I will be 34 in a month or so. Thirty fucking four. How the
hell did that happen? Here I am approaching mid-thirties, doing a job that is
taking me no-where and having had a random hook up a few weeks ago with a guy I
used to party-pash at uni. Geez I’ve come a long way in the past thirteen years.
I mean, I purchased an iron a month back, the first one I’ve owned or had access
to the past five years. When did they get so expensive? Over the past few
years, I’ve been quite content to walk around in crumpled, creased and crushed
clothing which, in part, is possibly a direct representation of my life.
For the past year and a half, I have been living life in this
weird, hazy funk. I now know what directionless means. I have achieved exactly
that. No direction. I have been asked time and time again, ‘are you really
finished with triathlon?’ I feel that I have answered that question by selling
off my race wheels, race kits and time-trial bike. Yes, I am done. I happily drive past
the pool on a daily basis, with no intention of stopping in for a swim. I
relish the fact that when the days get shorter and winter sets in, I don’t have
to haul arse out of bed at 4:30am for a couple hours on the bike. What I do miss
is purpose. I miss having a goal and a reason to get out of bed. All I have now
is this massive, gaping hole that fills with anxiety and discontentment. What
do other people do with all this time? Is that why people have kids? To fill
some time and remove the painful boredom of a mundane existence? I have since
tried to figure out what drives others to get out of bed? The thing that has
hit me hard over the past eighteen months is now trying to fill this gaping hole
in my life with work. I am trying to fill it with a job that doesn’t really
excite me. I don’t hate my job, but I am not passionate about it. I go to work, do my best, walk out and try
not to think about it until the next time I step through the door. For so long
work was just a means to an end. It was the sponsor to my real love that was
triathlon. But when the tables turn and work is now the nucleus of my life
some severe re-assessment in warranted. I have reached a professional ceiling
in my current place of work and I have no-where to go from where I am
unless I open my own clinic. I once heard that if you look at your
boss and are not striving to be them in five years-time then you probably need
to re-assess and move on. Another thing a patient said to me was, ‘if you don’t
like something, fucking change it,’ simple, straight to the point and it
triggered a level of embarrassment from me. Time to stop whinging and bloody do
something! But then I thought; maybe this is it? This might be all there is to
life. Was I living in a fantasy world for the past ten years and now I have
opened my eyes to reality? Am I seeing life for what it actually is for the
first time in my adult life? The incredible Samuel Johnson once said something
that resonated loudly with me;
‘We are chasing constructs like freedom and happiness & I’m not
sure that those things, the way they are sold to us, are true at all,’
Yet I have this undeniable gut feeling, there is so much
more. I’ve been spending the past year trying to work out what the hell I want
to do for the next 40 years. I love writing and need to remind myself to do it
more. Just write. I listen to podcasts in the car and on the bike and read at
any spare moment and think ‘Yes! I could do this.’ I have fodder constantly
flowing through my mind and then nine times out of ten, when I sit down to tap
it out on my computer I get stuck after a couple of lines. Or, more than often
than not, I think ‘ugh, I’ll write tomorrow,’ and then tomorrow turns into
weeks, months and then it’s a year gone and I have written sweet stuff all. I
made my first ever new year’s resolution at the beginning of 2017: to write
something every day, no matter how short, irrelevant or shit, just write
something. It went well for about two weeks and then my journal came to an
abrupt halt. So, I did a writing course; Introduction to Creative Writing. A
five-week online course through the Australian Writers Centre. It was great. I
consumed the content. At first, I thought that the information was common
sense, but the more I listened and read I realized that it was exactly what a rookie
writer needs to hear. I thought I wanted to write fiction, maybe I still do and
perhaps sometime in the future I may just do that, but when I go to write, what
I really want to get down onto paper are my thoughts, emotions, struggles,
confusions and unease. One of the biggest things I learnt through the course
was that the characters your write about are not you. The problem is I know me
best, but then again, do I really know myself at all?
I suppose I’ve had bigger things to worry about the past
five years than a creased shirt or getting to know myself. On the 27th
of June it will be my five-year anniversary of being diagnosed with cancer. In
the scheme of cancer this is a big milestone. Five years means you become one
of the positive statistics. Most of the time, cancer is so far at the back of
my mind until someone asks, ‘how’s your health?’ I have to
contain my laughter when I get asked this. It sounds like someone is asking
about the black sheep of the family. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel my neck
on a regular basis checking for enlarged lymph nodes, swelling or asymmetry. Panic
sets in around any persistent chesty cough given I’ve been through cancer and
have an indolent metastasis behind my sternum. These days, however, trivial
things are the biggest anxiety drivers in my life. Will there be a car park
available at work? Can I get those concert tickets before they sell out? Will I
get out of work on time for trivia on Wednesday night?
The question is; how do I get out of this low point and make
my dull life more exciting? You can’t blame me for not trying. I put my QTAC in
two weeks ago and got an early offer to study a Bachelor of Law through QUT. I
have applied for the Virgin Australia Cadet Pilot program. Today I got my
motorbike learners licence. I spent two weeks travelling through Vietnam and Cambodia
over Easter and I have a two-week trip to Borneo in August to do some scuba
diving, hike Mount Kota Kinabalu and see the orangutans. I am currently researching
my holiday for 2019. I have forced myself not to delete my tinder account after
48 hours even though it is still uninspiring three weeks on!
Somehow, I don’t think my romantic life is the key to my
happiness. The truth is I think I’m happiest on my own riding my push bike,
reading my book at a café or sitting at home alone with a glass of red watching
‘The Bachelor’- how do I make room in these places for someone? I recently went
on a couple dates with a guy and he couldn’t understand how I don’t get lonely
living alone. I felt like a freak and rather offended when he repeatedly asked
me this question. I spend ALL DAY with people. Some days I see 18 patients plus
the people I work with. Most days I just want to come home, not say a word, sit
on my couch and watch trashy TV. Additionally, I am not in a rush as children aren’t
really in my plans. There is no awareness of my biological clock ticking as my
eggs age and commit suicide each month. It’s like my body knows that it is
never going to produce new life. Seriously, I think my ovaries go on holidays
for 6-8 weeks at a time and every now and then they wake up and are like; ‘holy
shit, we haven’t sent a tribute out for a while now- someone get out there and remind
her she's still a woman!’ The beginning of the end was when I started going to the
movies alone. Oh my god, the absolute bliss of it! Two hours of my life where I
had no guilt in switching off my phone, eating rubbish and occasionally bawling
my eyes out with absolutely no shame. Two weeks ago, I went to my first concert
solo. Talk about liberating. I knew no-one. I could dance, sing and duck in and
out of the crowd without worrying about someone else. I also got to see an
amazing artist that most people don’t know. (Halsey- check her out, she is
bloody brilliant!)
Just to clarify, I’m not completely asexual. For one, I
am very straight. I like men and occasionally, one will knock me for six. Case
in point; about three months ago I met this guy and I became a blithering mess,
appearing completely incompetent at cognitive function and being a functional human in
general. My head takes about ten minutes to catch up with those butterflies certain
males can give me and by the time I realize they are making me nervous, I have
morphed into a ditzy fool. Shame. He was cute and even seemed half intelligent. On the positive side, at least I can still be attracted to someone.
So here’s to a future of options…. Or not. Who the hell
knows?
