I’ve got things pretty good at the moment; I finally have a job, I’ve got a new relationship that I’m excited about, I’ve realised just how good and dependable most of my friends are, I’m heading in the right direction again with a change of uni course next year, and it’s Christmas time which means lots of presents for Daley from Santy Claus.
I’m also feeling a lot better. I think I’ve intermittently had a bit of a negative view of myself since around the time high school started. I’m not exactly sure why the start of high school brought with it a change in the way I perceived myself. Maybe it just coincided with being a teenager and developing insecurities as teenagers do; riding that confusing rollercoaster of emotions. Either way, I feel like I’m slowly shrugging off a cumbersome, restrictive cape of negativity (don’t ask me why it’s a cape... I’m not good at metaphors!) and am emerging not anew but afresh with a more positive outlook on myself and what I have to offer the world.
This year’s events, despite being turbulent, have opened my eyes. The source of my increasing levels of self-efficacy (hehe, big word) has been the people in my life. Some are old characters, others are new, some I got to know really well, others only for a moment, but all were important. They all played a role in helping me to realise that I am an interesting, likeable person with the potential to achieve my goals and get what I want from life. Being me has never felt so good. And I owe it to these people who over the past year have taught me (in their different ways) that I’m cool (in my own way). :)
So thank you to everyone I’m thinking of. I won’t list names because I’ll inevitably leave someone out by accident! (This is sounding more and more like an acceptance speech at the Oscars – although I didn’t thank God or Jesus which is standard procedure these days I think, unless you’re Tom Cruise. God forbid he wins another award. Oh looky, I did mention God after all). Long brackets aside, I’m sincerely grateful. I guess your reward is seeing the outcome of your assistance and experiencing a more confident and happy me. :)
That said, here’s a sad poem I wrote the other day:
It’s 9 days before Christmas and all I can see,
Is my uncertain future staring back at me.
My life lacks direction and my motivation is flimsy,
All I have is my pen and several notions of whimsy.
I feel I need to be told ‘cause I can’t figure it out,
What my path, my journey, this life is about.
They say “life is what you make it” but I disagree,
I am the creation of what life has made of me.
So because I’m not whole does that mean I’ve missed out?
Or must I wait for the missing piece of inner peace, I shout;
To the ends of the earth, to heaven, to the skies,
Answer my cries, and to that piece alert my weary eyes.
Completely out of place and contradictory I know, but strangely that’s not the way that I was feeling when I wrote it. I think it’s a good sign that I can distance myself from my actual feelings and ‘feel’ whatever emotion I want, in terms of becoming a writer. Either that or I’m a nutcase. :)
Dale.
I’d like to start by thanking you for all the recent comments, especially on Intolerance of Intolerance. It got a much stronger reaction than I expected. I even received emails from people expressing their opinion and not wanting to seem too long-winded in public. Thanks again for taking the time to read it.
Also… my first shift at McDonalds is in 2 hours!
Now moving on to this blog entry.
Dale – Pigeon Rescuer:
I didn’t really know her well, but she did seem nice, so I told him to go and talk to her, which he did after a few minutes of convincing from me. I watched their interaction play out, and from their respective body languages it seemed to go well. He came back a few minutes later, told me he liked her even more, but hadn’t been confident to suggest that he was interested in her in that way or ask for her number, and that she was leaving now with her friends. Sure enough I looked back and she was headed for the door. It was too late to stop her. So I got to thinking, “How can I help a brother out?” (Apparently I think like a homie), and came to the conclusion that he needed her number. I told him to go to the birthday dude and ask to see his new phone, in which would be her number! It was a good plan I thought, but birthday dude was (although drunk) kind of sceptical of him and his motives. And it didn’t help that birthday dude also liked the same girl! So unfortunately he couldn’t get into the phonebook because birthday dude was looking over his shoulder and wanted his phone back to take a picture of himself with some other mates. Beer-buying friend returned to me, despondent. But I told him not to worry, that I’d get the number by the end of the night. Birthday dude trusted me a lot more, and I was feeling crafty.
So about 30 minutes later I approached birthday dude, asked to see his cool new phone, pretended to look at things through the camera on it whilst actually going into his phonebook and memorising the girl’s number, gave the phone back to birthday dude, quickly entered it into my phone, then returned triumphant to beer-buying friend. I lived up to the 007 part of my email address that night.
Then I closed my mouth again, changing my mind. It wasn’t in my nature to speak up in these situations. But then the older lady muttered something about the Fijian woman under her breath and it tipped me over the edge. Screw it, I thought. I knew I wouldn’t be happy with myself if I didn’t stand up for what I believed in.
“She’s right you know,” I say to the older lady and nodding in the direction of the Fijian woman.
The Fijian woman smiled at me - I could tell she was grateful that I had spoken up too. She mouthed a “thank you” at me.
The older lady’s face seemed to twist up in a mixture of shock and rage, her anger re-ignited, “You have no right to speak to me you stupid boy!”
Feeling the brunt of the older lady’s outburst I realised just how strong and brave the Fijian woman had been.
The older lady let loose another barrage of verbal abuse on me. It almost looked as though her tongue was actually that of a snake’s rather than a human’s. I just looked away, trying to ignore her. Nothing I said would get through, and the moment I realised that I felt quite sad.
The bus took off again, and not much else was said by anyone. The older lady indignantly picked up her bags and made a show of placing them on the seat which the Asian girl initially tried to sit in. I hear the girl sitting behind the bus driver, who'd been reading, tell her that the older lady once spat on another passenger.
When the Fijian woman, the Asian girl and I stood up to get off the bus at the station, the older lady looked out the window and said, “Good riddance.” I looked at her in disbelief and pity.
The three of us ended up on the same train carriage too, and the Asian girl who I hadn’t heard speak went over to the Fijian woman and thanked her, then looked at me and nodded a “thanks” too.
Whilst I was happy that I’d spoken up, for most of the train ride I felt a mixture of feelings. Part of me felt ashamed that a member of my community could be so ignorant, part of me felt depressed that that level of intolerance still existed, and another part of me felt naïve for not realising that racism and elitism were still so prominent in society.
Luckily I had a great afternoon, but even the high from that wasn’t enough to stop me from not sleeping very well that night.
I realised in the morning though, that I did the right thing, and I felt proud of myself. I was also reassured and inspired by knowing that people like the Fijian woman are out there doing the right thing. I decided that next time I won’t hesitate to speak up.
“Oh no, don’t you sit there, girl,” the older lady warns, looking at her sternly. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the nastiness in her voice. Confused and a little surprised, the girl turns around and heads for a seat opposite me, almost falling over on her way as the bus lurched forwards again.
I began to wonder if there was some underlying reason behind her warding off of the girl, when the Fijian woman, who had also been watching the event unfold before her, turns to the older lady and asked, “Lady, why can’t she sit there?”
The older lady looks at her incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, “Excuse me? Don’t you go talking to me like that!” she snaps, an ugly angry look on her face.
The Fijian lady doesn’t take too kindly to this and repeats her question, except not so politely this time, “All I want to know is why can’t she sit next to you?” she says, whilst pointing in the direction of the Asian girl who was now looking very embarrassed.
The older lady’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head, “What’s it to you?” she spat. “I’m an Australian.”
I couldn’t believe it. With those three words my suspicions were confirmed.
“Because I believe in justice,” the Fijian woman continued, seemingly undeterred by the older lady’s now apparent racism. “She is allowed to sit wherever she wants.”
“Shut up!” the older lady barked, turning away from her, and looking at me. She grins, and I feel sick to my stomach. I could tell she probably thought that because I’m white we share a special bond and that I agree with her.
I shake my head and look away. The lady disgusted me.
The Fijian woman wasn’t finished with her yet, and I was cheering her on in my head. “You should be wise, not nasty,” she proclaimed. A wise statement I thought.
The older lady whipped her head back in her direction, “I said shut up! I’m sick, and there were plenty of other seats, why did she -” she stabbed the air with a crooked finger in the direction of the Asian girl, “- have to sit next to me? I’ve lived in this country all my life!”
The rage was building up inside of me. I couldn’t take it much longer. Never before had I felt such anger towards someone I didn’t know. There were no excuses for what she was saying. I took a breath, looked at the Fijian lady who was still defiantly holding her ground, and then turned to the older lady and opened my mouth...
I move from one side of the bus to the other, because the side I chose originally was drenched with sunlight. Thankfully the bus is air conditioned. I’m sitting in one of the seats that run along the side of the bus, facing inwards rather than forwards. A girl a bit younger than me is sitting right behind the bus driver, reading something. An older lady is sitting to my right in one of the first forward facing seats; her bag placed before her on the last inward facing seat, three seats along from me. Across from her is another lady who looks like she is from Fiji or some pacific island nation, she smiles at me and I smile back. I notice that the bus driver is a woman also, and that she keeps fiddling with a little fan pointed directly at her face. There are a few other passengers sitting towards the back of the bus, but I don’t pay much attention to them. I’m more concerned about the bus making it to the station in time, and getting my body temperature down from heat stroke level. The bus travels along for a minute or so before slowing down near the
