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Showing posts from April, 2017

How Trauma Messes With Your Brain

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I had something pretty traumatic happen in my life late last year (after, and separate to, the nervous breakdown ). I don't want to go into detail cause that's not really the point here, but let's just say it was a genuinely traumatic event that would be recognised as such by any psychiatric organisation, with my safety and sense of self at risk. It's been fixed now, mostly, but I'm still learning about the bloody annoying after effects. (I've had other shit happen, but this was kind of last straw stuff). My short term memory is shot. All my life I've had an intense memory for small details. I've always known what day and date it is, and on what day and date things are happening. That's gone now. I've become one of those people who say "huh? It's the 17th already?" which after the novelty wore off, is kind of scary. Yesterday I got a fright because I learned next month is May, when I thought it was March somehow, even though March

Fear of Boys

At the park yesterday with G, one of those sparkling autumn days that makes you absolve Sydney of all its sins and renew your love forever. Despite the weather, he had the playground mostly to himself, but on two occasions toddler girls, apparently with their fathers, arrived to play. G loves other kids, and he approached each child in turn, once on the climbing frame and once on the roundabout, wanting to chat and play. Each time - before Mister G actually did anything, and before I could explain that he's a gentle child used to playing with his younger cousins - the fathers of the little girls swooped in to protect their daughters from the threat.  And I could suddenly see what they saw - not my sweet baby, but an older, school aged, boy . No doubt wild, rough, loud, and a threat to their child.  Not this again. My ex loves kids. And he's completely natural with them. He likes to play with them, talk to them, think Playschool presenter but with the messy, germy little things

Remembering Mark Latham

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Mark Latham just won't go away. Like a drunk that has been ejected from every pub in town - even the most disreputable of dives that'll take anyone - denied a chair on which to perch and share his incoherent ramblings, he's set up himself outside , regaling the public with his largely unwelcome rants. And as this brave warrior of "free speech" spews forth his bile, bravely continuing his "important work" that largely consists of attacking women who've never harmed him or anyone else, people rightly condemn him - no Mark, the left is not "afraid of you", and no one is trying to silence you; even if we wish you would shut up, we can't and won't stop your tired, irrelevant whining.  But there's a bit of historical revisionism in there, too. People wrongly remember the past. How did this guy ever get to be Labor leader, they wonder. Almost Prime Minister! Now we have two things to be grateful to John Howard for - the assault weapons