Living My Own Life

As I write this story I'm aware of the themes of cycles of having wanted to start a new life and a search for new beginnings many times in my life.

My parents were immigrants. I was born in Sri Lanka, my mother was half Sinhalese, half Scottish and my Father was a Burgher. They left Sri Lanka, to move across the world to a new land, for a new beginning and to start a new life. We moved to Melbourne, Australia. I was three years old and my brother six months.

Later, my beloved Scottish Grandmother (who I called Grams) who we had to leave behind when we migrated also left Sri Lanka and came to live with us. A year, to the day of our arrival in Australia, my younger sister was born. My parents were so very young and their hope of a new start, a new beginning was not to be. There was too much stress, too many obstacles, our family was so dysfunctional.

I know, I know, people say everyone's family is dysfunctional but mine was dysfunctional in the extreme. My parent's because of their own histories of trauma and abuse made our home a living hell. We were subjected to every form of abuse you could imagine, physical, sexual, verbal and emotional. The domestic violence was so intense it just became normal.

So we were living in a new country with extended family as my Paternal Grandparents were also now living in our house. There were five adults and three children, living in a large, five bedroom house in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

My father beat my mother constantly. No event was sacred, birthdays, Christmas, parties, bar-be-cues, every happy occasion ended in a beating. My Mother couldn't take it anymore and simply collected my brother and I at school one day, in a taxi. My grandmother was in the taxi too, ashen faced holding my four year old sister. My Mother spoke in hushed whispers and told us not to ask any questions.

Two of my Mum's work friends helped us out and were so good to us, providing us with a home until my Mother could legally get custody of us. We were hiding out like fugitives for I don't know how long until the five of us moved into a tiny two bedroom flat. We left our friends behind in the neighbourhood and we moved to a new school so lost our friends there as well.

My father remained in our large house with my dog and his messed up parents.

We had been in our new home for about a week and on the Sunday my father had his first legal visitation with us. We were supposed to go to Sunday school in the morning as our new school wasn't Catholic and then go out with him afterwards. That Sunday never came.

He turned up the night before to fight with my Mother and things turned ugly. He stabbed her to death and took his own life with the same knife in front of my younger brother, sister and I and my Grandmother. I was eight, my brother five and my sister four. That night changed my life forever.

We didn't know where we were going to live or who we were going to live with. We became wards of the state. Luckily, my Grams got custody of us. I breathed a sigh of relief believing life would be ok for us but again it wasn't to be.

After the murder/suicide life drained from her and she lost the will to live. She had a heart attack, was hospitalised for Gallstones then developed lumps in both breasts. She had a double mastectomy.

My life at nine comprised of taking care of my younger siblings. Getting them up in the morning, giving them breakfast, getting them ready for school. I would help Grams bathe and be scared of the angry, red scar where her breasts used to be. She was so frail and weak every day and it broke my heart to see the once large, jovial, happy woman I adored, a skeletal shell of herself.

I would often have to skip school to go with her to specialist appointments or sit with her in the hospital while she had chemotherapy. The other useless, dysfunctional adults around me, left me to fend for myself with my Grandmother. Because she was my Mum’s Mum and my Mum was blamed for all that had happened, my poor Grams was seen as the enemy. It wasn't much of a life for a nine year old and my childhood was over and I was already an adult but I would have done anything for my Grams.

I thought things would get better at home but they never did. Grams succumbed and lost her battle with breast cancer when I was ten. My paternal grandparents took over our care for a year and that was a nightmare.

My Dad's sister and her husband and my cousin moved into our house and the domestic violence continued. My Uncle hit both my Aunt and my cousin, who was a year older than me. My Aunt hit me and my cousin daily. My cousin suffered from severe depression and never really recovered from our childhood.

She died when she was fifty leaving her own daughter motherless, just as my siblings and I were left motherless. My remaining family members don't seem to be able to heal and the cycles just seem to continue and repeat. \

By the time I was twelve years old I had been raised by five personality disordered people, a combination of both Narcissistic Personality and Borderline Personality Disorder. Life at home continued to be a living hell. The only reprieve I had was I went to a great all girls catholic school that was filled with loving teachers, who looked out for me, and friends that I loved and adored and made life somehow bearable until school ended with year twelve.

My friends like me were also experiencing severe trauma and abuse at home and initially it bonded us but eventually pulled us apart.

I made new friends at University but they weren’t the same friendships I had at school. The bond was nowhere near as strong. I was working full time and studying part time to complete by Bachelor of Arts Degree and the daily abuse continued until I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

In a convoluted plot to leave a very traditional, controlling Sri Lankan family where the only way you could leave home was to get married and I was gay, I left Melbourne and moved to Sydney on the graduate program with the company I was working for. It was the only way they would let me go. I had completed my BA and my Aunt & Uncle believed I was only going for two years. I knew I would never come back.

So I was twenty two when I left Melbourne to move to Sydney to get away from the daily abuse. I moved away because like my parents I needed to start a new life.

Finding Joy

So how do you find joy after experiences like that? I didn't fit in with my family and I never felt a part of them. There was so much denial, avoidance and blame. I left home to escape the abuse. I needed outrun my family and their dynamics and begin a new life. In order to do this I had to face my own demons first and deal with the undiagnosed complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) that I did not know I had. I finally faced what had never been addressed through years and years of therapy.

I grew up to be a Life & Business coach, then trained to be a Counsellor, then Psychotherapist and ten years ago I specialised in working with complex trauma and complex PTSD. I needed to know all this stuff and work with clients and help them to heal, while I did my own healing. At the core of my being I really wanted to heal and have a different life to how I grew up.

I am blessed with a reasonably positive makeup. Not some fake form of superficial positivity but positivity that comes from wanting to live and thrive after a hard assed journey of working on myself. I am naturally resilient. Resilience is necessary to help get us through and can be a good thing but resilience can also keep us stuck in survival, struggle and just getting by. I wanted to live and do more with my life than just survive.

I did not want a life that was only about personality disorders and mental illness. I wanted a different life and I believe most of us can heal if we want to. There also comes a time in your life, when you have done (most) of the healing work on yourself that you have to let your past go and move forward. This has come in stages.

Music#1

“If music be the food of love play on” – Shakespeare’s quote from Twelfth Night. What doesn’t music evoke? It has the power to put all our feelings into a melody and rhythm and allow us to express ourselves. Music has the capacity to unite us and bring us together in shared pain, misery, grief, happiness or joy, Whatever you choose.

From Tears for Fears “Shout” watching Kurt Smith and Roland Orzabal stand on a cliff top in their music video and shout it all out to Bliss n Esso’s rap tribute to a dead friend summoning the need for friends and someone to let the light in. Yes even in pain there can be joy. Singing opens your heart chakra and the freedom of swaying your hips, shaking it off or being just like a gay man more than a lesbian sometimes the joy of belting out a Broadway show tune and camping it up. For people of my generation, a lot of us love Babs and Judy singing Happy Days are here again. We need some of that right now, looking forward to hope.

That’s what I miss the most during Covid -19 and isolation is the inability to go to live music gigs. I saw Belinda Carlisle from the Go-Go’s perform at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney at the start of 2019 and it was just pure bliss. She banged her tambourine and sang on stage in bare feet and the euphoria of the crowd when she sang “Heaven is a place on earth” filled my bones, got underneath my skin and filled with me such joy. It’s so easy to get lost in a crowd just having a bloody, good time. People forgetting their cares and woes and enjoying themselves as somebody else performs. That’s what music does to me – it fills me with so many things, especially live music.

When I first arrived in Sydney in the late eighties and discovered the Gay dance party scene and Ecstasy (the hug drug) and house music, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I fell in love with life. I’m not advocating recreational drug use, it was just part of Sydney’s night life in the eighties and for me it was just fun and freedom and breaking free of the shackles of my childhood and nothing more. It was part of my growing up and I don’t regret that as it was not an addiction for me,

There was no other feeling like it in the world. The “bom, bom” music and gay anthems like Style Council’s “Promised Land” or Candi Stanton’s “Young hearts run free” and dancing around, lights everywhere, flickering and strobing over hot, sweaty crowds of mostly gay men and some gay women and their allies. It was like an elixir, taking it all in and living it by bending my head over and watching the lights in my shiny Doc Martens. It was indeed the promised land and I was young and filled with hope. So yes if music be the food of love- please play on and on and on.

Laughter is the Best Medicine #2

There is nothing like a good laugh to just make you feel good. Before Covid -19 I used to love going to comedy shows, loving that feeling of a great belly laugh and tears streaming down my face and coughing, because I take in way too much air when I laugh and end up coughing but it doesn’t matter about the coughing because the laughter is worth it.

In my work as a therapist I deal with pretty dark stuff so in my downtime I need lightness. I love to watch light, fluffy stuff and comedies on TV. That’s how I chill and unwind and I love TV as form of relaxation.

In my childhood I was always known as the cheeky one from teachers and friends at school. I was the class clown and had a skill for making people laugh. I still do. Humour is so important when appropriate. Some topics just aren’t funny and I don’t believe in turning darkness into something funny to just deflect the pain. I am talking about something that is genuinely funny and it’s about feeling good. For me, laughter definitely brings joy.

Through this pandemic we get see the worst of some people and the best of some people. One social media account that totally makes me laugh is following the posts of #binisolationouting# on Instagram and Facebook. It was recently featured in Forbes Magazine in the US.

“The whole thing was started as a dare when Danielle Askew from Queensland challenged her friend to dress up in her fanciest clothes while taking out the bins. "My friend put a meme on her Facebook page ‘Day 6 of isolation excited it’s bin night so I get to go out’. I dared her to dress up for it and she said she would," Danielle told Bored Panda. Amused by the result, Danielle started a Facebook group called Bin Isolation Outing and thousands of people followed suit. "I made the page to make my friends laugh as I live to make people laugh," she explained. The woman didn't expect that the group will go viral, however, she's happy that the group made people laugh during these trying times. "I’m amazed at how it has gone viral," Danielle said. "I feel people just need a reason to smile, a reason to dress up and a reason to look forward to the next day." – from Bored Panda https://www.boredpanda.com/australians-dress-up-taking-bins-out/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

What started in Australia has now gone viral to a million members worldwide and the videos and photos are so funny and the creativity mind blowing. Given I haven’t been able to go snorkelling recently because the Sydney beaches have been closed, I dressed up in snorkel, fins, mask and pink wig for my fifty fifth birthday a few weeks ago and took out the garbage bins. I dressed my dog up in a rainbow tutu and placed her on top of the recycling bin and asked a friend that I go walking with to video it. The look on her face when she saw me dressed up in my snorkelling gear and pink wig and the pure laughter as she filmed me dancing and wheeling out the bins looking totally ridiculous was priceless. You are never too old to be ridiculous and have fun and my friend who had, had a very bad day at work (she is a front line health care worker) said the laughter turned a bad day into a day that ended well. We both just couldn’t stop laughing and that’s why laughter really is the best medicine.

Nature #3

It's easy to find joy in nature and I'm blessed to live in an area of Sydney that is abundant with nature. There is the magic of Sydney Harbour all around me in my local neighbourhood.

Each day when I’m out walking my dog we walk then we sit on a rock that looks across from the Sydney Opera House. There is a harbour swimming pool right on the foreshore and in summer I get to swim there during the week when everyone else is at school or work as my office is close by to my home and I work part time. Nature is abundant and beautiful. I live close to the city but in area that is surrounded by native bushland so I have the best of both worlds.

On my daily walk I see Cockatoos and endless Rainbow Lorikeets, their rainbow coloured plumes filling the sky with illuminous colour. They are more rare then the Rainbow Lorikeets, but there is a family of King Parrots (red and green Parrots) that live in the area and on those lucky days they fly above and I am filled with wonder at their spectacular beauty. Sometimes they have flown close to my head, almost as a reminder to never forget about the beauty and splendour that is around us.

One day a King Parrot just sat on the ground beside me and my dog without really moving for about twenty minutes. It just sat there chewing away at dead flower buds fallen from a nearby tree, incredibly calm and not disturbed at all by the presence of me and my dog. I needed to go home and get ready for work but I did not want to move and scare this beautiful bird away. Eventually I had to pull myself away and it continued to just sit there, content in its bird world.

My local area is also laced with lots of ladybugs. I see them everywhere when I’m out on my walk and they are a spiritual symbol of abundance and granting wishes. I always feel lucky when I see them. I captured one on my Samsung phone camera at close range so I always have the reminder of what they signify with me at all times.

Nature fills me with joy in so many ways because it is a simple pleasure, like a swim in the ocean or having fun with your inner child and jumping waves in Summer. I love going for a snorkel and am blessed to live close by to Manly Beach which has amazing waves and Shelley Beach which has incredible marine life where I can go snorkelling. To put your head under the water and see schools of colourful fish, Squid, Eastern Fiddler Stingrays, Manta Rays, Gropers, and on the rare occasion a Sea Horse is indescribable and without a doubt brings me joy. It’s like a magical world when you put your head beneath the water and see all the Aquatic life.

It’s bliss to feel the sand between your toes as you walk along the water’s edge or to feel the coolness of waves lapping at your feet on a really hot day. It’s that feeling of lying on the grass and closing your eyes and allowing the sunshine to caress your face, to feel it’s warmth. It’s to walk barefoot in the grass and know what it’s like to feel grounded and solid and have the earth hold you up and let you know it has your back. That is joy and that is nature and it surrounds us every day in some form or another and it’s free. It doesn’t cost anything to be in nature.

Nature is abundant and with everything going on in the world right now with this virus, as humans take to their homes, the planet is healing and animals are roaming the streets or their local environment more freely. Pollution is receding. Los Angeles has the cleanest air quality in decades. As humans are at home, hopefully some of us healing, the planets is healing too. That is my wish and hope.

Simplicity #4

Trauma complicates everything. People with complex trauma and personality disorders complicate everything and everything in their world is negative, stressful, overwhelming, complex, drama filled, riddled with conflict and tension. What my soul sought is peace, calm and simplicity and I discovered how to find it within myself. That constant longing for something different, I found it within and it was there all along. Most of the people I have encountered in my life, do not understand simplicity and all the joy it brings. They live complicated, complex lives. These were the only people I knew how to interact with because that’s all I knew. I only knew how to interact with people who were like my family.

I became a complex trauma, complex PTSD therapist for Godsake because it was all I knew, complexity. Maybe I needed to understand complexity in order to find simplicity. So I may have wanted calm, peace and simplicity but I only knew how to hang out with people who were like my family until I understood this pattern and cycle no longer served me and it was time to heal and let them and the cycle go. It was time to be free and commit to living a life of simplicity.

You see without trauma, life is so much simpler. If you need to get somewhere you can do so, simply and quickly and life becomes so much easier. So when there is simplicity and ease there is also joy. Simplicity is about waking up in the morning and knowing you are alive. I left behind my family that was addicted to death and pain and painful endings. There is simplicity in that first breath in the morning that tells you, you are alive and connected to life. There is simplicity in a morning shower and water as it cleanses you. There is simplicity in the first waking light and I get up and turn on my computer and I look across the harbour as the those first rays of sunshine sparkle and gleam on the buildings in the city. I view the magnificence of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge from my sun room window first thing in the morning.

Simplicity is the warm smell of my dog’s breath and I nuzzle her and kiss in her in the morning when I wake up, as she sleeps in the crook of my legs, nestled near my butt. Simplicity is going to the dog park with her and throwing a ball and seeing her smile as she chases the ball, over and over again, and never seems to tire until she collapses when she gets home. That is simplicity and pure joy and knowing that she loves me, always unconditionally and I am grateful and thankful and blessed that I have her to cuddle me and help me be happy. Dos are the ultimate beings of simplicity. A dog’s life is simple.

There are so many simple things in life that we take for granted but when you have come from the roots and foundations that I came from I have learned to take nothing for granted. Therefore I chose to live with simplicity and savour it’s flavours and immerse myself in its joy. That way you learn to be authentically thankful, take nothing for granted because we never know what tomorrow brings and live a life that is your own. That way you get to live a life that belongs to you and because I have done the hard yards and chosen a journey of healing I also get to love and live a life of mostly joy. For that I am truly thankful.