Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

I'm visiting a house. It's a house I've encountered in dreams before, with a corridor on the side with ramps and steps, and split level rooms that follow the slope of the hill the house is built on. No one seems to be home just now but it's cluttered with ephemera and traces of habitation. I go through an outside door and stumble down a step. 

Someone helps me up and and when I look at them I realise its another me, dressed more as a hippy, thinner, with longer greying hair. She smiles at me and "Hello there - took a tumble?" and I reply "You're me!". She says "Yes, I guess I a," cracks a grin, "How can that be I wonder?" We compare notes and our histories are very similar, but hers diverged when she moved to NSW and up to Lismore. The house is her home, leased from a local community where she does odd jobs and runs the website/internet. 

I tell her how nice it is to see her, and ask her how life is now, and does she have any pets? She says she ha a bird, a Major Mitchell, but it's not really a pet, it just comes for food. She has lots of acquaintances and a few friends. I ask her how university went and she says it was the start of her opening up, and finding herself. She only did her Bachelors, but has a string of paintings she sold with one or two in art galleries. She never went to Phuket like I did, and seldom gets down to Sydney though trips to Brisbane are a little more common. She seems much more mellow than me, and offers me a joint. 

I WAKE UP and go to the toilet, and then, instead of watching TV just after 2 am, I go back to sleep

 I'm in a different town which reminds me of Morisset but a lot closer to tall hills on one side. I'm walking the street down to the Markets and the town turns into an inner city suburb. I see someone over the road being hassled and it's me, again.

 This me is similar to the first, but is wearing poorer clothes and is being stood over by three thugs, one bald and the other two holding sticks and a pipe. I can here a "DON'T HURT ME" from her and the two thugs are raising their clubs. I race over the road and punch on of them in the kidneys and slap the other on the ears and eyes. While they're stunned I knock them down nd kick them each in the groin. The bald guy looks at me in surprise, and runs down the street. I follow him as he runs through a door way and find that he's tripped over a broom. I grab him by his t-shirt and shout "LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!" but before I can hit him he faints.

 Going back out on the road I look for the other me but she's not there. I ask people if they saw where she went and one says that she's a local street person who begs on the street and mutters and rants all the time. Someone else points out an alley way and I follow the lead and find her hiding behind a skip. She stares at me, afraid to say or do anything thing. I ask her if she'd like to eat and she stutters YES. I take her to McDonald's and though lots of people stare at us I buy her some food and myself a coke. We sit down and between gulping down her food she tells me "her story".

 It seems she came to Sydney (yes, it's Newtown, I should have known) in 1996 and stayed at a hostel. Things didn't go well and she seriously assaulted another member of the hostel she stayed at, stabbing her with a knife. After that she was in prison for a bit and in and out of mental health institutions. Her grand mal returned after being bashed and raped in prison and after her father died her family disowned her. I listen carefully with a growing sadness. Is this the me I'd be if I hadn't coped with my stay in Sydney that year? We get up and outside I give her a hug and as much money as I have, and she looks at me, still frightened and rush away.

 So I walk way in the other direction and it leads to the tall hills on that one side of the town. In this area it reminds me more of Katoomba than Newtown or Morisset. There's people in the streets like a fair or carnival is on, and I can see steep roads leading up to the top of the hills . I walk up one and see that house again, but this time instead of a gentle slope the house is built in very separate rooms connected with more like a slanted ladder. I look behind and see that a crowd's starting to follow me, as if they want to ask me something. And then I find myself again, waiting for me She's me, but not me. She's me, but with XX instead of XY. She seems radiance and cheerful and shouts "HELLO THERE!" and hugs me tightly. I fall away, stunned but she only smiles at me again and says "Don't be afraid". I smile back at her.

 The crowd looks on from a distance and some of them clap, and others boo, and some lose interest and move away. And then...

No Theo any more. With a very thin support network realised just how much I'd relied on my pets for comfort and affection. Mystery was right next to me while I was howling - but a cat's not the same as a dog - no friendly wagging tail, no madly enthusiastic greeting when I get home, no faithful pooch sleeping on the bed at night. And that's gap I feel so bad.

No Ang anymore. Back in 1996 when I did my "geographical" to Sydney and stayed in a halfway house that almost drove me suicidal, the people who managed that place suggested I go for a visit to Newcastle for a week. I did, and stayed with Andrea, who preferred being called "Ang" (pronounced Anj). I liked Newcastle because it reminded me of Albany, where I'd lived when I first moved away from home. And when I made the decision to move there permanently I stayed with her for a few months until I moved to Carrington. Even after I moved to Barnsley I kept in contact with her, at least while I still had a car. I would drop in and chat with her, but after a while when I knocked on the front door there was never any reply. There was a good chance that she was out or down the back in the garden, but I didn't know that at the time.

I was upset to hear of her death via social media, but I was able to make the service for her and later the wake. Apart from a deliberate "outing" of me at the service, it was perhaps the best service I've every been to, recounting Ang's life in a way that really made you feel that she'd lived to the full. Two things stick in my mind. After Ang had a heart bypass I visited her in hospital and she told me that the doctor had told her that she had at least another 15 years of life. But I can't remember when that was. Was it in 2002? If so the Doctor was accurate. But the other thing was a discussion about the Tao and Zen. Ang wasn't "religious", but she studied whatever, a LOT. And it was about a Zen master, who hearing that he had a painful and terminal disease, choose not to end his life earlier, but to sit with it, and observe its effects until the end. At the wake I learned that Ang had been diagnosed with Leukemia in 2010. From 2010 to 2017 is a long time to battle a cancer. But from others at the wake I realised that she hadn't just "sat with it", but engaged with her community, friends and family in the best way possible.

And since Theo's death, and more so after Ang's funeral, I've been having pains in my chest. And I've been doing this, that, and the other to keep myself busy. I hd pains, and was struggling with breath. I have asthma but this seemed worse than usual. I've been told that there's a flu going around that affects your breathing and gives you aches all over. Maybe it was only that. But the chest pains got worse. I have a history of epilepsy and an anxiety  disorder which gives me panic attacks, and depression. And I've had "panics" before where a set of symptoms pointed to one thing but which were actually another (like bad posture + overweight = chest pains) so I put going to the doctor off, and off again. Last Friday morning I was having trouble breathing. Possibly the asthma and the weather combined, maybe not. So I turned up to the clinic and they put me in the nurses room and gave me an ECG, and then referrals for a blood test, a transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE)and a stress test. I got the blood test done Friday, and booked the others for Monday and Tuesday respectively.

Come Monday I had the TTE and that was fine, and did a little shopping including four 60 ltr containers, and went home. But it was a cold and windy day and hat kept blowing off and so I put it in my bad and just walked from the bus stop to home with the sun in my eyes. And walked straight into a pothole, falling over and hurting my knees and scraping my palms on the blue metal road. It was painful and I lay for a few moment. I was unable to get up and crying with the pain. And there was no one about, no one in the street anywhere. Most places had their junk outside for council collection. A four wheel drive went by checking those out and just ignored me.  After a couple of attempts I was able to get up and drag my stuff home. Next doors was out, so I sat down for a bit, and then went back to the clinic at Glendale and had the scrapes dressed.

Next day (yesterday) I went in for the stress test. I felt exhausted and disd a bit of shopping for extra band-aids and alcohol gel on the way. And I had an injection of tracer in my right hand for the first 11 minute heart scan. This was really painful by the end because your arms are up and crossed over your head, so that the scanning machine can move around your chest by degrees. And at the end of that I needed help to move my arms and get me off the machine. I needed to come back for the same thing with the stress test before it, in a few hours. I ate an orange and was able to catch a bus into Adamstown when I had a satay beef lunch special, and then caught the bus back. I was already exhausted and just sat watching the TV until called. And then I went into the room with the treadmill, was hooked up to an EKG and had another tracer injection. Only the nurse couldn't find my veins even after several goes, had squeezed my hand into a fist over the scraped part (ouch), and supervisor misgendered me and finally they found one in my left inner elbow and then put a bandage over that.

And then I was on the treadmill with a 10% incline and even at the lowest setting I was struggling and after three minutes on that I could barely breath. And that bit was over. And I was in tears by the end of of it. In fact I'd been in tears at the start of it. Then it was back into the scanning machine for 9 minutes with the crossed arm position and all I could think of was "don't panic, don't panic, don't panic" and I didn't but I was crying and needed to be lifted off at the end of it. And all day I'd had a headache which had started out as as like a small spot at the back of my head and graduated to an iron band around my head, and I hadn't been allowed to have tea or coffe or aspirin for 24 hours before the test and I was desperate for something. The nurse got me a coffe and a biscuit and I sat there for a while and then caught a bus to 9 ways and then a 267 which went from Newcastle all the way home, bought some fish and pumkin scallops for dinner and walked in the middle of my street back home, where I collapsed in fron of the TV after feeding the cats. And then I went to bed and woke up at 2:30am.

And then, in the middle of the night, after watch Hurt, I had my panic attack. I was just feeling old and decrepid and not coping, and all it seemed like was that I'd started that long walk down a dark corridor to oblivion, feeling vulnerable and exposed all the way, with no point and no hope and entropy winning in the end. Years ago when I started my "transition" in the public service I'd been forced to use the disable toilets three stories away from where I worked. Then one day I was sick and went to that and found boxes being stored in it and slipped and fell and lacked the strength initially to get up. And when I feared I might have to wait until the cleaners came before I got out, I realised that I was in an environment that didn't support me. And I had that feeling again after the pothole spill. And I don't know what to do about it, can't see the options that will change things for me here, rather than just sustain a minimum.

And I know I have to sit with this, until I do.

But we were too late anyway - Theo died in my arms on the way to the vet. This photo was taken earlier Sunday in the backyard. I shall miss my little bundle of joy greatly.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is on the 20th November, as always. It's way too late here to do a call-out for the Webcomic Project, but I will say that I've moved the archive from ComicDish to ComicFury.

(the new logo for the ComicFury version)

The ComicDish version is still there, until February when ComicDish disappears forever. But all of it has been copied over to ComicFury, and I'm glad I made this move. The archives can now be searched!

If you are still interested in doing something for the project (which is advertising TDOR by use of webcomic/art/prose/video, go to the Contributing page. Just remember, "...you don't have to be a transgender person to participate, just appreciating or understanding the tragedy of the lives lost that are memorialized by the event is enough".

And if you spot a online comic / artwork / video / poetry or prose that's relevant to this, you can always post a link in a comment to this post.