We fuse into one skin, like a cowhide rug. I’m noticing that thing between your ears doesn’t quite work like it used to.

I miss you when you miss me.

You are the bad people we are warned about but can’t put a face to. The thick fog that lingers, the air you can’t breathe in, the blood blister, the energy in the cemeteries. Undisturbed, the constant sleep.

What comes after the candle has been blown out.

C x

I am thinking about buying the $8 eggs from the Mini Market and having passing thoughts about the person who lives in a rural town who paints and cooks and says they’re thinking about me but hasn’t met me yet. Me. Fire-breathing, casting spells, under-slept, under-fucked, breaking out from the tap water and needing an infill. I need to be my best self. They have put a thought in my head and it’s running wild, like a topless chick at Woodstock. I am a sucker for mystery and horny online exchanges, my Achilles Heel, even if they don’t make it past two weeks. If we ever do meet, I will eat them whole. I am a window, lean against me, crawl inside. It’s been a while.

My ex boyfriend messages and dares me to swim in the ocean in the evening and I consider it.

An internet crush leaves me on delivered for 8 hours and I start to think maybe my “cool girlness” has worn off and he’s onto the next best thing on Hinge. Maybe I just have too many hours in the day at the moment.

A forty something year old man tells me he wants to fly me out to Hawaii.

I am being hunted for sport.

My best friend tells me maybe I should start dating more women. Honourable advice.

Life is so constant. I was saying that to a friend the other day, a friend who I am not sure really loves me the way I love them and that’s okay. I’ve been here before. I am not certain where I stand in people’s lives anymore; I mean I do, I am moving through it, the five stages of grief or something like that. I have moved past denial; I don’t have the capacity to feel anger. People will show you how much you mean to them, mostly through movement and words unsaid, it’s always the things they don’t say. I wonder if there is anything left to be salvaged between people who have spent their teens and young adult life together and now hold some bitterness because of it. We’re not invincible anymore. You can’t get drunk together without someone saying the wrong thing, or someone fucking crying (usually me). We talk about work, what we’re having for dinner and the same shit from five years ago none of us have moved on from. Fuck me. I stay triggered in these dynamics where I used to feel like I was a part of something and like I belonged. I love until my cup is empty.

I fear the people closest to me know me too well and then I fear they don’t know me at all. I rely on my long-distance ties which includes my baby sister, who isn’t much of a baby anymore, but we can talk about anything and everything and that is a union that will never be broken. I’ve spent a lot of time alone the past few weeks with the exception of a few people that have resurfaced from my past; where I have drifted through the bars of their memory cage for a brief moment and they have remembered I exist and I am real and I’m fun to drink with, with the additional penchant for great story telling and having an extensive knowledge of music history. I also believe I have the gift of making others feel good, and been told on more than one occasion my brutal honesty is refreshing.

Life is so constant and I want and I want and I want. There is a lot of wanting and the pit that used to exist in the middle of the word yearning has been stolen, rinsed and wrung out, since Jacob Elordi used it once in some interview about Wuthering Heights. Conventionally attractive men think they’re so deep.

I resigned from my job a week ago. Very bittersweet only because I’ve made some great friends and have had some great laughs with people I think I would’ve really benefited from knowing 10 years ago. Lucky for me, because my generational curse has been lifted, I have been scooped up by a new company, more money on the table and more opportunity. A place that was voted “One of the Best Places to Work for Women”. Cool.

I am in the underbelly of trying to understand detachment and what healing actually means while processing grief and trying to create “My Dream Life”. This is what the focus is, and the outcome will be that of a masterpiece, an act of resistance. I am being radicalised in the way that this heart only has time for those with intention, depth. Blood or chosen family, there’s a weight in walking in your own path without an apology. A weight that moves you across the board. I am refusing to store my pain away and I am choosing to make it my life’s work, whatever that may be; it will be beautiful. I will roll around in it.

Summer is over, and I am rejecting the idea of seasonal depression once again. I am dreaming more and in the waking world, I touch grass, save spiders, watch pelicans, eat noodles for breakfast with spring onions and sesame oil, wooden chopsticks, swallow iron tablets, then candida ones, chlorophyll, green tea, unsweetened. The only thing missing from this routine is mood stabilisers and mind blowing head. I take a moment for God; I take a moment for nature. I drink blended reds; write passages with bleeding, dull pens. I tell someone I miss them and that we should talk more. I smoke to the filter; I smoke another one for my friend who’s no longer with me. I keep the big light off.

I’ll always have my vices.

C x

Blessed, blessed, blessed!

I am typing this on my phone; that’s kind of fucked up. I have been experiencing a blockage when I go to type on my laptop, so I had to try something different. I am typing while driving my fork into microwavable container that holds really miserable leftovers because I forgot to add parmesan and salt to it. I also forgot to buy pitted olives, devastating.

February brought a lot of good things, and weird things but mostly good things. I packed up all my belongings into my dad’s moving truck and moved to the beach. No one can tell me anything when I am living near the sea. I wear tiny denim shorts that are frayed and cowboy boots to the grocery store. I bum cigarettes off locals at the pub shamelessly and for some reason I have taken a whole new liking to pints of Heineken. I like this simple life. I meditate, have orgasms that bring a tear to my eye and cook in a kitchen with lots of bench space. I don’t yearn for anything anymore other than the feeling of home. Being in the present really is remarkable. Tumblr year old me is dancing.

I went to Melbourne for three nights and spent time with my baby sister who is just everything. She is a star and everyone adores her. I am forever her biggest fan. We spent Valentine’s Day together at a little Italian restaurant and our other days we spent drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and getting our 10,000 steps in around the city. I complain about not wearing the right shoes because heeled boots are chic. Having a little sister is just so special.

Blessed!

I am people watching more and talking to cockatoos, pigeons and bugs. Sarah and I have found a patch of grass on a hill near the beach that we’ve really started to favour. I look over tanned, glossy skin and long, strong legs but not in a perverted, freakish way. We drink cannies and talk about all the bad karma people who have done us wrong will get, but also the thought is fleeing. The salty air takes it away, we say “let’s stay positive”.

March is a juicy peach. I’m kissing people who are 70’s fine and don’t really get my slang. I am reminded that I don’t have it in me to have a boyfriend, then Sunday will come around and I am making a big pot of pasta sauce, and I just want to share it. I would like my body heat transferred into someone else but just for a small moment.

I’ve been listening to Andy Bull and Marlon Funaki (he’s a cool cowboy and I dig him) Liz Cooper, Lexa Gates. I am looking for a mini BBQ on Marketplace I can fit on my verandah that’s weirdly thin but overlooks a lagoon that sparkles. I want to grill fish and corn cobs and asparagus and stuff the mouths of everyone I love. I crave winter air and fur coats with neon swimsuits underneath; I crave funny, novelty mugs, dudes with boats, public sex, gelato, hand woven Moroccan rugs, modern-day pirates and the downfall of influencer culture. Yes, I am fueled by envy and bitterness because why do none of these motherfuckers work normal jobs? Hell is real and it has a HelloFresh subscription.

Now I’m at the beach typing, and that seems less fucked up. There is nothing browning yourself in the sun and burying your toes in the sand can’t fix. I spent $9 on a juice with some semi ripe fruit in it. Everyone is smiling at me today. I asked Sarah why that is and she said, “maybe because everyone can sense you need it”. I am feeling a little spiritually raw. I have spent lots of weeks of trying to reprogram my mind to just produce “nice thoughts” and now I am facing the music. To be honest, I am sick to death of working my 9-5 in a dark and depressing office when my life outside of it is so beautiful. There wasn’t any work for me in the original office I had transferred to and now I have been left to wilt on the end of the tram line. I am trying to create meaning; there is no meaning in a shared office space in an industrial estate. As soon as I find myself getting sick constantly or having that impending “The World Is Ending” feeling when I wake up in the morning, I know my body is rejecting or removing something.

I work a very emotionally taxing job that requires me to be “on” constantly. I absorb the energy of others, and I am not leaving much for myself. We need to change that.

Let the girl just eat her unripe fruit in the sun for fuck's sake!

I am realising I am wanting more hours in the day, more fun, more passion, freedom. I don’t want to burn away all of my potential. The neck tension is another story. I simply just don’t have my heart in it anymore and that’s okay. I would love to study something, pastry or flowers. Maybe I’ll become a cheese monger.

This week is slow and it’s unsettling, but I am looking forward to doing a grocery shop. I am committed to having a pretty pantry, that’s the best thing about moving into a brand-new apartment. The freedom to create a perfectly curated pantry from nothing.

Things I need to buy from the store later this evening:

• Banana or watermelon hair food, the Garnier one and the only one that matters. I spent 5 hours undoing my braids on Monday night because I couldn’t handle having hair in my face anymore.

• Vegetarian cheeseburger patties.

• Dill pickles. Please for the love of God have the Polish ones in stock. I need a really sour pickle that hurts my mouth. Maybe a potato chip to go with it.

• Potato chips, preferably truffle ones and crinkle cut. I will never be basic when it comes to the gift that is a potato chip.

• Teeth whitening strips.

• Cherry tomatoes. I’ve been really wanting to make a bocconcini and rocket salad with balsamic vinegar. This is a type of salad you eat straight of a silver mixing bowl.

• Ranch dressing because I want pizza later this week. Stuffed crust always.

• Dishwashing tablets because I am an adult. Not by choice.

• Maybe some eye masks so I can get the placebo effect I am fully rested.

• Gelato.

• Ice cream cones.

• Spring water.

I am trying to spend more time on my hobbies and develop new ones, so I don’t feel so brittle boned and pessimistic about having to contribute to society. Cooking always being one of them. Cooking is a language, performance, art, ritual. I’ve become fascinated with the idea of making my own sourdough and jams. Is this what normal 28-year-olds are doing? Making their own sourdough starters? Mmm.

I am back to typing on my laptop. I love her. I am thinking about removing my nails just so I can spend more time typing. I really would like to enjoy the feeling of revealing myself bare. No extensions in my head, no acrylics, I want to lay in the dirt near the peacock farm and comb weeds out of my hair.

The last few days have been muggy and rainy and kind of just whatever but today the air is crisp and delicious and now I am thinking about red apples, fresh berries, pinot gris, raw salmon, a few oysters. How I am so easily seduced by the thought of seafood and fresh fruits. Thinking about a long distant FT call, a spontaneous date with a stranger, one of those long evening walks that make your knees buckle when you get home but you fall asleep faster, thinking about dragging my bookshelf up from the garage so maybe, finally I can have all my books all neatly organised. I’ve grown to like them all sprawled out on the floor. I like their smell and the just knowing that they are there. Maybe I will water my plant that’s almost screaming at me for attention on my windowsill or start an argument with a man who hasn’t texted me back. (Harmless) Maybe all of the above. The evening is young.

C x

Do they hear us both cry?

You gather me up in your hands like a small animal, ball me up in your fist like a rubber toy. You’re going to make something out of me. Maybe an example, maybe a martyr so it’s not all for nothing.

The things that stick. When we both walk away but try to look for reasons to keep each other on standby, on a very short leash. We stick because nothing else feels whole except us when we’re folded inside each other. We stick because we’re scared of life outside of this because what else is there?

The things that stick. A rake in the dirt. A bird between cracks of gravel, left behind, sap from a wounded sycamore. Melted ice-cream between two couch cushions. You and I, sweaty in the summer. Skin to skin.

The things that stick. Finding God everywhere but in holy places. That last minute before the credits start rolling, the first time feeling needed; that one meal, shared that takes you back to your previous life. You’re a cowboy, kneeling, eating buttered bread underneath a crescent moon. The things that stick; the image of you wearing the sun, golden, arched, serene. The image of us, unmoved, warm, full, before we both knew how terrible things could really get.

C x

I have been delving deep into ceremonial practices, non-religious prayer, breaking in a new meaning of what it takes to love myself and keep it that way. I am speaking exactly what I want into the air, and I am not asking this year, I am taking.

A new mantra I have started to favour “My heart is a pretty siren that attracts everything golden and shiny. I was thinking of sirens at the beach the other day when I lost a significant and treasured ring I had worn since 2019. It slipped right off my finger in the middle of laughing in the water. I thought more about the spirituality behind losing jewelry and what that ring represented at the time that I had it made for me. Who I was and who I was with. The timing was strangely perfect; I am in the middle of shedding a layer of skin, lapping up every moment of The Year of the Snake, removing myself from my past, looking ahead without any hesitation. It belongs to someone else now. Every time I tried to put my head under water to try and retrieve it, I just had to come right back up. An invisible pull, a wonderfully sad goodbye to a piece of silver that may as well been surgically embedded on my hand.

My recent mornings have smelled of freshly mowed grass, specifically the type of grass that is pulled from the ground on a very early Saturday morning when you’re trying to savour your sleep in. Exhaust, kiwi skin, soap; the coconut and sandalwood kind that reminds you of your last trip up North a couple years ago. You received two big bottles of it for Christmas because you wouldn’t stop talking about how much you love it and ‘it’s just nostalgic or something”.

I am in a romantic daze, dreaming of Aphrodite taking a liking to me and I am less pissed off at the world recently because 2026 doesn’t feel real to me yet. I don’t even like dating my journal pages with it. Something about it feels unnatural but that also excites me.

I am enjoying lots of things. I sit on the floor of my bedroom at my mother’s house I had only planned to stay in for two weeks, now it’s been two months, and it will be another month, but she doesn’t seem to mind too much. I bring out a soft side of her she hates to admit. I sit on the floor and I take big, deep breaths, breaths so deep that I feel like my windpipes are going to explode. I don’t partake in dry January because I enjoy things wet and I really like drinking wine in the kitchen in my underwear during a heatwave. I stay double parked and fishing out the shells of crustaceans. I sit in the dirt, I go for long walks and listen to the bugs. A dear friend recommended Neville Goddard to me, and I listen to him at night, I fall asleep to his voice. I toss and turn. I wake up at 5am and can’t go back to sleep. I write something down on scrap paper. I brainwash myself into thinking “What’s meant for me will be” and “Everything I want I already have because my story is already written”. I watch my face turn plump and glossy with sunburn. I take some nude pictures of myself. I dream of living closer to a shoreline. I make a protection jar. I write and write and write until I can’t think of anything good or sultry or neat, until I have to crack my knuckles, find a new distraction. I think about kissing some people. I think about getting dressed for work in the morning, I think about breakfast. I probably won’t eat anything. I think about if I will ever fall in love again or what place I will travel to next. I think about the shitty passport photos I took the other week. I think about what my life would be like if I really just did whatever the fuck, I wanted without consequence.

C x

Maybe I am being rewarded for finally telling that one person to go fuck themselves and denying them access to me or maybe I am being paid my dues for unapologetically and messily burying myself in my purpose. That always seems to get a good response from whatever higher force that watches over me. “Just do what you’re supposed to do”. It’s really that simple.

As each sticky and smothering day passes, I am realising more and more that I can’t do boring or half full. I want the supersized. I want the huge gulp; I want to be quenched. I realise I don’t really want to be with anyone because no one is excited by me enough. Sadly, the guy that fucks you the best doesn’t want to date you. I am being selfish with my time. I don’t want to just “make more friends” because people happen to exist in the same room as me. I don’t see the appeal of being friends with people in their late twenties that hate themselves and project that hatred into the closest things to them. The type of people that believe trauma bonding is meaningful. I promise you it’s not the “soul connection” you think it is.

If anything, it’s condemnation. I don’t lay with wolves in sheep clothing.

The holidays are a strange and perfect time for self-reflection, but instead I choose to drink on Tuesday nights, chain smoke cigarettes and come up with ways to make myself look better. The irony is amazing, and the process of aging has become of great interest. I walk past Christmas lights at night and see hope, during the day I see the same house, and I just see a house piled up with plastic junk.

Do I still have childlike wonder left inside of me? Maybe I need to make a damn charmed bracelet or put some sand in my pockets.

I call up friends who have longed escaped the city and I sit alone at the wine bar. I sweat through my shirt; I lose track of time. I forget I am just a tiny speck. I am always my best company.

December. There’s a lot of marveling over pine needles and how they would feel in my hands. The smell of that fabric you only find on the seats of old cars, particularly your father’s back in 2002. I am thinking about laying my bones out in a neat arrangement and how that would look if I was to gaze up at them displayed in a large frame. I am foreseeing transformation. I am wearing the Eye of Nazar and speaking with my guides directly. My dreams speak loudly. December, a whistle through the trees, chlorine, starch, pastry with raw filling, a letter I don’t send, calls I choose not to make.

Maybe the holidays are more about who you don’t want to see again and less about who you have to make time for.

A friend told me over a slice that the only person standing in front of me is myself and my ego, because I really can do anything. I have been given gifts but it’s how I use them. Anything is disputable but I am constantly surprised by the people that find me in this lifetime and help me place my feet back onto Earth when I am starting to feel like roadkill, a native tree poisoned from the root. Who will find me in the next?

C x

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

Toni Morrison

source unknown

I remember the first time I ever encountered or experienced love at first sight or should I say love at first hello. I had buried that belief alongside that of myths and folk tales but there it was right in front me on a gloomy night in September of 2021.

Standing at 6’4 and with Yorkshire accent. I think we knew from the moment we sat at the bar and tried to order drinks for each other based off our personalities and he hated the one I ordered for him, and I loved the one he got for me that there was something worth exploring. If I can remember correctly, I ordered him something that was a weird twist on an espresso martini. I learned quickly he was a whiskey on the rock’s kind of guy. Everything I learnt about him fueled admiration for him. He was and still is a force, and we went together like ham and rye. We had a beautiful relationship, one met with adventure and laughter but alas, like everything, it ended. Amicably but painful, nonetheless. I wish him nothing but the best of the best.

I have loved and have been loved very deeply, and once you know what it feels like you find yourself trying to replicate it or search for the feeling again or at least something that’s close to it. I want to feel the warmth without setting myself aflame.

I have stopped trying to find it. I have learned to accept dating as a practice, as a hobby and as something that can just be fun without the underlying expectations from another person. Why does every date have to lead to finding love?

I am already writing the message in my mind, “I’m sorry I think we’re both looking for different things.” and I know how this sounds. You would think after some of the dates I have been on the past couple of months someone has a make-shift voodoo doll of yours truly. I am in need of a deep spiritual cleanse but that call to my mother can be saved for another week. She will tell me I’m in dire need of a yoni steam and send me off with a lecture and another stick of Palo Santo. I’m always thankful.

But if we’re speaking on a deeper level, I feel that that people are more detached, and more depressed. 2025 has not been kind, as well as the year before that. Coming out of the pandemic made people more closed off than they have ever been. Even typing the word pandemic makes my skin itch. We were strictly dependent on connections with the outside world when we were forced to stay inside and we didn’t know how to show up after it all ended, giving us a whole new definition of social awkwardness and avoidance.

People are focused on trying to pay off debt and show up for their 9-5 jobs that they hate without killing themselves then putting the work into birthing a romantic relationship and I don’t blame them. Our priorities have shifted, and people are feeling as fucked as ever. There’s always a price to pay and the price of falling in love, is a long and timely recovery. You can keep the house and get a sledgehammer to the nice china.

I remember a time you could go to a bar, and someone would actually approach you, if you were lucky, you would get a number written down on a forearm or a vodka-soaked napkin. “Who are you here with?”, “What’s your story?”. I can tell you how many times I have been groped and man handled this year, but I can’t tell you the last time I have experienced an interaction from the opposite sex that has left me pining, only blood thirsty and seeking vengeance.

Women are a different story; there’s always a shine and I always think about kissing women.

I have a million words for the girl I see at the bar with a tongue ring and low-rise jeans; the one who lightly touches your shoulder when you’re telling a story and tucks your hair behind your ear. She’s the type of woman I think about starting a family with and disappointing my religious grandparents, fuck them anyway. Women can disappoint me any day of the week, happily.

I used to think I breathed romance, but where has it gone? Has the romantic part of me died? Am I not finding it in the right places or have I not reached the point of self-love where I deserve it? I am nearly thirty years old, and I don’t know if I want a husband or a wife, a flock of kids or to just not feel like I am divided into quarters on a dinner plate, maybe I just want everything and that is the underlying problem.

I speak to women daily about the shallow pond, that is the dating scene in Brisbane. We fuck our friends, we fuck our exes, our summer flings that don’t care if we lived or died and then we punish ourselves for it. Maybe we’re starting to answer our own questions. People are afraid and some of us just need an orgasm.

C.

Part two cumming.

“The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-- as who has not? -- of human love, God's love alone is left.” - James Baldwin.

I messaged my ex the other weekend, on the slim chance that he was feeling as toxic and spontaneous as I am. Luckily for the both of us, mostly me and my tender heart, he was already in bed. He’s also not interested in my nonsense, sober or not and I do not blame him. He actually believes in being responsible and I just say I do. I hooked up with someone else I met in the wild later that night, different from my usual dating app stints. I am a sick fuck, and I never learn my lessons.

The instant karma from texting my ex-boyfriend out of the blue after promising myself I wouldn’t and also refollowing him again as a test to my spirit and while still enjoying our casual and somewhat problematic friendship is laughable. Someone at the bar sat on my phone (after already leaving it the rain) and now my screen is bleeding. Poetry really is everywhere. I need to start living with shame, but I also really just missed making out in the street. A true ode to my Cancer sun. I simply cannot resist European men with earrings, that is a phenomenon that needs to be studied.

Also, if a charming man appears out of the dark and he has thick accent and appears to be interested in your passions, what is a girl to really do? “So, what do you write?”

“I write what I feel and what I feel is everything”

But I was three whiskeys deep so all I really said was “poetry and stuff.”

We talked about or day jobs, how writing doesn’t pay the bills, but it is my calling.

He told me I was brave.

I have spent the last week having a lot of phone calls, a tribute to humanity is being able to pick up the phone and call someone you love. To talk shit, to catch up, to laugh. Most of my close friends are long distant ones. One living on a plot of land in NSW, and another in Amsterdam. Funnily enough we’re still calling each other three times a week. How I decide if my relationship with someone is going to be a meaningful one is their ability to dial up your phone number just because. We’re all hiding behind Instagram DM’s and Messenger, and I think that’s just pathetic. Don’t even get me started on the universal decline of receiving handwritten letters.

Men used to go to war and now they just ask you for your Snapchat. Put me out of my misery.

I am spending my days frantically absorbing my horoscope, I believe in that shit and if you don’t, just find something better to hate. The stars don’t lie and that is a hill I will die on, happily. Put that hateful, boring energy towards something or someone that matters. Like Elon Musk or chemtrails.

I am feeling happy lately, the astrologists all over my feed tell me I am going to have a “lucky June” full of abundance, new love perhaps? I don’t need it, but a winter romance might be my save and grace. The last six months has been the burning of the ugly and gross and I am eating it up by the spoonful.

I am feeling more open and less scared. I am walking with my chin up and a pep in my step. I’ve been wearing my eyebrows bushy and I’ve given up morning Red Bulls (for now). I sleep all through the night. I dream nice things. I smile at everyone and everyone smiles back.

Everything always works out in my favour.

Short and sweet, unlike the usual tall and mean.

Kisses.

C x

Fake it until you make it baby.

On Friday nights we will drink chilled red and smoke berry flavored “social cigarettes” and hang our bodies off the verandah, where I will let you hold me by the throat and drink my salvia until I am parched, and my tongue is scorched, branded, until I am just a corpse that is left to blister in the sun.

On Saturday mornings I will make you toast with butter and jam with two boiled eggs on the side and then will find a nearby stream to wash our hands in. We will sit in silence and that will be comfortable. I won’t breathe all the air out of the room, and you will think I am funny, soft, enticing. I am just sad in a “mysterious, sexy way”.

To a love that I do not know yet.

It will feel good mostly, maybe sometimes we will hate each other, but not in the way that is remorseless. The days are playful, light. Our friends will like each other, and my mother will always be trying to feed you. Everything will “fit”. Your father will think I am witty and exciting; he won’t care that I didn’t go to uni or that my hair is unruly or that I have a burning church tattooed on my forearm. She has personality and personality is fun.

We will kiss with tongue in public and have sex with the lights on, and we won’t take a shower right after. We’ll dream of buying that big house that we drive past on our days off. We will dream of plots of land with lemon trees, a couple kids running around barefoot with quirky names, one named after your grandfather, another after my late aunt. A chicken or two and maybe a cow named Dolly. Dreaming keeps the world spinning. We will joke about drinking raw milk and baking our own bread, starting our own cult. We’re likeable and everyone invites us to brunch.

We will make room to miss each other. We will be apart for days, maybe weeks as a testament to trust and virtue, love in all its glory. You in Greece and me in London. We will get matching tattoos in the spring, and they won’t curse us because we’re just not like everyone else, and no one else gets it. We’re the only ones to ever exist.

You will have a normal job that you like, that pays all the bills, and I will have time to plant a garden. We’ll buy a dog and name her Roxy. We will read our books side by side on two vintage lounge chairs that we found on the side of the road, the ones that creak when we plant our bodies on them and have lost pieces of their fabric. I will say “I wish I thought of this” after every line I read. You think I am insufferable, but you like me that way.

To a love that I do not know yet.

It will be true and raw and real.

It will be perfect until it isn’t.

Until we have to do it all over again, just with somebody else.

Monday morning is excruciating and when the sadness starts to lap at my blood stream and starve my life force. My chest is tight, and it feels like I have barely slept. Mainly because I haven’t. My alarm sends chills down my spine and my mouth is as dry as oasis. Thank God for personal leave and kindhearted higher ups.

As of late I have realised I am not a high functioning depressed person. If anything, it is crippling and stops me from managing day to day life. It’s ironic considering the type of work I do. A job that requires you to give your 100% emotionally to others in the community. My cup is empty. Some weeks I don’t even know that I am living with this illness, and no one could tell you otherwise. The mind is deadly and mine is a fucking liability.

I can’t even begin to think about feeding myself, but I know it has to be done. Fortunately, enough my housemate and dear friend decided to stay home “sick” from work and we both enjoy the rainy morning together.

First meal of the day around 11:30am, six buffalo wings from Wing Street slathered in sauce and dipped into a not so generous side of ranch dressing. Messy and not very satisfying. I was almost reminded of why I spent majority of my life not eating meat. An ethical vegetarian out of retirement. The meat is gooey, wet, almost jelly like. Oh well, first meal of the day done.

Throughout the day, I am snacking, not too hungry as the anxiety makes my stomach churn. The constant nausea makes me restless. Some mini toasts and 5 cheese squares, a slightly stale chocolate chip cookie. Sprite with lemon and lots of ice.

Around 5pm I decide I need nutrition of some sort and a comfort meal. I had been wanting to make a simple chickpea curry for the past week and needed a veggie clear out so that’s exactly what I do.

Carrots, potatoes, chickpeas, kale, Greek yogurt, herbs, spices and a dream. I can’t be fucked making rice and this somewhat makes the meal more enjoyable and heartier. Shared with my lovely friends with whom I live with while watching Married at First Sight. Last meal of the day done. A sleepy tea, iced water. Success.

(The Love Witch 2016)

Tuesday is an interesting one.

This morning was a little tougher than Monday. An angry headache, cold sweats, that sick feeling of impending doom. I feel like I am going to vomit. The tightness in my chest is back bitchier than ever. I count my breaths. I stop myself from crying. I sleep until noon.

I carry myself to the kitchen around 12:30pm, eat two slices of hot salami, some scrapings of the leftovers from the night before and a chamomile. This is all the body wants for a couple hours until I realise I really need to eat something around 2:30pm.

Two soft boiled eggs, a handful of blueberries, two slices of prosciutto, the last slice of hot Hungarian salami, sweet chilli-cream cheese with some mini toasts and a chai. We’re doing the damn thing.

It’s overcast and muggy. The birds in the garden are playful. I spend the rest of my afternoon mapping out my life plans to give myself a slight bit of hope that “it gets better”, reading poetry and catching up on Yellowjackets. Oh, and mindless doom scrolling to distract myself. I can’t lie to you.

The sun goes down, I refuse to buy groceries until pay day because it forces me to use what I have. I hate wasting produce and I am bad for it. I’ve stopped buying spinach for this exact reason. The number of times I have had to scoop up the grizzly-soupy remains of a forgotten bag of spinach from the bottom of the crisper drawer is beyond me. I bought a huge sack of sweet potatoes the other week that are sitting in a big container on my kitchen bench. I decide to boil them and then fry them with honey, olive oil, salt and pepper. I don’t like to cook with cheap honey, but we work with what we got and we what we got will suffice. I toast some chickpeas with paprika and the usual suspects. Make some quick pickled onions that I stick in the freezer while I prepare everything. A finely diced Roma tomato and perfection. A stuffed sweet potato with Greek yogurt to finish. My belly is full and happy.

My beautiful friend brings home a slab of my favourite Tony’s chocolate just for me. Almond and sea salt. I feel like Charlie Bucket. I have it with a chamomile and maybe I’m not so depressed anymore.

Wednesday.

I shift between being a massive traditional breakfast food hater and then other times I go to bed thinking about having marmalade on rye and scrambled eggs the next morning. Rye is special but this morning is not one of those mornings. I like variety and I usually let my cravings win.

I want ramen and the heart wants what the heart wants.

I’m up at 5am listening to the wind, my rain sounds still playing and they’re jarring as all hell from some reason. I still haven’t paid for my Spotify premium because I can’t be bothered and have a simplified my life in the meantime with Apple Music. The rain playlists aren’t really up to scratch and jump from one track to the other flippantly. I can’t tell if I am feeling better yet, so I squeeze in some more sleep before the sun rises and I start to get really uncomfortable with my existence.

9:49am I am awake, and I still can’t decide if I am feeling better, but I can see that Mount Kimbie is playing a show in June, so maybe I’ll buy myself a ticket as a treat.

I don’t feel well rested, and my eyes burn. My hair feels gross, my skin is sticky. It’s still raining but it’s humid. The washing machine is broken so I hand wash my clothes in the laundry sink. I’ll order new sheets of Amazon later and then complain about living in a capitalist society. I’m nervous about going back to work after personal leave because people will have all sorts of reasons as to why I’ve been away. Sometimes it’s not as simple as “I can’t put one foot in front of me because my brain won’t let me”. or “When I wake up, I feel like there’s too much air in my lungs”. My boss gave me access to the work mental health portal and I think I’ll use it today. 3 days of being house bound and it’s time to stretch and bend this cage of bone.

(credit unknown)

11am I still haven’t eaten. I am having an earl grey and an iced water. The lust for ramen seems like a long distant memory. I don’t feel good. Not one bit.

I’m thinking about dates with almond butter and canned pineapple, the real syrupy kind. Alas, my gut is still twisting, turning and I am overthinking everything.

12:35pm I’ve had my first meal. An old go to breakfast or late lunch I should say. I always have potatoes and a lonely egg laying around. I fry the potatoes; I boil the lonely egg, and I eat it with chilli oil. I would usually have this on a bed of leafy greens or with a side of kimchi, but the theme of the morning is scrounging.

The pit in my stomach is enlarging and I really should go outside and breathe some fresh air, but I am heavily considering a nap,

I choose against the nap.

2pm rolls around, my melancholy and I hand in hand. I am craving hummus, so I fetch the leftover sweet potato in the fridge and have the two together. I down more water, and some gingko and cranberry tablets.

3:30pm I am starting to feel more alive and human after brushing my hair, shaving every inch of my body and giving myself a face massage. I go grocery shopping with the lovely Sarah and I remember that it I love it. Grocery stores can be sanctuaries when they’re not bustling, and when there’s eggs! My local one seems to always be filled with attractive people. (I’ve deleted the apps, and I am dedicated to finding connections in the wild) maybe one day me and my soul mate will be both be reaching for the same imperfect pear and the rest will be history. I am starting to feel more like myself after being outside and having an interaction with the boy from the newsagent who’s wearing a Fontaines shirt from the recent concert. He said it was life changing and I cheerfully agree.

I buy steak, garlic butter, chopped kale, mango yogurt, pineapple juice, tomatoes, goats cheese, a loaf of sourdough. Alongside some more favourites, staples and snacks.

I am inspired. I can’t decide between a steak salad, a steak sandwich, a grilled cheese with soup or a snack plate with a little bit of everything. My appetite is slowly creeping back to normal, and I am trying not to think about having a glass of wine while I ingest a questionable probiotic soda. Health is wealth or whatever.

I embrace the drizzle and the heat; there’s a cool breeze in the house and lotus incense burning that my dad brought me back from his recent trip to Bali. It’s putting me at ease, it’s comforting. I have a nice phone call with a friend, and I am laughing and smiling ear to ear. The three days of agony appear to be coming to an end.

(a partial grocery haul)

6pm, I have devoured. I cooked a buttery porterhouse steak, laid her down with some olive oil, rocket (arugula for some) with big slabs of goat’s cheese to top it off. I am in Heaven. My mouth is watering, and I am drunk off it. I am excited to cook it again, maybe for the next dinner party. The simplest of meals are usually the most heartwarming. I have been getting really good at cooking steak, and it’s been an excellent pregame dish to soak up booze. I am thinking about toast with jam and whipped cream but now I am being ambitious because I don’t have jam, just marmalade and I can’t remember the last time I had whipped cream, maybe two Christmases ago, but I need her, badly. Instead, I’ll have a black tea and maybe a warm chocolate chip cookie. Reborn might be an overstatement. Steak is just steak; butter is just butter.

Endlessly hoping and praying that I wake up tomorrow and I am able to breathe again.

C x

I woke up with something screaming inside of me.

She’s ripping down the wallpaper and throwing chairs out the window.

I feel sick.

Sick that I am not living my life to the fullest.

It’s uneasy but rousing.

I am beginning to think the fullness was never really there to begin with and I am only seeking it out now at 27.

Last weekend I put my face in creek water and rested my bones on slippery moss-covered rocks. I perved on some tourists, bronzed and wet. Ate juicy watermelon and onion rings and crunchy green grapes with some special women who make me feel seen, understood, less psychotic.

We ended the evening BBQing meat, filling wine glasses to the brim and talking shit about all the men who have deceived us, sprawled out on the floor with Ella Fitzgerald playing, started planning our 2025 bucket list.

Outback camping and more swimming holes.

I love love love women and their abilities to create safe spaces.

Today I woke up and decided against contributing to society.

Call me irresponsible.

But you just can’t put a price on wanting to feel your existential crisis in its full potential.

I am ready to just put all my things into storage and move up North.

Take my kit off for cash, live in a one-bedroom apartment surrounded by palms. Fall in love for the winter and break my own heart again.

Buy a pet lizard, name her Luca.

I am hungry, starving for change, I could eat it raw, bloodied. Entrails and all.

It’s been nearly a month since my ex, and I parted ways, and I still think about having sex with him from time to time and sometimes I believe I am the worst form of masochist. I am addicted to the suffering, addicted to picking at the wound.

Maybe I just wanted him to yell at me one more time and then kiss me so hard that the wind is knocked out of me.

We have spoken one time on the phone during these frantic weeks and I tell myself I don’t love him anymore but that’s just easier than admitting that it still feels like a fever dream on my bad days.

Like suddenly I will just wake up on the operating table and I will sigh in relief.

On my good days, he’s just a stranger that passed by.

A blip in time.

A glitch in the Matrix.

“I would like to be friends”

I can’t imagine anything worse.

I still think he’s an asshole and he still thinks I am insane.

I dial up an old flame.

I pucker my lips, throw my head back, put a sparkle back into my eyes.

They ask me the same question.

“So, what happened between you two?”

“Does it even matter? You’re here, aren’t you?”

Loveless sex can be so fucking depressing.

I used to be so good at it. Hell, it’s all I would participate in.

I enjoyed the disconnection.

Now I can’t even stand the thought of waking up next to someone who isn’t utterly obsessed with me.

Tattoo my name inside your lip or nothing. A love letter signed in your blood, my photograph on your bedside table, a lustful voicemail sent in the dead of the night or nothing.

I go through the motions of wanting to be smacked in the face really hard but also wanting my soul to be French kissed.

It has to burn, sting a bit or I want nothing to do with it.

I tell myself it’s okay to crawl into bed with the guy who lets you talk his ear off, who doesn’t care about you finishing but lets you rest on his shoulder, sleep peacefully. He will never like you ‘in that way” and you don’t need that from him.

I’ll talk to anyone that’ll listen.

I am simply raw dogging my days unmedicated with my anxiety and mania at an all-time peak, but I feel a sense of freedom in all my emotional havoc.

The last couple days we have been rewarded with delicious, mouthwatering sunsets, they remind me of the inside of a nectarine and the moon has been full and ghoulish. Sits with me and watches, my forever best friend.

Today I woke up and that’s enough.

It prickles the inside of my mouth like budding cacti.

I am not saying sorry this time.

I am smoking your last cigarette that you left on my table and now my fingers smell like what the inside of your mouth tastes like, and it doesn’t even hurt the way it should.

Not much hurts these days, it just moves right through me.

Nothing comes much as a surprise.

I’ve been bled dry, and I emerge from the ashes just as great or even better each time.

I learn something.

I make art out of it.

I do what I have to do.

Oh, how I can still love someone even through the viciousness?

How I can be so full of anger towards someone who had breathed some sort of life back into me?

How do I stay sane when I face betrayal after betrayal?

The world holds wonderful things for me and removes anything that gets in my way.

I trust.

I will be loved so much by someone one day that my heart will stop wailing.

She will sleep good at night.

She will know peace.

I put on my favourite songs, I play them so loud that my head starts pounding. I lay down on the day bed, count the lights flickering through the sky. I laugh over the phone with my loved ones until my jaw hurts and my eyes water. My laugh reminds me that I am still alive and that’s something and that matters.

I am not saying sorry this time.

How tiring it must be to get your pound of flesh and still treat everyone else like the enemy.

How tiring it must be to demand so much from others without putting in any work.

How tiring it must be to have to be the loudest, coolest, most fuckable person in the room at all times.

How tiring it must be to never hold yourself accountable.

Do you ever get tired?

Your eyes are kind, but your heart is cruel.

This isn’t a poem.

I am sticky with love, it drips down my fingers to the floor. I am oozing it, carrying a new confidence to tackle everything that’s to come with a set of sharpened claws. Figurately of course, acrylics being on top of my out list for 2025 and press-ons most definitely being acclaimed.

I’ve seen three videos on lottery winners in the past 48 hours and me being the person that I am, zero willpower and immensely superstitious takes that as a sign from “God” to purchase a scratchy from my closest newsagent.

"I am feeling lucky”.

Rituals are taking place in the form of looking up ‘flights to tropical islands near me' every two minutes, reading ‘The Plague’ by Albert Camus on the balcony kicking my feet, selling all my clothes so I can buy new ones and detaching myself from material items that no longer serve me. I see it as removing old stitches and giving myself shiny new buttons. Although becoming a minimalist might be in the cards for me. Drinking liters of iced cold green tea and smoking again after quitting years ago for “spiritual research purposes” but to mostly combat questionable sleeping habits. Listening to Fontaines D.C’s ‘Romance’ religiously, like my life depends on it. Gua sha’s, online physic readings, mood boarding creating and shitposting. Lots of bedrest and recharging my social battery after treating my temple like a garbage disposal throughout the holiday period. The world keeps spinning.

A very sloppy in and outs list from my notes app:

INS:

• bath houses

• themed family dinners

• bike trails

• indie sleaze

• high quality statement pieces that will last you forever

• zines

• victorian night gowns

• book clubs

• chinese herbal medicine

• secret handshakes

• vampire erotica

• making things with your hands

• healthy sleep schedules

• being feral in nature.

OUTS:

• brain rot.

• knowing everything. (it’s okay to be wrong)

• influencer culture

• vaping (we try our best and that’s okay.)

• writers block. (it’s just a mindset)

• carnivore diets.

• over consumption (we as a collective need to stop buying shit)

• love bites

• private jets

• doordash

• moving in silence. move loud.

  Love you this year and the next!

silly season is strictly for salty olive eating & purifying the air…

She’s wild and she’s pissed.

I want to eat a really rare steak and sink into the bubbles of a hot bath.

Then stick my face in a container of ice.

Smother it in serums, lay my eyes to rest.

Two good things happened to me today.

The person I am in love with told me he has “endless patience” for me.

A nice sentiment to hear when you’re grieving the sudden death of an old friend, and you feel like there’s parts of you that have been jumbled up.

Drinking has helped but the hangovers are becoming noticeably excruciating as I get older.

And a girl just can’t shut the fuck up after a drop of liquor has entered her system…

The second, I got a call about the job I have been manifesting, my big girl job. I start in January.

I needed some good news.

I will be able to fund my outrageous seafood eating habit again without feeling like I am living beyond my means

I also slept for a solid two hours, uninterrupted during the daytime.

So, three good things happened to me today.

I don’t have an inch of excitement in me for Christmas this year when usually I would be thinking about making the perfect pie crust or writing a digital menu for loved ones.

This year dragged me through the absolute trenches and the trenches were really ugly.

I would love to just sit with the quiet.

Laze around in this ripening QLD heatwave.

I feel something bigger happening around me.

There’s gentleness.

Warmth.

My favorite time of the year has welcomed me and as I embrace my hay-fever, hormonal breakouts, and the reality hangover that comes with having to hustle to fund my creative pursuits, I am still.

I wear the starving and surviving artist badge proudly and I wear it well.

My parents and friendship family might argue that I wear it too well…

I sit in front of my computer most evenings, an unfinished doggy eared book beside me and a glass of spiced apple spritz in celebration of the tenth month of the year in all her glory. I have picked up digital collage making to enlighten my inner child. I still make the time to create something even if I know I am not going to be happy with the outcome.

There is always room for improvement.

The best poetry comes from napkin scribbles and late-night drunken ramblings I find in my notes app.

Lately I have nestled into the idea of becoming more of an observer of people and their behaviors much more than my physical surroundings.

I am banning the word ‘uninspired’ from my vocabulary as I have absolutely rinsed it.

I can’t even tell you how many times a day at my casual job I use the word when I am trying to dress a mannequin or organise clothes in a visually appetising fashion.

The weeks have all merged together and time has almost become meaningless bliss. I am taking the days and others for as they are.

I am enduring a chapter of becoming somebody while also realising there’s much bigger fish to fry.

I am without a roster or any qualms.

The late nights of “shopping on Hinge” have gotten the better of me and the idea of finding a life partner has become less and less enticing.

I will choose me always.

My most recent Google searches are “When Does My Frontal Lobe Truly Develop?” and “Who Makes the Sandwiches for 7/11 Because I Love Them”.

I stay curious and in love with the general public.

I wonder when my big break will be as I read over the pages of my poetry book I have been working on for the past couple of years. Chopping and constantly changing.

I wonder if I will ever be satisfied.

With my work or with the weather or with men…

I crave the most repulsive and addictive of romantic interactions.  

The spontaneous and stomach churning. Something to write home about.

Recently I have really been enjoying my own company and supporting the idea of solitude.

 I am wondering if that just happens to come with age.

I used to think I just wanted to be smothered.  

 I have spent the last couple of weeks dishevelled and twisted up in my bedsheets, unbothered and without the presence of someone I can only savour in intervals. Lots of time for my books and journals and lots of time to rot my brain with reality TV that somehow makes me feel better about my existence and the life I am slowly creating.

I am still clearly learning to live completely free of judgement.

I am on my fourth day of detoxing from alcohol for a month. 

A significant and important attempt from someone who routinely enjoys a red with dinner on “school nights”.

I have been feeding the restlessness and boredom with lots of salt and nicotine. Plucking dill pickles from the jar and drinking the juice out of coffee mug, while nursing a migraine.

I have been recently thinking about my relationship with alcohol and how that co exists in my love life. I am trying to explore the realm of “sober sex”, a rarity in the world of hook up culture when you feel you need that little bit of liquid confidence to get through the first 10 minutes of conversing with a stranger. I am yet to document my findings. Celibacy and sobriety are starting to look like they go hand in hand.

God help me.

Naturally I decided to come up with my own version of a love tonic:

“Calia’s Love Tonic”

·         Portishead’s ‘Dummy’.

·         3 cinnamon sticks.

·         Raspberry mood lighting.

·         Some form of silk.

·         Bath water.

·         Raw honey.

·         A skinny cigarette.

·         Hibiscus.