The 'Perfect' Relationship

 Adventure Girl searches for her perfect match

‘I have to keep telling myself that while this relationship seems perfect, it’s an illusion.’

Like most people, when I first meet someone, I try present my best. I hide my fears and insecurities, my frustrations, my limitations. I present the fun-loving sexy side of me: the person I want to be. This phase can last days, weeks, months, depending on the situation.

While I’m not ‘in love’ with the person I’m dating, or when I don’t want anything more, I like the person I am. I’m fairly relaxed, I enjoy my own space, I don’t make too many demands, and I keep things fun.

The moment I start wanting more, seeing this person as a potential primary partner, I become needy, demanding and picky – or worse, if I’m ‘in love’, I become insecure.

Insecure Me is every lover’s nightmare. I turn into HER, that jealous, psychotic bitch. Suspicious and questioning, I’m the girl who wants you to tell her over and over that you love her, that she’s sexy, that no one can replace her. But no matter what you tell her, it’s never enough. Never enough, because she had to ask first, because you used the wrong words, because the need in her is too great for you to fill.

I become someone I don’t like and don’t care to be.

On the other hand, if I’m with someone who makes me feel secure – either because I am not ‘in love’, and therefore not invested, or because they have managed to tame the jealous, psychotic bitch ME – I can not be needy or clingy. I can give my lover all the space in the world, but just as importantly, take the space that I need.

When I’m with someone who makes me feel comfortable, I don’t need to adopt euphemisms. I can be direct and articulate. I can have the difficult conversations without fear. But if I don’t feel comfortable, I struggle to hear my lover’s needs and to voice my own.

It’s the same with sex. I love being crazy, losing myself completely, but if I’m with someone inhibited, or someone whose opinion matters too much, I close up, and suddenly it’s all vanilla, or worse, there is no action at all.

These past six months or so, I have been exploring a more casual type of relationship, one where I don’t invest too much, where I actively choose to keep things fun and sexy, where I can offer friendship and support, where I can build my lover up, and only bring issues into the bedroom when I absolutely have to. I have been able to keep my jealousies and insecurities in check; I don’t allow negative emotions to activate; I have trained my brain to shy away. I have no right to feel this emotion; this is not my place. If I even start to feel jealous in a casual relationship, my internal dialogue turns the emotion away, rationalises it, and keeps it in check.

If my lover needs me, I am there, but in a casual situation, they will not demand too much. Similarly, I will ask the minimum from them, but take comfort knowing they are there when I do. While in this situation I have sought friends to support me, rather than demanding all my support from a single primary partner, and I have found strength within myself simply because I have had to.

This is the ‘perfect relationship’ my F-Buddy described: ideal, perhaps, but also, an illusion.

For some reason, when I am in a primary relationship, the same check-and-balance mechanisms seem to fail. They are bypassed by the part of my brain that says, ‘this is my partner; this is the other half of me, they must share and share all; I am entitled to more.’ I need them to love the other sides of me – see me at my worst and still want to be with me, love me unconditionally.

But why should a partner have to see me at my worst? Why should they have to pick me up again and again? I am not their responsibility. They are not a parent-figure who can put the band-aid on and kiss it all better. They are not my ‘other half’; they are their own person to whom I happen to have chosen to commit. Don’t they deserve to see the best in me, not only the worst?

I start to wonder if it is possible in a ‘full’ relationship to make the same choices I have made in casual ones, to keep the insecurity checks and balances in place, to make a commitment to bringing the best of myself to the relationship, to keep the space fun and sexy, and only bring the serious when it is needed. I wonder if it is possible to be less co-dependent, to maintain the strong friendships, self-reliance and strength I’ve established while being single. Because don’t I deserve to see the best in me, too?

Some people write lists and have images in their minds of their ‘perfect’ relationship, their ‘perfect’ partner. I’m not one of those people, but lately I’ve been wondering if perhaps I should be, mentally noting the types of people who bring out the best in me and the kind who bring out the worst.

But how does that translate into a list? And should it really be up to a partner to provide this?

That’s when I realise I am not looking for the perfect partner, the ideal relationship. I am not making a checklist of who I want them to be, but of who I am when I am with them. In a long-term relationship, a partnership, it's impossible to keep your worst at bay. It's part of who you are. But if I can make a commitment to being a person I want to be, and find someone who encourages me to be that, surely I am most of the way there?

Because it’s not just about choosing a partner, a relationship; it’s about choosing who I want to be, regardless of who I am with.

--AG

10 Things I've learned about blogging

Adventure Girl learns a lesson in putting it on show

I've been writing for Rhonda Perky's Bits for just over a year now, and it seemed as good a time as any to take stock of some blogging lessons I've had to learn the hard way.

1. People always think you're blogging about them. I discovered this first when I wrote a post about friendship. In a later conversation I learned that several of my friends believed the post was aimed at them. It wasn't.
2. People you are blogging about, never think it's about them. Yes, I mean you. No, not you. You. In the previous scenario, the friends the post was actually about, never made the connection.
3. At some point you will offend SOMEBODY. Okay EVERYBODY. This is pretty much to be expected as a writer. Just ask Helen Garner.
4. When you do offend, it won’t be over what you expect. Something which was written as a throwaway line (which we've already established is probably not about THEM) can cost you a friend, or at least earn you a cold shoulder or three. People have sensitivities you simply don't know about until you inadvertently stick them with the blogging equivalent of a giant needle.
5. People you know will read what you write. I know this sounds obvious, but when you're tapping away, expunging your deepest and darkest emotions, you can forget that your audience also includes THEM. It can be flattering, but also a little weird, when you can tell just by the way a person looks at you that THEY HAVE READ AND THEY KNOW.*
6. Other people you know will not read what you write and it’s not the people you expect. I remember writing a post, thinking, 'OMG my friend is going to LOVE this,' only to discover she never actually read it.
7. The line between TMI (Too Much Information) and NEI (Not Enough Information) is different for everyone. It is impossible to avoid tripping over the line at some point, for somebody, simply because the line is vastly inconsistent between individuals (see 3 and 4 above).
8. What seems clear to you is not always apparent to your audience. They are not inside your head, and what is inside your head doesn't always make it in entirety onto the page. Example: I wrote a blog post on being abused by my last boyfriend. When a friend indicated they had read the post, I felt I could talk a little more freely about what had happened. The response was, 'Wait -- he HIT you?' 'Yes, he hit me. More than once. Didn't my blog say that?' Apparently not clearly enough.
9. Only blog when you have something to say. Sometimes you are more prolific than others. In the down periods you may feel pressure to post while your ideas are still half-formed or virtually non-existent. You must resist; your readers will wait. Otherwise you will end up with a page of half curdled mush that nobody wants to read, and for which you wish you'd never hit 'Publish Post'.
10. Write something true to yourself. Write from what resonates, what keeps you up and night, and what you want to shout across the ether-sphere. You might be surprised who will end up reading and responding from halfway across the world. (Yes, I mean you).

*This applies equally to tweeting.

--AG

‘Of all the girls, I choose you.’

Adventure Girl puts the pieces together

A while back I wrote a post on being THAT girl. Recently, and to my horror, I discovered I can be another kind of girl, too. The girl you see on trains with a black eye, looking defeated, the one who won’t look you in the eye, the one who loses herself, her values, her family and her friends, in trying to be whatever she needs to be to earn her partner’s approval, to keep his attention, to be that special person to him. The girl who lets herself be beaten down and abused and then begs for forgiveness.

‘Of all the girls, I choose you.’

When I heard these words I was on top of the world. Finally. This is what I’d been waiting for. These were the words I craved, what I’d put up with everything to hear. Words that blinded out every lie, every betrayal, every hurt, and the complete disrespect shown to me.

I had become the Battered Woman.

Self-esteem is something both tangible and intangible. It manifests in all kinds of ways. The way we try to earn good grades, or seek praise, the way we grasp for the attentions of prospective mates. It can also make us yearn for things that are bad for us. Self-sabotage, if you like. It can mean we don’t trust when people are good to us, and seek out those who mistreat us instead, because this is all we think we deserve. It is what feels real to us, safe, and familiar.

Over the past year I have let someone close to me hurt me, lie to me and manipulate me, over and over. Every time I was ready to walk away he drew me back in. Somehow the memories of the hurt and the betrayal blurred and I was blinded by hope. This time it will be better. This time it will be fixed. This time I can heal. It never was and I never did.

In fact, each time I went back the situation got worse, because I was a little weaker than before, hating myself that much more for giving in, for being wilfully blind. Shame ate away at me until there was nothing left but a blinding, desperate need turning me into a person I despised.

A wonderful friend described it as like being addicted to playing the pokies. You insert coin after coin, blow hundreds, thousands of dollars, waiting for the rare times you put your money in and get a few dollars back. Even if you hit the jackpot, it doesn’t last, and how much money have you thrown away to get there? The coins come out eventually, just enough to keep you trying, to see each win as so much more significant than it actually is. Then the machine ticks over. No more flashing lights. No more returns. And so you insert more coins, starting over, hoping against hope for another return, another jackpot.

This has been me. Waiting for the rare times when things are good, when I’m getting the attention, the love, the security I crave. Never the respect I deserve.

Each time seems like a breakthrough. ‘He did THIS’, or, ‘He said THAT’, I tell my friends, bursting at the seams.

They look at me, uncertain, sometimes with awful pity. ‘Isn’t that how it should be all the time?’

To me, now beaten down, throwing good time, effort, love, and even money, after bad, I say, ‘But he sees me, knows me, flawed as I am, and still loves me. The others, they never saw me. Not really.’ Those others being any guy who has ever shown me love and respect, who has cherished me, who I have tested and tested and finally pushed away. Because I haven’t trusted that what they were showing me was real. How could it be? It must be cracked and flawed, or else aimed at a false image of me.

This is my trampolining love and also my leaky boat.

Finally I have some perspective. My trip gave me enough distance, enough time, to break the cycle. Working on my underlying needs, I was able to begin to recognise the situation and also see how I got into this mess in the first place.

It has meant that when I came back and it happened again, worse than before, I was able to see the situation for what it was. Recognise in myself the Battered Woman. This time I was able to walk away and stay there.

Still, I know it will take time. To not want to go back, to grieve and to heal. Time and space and reason.

I am very lucky. I have incredible friends to support me, an awesome psych to help me work through my underlying issues, and I’m not afraid to ask for help.

My biggest enemy at this point is myself. I have to stop from weakening and continue to build my self esteem.

Because not going back is only the start of the battle. I have to address the underlying need, the child in me who seeks out a partner who will treat her badly, who in her messed up way equates this to being loved, to re-train my childhood brain to seek love in better ways and to offer her the support and protection she badly needs.

Then one day when I meet someone who treats me with respect, who loves and cherishes me, I won’t cringe away, feeling unworthy. I won’t test their love to breaking point. I will be able to accept that it is real, solid, dependable, and that it is actually intended for me.

-AG

Recipe for adventure: just add people

‘Girls who go on trekking tours don’t do one night stands,’ – a fellow trekker on the Inca Trail.

For my first real solo-adventure, I opted for safety in numbers, and jumped on a few smallish group tours. I figured this way it would be someone else’s problem to sort out all the logistics with the added advantage of a local English-speaking guide to rescue me from my floundering phrasebook Latin American Spanish. It wasn’t a cheap option, but it has meant I’ve been able to see and experience so much in such a short time.

More importantly, joining tours has allowed me to meet a bunch of new people from around the globe: Australians, Canadians, South Africans and Britons, young people, old people, and everything in between. The kind of people who will look at the stiff bread roll and blackberry jam served for breakfast each day and say ‘that’s fantastic!’ just because it’s something new, something authentic, and something other than what they left behind.

Surprisingly each of the groups has housed quite a few couples. This has its pros and cons. On the one hand, the trips haven’t degenerated into singles-shagathons and the focus has remained on the in-country experience, but when you want to turn to a partner, or a lover, or have someone looking out just for you and you for them, as a solo traveller in a couplish group, you’re pretty much on your own.

Like me, many of the solo travellers have reached a crossroads. We are skin-shedders, people at the beginning or end of a journey. This trip signals the conclusion of one life phase and the beginning of something new when we return. Travel is an escape, a hiatus, and an epiphany. I shouldn’t be surprised by this. These are the type of people who have chosen the same kind of adventure – if nothing else, this says we share a way of approaching one aspect of our lives.

The same is not true for many of the couples, who are mid-together-journey, and for whom this is a shared experience on a continuum.

Each group forms its own dynamic fairly quickly, and no two groups are alike. Even within the one group, as newbies arrive and veterans leave, the dynamic shifts, leaving you feeling more or less connected to those around you, but never truly lonely, even when you’re alone. In fact, I've had to opt out of some activities to spend the day apart, simply because the introvert in me can’t socialise indefinitely without burning out.

I've been lucky enough to meet some truly inspiring people this way, people who have generously shared their world view, their introspection and life lessons, and who have shown me it is never too late to start something new, as many times as it takes.

I’ve also met people whose paths wouldn’t normally cross with mine, who have very different interests and who I might not otherwise choose to hang out with, but that’s all part of the adventure, and in a big enough group, it’s easy to find the like-minded, or to temporarily retreat, without it being an issue.

With only a week left, and no more group tours, I’m left wondering how I can return to the mundane of home, how I can keep in touch with the new friends that I’ve made, and more importantly, how I’m going to save up for my next big adventure.

--AG

The Guide Gallery

Having toured now for over a month, I’ve encountered tour guides in all shapes and sizes, but whatever the attraction, the excursion, or the adventure, you can be sure to come across one (or more) of the following types:

The Language Barrier
This is an advertised ‘bi-lingual’ guide who has memorised their English script but can’t deviate from it. Identifiable by their poor pronunciation, these guides are likely to provide some entertaining translations (for example, damage to monuments being caused by ‘thunders’), but will be at a total loss if you ask any questions.

The Super Sleaze
Typically an older señor who has determined you will be endlessly flattered by his ongoing attentions, serenades, and inappropriate remarks. And you might be, until you realise he’s tried it on every señorita he can find. If he’s particularly determined, he will ask about your family, your marital status, and even grill your fellow group members to find out all there is to know. Eventually of course, it just gets annoying and you wish you’d taken the advice of the Lonely Planet and invented a husband from the outset.

The Bundle of Knowledge
For this guide, the tour isn’t about showing you the sights, but showing off their knowledge. They don’t want you to learn, they want your adoration and adulation. For every tit-bit of information, you will be prompted to inquire, to expose your ignorance, and to marvel, not at the facts, but at your guide’s knowledge of them.

The Moral Crusader
This guide has an opinion on EVERYTHING, and [insert appropriate deity here] help you, you had better not deviate from theirs. If you do, you can forget whatever sights you’re seeing, you’ll be ear-bashed until you agree that Americans are the saviour of the earth, people who destroy the environment should be put to death, sharks aren’t dangerous and you will eventually win the lotto.

Get Thee to a Nunnery
Usually found in a converted convent, museum or art gallery, this guide will dress as though it’s 1934 and carefully express only orthodox opinions. While you take equal care to word your questions in order to get some semblance of useful (if sanctioned) information out of them, you’re left secretly wondering if this guide doesn’t do a naughty-by-night transformation as soon as she’s off-duty.

Everybody’s Best Friend
This guide makes an effort to get to know and entertain the group. Less likely to accurately answer your cultural and historical questions, this is the guide you want to have telling Dad jokes and doing magic tricks while you’re trekking to 4000 metres through sleet and hail. At their best, you will become friends with this guide, but at worst, they just want to be liked by everybody, but don’t really like anybody.

The MIA
When this guide turns up they might as well not be there. Happy to take your money, they are less happy to actually do anything to earn it. At best you will see this guide at pick up and drop off, at worst, you won't see them at all.

The Bi-polar
Moody is how best to describe this guide. Your Best Friend one minute, they will turn sullen by the end of the day. In the case of the Super Sleaze this may result when they realise not only do you not intend to return their interest, but you also find it humorous. In all cases the Bi-polar will result at your lack of tips.

The Kick-arse Awesome guide
Lastly I want to make a special (serious) tribute to our Peruvian guide, Bel, who faced illness, injuries, and the Inca Trail (again) to keep us working together as a temporary family, who went above and beyond to make sure we could kick back and enjoy while she worked tirelessly in the background. Tips are not thank-you enough for the kick-arse awesome guide.

--AG

The New Adventures of old Adventure Girl

So this is it.

Looks like I am actually going. Like really, actually going. After all the angst and doubt and doubt and angst. F**k it, I'm going.

Better than that, I'm going with barely a few days to plan, to pack, to panic....

No. No time to panic. This is the best way. I'm going to f**cking do it!!!

Galapagos, Lima, Incas, Amazon, Iguaza, the works. Well, almost the works. Minus some stuff, but you can't do EVERYTHING. Not in one go, anyway. You want to leave something to go back for. Leave yourself wanting more....

I have so much to do in just a few days, it seems crazy. Am I insane? Or just adventurous. Either way, this will be a crazy adventure. And I need this. I may never get another opportunity.

Stay tuned for adventures galore...

...as long as I don't get raped, mugged, murdered, or just lose my Internet connection again...

-AG

Someone else's slippers

Adventure Girl learns a lesson in friendship

‘Does this mean I’m dumped?’

In relationships, there are commonly accepted ‘rules’. There are statuses like ‘single’, ‘in a relationship’ or ‘f-buddies’. You form a ‘relationship’, you break up, and sometimes you make up. You have ‘the talk’, assign the appropriate label from the drop-down menu, and alert the rest of your social network via Facebook. All of this is clearly defined. We even have laws and ceremonies dedicated to officially sealing two people together.

Friendships aren’t so clear cut. The boundaries from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘colleague’ to ‘friend’ to ‘BFF’ are more subtle. They are also more fluid.

Friends can step into your life suddenly and intensely, or they can shift gradually into focus and back out again. A friendship can become strained, or a shared experience lost, causing distance to stretch between you.

Where a friendship does come apart, there is rarely a single event you can point to as the end. You don’t ‘break up’ with a friend; you just stop calling, but this can mean you both drift away, assuming a slight on the part of the other, when they are thinking the same as you. Leave it too long and the silence stretches into awkwardness and you may never know if they felt wronged or just got busy.

And if your friends are friends with each other (you may recall my post on mixing friends from a few months ago), there’s a whole extra layer of grey to worry about. There are issues of confidences, sensitivities when discussing one friend with another, entire areas of taboo which can place a strain on that friendship, too.

Post-rift, it gets more complicated. Social gatherings can become awkward when there is an issue left unresolved, especially when there is no rigid boundary or expectation that you will take sides, as you sometimes divvy up friends when a relationship dies.

With so much murkiness, it can be difficult to know what is reasonable to expect from the other person, and what they can reasonably expect from you.

There are rules, but we don’t speak of them. There are expectations, but we don’t acknowledge them, except as we navigate their fragile borders… oops, she got pissed off, I won’t do that again. And sometimes by then it's already too late.

Forgiveness is important, but for me it’s one of those paradoxes. The more you care, the more you are prepared to let things slide, but something can hurt more because you care so much. And then you get the flip side, where you let things go because you don’t care enough, or you forgive less because it's not worth the effort when you can simply walk away.

In the absence of defined rules, it can be more difficult to acknowledge jealousies and rivalries, slights and injuries. You suck it up and you move on, together or apart. You withdraw, or you extend, but it is all unspoken, at least between the two of you.

Most of the time when a friendship does end, it’s like an old jumper pulled out of shape, or worse, a borrowed jumper, stretched until it fits neither of you. You accept your time has come and gone, the season has past, you slip it into an unused drawer.

And when that happens I mourn its loss. Others come along and fill their place, but it’s never quite the same shape, like wearing someone else’s slippers. A lesson learned too late, or sometimes not learned at all.

-AG

Recipe for disaster... Part 1 – My Best Friend’s wedding

So your eternally single Cold Date* has finally got himself hitched. You’re over-the-moon happy for him (and her), even if it means you rarely get to see him because he still hasn’t crawled out from under the new-love covers for air.

The problem is you met him through your ex.

It was all a long time ago and so far you’ve managed to skirt around all those awkward ex-encounters such as birthdays and bar mitzvahs, but then comes The Wedding.

Obviously, this is a biggy. The groom was in your bridal party as a mutual friend, but in the post-break-up friendship war, you won. This makes you the equivalent of his Best Man.**

This could be a recipe for disaster… or a whole lotta fun. I’m going to try for the latter. Here goes.

Ingredients

You (alone)

Your ex (also alone)

A room full of people you barely know

A room full of people your ex barely knows (most likely the same few people)

Free alcohol (essential)

A dance floor (people willing to dance are preferred, but not essential – see Method)

Method 

1. Drink
2. Find people to socialise with. Typical openers include, ‘How do you know the bride / groom’, but you can also ask what people do, for pleasure, for pain, or for best effect, both***
3. Drink some more (very important)
4. Find some dance buddies
5. If there are no dance buddies to be found, apply steps 1 and 3 to your potential partner(s) until they agree to dance (this has the added advantage of making you look like a really good dancer compared with them)
6. When all else fails, play the Adventure Challenge Game (see below)

How to Play

Set challenges to earn points. Points can be lost as well as won. The object is to make it home with a positive score.

• (+ 5 points) If you look waaaaaay hotter than your ex
• (– 10 points) If he looks waaaaaay hotter than you
• (+ 2 points) For every compliment received from people who knew you ‘before’ on how great / young / slim you look
• (+ 10 points) If the same people complimenting you say to your ex, 'Oh, yes, you look um, good too....’
• (– 20 points) If this scenario happens in reverse
• (+ 5 points) If you speak to your ex before he speaks to you
• (+ 2 points) For every member of the groom’s family who offers to help you overcome this hurdle
• (– 5 points) If you let them
• (+ 3 points) If you discover your life is waaaaaay better than his
• (– 10 points) If you discover his life is waaaaaay better than yours
• (+ 5 points) If you realise your ex is ridiculously boring and wonder why you ever dated him, let alone married him
• (– 8 points) If he thinks the same about you
• (+ 25 points) For every person who confesses to you that they got ‘stuck’ talking to your ex until you came along
• (– 25 points) If they say the same to him about you
• (+ 2 points) If you can get the Mother of the Bride to dance
• (+ 8 points) If you can get the Father of the Groom to dance
• (+10 bonus points) If they are the kind of dad who wears his serious face for all occasions
• (– 2 points) If he is secretly a giant teddy bear
• (+ 2 points) If you manage to drop into conversation how young / hot / talented your current lover is
• (– 10 points) If you do it badly (e.g. Him: ‘So how have you been?’ You: ‘OMG you should SEE my new lover, he/she is AMAZING… SOOOO much better than YOU…’)
• (– 2 points) If his current lover is also young / hot / talented
• (+ 10 points) If he mentions this repeatedly in a way that lets you know he/she is really old / overweight / ugly / stupid
• (+ 10 points) If she IS old / overweight / ugly / stupid
• (+10 points) If she is pregnant
• (– 10 points) If she is pregnant and you want to be
• (+ 25 points) For every family member of hers currently living with them
• (+ 5 bonus points) If it is her mother
• (+ 12 points) For each boundary set when your ex gets protective / judgemental / annoying / flirtatious (e.g. Him: 'Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a water?' You: 'I'll have another vodka, thanks. Make it a double', or Him: ‘So… are you staying nearby?’ You: ‘Yes, with my new lover, Cassandra’)
• (– 20 points) Regretting the consequences of the boundaries you chose to set (e.g. when you have to be escorted to your hotel room by the groom’s family, or when you wake up beside some stranger named Cassandra who you think may have been at the local, but you’re not really sure)
• (+ 50 points) If Cassandra is hot
• (– 100 points) If Cassandra has no teeth
• (– 25 points) If you wake up naked in  your bed (alone) with your $400 Ted Baker dress crumpled on the floor, your make-up halfway down your face, and all of your jewellery still on, including your glasses
• (– 150 points) If you wake up naked in your bed (with toothless Cassandra) in the same scenario.

Result

If nothing else, by playing the game you get a night of free booze, a chance to catch up with some old friends, to perve on a Ghost of Boyfriends Past, and more importantly, see one of your oldest and bestest friends get happily hitched in a way you never could.

Happy gaming :)

-AG

*Similar to ‘Bromance’ but for a guy and a girl
**She-Broman (?)
***Tip: if you get stuck with people who are particularly boring, you can always try the ‘Dom/Sub’ guessing game, or make up lives for them. That way, when you smile and nod you don’t have to feign amusement / interest.

What colour is your Polaroid?

Adventure Girl finds spiritual enlightenment... well, sees a picture of her aura, anyway

So apparently I'm clairvoyant.

I know this because Chris from Enlightenment Photography knows this.

'See how the purple extends almost all the way to the edges? That indicates intuition and psychic ability.'

I'm sitting in a small study in Boganburbia staring at what appears to be an over-exposed Polaroid of myself.
Everything smells like oils and incense, and I'm sure someone has taken to the entire house with a crystal Bedazzler.

The photo is mostly violet with a smudge of blue to my left (the picture's right).

'Blue is a communication colour, so you are a good listener, an intuitive listener, able to transform others through loving listening.' This represents my future.

In the centre I'm told 'Mystical unifying would best describe you... Enchantment, charm, sensitivity and deep spiritual understanding are the qualities most important to you.'

On the right side is the energy I am 'putting out to the world... People see you as magical... What you want comes to you as if by magic.'

The Polaroid was taken over several seconds of me sitting on a bench, spreading my palms on a metallic hand-shaped template with some kind of electrode sensors on each fingertip. 'Don't move,' Chris says, and I feel like I'm in an episode of House undergoing a CT scan.

Afterwards, we don't just talk about the photo.

'Dreams?' Chris asks. His flavour-savour beard jiggles when he talks. It's reddish-brown and it reminds me of a faun. Actually he's kind of faunish in general. It might be the purple t-shirt (or the purple everything), but there is definitely something mythological about him.

'What about them?' I ask.

'Do you have them?' Not the everyday vanilla ones about stuff that happens during the day, he explains, but the really real ones.

'Oh, you mean those horrendous ones where you can't wake up?' (which I always thought were a case of sleep paralysis), 'Or the ones that later come true?'

Chris is staring at me. It's an intense stare. The kind of eye contact that makes you want to scream, blink already!

That's when he asks me if I believe in ghosts. Except he doesn't word it like that. There seems to be an entire vocabulary that spiritualists use that I haven't quite gotten my head around. Thank God/my Spirit Guide/the Earth Mother for Google.

'I don't know if they're ghosts or spirits or whatever, but I see what I call the Night Eyes. In the dark, with my eyes open or closed, they stare back at me. All different ones.'

'They're people who have passed on,' he says. He wants to know if I'm in touch with them. If they make contact with me.
 
'Hell no.'

'Why not?'

Is he serious? What about the girl with long blonde hair who came to me at my lover's house, terrified, or the one standing in my bedroom doorway, mouthing silently as she strangled, or those guys who were hovering in my living room, looking like they wanted to steal my TV? 'These are different to the night eyes.' I shudder.

'Are they malevolent?'

I nod. 'The others, the eyes, the faces, they're neutral, they just watch me like I watch them.' I always assumed they hadn't 'passed over'.

'Maybe you need to get in touch with your Spirit Guide.' Apparently my Guide will protect me if I ask it to, keep the ghosts away from me, away from my room, and the hell out of my house.

'Do you sometimes wake up with a song stuck in your head? When you've had these dreams?' This, too, is a spirit, sending me a message, he explains.

For some reason this freaks me out. Not the idea of someone sending me a message, but the mention of hearing a song when I wake up. It's probably something he says to everyone, but it resonates because I was talking about exactly that to a friend the night before. In this case (because there are others), it is a song by UNKLE called 'Nursery Rhyme,' and it has haunted me for years. 'There's something in the way it makes me feel that is also in my book, something I am trying to write out, that is also in the way that my lover sometimes holds and whispers to me. They are connected,' I say, 'but I don't understand how.'

I know this makes no sense to him. It barely makes sense to me.

He asks about my writing. I tell him yes, sometimes when I write it's not like I'm writing at all, but as though I'm reading. I have no idea what is going to happen until it is on the page in front of me. 'When that happens it's exhilarating.'

He tells me that it is most likely a spirit guiding me in those times.

Then he takes a bag and asks me to pull out a crystal. I rummage around for the one that calls to me, that feels right in my hand. I don't quite get the sensation I'm looking for, but we're running out of time, so I take the next best thing. It is small and blue-ish black with lighter blue veins. He thinks it is sodalite rather than lapis, and this is consistent with his opinion that I am very in tune with my third eye. It is the stone of 'insight and intuition'.

Next he draws out two cards.

I take a sharp breath. One of the cards shows a child standing at a gate. She is locked out. It is called 'The Outsider.' It is a scene from my book, a premonition that comes as a dream to the main character of her daughter standing at the gates of Nedran. It is also the name of one of these posts, and represents how I feel about my family.

His explanation of the card bears no resemblance to mine.

The second card is called 'Comfort,' and is mostly words but we run out of time to look at it in any detail.

I want to be able to stop looking into his unblinking eyes, stop seeing the flecks of dark against light. I can feel things crawling behind me. Hovering. It is a sensation of eager malice. They don't want to get to him, they want to get at me.

'Do you have any questions?' he asks.

Where do I start? 'No, I think that's it.'

I pay him in cash, take my photo, my crystal, and leave.

It has taken a while to shake the creepiness, to stop remembering those dreams, the picture on the card, and the feeling of that song. I know I've had dreams that have come true, names of people I never knew and later met, always in some significant way. I know that if I ignore the nagging in my gut for too long it will slam itself in my face, usually at 3am.

I have no idea how much I believe of what Chris said, whether the photo is a reflection of the colours I happened to be wearing, a random result of over-exposure on film, or some other con. I didn't get any insights into my future, or any signs to help me work out what I should do next, but I did learn a bit more about me, about the things that haunt me, real or imagined, (and I did wake with a song stuck in my head the following morning, this time, the Eurythmics' 'Thorn in my Side') and maybe that's adventure enough.

-AG

'Six months in a leaky boat'

Adventure Girl learns how to swim

So you’re in this relationship, and it’s had a bit of a rocky start, travelled some rough seas, but finally you’ve reached calmer waters, and you can see land up ahead.

In real terms, this is the point where you know you love them, and they love you back. They say it and they show it and you feel it. You’re floating, and it’s thrilling, and it’s peaceful. Then BAM.

The storm.

Out of nowhere you’re throwing a 15-year-old tantrum, all the while aching for them to hold you, to reassure you, to carry you to shore.

Of course they don’t. You’re behaving like a child.

It gets worse. You panic. You’re grasping. You don’t just want to be rescued; you’re drowning and feel like you can’t get to the shore without them.

But they pull away. If you’re lucky they offer you a life-raft, but most times they’re reaching for one for themselves.

‘See?’ you tell yourself. They don’t love you, not really.

The storm might come in the form of that nagging thing they once told you that still doesn’t quite add up, or yet another text message from the Ghost of Shaggers’ Past. You ask AGAIN for an explanation, you want to know AGAIN why she is texting him. Not, as he supposes, to find the worst in him, to prove that he’s lying, cheating, but to be reassured that he’s not.

It’s a test not of him, but of his love for you. You’re looking for cracks and testing if the boat is watertight.

Because can he really love you? I mean, REALLY? Love YOU? Doesn’t he know who you are underneath it all? Won’t he run screaming when he finally discovers the truth, when he finally sees who YOU are?

So you push and you squeeze and you test, but it’s not about not trusting him, it’s about not believing in you.

If you think of the relationship as like being on a leaky boat, you see yourself running around trying to plug and test every last hole. But when you test the holes, you put more pressure on them, and most times make them bigger. Do it too often and chances are there will be so many holes the ship will sink.

The other part of you, the secret part, doesn’t just test the holes that are already there. This part wants to be sure that the boat can withstand an attack. This part steers the ship into the storm instead of away from it, to see if you can weather it, and punches new holes to see if together you can plug them up and keep afloat. Eventually, if you punch enough holes, or steer into enough storms, you’ll both be grasping for life rafts.

Deep down, you know where the fear comes from, a history of sunken boats as long as the Shipwreck Coast. Too many people have been in love with you, but not loved you. Because they didn’t know you, didn’t see you. They saw an idea of you. You felt like a fraud and it never worked out. Because the more they tried to love you, the more you were convinced that they didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. Because they never saw who you really were. Never saw the rocks beneath the surface until you rammed your boat into them.

But now you’ve found someone different. Someone who sees, who knows. Who has seen your flaws, and still loves, just as you have seen his. He can even tease you about them and make you laugh at yourself. This time you want it to be different. You want to BE different.

You’ve learned your lesson.

Instead of trying to plug and test every possible gap, instead of punching new holes, you will try to accept that nothing is watertight, that the ship can have a few cracks in it, and still stay afloat.

Because even if you do manage to seal the boat completely, there’s no guarantee it won’t one day break down. The motor could simply run out of steam.

And if it does? You might be battered by the sea and swallow water until you choke, but you will make it onto shore. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. And again. And again. You have a life raft, and a vest, and you know how to swim.

-AG

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

A lesson in reconciliation with Adventure Girl


‘You look so old.’

I’d just stepped into the restaurant. It took me a moment to recognise him. I was expecting someone tall, bearded and grey: the father I had last seen almost a decade ago.

Instead I saw someone large, someone pink and someone pale. His grey hair had faded to white. It was most noticeable around the eyes. Once blue and slightly beady, they disappeared into his face.

He stood to greet me. He wore a supercilious grin. Some things never change.

I hovered beside the table for a moment. Should we hug, kiss, shake hands? I dived for my seat.

‘There’s quite a bit less of you,’ he said, just as tactfully. ‘A lot less, in fact. Maybe too much less.’

I opened the menu. ‘What do you feel like eating?’

‘I have to be careful, you know, with my diabetes…’ And so began the theatrics. Dinner became a role play. Not of the prodigal daughter and absent father, but a game of show-and-tell where I played reticence and he played look-at-me-now.

I heard all about his new wife, his new daughter, his new life.

Yes, I noticed your ring, I answered. Yes, I know you have a new family. Yes, I know what songs you’d like played at your funeral.

I waited for him to ask me a question. A question about me.

Virtual silence.

I glanced at my phone. Pretended I wasn’t checking the time.

The game went on.

I grew stubborn. If he wouldn’t ask then I would tell. So I described how I’ve gone back to school, how I’ve been writing, and told him about my new job.

‘My wife writes,’ he responded. ‘And studies. And works.’

Good for her.

I told him I was sorry if I seemed distracted. I’d had a difficult day. I was almost in tears. The one thing I wanted more than anything in the world in that moment was to hear him say something nice, or to be caught up in a big bear hug.

Instead he said, ‘The problem with you is…’

Some things never change. I asked for the bill.

-AG

Bearded weirdness or 'Playing Paddocks'

A lesson in mixing friends with Adventure Girl

Remember that game you used to play as a kid, where you drew up a grid of dots, as big as you could make it, then took turns to connect them with dashes? The object was to make as many closed-in squares as possible: paddocks. Then you would initial them, territory marked, borders closed.

I was never very good at it.

I'm not sure if the two are related, but I've never considered myself particularly territorial. Not over friends or family, or friends of friends. In fact, if I could put the acquaintances from one side my life's paddock in a room with a bunch from the other side, and they hit it off, that was all for the better. As superficial as it sounds, it made my life easier, because it meant I could catch up with more of my friends at once. It was like I'd managed to join lots of dots across the page in a kind of uber-paddock of friend efficiency.

As I get older, the dots of my life seem to join up more and more. My life is covered in interconnecting dashes. This should feel great. More of my friends are becoming friends, and I'm becoming friends with their friends.

But on a couple of occasions now, this has bothered me. I've noticed my friends interacting independently of me. Not just independently as 'friends', but forming connections that extend beyond being the 'friend of a friend'.

Suddenly I feel as though my border hasn't extended into an open-armed love-in, but has been crossed.

I've laid out a whole bunch of dashes without closing the gates. The paddocks don't contain my initials, but somebody else's. All that ground work, only to miss out on the paddocks! Worse, I'm standing outside the paddocks: borders closed.

I know this is a childish response. I shouldn't feel territorial at all. I should be happy that my friends are getting along so well. It's not as though I'm worried about what they will say about me to each other. They tend to say all that stuff to my face - that's why we're friends. And it's not like I'm worried about losing a part of their friendship when they offer that piece to someone else. There's always more to go around.

But it must come from somewhere, this feeling of bearded weirdness. If only I could pinpoint the cause, I could shake the whole thing off. And I know it will pass. I just have to get used to it.

Maybe I should start a new sheet, a new game. One where everybody works collaboratively. No initials and no borders.

Or maybe I should stick to Chinese Checkers.

-AG

When at the office party, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, vomit on the boss's shoes

A lesson in office party etiquette with Adventure Girl

If one Friday night you find yourself trapped in a room with free alcohol, some dodgy dance music and three quarters of your workmates, under no circumstances should you:

• let anyone over 35 or under 25 commandeer the jukebox
• dance around one or more poles
• hit on the boss
• hit on the boss's partner
• hit on anyone
• respond to anyone hitting on you
• drink without eating a proportionate amount of food
• drink while tired
• drink beyond 'happy'
• mouth off about your boss, your boss's partner, or any co-workers
• take bets on who will end up in the most inappropriate or unlikely pash
• offer to take a hit to win said bet
• take said hit
• position yourself anywhere near the designated party photographer
• position yourself anywhere near a camera
• call or text your partner (who is not at said party)
• 'kick on' afterwards
• venture into a quiet corner with anyone as sloshed as you
• find yourself in a position which might result in a walk-of-shame
• do a walk-of-shame

In fact if you want to hold your head up and meet everyone's eyes on Monday morning, the best thing you can do is eat, have one or two drinks, circulate with a quiet smile, then take that cab voucher straight to Boganburbia - do not pass go, do not collect $200.

-AG

I'll give you yours if you give me mine

Adventure Girl calls for amnesty on the return of borrowed things

I have a confession to make. I am a serial borrower.

In my study is a shelf bursting with ‘things that don’t belong to me’. Worse, I have a shelf of ‘things that might belong to me’. The problem is I can’t recall what was gifted and was loaned. Books by the same author, one a present, one on loan, and I can’t remember which was which! No tell-tale dog-ears or creases to give it away. These goods belong to people who have cherished and maintained their possessions, forever pristine.

It’s not as though I’ve watched / read / consumed each item and then simply laid it aside. Most times the reason I still have the item is because I haven’t quite gotten around to consuming it. In fact I have a backlog of un-checked-out items that I’m still working my way through. Purchases, gifts, and loans.

Some I’ve had for years and years.

The difficulty now is so much time has passed; it’s like returning that Grade 6 library book you found under your bed having sworn it was returned, the one you fought the crusty librarian over to waive an outrageous $12.93 accumulated fine.

Returning them now is just embarrassing.

But suddenly I find myself as that crusty librarian.

Last night I went looking for my copy of The Emerging Writers’ Festival Reader. I know I have it somewhere; it was a birthday present. In my mind, a niggling memory of someone peering covetously over my shoulder… and me handing it to them. Here, of course you can have a loan of it. Another memory surfaces. Of the Reader sitting on my desk alongside a second hand copy of Sheri S Tepper’s Grass, the one I hunted down for months in dodgy second hand bookshops, and ended up ordering online, just to own a paperback copy at last. You’ll love this, I hear myself say to a friend, Why don’t you borrow it…?

Then I see the empty ‘B’ section of my DVD collection taunting me. The gaps where my copies of Big Love ought to be… Who did I loan them to??? And where did my Presidents of the USA CD vanish to, all those years ago…?

Are all these items perched on someone else’s ‘things that don’t belong to me’ shelf? Are they too embarrassed to fess up and return them to me?

It seems there’s only one thing to be done. I need to hold an amnesty swap-meet.

Not that I can be that candid about it. Instead I’ll host some sort of social gathering out in Boganburbia, and while the blokes are singeing the snags or carbonising onion rings, and the girls are peering at my pitiful stiletto collection, I can subtly point out the ‘things that aren’t mine’ shelf, and veer them past the pile of ‘things that might be mine’, and between rounds of bubbly top-ups and music exchanges, ask ‘where on earth did that Presidents CD go?'

With any luck, by the end of the night, as people step back inside to grab a drink or go to the loo, everybody’s belongings will have returned themselves to their rightful owners, discreetly and anonymously.

And unlike the haunted library book, no one’s things need end up discarded along with that strawberry jam sandwich and mouldy orange you never told your mum about, just for the sake of misplaced pride.

-AG

Too many exes spoil the broth...

"Maybe she wants her CD player back?"
"Maybe she's getting married?"
"Maybe she's pregnant?"

--Spaced, Series 1, Episode 7

Adventure Girl gets up close and personal with a ghost of boyfriends past...

So out of the dust your ex gets back in touch. They want to meet up. Been there, done that, but your stomach is churning. It's the ultimate unknown. Will your ego be plumped or terminally bruised?

Still, you rock up, wondering, wondering. It could be awkward as arse, surprisingly fun, profoundly deep, or spectacularly awful.

My recent encounter was a chef's combination, smothered in wasabi soy and drowned with a glass or three of house white. There was a touch of he-said-she-said, a smattering of what-ifs and if-onlys, and a whole lot of coulda-shoulda-woulda played out in second-hand clichés.

Of course I can't write too much - social networking and the interwebs provide a horrid mix of torture and solace in the game of oscillating cyber-stalking and avoidance we exes play.

But I am glad I went. I was reminded of why I went there the first time, but also why it didn't work. The kind of murky clarity only hindsight can provide.

Until next time, I'll chalk it up as another lesson learned ;)

-AG

A Lesson in online etiquette - Adventure Girl tries her hand at Chatroulette

'Show boobs or I will push the bird towards the snake!’ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/03/nsfw-infallible-method-to-get-chatroulette-boob-flashing/

I recently spent a Friday night with friends playing chatroulette (don’t ask – we were VERY drunk). After all the hype, I had a fair idea of what to expect: randoms with their cocks out demanding I ‘show boobs’.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Me: 'How many inches?’
Random: ‘Eight.’
Me: ‘Really? Is that all?’
Random: ‘Show your tits’
Me: ‘ '
Random: ‘Tits!'

And so it went.

Sadly I got ‘nexted’ as soon as the random realised I wasn’t going to ‘show boobs’ – though I did tease that out for a bit ;)

After ‘nexting’ ten or so guys, I began to wonder why any of them started with their pants on.

My experience wasn't as varied and kooky as some (checkout ‘The Best of Chatroulette – What happen on Chatroulette should stay on Chatroulette’: http://www.bestofchatroulette.net/). It was penis-pump and animal-costume free, and disappointingly, I didn't end up flashing my boobs to an entire music festival in a game hosted by Faith No More front man Mike Patton.

Maybe if I try my luck again this week...

-AG