BlowDown

This ain't no Glow-Up

March 3rd.

Nan’s birthday? No, that's not it.

March 3rd.

Cousin’s birthday?

Not that either.

Writing the date several times today, it felt significant, but couldn’t remember why.

Then it smacked me.

Book Release Day.

Five years ago, on March 3rd, my book landed on shelves. Actual bookshelves in real bookstores.

In Sydney for press, I walked into Angus & Robertson on bustling George Street, twinkling heels carrying my prance. Beelining for Non-Fiction with one eye open, I couldn't believe the time had finally arrived. Three years writing the drafts, scoring a literary agent, then publisher! Back and forth edits and delays. It was finally here! I flicked back my professionally styled hair and inhaled, bracing myself for the moment I'd dreamt of since I was old enough to hold a pen.

There it was.

Freshly unboxed and shiny. Perfectly displayed. Exhale.

I opened the sleek cover and breathed in the inked pages. Careful not to disturb my camera-ready makeup, I swallowed the tears. A television interview was waiting. I slid my book back onto the shelf and click-clacked out onto the bustling sidewalk. Businessmen, tourists, cab drivers, stallholders; none of them had any idea a new author strutted among them.

A real, published author.

It was a beautiful day.

One I forgot.

“Glow-ups” are trending. But what about blow-downs?

This isn’t a sparkly piece full of tips on becoming your best self.

This is the wreckage list. A demolition report.

I wish someone had warned me. Longing for someone who was killed suddenly does not only break your heart, it can dismantle your personality, your ambition, your body, your identity. I don’t intend to pour heaviness into you. But I am going to be brutally honest. I’m listing the upheaval. The rubble. The unexpected demolition site this experience became.

Maybe it will prepare someone. Because complicated grief is harder than you can ever imagine until it clamps its claws around your throat. I kinda wish I’d read something like this before impact. A warning label; brace position! A way to phone a friend in advance:

“Hey! My life is about to slide completely off its axis and dismantle me for three years. Are you ready to hold a candle while I burn?”

♡

#1. Pre-Grief:

Social Butterfly.

“Life of the party.”

“The bubbly blonde social butterfly.”

That’s how friends described me.

Now? I am galaxies away.

The idea of sipping champagne at a rowdy bar or dancing on a tabletop to Justin Timberlake's SexyBack feels like fantasy fiction. Today, it takes every ounce of energy just to make a phone call. A basic conversation with family scrambles my brain. I have to consciously select words, like someone recovering from a head injury. I stutter and lose language. I apologise and blame phony migraines for my inability to construct a sentence. On the rare occasion I accept a lunch invitation from the three friends who haven’t quietly drifted away, I sit anxious in the restaurant. Earplugs in and speaking only if spoken to.

#2. Pre-Grief:

Relentless Ambition.

Being published by one of the country’s largest houses wasn’t luck. It was drive. Fire in my bloodstream. I dreamt of my name on neon billboards and wouldn't accept an alternative. I worked two jobs, built businesses, creating goals faster than I could achieve them. No dream was unachievable. Now I work part-time. And I need three days to recover from being in the workplace.

#3. Pre-Grief:

Family-devoted.

I lived for my family and moved mountains for them. Well, I paid for my sister to climb them, anyway. When I travelled the world, I flew my sister to New Zealand and Samoa so she could experience magic. Watching her smile was everything to me; her happiness so important to my heart.

Back home, I resumed glossy-lipped ambition (Chanel lip gloss only, thank you very much)! I invested in myself only after supporting my family. I am not a mother, so when I say family I am referring to my siblings, nephews and nieces,. I was a provider. As long as I existed, no one struggled.

Now?

I don’t speak to them.

And this one cuts deepest.

I didn’t walk away. I lost them during the first two years of grief. When I became immobilised, my loved ones disappeared. I acknowledge my grief is heavy and something they were alien to, but they abandoned me when I needed them. The calls stopped. The visits never came. Silence stretched into years. Grief didn’t just take my partner. It exposed the imbalance of love.This loss became secondary grief.

#4. Pre-Grief:

Healthy Gal.

I enjoyed Espresso Martinis with the girls, but my diet was impeccable. Not from vanity, but from vitality. I craved nourishment. Now I crave chocolate and eat it as though supply chains are collapsing. I am a glutton; pizza. Meat pies. Beer.

My skin is dull, body bloated. Energy? What energy?

As the saying goes: I’ve “drunk myself a face.”

I don’t recognise the woman in the mirror.

#5. Pre-Grief:

Sexxyyy baaaby!

I loved sex. I needed touch. This devotion to sexiness expanded to beautiful bed sheets and nightwear, even if just for me. I made love to myself. I made love to strangers who became lovers. I adored all bodies, male and female and all in-between. I am bisexual, and melting into bodies of both genders was magic. I've kissed men under lights in Times Square, swam naked in the ocean with a girlfriend under a full moon. Body to body pressing together until the space between us disappeared entirely, salt water tangling our long hair together in dark ribbons.

Since my boyfriend was killed?

Nothing.

No hunger. No spark or curiosity. I haven't made love to anyone nor plan to.

I wouldn’t even know how to kiss anymore.

#6. Pre-Grief:

Pretty Lady.

I'm not naturally gorgeous by any means, and enjoyed the effort in looking pretty. Extensive skincare rituals. Hair appointments. Full-body moisturising before bed. Pedicures. Manicures. High-end outfits and shopping sprees. Now I don’t even paint my toenails. I still groom obsessively but that’s courtesy of OCD. Hygiene has become compulsion, to quiet the mental noise, not to feel beautiful.

#7. Pre-Grief:

No OCD.

I have always been a neat and ordered person. Particular, even.

But this? This is different.

Grief hurled a mental illness at me I never saw coming. Debilitating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Not just tidiness or hand washing. I’m talking about animated germs storming carpets with machine guns. I once cried in a guest bedroom because the home-owners wore shoes inside. I imagined the bacteria as little cartoons with weapons, coming straight for me. A grown woman, sobbing like a child with imagined monsters under the bed.

And the rumination is torture. I avoid conversation because it will replay in my mind for twelve hours afterwards; every word dissected. I am medicated and attend regular mental health appointments, just for this alone.

#8. Pre- Grief.

No sleep-ins.

Oh, the tiredness!

Movement itself feels expensive now. Not painful, but costly. Every outing, every task, every moment of being “up” feels like it withdraws from a bank account that never refills. I don’t want plans. I need stillness. I desire to be unobserved. I was once a professional dancer and my rent depended on physical movement. Motion wasn’t effort, it was my identity, making sense of the world through muscles and momentum. Now that same body needs the opposite. It wants horizontal. It requires quiet. Slow mornings and nowhere to be is medicine.

I don’t think this is laziness. Maybe it's what happens after years of holding yourself together; a nervous system finally asking to be held. So if all I do in a day is wake up, make coffee, and return to bed, I must not call it failure. Sometimes staying alive looks like stillness. Sometimes healing looks like doing nothing.

♡

This list is a fraction of what sudden loss has dismantled.

As harrowing as I sound, my heart is still enormous. I remain deeply empathetic. I will still help anyone who needs me and wear mascara to work. I'm not a total ogre.

I am quietly confident I will survive this and return to myself eventually.

♡

I have come frighteningly close to disappearing during this journey through starvation, over-drinking and wandering into the night without care for where I’d land. How I am still alive I'll never know, but one thing I have learned through all of this mess, including almost dying myself: there is more than this world.

That is the one strange gift: the otherworldly awakening.

But damn, do I miss Me.

I miss being the polished author sipping sake at inner-city sushi bars.

I miss desire, vitality.

I miss her so much!

Yes, I’m depressed. Of course I am. The love of my life was murdered. Missing him every day costs more energy than people understand. Grief isn’t an emotion you have , it’s a job you never applied for. It’s physical, draining you quietly, whether you’re crying or not.

March 3rd.

Now I remember.