Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
I started the day with a gorgeous sleep in – wait, no sleep in, scrap that, I woke with the all-encompassing dread that Olive, my mental one-year-old would be waking any second and I would have to be at her service all over again. I thought that this day would be no exception to the usual – the clock would 4-something-am and as I allowed that revolting time sink in, I would start to hear her demands for my attention get louder and louder.
I slowly and reluctantly opened my eyes and it wasn’t 4-something-am – it was5:45-fucking-am and Olive was not making a sound. There was silence in my house and I was awake and Old Mate wasn’t. What the fuck was happening? I slammed my eyes shut again, buried my head into my pillow and hoped to return to the depths of sleep, but alas, the sheer excitement and disbelief that I was awake before her, combined with the prospect that that bloody whinge would fill my ears any moment kept me wide awake. I may as well have just sucked on a fired up, filthy crack pipe, because my eyes were darting around my scrunched up eye lids and my heart was racing faster than every Hill Song member’s as they watched Guy Sebastian on Eurovision. It was in that perplexed and ecstatic moment that I wouldn’t have been surprised if my face exploded in the most aggressive nose bleed that ever existed.
Admitting defeat that sleep was gone forever, I reluctantly picked up my phone from my bedside table and scrolled through emails that I can’t for the life of me care about regarding some patronising baby club I accidentally signed up to in a moment of sleep deprivation and desperation. I then found myself navigating my way through the mindlessness of Facebook – through the lives of high school acquaintances that I didn’t give a fuck about ten years ago, but ironically find myself clicking on photos to see what they named their new fox terrier or what shit Canberra café they just went to. Eggs Florentine? Is that making a comeback?
How do I even pretend to care about this? What has become of me? In the comfort of my own bed, I found myself embarrassed in front of myself – a feeling that is becoming more and more frequent these days.
I pulled myself out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom, stepping over the exploded box of bulk tampons Olive has recently become obsessed with. A smile appears on my face as I remember that when bathing her last night she sat triumphantly in the water with three tampons wedged in her fat fingers and one unwrapped and bulging one in her mouth. I sat on the toilet and I pissed as quietly as I could hoping to prolong the moments of solitude I had amazingly scored. As I pondered whether it was gross not to flush a consuming thought dawned upon me – the silence could actually mean that she was dead. As I listened to the tiny snores seep through the bathroom wall, I started to breathe again, but stood frozen.
As I stood over the toilet bowl of my own piss, I wondered what my life would be like without her. What would I stay silent for then? It was an isolating, deafening thought that made me realise that the silence that I found myself in was a silence like no other. It may not be a silence where I am solving the world, or even thinking about anything productive – it’s the place where I can hear myself, even over the niggling noises of Facebook shit and baby product emails. This was the silence I loved, but find myself always searching for it to end.
This silence reminded me that I am alive, but even better, it reminded me that someone else is.
You can find Bron’s blog at:www.blastedbron.blogspot.com.au