Where You Are Is Nowhere;

"Midlife crisis, noun: a period of emotional turmoil in middle age caused by the realization that one is no longer young and characterized especially by a strong desire for change."

Okay, so substitute ‘midlife’ with ‘on the cusp of adulthood’ and you’ll locate the You Are Here sign on the tourist map of my life. Don’t ask me where to go from here, cause I have no idea. You might want to check out the glitter-drenched disco in Old Town where I’m constantly dancing in a pink thong with James Foster to Sorry You’re Not A Winner and rum and coke is the house drink. Just don’t allow the 2006 calendar pinned to the back of the ladies’ bathroom door to deceive you into thinking you’ve gone back in time. Or if you’re more in the mood for a thrill, how about the old haunted high school where you might catch the lingering scent of Cool Waters on the air and hear the words When you’re sixteen, I promise whispered down the corridors by people who are no longer there? If a little culture is what you’re after, why not head on over to the museum where you’ll spend hours poring over the collections of photographs, paintings and recovered artefacts? Popular pieces include the tattered pair of black jeans given as a memento, the penny coin with the inscription I love you branded into the copper, and the colourful print of a black haired boy with his arm around a girl in a scarf which is the crocheted incarnate of autumn. Don’t forget to visit the gift shop on your way out, where you can pick up a copy of the bestselling memoir A Diary Full of Christopher. (The original manuscript can be found on the attic level beside the box of bees, to the right of the moth & butterfly display case.) Alternatively you can watch a triple bill of Alpe D’huez ’07, American Beauty and Ludovico Einaudi live in concert at the nearby cinema for a lot of skiing caper, minimalist music and floating rose petals. The bookshop is always a favourite, carrying titles from Wuthering Heights to Into the Wild to Prozac Nation, and specializing in the Collected Letters of Freak-Out & Self-Deprecation. Feel like a shopping spree? The boutique offers an eclectic variety of clothing, from the black hoody I snuggled against in the rain after school when I needed to feel safe and he needed to protect me, to the slinky floral dress I wore on November 10^th 2010 and haven’t worn since, caressed by another him and smelling of cigarette smoke, silent moments only for us, the first snowfall, inhibition, the magic of being in an unknown city at night, strangers to one another, the universe to one another. Why not explore the surrounding terrain? The topography ranges from majestic snow-capped mountains perfect for skiing, to the staggering cliffs of the Carpathians on one side of the road and the azure blue of the Caspian Sea on the other, to the cityscape of Sydney, the intense palette of antipodean mangroves, puffin-clustered sea-stacks and crashing waves, the picturesque seams and lawns of North Berwick. Drive in and leave your car on the top floor of the municipal car park, and note the dingy western vestibule that reeks of piss and stale smoke where I had my first kiss with a boy who saw right into me, and persevered even when I laughed at the tickling sensation of his proximity, and our rapt audience watching through the glass pane in the door, and the patchwork tarmac where I roasted in the sun and felt so very safe at that height, and the railing where I photographed someone who didn’t really understand why he was there while I realised neither did I.

Feeling lost? Don’t know where to begin? The Tourist Information Centre can help you out there! And here’s a free raffle entry. The winning ticket will be drawn from a lottery of memories in the still-extant ski hat, with the prize being Enlightenment, when the horizon is reached. Meanwhile, here’s your orienteering equipment and survival kit. Good luck with navigating your way through the maze—watch out, it’s a little overgrown!—and hopefully we’ll see you on the other side. The time will run out when the big hand hits the S and the little hand hits the OON. Get going.

*

I’m trapped in that maze, you see. My options are pretty much obscured by fog and I neglected to bring a compass. They don’t make maps for mazes; that would be cheating. I’m so fucking sick of the place. It’s always my fault in the end, it’s always in my head, you always have an excuse, I’m always wrong. I’m always the one apologising—but what am I apologising for? For your mistakes. For your treatment. Like I somehow bring it upon myself, like I somehow deserve it. So then I get to thinking that maybe if I do all of this good stuff, get through all my reading for today, go to all my lectures, sacrifice something, suffer some more, the dispenser of fate up there will reward me. Because I’ve earned it, right? It’s like a dog trained to obey commands for a treat, and scolded when it fails to comply. Except you withhold the reward. Because you have the power to do that. Even when you promise you won’t, you still do. And I’m just fucking sitting, and the whole damn world is going by. Why can’t I let you go? Why can’t you let me go? Why do you have to keep me in this nowhere place?

I’m obsessed by the gender politics in Things Fall Apart and The Dispossessed, particularly fixated by the objectification of women. But I’m wondering if maybe my total resentment and indignation regarding the bride-price is actually envy. Maybe I am envious of these women because, whatever else happens, they know their worth in gold. I have no fucking clue what I’m worth. I’ve often wondered why I find guys easier to get on with, knowing there must be a more complex reason other than the bullshit one that they are more straightforward than girls. In high school there were three girls and six guys and we were their property. They weren’t friends, not really. I’ve had many more friendships with guys than girls, but the female relationships are a thousand times stronger and more precious to me. In my mind, because of the guys in high school, a girl around a guy is a commodity. I get on with guys better because I’m pushed to inhibition because I want to know how much I’m worth. Truth is I don’t know how to be proper friends with a guy. I thought I did, but I don’t. Because of that introduction in high school, because of many unintended experiences, I don’t trust them. I don’t trust them to allow me to be vulnerable and a total girl about things, or be serious or jealous or afraid or like reading. It’s the same with new people; the constant expectancy to be a firework, completely radiant and dazzling and funny. It’s like bribery, trying to keep them interested.

And then there are the people who completely enervate you, who bleed you dry of all sense of self, and you sit around wondering what the fuck it is you do to pass the days and where the fuck you’re going and what you’re going home to. And the ones who make you want to let go because you feel safe enough and unknown enough to do so, and because you feel the need to impress them. And the ones closest to you who are hesitant to share because they know they’ve left you far, far behind and this might widen that gap insurmountably. And you hardly touch anyone anymore because you’re too afraid to make yourself known, and then to be rejected. And what exactly is expected of you anyway? You can’t be fucked going back to them, to their endless, empty, identical stories and their soulless conversation—that’s everything you gave up—but what else is there? Who else is there?

It’s that place between Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night. I’m thinking about what I’m afraid of. Of having made the decision to scrape off all the detritus and then discovering that’s the only place I belong, and having to sentence myself to it again. Of very deep water, of drowning, of falling on the ice, of falling in general. I never wanted to care. I didn’t ask to care. Of only writing of things and never having them, of watching other people have them and of being left farther and farther behind like in that recurring nightmare I had as a kid where my parents left me on the pavement and drove away and never looked back no matter how hard I screamed or how fast I ran. Of always being so fucking scared. Of someone never reassuring me I don’t have to be scared. Of fucking it up and being alone. Of making my children suffer for it, of them ending up afraid. Of never getting over it, and also of getting over it. And then it’s Guy Fawkes Night and he’ll be there and I will be the fifth and I could pretend to see the symbolism, that he tried to capsize me and now I’m letting it all be consumed in the conflagration, but who am I kidding. That’s the trouble with growing up around movies and books; you become conditioned to the concept of a beginning, middle and end. But life is the middle. In all likelihood I will be so deeply unhappy I will verge into recklessly happy, and then come home and be in silence and curl up in a ball until all the badness is squashed up and I can’t hardly feel it, and console myself with the oblivion of sleep.

Right now I feel like taking off and tearing through some place and not caring about anything. But if I do that I will officially be the girl who doesn’t finish things; not high school, not Australia, not this. I would like to run, but I am very tired and the fog is hiding the escape route from me.