‘There is an old Indian story about how each of us has two
wolves living inside us. A good wolf and an evil wolf, each
fighting for survival. The good wolf represents harmony,
tolerance, peace, happiness, all things good. The evil wolf
represents hatred, jealousy, spite, malice, all things evil. We
determine which one survives by which one we feed,’ he says.
‘We feed them with our thoughts and actions,’ he says.
‘Which wolf are you feeding?’ he says.
Playground gossip
The girls from class are talking at lunchtime,
speculating that another girl in the grade,
one who’s been away recently,
is pregnant.
They chatter about pregnancy and babies like girls
for whom it
has never turned into a nightmare,
the girls who have never felt that something within their
bellies and been scared,
so very scared.
Char feels like an outsider.
She can’t imagine what it feels like to be pregnant
because she knows.
She can’t join in the spiteful giggles and catty gossip about
teen pregnancy.
She’s been there.
She can’t do anything much
except stare wistfully from behind her sunnies.
Every word
Every word they said
stabbed me like a knife
twisted at my heart
hacked into me just a little more.
Every word they said
made me feel so guilty
because I am so bad.
What kind of person kills their child?
Every word they said
made me hate Jim a little more.
How could he have put me in this position?
And then I hate myself even more.
Every word they said
stabbed me like a knife
twisted at my heart
shrivelled my soul — just a little more.
Salt into the wound
Char wags the rest of school.
She sits in a park,
cursing herself for wearing eyeliner that stings her eyes,
when she cries,
for having the gall to have an abortion,
for not hating herself enough for going through with it.
I am such a bad person, she thinks.
I’m damned to hell no matter what I do.
I was pregnant. Pregnant.
I would’ve had a baby. A child. My own.
A mixture of tears and snot runs down her face.
She fumbles in her bag for a tissue, when something
flickers out of the corner of her eye.
A woman in a straw hat sits on a blanket,
a baby lying in her shadow.
They look so happy in their own little world.
For just a second, Char thinks of the ‘what-ifs’.
It’s like rubbing salt into the wound.
I’m so fucked up
even the voices in my head are fighting.
I shouldn’t drink tonight.
Drinking won’t fix anything.
It could even make my problems worse.
I should drink tonight.
I don’t want to fix anything, I just want to forget.
But I can be such a sad drunk.
What if I get shitfaced and decide to walk in front of a car
or something?
But I can be such a happy drunk.
Maybe I’ll forget all of the shit and remember how to have
fun and be carefree and laugh.
I’ve got no one to drink with.
And besides, it’s about time I stayed at home for a night
and not worry my mum.
Drink with Jim’s friend.
Besides, it’s a Friday night, and I haven’t been at home for
a Friday night since I was about fifteen. Mum will be more
worried if I stay at home.
I shouldn’t but.
Blood from a stone
‘Heading out tonight, Char?’
her mother asks,
trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Probably,’ she replies,
mind elsewhere.
Her mother keeps probing, and
she knows she should make an effort to sound
less vague,
more coherent,
more like a perfect daughter.
Her mother
silently
stifles
a scream.
Sometimes,
talking to her daughter is like
drawing blood from a stone.
Wild child
I meet up with Jim’s friend at a party.
Discover he has a name — Guy.
The kid who’s having the party has never been
cool or popular.
One of those kids you don’t really notice at all,
a bit of a misfit.
His parents have gone away
and he figures now is his golden chance,
his ticket in the door to coolness.
Char feels slightly sorry for him.
All he’ll get is a trashed house and a hangover.
And by Monday morning,
he’ll be nameless,
faceless,
again.
Something stronger?
I’m sitting in a lazy circle,
playing drinking games,
getting drunk
drunker
drunkerer.
Guy has disappeared
but all of a sudden he comes back,
sits down,
arm slung around my shoulder.
Other kids have come with him.
They’re lighting joints, I think.
Guy plants a smooshy kiss on my cheek and purrs,
‘Something stronger?’ in my ear.
I’ve always wanted to try dope.
The kid having the party comes over and sits down.
‘No pressure, OK?’ says the guy with the joint in his hand.
‘If you want some, stay. If you don’t, leave.’
Everyone looks around,
but no one leaves.
Jill from my class is handing me another shot as the joint
comes around.
I down the shot, breathe, and close my lips around the
joint, breathing in.
I’ve seen enough movies to know you’re supposed
to hold your breath.
As I breathe out, I cough and hack and make
an idiot of myself.
My lungs are rebelling against the rebellion.
Best kind of medicine
The joints are like the best kind of medicine.
I don’t care about anything and I’ve forgotten
all my problems.
I’m soooooooo relaxed my lips won’t even work properly.
Everything seems OK again, and I sink into the
cushiony lounge.
Why didn’t the doctor prescribe me this?
— Guy kissing me and laughing hysterically about nothing —
— doing a shot with Sara —
— back to Guy’s place in a car with unbelievably loud music —
— kissing him —
— landing on the bed and fumbling with his buttons —
— tasting the saltiness of his neck —
Good morning, sunshine
I wake up,
head pounding,
mouth dry.
Strange bed,
strange room.
An arm over my chest.
Guy!
He’s beginning to wake as well.
There’s a knock at the door of his room.
‘Shit!’ he hisses.
I slide down into the bed, pulling the covers over my h
ead
as the door opens.
It’s his friend, who crashed here last night,
the one who gave us the lift home.
I stick my head out of the covers,
and he laughs and laughs.
I’d got lucky
On Monday morning
a special assembly is called.
But I’ve already heard what happened.
That geeky kid who held the party drank too much and
did drugs, they said.
The marijuana flipped him out, made him crazy.
The cops found him wandering the streets in his dressing
gown carrying knives and razors in his pockets,
broken beer bottles clenched tightly in his hands.
He’d been put into the mental ward of the local hospital,
strapped down,
medicated.
His parents were sedated too.
Of course, we didn’t hear any of that at assembly.
Instead,
the principal warned us about drugs.
Told us about how easy it was to slip into psychosis, to
believe in things that weren’t real.
Told us about how easy it was to get arrested for
possession and go to jail.
Told us about how easy it was to do something stupid, to
drive a car and kill yourself, or somebody else.
I wondered how it happened that I had such a good time,
and this kid ended up with more than he’d bargained for.
Maybe it was like Russian roulette, and I’d got lucky.
The bullet had hit someone else this time.
Remember?
I start hanging out with Guy on weekends,
but I don’t do any more dope.
I tell him about the kid at the party,
and he doesn’t offer it to me again.
At one party, Jim is there.
I’m sitting on Guy’s lap,
lovebites covering my neck,
his hands wrapped around me.
Jim looks at me, eyes cold,
hard,
accusing.
I ignore him.
It was his fault we broke up,
not mine.
Shocking people
Jim gets drunk,
kisses another girl.
He looks proud,
looks at me triumphantly,
as if he’s proved something.
They’re standing close enough to us that I can reach out
and grab him.
‘Do you want a fucking medal? You’ve got quite a talent for
kissing other people. Like how you went out the night I’d
had the abortion and cheated on me. Why don’t you just
fuck off.’
Jim looks shocked.
The girl slaps him, walks away.
And Guy grins at the drama.
I’m good at shocking people.
Bad
I tell Guy about it later. About how bad I feel.
He says that guys don’t really understand. To them it’s not
a baby until they can hold it in their arms. But that’s no
reason to justify what Jim did.
He says I’m not a bad person.
But I don’t believe him.
How much longer can I hold
all these cracks together?
My life is cracking,
cracking up.
How much longer before it smashes?
Fortune tellers
In home class one morning we have to sit in a circle
and tell everyone else
where we see ourselves in five years.
(At least they don’t make us hold hands and sing.)
Most of the boys laugh,
jeer,
and say they’ll be pub-crawling and vomiting in gutters,
professional dole bludgers,
or working as personal assistants for Playboy models.
Some of the guys are serious
as they talk about jobs and uni, and maybe travel.
Some of the girls say they’ll be married,
with kids probably,
their entire lives already mapped out.
Most of the girls say they’ll be living on their own,
working or studying,
not having to bother about cooking and cleaning for a man.
Jake laughs and mutters something about crazy old ladies
with lots of cats.
Our teacher smiles and says she’ll still be teaching
ungrateful kids,
probably still needing therapy from putting up with us lot.
Then
everyone’s eyes are on me.
I don’t know what to say
so I ask for suggestions.
Everyone seems as vague as me
about what I should do with the rest of my life.
I just can’t imagine myself any older.
I’m not a bloody fortune teller.
Patched up
I’m helping Mum with dinner,
slicing meat,
when I slip,
cut myself.
Mum shrieks,
but all I can do is watch,
watch the blood racing out of my hand.
It’s coming out like it never wants to stop.
Maybe this is what people mean when they tell me I’m
self-destructive.
Flow.
Flow.
Flow.
I stare,
transfixed.
Mum screams, ‘Put your arm above your heart!’
I obey,
and gasp as the blood runs down my arm.
Looks like I’ve tried to slit my wrist.
It’s probably only seconds
but it feels like hours later
when Mum wraps a tea towel around my hand
and drives me to the hospital.
She can’t watch,
says it makes her feel sick
when they poke the needles through my skin,
sewing up the hole with precise, tidy stitches.
But I stare,
watching them patch me up,
sew me back together.
Mum buys takeaway Indian for tea,
vegetarian.
Tim says it was the cow’s revenge,
but even he gags
at the sight of the steak, the knife, the bench
covered in my blood.
To be lonely
Bronwyn asks about the bandage on my hand.
She still worries about me, I think.
She asks me to come to her place after school
for a sleepover.
I don’t know why, but I say yes.
We read magazines, watch telly, eat lolly snakes.
Sometimes I forget
I’m not the only one
who knows what it’s like
to be lonely.
We share a bottle of Baileys,
drinking straight from the bottle.
Bronwyn can’t drink like me.
A few drinks and she’s drunk.
She’s a sad drunk.
I take her into the bathroom,
help her brush her teeth,
put her into bed.
As I turn out the light, she says mournfully,
‘Char? What happened? You used to be
my best friend.’
Looking inside
I should
be having the time of my life.
New boyfriend,
reconciliation with an old friend,
halfway through Year Twelve.
But —
there is a blackness inside,
hungry
yearning
pulling at me.
I sit on the train,
watching people.
A young girl with a black eye and smashed nose.
A mother screaming abuse at he
r child.
The kids who think it’s funny to kick the homeless man
then run away, around the corner.
The man on another corner with the heroin addict look.
The girl in the reflection of the window
with eyes so bleak I can’t believe they’re mine.
If eyes are the window to the soul
then mine must be empty.
The voice in my head says that there’s enough despair in
this world without one more hopeless case
like me.
What for?
I eat my vegetables, what for?
I do my homework, what for?
I’m polite to my teachers, what for?
I don’t argue with my brother, what for?
I iron my clothes and shower and brush my hair and hand
in assignments and try not to fall asleep in class and think
about what I’ll do next year and participate in this whole
goddamn awful thing called life, and
what the fuck for?
Healthy young girl
I go back to the doctor’s
for another prescription of knock-out pills
so I don’t have to drink myself to sleep.
He’s asking me a whole barrage of questions
about school, and my parents, and how I feel,
when I just want the goddamn pills.
He insists on doing a physical,
says everything’s fine
and tells me he can’t prescribe me pills any more.
‘It’s unnatural for a healthy young girl to need
sleeping pills,’ he says.
‘There must be an underlying reason you can’t sleep.’
He gives me a referral to a ‘very nice woman who might be
able to help’.
‘A faith healer or shrink?’ I ask.
He tells me if she thinks I need sleeping pills she’ll
prescribe them.
A shrink with a prescription pad, I guess.
I want to scream.
Hit the fan
When I get home
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 7
