The Long Road Parts 10 to 12
Part 10
Living In and Moving Out of Home
Life at Home
We had hardly any money and Mum had to do some pretty creative things to keep the food up to everyone. She would add 50% TVP (a soy mince substitute) to the mince in spag bol. We were only allowed 4 Weet Bix for brekky, we still always had powdered milk. We only ate meat 2 or 3 nights per week. We had chops every now and then, which was a bit of a treat. We still had lentils and rice a fair bit. For school lunches, I was only allowed 2 sandwiches and I’d always eat them at the first break and have nothing for the second. Thinking back to school, I think I was always hungry like most teenage boys I guess! Mum would bake cakes on the week end to be divided up for school lunches. Banana cake was my favourite!
Dinner times were intense. We would still say a Prayer before dinner and then start eating. All 10 of us packed in around an extendable table. You would eat as quickly as possible so there was the best chance of seconds but you had to be careful because if you looked greedy you’d be in trouble. Table manners were ruled with an iron fist. I only remember eating at McDonald’s once and it cost nearly $100 back in the early 90’s! That was the end of that!!! One time we were going to be rewarded for good table manners with a meal at Sizzler. We all packed into the van and headed down to Tuggeranong, which was about a 45min drive away to find it was closed! So we all glumly went back home again…
When we were done eating, my job kicked in with managing the clean-up. I’d set each kid a task and then “Set them free” when it had been completed satisfactorily! One sister never did her bit even though I always gave her the easiest thing to do but everyone else was pretty good. I’d do the washing mostly so that it was done properly, or the drying so that I could put back any dishes that didn’t get cleaned properly.
If I ever invited a friend over for dinner (very rare), they would be in a state of shock for a while. If they weren’t eating fast enough I’d have to give them a nudge and say “If you don’t get a move on, you’re going to miss out”! When I finally had my own money, I’d slink down to the local take away shop and buy $2 worth of hot chips and eat them all to myself. Many of my stories like this sound familiar to most people’s Parent’s stories. It’s kind of like I skipped a generation when it came to financial hardship and living conditions.
Dad bought an old Nissan E20 12 seater van that had sign writing all over it for about $2200 and that was the family bus. I’d sit in the back seat and zone out because everyone we drove past would look at us. Mum would do a roll call every time we were leaving somewhere to make sure we didn’t leave anyone behind!
We only had the one car and when Dad took it for work, we had to ride our bikes to school rain, hail, sleet or shine or we just didn’t get there! Canberra could be so cold in the morning that ice would form on the outside of my gloves on the ride in and I’d have to hover near the heater to slowly warm them up to get my hands open! We’d catch the bus sometimes as well depending on where we had to go. I’d get my allocation of Bus Tickets at the start of the week which covered travel to and from school only.
If I wanted to go to friends houses, I had to ride, skate or pay for my own bus tickets. I was very fit because driving was very often just not an option. That $20 racing bike sure did some Km’s!
It got so cold in Canberra at night and in winter I’d have 3 flannel blankets and a sheet on my bed but would still be cold so I’d lay all my clothes that weren’t dirty yet over the bed for extra warmth. I was given a Kangaroo skin by the Farmer from the Farm I worked at. That made the bed awesomely toasty. Getting up wasn’t great and you could see your breath even in your bedroom! Years later, we got blow heaters but we were only allowed to use them for a couple of minutes just to take the edge off the cold!
The strange thing is that Dad could be so amazing with kids and other people when he wanted to turn it on or was in a good mood. He could do crafts, and kept fit, and fixed our bikes. He let me help him build my Budgie Aviary in the back yard etc. He didn’t sit back and wait for the Govt to tell us they had a housing commission house ready for us, he went around to the office and asked where the houses were that were nearly finished being built. He found one that just needed carpet and Blinds with a yard full of weeds and went to the Housing Dept saying he’d found one and that we’d take it! We got carpet from the Smith Family and laid it all ourselves. We dug the weeds out and sowed a lawn with seed. The Govt gave us a voucher for 150 plants to help make it look nice and he did it. He really had moments of brilliance.
But each time, we’d just be waiting for the next time he was in a bad mood. He was so controlling and an authoritarian to the bone. He was a very, “You’ll do exactly what I say when I say it or you’re in deep trouble” type of man. He did some very unkind things and could be a total Bully, but as in almost every case, there were times when he was creative and nice. Unfortunately, I found growing up with him very hard. We clashed big time but it wasn’t just me. He’d yell at all us kids with his face right up close to ours poking us in the chest with his finger, spit splattering on our faces and I still remember the smell of his breath he was that close. He would absolutely belittle us in front of the rest of the family and wanted to see signs of fear and reverence and the sooner you showed him that, the better chance you had of him finally stopping. I just couldn’t operate in those extreme opposites and really disrespected him for his inconsistencies and aggression. I think he’s surprised now that us kids struggle to get along with him and thinks we’re all behaving poorly toward him, but he forgets what we’ve had to put up with from him and the shame and cruelty he inflicted on us.
I have a story to put in here and it was on my 8th Birthday. We were living in Nagpur India and there was this big cardboard box in the main room of the house. Now we hardly got anything even for our birthdays so I didn’t ever get my hopes up. I knew we didn’t have much money and accepted that. For one of my sisters birthdays all she got was a teddy the size of the palm of my hand that I’d hand sewn and stuffed myself. When I turned 7 I was given a little dog teddy that belonged to another kid in the house etc etc, you get the picture. So Dad kept saying stuff about the cardboard box and that it was my present, “See how heavy it is Joey?”. It was really heavy and I couldn’t even move it. I let myself get excited and couldn’t wait till night time when I’d get to open it. So dinner time came round and everyone’s sitting around me ready to watch me unwrap this present. I open the box and in it there are a bunch of wrapped rectangular objects. I lift the first one out and unwrap it. It was a wrapped brick, I laughed thinking that was just a bit funny and it would all make sense soon but the box was full of bricks and with each one I opened, a little part of me died. I had let myself get excited, he had got my hopes up and it was all bull shit. In the bottom of the box was 1 smaller thing that was wrapped as well and it was a bottle of aftershave that had ¼ left in it as it was from someone else in the house. I ran out of the room balling my eyes out and was so mad. I could handle getting nothing and was a very practical kid about our financial situation. But the fact that he built me up just to see me come crashing back down again was so shit. Maybe in his mind it was going to be funny, but I’m not sure in which universe that was ever going to be.
He has said that he gave us a “Pretty Good Childhood all in all” and I just wonder which part of it he’s referring to. I know the Olds thought they were doing the right thing in sending us to Christian Schools when they could afford it and I’m sure it was money they could have used for other things but they just needed to stop and let us be ourselves. They needed to stop meddling in our belief structures. They’d fucked it up that bad in the beginning that after that they just needed to leave me alone to sort it out. The extremes were too great. True for me anyway.
When you’d least expect it, he’d start saying that I was a “Shit of a kid” when he first met Mum and till he came along and “Fixed” me through discipline.
I feel really sorry for Mum because she was just a free spirit, fun loving hippy who got caught up in the wrong shit. I know that she is truly sorry for the pain she caused through her decisions and she is such a good person inside and out and I love hanging out with her, she is my kind of person. She has so much love and care even though I really don’t think she knew how to show it.
I facilitated an intervention between my brother and Dad because if I didn’t, my brother was going to beat the hell out of the old man. Every time Dad got to the point where he would apologise, he would instantly follow it with, “But we were victims too” and I’d have to stop him and say that he’d just completely dis-empowered his apology. Now I believe they were victims of Mind Control as well, absolutely, but that is not the problem of the kids. If he levelled up and owned his own mistakes and took responsibility for them, we could have started to patch up and re build from there but he struggles to do this in an authentic way without some self protection. We really were dragged through a living hell and any recovery and eventual life success is owned by the individual, not him. On top of that, even after we left the group, the way he treated us with controlling and belittling and fear and absolute authority was completely unacceptable and abusive. He was a brilliant manipulator and would talk to kids about other kids and turn everyone against each other. Most of my brothers and sisters still won’t talk to him. I’ve now completely cut him out of my life for good. Zero contact.
Moving Out of Home
I couldn’t wait to move out of home. I was desperate to get out. ½ way through Yr 12 I started going out with a very nice girl who had to move out of home as well so we started house hunting together. We found a little unit behind another bigger house for $120/week and we signed up! It was July by this stage and the move in date was the 7/8/93, 1 day before Mum’s birthday which was terrible timing. I was still only 17 but my girlfriend had turned 18 in June.
I called Mum and Dad into the living room about a week before the move in date and said I had something to tell them. They sat down on the couch together and I told them I’d signed a lease with my girlfriend and was going to be moving out on the 7/8/93. Mum was in a bit of shock but I could see that Dad was livid. He said, “Well, I think you’re doing something really stupid and you leave with my good luck but not my blessing”. I said ok, and left the room. I was stoked that it didn’t end up in a massive row and couldn’t care less about the “Blessing”. I was so relieved.
Dad was going to get me two more times though.
1. In the month leading up to all this, they’d made me go on a Christian camp somewhere I didn’t want to go on anyway and they lost my sleeping bag in the coach luggage transfer. Anyway, Dad bundled me into the van after I told them I was moving out and drove me down to the ‘Paddy Pallin’ Camping Store, late in the afternoon. He was using his last chance to give me a grilling but I just sat there knowing it wasn’t long till I was free. He chose a replacement sleeping bag that cost $110 and I know the one that was lost was only $30 odd. I was in there saying “how about this one?” to a bag that was similar in value and quality to the lost one but he was like, “Nope, this one…” It was such an awkward experience and I would have been so angry if I knew it wasn’t so close to the end. It was such a petty and shit thing to do, he was being a down right arsehole. While most parents are helping their kids with household goods and a rental bond or something, he was using his last chance to take money off me and make things harder for me. I knew he was just so pissed off to have finally lost control over me, I’d done it, I’d survived, that’s how I looked at it. It was such a relief.
2. Mum came to me 4 days before I was supposed to move out and told me that Dad was going to replace the carpet in my bedroom so the timing was good anyway. She let me know he’d said that it was pointless moving my stuff out and then back in again so he wanted me to leave the next day. I had nowhere to go! I told my best mate who had to ask his parents’ permission for me to stay there for the couple of days and after a brief explanation of the situation, I had somewhere to stay! So I took my 2 little boxes of clothes and bits and pieces and went to my mates house… Mum gave me an old enamel pot and a wooden spoon and told me not to tell anyone she’d given it to me!
It’s funny because when Mum was giving me the pot, she said, “You have to marry her!” and I replied that I’d only known her for a month, why would I do that?!! Then she said, “Well, don’t you dare hit her!” To which I replied that I hadn’t been in so much as a fist fight my whole life and didn’t believe in hitting anyone! That showed me a fearful side of Mum and something that she’d probably endured but it also made me feel like she was going to defend the girlfriend over me, and that because I was a man I was some sort of potential monster. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She didn’t mean that by the way…
From all my working, I’d saved up $1300 but my girlfriend had nothing. After I had to spend $110 on the bloody sleeping bag, paying the bond and first 2 weeks rent there wasn’t much left. I was still finishing Yr 12, working in my friends Dad’s bakery and had a second job at New Zealand Ice Cream in the Canberra Centre making Waffle Cones. It was just enough to scrape by. We’d eat left over bread and croissants from the bakery as well as Maggi noodles etc. We had $30 a week for food. We filled the unit with gifted furniture and sat on the floor to eat! (The pic at the front of this is me sitting on the floor eating!) We bought a second hand fridge for $50 that would freeze everything randomly, but we were happy. I was finally free.
My brothers and sisters were told not to come see us but the older ones snuck over a couple of times. They told me that one of the little kids had a dream that Bats were chasing me and Dad had some sort of strange explanation for what the dream meant. Something to do with my demons… whatever. Another person from their church had some sort of ‘Prodigal Son’ type dream about me and Dad thought I was going to fall flat on my face and come crawling back to them. I would have eaten grass before I let that happen. The visiting siblings told me that Dad was telling the other kids that I was starving, had no money and not doing very well… crazy.
My Parents didn’t come to my Yr 12 Graduation and I just went up there, collected my Certificate and went home again. I didn’t want to hang out with everyone else getting family photos etc. Mum and Dad took me out to a Chinese Restaurant for my 18th Birthday and it was just me and them… Very awkward, but I guess they tried.
My leaving left a bit of a hole in the family home though and some of the smaller kids were very distraught over the event. (It probably didn’t help that they all thought I was starving with no money!!) I felt really bad about that, I still do, but it was time, I’d done what I could for years and years to protect them, and I needed to escape. I needed to start rescuing myself.
Part 11
Getting Started with Life
Life in the Van
So school finished and I was working as many shifts as possible at the NZ Ice Cream joint and because it was Christmas holidays I was getting 12 and 13 hr shifts which was great. We saved up enough money to buy my girlfriends Mum’s old van (which also happened to be a Nissan E20 so at least I knew how to work on the motor and service it!!!) for $1200. I built a bed in the back of it and strung up some curtains and got ready to head north.
It was an old car and couldn’t go more than 80km/hr! It would use 4L of oil and 1L of water to every tank of fuel and was very noisy inside. If it was raining, the footwell would fill up with water so I’d have to take my shoes off and I’d be splashing about to push the pedals! I used tape and silicone to try and plug up as many holes as I could but in the end, I just drilled holes in the floor to let the water out!
My girlfriend and I left Canberra in around April of 1994 and drove up to the Sunshine Coast where she had some family (Aunties, Nan, etc) staying. I did whatever odd jobs I could in the area to get money. I cleaned out underneath the Woombye IGA for 2 days, mowed lawns etc. I was getting frustrated at how hard it was to find a job so I decided it was time to cut my hair! My girlfriends Nan (she was one of the angels that really encouraged me during some tough times) gave me $100 to buy some clothes for job interviews. I just couldn’t get a break so we drove back down to the Farm at Orange and I did a few weeks there and then we came back. I absolutely loved driving and travelling in the van. We had everything we needed to live simply and happily.
Hard Work
I finally landed myself a job at the Nambour Woollies as a checkout chick! My picky, neat, bag packing methods had me as the slowest checkout person on the whole team so they put me stacking shelves and squashing boxes in stead! I kept looking for other work to top up my shifts and I did 2 weeks at the Landsborough Abattoir, which was an eye opener! The place was full of big burly ex cons wielding knives! I was the guts boy and had to empty out the crates of guts into the blood and bone muncher… Hard work for $12 / hr. We did a junk mail run and anything else we could get hold of.
I found an add in the paper for Apprentice Carpenters but I had to do a Pre-Vocational Course first which was being run at the local TAFE. I enrolled and applied for ‘Aus Study’ (Govt low interest study loan) for low income students which just covered the bills. The course was 9 mths long and I kept working at Woollies the whole time for extra money. Towards the end of the course you had to do ‘Work Experience’ which was 200hrs of unpaid work as a carpenter to get experience and round out the course. I called around and got a go ahead from Classic Queenslanders in Forest Glenn, which was about a 30 min drive from our little unit. Problem was, the van had 2 flat tires and ran out of rego just before it was to start and we didn’t have the money to pay for it.
I worked out it would take 3 hrs to walk to Forest Glenn so I set off at 2.30am for a 6am start! I was shit scared because the roads were narrow in parts and all dark, but I got there. So I walk in and the owner says, “where the fuck did you come from?” I told him I had to walk and his jaw nearly hit the floor! He gave me a lift after that! I ended up getting my first gig as an Apprentice Carpenter Mid 1995 (Sunshine Coast Regional Group Apprentices (SCRGAL)) working for Classic Queenslanders! It payed off! I’d won the job in hard economic times through sheer enthusiasm and determination!
So anyway, first year wages were $210 / wk including travel, which was barely more than the Dole, but I was away! I put my hand up for all the free extra courses that the Apprentice Group put on like ‘Door Hanging’ etc just to get ahead a bit. I worked my butt off and my first boss was a true tradesman who was very tough on me but showed me the best way to do things. We pitched rooves and built all timber houses with massive skirting boards etc. I loved working as part of a team. I’d lump bricks and dig holes, day after day, just so happy to be working. My goal was to make $600 / wk and thought I’d have hit the big time of I got there!!
After breaking up with my first Wife in early 1996, I shared a house in Maroochydore with some friends I’d made for 2 ½ yrs. They, and their family were very good to me and I felt part of something. To start with, I stayed there rent free but when I started as a 3rd Yr apprentice I could afford rent. It was a total party house and there were a lot of good times. I let myself be happy and felt like I was living the childhood I never got to have. It was awesome. We’d go round the corner to their parents’ house for dinner 2 or 3 nights a week, shared grocery shopping and basically did everything together. They were really awesome people and I am eternally grateful for the love and help they gave me when I really needed it.
Classic Queenslanders ran out of work for a couple of weeks when I was early in my 4th yr and there was a vacancy with a Major Tier 1 Builder that SCRGAL put me forward for, due to my keenness to work. I went from earning $410 / wk to $850 due to the crazy overtime! I felt like I had so much money I didn’t know what to do with it all! I was working 80 odd hours a week over 6 days but I loved it! I bought a Nissan Patrol 4x4 and thought I was on top of the world. They offered me a position as General Foreman with a salary of $45k / yr, or if I agreed to cut my hair, $50k!! I cut my hair!!! I would work for them for another 8 years and ended up as a Site Manager on nearly tripple that. Not much in the grand scheme of things but well beyond my original goal of $600 a week!!! It was during these very tough years that I gained my experience in major construction. Everything from high-rise to Stadiums, University buildings etc etc. It really set me up for anything in the construction industry I choose to be involved in. The experience was priceless.
During that time, I won the Queensland Master Builders ‘Apprentice of the Year’ for the state as well as the ‘Qld Training Awards’ Apprentice of the year for the Wide Bay Region, just missing out at the state finals. I felt unstoppable. I went to all the dinners and functions for these awards in a poorly fitting Navy Blue Suit I bought for $100! All I did for each new dinner was buy a new tie!
Married at 18
My girlfriend and I got married while I was still doing the TAFE course (which we both now agree was a crazy thing to do). We should have just stayed BF and GF but you know!! I was 18 and she was 19 and it sucked every last penny out of us at the time. We were so young and it was classic young love. We were so in Love… Passionate, up and down, fights, happy, you know the drill! It only lasted 11 mths and we broke up just after I got into the second year of my apprenticeship. I had to borrow $800 from Mum and Dad to help pay for the wedding (I didn’t end up paying it back) and it was dry because we couldn’t afford drinks!! The whole thing got out of hand thanks to my parents and there ended up being 150 people there. People I’d never even met before! It was at the Church the Olds were going to at the time and I remember cringing at even having to step foot back in a church at all. I felt so much pressure to get married that I went against so many things that felt in line with what I believed was right. I’m embarrassed by the whole situation really, mostly because I just went with the flow instead of being firm. My girlfriend was an awesome, creative person but we were so young. We’re still friends. She is a remarkable human.
When we broke up I was so worried about telling Mum because she’d told me I had to marry her when we first moved in and I felt like a total failure. Because I felt Mum was more on her side because I was the man, I was also worried she’d be mad with me. It all worked out alright in the end and it’s just another down to experience!
Working Till I broke
So I guess being keen to be finally getting somewhere left me open to over working, and I did just that. I started off building multi story apartments as a General Foreman straight out of my apprenticeship and the pace and action was both draining and energising in equal measures. There was so much going on and I was the energiser bunny who pushed it all along. I’d mediate disputes, wake up at 3am to get in and set walls out before anyone else got there and then stay there till 10pm to make sure everything was ready for the morning.
I revelled in being able to create something the general public could use out of a dirty, dusty hole in the ground. I loved the challenges, I loved the fact I could yell and scream at people and have them yell and scream at me back but then be ok 10 mins later. I liked that no one talked about feelings. I liked the climbing, hanging off things, pouring concrete well after dark just to get that little bit ahead.
I started off as a Junior Foreman on $50k a year and over 8 years got myself to being the Site Manager of a Football Stadium project where I had to spend $53mil in 42 weeks. I had 2 tower cranes and up to 350 workers on site. But it was to be my undoing. I ended up working for 4 months, 7 days a week including night shifts installing seating plats with the tower cranes under the stadium lights. Some days were up to 18 hrs long and I topped out. I couldn’t recognise it at the time but I was entirely burnt out.
One day I got to work in the morning, vomited beside the site shed, layed down in the site first aide bed and slept for the whole day, then woke just to drive home and slept the whole next night and half the next day.
At this time, Ricky (Davidito) the COG’s leader’s son, took his own life while on a suicide mission, trying to save his sister from his Mum. He got some bad info and only found a baby sitter and a different child. He recorded a video of his plan leading up to it while he was packing his magazines with bullets but all the while stating his ‘go to’ weapon was a knife. He got to the point where he thought there was no other option and had to do something. He was all of our big brother and this triggered something massive in me. I cried for 3 days and told myself I had to kick into gear and do something to try and save my brothers and sisters.
First I needed to get away. I booked a trip to Europe that consisted of landing in Zurich and then leaving Zurich 2 months later… That was as far as the plan went. I travelled through France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Chech and Austria. I basically drank my whole way around, travelling on my own, getting smashed and high at every opportunity. I was lost but desparate to find myself somewhere.
When I got back, my boss offered me a payrise that would have taken me to $135k a year which was a big deal back in 2005 but I pushed the envelope back across the desk and said I couldn’t do it any more and had to go and just try to make a difference in a shit storm of a situation I had no idea about.
I enrolled in a Counselling course because the last thing I wanted to do was ruin people any further. I did the first unit and sent it off but had it returned to me asking me to just copy the text from the book! It was then I realised the whole thing was bull shit and quit.
Lost Trying to Help
So in the mean time, from 2004 I was posting a bit of content on a website run by an incredible woman who devastatingly lost her battle to stay with us and the world is darker for her loss, called “Moving On”, and it was a beautiful idea. There were so many lost people on it and I got really discouraged. Some people were picking on each others spelling and punctuation errors when hardly any of them had even been able to go to school at all. But then there was a lot of encouragement, poetry, and acceptance but all a bit strained. Many of the stories told on the site were heartbreaking and so very hard to read.
I wrote backward and forward with some amazing humans and made some beautiful long distance friendships that I treasure to this day.
But I also started to get drawn further and further into an unsolvable mess. I was writing to girls from all over the world but some living as close as the Gold Coast that were so lost. Some working in the sex industry, which was common as they were so de-sensitized to being objectified that getting paid for it seemed too good to be true. Most were involved in relationships that were terribly abusive and only further deepened their distrust in humanity. The big problem is that when you get disconnected from any sort of self ownership or self esteem, you’re left open to any and every ‘taker and abuser’ there was out there in the world.
I tried to help get a kid out of the group who was in an arranged marriage with a man 20 years her senior only to find she didn’t want to leave from fear of what was waiting for her in the outside world. How do you pull apart a lifetime of lies, misconceptions, fear, abuse and indoctrination? It’s almost impossible. This is why I am so unashamedly and vocally proud of any of them who have managed to not only get out, but then scrape together some resemblance of a normal life. Many of these girls had 3 to 4 odd kids in their early 20’s and then had to go back to do bridging courses to cover basic schooling to just be able to further themseves in anything. Hence why the sex industry was so often the fall back.
None of these girls deserved this, were sluts or asking for it, wanted it, loved it or any of the shit people throw at the humans in these shadow industries and they are a huge reason I have such a compassionate response to anyone in any circumstance just doing what they need to get by. Judgement has no place in my sphere of understanding when it comes to these beautiful beings of fragile light. Next time you are suffering from the affliction that is judgement, pause, and be fucking grateful you have had the opportunity you have had to just be able to go to school or choose who you wanted to marry or have sex with. Many people don’t have that luxury.
This was a horrible realisation but I had to accept that people had to be ready to save themselves before they were ever going to be ready for any sort of assistance. I resigned myself to the fact that I should just get stuck back into work and then make donations to organisations that supported those who had been poorly treated in the world at large. It was really tough but nothing compared to what others were going through.
A few More Random Memories
So, that was a bit heavy! I figure I’ll break it up with some random memories…
When thinking back to the things we did on a daily basis in India, it’s a bit surreal. We sat for hours sifting thorugh the rice, wheat and lentils in a big pan, looking for weevils and little rocks that would break your teeth!
At 8 years old I was a human washing machine and would stomp the laundry in a big bucket with my feet. The detergent in India was so corrosive, you’d get little birdseye burn holes in your skin which really hurt.
While living in India we got so many diseases. Malaria, Typhoid, Dengi Fever, Scabies, Disentry caused by single celled bugs called amoebas, Hepititus A, lice, worms, we always had fucking worms. Boils, infected cuts etc. It was hectic.
Because we were so poor, we got so little as gifts for birthdays etc. Sometimes you might get a 2 rupee packet of biscuits. The girls might get a Qupie doll the size of a childs palm which were 1 rupee. But, from what I can remember, we were always grateful for what we got. I hand stitched my sisters only present for one of her birthdays. We were all acutely aware of how tight money was. Once, we all had to give our little bits of money back to Mum and Dad that we might have saved or earned somehow and as a whole family we owned 13 Rupees which was the equivalent, at the time, to $1.20 Australian Dollars.
This is why, when my Aunty knew where we were, and she sent us a little birthday present, it was the highlight of the entire year. I still remember my brother getting an action figure from the “Mask” show. Now we had no idea what the Mask show was but the action figure was highly prized. The continued effort my Aunty put in, puts her in a highly exhalted place in my heart. She will eternally be an angel to me. The smallest acts of kindness can very often have the largest and longest lasting impacts in a person’s life, so please give often and freely within your means.
There were other times when we must have had some money because at different stages I had a cage with budgies in it and some wild caught Indian Ringneck Parrots that I ended up letting go back to the wild. The Indians would climb up into the trees and catch them during the night and sell them as pets.
A funny, not funny, memory from being a little kid in Year 1 back in Australia before we even went to India was being sent to school with a clear plastic sleeve on a string around my neck with a Bible verse in it. I was supposed to memorise that verse for the day and reflect on what it meant. Year 1 people, year 1… It has made me laugh in the past but it’s an odd kind of laugh as I’m sure you understand. I hated that shit. I still remember the other kids asking me what it was and why it was around my neck. Maybe you’ll see why now I struggle with Christianity. If you’re into it yourself, that’s totally fine, but keep your God bothering to yourselves please, for your own safety!!!
There were definite upsides to being in a family of 8 kids. You could play a game of backyard cricket without anyone else coming to visit!
Lucky
I didn’t ever think I’d ever come to a point where I would be considered lucky to have been able to go to High School after missing Primary School. But when I now consider all the kids that didn’t go to school at all, I certainly feel fortunate. It went a long way to making sure that I had some founding in my formative years in something of a safe and normal environment. It helped me be in a crazy middle ground position where I was touched by the fuckery enough to be exposed to adversity but then not be so entirely lost to it, that the journey back rendered me lost, hardened and closed.
I used to get my friends old skate pants and use them as a pattern to cut out and hand sew my own pants. I’d use Callico material that I remeber Mum having and tie dye it, and then sew my own pants. I made 3 pairs. No pockets though!!!
This is another reason I can so confidently say that no matter how bad you think your situation is, there will always be someone who thinks you are one of the lucky ones. Just sit with that thought for a few minutes.
Where you are now, wanting more, is more than some people would ever hope to achieve in their lifetime.
It is this basic skill, gratitude, that is so lacking in the first world around me and it is stealing our happiness. Without the ability to be grateful for all you have, you will never be satisfied, you will always want more and you will never be happy. Happiness is in the journey, not resting at the end of the road in some pot of imaginary gold. Today is a reason to be happy, grateful and considered lucky. Don’t fuckin’ waste it.
