on the bus. About half way home, a local kid named Ben decided to move seats and sit in the seat in front of me, and turned to face me, looking straight into my eyes. Ben – about 6 or 7 years old, lived about 10 mins from me. Ben’s family are fourth generation dairy or beef farmers, one of the original settlers in this area who have since become the minority since ‘the hippies’ have moved in and onto the land.

On this sun drenched afternoon on the bus, Ben began to chant at me. “we don’t like darkies!” “ and again “we don’t like darkies!” he chants , over and over and over. I feel my tiny wholesome and trusting heart breaking. I’m shocked and confused, and hurt. I ignore him. He continues. On and on he goes, and another small boy named Raymond begins to join in. I thought Raymond was my friend. I feel hot and sad, and very unsafe. I stare straight ahead and do not respond.

The bus driver keeps on driving. The other kids are quiet. This continues for what seems like hours but is most likely only about five minutes or so.

A boy named Cairn, who is about 11 or 12 years old , approaches from the back seat of the bus where the cool and older kids sit. He stands right in front of Ben and says “If you don’t shut up I’m going to punch your head in.”. Ben stops. A horrified look on his face, he turns around and is silent, as is the other boy. Cairn smiles at me and goes back to the end of the bus.

We all travel onwards, the rumble of the bus on the dirt road the only sound. My heart beat slows. Many years later, Cairn would become my boyfriend, for a brief moment in time. We still occasionally run into each other and a hug is always a given.

That night I tell my mum what happened. She does what every good mum would do, and rings the boys’ parents. The next day on the bus I receive two apologies. One from Raymond who has a lovely family who are also long time farmers in the area but who see no threat from ‘the hippies’ and they continue to live side by side in the valley to this day. Raymond looks sad and very genuinely sorry. The second apology is from Ben who spits it at me, as though he has been forced to do it and the resentment and hatred is there in his eyes, there in his whole being, so much anger for a seven year old.

This was such a shock to me, being treated like this. Even though I did come from a 'broken home', my parents separated when I was 6, my mum repartnered with my lovely stepfather, and I moved from the city to the extreme country, I never really felt uprooted or unsettled, and I always felt supremely loved. My parents remained friends and are still to this day, and our blended families always spend christmas together, all my sisters from both new marriages and both 'step' parents as well. I realise the older I get that this is a rare occurence, and perhaps this feeling of being safe and loved in childhood is a rare occurence for most people as well. However for me, this idea that I was different in any way had not really crossed my mind before then.

I learned two things that day on the bus, one is the realisation that I was a different colour to most people where I lived, and that this would always be an issue for some people, and also that the world is not a safe place, but if you surround yourself with people who care about you, everything will always be ok.

I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have been a part of such an amazing movement and lifestyle and it brings tears to my eyes when I realise this was probably the best time of my life,and it has now passed.The downside to growing up in such idyllic conditions is that you inevitablely spend the rest of your life trying to recreate it, in some way. All my life I feel I have been chasing the feeling of being in this world again, but no amount of tofu and crystal deodorant has brought it back. Yet. I say yet because today, I feel hopeful. I do not always feel this hopeful, but for today, the sun is shining, the haze has lifted and I can see into the future, and all hope has not abandoned me.

I lived in this wonderful valley world until I was 18 years old. On approaching this significant age, I began to resent my 'boring' life, with all it's trees and hippies and stuck in the past ideals ( or so I thought at the time). I had met my boyfriend in high school maths class at the age of about 16. We were very much besotted with each other despite an obvious difference in goals and values.His name was Elliot Peters. He was part Aboriginal, with the most beautiful green/grey/blue eyes and mocha brown skin. I remember the first time my Dad met Elliot.

"what, so, you like went and picked the best looking guy in the school and brought him home?" "um...yeah Dad that's exactly how it went". From that day he was embraced into the cocoon of my family, having had a slightly troubled upbringing of his own, he had moved to the area to live with his uncle and aunty as his mum could not control or handle him. His mum drank, and stories of him learning to drive at an early age ( like 11 or 12 ) and having to learn this skill so he could pick his mum up from the pub when she was too drunk to drive home, these were stories that were completely foreign to me. I mean, I grew up in a valley where the majority of people's incomes came from the cultivation of marijuana, and my Dad was a Registered Nurse who worked in the Methadone on the weekend shifts, but this feeling of having to look after your parents, of the role reversal, didn't really touch me. Apart from a memory I have of my Dad visiting me in the valley from Melbourne, before he had moved there permanently, and he was in tears, distraught and vulnerable. He was weeping and I saw such a sadness in him, that my 9 year old self did not quite know what to do with. I had heard my Dad discussing the issue of money with my Mum, and so I wanted to help him. I went to my cat shaped piggy bank and emptied it, all 21 dollars of it which was a large amount for a 9 year old. I gave it to my Dad, and told him " it's ok Dad, I have some money you can have."

This, of course, made my Dad cry. He would not take my 21 dollars, and explained to me that he and his girlfriend were not getting along and that was why he was sad, and that he did not need my money. He hugged me close and I felt his sobs and heaving chest.It may have been the first disillusionment of adulthood for me, seeing my Dad so sad. I had seen my Mum cry before, but that was on an anniversary of her mother's death, who died when my mum was 26 and pregnant with me. This was easier to process than my Dad being sad because he had no money.

So I grew up fairly sheltered when it came to parental problems, compared to my beautiful boyfriend. In hindsight it seems unreal that I expected him to have emotional maturity and intelligence, when he had come from a damaged background.I just assumed that everyone was equal, as that was what I was taught. Everyone deserved respect, and you should expect respect from everyone else in the world, regardless of their upbringing. Elliot's father had a history of heroin use, and was now long term on methadone.The only thing I really knew about him before I met his Dad was that he could no longer sustain an erection due to such long term drug use and vein damage, this was the sum of what Elliot had told me about him. Also that he had a mushroom tattoo on his ankle with Elliot's name. We went to visit him once, I think were were about 17. Boarding the train from the city of Sydney and riding it to Fairfield. On arrival at the station after dark, we saw a fight between several asian youths break out on the platform across from us. I watched as the ticket person locked themselves into their booth and pulled the shutters down. We were a long way from the valley. Or Kansas, as the saying goes.

We arrived at his Dad's home, and I was met by a large white man with a long ponytail and the years of drug use etched in the creases of his forehead and the pain of lost time etched in his eyes. He was pleasant to me, and began by giving us the safe sex talk.Too late for that really, as we had been sexually active for over a year by then. Over dinner he asked me in a confrontational manner " So, what do you want to do with your life?You can't just sit there and look pretty for the rest of your life." I had never before been spoken to like this, least of all by an adult. I was shocked, and probably flattered that he thought I was pretty, as being 17 you tend to spend a lot of time wondering if people find you attractive. I had never really thought much about what I wanted to do with my life, I was just happy living it. I always loved music, and had an inkling that being a band manager might be a really cool thing to do, since I knew so much about music. I loved punk, thrash,grunge, metal, anything loud, powerful and heavy.Music that made you feel something.I always imagined myself as a cool rock chick organising all these musos to turn up to their gigs and interviews. God knows what made me think this would be a satisfying or interesting job. I'm not sure what I said in response to this question , but I remember Elliot's Dad looking at me with a look like " you'll be pregnant in a couple of years and that's what you'll do with your life so it doesn't really matter". I cannot say for sure that is what he was thinking, but I was determined to prove that look wrong. Interestingly, I am now 38, married ( not to Elliot), and childless.

Elliot and I never visited his Dad again together. I don't really think this was significant, it's just that in the 5 years we were together it never really happened again. he visited once when Elliot and I were about 19, living together in Lismore, but I don't have a memory of it, only that he didn't stay the night.

So yes, Elliot and I were together for 5 tumultuous years. I loved him desperately, and physically we were very compatible, but we really did not like the same things at all. He loved to smoke a lot of pot, take a lot of drugs, go surfing, play his guitar, see live bands, hang out with lots of friends,going to parties, he was always looking for something more exciting to do, and consequently someone more exciting to do. I had a steady job in a bookshop, I loved going to the movies, cooking dinner at home ( actually make that having dinner cooked for me, I was not much of a cook), opshopping, going to local markets, spending time with my family, reading books, animals, drawing and listening to music. I liked seeing bands as well, just didn't like the party scene that came with that hobby. Our relationship, in hindsight at least, was not really ever destined to last, although I really wanted it to because I loved him, and I believed he loved me too. At the age of 18 I decided it would be best for me to leave the area and move to the city, that city being Sydney. This was 1994 and Sydney was the place you moved to if you were raised in the country. I had high ideals of how my city life would unfold, I would get a cool job, live in a share house and generally have a great time. The relationship between Eliiot and I was discussed before I left. I explained that I had always planned to move to Sydney after finishing high school, and that if he did not want to come with me that was ok. We made a harebrained decision to stay together in a way that meant we were free to see other people, but when I came home to visit we were exclusively together. Absurd I know, but made the break a bit easier at the time.

I lasted only about 6 months in Sydney, homesick a theme that has run with me my whole adult life. The city was mean and dirty and I was shy, naive and did not know how to get a job. I stayed with a friend of my Mum's ( an ex valley member herself) and her flatmate Josie. My Mum's friend was going through a strange phase in her life where she didn't really speak to anyone and preferred to spend most of her time on the purpose built top floor of her home- a beautiful high verandah overlooking the backyard which had some trees and grass, sun streamed through the windows of her lovely big bedroom and she had an ensuite up there as well. She smoked a lot of pot and occasionally made an appearance downstairs with us common people that rented rooms in her home, but she never really engaged, save for a vacant stare and a slow walk back upstairs if you made eye contact.

I was desperately seeking the comfort of an adult to help guide me, and became instead friends with Josie, who was about 11 years older than me, so I guess she was about 28 when I met her. She and I got along well, we bonded over watching episodes of 'The Bill' in her bedroom and she got me some work with her in a factory in Alexandria, washing silk screens out in full protective gear. She took me to meet some of her friends and generally made me feel ok about being there. I had decided about 3 months in that I would be going home, that Sydney was not for me, and Josie began to think it wasn't for her either. We made plans to leave Sydney and move to the north coast- me to come home, and Josie to be introduced to the area that she still calls home to this day. In the valley my Mum and stepfather and now two little sisters had a home, and my Dad had one too, the difference being that Dad had not lived in his home since I was about 13, when he moved to Bangalow. A few people had rented it out from time to time, including a beautiful girl with Thai heritage that was in the same year as me, and her beautiful blonde boyfriend, at the age of 16 she lived here for a while and then had a baby. She moved to Lismore after that and I think she had another baby soon afterwards. I remember thinking how grown up they were to be having babies at 16 (I think he was a bit older), but in hindsight they really weren't that grown up, they were just young and in love and made it work somehow. That's how it looked from the outside anyway. The house had been empty for a few years when I decided to live there,and sharehouse with Josie.It was quite the adventure looking back on it now. Neither of us had cars or even licences or even knew how to drive, and we were 25km to the nearest town, all the way up a dirt goat track, living in a run down A frame weatherboard house with no electricity and a pit toilet. Days were spent collecting firewood, hitching rides to town to spend our welfare payments, and watching black and white TV when the solar power permitted it. During the wet season of the north coast we had a choice between TV or lights. Usually we chose TV and used Kerosene lamps for lighting.We also visited friends in the valley and sometimes spent whole days out walking to friend's houses which could take up to an hour and hanging out, then walking home again. We were fit, but I was bored. Soon after moving back, Elliot got in touch with me and we became lovers again. Elliot had a car, which helped for trips to town. It also meant he just drove off whenever he needed to see a band, go to a party,whatever, and I had no choice or independance of my own. I clearly remember my 19th or 20th birthday whilst living in this house. Elliot wanted us to go see a band together for my birthday, it was a local band called Magic something, (not Magic Dirt) and the lead singer was this wild blonde girl that spent a lot of time screaming into the microphone. I thought they were ok so I went along with it, took a friend of mine and we sat at the back drinking while Elliot was down the front dancing and flirting with this girl for the entire concert. At the end we drove home, dropped my friend off, got to my place and Elliot said he was going home- he had rented a little dairy shack on the same commune, down the bottom of the property, about 15 mins walk from where I was living. I felt so sad that my boyfriend did not want to spend my birthday with me, choosing instead to go home on his own. Looking back I'm not sure what my problem was, this guy clearly did not love me and yet I continued on with him, convinced things would change.

Later on that year Elliot decided to go to Uni and study Aboriginal Legal Studies. He came to have dinner with me one night, we cooked dinner at my house (all food supplied by me) and settled on the couch to watch TV. He turned to me and started talking about how next week was orientation week at the uni, we discussed this for a while and then he said to me " I've been thinking that maybe it would be better if we were not together when I start Uni". Again I was saddened and unsure what to say or think, self esteem drained from my chest and spilled out all over the floor.I said that if we should not be together when you start uni next week, then what are you doing here now. He went home.

Josie moved out after about a year as she got a fantastic job as a dressmaker for theatre productions and this involved a lot of travelling and big money.My mum's place down the hill had been rented out the whole time I lived there as she was away, taking my sisters around Australia for a few months with my stepfather. With Josie gone, and Elliot gone, I was very very alone, and living in such an isolated place meant whole weeks could go by and you wouldn't see anyone unless you made an effort to go and see them. I realised I could not live here on my own, it was too sad.My Dad would visit from Bangalow, but he was also busy in a dramatic and painful relationship and I had no way of going to see him whenever I felt like it. I decided to move to Lismore, being the closest town. Being that I was fairly isolated, the easiest mode of transport was via the school bus, and I accessed this frequently to get to Lismore and back. It meant you had to spend the whole day there but really this was pretty exciting compared to being at home anyway. One day a few weeks after deciding I would move to Lismore, I was waiting at the bottom of the hill to catch the school bus to town, and I ran into Elliot. The last time I had seen him was unpleasant- I had been hitching back home from town and he had stopped to give me a lift, which I tried to turn down but he pressured me into getting in, and I was sick of walking so I reluctantly accepted. On the way home I noticed the tell tale signs of the 'lovebite' on his neck. I felt sick. I asked him who they were from and he laughed in his cocky way and said "some chick from the Blue Mountains". I couldn't wait to get out of the car. He dropped me off at the dairy where he was living and I walked up the shortcut that met up with the road that took me to my place. he went into the dairy and the booming sounds of Metallica began, and I listened to it all the way up the hill to the road junction.

This morning I was wearing a favourite skirt of mine, a dark purple a-line mini skirt that showed off my legs, which at the time I thought were pretty nice. I met Elliot at the bus stop. Pleasantries were exchanged. He remarked on how great I looked (absence must really make the heart grow fonder) and sat together on the bus. I began to talk about my plans of moving to town, and he was really excited and we were getting along so well and I missed him and was lonely and really needed someone to live with anyway, so I was swept up in the idea and by the end of the day we were back together, and moving in together as well.

We began looking for a place to rent, and amazingly the local real estate agents were happy to rent to us. I'm still surprised they did- we must have been quite a pair- Elliot an Indigenous boy who clearly did not have a job, long hair, often barefoot, straight from the surf.Then there was me, dark skinned girl in a small town, no job, we were clueless, and about 19 years old. I know I wouldn't have rented to us.We were lucky. We found a large weatherboard two storey place on Ballina Road, next to KFC. We rented the top floor which was three bedrooms, and a single parent rented the downstairs. We had a shared backyard, but neither of us took advantage of it really. The place cost us $130 per week, so $65 each, for a huge place within walking distance from town. Both my parents helped us move and provided many items with which to fill our home- we had all the furniture and cooking utensils needed.

It was strange, this new life with just the two of us.I'm not sure either of us was really ready for it. Elliot began his Uni course, and as usual proceeded to embrace his new life and friends and interests. I was stuck at home, unsure what to do with my life and picking fights over stupid things like his extensive porn collection I found one day at home, and being insanely jealous every time he brought a new uni friend home. To my credit, the new friends were often beautiful hippy girls that clearly had eyes for Elliot and I was completely ignored. The stench of Patchuli overpowered me one day as I got home and was greeted by Natalie or Vanessa or whatever her name was, sitting in our kitchen with her perfect dreadlocks and maxi skirt, little vest showing off her tiny waist and perfect arms. She possessed a glazed look in her eyes as she laughed at his jokes and glanced at me as though I was a flatmate. Perhaps he had told her that I was.

A couple of months after moving to Lismore I was forced to join a 'job club' and given a caseworker by Centrelink, which was then called Department of Social Services (DSS), in order to keep receiving my welfare payments. I found these job clubs bizarre and full of people that I found so dumb, so ineffective and so incapable of anything, and I often found myself confused as to how I had found my way to this place. Was I really this stupid?Did I really need to be taught these basic life skills? I needed my welfare payment as I had no job, so I really had no choice. I jumped through their hoops, completed resumes and cover letters which was a short day as none of us had any jobs to list. I became despondent and felt awful and sad for the people in my group who were 20 years older than me, and still going through these demeaning processes in order to get about 270 dollars a fortnight.

One day I was sitting at home in my torn jeans and grubby striped T shirt and I received a call from my caseworker, I think his name was John. He asked me to come down to his office and have a chat about a job opportunity. I walked in to town, in my blundstones, about a 25 minute walk in the heat of a Lismore day. I arrived dishevelled and dagga. I didn't really care, as I knew all I had to do was show up in order to still receive my payment. When I arrived John told me that the book store across the road was looking for an employee. I was interested, as I loved books and reading. I was not, however, dressed for an interview. John advised me to go across and speak to the lady who managed the book store, and asked me to explain that I was not dressed for an interview as I had only just heard about it. He encouraged me and said she would understand, and that it was better to be keen than not show up at all.

I frumped across the road, thinking there was no way she would employ me. I was taken out the back to her office, where she asked me a few questions, one of which was the standard " who is your favourite author?". To this I replied "Jack Kerouac", having just read 'On the road', a life changing tome to many an angst teen/almost adult. To this day I'm not sure if she knew who Jack Kerouac was, or whether she cared. She told me that her neighbours were Sri Lankan and she got along with them famously. I later found out that I was actually somehow related to them, or they were somehow friends of my Nana who lived in Melbourne. I think this is probably what got me the job, rather than my 'Jack Kerouac' literary name dropping to make myself sound clever. And so my life in the bookstore began.

The bookstore actually was comprised of two stores side by side, one was a discount bookshop/toystore and the other a full priced bookstore. My job was to begin in the toy store and eventually work my way into the full priced bookstore one day.On day one I was introduced to the girl working there, who was tasked with showing me how to do the job. I will never forget the look on her face when she met me. Clearly unimpressed, she was factual and helpful without being friendly. I remember dusting shelves of toys and weeping in the middle of the day, horrified that this was what 'work' entailed, this endless mind numbing chore and clock watching.

After a few weeks I accepted my fate and began to look at the positives of this job.There were endless books to look at, and cheap too. I had a 40% off discount as an employee, and two small sisters who loved toys. I began to make friends with Alison, the girl who had to show me the ropes. We began smoking in the back lane on Saturday mornings as the boss wasn't there, and found we had a few things in common. Another girl worked there too, her name was Flower and she had grown up on a hippy commune in Nimbin, same as I did in the Valley, but she was deeply ashamed of her roots and occasionally her father came to visit her in the store but she always made him go outside to talk to her and asked him not to visit her there.She embraced all that was the opposite of her childhood- commodores, Lismore hoon boys, false eyelashes, and tons and tons of makeup. She was beautiful, but sad inside. She later changed her surname, so she could finally shake off her family. I found that utterly heartbreaking, as I loved my family so much and was so grateful for my hippy upbringing, and I could not understand what she could hope to gain from it all.

I eventually made my way in to working in the full price bookstore and enjoyed that immensely. I liked being able to dress up for work and enjoyed ordering interesting books for customers. The only thing I didn't like was Christmas, and the free gift wrapping we provided. It took so long and I despised it, people would have to stand and queue for half an hour at a time to purchase books while we painstakingly wrapped another customers 10 books. One day I could not hide my hatred and I was huffing and puffing and sighing and carrying on, and a customer pulled me up on it. A lady said to me " have you got a problem?" and I felt instantly ashamed of my behaviour. There was a counter full of people and all were silent. I apologised and said I was just finding it difficult as it was so busy at the moment. She settled, and I remembered that I was lucky to have a job at Christmas.

I worked for this company for about two years all told, and in this time I lived in 6 different houses. The house near KFC that I shared with Elliot fell apart the day he told me he was going to Cairns for his uni holidays with his uncle. I asked him 'what I am supposed to do for the holidays'? and he said he was unhappy and wanted to move out. My heart broke once again. I remember him coming and packing all his belongings and leaving with his uncle, who stood at the front door and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. I was left with a lease, and a house full of furniture and household stuff. I remember the first night he left, all the power went out suddenly. The blackness engulfed me. I was appalled to learn that I actually had lived with a boy fro so long that I had no idea what to do in this situation. I was so used to having someone sort it all out for me. I vowed never to be in that situation again. I found my way downstairs to the single mum who lived there and asked for her help. I'm ashamed to say I had never really spoken to her much before, or her child, and I had taken them for granted. She was lovely and listened to my sad story (she had guessed, and had been privy to many a screaming match between Elliot and I over the last few months) She then showed me the fuse box and how to turn it back on after an appliance had caused it to trip. I had power again, in more ways than one. Another night during the first week, I called my friend Dana, who lived across the other side of town. She was feisty, tattooed, dreadlocked, and had two dogs and a cat, whom I loved. She was independent and had recently broken off a long term relationship after he slept with their married flatmate.She invited me to stay with her, on her fold out couch in her minuscule flat near the cinema. She said she would help me find another sharehouse. I kept all my stuff in the house for the week I stayed with Dana, and ended the lease soon after. Dana found me a room in a beautiful crumbling home in a famous or infamous street (depending on who you talk to) in a little street in Lismore. I called my two best friends, who appeared with pizza and helped me pack the entire house. I called my parents, who helped me move to my next house. Dad bought his HK Holden ute and we filled it four times.Two doors down from Dana, it opened up my world to another side of the town I lived in. I loved my new house. My room was $45 a week, I shared with two flatmates- a tiny redheaded man, and a tall red headed girl who worked at the local vegan restaurant. Bizarrely it would take me over 20 years to become a vegan, despite being exposed to it so early in my life. The house was literally rotting but so beautiful, and dubbed 'The Gingerbread House'. there were runes painted on the walls of the living room, and a man named Tree who lived under the house at times, and who had a beard that covered his entire face, and he wore an old mushroom shaped hat pulled down over his eyes. He was tiny and hairy but harmless. One day he knocked on the door and asked if I had any spare food. I truthfully didn't, as I wasn't much of a cook and tended to eat out for lunch and dinner. I told him I had nothing except some mouldy bread in my compost. He said he would be happy to take that, if I didn't mind. I didn't mind. He took my mouldy bread, crawled back under the house and I didn't see him for weeks. I went about my life.

Around this time I also began to feel angry and revengeful. There was a boy at school I had always been attracted to, and I remembered a brief encounter at a party just before I moved to Sydney. A time where Elliot and I had agreed to be 'single' when it suited. It suited me that night, and I told Elliot so. He spent the rest of the night screaming and looking for me in the darkness, clearly not as ok with the idea as he had been when he suggested it. So I began to think of calling my friend up…partly because I was lonely, but also partly to seek a bit of revenge I think. His name was James.