Little Black Book

Heart pure and mind sharp. Invisible connections to her mum and the sun. She walked on the cusp between worlds. Strange voices haunted her sleep at night. A bright academic. Always top of her class. Seriously studious, for a 5 year old. She would sit in her garden for hours communicating with ancient Egyptians as they danced around the sun in geometric patterns. She knew the trees, each with their own personalities. Energy open, receptive, understanding.

But by age 26, further down the obscure path of life, she found herself astray.

09 November 2011

It was like a deep, silent panic. An unfamiliar un-ease.

There she was, sitting on the beach in Canguu, Bali.

Honeymoon.

3 days married.

Watching her handsome husband surf.

Post wedding skinny frame, flat tummy. Brown skin. White bikini. Baby blue towel. Over-sized sunglasses. Sparkling diamonds on her ring finger.

You might be thinking this is sounding something like a rap video. Admittedly up until that point, that’s kind of what she was aiming for.

She was always one to strive for perfection, so at the ripe age of 26, she had created a life that was white picket fence perfect, successful, desirable.

With 2 weeks of bliss ahead of them, Indiana imagined this moment would feel like one big SIGH. All the wedding craze was over. They made it. They were newlyweds on their favourite tropical island.

But as she sat there watching him surf against the grey, pollution hinted horizon, she felt the urge to get her small black notebook out and write out the lingering tension that remained from the craziness of the past week, or year.

She rolled over onto her stomach and looked at the blank page.

Pressed her pen up against it, but nothing would follow.

She wrote the date 09/11/2011… but nothing followed.

This was the first time she was checking in with herself for well, months. Maybe in over 12 months. There was a wedding to plan, bridesmaid dramas, finances to manage and some cold feet moments, but that was all totally normal, so she was told.

She began to feel uneasy.

She stopped for a moment and allowed herself to feel into it.

'Oooh.. it must the sun!' She thought, as she felt it piercing into her, sweat beginning to sparkle and pool on her back.

She closed her eyes and felt into herself again…

… ‘UGh… What WAS that?’ She thought.

She had never felt this before.

It was like a deep, silent... panic? An unfamiliar unease.

Her chest felt tight... a tiny lump in her throat.

There was a part of her frozen, in the sweltering heat.

She closed her notebook and laid down on her back. Silent. Still.

An eagle circled high above. She admired it's freedom.

About 35 minutes later she hears ‘You didn’t watch me once!!’ his voice, playfully angry as he walked up the beach.

‘Oh I’m sorry!’ She replied. Completely forgetting his request for her to watch him surf.

He sat next to her on the towel. Droplets of cool ocean splashing and sizzling on her toasty, tense skin.

The truth was, in those brief moments, she’d felt something she’d not felt before.

It was DREAD.

She felt powerless, that she just lost control of her life.

That she had made a mistake by getting married.

She heard the cages of predictability and compromise loudly shutting down around her.

She felt the rigidity of the legal agreement they both signed, in the name of their love.

She felt the free-spirited teenager within her yell - what the fuck Indiana!?

It didn’t feel how they said it would feel, marriage.

And that scared the shit out of her.

So she ignored it.

But, if her fingers had written any words down on that page that day, they would have been...

‘Fuuuck

WHAT HAVE I DONE?’

She kept this secret locked away in the shadows of her heart for years. Every morning, the feeling of waking up to a life she didn’t recognise as her own, kept growing stronger.

She had abandoned the voice inside her that knew what was right. She had forgotten about her essence, her connection to life, magic, freedom.

The more days, months, years that passed, the further away she moved from her sanity.

Her half-heartedness was like a split in the psyche. The lack of expression kept her stuck and imploding. She began to slip down a dark spiral of depression, every few months or so.

She eventually made a deal with herself. If somehow, she received enough money to stabilise herself on her own, she would leave and follow her soul, that seemed to be calling her back to the tree’s, the sun, the mysteries.

$20,000 she thought, that’s all she needed.

That evening, she was scrolling through her phone and saw a writing competition, the prize being $20,000. All she had to do was submit a story about how she moved from depression to expression, in less than 2000 words.

Something inside her moved, snapped, sparkled and popped. For the first time in a long time, a part of her felt ALIVE.

That evening, she rummaged under her bed for something to write on, fumbling around a bunch of old books and bags. She pulled out a small black notebook and flicked through the pages. Not a word had been written in it, just a date 09/11/2011, one that she did not recognise.

‘Perfect’ she thought. ‘I will write it in this.’

A couple of months later, she received a phone call. ‘Indiana’ the voice said ‘You have won $20,000 in a writing competition you entered, Congratulations.’