I feel like I've gone crazy over these last months, like I'm walking towards a mental home. I can't believe I've avoided antidepressants. I have been in such a bad place; distressed, angry, miserable and depressed. I totally lack will. It’s like I’m waiting for one more trauma that would give me enough reason to give up completely. I've lost so much I can't bear it, and I have been cut so deeply.
I’m 28 years old and have spent about seven years of my adult life travelling overseas to some very adventurous third world countries. I was born a thrill seeker; from about the age of five my parents knew they would have their hands full.
At 16, I was bored and started trolling through the yellow pages looking for something to do so I started skydiving. As I write that sentence I just think “what the?” At 17, after having major spinal surgery (not related to the skydiving) I travelled to Kenya, much to the displeasure of Dad, to live with a local family. “What’s wrong with America or the UK?” Dad implored. It only made Kenya sound all the more exciting.
Before I was 23 years old I had travelled to Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Eritrea, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Maldives and India, mostly on my own. When I first left I took my parachute, fire sticks (for fire dancing) and about five items of clothing (which was all that would fit). The man at the check-in counter asked if I was going away to join a circus.
Mum and Dad parked on the side of the road to watch the plane take off. Mum told me later that as they watched me fly off into the sunset Dad turned to her and said, “Well, at least you know where she is for the next 24 hours”. I was going to the other side of the planet and my only plan was to have an indefinite adventure.
On the way I worked on diving boats and then began to crew on sailing boats. It became my preferred way to travel and I ended up sailing around a lot of the world including a trans-Atlantic crossing.
After missing seven in eight Christmases, I decided to come home. I arrived back in Adelaide from Mexico, where I had been shooting underwater videos on the 11th December 2001 (Dad’s birthday). My sister had just had a baby boy called David and I wanted to meet the newest member of my family. Mum and Dad excitedly thought I would ‘settle down’ and get a ‘proper’ job. ‘Proper’ is not in my vocabulary so Dad was to be disappointed again when I announced I was going to become a documentary filmmaker.
All that sounds awfully exciting and fun, but there is one BIG problem, I’m no longer that person.
My grief is so freakin’ complicated it’s doing my head in. I go round and round in circles. I call it my circle-work. Last year I was in a ‘relationship’ that was very bad for me. I’m very inexperienced in relationships and this was the closest I’d come to a ‘grown-up relationship’. I cared very deeply about someone who doesn’t care much about anything, including me.
We broke up about five months before Dad’s accident and I felt like my heart had been smashed into a thousand pieces and that muddy boots had walked across my soul. I knew we had to break up, but I was devastated from the way I’d been treated during the ‘relationship’. Instead of being relieved that it was over, I blamed myself and interrogated myself, soul searching for answers. I wanted to know what was wrong with me and why he couldn’t care about me?
When the relationship ended I made the break-up as messy as I could. I was broken, my self worth shattered. Thankfully a film job in Ireland removed me from the mess. When the job finished I went on walk-about and ended up in Northern Thailand. I stayed in a Buddhist monastery and did a 15-day silence meditation. Although the whole idea is to not think, the thing I took from it was that I needed to sort out my relationship with Dad so that I could have a healthy relationship with a man.
My relationship with Dad was not perfect, to say the least. It is very hard to write about, but essentially, we didn’t get along. At all. Someone said to me the other day, “Every girl has a special relationship with her Daddy”. I scoffed inside my head. No words could be further from the truth. I was never Dad’s ‘princess’, that’s for sure.
The finality of his death is so distressing because it means that our story is written. Our story has reached the end. The fairytale of bad turning to good is not possible for us. We have run out of time. We have no time to make it better, we have no time to change our story. It’s written, and I don’t like the ending.
After Thailand I wasn’t ready to come home but I was a bridesmaid in my best friend’s wedding. The wedding was a week and a half before the accident, although of course the accident wasn’t scheduled in my diary.
They, whoever ‘they’ are, say that things happen in threes. While I was in Thailand, I found out that an American man, Richard, who I had sailed with down the Red Sea, had passed away. Richard was an important person in my life, I admired him and he gave me an opportunity that opened up a world to me. He taught me how to sail and we had an awesome adventure sailing from Turkey through the Suez Canal to Egypt, Jordan and Eritrea. We cheated death, sailed his beautiful wooden boat and worked together as a team (in a confined 46 ft space).
I met Richard in Turkey in 1998. Richard was 65 and he was a good friend, father figure and teacher all rolled into one. I wanted to go somewhere and I wanted to go by boat. The Turkish summer was winding down and I had not saved enough to fly anywhere. I thought sailing sounded like an interesting thing to do and it would be perfect for my next adventure.
I liked Richard when I first met him. His beard and hair were sun- bleached white, and his skin weather beaten and tanned from outdoor living. He looked like a real character, a real sailor! I was thin and lanky and didn’t look physically strong. I was 22 but looked younger. Richard was unimpressed by my lack of sailing experience however, I gained points when I promised I didn’t get seasick.
It seemed I didn’t have much to offer until he asked how much luggage I had. “Oh, not so much” I said. “But I have a parachute, it would need to be stored somewhere dry”. “You have a parachute!” he exclaimed laughing. “If you can jump out of a plane you can come on my boat”. It was settled, few questions and few answers. My parachute and I were going to sail down the Red Sea, whatever that meant.
I first heard of Isobar (Richard’s boat) three months earlier when I scribbled the boat name on a tiny piece of paper in a city 300km away. Some people I met in an Internet cafe gave me Richard’s name saying he might need crew to go to Thailand. Other pieces of fate lead me to Marmaris where Isobar lived. I began to walk the docks. I was sure Isobar would have left a long time ago. I was unperturbed; with determination and luck I was sure I’d find a boat.
Whenever I saw someone outside on the deck of a boat, I would stop and ask if they needed any crew. I approached a man scrubbing a deck and asked if he was leaving Turkey and needed crew? “No” he said, but added he knew someone that might. I was excited as he led me to a beautiful wooden boat. As he called out to the Captain I read its name… Isobar.
At marina parties I quickly learnt that Richard was well respected by fellow sailors. He didn’t use autopilots or engines and he refused to equip Isobar with fancy gadgets such as radars or water makers. He was a real sea dog.
I sailed with Richard for four months and it was an amazing experience. Richard and I were like two peas in a pod. Along the way he had other crew as well, but it was Richard and I who really got along. We could talk about anything. I wished that I could talk to my Dad like that.
I last saw Richard in Thailand in December 1999. At the time I was head over heals in love with a Spanish guy. Richard told me I had the worst taste in men and that I needed to read a book called ‘Women who love too much’.
Within the space of six months I have lost three of the most significant men in my life. My circle-work is this – why didn’t Dad care about me? Why didn’t my ex care about me? I am the common feature here, therefore it must be my fault, and so what is wrong with me? I’m on a quest to find out what is so wrong with me. I’m like a goldfish and I go around and around, as soon as I assemble some clarity, I forget about it and start from the beginning again.
I know this is so unhealthy for me but it doesn’t matter how often someone puts it into a different perspective or assures me that it wasn’t my fault, I can’t stop it. I know people can control their mind and I know people are responsible for there thoughts and emotions, but I just can’t stop myself. I cannot be responsible for my life and mind at the moment. It is beyond me.
Dad and my ex are the same; Freud would have a field day with this one. It is so hard for me to separate them. I get so confused; I don’t know who I am grieving or which emotions are connected to which person. No matter how I try to clarify things in my mind I just keep going around and around. I only need to move an inch, and I feel pain. Pain again and again. I hate my life.
My family has shrunk and I feel very alone for the first time in my life. The family is divided more than ever. The only secure thing I had in my life was my family, I didn’t have a secure job or a secure relationship, and I certainly didn’t have a secure life. I was happy with that, I would much rather hitch hike around Jordan than buy a dog and a house. The last thing I wanted was security, but I did like knowing that behind all the craziness and risks that I took (and yes, upon refection I think hitch hiking in Jordan was taking things a little too far even by my standards) my parents were ‘there’. Now I’m realising that the one secure thing I had isn’t secure either!
I look at Mum and I think, “Oh my god, I only have one parent left”. The Buddhists teach that everything is impermanent and that everything is an illusion. Now, for the first time in my life I want some kind of security, but it’s completely contradictory to what I know now – grief takes you to a place where you realise nothing belongs to you. The Buddhists are right, the little amount of security I thought I had wasn’t real either, everything is an illusion and nothing is permanent.
In the past I have never been jealous of my friends; I would never swap my life with any one. It’s not that I want to swap places with them, or even that I’m jealous of them, but I’m jealous of the fact that they still have their illusion in tact. I know their illusion isn’t real, but they don’t, and that’s what I want.
Written on 10 Aug 2004
Over 8 years since incident
Tags:
grief, depressed, antidepressants, relationship
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