Until recently, let’s say the last twelve months, I would’ve said that I always trusted my instincts but I look back on my life well lived and I know I didn’t… There is perhaps a handful of times that I could truly say that I trusted my instincts and rolled with what my gut knew was right, and one of them was my marriage… Now, considering how badly that all turned out, i wouldn’t blame people for wondering how that was trusting my instincts at all!? Why would the universe want me to go through all that hurt?? That doesn’t make sense… But it does, because every part of me knew that he was my person. Even at the baby-age of 13, I was inextricably connected to that man, and no amount of well-directed “advice” would keep us apart - and to be fair, the whole situation screamed of needing parental intervention and mine went above and beyond to fight this battle but, as I said, nothing was going to keep us apart, and we fought for six years against a society who (quite very rightly, tbh!!) didn’t want us together. And we tried to stay apart, we tried so hard, even down to self-destructive stuff…
When you’re 16 and “in love” and I was (I won’t ever belittle teenage professions of love because the feelings are very real to them, just like mine were to me) you find yourself in a strange turmoil of ferdent self-confidence and destructive self-doubt, wrapped in the dressings of a self-absorbed, moody pseudo-adult who quite legitimately believes that the world revolves around them - this is actually a developmental fact, much like the stages of development in small children, where the “beloved” teenager is caught in a cycle of development where they do actually believe that their world is the most important thing… They honestly don’t understand why it’s not the most important thing in the universe to you, and everyone else… They appear selfish and thoughtless and if you deconstruct the behaviour with them, they MAY (this is a big MAY) actually understand and modify but it’s totally normal... I am lucky enough to deal with it every day at school, and this is not something you can prevent or change, just roll with it and know that, like the “Terrible 2’s”, this too shall pass… Sometimes like a kidney stone, but it will pass!! Trust me, I have it tattooed to my arm…
But for me, the age of 16 cemented the course of my next 20 years… I don’t really think the gory details are necessary but I’ve had to revisit them over the years, and some of them have resulted in moments of my more “unsavoury” behaviour. At the beginning of this fateful 16th year, I had a nasty horse-riding accident on the main street of my town, which happened to also be the Great Ocean Road... Now, I had been galavanting around the countryside for YEARS on my faithful steed and even though I regularly pushed him far beyond his capabilities, he never failed to do what I asked, to his own detriment, and mine!! He was far smarter than me and had i learned to trust HIS instincts, life may have been a very different story for us both - that moment of hesitation before he jumped into something he knew was dangerous, that moment that he may as well have shouted at me “ARE YOU FUCKING SURE ABOUT THIS, YOU CRAZY BITCH?!? YOU’RE GONNA KILL US BOTH ONE DAY!!” And during the terrifying and yet interminable 8-10 seconds (felt like a lifetime) of he and i twisted together in a rolling thrash of horse and human arms and legs, along the side of the Great Ocean Road, time slowed down and I apologised for everything I’d ever pushed him to do, if only we’d live to tell this tale...
We did (clearly!!) and actually he came out of it pretty well, only superficial war wounds… Forever after, I did always feel like he eyed me with some kind of pursed-lips disdain mixed with love and genuine affection, and a perpetual “I TOLD YOU SO, DIPSHIT” kind of demeanour and i loved him for it (he more than earned his tattoo, I guarantee that)… I sometimes see the same wary but loving expression in the eyes of my friends, and I love them for it too…
Distracted again!! So the accident… For me, it resulted in some pretty severe injuries - i guess when you’re in a rolling match with a 600kg horse, you’re going to come out of it a bit worse for wear!! I know the pain was intense because once I’d got over the mad protestations (silent but intense - seeing as i couldn’t actually move) of them cutting off my jeans (actually my sister’s jeans - why oh why did i choose that day to steal her jeans?! I don’t think she’s forgiven me to this day) and favourite Rip Curl t-shirt, and enough time had elapsed for all of the residents of the town to come and rubber-neck (to be fair, it was a small town and all 23 people were there pretty quick!!), the ambulance arrived and at the point where they moved me, my blood-curdling scream also marked the point where I watched them move my body into the open doors of the ambulance from WITHIN THE CROWD - so strange… I was in no danger of dying so it wasn’t that but perhaps the pain was too great for me to bear seeing as they couldn’t give me more than the green puffer that I sucked on for dear life… So I got to watch it all happen just like all the neighbours!!
After an epic 2.5 hour trip back to the nearest town, a trip that, in a car, took all of 40 minutes (or 32 if Mum was driving), seeing as against all policy and procedure, the ambo came up the Hill solo and every time my battered body went into shock, he had to pull over and re-stablise me before proceeding. I didn’t realise at the time, but now that I have a child of my own, my heart breaks a little more for what my Dad must’ve been feeling, in the back of that ambulance with me, sitting helpless beside his little girl who was so terribly broken, both physically and emotionally. We always had an incredible bond and he knew that I was hurting long before this day, but he had to let this play out of its own accord. Never in his wildest nightmares did he see it playing out like this though... My injuries included a cracked pelvis, a broken vertebrae (although this wasn’t found until my back injury years later), dislocated shoulder and broken wrist, dislocated knee and various other cuts and bruises and less obvious injuries… Like a miscarriage… And at 16yo, they weren’t able to tell my parents without my consent, which nothing in the world would make me give!! A blessed relief to my 16yo self, if I’m going to be truly honest, it was like the problem that got me in this mess in the first place had been solved…
Needless-to-say, there was a lot of down-time for me to consider my next move… Some things became very, very clear, this man would be in my life, of that I was sure, but he couldn’t be in it right then… Nowadays, i don’t speak of it much, and you’ll likely only hear snippets of the story, and then it sounds unsavoury, but i married the man to whom i gave my virginity (yes, at the baby-age of 13), the man with whom i lost our first child at 16 (and second many years later), the man I loved with all my heart, and the man who broke it piece by piece. But that came later… In the hospital bed, battered and broken, nursing a heart whose pain i refused to acknowledge, I set about charting what would be my (unhealthy) “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE” response to anything that challenged my protected heart over the course of the next 20 years…
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