To me, this situation typifies a family crisis: overreaction and competing ideas about what’s best with no measures of control in place. I look back on all the major family crises I have been involved in and most of them happened because someone was worried about someone else. It all comes from mutual concern, so why do people end up fighting with each other?
At work, we have process and policy to resolve conflict, and in our social lives we take a step back when the situation gets too much. But family is a completely different ball game. There are roles to be played and there is history to be repeated. And we never learn. Or worse still, we have learnt but we can’t help ourselves.
In a few months, this situation will have blown over. But what about the long term damage? The roles of mother, father, son and daughter have been reinforced. And now the girlfriend will never have the opportunity to break the stereotype that preceded her.
The struggle for independence is an important one but you have to pick your battles. And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that sometimes my mother really does know best, even if I don’t like to admit it.
W rang my mother in a total state, which was absolutely understandable considering the circumstances. A had a life-threatening virus and they were miles away from home and the big city hospitals. Aside from being dangerously ill, A was agitated, confused, restless and generally unmanageable, which is normal behaviour for a person with a cerebral illness. Although they hardly knew each other, L and W managed to keep it together for those few days until A regained some sense of himself and his father and sister arrived.
Meanwhile, I was trying to work out what to do about this party for L that saturday. V told me to cancel it, while L told me that A still didn’t know she knew and she’d overheard a phone call he’d made to a mate referring to ‘the secret’. V told A the party was off and that L knew about it, which didn’t go down that well. He immediately began making preparations for L’s actual birthday the following week.
By this point, V, A, W and R were back at the beach house like one happy family. L had gone back to work until the weekend. W rang my mother in another state, this time about L returning to the beach house while A was unwell and how they would accommodate her. I can only assume that A was recovering in the master bedroom while V and her parents bunked up next door. The thought of L sleeping in her and R’s bedroom with a sickly A was too much for poor W to handle. Mum agreed to go up and see everyone on the weekend, and drive L both ways if need be.
L came up on the Friday night and stayed until the Sunday. The sleeping arrangements are still unknown but the whole situation was deemed unsatisfactory by W, who resented that her son was going for walks and generally behaving as though nothing had happened. By Monday he was back in hospital. The doctors confirmed everyone’s worse suspicions: A had overdone it and needed to calm right down or he could do himself permanent damage.
V rang me on Monday night because A was being very disagreeable about L’s birthday, demanding L should come up Tuesday night so they could go out to dinner. W was beside herself and A and she were now fighting. I rang L, who was in tears because A had been very difficult and demanded she come up that evening. V had also spoken to L, urging her to stay away for a few days. L was torn: she felt it a time of need for A but also sensed his family’s distress. Not knowing them particularly well, she went up the coast to be with him. Apparently A and W fought the whole night.
Fast forward to Friday: A and W are not speaking. Mum has received various distressed phone calls from W, where she has detailed her frustration with A and expressed her disdain for L. W drops A back at his door in Sydney and continues her travels to Melbourne, swearing to change the locks of the beach house.
1. A’s mother W is neurotic at the best of times, but particularly when it comes to baby boy A.
2. A lives in Sydney now and spends most of his time with girlfriend L, who is Canadian and away from her family and friends. A and L spend a lot of their time together at the family beach house.
3. L’s birthday was the following weekend and A had organised a surprise birthday with 20 attendees.
4. A’s family have met L a few times but they don’t really know her that well. They have preconceived ideas about L based on the fact that all A’s other girlfriends have been knobs.
5. W and my mum are best friends. V and I are oldest, dearest friends. I spend more time with A than his family. L and I are now friends as well.
6. The beach house only has two bedrooms: a double bedroom for the parents and the kids’ bedroom which has bunk beds and single.
7. A’s parents are ultra conservative.
8. All of the persons mentioned above can be completely unreasonable and always think they’re right, bar L.
9. All of the pesons mentioned above are prone to exaggeration and overraction, bar L.
10. All of the persons mentioned have great difficulty sitting still or relaxing.
There’s nothing more stressful than a good old fashioned family catastrophe. Seeing as my family seems to have these all the time, it was reassuring to witness how ineptly our family friends dealt with an horrific situation recently thrust upon them.
We have known this family our whole lives. Mum met W in the hospital when they were having me and W and R’s second child, V. They moved to Melbourne when I was 12 but we have still kept in close touch and spent every summer together on the central coast until V and I were about 18. They are great people. But, like our family, they’re pretty intense, which I suppose is why we all get along so well.
The third child and baby of the family is a guy called A, who is Lou’s age. He moved to Sydney about 5 years ago for work so we see each other quite a bit, usually with his girlfriend, L. A is a good-looking guy who has his shit together professionally, is lots of fun to be around, lives a clean-as-a-whistle lifestyle and is very sporty. However, he is also a major mummy’s boy. He’s had consecutive girlfriends, most of whom have been completely ditsy and needy and hated by his mother. His most recent girlfriend L is not only a winner by comparison, but a lovely, smart and gorgeous girl in her own right.
A, L and W were up at the beach house on the central coast (still in its circa 1982 condition) a couple of weekends ago. W was up from Melbourne for a week and the weather was good, so they spent most of the time at the beach. On the saturday A came out of the water after a three hour surf session complaining of a headache. He went back to the house and went to bed early, but when he woke up the next day he had a sore neck and wasn’t any better. About 4 years ago he’d had similar symptoms and it turned out to be meningitis. He spent a week in hospital and almost died. So as you can imagine, his mother was particularly sensitive to his symptoms on this recent occasion and took him straight to Gosford hospital, where he was immediately admitted. He spent the next 48 hours in intensive care not knowing where he was, who his mother and girlfriend were or what was wrong with him. At points he was convulsing and at others he was close to coma.
Fast forward to Wednesday. He finally recognised his loved ones and doctors felt he was in the clear. An MRI revealed he had encephilitis, an inflammatory cerebal condition not dissimilar to meningitis. But they had caught it in time and the doctors were confident A would fully recover if he rested and took it easy. He was told he’s not allowed to work for a week or drive, surf or drink for a month. Problem was, A had no real concept of what had happened and didn’t comprehend how serious it was. He felt okay but had moments where he couldn’t find the right word or forgot what he was doing. By this time sister V and father R had arrived from Melbourne so they all took A back to the beach house to recuperate.
history
Girl With A One-Track Mind is a blog by a young woman living in London who writes under the pseudonym Abby Lee. Abby started writing the blog in 2004 as an outlet for and distraction from thinking about sex all the time. Her early blog entries are explicit, hilarious, insightful and shockingly honest as she lays bare intimate details about dating, shagging, masturbating and her general obsession with men’s bodies and bits. The blog soon gained a cult following. These days it claims 6 million unique viewers and over 150 000 readers a month. When you read the early entries of Abby’s blog it’s little surprise it gained such widespread popularity and fame: she writes with the honesty and insight that can only come from true anonymity.
In August 2006 Abby published a book of the same name with Ebury Publishing. She was rumoured to have been offered a six figure advance for the book, having managed all communications through an agent. A few days after the books hit the shelves, Abby was ‘outed’ as Zoe Margolis, a 33 year-old film producer. A photographer from The Sunday Times captured her accepting a bunch of flowers that were supposedly from her publisher and on 6 August the story revealing Abby’s real identity was published. Great for book sales, not so great for Zoe.
Zoe’s life changed overnight: she was suddenly the subject of media interest and hype, as were the people she had written about in her blog. While Zoe had always maintained a level of privacy by using people’s initials, the subjects of her blog were easier to identify now everyone knew who she was. As a retort to being unwillingly outed, Zoe accepted an interview with The Guardian and wrote an article for The Independent on Sunday.
Abby continued to write about the experience of being outed in her blog throughout the month of August 2006. Using her signature dry humour and acute observation, she diarised coming to terms with the fact that her family, friends and ex-lovers now knew her most private thoughts and had to deal with the media to boot.
book
Abby’s book went to to the top of the bestseller list and has sold 165 000 copies. It has been translated into several languages and is available in the US. This is an extraordinary success for a previously unpublished author whose writing has local English overtones (sales of 5,000 copies in AUS market would be considered reasonable, for example). It reinforces that the essence of Abby’s writing are universal truths about sexuality, sensuality, confidence, sensitivity and emotional volatility. Truth is, Abby is as fucked up as the rest of us - and that makes a good read.
today
Zoe had to give up her job in the film industry because she was considered to be too high risk. She continues to write the blog and speak /write about blogging, technology, sex and feminism. Her most recent article was for The Guardian, where she comments on the importance of safe sex education for kids.
blog
Since being outed, there’s no question that the tone of Girl With A One-Track Mind has changed. It would not be possible for Abby, a nobody with a big sex drive, to write with the same honesty now she is Zoe Margolis, professional blogger, tech wizz, feminist and general sexpert. Not to mention sibling, daughter, friend and lover. Abby has taken on a professional identity that has allowed her to shape a successful career. No longer just a lowly blogger, Zoe Margolis is now an international media and technology brand. As with any brand, there is a conscience about profile that shines through her work. In a recent blog dated 6 September, Abby asked heself the question: “am I - or have I become - much more boring in person than online?”
It is a question any professional blogger would face. However, it’s especially hard to separate Abby’s personal persona from Zoe’s professional because of the inherently private nature of her musings. Abby provided us with a window into her world, albeit frosted in parts. But life changes and people move on. The things Abby wrote about back in 2004 are not necessarily things she’d want to discuss now. And they’re not necessarily things she experiences at that level now. On her professional site, Zoe Margolis claims that she started writing the blog to balance the sexist stereotypes about male and female sexuality. What happened to the girl who just loved cock?
Fame has brought with it expectation on other levels. As a reader, I expect to be entertained, amused, horrified or simply connect with Abby on some emotional or intellectual level or I will stop visiting her blog, which means others will stop reading and she will be challenged on the things which now form the basis of Zoe’s career. Somewhere along the way, the personal became professional, which means a slow death to the things that brought Abby to life in the first place. I read some recent posts and enjoyed them much less than the early days. I feel like I am reading Zoe’s work, not Abby’s.
In any case, the tale of Abby Lee, Zoe Margolis and Girl With A One-Track Mind is a fabulous story and her publisher would be mad not to sign her up for another book - a merger of the different parts of her life.
Our family is obsessed with cats. My uncle and aunt have five cats, Mum always has at least two and, until his death in June, I had a mog called Irving. We have mostly inherited these creatures from other people who have moved or changed their living arrangement. Invariably the cat had already decided that we offer more suitable accommodation and food and gradually moved its stuff in.
This was the case with Irving. In 2004 I moved into a studio apartment in Paddington in a little street behind Five Ways that was notorious for its cat population. At any given time you could look out the window and see eight or more cats basking in the sun. One of these cats was a runty little grey and white thing who everyone seemed to know. He was thin and ragged, but held his own in a noble and knowing way. He was my kind of cat.
Evidently, I was Irving’s kind of owner and within weeks he was sleeping on my bed every night. His actual owner (although legend dictates he had many) lived across the hall. She was a vegetarian fashionista who didn’t like handling meat so just threw Irv the odd lettuce leaf or bit of falafel. Then, one day, she arrived home with a Chihuahua so that was the absolute end of her and Irving. A couple of months later, she and the dog moved out.
For three years Irving and I lived in that little apartment. It was happy, if not tumultuous, time for us both. He had been quite badly neglected and had a few health problems, including a mouth that was almost totally rotten from being malnourished. That was the first thousand bucks and every penny well spent as he became more trusting and confident with each passing day.
Then in February 2007, Irving went missing for two weeks. I really thought that was it and he’d crawled off to die. I never knew his age or history, but I suspected he’d ran out of lives some time back. The whole street rallied as I door-knocked, put up posters and rang around vets and councils. Then, when I’d almost given up hope, a neighbour found him in the park down the road, confused and traumatised but otherwise okay.
That cemented the decision to leave Paddington. Irving was ageing and wasn’t safe on the street during the day anymore. When we finally packed our bags for Mum’s place on the leafy north shore, my landlord tried to make me leave him, claiming the cat was property of the apartment block and there to catch rats. This made me laugh. The only thing Irving ever caught was a cold from being outside in the rain. Mum and I staged another disappearance and Irving moved in two weeks ahead of me.
Irving’s arrival at Mum’s caused absolute havoc with her two cats, the north shore princesses. But, as always, he held his own and forced their acceptance. Such a small cat but so many resources.
Two weeks before his death, Irving started behaving funny and walking in circles. Thousands of dollars later, he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. He weakened quite quickly and our home-visit vet recommended we put him down. He died in Mum’s arms as I just couldn’t do it.
Now I’m living in my own place again, I miss him more than ever. When you have a cat, you never go home to an empty house. Evidently Mum does too because she has just bought a little Burmese kitten called Hermes or Erm for short. Like Irv, Erm spends his days pissing off the other two cats. Irv would be proud I think.
When you grew up in a family who fought all the time, it’s a pretty difficult habit to break. The thing is, I really hate conflict, but it seems to find me wherever I go. I look at certain situations and know the way I should react - but more often than not that goes against the grain of what I actually feel. And who I am. From a young age, I learnt not to let people walk over you and to confront things head on. How do I now train myself to bite my tongue?
It’s not that fighting was acitvely endorsed at home, but it was such an integral part of our childhood that I can’t remember issues being resolved any other way. For years Mum juggled the various duties of parenthood, a job and a husband who contributed little except emotional abuse and half the mortgage. Completely exhausted, stressed and exasperated, it didn’t take much to set Mum off and my father was always a willing contestant. His anger invariably made its way down through the ranks to us girls.
Now the dust has settled on the past and we have grown stronger and closer as a result, how do we change the habit of a lifetime? A good friend of mine who has been with her partner for 14 years, thinks the solution is simple: don’t go to bed angry.
I am getting better at not going to bed angry, but I am yet to learn how to stop thinking that someone is angry with me.
My last blog post hit a major nerve with a friend. She thought my comments insensitive, offensive and deeply critical of her (relatively new) life as a newlywed with a baby. I have gone over this one in my head a million times, trying to see it from both sides. Granted the post was a major rant, but would I really hang out with couples if I had such a low opinion of their company and their lives? I wrote the post thinking it a good opportunity to let off some steam and explore an insecurity of mine. Little did I realise its potential to lay bare the insecurities of others.
I always thought that the older I got the more black and white my relationships would become. Well that’s what I had hoped, and how naive that was. There will always be people who think the grass is greener on the other side. The question is: am I one of them?
I don’t want a family right now. But that’s not to say I won’t want one in the future. So why is it that some non-single folk assume that being on my own is a choice? Or that singledom is a way of life they gave up because they decided to be responsible, less self-absorbed and devoted to the greater cause of populating the world. Most of the people I know who are in relationships have less time for their friends and are often completely consumed by their relationship and kids. It’s absolutely normal and that’s life. But don’t turn around and make out that I’m selfish and frivolous, when I’m the one who makes the effort to come to every engagement, wedding, anniversary, kid’s birthday party and christening, often armed with a gift, a bottle of wine and a salad. Having children is a wonderful thing that brings family and friends together. However, ultimately who are you doing it for?
I have not met the right guy yet. Perhaps that’s because I’m not ready. Some think it’s because I’m too picky. But maybe it’s because I grew up in a house where my parents hated each other so it has to be absolutely right. Whatever the reason, if and when I do meet someone and decide to have a family, I want to know in my heart of hearts that the decision and the consequences are wholly mine and I don’t care what anyone thinks.
It’s happened. I have passed marriageable age. Well, 50 years ago I would have and my fate would have been sealed. These days, being 28 and still single just means I have to go to things on my own and listen to my other friends and their husbands / wives / partners, bang on about their latest mini break, real estate investment, trip to IKEA or ‘the baby’.
This is why I like hanging out with poofs. They mainly bang on about banging on. But there’s only so many times you can go to a party, open the fridge to get some water and be confronted with 20 vials of GBH before you think: one of these days I’m going to grab the wrong bottle and end up dead, which would quickly accelerate me past any age. And let’s face it, I’m not going to meet my future husband at The Midnight Shift.
Everyone around me is in relationships or starting a family and it is so fucking boring. Obviously not for them though, which makes me think: has the world gone mad?
The last two Sundays I have turned up to barbecues to discover I was the only single person on the guest list. Do couples deliberately just hang out with other couples so they can compare mini break, furniture and baby stories? The thing is, often when you get these people on their own they are completely normal. I reckon it’s that their other single friends have just gotten jack of turning up alone, making conversation with people’s partners and talking about stuff they can’t even begin to relate to, and so they’ve politely made their excuses.
Not me though. I’m that sucker that still rocks up on her own. Mainly because these people are my friends and I want to try to embrace their decisions, even if I can’t relate to them. But also because there really isn’t much opportunity to see my married friends on their own these days. So it’s this or nothing.
I have often moaned to my mother about this. “Well, that’s exactly why ended up married to your father,” she says, the circumstances clearly beyond her control. ”All my friends had paired up and he proposed. At first I said ‘no’ but he just kept at it and I ended up caving because everyone else was getting married.”
As always, Mum’s less-than-assuring reassurances bring me back to earth. I would rather spend one day a week as the only single in the room than 20 years with the wrong man.
One of my mates, let’s call her Anne, is adopted. She spent the first 34 years of her life knowing only that her adopted parents had picked her up from the hospital when she was 6 weeks old, after the cut-off date for her biological mum to change her mind about the adoption. She had no idea who her real mother was or why she gave Anne away, all she knew was that when her parents picked her up, she had a rash from being passed between so many different people. To the day, she doesn’t like being touched by people or displays of affection, even with her nearest and dearest.
While Anne had often wondered who her parents were and what they were like, she never actively tried to search for them. There were unexplainable things about herself that she had learnt to manage: like her chronic gambling addiction, her obsessive task-setting and list-making, and her smoking addiction. Like all of us, she had her cross to bear, but was otherwise a strong, smart, easygoing and well-adjusted person.
Then, one night as Anne sat at home smoking a joint and watching TV, the phone rang. An emotional, nervous and strangely familiar voice on the other end announced that she was Anne’s biological mother who’d been trying to track her down for years. After two intense hours talking, Anne suddenly had a second mother.
Understandably, Anne was surprised and overwhelmed. Mum 2 had taken it upon herself to contact Anne independently, which defied the adoption act. At times Anne was resentful that she had not been given time to prepare or the choice to even be contacted.
It’s been a rocky time, but two years later, Anne has learnt to live with 2 mums. And she now knows so many things about her history - physical and psychological. She has learnt that Mum 2 and her half siblings struggle with vices ranging from codeine dependency to cocaine addicition, to gambling addiction and smoking. Mum 2 is also prone to make lists and set herself unachievable tasks. It has been somewhat reassuring for Anne to learn these things in the understanding of her own personality. But at times it has been a bit confronting. When Anne finally met Mum 2, she was shocked to discover Mum 2 was morbidly obese.
More than anything, the experience has made Anne grateful for the grounding upbringing she had with Mum 1, who gave her the strength of character and endurance to overcome anything that might be thrown her way.