The man I’ve never met

It’s been a busy week. But I’ll write about that later. This entry is about the loss of a man who I’ve never met; I didn’t want him to be buried in a postscript to a larger post so I will postpone stories of my week until tomorrow.

A dear friend lost someone very close to her in a particularly cruel way. I never met him, but the fondness with which she spoke of him made me wish I did...In fact, I was looking forward to meeting him should we both be in the same town at the same time. He sounded such a warm, vital and generous man. I haven’t had a chance to talk to my dear friend, whether online or on the phone, due to our busy schedules and the acute lack of internet here. But I know that you know I’m thinking of you--constantly--and wishing there was something more practical I could do for you.

The words “he’s in a better place” sound so hollow at this juncture...

123

Paul has “tagged” me to participate in the Page 123 escapade. In fact if you are a reader of his blog you may find this whole page is familiar t you. That’s because I copied and pasted his entire post…sorry Paul. The instructions are: “the mandate: pick up a book on the top of your book stack, turn to page 123, read the first five sentences, then post the next three sentences”.

The book I’m reading at the moment is called A time before me, by Michael Holloway Perronne, a really well written coming-of-age/coming-out story…

I knew I had to do it that way, or I would never get it out. There was silence on the other end for a couple of seconds.
“Come again?” she said flatly.

I tag Liz, Kate & Lance, Lou and Calla.

Doug and other anxieties

The week has not come to a peaceful conclusion.

Catch your breath,
Hit the wall,
Scream out loud,
As you start to crawl
Back in your cage
The only place
Where they will
Leave you alone.

Doug, the amiable bloke next door who appeared to be “quirky” on the first day, “a little strange” on the second and “downright weird” on the third has devolved into the housemate from hell by day eight. My theory (or which I am 95% sure) is that he is doing some kind of drugs and that the showers he takes aren’t showers at all, but in fact just him turning on the water to ensure I do not enter the bathroom while he does goodness-knows-what as he talks on the phone (and at times, yes, to himself) or lies on his bed (presumably) with the door to the bathroom open to ensure good ventilation for the smoke that would otherwise stagnate in his shoebox of a room. I know this because I can smell the smoke, I can tell he’s in his bedroom when he’s talking on the phone as the shower runs, the fact that he flushes the toilet while the shower is running, and the fact that the shower curtain doesn't move from one shower to the next nor does the shower head, which was pointing at the wall at one point. Last night the shower was running for an hour and a quarter and while it was only around dinner time, and hence not sleep-disturbing, it was still pissing me off nonetheless as I sat in my room watching TV and dwelling on all the strangeness in which I now find myself. I should point out, by the way, I have no issue with drugs being consumed. If he wants to take them then he is big enough to look after himself. It is the being woken at all hours by running water and the fact that by the time night falls there is not any hot water left that I take issue with.

There have been other incidents and evidences that indicate he is a few cards short, however I doubt that any of them would actually hold up outside of my circle of friends. I don’t want to complain because to be honest I just don't trust the guy not to hit me or set my room alight or something of that nature. Dad suggested encouraging him to think of the room as a shoebox in the hope he makes a move himself. This isn't an entirely ridiculous plan since the room is, and I promise I’m not exagerating, the same size as the laundry at my parents’ place.

This afternoon I decided to move my wardrobe in front of my door to the bathroom in an attempt to muffle the noise of his ostensible showers and his awful music from wafting unbidden into my space.

Locked inside
The only place
Where you feel sheltered,
Where you feel safe.
You lost yourself
In your search to find
Something else to hide behind.

So tonight, as I was attempting to go to sleep, I was dwelling on this issue and some others that have been on my mind during the week. As a consequence, I had an anxiety attack. It wasn’t pretty. Since the bad trip, I have had another major anxiety attack apart from tonight’s so I am a little worried, to be honest, that this may be a new and interesting symptom of something else under my medical belt. After I calmed myself I tried once again to fall asleep but my mind obstinately returned to the issues that are worrying me as I felt my pulse quicken and my breathing became shallow.

You don't know why they had to go this far,
Traded your worth for these scars,
For your only company.
And don't believe the lies
That they have told to you. Not one word was true
you're alright, you're alright, you're alright.

As some of you may already know, anxiety (and at times depression for that matter) has the uncanny knack of warping one’s thinking to the believe that ultimately if one cannot do or have something, that the world will end and one will die a horrible, nasty death (at least in my case, since on a good day I am petrified of death). The idea that everything can (and in all likelihood will) end in disaster is paralysing. I turned on the light and the laptop and decided to write a little about it in order to prevent it...it’s worked too, I feel much better. I realise that the things I’m worrying about haven’t gone away and that I still need to do some legwork to fix things up, but at least I can do it calmly, without fear of apocalypse or an untimely death.

After arguing with a half dozen people, I now have internet at my new place. I’d be jumping around whooping with glee, except that it doesn’t really kick in until next month, so in the mean time I have to make do with minimal connection at home and the rest at uni... So bear with me. In the mean time I’ve uploaded (and backdated) four posts that I wrote over the weekend…

If you know me well enough to have my postal address, it's changed obviously so let me know i'll give you the updated version. Ditto emails, its better to email me to my uni account while I'm here because it's the easiest to check.

And now I sign off, ready for adventure.

The sound of white

Like a freeze-dried rose you will never be what you were,
What you were to me in memory.
But if I listen to the dark you’ll embrace me like a star,
Envelope me, envelope me.

I knew it was coming, I saw it on my calendar early last week and ignored it with the skill of the expert procrastinator that I am but like all things that one procrastinates about or ignores, Pop’s birthday happened today nonetheless.

If things get real for me down here
Promise to take me to before you went away, if only for a day.
If things get real for me down here
Promise to take me back to the tune we played before you went away.

The weather was appropriately dismal in the early afternoon as I wandered around the city. I was on the way to St Marys Cathedral to go to mass in memory of him. I bought lunch, a plate of chips and gravy, and sat in the park watching the people walk by, their heads hunched down as it started raining. And then this song came on my music player…

And if I listen to the sound of white,
Sometimes I hear you smile and breathe your life.
Yeah, if I listen to the sound of white…
You’re my mystery, one mystery…

As I sat there in the park, trying not to shiver as I ate, a single tear escaped my right eye and rolled down my cheek… followed by another from the left eye… and another… and another… until my sunglasses fogged up and I could see nothing but a blurry mist.

My silence solidified till that hollow void erases you,
Erases you till I can’t feel at all.
But if I never feel again at least the nothingness will end,
The painful dream of you and me.

After a short time I picked myself up and trundled over to the cathedral, where I lit a candle and sat in silence…waiting…remembering…

If things get real for me down here
Promise to take me to before you went away, if only for a day.
If things get real for me down here
Promise to take me back to the tune we played before you went away.

This is supposed to get easier right?

And if I listen to the sound of white,
Sometimes I hear you smile and breathe your life.
Yeah, if I listen to the sound of white…
The sound of white…

Hands up who can remember The Sandman and his Guide to Sharehouse living. I have been having flashbacks to that fabulous little radio play all week.

I have met two of my roommates… There are currently four of us in the house, with one more to move in, but I haven’t met the third person (I don’t if it’s even a guy or a girl). The one in the room next to mine, who shares the (now much, much cleaner) bathroom with me, is a really friendly guy who for the purposes of this missive will be known as Doug…because he looks like a Doug. Doug is a very friendly guy, 27, arts student like me, we get on really well but he doesn’t appear to eat, he showers three times a day, and most disturbingly of all he talks to himself in the shower—which I can hear because although the walls are concrete rendered brick they may as well be tissue paper at eight in the morning. So I have invested in some ear plugs and finally slept past nine for the first time since I moved in. If it weren’t for these few “issues”, I’m sure he’d be a top roomie, but potentially being a member of a notoriously unpredictable group gives me pause. On the plus side we’ve had some really interesting conversations about some very deep shit, and he has no issue with the “gay thing” (for want of a better way of expressing it), so I guess we’ll have to wait before .

The other roomie lives upstairs. He’s 19, straight out of high school, about to start a science degree (in maths no less). I only met Nineteen yesterday and he’s already gone back home for the week—he’ll move in properly next week—so I haven’t really formed an opinion on him yet.

Phantom, the one with the big room upstairs, has been in and out in a flash once—Doug and I only know of their presence because we heard the shower running one night—so obviously we’ll have to see on them too.

After an afternoon with a bottle of bleach, a (now very bedraggled) toothbrush and a tea towel which is now totally white (due to lack of rags in the house), I managed to get our bathroom into a more habitable state. I also bought a new shower curtain, so the brown eighties affair has been retired.

One more thing… just did a load of washing for the bargain basement price of $2 per load. Once it finished I inspected the final product to see if it was money well spent. It wasn’t. The clothes were washed, yes, but I seriously doubt that they were spun in any way shape or form. A serious amount of water had to be wrung out of them before being hung up.

Every day this place feels more and more like the Sandman’s terrace.

Faggot

As I was walking out of the Mardi Gras fair day this afternoon, on my way home after a great afternoon, a ute full of hoons, complete with P-plate, sped down Broadway while its occupants shouted “faggot” at me. I kept walking.

The move

After packing a car load’s worth of books, clothes, sheets, towels, TV/DVD stuff, and general detritus of my life safely into Dad’s car, we embarked on the drive to my new place at uni. I signed a set of forms as thick as a phone book, collected the key and went to see what room had been allocated me…

I was underwhelmed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a palace, or even anything bigger than your average shoe-box, but I did expect a basic level of hygiene. Upon opening the door, our noses were assaulted by the musty smell of a room that hasn’t seen sunlight in at least a year—that’s fine, I didn’t expect them to air the room in anticipation of my entrance—but when I moved a wardrobe to make better use of the space I was a little put out to discover a forest of mould growing on the carpet beneath it. I’m talking tree-like structures and the whole bit. After a liberal dose of Glen 20 and a smattering of domestos (fuck the carpet’s dye running) I’m monitoring the situation to see it doesn’t sprout little shoots of nastiness again. Apart from that the room itself is fine—it’s the same size as my room at home, maybe a little bigger—with a comfortable bed and enough space to store all my crap. I opened the door to the bathroom I share with my neighbour…

I was disgusted.

The shower curtain looked as if it was alive and kicking during the 80s, with an appropriate amount of mould and mildew for a specimen of its age. The shower itself sported once-white-but-now-a-tarnished-grey tiles, and grout that hasn’t been its original colour since the shower curtain was installed. According to all the stuff I’d read on uni housing, the bathrooms are supposed to be cleaned weekly. I went upstairs and checked out the bathrooms up there—they were fabulous—and came to the conclusion that ours has somehow been missed out of the cleaning roster for quite some time. I will be showering upstairs.

The kitchen is clean (but then after the bathroom I would have considered eating off the floor in the kitchen). There is a sandwich press under the sink that looks like it was manufactured when my parents were teenagers, going by the shape and the general purpleness of its mouldy exterior.

But hey, it’s a place to lay one’s hat, as long as one remembers to be careful of what one lays it on… more to come…

Fine print

I discovered last night, with a small measure of amusement, that while using a particular internet provider’s services, it is unacceptable to

“unlawfully incite discrimination, hate or violence towards one person or group, for example because of their race, religion, gender, sexual preference or nationality”.

I was tempted to email the company and tell them that their terminology is so last century. “Sexual orientation” or, more accurately, “sexuality” would be a much more appropriate way to allude to discrimination when it comes to sexual minorities in the twenty-first century. The term “sexual preference”, once used in the latter half of the twentieth century to describe sexual minorities (if they were considered at all that is), now it is only used in this sense by the religious right who cling to the mistaken believe that it is a choice or a simple preference, and usually is used in such a way as to deny basic legal protections on the grounds that it is unnatural anyway. I would point out that the “preference” implies a certain amount of choice and fluidity so that while one may prefer, say, chocolate ice cream over strawberry, they will happily partake of either at a pinch. With that in mind, I would argue that the term really refers to discrimination on the basis of issues more along the lines of preferred sex position or whether one enjoys using sex toys, not whether people are attracted to/fall in love with/fuck members of their own sex or gender. I stifled the temptation, reasoning that whoever read my email would probably see only the inane rantings of a nit-picking “gay activist”, and not fully appreciate the pithy humour with which it was written.

Besides, presumably it is perfectly acceptable to lawfully incite discrimination or hate towards any person or group, for example on the basis of their race, religion, gender, sexual “preference” or nationality. A quick look at anti-discrimination laws in this country will show you that it is actually quite easy to legally do such things. You just have to be a part of a church or government body and you practically have carte blanche.

Conversion therapy and other acts of lunacy

For the first time in a long time I looked at my counter’s stats this morning. What interests me about the stats is the search terms that bring punters to my blog. Usually I have a quick giggle at the weirder ones (such as “shorts pissings”, “why gay.com slows computer”, “4 foot fibre optic virgin mary”) or I sign over the ones that make me sad (“my life seems empty”, “sick of this s[h]it life”), but on occasion I find one that gets me really mad. And l found one such search term this morning, about three quarters down the page that got me intrigued, and a little bit mad: “conversion therapy places”. [I warn you now, this is a heavy post so if you’re in a light mood I recommend reading this another day.]

I followed the link to the search engine page and found that the link led to an entry from many months ago where I was talking about using two cross-over network cables together (which effectively makes one straight-through cable and renders them useless). Liz made the comment that you shouldn’t try to make things straight (thankfully her grandmother, who was in our presence, didn’t get the joke) and I said in the post that this proves conversion therapy is a crock of shit. Boom-boom, end of story.

I’ve actually done quite a lot of reading on the concept of “reparative” and “conversion” therapy. I use the quotes around the words because I think they only apply very loosely to the reality of conversion therapy and the misery it brings with it. Before I came out to Sister I looked into it because I thought there was a very real possibility of her insisting I seek out this kind of “help” to “cure” my homosexuality. I was lucky and she has never preached to me on the issue. I think it’s partly because she knows I have read so much on these things that she’d have a hell of a fight on her hands, but even so I do respect her for leaving me to live my own life, when it clearly goes against many of her beliefs.

I wasn’t so much angry that someone had come to my site hoping to find information on conversion therapy—they surely would have taken one look around and then left quick smart—but after seeing some of the other links on that search page, I was more pissed off at the mere existence of these lunatics. Ironically, my discussing it will only ensure it happens more often.

Five pages caught my eye, four (long) articles and a blog entry. The articles (for anyone who is interested) are: Mission Impossible: why reparative therapy and ex-gay ministries fail from the Human Rights Campaign, Conversion Therapy Revisited: parameters and rationale for ethical care by NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, who set up their organisation under the guise of a reputable charity with the express purpose of promoting conversion and reparative therapy…a bunch of crap-merchants if I ever I saw one), Deconstructing Reparative Therapy: an examination of the processes involved when attempting to change sexual orientation from the Clinical Social Work Journal, and “Reparative” Therapy: whether parental attempts to change a child’s sexual orientation can legally constitute child abuse from the American University Law Review.

The blog entry was about a sixteen year old kid who had been sent to an ex-gay group called Love in Action against his will (another bunch of crap-merchants, you can tell straight away by the name; google them if you want a fun look at whacky fundamentalism), who published the rules of the organisation on his blog. The links to his blog are now dead, since this all happened in 2005, but I was able to track down a copy from elsewhere on the net, and I also found this really interesting blog post about Love In Action and how love and hate play out when it comes to these things. I also found a wholly annoying article outlining LIA’s stance on what homosexuality is and how it needs to be cured.

The last article boils being gay down to ineffectual upbringing and/or some kind of failure on the part of the father or mother. I didn’t read the entire article; I ended up skim-reading it because it made me so mad. The thing is though that the ineffectual upbringing outlined in painful detail in this article doesn’t fit in with my experience of growing up. My father wasn’t distant and was always there as a “male role model” in my life. My mother didn’t smother me or overdo it with her “feminine influence”. I don’t fit the mould of the religious-right’s definition of what makes a homosexual. That gives me hope. It gives me hope because it means there must be other exceptions to their “rules”, and after a point they will no longer be rules anymore.

So that’s all I’m going to say on it. I realise I haven actually said anything substantive, that I’ve merely given a list of files and articles to read, but I figure there isn’t much I can say on the subject that hasn’t been said in those articles I read this morning. If you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to read them, or if you don’t want to read them (which I totally understand cos they’re big and long and depressing), here’s the short version:

Being gay is not a choice, it is innate. As such conversion therapy is a false therapy peddled by the neo-con religious right which seeks to change a person (whom they believe is not innately gay, but an individual who suffers from same-sex attraction, which is seen as unnatural and due to an inadequate upbringing in some way) from being a homosexual to a heterosexual through dubious psychoanalysis, sheer will power and prayer. It is denounced by all major psychological bodies around the western world as being an inappropriate therapy in any circumstances.

Quick update

A quick update…it has been five days since I smoked. There are thirty-five days of lent. I am craving them, sure, but I know I can (calmly) last the whole forty days with little temptation. The big question isn’t going to be whether I crack and smoke during lent, it is whether I will have a smoke on Easter Sunday and, more importantly, if I will keep it up or not.

I move in less than a week. On Friday the 15th to be precise. I have heaps of sorting and packing to do. More because my room is in such disarray than because I need to take a lot of stuff.

More to come tonight.

The week in pictures #06

3/02: My newly made bed. This is a relatively rare sight, since I tend not to "make" my bed each day, I just leave the covers sprawled every which way, so it really only gets made when the sheets are changed.

4/02: The view of the Railway Square spires from my bus on Monday, the day I got soaked.

5/02: Nearly all the tablets I took on Tuesday. The photo is missing some pain killers, but it gives you an idea nonetheless.



6/02: A (very blury) picture of the label on my main fibromyalgia medication. As I took out two tablets this morning I noticed the fine print: "This product is not designed to diagnose, cure or treat any disease." What's the fucking point then!?

7/02: Jack, my little teddy bear and the keeper of my locker keys; he's only small, fits into the palm of your hand. He was a gift from my nephew Lance. Shameless promotion: click on the link to go to JDRF's online store to purchase one :) all money raised supports research into Type 1 Diabetes, one nasty fucker of a disease (just ask Lance).

8/02: The bottom of my new pink frying pan, a birthday gift from Liz. I love it!

9/02: Sunshine in the backyard. It feels like the first time this week!

Dry lead a silly emit

I was watching Queer as Folk last night when suddenly subtitles appeared on the screen because I had sat on the remote. The DVDs are imported from China and they feature some of the most hillarious mis-translations I've had the privelage to encounter. Case in point:

That was hot! --> Too the fire exploded

Think so? --> Is?

You know, I’ve been here before. --> Is / I seem to lead the here

Oh? --> H'm

I mean in this building. Fucked some poor looser. --> I came this building / Dry lead a silly emit

Yeh well, the place is crawling with them, believe me, I know. --> This kind of silly to emit to get much is

One of my pity fucks. --> Are all I break the shoe

Yeh, speaking of pity fucks... --> Say you dry lead of break the shoe

You know, when we first hooked up at the gym, I wasn’t sure— --> At the gym and you meet ,I did not feel the...

—that I was your type? --> Am I the type that you like?

That you’d be so...hot. But man are you ever. Look, I’m still hard. You up for another round? --> Unexpectedly you so the fire explode / See, I m still crustily / Come to one more bureau

Actually there’s something I want to say to you. --> I have the words to say to you.

You want to roll me over and fuck me again? --> Want to turn over me dry I?

What I want to...what I want to say to you is...ah...roll over --> My......means to say the......to turn over to pass by!

Remember man that thou art dust...

...and unto dust thou shalt return.

I had a moment of clarity the other night. An epiphany you might say. I was catching up on my blog reading, something which incidentally I am very behind in, when I read this post over on Kate and Lance’s blog. She discussed her brother, who died from aggressive stomach cancer. Due to smoking.

Kate and I have shared a great deal of ourselves with each other over the course of our relationship, but to my recollection (which admittedly isn’t as sharp as some), we’ve never discussed her brother and his sudden, painful death. I have thought of him often, but I never felt I could bring up the subject with my nicotine-stained fingers doing the typing or my nicotine-stained lips doing the talking. Anyway I read that post and realised just how quickly it happened for him, diagnosis and death within months, and I was struck with the thought: “I don’t want to die”. No amount of disgusting warning images or television ads have ever effected me like this.

So I’ve decided to give up smoking. Again. At least for lent, but we’ll see how I go.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of lent, so it’s perfect timing really. A few weeks ago, I was toying with the idea of giving up smoking for lent, or at the very least cutting down, but it was never a permanent move. Let’s see how long it lasts this time.

The problem is I actually quite like smoking. I’m also petrified of dying. Hopefully the latter wins out.

Wet

Ever had one of those days where you wonder why you bothered leaving the house? While Monday wasn’t totally unproductive, it was a bit of a wasted day. A wet, wasted day.

It began at 7am with Triple J blaring menacingly from my clock radio, followed by the cosy sound of pouring rain pattering outside my window. Such a calming sound, the pitter-patter of rain I mean, at least until you realise that you have to go out into the world of umbrellas, mud splashes, and raging torrents of water careening down gutters towards unsuspecting feet.

By 10am I was at uni, a little damp by that point, but I was ready to face the day head on. I had a small list of things to do: collect my disabilities services card, hire a mail box, sell old text books to the second hand bookshop, buy some of this semester’s texts from same bookshop, go to a meeting about a discussion panel they want to take part in, lodge some forms with Centrelink (for the non-Aussie punters, Centrelink is a little like the US’ Social Security, only less helpful and probably meaner). So simple really: just do each item in turn, cross them off, then go home unscathed.

I arrived at disabilities services and after a short wait got my new green card, no dramas. I arrived at the place where the mail boxes are let out and filled in the form. The guy at the desk then informed me that the woman who organises them was away sick and he couldn’t log into the computer to allocate one for me. He tried calling various IT “help lines” (I use this term very loosely), ultimately to no avail. The bookshop only took two of my books on consignment so I had no cash in the hand. The day was not shaping up well.

On the way to the meeting, I paused briefly under an awning to light a cigarette and noticed my backpack was open. The Centrelink forms were fast becoming sodden and as I stood at the lights on City Road the deluge intensified and I noticed myself becoming very wet. I looked up at the underside of my umbrella just in time for a giant drop of water to hit me square in the eye. The lights went green and I crossed the road, leaking umbrella in one hand and walking stick in the other. Just as I put my foot to the bitumen, a tidal wave rounded the corner and drowned my unsuspecting feet which were (admittedly foolishly) clad only in canvass-top shoes.

I arrived at my meeting and inspected the damage. My shoes were totally sodden through; the white business shirt I wore over the top of a green t-shirt was also soaked. I removed the soaked shoes and peeled the formerly-white-and-now-lime shirt away from my body. The centrelink papers were salvable so I laid them out in front of the air conditioner to dry. My novel was half damp, its pages rippled with moisture. I put the shirt into one plastic bag and the papers and novel into another.

By the time I was on the bus I removed the shoes too because they were making my toes cold. I arrived at Centrelink shoeless and soaking wet. Luckily I wasn’t the only one. When I got home I took stock of my day: got mail box, uncheck, sold old texts, uncheck, bought new texts, check, disabilities card, check, meeting, check, Centrelink, check.

Maybe it’s my new lime shirt, but despite more checks than unchecks I still feel like it was a wasted day.

The week in pictures #05

Week 05

27/01: My birthday celebrations began a week early this year with lunch at my grandparents. Grandma didn't have a 4 candle so she put 25, then a white biscuit on its side, then a 1 to make "25-1".
28/01: 404 error, no image today.
29/01: A pile of negatives waiting to be scaned.
30/01: The total disarray that is my bedroom as I start packing things.
31/01: The cover of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, which I watched as I cleaned.
1/02: Dinner from tonight's birthday dinner excursion.
2/02: A small sponge with a ferrero rochere on the top.

Twenty four oceans

Today I turn twenty-four. Twenty four years (and one day) ago my poor mother's water broke while she was at my grandparents for lunch...shortly after, the world changed for ever. I was born.

Today passed with little fuss...in fact I’ve only been awake for half of it since I woke up at 1pm. The plan was to wake at 10.30, because I need to stop sleeping in so much, but it failed abysmally. The next few hours are a blur...I don’t remember what I did today, except that before I knew it, it was seven o’clock and I had to get ready.

Mum, Dad, Sister and I went out to dinner at small local restaurant and I’m totally full now, with no room for a cake. I actually had a cake last weekend with the Family at Large, so this will be number two for the year.

Twenty-four oceans
Twenty-four skies
Twenty-four failures
And twenty-four tries
Twenty-four finds me
In twenty-fourth place
With twenty-four drop outs
At the end of the day

Life is not what I thought it was
Twenty-four hours ago
Still I'm singing 'Spirit,
take me up in arms with You'
And I'm not who I thought I was
Twenty-four hours ago
Still I'm singing 'Spirit,
take me up in arms with You'

I feel very dopey tonight, so there will be no witty remarks I’m afraid. I feel very huggy tonight...I’m hugging everyone I come into contact with. If I were a cat I’d be rubbing up against people’s legs and demanding attention. For the first time in many years my day actually started out being fairly ok on my birthday, pain-wise I mean, although as the day progressed it crept back. Before we left for dinner I took a largish dose of pain killers so I’m now sitting pretty (or lying pretty to be more accurate) watching One Tree Hill with Mum before bed.

The image with this post is a scan of the card Mum and Dad gave me…it sums me up quite accurately I think. And below are the lyrics to a song by Switchfoot, called Twenty Four, which was written on the eve of the lead singer’s twenty-fourth birthday. Such a beautiful song and so true of my life.

Anyway I’m off to watch some telly.

Who am I?

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Cool huh?