Hubris.co.nz

For my homework last week I had to think about my emotional, spiritual, physical and intellectual needs, and while I only wrote it on paper today, I did have a good think about it. As a non religious person, I decided that my spiritual need would have to be something that makes me feel calm and at peace, so I decided that I needed to see the sea every day. After my counselling session today I went and sat in Frank Kitts park for ten minutes to soak in the tranquility of the green sea and wished that I too was jumping off Taranaki Wharf, and so after work because it was still hot and sunny I rushed home and rushed to my swimming spot where the water was gorgeously clear and the warmest it’s been yet, and I just felt so fucking good. I came home and showered and tried on my new dress, which looks much better with a proper bra then when I tried it on at the shop today, and it was only $35, and it’s two sizes smaller than what I’d normally go for, and it’s long enough to wear without pants which is extraordinary, although I might have to *shock horror* shave above my knees.

So that’s spiritual, and I suppose to some degree today’s swim aided my physical needs. Intellectual is obvious – I need constant stimulation. It’s taken me a while longer to figure out my emotional needs, and I think it’s tied to the stuff that I’ve been going through lately. I need to be around people that I am comfortable with. Who am I comfortable with? Am I comfortable with you? Here’s a simple test: have you ever hung out with me for a long period of time in which I was sober? If the answer is yes, then I am probably comfortable with you. If I get rapidly drunk, then – and this should have been obvious to me a long time ago – I am uneasy, probably with my own standing in relation to you. Good times.

My counsellor has decided to try and figure out at what point I started to fake having confidence and to trace it back and find out why I stopped having confidence in the first place. That’s the stage in our session when I found my chest tightening and my hands curling up and smushing at each other. It’s a funny thing to be aware of your body language but not being able to change it. It also seemed like I was arguing with her about being bullied – she was saying that it seemed like it was an issue that was continuing to have an impact on my life and was therefore important, and I was saying “yeah but how is that productive, to accept that it’s okay to be upset and hurt and shaken by those events? How does that make me stop having depression? HOW IS IT PRODUCTIVE?” I know she was right, but I couldn’t say what I should have said. And I’m not explaining myself properly here, because I don’t want to talk about it again, because I tensed up and wanted to puke tonight but settled for crying instead when I was watching “Smells like the 90′s [sic]” and the video for ‘Jeremy’ came on and I felt like it was 1992 all over again and that fucking hurt and oh, it was just somewhat difficult. The reason I’m relating it here, apart from my own records, of course, is because I’m getting to a semantics thing. I was all “I’m not happy with myself if I dwell on things that are long gone, because I should be smarter than that”, and she was like “what if instead of dwelling you’re processing?” and I said “I like that you can change the entire concept of soemthing and all its conotations just by changing one word” and she was like “well, you like words!” and I laughed, because anyone who has my business card knows that I like words – I really like words.

That was a lame story. My homework is to write her a timeline of events in my life that I think have shaped me. When she said a timeline I thought she meant for the future and I panicked, because what, have goals and aspirations? Ha! But no. And this freaks me out a little, because I know that there are things that I haven’t talked about since Kalpana and I know that my rage at taxi drivers has roots there, but holy fuck, man, it’s just eeeeeeeeeeeegggggggggggh. Yeah.

But you know, things go on. I got my camera back and discovered I had taken two photos on New Year’s Eve. One I knew about, because it was of a crate of beer in the bath and one of the bottles had a different cap, and for some reason that was just enthralling. The other suggests that I sat at the dining room table for a while at the party, and that the house has far too many pepper grinders. I got approval at work for the start of an FAQ I’m writing for our website – or rather, I’m writing the questions but don’t want to have to come up with the answers. One of the questions features Bono. Another talks about religious agendas. Yes, this is government work. I drank a beer tonight. Two in fact. Smoo’s building a model car. My arm is sore. The bath needs cleaning. The people in City Life reruns are still wearing too much lipstick,and I wish I had some purple lipgloss. I lost the lid to my coconut Lancome Juicy Tube on New Year’s. Of course. I’m planning outfits for Auckland. Blah blah. Yeah I’m okay. I should probably just go to bed, although I have once again run out of books. Maybe I’ll read The Game again and neg all the boys. In fact, that sounds like a good idea. Brad’s coming to Auckland with Lisa and I. Roadtrip!

Sunday the 3rd of January, 1999

So it’s a new year, so we get a new colour scheme. Possibly this purple is a little too bright for your tender eyes – do let me know. Okay. Onward ho. Do make sure you’ve downloaded my font too, okay?

I woke up around 10.30am when Karen came into the lounge (I was in the moonlight lounge remember?) and said Good Morning to her. She was fully suprised and was like “what are you doing here?” I replied “sleeping” and turned over and went back to sleep. Such a shocker of a McLeod answer huh?

Anyways, I got up properly at the far more dignified hour of 1pm, and explained to her that I’d been out with Anji. We went to have breakfast at the Krazy Lounge, which was nice, only I’m not a big fan of breakfast menus. Eggs and I are not on speaking terms, basically. But yeah, anyways. Mum and Neil came to collect me, and I went home.

Did I ever explain why I call my father ‘Neil’ ? Like, everyone always asks me, so maybe I’ll write it down here for you.

Once upon a time, way back in the early seventies, a man called Neil and a woman called Aimee had so much love for each other that the love formed a whole seperate baby that they called Angeline – or Angie (Anji now) for short. Angie watched her mother and father refer to themselves as “Neil” and “Aimee” so when she started to talk, she called them that too. Aimee and Neil made another baby out of their love, called Karen, who was basically just an Angie wannabe and called her parents the same names too. One day Angie started Preschool, and saw all her peers call their mothers “Mum”. Aimee helped out at the preschool, and all the children there called her “Angie’s Mum”. A lightbulb went on in Angie’s head, and she started to call Aimee “Mum”. Karen instantly copied her. Neil however, was not as involved in his children’s lives, so he didn’t have his name changed to fit in with their peers’ expectations. A few years later, Joanna came along, and mimicked her sisters. She got really tired of telling the story, and since she resented being moved to Japan and loathed her father for it, she claimed that was the reason he didn’t get called Dad. But it wasn’t really.

Gosh, that was a fun digression, wasn’t it? Anyways, where were we? Oh yeah.

The rest of the day was pretty boring. In the evening I totally hid out in my room because my aunt and uncle came over and they’re excrutiatingly boring. I was just sitting on IRC and stuff when Kate came online, and she was like “can I come over?” Of course I would have said yes, only up pops Simon with “come and visit me!!!!!”. So yeah, on the spur of the moment, we decided to make the hour long drive up to Waikanae. She told me that she’d be at my house in fifteen minutes, so I went to wait for her at my letterbox, foolishly not realising that she meant half an hour. Ah well. Eventually, we were on our way. In Johnsonville, she decided that we needed to get KFC, so we got burgers that were actually really yucky. The roundabout had its sprinklers going, so we drove around it like four times, shrieking when the water came in the open window. Ahhhh you crazy kids!

The drive out to Waikanae took a long time, and Kate’s driving is slightly scary, but that’s okay. It was amusing ‘cos she made me smoke a cigarette, and I realised that they taste like shit, even more so because I wasn’t drunk. So yeah, I don’t know what the moral of that story is. Smoking IS sexy though, even though it probably shouldn’t be. Most of the people I know smoke; it’s kind of suprising that I don’t. In fact, neither me or Anji or Karen smoke. I guess in Karen’s case, that’s not suprising, but both me and Anji dwell in what are extremely smokey societies. How Brady are we then?

Anyways. Kate and I decided as we drove along that we’d take Simon to the beach, so after sitting around for a while watching him play with his linux, and after making more arrangments with his momma for our exodus up north (she’s coming next week to help us flat hunt) we did just that. It was so dark walking through the trees barefoot, and then we had to scramble down sand dunes, but it was completly worth it. There was a full moon, and it glinted off the water something gorgeous. Further along the beach was a bonfire, but as it was midnight, it was completly deserted otherwise.

I rushed into the water, although Simon calling out a warning about blue bottles was a little spooky, as was the thought of Katipos. Kate rolled her pants up (I was holding up my long skirt) and came wading in too. It was so lovely and warm. It could have been so romantic if I’d been there with a guy, instead of two of my best friends. We splashed around a bit, after finally convincing Simon to come in – he’s such a big girl’s blouse sometimes. Kate gave me the fright of my life, sneaking up while my back was turned. I screamed so loud, it was crazy. I ended up totally soaked, which sucked a bit, plus I got sand in my open blisters, which wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it was soooooooo much fun!

We dropped Simon off back at his house then, and went to harrass the macdonalds staff at Mana. When we found out the drive through was shut, we drove through it like three times, sharks circling their prey. Meanies. Shit, that’s like three times Kate and I have played games with Maccers staff that they didn’t get. You’re terrible, Muriel. I swear to god, she’s just a bad influence!