A Spanner in the Works

It’s Saturday morning. Normally, on a Saturday morning I head to my favourite coffee shop—shout out to Bean Scene in Warragul—and spend an hour or two writing before Hubby arrives for our Saturday morning date over coffee and chocolate chai. Then we go do errands together.

Instead, today, I am here at the hairdresser.

I don’t mind—I adore Diana. I found her fifteen or so years ago and discovered that she could manage curls. It is such a rare thing to find a hairdresser who can manage curls, let alone mine, that I followed her from salon to salon and now to her her own salon. When you find someone who meets your needs do everything you can to keep them!

So I am here and Di is looking after me.

Normally, I get my hair done Tuesday afternoons, on my afternoon off. I take my time, read a book about writing, and sit in the salon enjoying the hustle without having to be a part of it. Di is great like that. She gives me this safe space to read and think and be. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we don’t.

I had an appointment for next Tuesday. Well, I did until I got a call about my recent breast screen.

It’s not a big deal. Someone who checks these things has a reason to do some more checking. I don’t yet know what the reason is or how much checking is needed. I had a feeling—not a worry, just a feeling—when I had the original screen that I would be back.

Just like I had a feeling that this latest publisher would send my manuscript back, unaccepted. It’s unusual now days to have a publisher want a hard copy. I sent my poetry collection off, all hopeful that it would be a yes. Honestly, a little bit confident that it would be. This was an edgy publishing place—I felt they would take the risk.

But, clearly, the risk is too much.

And it is with this collection. It’s a brutal exploration of a difficult childhood. The brutality rests in the depth of abandonment, not so much in the violence that is retold. There is a lot of dark, gothic imagery—not to everyone’s taste.

I checked the mailbox before heading off to Friday night stretching class and found the slightly snail-damaged, self-addressed envelope bearing my handwriting.

I went to class fully grumpy and ready to chuck the whole publishing thing in. I’m still kicking around the idea of taking the next year to just write just for myself. Writing is the thing I love to do. Publishing requires a certain sort of hustle that I just can’t seem to figure out.

I come back to the idea of not being born for such things. The life I have come from thought little of words and books and reading. But words and books and reading are my mainstay and the desire to contribute to that space keeps popping up like a beach ball held under water.

Last night, I imagined myself taking to that beach ball with a kitchen knife, and being done with the desire to publish a book.

And yet, here I am, talking with you. Writing. The irony isn’t lost on me that I keep finding ways to write despite deciding—sometimes daily—to give up. I seem to reach for the pen even when I am my only reader.

Do you do that? Reach for the very thing you just gave up on?

I took the call from the nurse practitioner summoning me in for more tests while standing in the hot house at school, looking out the door at the kids working in their gardens. A boy tossed a worm at one of the girls and as I listened to the instructions for day and time, I wondered whether he might have a little crush on her and smiled. It’s one of the sweet parts of teaching, watching love begin. It isn’t that they will have a long term relationship or anything like that. It is watching love itself. Up until this point, love has been for their parents. When children become young people, love takes on an electric charge as they find themselves drawn to one another in exciting ways.

Love tosses worms at the feet of a girl, as I hear ‘there will be a nurse with you at every stage while they explain the results and tell you what will happen next’. The nurse asks me if there is anything they should know, anything I think will be helpful to them.

Usually my answer is no. My childhood, the resulting PTSD, is so normal to me that I forget is makes life harder. Then I remember my last dentist appointment, my mouth filled with things for an x-ray and it taking all of my effort to hold back vomiting until they were finished. The dentist, a kind young woman apologised over and over. ‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her between breaths. ‘I’m not good with things in my mouth. It’s the trauma.’

‘Um, I’ve had a difficult childhood…’

‘Mrs Beamish! He’s throwing worms at me!’

I wave through the open door, pointing at the boy and making a face at him. He is delighted that his first attempts at love have gotten a response from the girl in question and holds his hands palms up, an innocent man, falsely accused, big smile on his face. He goes back to looking for more worms.

‘PTSD. Note down that I suffer from PTSD. I can’t predict how I will respond but I won’t be violent. I’m more likely just to internalise things. I might cry but I might not.’ I’m babbling now, unused as I am to putting this thing into words, hoping to help her understand that even though I am high functioning, I still suffer.

The nurse practitioner becomes even more kind, if that is possible. ‘I won’t be here when you come in. It’s my birthday and I have a rule that I always take my birthday off work,’ she says.

Another boy throws a clod of dirt at the same girl. Love gone awry.

I step out of the hot house, and gesture my disapproval.

‘But he threw a worm’ is the protest. I shake my head a firm no.

‘It must be birthday season,’ I say to the nurse. ‘It’s my husband’s birthday on Friday. Anyway, I had better go, I’m a teacher’ and love is learning the hard way and proper intervention is needed before there is retaliation and things go fully pear-shaped.

It is so inconvenient. Illness. Even though I am not feeling sick and currently not dying any faster than anyone else, and may not be even after Tuesday.

I am glad that there are processes in place for checking on such things but the reality is, I don’t have time to be unwell. All the same, time will be made should there be the beginning of a thing happening.

As for the manuscript. I just don’t know. A new publishing opportunity landed in my inbox the day before last so maybe I will send it in to that and quit once they say no—it’s the story I tell myself every time a no comes in.

Who knows what the future will bring?

I, for sure, don’t.