PROLOGUE + PLAYLIST 🎶
There’s a scene in the movie ‘Jennifer’s Body’ where a mysterious whirlpool at the base of a waterfall sucks in objects that are never seen again. Scientists drop all kinds of things into it, ping pong balls, coloured dyes, but as the narrator says, “nothing ever surfaces”. It seems symbolic - an endless hole, a yawning maw leading to unknown underground dark places. Named the “Devil’s Kettle,” by the locals, this waterfall is the namesake of the fictional town in which the events of the movie unfold. It’s a story in which a teenage girl’s body is taken over by a hungry demon, seducing the boys in her town so she can consume them.
Thus we set the stage for our dark tale…
ON THE SURFACE
A storyteller sits in an old armchair. A heavy book rests in her lap. Cradling the spine with one hand, she cracks open the cover, dust swirling and spiralling out from the untouched pages. Finding her place, she begins to speak…
“How long has it been, dear reader? This bookmarked page has sat, waiting patiently, for five whole years. And how much has changed, my beloved? Much has happened since we last sat together…”
So much has happened, and yet I have been silent.
This particular story was a long time in the making. The pictures were taken back in 2019. They sat, waiting patiently, like all the other stories that are awaiting me in my drafts. Calling to me throughout the years with soft unworded whispers that drizzle down to pool in my chest, making me ache for all the things I have desired to say and do and create during the dark years.
You see, I got sucked into a kind of devil’s punchbowl. At times things were so turbulent that I did not have the space to write. At other times I was lost deep in the dark waters of self reflection. I did not take photographs. I did not write. I did not film. Aside from the small stories I shared on my Instagram during this time, I did not create.
Then, in 2021, the words began to come. I sat on a leather couch, in a lamplit lounge on a palm-lined street in L.A., my heart hurting, and began to write on this very page. What came pouring out were the first chapters to a much larger story. My Story. The story. Our human story.
Soon, it all became too overwhelming. It was too much to tell My Story. My Story that was still unfolding, as I sat in the lounge of the partner who would turn out to be my second abuser. I already had a lot to say, but I still had a lot to unravel before I could find the main thread of the tale. It would take another few years before I uncovered the heart of it.
So I gathered up those initial words like seeds. I cut and pasted them, sowing them into another document where I have been slowly tending to them ever since. I write My Story in stops and starts. It is both painful and healing to dredge up my past. Mostly, it is exhausting. I spiral around it, sometimes leaping away, wanting to leave it all behind and let the past be the past, before I am drawn back, desiring to understand my past, and, through it, myself.
That story is long and unfinished. But it started here. Its roots are right here in this very page. This is the beginning, the scribble that I cannot unwrite or unsee. I want to begin here. I want to name it. Place it. Put words to it, as a sculptor moves clay, bringing earthen form to the thing of their mind’s eye.
I am sitting in my bedroom in New Zealand. It is currently Wednesday September 18th. Opening the page, I discovered that tomorrow will be the anniversary of my website’s creation, a fact that feels poignant. I have waited, the hope and desire to write coiled inside me till this very moment when it all burst forth on the most ordinary of days, prompted by nothing spectacular. I am recovering from a cold. I have a pile of to-dos still cluttering my list, all of them seemingly important enough that, up till now, they have taken priority over writing. I figured I would get to my writing… one day soon. When I had gotten my things in order. Dear reader, my things are not in order. But there is a candle burning in the corner, and one on my altar, and I am ready. I am finally ready.
I wish to take you back, before we go forward, for I feel that there is so much to be gotten from sharing the unspoken pasts that have shaped my present. Both for me, in the telling, and for those who might listen. This will be the first of a number of very old and dusty memories that I publish here on my website. I am excited to bring them to the surface, to look at them and remember them with fondness and heartbreak and nostalgia, before moving on.
The pages I am about to share with you come from chapters that seem like distant memories to me now. They have become my own legends; tales I occasionally tell to new friends over a beer at the pub, when I am explaining the course of my life. They underpin every adventure I have set out upon since 2019, and every misadventure that has befallen me.
So, let’s begin on this bookmarked page.
DIVING UNDER
I swam upon the Devil's lake
But never, never, never, never
I'll never make the same mistake
No, never, never, never
~ ‘The Wind,’ Cat Stevens
It was a dark time, and it was a growing time.
The pictures that remain are softly lit, but the period was a murky one. Like a bittersweet pomegranate, or an apple with a shiny surface and a rotten core. I remember the good and the bad.
There was a sweetness to these moments. I took these pictures and that video on a day trip in the mountains. We all piled into the car, blasting music with the windows down, hair streaming out in the wind and sunlight. I remember sharing ripe blackcurrants picked from bushes down by the waterside, and the moments of companionable silence spent with the girl in the video, as we watched the shimmering leaves of the yellowed aspens; reaching out to touch ashy trunks, leaving our fingers coated with a fine film of sour aspirin-laced dust, like that magical-sad accident when you touch a moth’s wing and find that you have stolen some of its flying power. There were the moments when I would turn to find Oliver’s smile, or when he would take me into his arms to spin me around laughing. Love-filled moments. There were whoops of joy, as some of us jumped into the waters of the devil’s pool. The youngest of us, my nephew at the time, jumped into the azure river, far away from the bounds of the pretty ultramarine and midnight blue colours that belied the yawning depths of the middle of the pool. We had food, and shared jokes, and soaked up the sun, anticipating the winter to come, still feeling so young that time seemed to stretch like an endless Indian summer ahead of us, brimming with further road trips and possibilities.
Yet these pictures are tinged with darkness too. I can see it now, creeping into the corners, burning and smoking, threatening to set fire to the film. I think so much of the pain in these images comes from the people who appear in them. My heart hurts to see them. For a long time, I thought it was because of the falling out that had happened, and the wrongs that were done to me. My relationship with the girl in the video - my sister-in-law and close friend - got thrown against the rocks when we tried to live together. It ended in a brutal wreck, both of us retreating from the scene with new wounds. It was partly because of the flotsam, the still-sharp shards of that wreckage, that I left Colorado and returned to New Zealand; to escape that situation, and moreover, to escape myself. I overhead a conversation in Spanish in the kitchen: she was coming back for Christmas. I went to the bedroom and without a second thought, I searched for jobs in New Zealand, found one that sparked my interest, and booked a flight. It was mid-Covid, but I was hell-bent on leaving without saying goodbye. Within a couple weeks I was on a plane. I got that job. I began working at the National Archives of New Zealand. Ollie soon followed me. But the darkness followed me too.
One cannot escape oneself for long. I was met with my inner demons once again, and this time the wreck was much more severe. I ruined my own marriage.
This is the story left unspoken till now.
I want to share a little about the demons that live inside of me. The devil, the hungry ghost, the horrible gnawing thing inside me that consumed my life till it was all gone, leaving me with nothing but hope for a new one.
DEEPER
I have been the bearer of great pain.
I knew I had been hurt, but I did not realise I could hurt others.
Strangely, the pain I feel when I gaze at these images does not come from the wounds that were inflicted upon me. It comes from someplace deeper - less fretted over and worry-worn than the replayed arguments and the jabs that stung. Somewhere more subconscious, dark and dim. It comes from knowing that I hurt these people. I loved them, and I hurt them.
First, there was the wreck of 2020. Even the most angry parts of me, the bits that remember overhearing whispered words like poison in the walls, or that time I was told I should stop voicing my opinions, even the label “know-it-all” and the misdirected accusations and the scapegoating that drove me to a point of near-insanity, making me actually physically lose my voice, even those angry parts do not hold a candle to the self-reproach that I feel when I think about the lasting hurt that I may have caused.
Let me put it in plainer words. I really fucked up. I did not support my friend in the way I should have during her pregnancy. Instead of believing in her, I worried for her. The words I used, my tone, my attitude, it all landed in a way that caused a deep rift. I did not intend to hurt her, but I did, and I can see that now. I can see the way it must have felt, and it pains me to think about it. Because I know exactly how it feels when someone substitutes worry for real care. It has taken me years and years to see the picture this way.
I knew I had been hurt, but I did not realise I could hurt others…
Then there was my marriage. The wreck of 2021.
The truth is, I cheated on Oliver. Not once, but multiple times over the years that we were together. I cheated, then vowed never to do it again, then would cheat again. 3 times. 3 people. 3 deep gashes. That is what it took to break my marriage.
To explain why I did this, I would need to write several thousand more words. The river runs deep at this point, the caverns dark and horrid, but I have been exploring them these past few years, in order to face my own demons. Suffice to say, I felt a gaping hole in my heart where selfhood and a sense of secure love should have been. In running down all the wrong paths, I was reenacting those scenarios that had played out first during my childhood and then in my later teen years, when I went through 5 years of intense coercive control and abuse at the hands of a romantic partner.
… I knew. I knew I had been hurt. Yet still I did not realise I could hurt others. Not till it was too late.
Without intending to, I took my own hurt and passed it on to the person I cared about the most. In trying to fill the hole in my heart, I went and hurt Oliver in the exact ways that I was hurting. I cannot even begin to describe how it feels to know you have passed your pain on to a loved-one this way. Gut-wrenching. Sleep stealing. The worst of it is, I know that pain like the moles on my wrists; I heard its familiar ghostly voice when he spoke to me of the newly embedded question that was gnawing away at him: why did I look for love elsewhere? Was he not enough?
INTO THE HEART OF THE DARKNESS
I feel it in my soul,
I feel the empty hole,
the cup that can’t be filled…
The beast that can’t be killed.
I know I shouldn’t love you, but I do…
~ ‘Bitter Water,’ The Oh Hellos
Not enough.
That is how I felt all the time in my own mind. My inner critic was like a constant hum, a tv playing in the background of my life, waiting for me to make a mistake, and then an invisible hand would turn up the dial and I would be sitting with my arms over my head, trying to hide from something that I could not shut out.
If shutting it out didn’t work, then maybe shutting myself away from the world would. So, I began to build a wall. Without ever consciously thinking about it, my mind set out to protect myself in whatever ways it could find. Apparently, what it found was that I could numb myself to pain by never really touching the outer world. Never letting it get to me. At this point, everything felt so raw that numbness was a welcome relief. Unfortunately, I did not read the fine print at the bottom of the contract… Build a wall to keep out the pain, and you are building a wall that will keep out every other part of the world. Pleasure and suffering, achievements and pitfalls, curiosity and challenges, awe and uncertainty, love and loss… Each is bound within the other. You cannot shut out one side of life. You either live, and experience the world in all its fullness, or you don’t. To live is to be invested, and to be invested is to risk something. In short: living is caring. Indifference is death. These were things I did not know, at the age of 20, when I decided to retreat from caring about the world.
Another couple points of fine print I did not foresee:
- Walls of indifference keep love out. Both ways.
- The hole in my heart would only become more hungry.
- The less I felt, the more I craved feelings. I wanted to feel something, anything! Adrenaline became my only way back, a return to feeling alive.
- The word “whatever” can lead one into recklessness.
Most of the time, the river of my life ran under a summer sun, and I floated along lazily, feeling relatively peaceful and detached. There were long stretches of time where life would mull on happily in this way, and Oliver and I were the best of companions. A lion’s share of our time together was spent like this. Happy, exploring, cooperative.
Looking back, I can see that the waters only became dangerous when a figure would appear. Someone hazy, just out of reach. A person who would first call to me, then dive away. In plain English, I was captivated by anyone who was initially interested in me, only to become emotionally unavailable… even cruel.
It was as if I hoped to reenact the pain of my past loves, so that I might change the ending. If only I could make this person like me. Love me! Then I might feel whole again.
So, I chased them.
I chased them because it was familiar.
Because I felt more comfortable earning love than having it. Especially when I felt internally that I didn’t always deserve it.
I chased them because I wanted to finally prove to myself that I was lovable, even by the most unloving of people. That was the impossible glimmer of gold I sought to capture. The love of the unloving.
All the while I scorned the love of those people who truly cared for me. My husband. His family. My friends. My own family. I never believed in it, let alone felt it. I felt alone.
And the hole inside me gnawed, never filled, always hungry.
Till the day it consumed my entire world, my marriage, and all I had known. Gone.
Only then did I realise that something needed to change.
SWIMMING UPWARDS WITH GEMS
Where I go, will you still follow?
Will you leave your shaded hollow?
Will you greet the daylight looming,
Learn to love without consuming?
~ ‘Thus Always to Tyrants,’ The Oh Hellos
Since then, I have been trying to unravel the knotty clump at the heart of it all. I have learned to love myself, but I am still learning to love and be loved. It is not easy. There have been missteps and setbacks, all of which have helped me to grow. I am the fool, bumbling along the road, unsure of the way but never faltering for all my ignorance. I am determined. I will not let my heart calcify around the hurts. I continue to feel, despite it all. Loss is intimately wrapped up in love; to love is to lose. For so long, I wanted to keep myself from feeling the pain and the loss that I associated with love, (my innermost fear is that I am slowly losing every single person I love - that the more they get to know me, the less and less they love me). I thought that if I guarded my heart from caring, if I stopped caring altogether, I would be safe. My motto, without realising it, had become “Whatever. I don’t care.”
However, I can see now that the real work is to hold my pain with care, so that I do not pass it on to others. I don’t want to create any more hungry ghosts. I can be the point at which the pain stops.
My motto for the last 2 years has been this:
What happened to me is not my fault, but it is now my responsibility.
RESURFACING
The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return.~ ‘Nature Boy,’ Nat King Cole
I wish, in writing this, to take responsibility for my part in this sad story. I wish to tell the story, and in the telling, have it be touched by that magic that happens when one weaves their experience into words: to sooth, to process, to put it in the past, place it in the fabric, counting the threads that make up the picture before moving forward to weave some more. This section is part of the tapestry of my life, and although it is unsavoury, it is real.
So often, we want to turn away from what is hard to look at. I believe it is a difficult but worthy practice to face the darkness in ourselves and to name it. In doing so we may open the door to change. And so it was - this time was filled with the power of great change. I have had to change, in order to stop hurting those I love so much. This time was the rich black wormy soil from which I grew. The soil itself is unpalatable, stomach churning, but the fruits… they have been beautiful.
My greatest fear has come to pass. I have lost love. At the core of it, this little story has been about the love I lost when I lost a part of my family: Oliver and all of his family, the people who had taken me in and cared for me - people with whom I had shared hundreds of meals, laughs, and cherished experiences. In many ways, my fear of losing love was the very force that drove me to push their love away. My fear of pain lead me to callousness, and a “whatever” attitude, and in this way, I was like a starved wolf. Hungry and dangerous. Slow to trust. Apt to lash out.
Yet, my greatest wish still lives on. Underneath it all, I know my heart yearns for one thing: to love and be loved.
And I am on my way, opening a little more each day. I am taking care of my hurts. And I have been allowing myself to feel the love that already surrounds me. In my palm is a tiny seed of hope that I hold as I walk.
For you, at last, to comprehend
the kind of love of which I speak.
~ ‘This Will End,’ The Oh Hellos
For Oliver.
Who stuck around, and continued to care for me, even after I started to push him away. I am so sorry. You are enough. I hope that you will go on being your wonderful self, unburdened by any fear or doubt. I wish you only love.
