#30daychallenge day 5: a time you thought about ending your own life

and BAM! with the heavy.

i've never thought of actually ending my own life, to be fair. i've been through the parts where i didn't give myself much value, i've been depressed & a bit lost, but to put an end to things is something which my brain refuses to process. i'm not sure why, perhaps because i've always had a little bit of curiosity about what tomorrow might bring, even if today, yesterday and the last 6 months has been a grey monotonous blur of 'ugh'. not suicidal by nature, me.

just because i would never do it myself doesn't mean i don't understand why someone would. i can only feel grateful that i don't suffer from depression to the extent where i honestly cannot see any other way out.

the worst of all of it for me was post-uni, pre-Canada. at the time, it wasn't so dramatic as all that; i just couldn't quite see the point of what i was doing with my life, but also frustrated because i'd made the decisions that had put me there. i lacked the motivation to change my situation up until the point where i took 2 weeks leave from work and had a bolt of lightning hit in the form of a 'i gotta get the hell out of here' realisation.

i'm not sure why i was so unhappy, and honestly it may not have been the situation so much as the repercussions of the past few years involving moving out of home, parents separating, ex-boyfriend with mental illness (very manipulative, very clever about it), going from being in the top percentiles of my highschool classes to just another essay in a pile at university of melbourne, being in a relationship with somebody who seemed to feel that artistic disillusionment equated with one's value as a person... i don't think all these feelings were necessary unique to the age i was, but i've found that not many people will come out with it and admit they're depressed. i certainly didn't- i couldn't call it that til i knew otherwise.

i'm so, so glad that i dragged myself out of melbourne and that awful mental state to the green green grasses of Canada - whistler, specifically. little by little, i began to enjoy my new life, once i moved past the sense of it being an extended holiday. people will call it that, but i was there for just shy of 3 years and it was not a holiday, it was my life. and it was good!

i realised that something huge had changed (very quietly) when i learned to snowboard and actually felt the adrenaline rush that goes with fearing for your life: at the top of my first blue run (for those playing at home, i refer to the Saddle on whistler) i thought i might die, and i didn't want to.

that's how i knew the worst of it was over.

the other thing i actually learned as i processed this realisation was the fact that being depressed is not equal to failure, or even failing. for someone like me, so capable of the insane happiness that a sunny day, a jug of beer and your bestest friends can bring, there must also be darker days as a balance. and that's what makes the sunny days so wonderful.

so no, there has not been a time when i thought about ending my own life. but there's definitely been a touch of darkness in some of my many days, and what i want to say to anyone pushing themselves through that same muddy puddle is it's ok to sit in a mud a while, but not forever. if i can push for anything in this post, it's to acknowledge that we all deal with depression at some point, and it's got to be easier to talk about this sort of thing than it currently is.

Visit Beyond Blue if you're depressed or think that a loved one might be- it's a place to start. I've also found this nice page by elephant journal to be helpful.

treasure: memoir: snowboarding as therapy

" I was twenty-three when I moved to Whistler in British Columbia, Canada. I moved on little more than a whim and a vague sense of the urgency to change what had become dangerously apathetic circumstances. My younger brothers had both spent time in that part of the world and encouraged me to check it out. I went there with plans for a six-month holiday. I stayed for three years. I have to say, it was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I learned to snowboard."

You can head over to lipmag to read the full piece here.

I really enjoyed getting my act together to write this piece, and hope to start work on a few more in coming months. If you guys have any feedback or suggestions on what I should write about, let me know however which way you wanna.

Thanks for reading.

treasure: oh, Canada!

so listen: I'm just going to come right out and say it.

there are days when it rains a lot and you have a headache and generally, it turns out, you're failing a little bit at life. 90% of the time, I love my life. the other 10% i think, damn I wish I'd stayed in Canada.

today is Canada Day, and I'm too far away to be able to get my hands on some Clamato juice for Caesars, or $10 worth of wings at Crystal, or wedges with the infamous Butt-Rub mayo from Dusty's. No Eggs Benny from Wildwood for me (no side of Banana Bread french toast either).

there's no green grass by picturesque lakes to sit on today, either; no snow-capped peaks to surround me; no fresh pow to shred; no bears to thrill/scare the bejeezhus out of me.

oh Canada, I miss your face. the shitty bits of Canada have fallen away to the sands of time, and all I really remember now are the friends, the good times, the all-consuming sense of possibility and non-sensical lack of responsibility and need for decisive behaviours. floating through 3 years of living out amongst the seasons, knucking down for the freezing cold or the hard-to-come-by sunburn, adapting to the weeks on end of rain, the overnight 30cm messing up the bus route but answering your prayers when you awoke to the sound of avi bombs exploding.

I miss the downtimes in the village between seasons, where you get to spend time getting to know the long-termers who have made their lives in Whistler and are not just passing through. I miss the peak season for the parties and the nightclub dancefloor (but no, not the lift lines or the queue out the door of lift coffee co. for a hot beverage).

I miss my friends; my Whistler family. I miss you all so much, and am lucky to have a few of you who followed me back to Armidale (because I got here first). I miss all the food we ate and the ski days we smashed and the apres we soaked up. happiness, plain and simple.

next year I'm going to visit Whistler, Canada, and I'm going to love it all over.

until then - Happy Canada Day.

treasure: looking backwards while walking forwards.

so it's more than a year since i returned to the homeland. it's a bit of a bittersweet milestone; when i think of how i felt about coming back, all the mis-met expectations of the last 12 months, i do feel a little twinge of sad in my belly.

i was never meant to still be here, in armidale, by now. i was meant to have moved on to a bigger city; to have found a new favourite coffee shop and a new local where they knew my drink of choice. i was meant to have found a little group of trendy hipsters to befriend; i was meant to be taking over the world with a person by my side. i was meant to be moving to germany, learning the language pre-emptively, planning european road trips.

well i'll be damned if it didn't all fall to bits. it was those little things that made it ok to leave whistler, my life and my mountains and all the places that i loved (and still pine for). the person i was in whistler was mainly pretty kick-ass, and thinking back to my single days of before, i was pretty awesomely self-sufficient and satisfied by my own company.

i think it's true- at different times and places, we are different versions of ourselves. for me, my canadian adventure was emancipation. for so long, i attributed it to canada, but of course all along it was me. it's true that i'll never be quite as free as i felt in those 3 years, but i think at least now i can say, safely, that i know myself better. and perhaps it's ok not to be perpetuating quite so much damage to my liver any longer.

saying goodbye to canada was most heart-wrenching for the friends i had to leave. at the time, i felt bolstered up by love and a long-distance boyfriend, but more and more i realise it was my friends that got me through my stuff; the girls for the feelings n shit, the boys (and the girls) for the drinking and fun action adventure & activities. the hardest thing to do and the most precious thing i've realised i am capable of is to stay true to what i want and who i am. to put myself around the people who inspire me instead of those who still, even in the second part of their twenties, find it easier to be sarcastic, to shoot down those with dreams and goals, to feel no more than bitter in the face of other people's success and happiness. i've been that person, and she sucks. i'm not her anymore.

that's what hangs on from what whister gave me. the part that i miss is the family of whistler orphans, all snuggled together for pot luck dinners, birthdays and christmases, post-shred warmth and runny noses, all stoked on pow days and new boards and dropping things not previously dropped. we were all so happy, we were all so encouraging and full of heart and soul, breaths of mountain air and rosy cheeks from blood thumping through our veins.

i miss not having a commonality like that to share. i miss having some of my best friends living in the room next door (or downstairs). i continually wish that i'd spent more time with them, and ache desperately to see them all again - looking forwards, i'm being propelled along by the prospect of seeing them all again within the next 12 months; weddings, christmases, a move to europe... oh boy oh boy!! i wish it were right now.

there are little bits of my heart in all the places. whistler, vancouver, corvallis. sweden, norway, england, germany, prague. brisbane, sydney, melbourne, perth. all of them. big love from little armidale, right atcha.

xxx

treasure: whistler

these are two sights i miss... of course there were whole other seasons in whistler, after all i was there 3 years, but it's the snowy times i think of tonight with most wistfulness.

it's actually been a year since i left canada, almost to the day. i read back posts from that time, like this one with all the nervousness and hope, and i'm flung back into it. the feeling of uncertainty in leaving somewhere that you love, where you know the people and the bus route and the best place to drink. i was ready to leave on a lot of different levels, but i can't honestly say that the last few months haven't made me wonder if i should have just quit while i was ahead and stayed put. that's just a wish really, but the truth will set you free, or some such.

it actually hurts me to think about the ease with which my life became snowboard-focused; i have that physical memory but awake from those daydreams to find myself in a place dry of snow. if i think it over now, with the wisdom gained with time, it really was the empowerment of being able to actually do a sport and enjoy it. Until that point in my life, my body was not a physical thing on its own, it was dragged down by all the thinking i've been in the habit of doing my entire waking life. it wasn't much good at anything except for hands to turn pages or wobbly bits to curse in despair or a mouth to make a bit of noise now and then. i used to be all brain, is what i'm saying. for me, snowboarding opened up this world where it actually didn't matter so much how you looked (well, as long as your pants were the right colour and your board had a little street cred) as what you could do. i've waxed lyrical about a lot of the days of revelation i had on the mountain, powder days being the big favourite obviously (read my blog anywhere between mid november 2010 and may 2011 for the full understanding of just how great this all was for me). it did actually change my life, and just the snowboarding would have been enough.

the icing on the whister cake though, or perhaps the eggs that held everything together (not much of a baker; this metaphor has sunken in the middle like a faulty sponge cake) was the everything else. the everything else was mainly the people, partly the view, partly the beer. ah, the beer (i'm still trying to wear off the effects of drinking beer for 3 years solid. i don't drink beer anymore). and the everything else was just right. honestly, there are a few stand-out days for me, but the whole experience passed in a wonderful blur of knowing confidently that there would always be someone to ride with and someone to drink with afterwards.

there were the shitty bits, like being poor or fucking my ankle up or bitchy housemates or that time i left my beer outside too long and it froze, but mostly those things fade into the scope and the colour of the memory i hold dear. honestly, mostly i loved it, and i even knew how lucky i was. that's the thing that gets me about whistler- there were a few complainers but they weren't my friends, and really everyone spent plenty of time and energy acknowledging just how lucky we all were. 'living the dream' is a large category, and you can fit most whistler experiences in there.

a year on, all i have is this lousy tshirt. and i tend to complain, and talk about the good old days,and blog about things i've been thinking about instead of things that happened to me. today, a year later, is i guess a good wake up call to remember why whistler was my favourite place- it's the attitude you take with you.

i'd like to write more about whistler, and i'm certain i will. i started a series of blogs last year called 'things i'll miss about whistler: a series in many parts', but i only managed to get 3 parts finished. there are some unfinished posts in my drafts folder that i hope to breathe new life onto, and with the gift of time perhaps overstate their awesomeness slightly. i'd like to get to that, in fact it's on my writing list now, so stay tuned.

for now, i send love out to whistler and to the people i met there who i miss a bloody lot. to the pow days, to the apres, to the lot of us squished into lounge rooms for pot luck dinners and squished into gondolas heading up the mountain. lots of love going out to you from the comfort of my bed in humble armidale, NSW.

and more to come.

treasure: snowboarding

the mountain is open.

if the 1 & 1/2 of you that actually look in on this self-indulgent blog from time to time will recall, i am sort of into snowboarding. so this is rather good news for me...

whistler blackcomb were advertising for bloggers to write for them for the season, weekly, with the appealing offer of a free season pass. i considered this and actually got sort of excited about it, thinking about what i would write for my application to go with my resume. then i thought about it again and don't feel confident i could provide video footage and photos that would be up to par with the whole 'shiny squeaky clean' whistler blackcomb website. they must pay someone well to put together all the graphics and whatnot to make that site so tourist friendly.

i am generally a shit photographer, and right now only have my iphone and a little shitty camera to play around with.

it doesn't mean i don't love these mountains though, and so i thought i'd have a crack at the 250 words whistler blackcomb was asking for about 'your best day on the mountain', because i did originally start this blog for writing practice.

i actually think my best day of 09/10 season was the last day i spent on the mountain, which was late april/early may on blackcomb.

i was working at 1.45, the close shift at the supermarket i was at as a cashier for 6 months. so i had time to ride in the morning. miracle of all miracles, we had about 12cm of fresh juicy snow the night before. i was waiting for the lift at 9, when it opened. riding solo- i did a lot of that last season, firstly because i was learning to ride and i hate the idea of slowing people down, so i went up on my own most days, even if it was just for the hour before i started work to get a couple of runs in. once i could keep up i found that i still loved riding on my own, music playing in my ear, hitting the singles line at the lifts, sometimes just doing the same runs over and over again, totally stoked on it. just like this day in may. i went straight up aiming for jersey chair, to hit those few runs that i was loving at the time, when i realised i as perfectly capable of dropping right over the side- the powder was fresh, soft and forgiving and there were some trees to sneak into right over the other side of the groomer...

i think i probably hit that same run 5 or 6 times, with no lift lines, no falls, not a care in the world, until i saw that glacier chair was just about to open, with the tiniest line. as i came up to the very end of glacier chair, the last bits of cloud had cleared and it was officially a bluebird day- clear and beautiful skies with a view right down the valley.

there are very few moments in life where you truly believe you are untouchable. normally you're drunk at the time, and about to do something very stupid, which 9 times from 10 will end badly, probably with bruises. but this day was one of those days where i was so filled with the perfection i was experiencing that i felt weightless. everything went right- i picked good lines, i had the right tunes playing, and i had no falls. i felt like a superstar. i felt like someone should have been filming me. i did 3 runs from glacier, and coming out of the last run i went far right and took the trees that had been cleared out by the fires that went through in 09 summer, the first month i was in town.

fresh lines at midday on a bluebird day in may.

i didn't know at the time that it was my last day on the hill. i think if i did, it would have had to mean more, for me to do something significant like i did riding my last day on whistler, where i spent the day hurrying around trying to do all my favourite runs, hating the saddle in particular on the peak because it was damn icy. the way this last day fell though, it was just this sort of moment in time that made me the happiest i'd been for a really long time. since the innocent happiness of spending a whole day outside playing matchbox cars with my little brothers when i was about 10.

i'm in love with these mountains. the beautiful thing about this place is that everyone seems to have had this same connection i feel, and thus to have some kind of personal stake in the weather, the snow, all of it. i know if i hear people bitching about anything (especially at this point in the season where i'm still experiencing the heady rush of first love) to do with the mountain, i feel like shaking them... or kicking them in the shins hard enough to leave bruises.

not to get all enlightened on your asses, but life is really very simple. living here has taught me that, and i don't think i'll ever be the same.

day 05. a picture of somewhere you've been to.

the top of flute, with mitchy and shani, 2 crazy kiwi gals. we hiked up and we rode down in the powdery goodness.

i chose this one because i've been thinking a lot about upcoming winter season and all the things i want to do...

treasure: mountains, mountains, oh mountains!

i have fallen in lust and in love with the rockies. they are all i have been looking at and thinking about for the last 5 days, i have fallen damned hard.

i think i need to be near mountains always. ones with snow on. how can i ever go home now i know how much i love the mountains?

and riding in winter. mmm. is it bad to wish it was winter again, when summer has really only just kicked in? i feel like everything is just one big wait for winter. i am such a winter person. riding and apres and warm headwear (give me another winter in canada and i'll be calling a beanie a toque). powder powder powder.

i send a prayer to the snow gods: give me another good powder season.

then i think i might do a year of double winters. it's getting serious.

basically, this has the makings of a long-term relationship.