Where I've been (part two)

I spent last week in Canberra, which is the main reason I haven't blogged anything in a while. Yes, they do have the internet in Canberra, so that's not entirely the reason. It's just I didn't really feel like writing while I was there. I was trying to live in the moment and enjoy the precious time I had to spend with Anika and Sasha, who I went especially to visit.

I think it was a good decision not to blog. I think I would have written some sad stuff, late at night, when I was missing home and thinking of how different my trip would have been if I'd had Max with me, which at this time of the year I should have. If he'd been born when he was expected, he should be three months old right now. The sad stuff would not have accurately reflected how I felt to be visiting my dear ones. I was so happy to see them, and so surprised and delighted to see how much my Sasha has grown and matured. I felt like I got to know her again, as the little person she is becoming, as opposed to the baby she was. I think I coped pretty well, but it was a hard trip - my first away from home since Max was born and died. My first time away from Leslie since our lives changed so unexpectedly. I felt OK during the days, but dismally upset at night. It happens like that sometimes. The day takes all you've got and you're scraping the bottom of the barrel of sanity later that night.

I'm very conscious these days that I'm not a 'normal' person to be around anymore. Maybe I will never again be the person I was. I don't know what my friends think about the ways in which I've changed - whether they've noticed or whether I'm the only one that notices. I'm highly emotional, prone to moody bouts of sad and silent reflection, and I tire easily. I could probably say that these things were always true of me, but they do feel different somehow, perhaps magnified. I don't take joy in as many small things as I used to. Sometimes I think I just can't be bothered talking about any of the things I used to talk about or to be interested in any of the things I used to like. You know, just sitting around and chatting about my every thought, or whatever comes into my head. I'm guessing part of this is because I am so often thinking sad and horrible things. It's not that people don't want to hear them, as I'm so lucky to have for my closest friends people who can, and do, listen without judgement. It's just that I feel that it is too much to ask them to listen to the same stuff over and over and over again. I'm embarrassed that I have nothing else to contribute. I don't want the only conversation I'm capable of having to be about Max, or the gaping hole he has left in my life, or about how the world doesn't make any sense to me anymore. But a lot of the time that's just where I am. A lot of the time I spend at home is me sitting on the couch and literally staring at the wall, sighing. I'm sure this doesn't make me a very charismatic or enjoyable house guest, but I tried to do my best. 

Anika and Sasha did extremely well to sit with me through moments of extreme sensitivity and silence. Anika's always been good like that. She's like me in many ways, just happy to have the person she loves in the room, whether they're talking or doing their own thing or not. At least I hope she was, as I don't feel like I brought much fun with me! The most joyous parts of the trip were spent reading stories to Sasha and joining in her many and varied conversations, and on the long walks I took with Anika, which were good for me in so many ways. As always seems to be the case lately, I don't know where the days went. We went shopping a few times, went out for tea a few times, and then it seemed time to come home. Luckily I will get to see them again next month when they come to Melbourne for Anika's graduation, which will be a lovely, happy, exciting occasion, that I'm saving up all of my positive feelings for.

It's late tonight, and I'm tired, and a bit sensitive about it being my birthday tomorrow, so I won't go into the details of the whole trip. After all, at least two of the most important people in my life were already there! They don't need a recap! I will say that I took the train to Canberra, and I will say that I will NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! Stories from the XPT from Melbourne to Sydney could keep me in blog posts for at least the next month. Hell, if I rode it often enough I reckon I could dedicate a separate blog for the plethora of fucking weird and disturbing shit I saw and heard!

A very grown-up looking Sasha:

Things-I-Love-Thursday: Best Friends Who Complete Their PhDs

I would like to dedicate today's Things-I-Love-Thursday post to best friends who complete their PhDs. Specifically, I am enamoured of one particular best friend who has completed her PhD: soon-to-be Dr Anika.

Dr Anika, specialising in English Literary Studies and Awesomeness

I have not had much good news of late, so when Anika's call came to tell me that her thesis had been passed it seemed like the absolute best piece of news I'd heard in months. Anika worried that I might have mixed feelings about her completion, given that thoughts about my own have caused me so much grief, but I can honestly say I had no such feelings. All I felt was pride and awe that she has been able to accomplish so much over the last few years, alongside being an inspiring mum to my VIP god-daughter. I felt fortunate that I could say I had been there through it all, and as such, it felt a little bit like my achievement too.

Anika has worked so hard. Where I am more often than not driven by distraction, Anika is just plain driven. That's not to say the thesis road was any easier for her to travel because of it. Despite her enviable work ethic, she still suffered her fair share of supervisory dramas, crises of self doubt, topic confusion and just plain thesis malaise. I have not forgotten her days of frightened and frustrated tears, even if she has, as she finds the post-PhD amnesia kicking in (this is similar to post-birth amnesia, I think, and is a very clever survival mechanism!) But her achievement is all the more meaningful for that; the victory tasting ever so sweeter.

Anika wrote her thesis on the politics of beauty in twentieth century literature - from the rise of the Flapper in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, to the black is beautiful movement that Toni Morrison shaped, to the rise of the varied chick-lit genre that emerged post-Bridget Jones's Diary. She wrote about Lolita, and a fascinating chapter on Mills and Boon and the fairytale. My critical opinion counts for very little on this matter, but I can say with confidence that her thesis is strongly argued, meticulously researched, and also very interesting to read. She most certainly has achieved the trifecta!

I'd like to say, however, that from my perspective the biggest achievement of our collective theses has been our deep and lasting friendship. For it was the PhD program in the English Department at the University of Melbourne that brought us together in the first place. I was already a graduate student   about two years into my candidature when I first met Anika. I wasn't working much on campus at the time and I remember that I'd been having printer troubles at home one day so I took a special trip into the university to print out my document. On the sixth floor of the John Medley building is the English postgraduate work spaces and common room. It ain't fancy, and it used to smell kind of funny, so I didn't hang out up there much, so our meeting there, on what I think was a Friday afternoon, was kind of feted from the outset.

There at a big communal table in the ramshackle common room I first saw Anika, head down, engrossed in a book. She was sitting alone, so shyly, and I could barely see her face because she was all snuggled up in a purple parka. As I now know, Anika loves her parkas  , and the protection they afford her from the elements. It was the first of many parkas I've seen her through over the years but it remains my favourite. I think it might have been from Dangerfield. The hood had a fur trim, that much I can remember.

Because I cannot stand social awkwardness, and it was just the two of us in the room at the time, I introduced myself in what I imagine was my usual friendly way, and I found that she was a newly arrived student and that she was from ANU in Canberra. We must have exchanged emails or phone numbers as I don't really remember what happened from there, except that we went out for a cup of tea at Animal Orchestra (the first of literally hundreds of such episodes) and discovered we both had a lot in common, especially our depressive tendencies (nothing like misery to join two friends together forever). The next outing we had, I think, was to the Espy in St Kilda where my friend's band were playing one weekend. We went out for dinner, with a friend of mine at the time, at Soul Mama. Here I first discovered Anika was engaged, and probably lots of other things about her that I forget now as I think we had a bit to drink that night!

The first picture I have of me (centre) and Anika (right), at Soul Mama that night.

Anyway, the rest, as they say is history. Our friendship has grown and prospered and changed, and she and her daughter are now a very important part of my family.

Best friends with PhDs should be celebrated. Firstly, because they are very self-deprecating and won't celebrate themselves unless someone does it for them. Secondly, because they have achieved something very deserving that few people ever do. Thirdly, because there are so few opportunities in life to really sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labour and you must take the time to really live in that moment. Finally, you must celebrate best friends with PhDs, not just because they have PhDs, but because you love them no matter what they do and its just a bonus that they're smart and literary and now get to put 'Doctor' as the title on their credit card applications (which they'll inevitably need as completed PhDs pay little more than uncompleted ones, especially in the humanities!) But that consideration is for another day. Today is just for the party.

Congratulations, my dearest, darling poppet. May your life be much freer and even more celebratory from here on in!