by Tara J Lal
The panic robbed me of my connection to the present moment, as if it sliced the cord that bound me to the world and to nature. It brought me face to face with my deepest fear: that I would lose my mind just as I had watched my brother lose his fight and my father struggle continuously in the battle for his sanity.
It had been eight years since Adam’s death, but the panic attack was a signal that all was not well within my soul. Adam’s words echoed in the mountain air:
It used to come from my heart and then I put it away and never looked at it again. Now it’s back, the vigour and truth of within.
I was on my way back to London, returning to the painful truth of all that I had packed away deep in my heart for the last fifteen months. I didn’t want to confront what lay ahead, or what lay behind. I flew into Heathrow and I looked around me. The people seemed strained and grey-faced, just like the weather. I walked back into the darkness of my memories.
CHAPTER 18
I lay in my familiar bed at home in our house in London. I thought of Anthony and I started to sob. I missed him so much. Our family house was on the market and I had made an offer on a flat in London, which had been accepted. I had a place confirmed on a physiotherapy course. I should have been happy, but my heart wasn’t in it. Dad had come to visit to sort through his books before we sold the house. I heard his familiar heavy footsteps ascending the stairs, coming to rest outside my bedroom door.
‘Ah … Tara … Are you all right?’ Dad asked, anxiety and concern lacing every word.
‘I’m just upset, Dad. It’s okay,’ I said, trying to stifle my sobs for I never wanted to worry him.
He didn’t open the door. He didn’t come in. Instead we held the entire conversation through my closed bedroom door, with him standing on the landing.
‘I … I … just don’t know what to do, Dad.’ I hiccupped through my tears. ‘I love Anthony,’ I said tentatively, for I rarely showed my emotion to my father.
There was a quiet pause before my father’s soft voice filtered through the closed door.
‘Follow your heart, Tara.’ His words echoed in the room.
It was a rare moment of clarity and connection between us that transcended the closed door, a treasured gift of wisdom from my father. The finest he had ever given me.
I was waiting tables in a restaurant in Camden Town while I waited for Anthony to arrive. I couldn’t wait to see him. He had cut his trip through South-East Asia short because he missed me. I went to meet him at Gatwick airport still head over heels in love. He appeared through the sliding doors wearing a faded red woven shirt and his old ragged jeans, backpack slung across his shoulders. Just as he had when I first saw him, he took my breath away. The frenzied hectic bustle of the arrivals lounge at Gatwick became only a distant fuzzy haze as we embraced, enclosed in our own world. God, I loved this man.
It was less than twenty-four hours before Anthony asked me to come back to live in Australia with him. It was the moment I’d been waiting for. I didn’t even hesitate in saying yes. I had my father’s blessing. I was going to go and live in Australia with Anthony.
By the time I had returned from my travels Jo had already cleared a lot of the stuff out of the attic in our house. With hindsight I realized how unsupported she must have felt doing it on her own. I had happily shunned the responsibility until I’d returned home. It is the decision-making that cripples you. What to keep and what to chuck? Everything has a memory, an emotion, attached to it.
Together Jo and I spent many hours in the loft sifting through family memories. Do you read every letter you find? Do you keep your dead mother’s wedding dress? Do you keep your dead brother’s schoolbooks? Do you take the risk and throw away boxes of papers and cards that you haven’t had time to look at? I was paralysed: What if I chuck my brother’s schoolbook and it has something important in it? What if he’d scribbled a poem?
There was a permanency about throwing things away that stank of death. Yet a part of me wanted to rid myself of everything, as if that way I might shed the pain too, so that I could start my life afresh.
Jo and I became more ruthless as time went by. Our motto became ‘fuck it, chuck it’. Painfully and slowly we cleared our family house. Eventually the ‘For sale’ sign was replaced by a ‘Sold’ one.
When the time came to move out, the stress and resentment had built to such an extent between Jo and me that it boiled over into a full-scale screaming match. My annoying habit of crying, something I couldn’t seem to control, only made things worse. I cried when I was sad; I cried when I was angry. It was frustrating that when I wanted to show my anger, the tears always seemed to get there first.
We started arguing about where the removal truck was going to park. I became increasingly frustrated, and then the tears came. Jo knew exactly which button to push.
‘That’s right, cry like you always do,’ she snarled from the top of the stairs.
Something in me snapped, an overwhelming rage enveloping my body.
‘I fucking hate you. You stupid, horrible, ugly bitch!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs, using every muscle in my body. I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say or why, only that I hated her and wanted to hurt her in any way I could. A feeling born of a deep resentment for every hurt she had ever caused me or my brother. Now I laugh at those words. Ugly? Was that the best I could come up with? My sister is in fact very beautiful. A piece of cheese came hurtling toward me from my sister’s hand in retaliation.
It was the only time I have ever shouted in rage at another person and the intensity of it shocked me. Anthony and Nic, my sister’s boyfriend, looked at each other nervously from their respective corners. Eventually Anthony suggested gently that I should talk to Jo.
‘I’m not speaking to that fucking bitch,’ I replied with venom.
‘Ta …’ he said, raising an eyebrow, taken aback by the uncharacteristic rage in my voice.
Finally the anger dissolved into sadness. The day we moved, Jo and I stood in the living room of our empty house, our childhood home. We hugged each other. It was a relief to say goodbye to the house: it held too much pain for us all. Without it to tie us together, my sister, my dad and I were free to live our own lives.
Anthony left for Australia five months before me. His father had avidly researched university places for me and as a result I had a place to study physiotherapy at Sydney University as an international student. Unfortunately my visa didn’t start until January. I couldn’t bear the thought of being apart for all that time so I went to the Australian high commission in the Strand, armed with a battery of reasons as to why I needed to be in Australia before my course started in February.
The man at the immigration counter looked at me, his face deadpan, and said, ‘No.’ I tried to explain that I hadn’t a family or home here any more, that I had thrown everything away that I owned, except for six cardboard boxes full of photos and my brother’s letters and diaries. I started crying.
‘Please!’
He softened slightly. ‘Go away and get yourself together,’ he said. ‘Come back to me in an hour.’
I ran out of the building and straight to the nearest phone box. I looked in my wallet. Only two pound coins. It was 1.30am in Sydney. I called the Basement and the manager answered.
‘Please can you get Anthony? It’s urgent.’
He put me on hold and I watched as the pennies ticked away. Please hurry, please hurry. Then I heard Anthony’s voice.
‘Bub, what’s up?’
‘They won’t let me come. They won’t give me a visa!’ I sobbed into the phone.
‘It’s going to be okay, bub. I promise. I’ll come over. I’ll come and get you.’
Then the phone went dead. Hearing Anthony’s voice had made me feel safe, in the way my mother had always done, and I walked back to the Australian high commission feeling calmer.
‘Okay. You can have a three-month temporary visa, which will cover you before the start of your student visa, so long as
you don’t undertake paid work in that time.’
‘I promise! I promise I won’t work. Thank you. Thank you so much!’
I wanted to hug and kiss him. I had my ticket to get out of here. I was on my way to my new life, leaving the darkness behind.
The day before I left, I embarked on my last nose-to-armpit trip on the London underground in rush hour. I’m sure as hell not going to miss this, I thought.
I walked along Camden Road wondering how many thousands of times I must have walked the same path, and how this might be the last time. I felt an object skim past the top of my head. It was an empty Coke can that someone had chucked from the top of a double-decker bus as it crawled up the road.
That’s right, T, I thought. Get the hell out of this shithole.
I glanced to my right as I walked past the newsagent’s shop and caught the eye of a young man. I thought nothing of it and continued up the road. Ten minutes later, he came running up behind me, out of breath. ‘I just wanted to tell you I think you’re beautiful,’ he puffed, and handed me a red rose.
I smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do you live here?’
‘Yes … no … sort of. I’m going to live in Australia. I leave tomorrow.’
‘Oh, well, good luck. You’re beautiful!’
That was it. He turned on his heel and walked back the way he had come. Life is full of contradictions, I thought. Maybe London wasn’t so bad after all.
Dad and Jo took me to the airport. The tears flowed as I said goodbye and we hugged each other. Then Paul Hogan walked past and my sister and I cracked up laughing. I cried steadily in the plane, until somewhere over Russia, the tears stopped, replaced by a sense of excitement for my new life. A new beginning.
CHAPTER 19
I arrived at Sydney airport to be greeted not only by Anthony, but by Helga, Sam and Bert as well. They showered me with love, welcoming me into their open arms. I felt instantly that I had a new family, smiling at the familiarity as we drove down Bondi road on the way to Anthony’s flat. Past the footy oval on the right and Three Steps greasy cafe (the best fry-up in town) and Harry’s Pizza, the scene of many a drunken midnight feast. I glimpsed the ocean ahead of me, feeling a tingle of excitement into my stomach. A sense of warmth descended upon me. I knew then that I was home.
I started my degree in physiotherapy, studying hard and waiting tables at night to support myself. This was a degree I was going to use and I was passionate about my course-work, knowing I was heeding my mother’s dying words: I hope you will lead a useful and caring life. I did nothing but study, work and spend time with Anthony. I didn’t have any particularly close friends at this time. I didn’t need to. I had him.
Anthony and I started collecting the necessary paperwork together for my application for Australian residency. I was applying on the grounds of our de facto relationship, and we had statutory declarations from friends and family members that our relationship was ‘genuine and ongoing’; joint bank account statements showing that I had put the proceeds from the sale of the London house in both of our names; the letters we had written to each other in the months that we were apart; and a note of the joint lease we had taken on an apartment in Bondi. The stresses of day-to-day life began to mount. We weren’t as carefree as we had been.
I rarely thought of or talked about my past; there were no reminders here, and no one knew my family. Life just ticked along. I was focusing increasingly on my university studies and Anthony was trying to break into the field of sound engineering. Music was his passion and he was still living the nocturnal life, so we gradually saw less of each other. By the time he crawled into bed at night I was fast asleep.
Still, though, on the surface everything seemed fine … except the panic attacks were back.
A friend of mine, Libby, with whom I’d waited tables in London, came over from England. She was disarmingly attractive and charming and she’d been going out with the extremely wealthy owner of the restaurant we both worked in. I felt intimidated by her in every way, aware of my inadequacies. I was flattered when she accepted my offer of a room in our flat and secretly thought how much a few extra dollars would help. She offered us rent but I didn’t have the heart to take her money, at least until she’d found a job. Eventually Anthony and I found her waitressing work at the Basement. The topic of rent never came up again after that and we all seemed to get along well. Anthony still worked at the Basement at weekends so I often heard the two of them come home late after work, trying to be quiet as they listened to music and laughed. I heard them whisper as I tried to sleep. I didn’t feel a part of it. I trusted Anthony completely but something felt uncomfortable. I could feel him drifting away from me.
Before long we stopped sleeping together. I became used to only ever seeing his smooth olive-skinned back in bed. I was always reluctant to try to tempt him into making love for fear he should reject me. My uneasiness morphed into a festering sense of nausea that began to envelop me. Finally, I looked Anthony in the eye one day and took myself by surprise with the words that came from my mouth.
‘Are you in love with Libby?’ I asked tentatively.
He gave a kind of half laugh and said, ‘One English girl is enough for me.’
I trusted him so I let it go.
Then, two weeks before my second-year exams, we sat in our bedroom talking. Out of the blue, Anthony said, ‘I don’t think I love you any more.’
At that, my world disintegrated before my eyes.
There was no more comfort in Anthony’s arms, only tears and isolation. I cried incessantly. Anthony couldn’t cope with the devastation he saw in me, knowing he was the cause of it. He asked his mum to look after me. So, I went up to the mountains into Helga’s open arms.
‘It doesn’t matter what happens, you are a part of the family,’ she said as she wrapped me in a motherly hug, quietly muttering, ‘I’ll throttle that son of mine.’
I tried to study, but invariably I simply stared at the pages in front of me as tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping on to my notes, smudging the writing. I had flashbacks to sitting at my desk in London after Adam died, staring at my A-level notes through oceans of tears.
One day Helga asked me, with an uncharacteristic edge of spite in her voice: ‘Tell me, does this have something to do with that friend of yours?’
‘No, no,’ I said, wondering if it did.
I sat my exams still crying; the two seemed to go hand in hand. Anthony went to stay at a friend’s place and I returned to our apartment. Libby comforted me day after day. Every morning I would drive slowly down the road in the hope that I might see Anthony, that maybe it wasn’t over. Eventually, when my exams were finished I met up with him.
‘I don’t understand what happened,’ I said. ‘When did you stop loving me? Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ I pleaded, desperate for answers.
He looked guilty. He never could lie to me.
‘I kissed Libby one night,’ he said.
‘What?’ I said, devastated. ‘When? What happened?’
‘It was only once, after work. We never slept together.’
With that my illusions of love disintegrated, just as Adam’s had when his relationship with his girlfriend fell apart.
I don’t really want to talk about Sarah because I see no reason to. I’m not upset in any way really, just, I suppose, somewhat weary. I’m fed up. I think my dreams of pure hearts and thoughts are rapidly encompassing themselves in just that, the world of the mind. Reality readily blasts them away, so kindly disposing of them as nonsense.
I wasn’t angry with Anthony. I couldn’t be angry with him because I still loved him and in my childlike mind anger and love could not co-exist. I reasoned that at least he had told me. Instead, I felt a deep sense of betrayal toward my friend who had comforted me only hours after she had kissed my boyfriend. Everything was her fault. She had flirted with Anthony, told him everything he wanted to hear, handed him a beautiful fantasy in a cup. I channelled ever
y bit of anger toward her, telling her to get out of my flat even though I knew she had nowhere to go.
Anthony and I went to see a counsellor, at my request; I was desperate to save our relationship. We only went once. The counsellor questioned me about my family, and he kept going back to it, over and over again.
‘It’s not about my family,’ I thought. ‘It’s about me and Anthony.’
I had happily packed up my pain in a box when I left England. I was not about to open it up now.
We told ourselves that we couldn’t afford any more counselling.
The disintegration of our relationship escalated the moment my trust had been broken. I no longer believed Anthony when he said everything would be okay. Without the safety blanket he had always provided, our differences quickly became obvious.
When Anthony and I met, an unconscious force drew us to each other like powerful magnets. I grounded him and he cared for and comforted me. Only now do I question whether our relationship was one of mutual need packaged, ever so convincingly, as love. Or did our attraction morph into need? I don’t know. One thing I do know is that I didn’t love myself. In fact, I didn’t even know myself, so how could I truly love another? I had no idea of the faulty ideas I held about what love was.
CHAPTER 20
Anthony and I remained friends, for I continued to love him. I simply could not let go of him entirely. The thought of him not being a part of my life was intolerable. I turned toward studying and a new job waiting tables. I began putting my life together again, oblivious to other men.
It wasn’t long after Anthony and I had broken up that Luke, a bouncer at the Basement, invited me over to his place for drinks. He used to drop in to Sports Bar, the restaurant in Bondi where I worked, just to say hello. I often wondered why he was there. To me it always seemed a touch awkward. Luke was tall and big built, with small blue eyes and short sandy-coloured hair. He was very different to Anthony, always well dressed and groomed, reserved and shy. At times it could be hard to get conversation out of him. With Anthony, on the other hand, it was hard to get a word in edgeways. He was passionate and fiery while Luke was placid and quiet. He reminded me of a teddy bear, which I found endearing. We didn’t really have a lot in common, but I liked him.
