Something I Absolutely Never Do!!

This is something I never do - share my writing. My lecturer has dared me to put it on my blog, she said she really enjoyed the piece and I need to get used to sharing my writing. What would she know! ;)

So here it is. My Creative Non-Fiction piece that I submitted for my Master of Letters this semester... If you can be bothered reading to the end I'd love to know what you think. (We'll see if I can handle the criticism...)

Deep Heat and Loneliness

It had been three years and four months since I last cooked a meal.

Baking? Baking I can do. Cookies, cakes, slices, food that is more a snack than a meal, those are the things that I do well. Stir-fries, curries, stews? The man who owns Joeseppe’s Pizza down the road from my house, just happens to know my first name and address.

Most women my age can cook. They take pride in it. I always admired the art of cooking, I have all the Nigella and Jamie books that there are, and I’m certainly a fan of the end result, but cooking and I do not go well together. By 27 I’d managed to have two fairly long-term relationships, both of them with men who took great delight in producing culinary masterpieces.

Four months ago that all came to an end. It had ended painfully but relatively scene-free. A quiet discussion ended with bags being packed and me landing on my father’s front porch in the early hours of the morning. It was handled very much like any other business transaction and I spent the next couple of months reminding myself and anyone who would listen, about just how well I was doing.

Two months later I had a new house, had picked up the dogs and started a new job. On the outside it appeared like better things were happening and I couldn’t be happier.

Behind those closed doors things were a little different.

My new living room and kitchen are an open plan, with no clear divide between the two. Standing in the middle the windows to my right frame a wild field. 700 square metres of grass that now reaches halfway up my tibia. Hanging the washing has become a game of guess where the landmines are, as the presents left behind by two over-sized dogs are hidden beneath grass half a foot long. While my knees are not quite lost in it yet, Bronson the Labrador has refused to go outside for weeks. He had scratched himself bare in places from trying to soothe the itch the little bits of grass stuck in his fur caused.

Gazing across to my left and through the dust-covered security screen, which I’ve been meaning to clean since I moved in, a jungle has blocked the view of the street. There are only a few sunbeams strong enough to shine light through the maze of branches. I couldn’t tell you what sort of shrub it is. All I know is that it has grown so tall I no longer stand any chance of being able to reach high enough to even contemplate trimming the upper branches. They continue to grow unimpeded.

It seems like only weeks earlier that the front and back had been perfectly manicured, no branch or leaf out of place. Of course it hadn’t been my handiwork. Dad had called by one day while I was at work and had given me the most practical of housewarming presents. 8 hours later the yard fit in perfectly with the neighbours highly maintained gardens. These days the neighbours tend to shake their heads as I rush head down from the front door to my little red car in the driveway, hoping that no one notices the guilt on my face at having single-handedly destroyed Tiffany Street’s chances of winning the tidiest street award that the Cairns Post runs.

Each bolt to the car is marked by a mental note to ring Dad and try to persuade him to call by again, knowing that one look at the garden will mortify him beyond words and result in yet another working-bee. Guilt eventually kicks in though and I bail on calling him. At 53 and with multiple prolapsed discs in his spine and two knees that need reconstructions, tricking him into tidying my yard probably makes me a bad daughter. Momentarily I had toyed with the idea of buying a lawn mower, but then the reality of not knowing how to turn it on, too much pride to ask anyone and no plans of finding out swayed me.

But it wasn’t just the lawns. If the wilderness that was my back yard wasn’t getting enough attention then the sheets on the line every second day certainly were. Vanessa had called over the back fence, from high above on her second storey balcony, several times, “You been wetting the bed or something?” Her face was both curious and amused.

The first time had been humourous. Trying to return the smile on the fourth time, the corners of my mouth twitched but could not be convinced to curl up. Given my issues with all things dirty, perhaps wetting the bed would’ve been a more acceptable reason than the truth.

It had been hard adjusting to sleeping alone. After sharing the bed with Todd every night for four years, it was difficult to now sleep all by myself on a queen-size bed. Todd and I used to fight over the space, him often copping a swift kick to the side midway through the night as I decided I needed more room. He’d either roll away obligingly, leaving me with three quarters of the bed and me insisting that I still needed more space. Or he’d growl at me about sharing meaning half each. Now I had the whole bed to myself, free to stretch out end-to-end, lying in whatever direction I pleased, but it wasn’t quite right. The doona seemed to get tangled and no matter how hard I stretched it seemed like there was no edge to the bed. It was easy to get lost in the vastness of it, wondering why it needed to be so big. Night after night I found myself curled up right on the edge of the bed, one leg hanging over the edge, my arm wrapped underneath and hugging tightly to the timber side.

After the first week of tossing, turning and near falls of the bed, all amidst the endless soft cries from Bronson, I finally gave in. From a big, green dog pillow on the aging tiles outside the bedroom door, Bronson moved to the brand new, timber frame and heavy-duty, posture supported mattress that was my bedroom ensemble. By week two he was so accustomed to sleeping there that the whole neighbourhood suffered an entire night of his howls while I slept soundly in Townsville on a work trip.

It had gotten so bad at one point that Vanessa had instructed her husband, Allan, to hang over the fence and make sure no one was breaking in. She told me later she thought I must’ve been murdered. “What did the police say when you called them?” I’d asked incredulously. “Oh I didn’t bother,” she replied casually with a shrug of her shoulders and a slight wave of the hand. Watching her waddle away I was struck with the slightly disconcerting thought that if my neighbours were to suspect I was being murdered, they are highly unlikely to call in the cavalry. Extra vigilance when locking up at night was now called for.

Silence. Two dogs scurry over the patio, I can hear them bashing together as they try to beat each other to the back door. There’s a yelp and a bang as a 37kg Labrador fails to stop in time and smashes into the back security screen at full pace. A moments silence while the screen balances precariously on its edge, then another crash as the heavy security screen loses the fight to balance itself and plummets to the ground. One dog scampers away. Bronson, tail wagging, breathing heavily and enjoying the daily joke stands next to the screen door for a few seconds before walking straight over the top of it. His feet and the screen make a strange crunching sound against the concrete floor and it’s at this point that I usually open the front door and discover him nudging his nose against the glass backdoor. While this approach has never worked, he continues his daily attempt to open the sliding glass door by pushing it inward with his nose. Dozer, who is a slightly larger Mastiff-Ridgeback X, is much older, less impressed and is cowering in the corner, tail between his legs looking sheepish. For 55kg he is a cat.

The scene plays out every single day.

There were times in the past that I would purposely drive slowly the whole 87km home from work, butterflies fluttering away in my stomach as I contemplated what sort of mood Todd might be in when I got home. I never expected to reach a point where I would miss walking into a home and being met by someone in a foul mood, looking to pick a fight. After being apart for only a week I was there and would’ve given my prized Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson action figure to have those moments back. Now, coming home to the daily greeting of destruction and excitement is a much more enticing offer.

The conversations that people save for housemates and partners I now have with two dogs. I ask them how their day was, what they got up to, what did the destroy; tails wagging furiously and mouths open in crazy grins sometimes it’s a little disappointing when they don’t answer back, although not completely unexpected. The silence in an empty house can be enough to drive you mad. In my crazy moments there are times when I speak to the empty room as if there were someone right there, but I’ve learnt from managing a team of psychologists that talking to an imaginary audience is behaviour worthy of an involuntary treatment order, or at the very least a personality assessment. Talking to dogs though? Well no one ever got admitted for that.

Things coasted along like that for a while. Me pretending that everything was ok and that I was coping well, while at the same time allowing a 37kg Labrador to lie next to me every night for safety and comfort. The yard continued to grow unchecked and my savings started to dwindle at the cost of eating out every night.

The days were filled with work and training. Instead of spare time and quiet moments I took to running longer and longer distances, under the clever façade of training for a half-marathon. While I genuinely did intend to run the race, there wasn’t a half-marathon runner on the planet who was clocking up the training miles and gym sessions I was. The hours at work were getting longer and longer and I had taken to volunteering for every work trip away. While the promotion that resulted was nice, it also provided a valid excuse for ignoring the concerned phone calls from neglected friends and family.

Days of hard training turned into weeks and eventually months. Using exercise as a form of therapy (or an obsessive behaviour to fill the void in my life, the team of psychologists told me) had resulted in tension that radiated from deep inside my lumbar spine and spread out through all four limbs. After a monster session that started with a fast 15km run along the Cairns esplanade and culminated in teaching a Body Balance class, my body screamed for mercy.

Safely home, each movement sending shock waves down my spine, I peeled my clothes off and forced my body to manoeuvre the normally moderate-height step from the floor, over the bath ledge and into the shower. The heat emanated from the quadriceps and for a brief second I contemplated whether that giant leap was just too much for this night. Sweat and smelly skin were easy to live with when compared to climbing Everest just for a shower.

Fortunately commonsense won out and with one hand on the window sill and the other gripping the hot water tap I dragged my body under the steady stream of warm water, allowing it to rush down my back, the heat helping the muscles relax.

I emerged from the shower with aching, knotted muscles, in desperate need of a massage but with no time to fit one in. As a poor substitute I reached for the Deep Heat gel. There are approximately 56 muscles that act to hold the spine straight and assist it with movement. The quarter that makes up the lumbar spine had been screaming at me for days. Each movement started with a twinge through the muscle, followed by a sharp inhalation and ending with contorted facial muscles.

The four week countdown to my first half-marathon was on and blind determination refused to let something as trivial as a single twinge interrupt my training schedule. It had started two weeks earlier after a poorly executed transition from bridge post to back bend pose during a yoga class. A fortnight of being ignored created a full-blown glute to upper trapezius nightmare. It seemed my entire torso had gone on strike. Angry erector spinae that had been overworked trying to relieve strain from my tight piriformus muscle had been overused. They were compensating for someone not carrying their weight and like tired workers had burnt out, refused to budge and were now very much useless. Quadratus lomborum tried to take the load of the upper body, a valiant effort, but I’d felt him give-in days ago. After a fortnight of heavy training and two days in a row of 90min runs on the gravel the team was simply giving up.

The clear gel spread easily across my back, greasy beneath my fingers, but there is only so far you can reach when your back is fully mobile. Injured you don’t stand a chance. Mobility becomes a luxury that you can only daydream about. It should have been enough that at least some of those 56 muscles would get some relief, but the three quarters that the lack of Go-Go Gadget arms prevented me from reaching continued to send spasms and sharp stabbing pain at intervals up and down the spine, a constant reminder that this was really only a temporary solution and a poor one at that.

The dull heat quickly began to radiate through the lower muscles and the relief came in waves. One at a time I could feel the muscles releasing as the warmth spread deep into the fibres causing the elastic mechanism within to lose its spring. With the ability to rotate gently at the hips I headed for the spare room feeling more relaxed than I had in days.

As the gentle, soothing warmth continued to spread, slowly burning hotter, I could feel the rest of my body relaxing as the tension slowly left the spine. It was impossible not to enjoy the effect that the heat was having, the rest of my body began letting go of more muscular stress with each passing second.

I dressed and the gel continued to work its magic. Seconds ticked by and the temperature slowly started to climb. Running a brush through the tangled knot that was my hair, unease began to build in my stomach. My skin did not feel right. Telling myself that this was exactly what the extra strength gel should do was doing nothing to calm the gnawing notion that something was wrong, particularly as the gel continued to increase in temperature against my skin. The warmth that had initially spread so gently and pleasantly deep into my tensed up muscles was now starting to burn its way through each of the layers that protected the flesh. The discomfort spread. The gel burned hotter and hotter. Within a minute of feeling the first unpleasant tingle there was a fire blazing its way across my back. Twisting in front of the mirror, I was trying desperately to glimpse the skin on my back and see what was causing the searing heat, but all the mirror showed was the definition through my upper back, an exaggerated lordosis through my spinal column and a booty bigger than Beyonce’s. My skin was its normal, pale, colourless tone. There was no redness, so skin peeling away, no exposed and burning flesh as I had expected to see. All that stared back at me was my larger-than-life, pale-as-the-moon behind. The fire continued to burn.

Skin screamed. My mind replied. Get it off!

In the bathroom I grabbed the fluffy, deep red towel from the towel rack. It was the same towel that only days earlier I had baulked at lending to my brother-in-law, as it was so new and soft, I hadn’t wanted him to ruin it. Towel in hand I furiously began rubbing it against my back, no concern for the damage the gel would most certainly cause to the fabric. Each wipe more forceful than the last, trying to scrape my way beneath the surface to where the fires continued to burn. It was futile. No gel remained. The burn continued and the towel provided no relief. Throwing it onto the floor and with skin now red-raw I jumped into the shower.

Cold water blasted from the taps straight onto my back and I began clawing uncontrollably at my skin. Trying to remove the imaginary gel, but the quick drying, fast-acting, rapid-absorption gel could not be removed. Skin gathered red beneath my fingernails. The heat continued to burn like acid.

Panic spread quickly. The rise and fall of the chest became exaggerated by heavy breathing as my mind raced trying to think of different ways to fix the situation. The gel was not coming off, the water was not cooling down my back, there was no one to call for help and no means of getting help. My hand flailed around at all the bottles of the shower ledge and in the rusted shower caddy. Soaps from the Body Shop, Shampoos and Conditioners in every variety, a loofah, body gloves, a pumice stone, a razor, some watermelon scented body lotion; but absolutely nothing that could help to cool my back down. I reefed back the shower curtain desperately looking around the small, cluttered bathroom. A mop and bucket, a washing machine, bathroom mat, dirty clothes and some bra bags – none of these were going to help my cause.

Turning the cold-water tap as I high as it would go I couldn’t budge from within the confines of the shower. The water gave only minimal relief, but pulling away from it the heat started to return almost instantly. The nearest phone was lying innocently on the bedroom dresser only three or four feet away but given that I had lost my cordless to a water related-incident and the phone on the dresser was a standard issue, Telstra wall phone, I wasn’t prepared to chance it. My skin was searing and the only other means of communication lay somewhere in the depths of my handbag. Where was my handbag?

I stayed in the shower, clawing at my back and praying that the burn would go away. The flames continued to lick at my back, working their way down my spine towards my tailbone, wrapping around my obliques and spreading towards my neck. The water was tinged red at my feet, hands still clawing at gel that was no longer there.

Gradually the burn slowly started to fade. The roasting began to feel like a bad sunburn and then eventually a soothing warmth. As the temperature declined my muscles ironically began to unknot themselves. Contorted facial muscles began to release their stress and the gnawing in my stomach eased.

I slumped in the bath, arms wrapped tightly around my legs, chin on my chest and tried desperately to fight back the tears that trickled down my cheeks. My legs refused to let me stand. The physical strength that I had always prided myself on had all but left my body. So I sat there, curled up like a child, eyes squeezed tight.

My hands shook. I forced my breathing to slow down, taking in controlled, deep gulps of air and stopped fighting the tears. They spilled relentlessly down my cheeks and they flowed unchallenged as loud, desperate sobs choked from my throat.

It had occurred to me while mercilessly clawing at my back, praying that the pain would end, that I was very much alone. There was no one to call to come rescue me or calm me down. It was just me, alone in my little house, having to save myself from my own stupidity.

At its worst it had occurred to me that perhaps, given the state of my back, it may be sensible to call for help. I had clawed my back to shreds. At least the top layer had already been removed from heat alone. But whether calling for help was a good idea or not, physically I couldn’t do it. There was no way I could leave the shower to find the phone, not when it felt like someone had tipped a pot of boiling water all over me. The relief of the cold water was barely enough to lower my pain from excruciating to incredibly bad. As the worst began to pass emotions began to crash inside my head. Fear at what had nearly happened, anger at doing something so silly, sadness at realising there was no one to help me, loneliness knowing there was no one to tell me it was ok.

The house I live in is not that big. Maybe 20 steps from one end to the other. There had been moments throughout the ordeal that I thought my skin was being burnt from my body. For a split second I had wondered what degree of burns I would be left with. For an even more fleeting second I had wondered how disfigured it would leave me. Yet I hadn’t left the shower. Fearing the worst, terrified and in more pain than I could remember, I had stayed in the shower. What was it that had kept me there?

Up till that point I thought I had been handling the break-up fairly well. Todd and I were being polite; he called once a week to check in and make sure everything was ok. There had been no fighting over furniture or possessions, we were two friends who just weren’t going to live together anymore. Yet here I was still curled up on the floor on the bathtub, crying like a baby and hugging my knees with all the strength that I had. My shoulders trembled unable to contain the full body letting-it-all out cry that I had bottled up since January. It was now escaping through muscles that shook from a combination of sadness, fear, exhaustion and loneliness.

That was definitely the lowest point for me post-break. For ten minutes I sat in my bathtub, crying my eyes out and rocking myself like a child. Back and forth on my heels I rocked, trying to comfort myself but with nothing left to give. I was alone. There was no denying it now, no sugar coating it by telling myself such hollow platitudes as I have such great family and friends. When it really came down to it I was all alone and I was terrified.