I'm bored of all this legal stuff. No one takes me seriously.
I'm losing my fight in regards to seeing Andrea. I don't know any more, I feel it's hopeless and I should surrender to the system. My frustration with the system turns into frustration with Andrea. I feel we have the right to know what happened and that she should tell us. I want to know why she plead not guilty and why didn’t she tell the police what happened. This is the system’s fault, it enables these actions. I've been so focused on my documentary that I've been forgetting about my own grieving.
In a counselling session the other day, I finally understood that because Dad never heard me, it kills me when other people don't, so much so that I'm making a documentary so everyone will hear.
Will Dad ever hear me now?
I can’t fix this relationship with Dad, because he's gone, but I want to make this documentary so that something good comes out of this experience.
Dad was a totalitarian ruler; we did what we were told because we lived in fear of getting yelled at. We were scared of him. Dianne was two years older than me and when she became a teenager, I’d watch wide eyed, as she started to rebel against Dad. She was fighting back; it was exciting to see alternatives.
I always felt invisible to Dad and that my words and actions were unseen and unheard. I finished Year 12 when I was 16 years old and I was anxious to take control of my life. I didn’t know where I would fit in the world. Dad didn’t approve of me so why would I approve of myself? I needed to work out who I was, and whether or not that was acceptable.
I equated ‘finding myself’ with pushing all kinds of personal boundaries in conjunction with any kind of escapism. I needed to prove to both myself, and Dad, that I was fearless and independent. My first outlet for this was skydiving. When Dad was younger he had flown gliders. When I started skydiving it felt like he finally noticed me. He introduced me to someone at a wedding with pride, “This is my daughter, she jumped out of a plane this morning”. He was proud of me.
But it was to late. By the time I got to the point that I had his admiration I had done a 180-degree turn and was determined to prove to him I didn’t need him. I resented him. I couldn’t get far enough away from him and he knew it. I was going travelling soon and he knew I wouldn’t be back for a long time. Dad had taught me to be strong, and I was. I travelled to dangerous third world countries on my own, with complete abandon.
My travelling style was reckless. My motto was ‘maximum adventure/risk equals maximum reward’. I played games with fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it. I wanted to know who I was and what I was made of. I constantly pushed myself into dangerous places and dangerous circumstances. I went as far off the beaten track as I could. I used to say that I hadn’t been to a country unless I stayed with a local family. I never had a Lonely Planet and I only took local buses or hitch-hiked. I trusted strangers completely.
It was nothing for me to arrive in countries like India or Egypt after dark with no plan. I would literally jump on a local bus or go with someone I had met on the plane and see where it took me. I was on my own and I was a very, very young girl. No-one knew where I was.
It was like I had two selves. The bully self who would risk everything for an adventure and the real self who probably didn’t really want to get herself killed. It wasn’t until I turned about 24 that I let the real self even be heard. For now the bully self was in control and she had something to prove. She loved to see how far she could go before she would admit that even she was scared.
I would call home maybe every couple of months. The first question would be “What country are you in?” Imagine having your 20-year-old daughter literally roaming the planet and having no idea where she was. Email was yet to be an everyday method of communication.
Even though I did all this stuff, Dad never made any attempt to rescue me from myself. He never said, “Sandra, I think hitch-hiking on your own from Adelaide to Cairns is a little risky, please don’t”. Or, “What’s the name of the boat you are sailing across the Atlantic on, or the name of the captain?”. Or, “I care about you, I don’t want you to get hurt, I love you.” He never said a word. Probably because I did such a good show of proving to him that I didn’t need him.
Written on 01 Nov 2005
Over 7 years since incident
Tags:
relationships
There are no comments yet.
If you log in, you will be able to add comments here.
