I present a facade of self assurance when really I am insecure and guilt ridden every minute I am awake. I walk past homeless people in the city – sullen eyes and sunken cheeks – and I feel ashamed of my plump body and the money I spend on losing weight. I want to hide the bulges and the evidence of my daily dabbles in excess.

It’s impossible. I reek of privilege and I know it. When I wallow in my self pity, smearing tears from my cheeks, I feel guilt for even being unhappy when outwardly things look great for me. I watch the news and see the images and hear the stories of refugees fleeing imaginable horror, acknowledge the atrocities numerous wars have seen, contemplate the injustices that have been done to our Indigenous peoples and empathise with children and women and men who have been and continue to be assaulted or abused. All of this from my comfortable, warm bed.

Knowing all of this exists and that every morning I take a little pill and I talk for an hour each fortnight, to a Professional, about my problems seems so…wrong.

Is it really necessary – and is it moral – to block from your mind all the bad things in the world in order to be happy?

I was a teenager when I was first diagnosed with depression. I can remember that I told my Dad that it seemed like lots and lots of bad things were happening more and more in the world and that made me feel people were not to be trusted and the world was a horrible place. Dad told me that bad things had always happened but perhaps I was more aware of it now that I’d gotten older. That was probably true in a lot of ways.

Today, I feel that same despair at the world.

I’m a cinephile and I often think of particular films or scenes when ordering my feelings and thoughts. I can relate this feeling strongly to a scene in one of my favourite movies: The Fifth Element. Leeloo is a supreme being who has been tasked with saving the universe from complete destruction. In one of the last scenes of the movie, she is exhausted, crying and draped across the arms of Korben Dallas, her accidental conspirator and supporter. Korben is trying to convince Leeloo that humans are worth saving.

Leeloo has learnt about the universe and it’s inhabitants through news and history. Watching her flick through the images when learning, painted a horrible story of our past and current life that made me feel sick. I saw that reel of information play through my own head when I read Facebook in the mornings or listen to the news throughout the day.

Leeloo is unconvinced that there is good in the world. Korben seems to have only one answer: we have love. I know that it went through her head as it goes through mine: what shows you this love? Have you seen what goes on in this world? These events do not show love.

I often feel that this struggle goes on inside me and I’m not entirely sure what arguments my internal Korben makes. I don’t think I know how many times Leeloo is going to be able to save me.

I find it incredibly fascinating that penguins are generally monogamous and many mate for life. One might argue that for penguins, there are soulmates. I’ve wondered lately, as I lay about sleepily; do penguins dream? More specifically, do they dream of their special, loved one? Their soulmate? Maybe penguins don’t have to dream because life is snowflakes and fluffy babies with their partners when they open their eyes. I’m not suggesting that life is easy for them. Just that things would be immeasurably more bearable if there’s such a thing as a soulmate, and you’ve got one, right?

I don’t believe in soulmates personally, at least for humans. It’s romantic nonsense for us. It’s irrational. Maybe it works for penguins because – I assume – they aren’t the complicated, hot mess that humans are. All feelings and fucking.

It must be a relief – or a curse, I’m unsure – for those who don’t dream. Dreams are bittersweet in many ways. Sometimes upon waking, I long for the dream world to be my real world. To not know what the dream world holds might be how penguins get by with their realities.

Currently, I live in two worlds.

One World is where he stands the first night I met him, hoody on, strumming the guitar strings as if plucking at my heart. One where he and I get lost in that kiss in the car, where I notice the ache in my back as I lean over the gearbox to fall deeper.  It’s the world in which our hands find each other, seemingly of their own accord, as we walk down the road to the house we share. It’s the world where I compromise a little more and he nurtures a little more, the world where we come back together, despite all that’s happened. This world is without definition, no edges, hazy, and I try to hold onto it every single night.

The Second World begins where the other finishes. This world is alarm clocks and schedules, friendships and casual sex. It’s rational. It’s where I tell myself it ended, several times, for a reason. In this world, I remember the fights, the tears and the pain that we caused each other because we just weren’t on the same page. It’s where I date this other man, happily, but know there’s a void that just cannot be filled by anyone new. This is the world in which penguins are just penguins. They aren’t an anthropomorphic cliché that I seek to find in a partner of my own.

I don’t want to be in between worlds any longer. I want a new world. One where we both acknowledge that we’ve changed since the last time we tried together. I want a new world where perhaps the changes we’ve made and the ways we’ve grown have resulted in each of us becoming who we need for it to work. I want to silence those thoughts that tell me not to call him and I want the other side of the bed to be his again. I want that hoody and I want the back ache inducing kiss.

Penguins come to mind when I wake because that’s the world in which I want to live. A sleepy collision of worlds One and Two – rationality and reckless hopefulness. I want my world to have him in it again. I want to wake up from one dream to another. I want to have his stubble on my cheek and to feel his breath on my skin when he says: “Good morning Penguin”. I want him to read this and to take the step that I’m unable to make.

I’m leaving this here, now. For another Penguin to pick up.

He’s messed up. It’s easy to categorize him as crazy. His story is so exceptional, it’s hard to believe it’s really true. He flat out defined himself as a sociopath in early conversations with our lady. 

Wikipedia informed her that sociopathy was otherwise known as “Antisocial personality disorder”. Characterised by “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others”, she read. He laughed and teased when she didn’t respond immediately – he knew she was googling. 

He was intense and broken; so broken. “Beyond repair” as he kept reminding her. 

She is kind and loving. She thinks everyone is worthy of love. She wanted to prove it to him everytime he talked about how he was unlovable. She knows that is a terrible reason to get involved with someone. 

He was the quiet boy at primary school. She was the girl that really saw who he was inside and did not judge, like the others. There was something between them then. Unrequited. Now, 14 years later, they’d come back into each other’s lives, fully formed adults with back stories at completely different ends of the life experience spectrum. 

For all intents and purposes she had lived a very comfortable, normal life with all the expected trials and rites of passages that any young, white woman may encounter growing up. She had loved deeply and lost spectacularly, grown as a person and learned how to be a friend. She had worked on becoming more independent,  and mostly won that game. She’d lived alone and with housemates, dated, had her heart broken again and broke some too, completed a university degree, traveled a little, had crises of confidence, loved and hated her body, flirted shamelessly, gotten fit, developed her career and spent much too much on social pursuits. She worked hard, constantly to be a better person.

He had earned his money dealing drugs. He’d been involved with extensive violence and crime, spent countless hours and dollars on therapy to deal with being physically abused and neglected as a child. He’d worked hard to build muscle and get fit – he structured his life around workouts, protein shakes and bulking meals. He then discovered he was going to die of cancer, imminently, at age 23, and after some time, came to grips with his impending death. He fell in love, walked away from love, spent time in and out of hospital, did physical therapy and had surgery after surgery after surgery and got fit once more, despite new disabilities. He now faced a life ahead of him filled with intimidating possibility after learning that he was in remission. 

They talked online for some time before they met again in person. She was a little frightened of him. They began as friends but she knew that she would jump into bed with him soon and she wanted to delay that. She always jumped in too soon. 

There was an intense physical, spiritual connection between them when they did sleep together. It was probably the hottest, most passionate sexual experience she had ever had in her life. She thought that maybe this meant he was different to all the others – that maybe she was truly connected to and interested in this one. 

It was the first time he had ever felt a real connection to another person and the first time he’d felt someone truly understood and loved him. He didn’t feel uncomfortable then, to share with her that he was falling in love with her after only two nights and three days together. 

She believed him but knew that she wasn’t there at that point with him and probably never would be. She immediately realized how selfish and inconsiderate she had been. She tried to justify her actions with “it’s what I wanted at the time” but deep down felt that was a cop-out used by asshole hedonists. 

To her, slowly removing herself from his life was the right thing to do. She honestly thought she was doing the best for both of them by cutting things off where they stood before he became more attached when she knew she wouldn’t reciprocate. In hindsight, she regretted her actions as they were cowardly.

He called her out on her subsequent withdrawal from conversations and her reluctance to be honest about how she felt about him. He likened her actions to that of an embarrassed child who would hide a broken vase so as to not have to deal with the consequences of that broken object. 

She realised that while she might be OK jumping into relationships head first and with reckless abandon, it wasn’t just her emotions she was gambling with when she did so. 

She thinks now that perhaps it is she who exhibits the most sociopathic behaviour after all. 

[Trigger warning: Graphic conversation about Sexual Assault]

I’m sorry to interrupt your Sunday relaxation. If you are uncomfortable with vulnerability, please scroll on past. This may be tough to read.

You know me, probably quite well. You might not know that I was sexually assaulted some time ago. By a boy that I liked, who I was attracted to, who for all intents and purposes is a progressive, kind and respectful person. He probably considers himself a feminist and in some ways he probably is. He works in the community service and health sector. He volunteers often and is well liked by his friends. You or they might say “but he’s not like that“.

I have thought long and hard about making this public knowledge – for years now – and I still want to do it. At least once a week I think about writing a status on Facebook that would get it off my chest – would make it open and light rather than a dark and shameful thing that I carry alone and only speak about with close friends. I don’t want to feel careful about who I tell anymore. I was sexually assaulted. This happens. This happened to me. It happens a lot and it’s not OK.

I don’t want to tell people so they see me as a victim. I am strong and resilient and I think talking about this is evidence of that. This is bravery. Whenever anyone talks about sexual assault, it is incredibly courageous. People want to turn away from the fact that this type of thing happens: the pain of the victim and the realisation that people who are lovely and respectful and not like that can actually very easily do this to others, is much too hard to bear. I understand that. I do not blame you for wanting to turn away. To talk about such trauma for the chance of healing and at the risk of deaf ears is extremely brave. Those who do should be commended for it.

I feel stupid labelling my attacker an attacker. He did not come at me with a knife. We had breakfast with friends the next day as if everything was normal. He texted me for a week before I told him that what had happened was really unacceptable and that I was really upset about it. Some would respond to this amount of time passing as evidence that I’d just changed my mind about wanting it. That’s just not true. I didn’t want this to have happened to me – I didn’t want this to be my truth so I tried to make it not be. Ignoring the truth does not make it any less true.

I did not realise that what had happened was sexual assault. This is a very strange thing – when I look back at the event. It does look plain as day, now. My exact words were: This is not going to happen and his exact words were: I’m going to do it anyway. That is a no. A resounding no and an aggressive reply.

I’m sorry this is hard to read. This is still hard to write about and it has been a couple of years since it happened. I can tell you that I went into shock when I endured it. I could not believe that someone was saying those words to me in response to my words. I could not believe that the man I had kissed just moments before was pulling my pants down whilst I was trying to pull his hand out of them and simultaneously trying to hold the pants up.

In what ways this has affected me is much too much to write about in one little text box. I struggled to trust men in general for a very long time, despite how lovely and trustworthy I knew they were. This went against the deepest of my personal values and made me question whether I was a good person. I struggled to become aroused even with people I loved and was incredibly attracted to, for a very long time. For about a year, I did not want to be touched by anyone which was a shock to my friends who know me as a very affectionate person. I did not want to die, but I did not want to live in a world where this had happened. I was angry and scared, for a very long time. Often I still am.

The worst thing was that I did not trust myself anymore. I’d always thought I knew how I would react if someone tried to assault me. I did not react that way at all. I did not scream and kick and punch – I shut down instead. I thought I was braver than that. Oftentimes I tell myself that shutting down was brave or at least, the only thing possible for me to get through it. I’m holding onto that thought just like I held onto my jeans’ belt hoops – with quiet determination.

I hate that the effort I’m making isn’t so much about forgiving him, but about convincing myself that it was in no way my fault. I thought for a long time that I needed to forgive myself for letting it happen. If only I hadn’t kissed him. If only I hadn’t attended that party. If only I hadn’t been interested in another human being. I don’t know where that line ends.

Today, right now, writing this to you I feel bold, empowered, courageous and unstoppable. I am broken in a way, but I’m not interested in hiding that and somehow, showing the cracks in such a public way feels like relief. In spite of the sexual assault, I am a strong, confident and affectionate person. In spite of the sexual assault I do not default to a distrust of men who could possibly hurt me. In spite of the sexual assault I love and trust deeply. In spite of the sexual assault, I continue to be the person that I always strive to be.

Today, in spite of the sexual assault, I know I’ll be OK.

EDIT: Response to this piece has been incredible. For all of you reading this who are struggling through something similar, I wanted to pass on some resources that have been helpful to me and to remind you that it’s not your fault, you don’t have to do this alone.
http://www.kemh.health.wa.gov.au/services/sarc/have_you.htm#past

The wind grasped my skirts. I clutched at them wildly to get them under control. My face; beetroot red. His face; unfortunately positioned at my now exposed crotch.

“Oh, hello”, he said, with a wispy, mocking smile on his bronzed face. I flushed a deeper colour still, not that he’d be able to see from where he was.

“No need to pout, I’ve seen it all before. I’ve got five sisters, see”. He turned away as some sort of gesture of respect and held out his hand to help me onto the boat. The damage was done with his previous words, but I took his hand. It was softer than I was expecting. I didn’t let my fingers linger on his. I made sure not to look him in the eye.

There was an awkward silence as he loaded my luggage behind us. I didn’t know what I was allowed to touch or sit on but I settled on a tarpaulin covered box across from him.

“Are you the only boy?” I tentatively asked, to keep a conversation going – away from my underwear.

“I’m sorry?”. He stood up as I asked, having finished tying down my cases with some sort of rope netting. Had I offended him?

“In your family. The only boy in your family”.

“Oh. Yes. I had a brother. A twin actually, but he passed away ten years ago.”

There were no other passengers. We were safely tied down, so it was time to push off. He threw the rope holding us to the jetty expertly onto the wooden boardwalk. It curled neatly around the pylon.

“Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. What was his name?”

“Well”, he paused, as he used an oar to turn us toward the open water,  “my name is Andrew. We haven’t really started at the right place, now have we? I suppose we couldn’t have seeing as I’ve seen your knickers before I even know your name”. My face flushed again while his beamed.

I was speechless. He smiled cheekily and waited for my response. I stared at him, incredulous in my embarrassment.

I opened my mouth to tell him that my name was Doctor Thoreau and that I – not a Husband, not a Father, but I – paid his wages. Before I could utter a word my ears were inundated with a deafening noise.

“Blllllgggghhhhh barrrrrpppppppp blllllllggggggg”. The engine roared to life with one swift movement of his muscled forearm.

I stood up and let my skirts give in to the wind.

I locked eyes with the European boatman. He shifted uncomfortably and the smile ran away from his sun kissed face. The horizon was between my legs.

As sweet as a whisper I said: “What do you know about me now Andrew? Nothing I don’t want you to”.

I walked to my car in the cold air this morning and felt a great emptiness in and around me. It felt like an apocalyptic fire had ravaged the Earth and left the atmosphere empty and crisp and longing. Like it had cleared everything away. My insides mirrored the outside – or the outside mirrored the inside, I’m unsure. I knew that soon this emptiness would be replaced with heavy, unrelenting grief. It felt like nothing would ever be the same again. There’s an uneasy sort of clarity when things have been wiped away.

I’d had two hours sleep the night before. The ethereal nature of all solid things in my path was realistically caused by my delirium, but it felt like a new perspective. My hands on the steering wheel – ghosts. The trees passing by – shadows. The people walking on the sidewalk – memories. Nothing was real, I was drifting in a dream. Nothing mattered.

For hours last night I’d considered, seriously, that I might not have my friend in my life in the morning. I’d envisaged life without him and I’d pleaded for him to stay. I knew my words would have no effect but still I tried. Something worked. I never once thought to thank God, but someone must be thanked. I don’t know who they are yet. Perhaps it was just him, coming through and convincing himself to stay when so many things were telling him not to.

There is a long way to go, but goddamn I hope there is a long way to go yet. I hope there is a long way to go, with him filling the empty space instead of grief.

I told a boy I loved him, with all my heart – my precious, open heart – and he said nothing in return. The other end of the telephone line was pregnant with silence and then we said goodbye. I was relieved to have said it and I was relieved to have had no reply if it wasn’t matched with his precious, open heart. I told him we’d be friends only when I felt OK with my broken heart. This would be some time from now and he respected that.

Months came and went and I cried myself to sleep knowing my heart would take some time to heal itself. I regretted nothing. I had been courageous. I could ask nothing more of myself. Courage, it would seem, does not cancel pain.

A little while later, a romance blossomed with a new friend. Our first date was dressed up in staged friendliness – a transaction that would result in a reason to spend time in each other’s company without being explicit in our interest. “I’ll show you how to do this in photoshop if you’ll teach me how to cook that meal you made”. We were both unsure if our feelings were mutual but in that ambiguity there was excitement.

On our date, the morning turned into the afternoon. The afternoon turned into the evening. The evening turned into the early hours of the next day. We planned only to be in each other’s company. It was so easy.

“I’ve been wanting to hold you in my arms for some time now” he said when we eventually lay in bed together, physically closer than I thought humanly possible. He stroked my shoulder and I nuzzled that little bit further into the nook of his neck. I heard the words and I took them in but I’m not sure I believed them. I couldn’t see how I was going to be any different to his previous girlfriends (you sneaky insecurity!) but I was happy where I was at that moment – it would be what it would be. I soaked up every little joyous second and in the morning I was shocked when that continued. I wondered when the part would come where it became awkward and we both lose interest.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. I felt strange using the term ‘boyfriend’. I’d spent so long trying to convince someone that I should be considered their ‘girlfriend’; that our relationship was a relationship; and this man bandied around ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’ like it was as obvious as I thought it was with every other. He trusted. He was courageous. He risked.

The other boy texted now and then. I thought about him occasionally and was still sad to not have him in my life. I was not ready to be friends, there was still pain.

One day, out of the blue, he texted to say that he’d appreciated the time we’d had together. Despite both our separate happy lives with our separate happy partners, he took the time to say that he regretted nothing. Any other person might smile when reading this but instead, my heart ached in response. His words were so incongruous with his actions, I simply could not let them in. It seemed random and I am ashamed to note that my first reaction was to think he wanted only to open up my legs, not my heart.

He went on to say that a friend had written about our time together. I asked why he would do such a thing. He replied that I’d had an effect on him that I never would understand and simply could not be forgotten. He sent me a link to a blog. I read the words. My heart broke again on the last sentence: “for what it’s worth, I love you”.

The words I wished for so badly to come from his mouth in that pregnant pause on the telephone, were written right there on the screen. There was relief in the tears I cried this time – to know that I wasn’t meaningless to him.

Days later I pondered whether the words were a consolation at all. Did they make me feel better about not hearing them the night I said them? I considered our relative positions when declaring feelings of love for one another. Mine was heart bared – everything to lose and everything to gain. His was from a place of safety – a girlfriend to go home to, no lonely bed if love wasn’t reciprocated. Did the words mean less because he said them when he had nothing to lose? I considered how courageous my actions were.

My love is courageous. My love risks all. My love does not get written as an after thought. It must be said.

Am I happy?
Ask me at 9am in the morning, getting ready for a job that I’m not sure I’ll have for much longer.
Am I happy?
Ask me at 10pm when I’m slipping into a warm bed with my precious loved one.
Am I happy?
Ask me at 2pm when I’m struggling to concentrate as the coffee and five hours of sleep are failing me.
Am I happy?
Ask me at 11am when I’m walking in the sunshine and patting all the carefree puppies I cross on my path.
Am I happy?
Ask me at 6pm when I’m driving home and I recall the affair, the sexual assault, the feelings of inadequacy that I know I need to deal with as soon as possible.
Am I happy?
Ask me when I know.

I’ve started online dating again. I feel ready to meet people and eager to investigate what makes others interesting – everyone is interesting in some way if only I believe it and search for it. So I will.

Whereas previously I’ve been desperate to find some connection in others because I was so lacking in confidence of my own self worth – I had to somehow receive it from others – I feel the journey of getting to know others worth taking the time for, now. If I were single for a year or two more, this would not be the end of the world. That idea terrified me not more than 6 months ago.

This site supposedly provides an idea of your compatibility with potential romantic matches based on the answers that you each provide to a series of personality trait questions relating to love, lifestyle, sex etc.

I came across a profile with an interesting black and white profile picture – a bulging bicep clearly visible due to a strategically positioned arm. I clicked, I was curious. We had a 97% compatibility which was the highest I had seen so far.

There was humour in the description, which was long. Sometimes arrogant, but also self-deprecating. It was written as if advertising some product – this person was versatile and would fit into your lifestyle and result in “domestic bliss” for you, the lady consumer. Clearly this person was serious, but not too serious that it appeared desperate. At several points I laughed out loud and appreciated the style of humour I was reading. I didn’t want to skip ahead – this person knew how to write; I drank in all of those words. It reminded me of my previous partner and the way he would relish the opportunity to string so many words together like this.

The book section was enormous! But not a list – it flowed like poetry. Bukowski, Hunter S Thompson, Irvine Welsh… hold on. This is weird. Could this be him? I kept reading. Next up this: a positively disastrous account of James Joyce’s Ulysses, just as I’d expected.

I finished reading. I opened the image gallery. Mother fuck! This is him. In all his ridiculously photoshopped glory. Black and white photographs with some ironically coloured part of the image – this is his humour. There’s even a fucking image of his 6 pack out of focus while some Goddamn classics are stacked in the foreground. That curly hair, those beautiful eyes, the cheeky eyes. My stomach dropped when I realised this was him. The man I spent two intense years with, desperately in love, through terrible and beautiful times. Here he was again, a stranger once more. Seeking love from other strangers.

97%. Life is funny sometimes – what does this mean? What is it within that measly 3% that caused the complete incompatibility of our personalities? If 97% compatibility can’t work….what the fuck will?

I was confident that I could compartmentalize tonight – quarantine things from others. I was sure I would have a good time with you, knowing what this is for you and what it is for me. I know you’re a respectful, lovely person and I know you care about me. I don’t think you’d ever do anything to humiliate or belittle me and you’d never do anything to hurt me.

I shaved my legs. I wore a short, tight dress. I put on my heels, red lipstick and a smile. I saw how affected you were when you entered my apartment and I was validated. You looked incredible and I wanted to tell you just how much. Instead I ate my complimentary words in some attempt to retain control over the situation. Like you’re some situation. How absurd. I think my eyes betrayed me regardless of my silence.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping things under control. Then your hand was under the table, holding my heel in your palm. It surprised me and I had to suppress the sharp intake of breath the action had caused.

I regained some distance and we entered the cinema. The chairs were the special, bucket kind. The sort that affords theatre goers a lot of personal space. You remarked on this and it still didn’t occur to me that physical contact between us in public was something you wanted. I had assumed that any touching between us couldn’t possibly be loving and that’s what I thought that was. If it’s behind closed doors, at home, then it is in the realm of sensual touch and that I could handle.

Your hand caressed the inside of my wrist. It was electric, here, in this crowded cinema, with the sound of ice cream wrappers and popcorn being chomped by oblivious strangers. You whispered in my ear: “I love this part of you, right here”. I melted.

How could I possibly hold myself together when such words of endearment echo in my mind? You didn’t say those words in an animalistic way. You said them because you legitimately enjoy that small, soft part of my body. That you could notice little things like this about me and so unashamedly share your joy about those pieces of me, is truly heartwarming to me.

How do you enjoy me so, but still find it easy to feel comfortable saying this is the limit – right here – this is where it ends? This is the box you fit in and this is the box I fit in? How? I’m not box shaped and neither are you.