Manda Propaganda

For the past month or so, I’ve wanted to rearrange my bedroom furniture. My room is very small, so I dont have a lot of options, but specifically, I wanted to turn my bed around to face the opposite direction. Its never felt right, sleeping with my head towards the door, but I just never got around to doing anything about it.

Last night my brother was meant to come over and help me do it, but an hour before I left work he called on cancelled on me. I was not at all surprised, he cancelled the last 2 times as well. With Katie out of the house for the evening, I decided to do it myself… no small feat since my bed is too heavy to simply push around, and when I bought it a year ago it took Katie and I over 2 hours to put the damn thing together!

Sweaty, tired and sore, 90 minutes after I started, my room was the way I wanted it. I washed and dried my sheets, organised my electrical cables and applied a new decal to the wall above my bed. The room feels much more spacious, and the layout makes more sense. In fact, for the first time in almost 18 months since moving in, my room feels like home.

I sat in bed writing letters and watching Metropolis, until the combination of quiet unwinding and exhausting physical labour took its toll… I slept so well, and woke this morning from a dreamless sleep with a feeling of utter contentment.

Today is an important day… while I never believed for a moment that the event allegedly scheduled for today was actually going to happen (#vague), I am allowing myself to let go of things and act as if it were. When I see my psychiatrist tonight, I’m going to tell him all about this, and let him help me get through it. I guess thats the one good thing to come of all of this… I am no longer afraid to ask for help. I am simply greatful that I have so many people to go to for help when I need it.

While doing some research on childrens fiction recently, I recalled one of my favourite books from my childhood, one that I still enjoy to this day. It’s called The Squealies by Joan Flanagan, and follows the adventures of a young boy and his very unusual family. It is essentially fantasy, but based in the real world, and what I loved most about it was how the author ignored the laws of common sense and liklihood and just embraced the absurdity of the scenrios she created.

Within the space of one afternoon, I had been struck by inspiration, and the outline for my own story began to solidify in my mind. Much like Joan Flanagan must have done, I am allowing my imagination to go to town here, rather than dismissing ideas that are just too “fun” to make sense of. The Squealies makes no apologies for colouring outside the lines, and its only now that I’ve realised that when it comes to childrens fiction, thats really the only way to work.

I am so excited by whats going on in my head at the moment, its hard to concentrate on work and study, but while I make notes and work out who my characters are and what motivates them, I will be eagerly awating the day I have time to sit down and bring this story to life.

WOO! :D

I am finding myself gripped by ambivilence lately… unable to decide how I really feel due to my frustrating ability to see things from opposing points of view. There are a few things though, about which I experience no confusion, and fortunately this past weekend contained enough of those to prevent me feeling totally befuddled.

On Friday night I met up with that cute artist boy for a coffee. Its rare to meet someone with whom there is such a harmonious blending of similar and opposing views, and with whom I felt almost totally at ease. Rarer still was to realise that despite this, there were no real romantic feelings. I am intrigued for sure, and would very much enjoy to develop a friendship with him, but thats as far as it goes. This actually pleased me highly, as I was concerned that I would not be able to resist an ill-advised rebound fling, but the fact that I was able to objectively review the situation and decide against further action was most satisfying.

Saturday morning was like Christmas, my post office box a veritable cornucopia of items to unwrap and ponder. Turquoise earrings, a box of gift cards and a letter from Mitch, my death row penpal, all brought me great pleasure, but the unexpected return of a flash drive loaned to a friend left me feeling fairly hollow. On one hand I was pleased to have it back without too much drama, but on the other hand, I guess I expected a note or a file left on it to indicate the senders state of mind. The lack of such communication was unsurprising but perplexing nonetheless. I dont know what I expected, and know even less what I would have done if something had been included. Its for the best really.

The rest of that day was one of the most pleasant in recent memory. Shopping with my best friend, finding shoes, books, kitchen accessories and various homewares was both fun and exhausting, and an afternoon spent laying on his bed in the sunlight was more rejuvenating than I could ever have imagined. We updated his resume, put in an application for a newly vacated role with my company then drank wine, ordered Thai and watched Capote. Fabulous.

Sunday requires its own post, which will take a while yet to evolve. After escaping the City To Surf traffic that threatened to imprison me in Heaths neighbourhood, I got to my sisters house just before my brother turned up with his children. I spent 8 hours in the company of my favourite people on the planet, and had a wonderful time. While the emotional confusion that followed does need more thought before being put into words there is no doubt in my mind that I love those children more than life itself.

As long as I remember that, nothing else really matters.

One of my favourite lyrics of all time is from the Spencer Bell song Fearful - “I’m almost sure about the long term, just being a whole lot of short terms”. Thats what life is, a series of phases and stages, of chapters that begin and then end.

I recently read a newspaper article about a woman who decided to conceive and raise a child on her own, despite the concerns of her friends and family. To paraphrase her response, the odds are high that any man she planned to have a child with would end up leaving anyway, so she was better of starting the process in her own time and being self reliant rather than waiting for a fairy tale that would inevitably end, if it even begun at all.

Much time was spent pondering the wisdom of this woman, and after many in depth conversations with my own friends and family I have decided to do the same. Not now, obviously, but soon. In fact, very soon. In 6 months and 2 days I will turn 31, and at that time, I think I will go and get myself knocked up. It might take a while, but with any luck, around the time I turn 32, I will have my first (and possibly only) child. Isn’t that exciting?

Of course, there have been a few dissenting murmers from the peanut gallery - friends who fear that having a child will stop me from going out or being the fun person I have only just recently begun to be again. They worry about the financial managability, the health implications and the stress I will have to endure being a single mother.

In my currently optimistic state however I only see the positives - I wont have to rely on anyone else, I wont have to worry about losing my partner (as I wont have one to lose!), and best of all, I wont have to compromise when it comes to choosing names I like. This last point is especially important as I have 2 girls names and 2 boys names that I chose many many years ago, and that despite the trends that have come and gone, they still feel relevant and right to me.

The other concern my friends had is the obvious “who would want to date a single mother?” issue. Dating is a bit of a dead end street anyway; men my age usually are either bitter women-hating divorcees or emotionally retarded game players, and therefore of little interest to me for anything other than temporary companionship. Any man who is worth the effort either wouldnt like me back, or wouldnt be ready for the type of life I want to live, and therefore once again unsuitable in the long term.

Another point to consider is that many girls my age already have kids, and if/when their own relationships break down, they too will be single mothers looking for a new partner, so whether I have a child deliberately alone or as the result of a failed attempt at “happily ever after”, I am still in the same boat as them. So really, whats the difference?

While it would be nice to have a biological father in my childs life, I am resigned to the fact that it would only be for the short term anyway, so I might as well make that chapter as short and painless as possible, and move on to the next one.