Mindfulness. Medication. Mediation. Marriage. Metal. Motherhood. And motherfucking Mark Manson. That's what's saved my life.

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I have a weird brain.
My nearest and dearest oft admonish, lovingly, that they "love my brain". When I have heard something in conversation and drawn a parallel to the article in National Geographic, a study or book I read, a podcast I listened to...Things, they  just - snap into place for me. Like a pair of magnets.

I am not a specialist. I am a generalist. Not Mensa brilliant; but my grandmother was. Maybe I could be. Never got tested... Who knows. Life never led me to academia - that's my little brothers job - Mr T and his PhD.

But what I am, and what I can offer you, dear reader, along with the weird driver of my mind car - is experience. In the general fuckery of life.

Let's do a brief overview, shall we?

Hold your nose, cause here goes the cold water.
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I was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, to a Policeman father and a  horse loving hippie mama. Like Australia's Dani California. Emma Queensland doesn't have the same ring to it, though. Damn.

We moved around alot with dads job and the isolation took its toll on my mums already fragile state of mind, probable bipolar disorder and ptsd among other things from a beyond traumatic childhood. She was raped at 3 by her father, there was an illegal brothel, and the children were made available to the clientele among other things. It was horrific. Absolutely horrific. All of the children from that "line" of the family are dead now. Suicide, or basically suicide. Fuckers had no chance.

So poor mum never really had a chance. Nor did her marriage with dad, due to the lack of communication. They separated when I was 6, and my brother was 4. My poor Dad. He never had a chance either. He didn't know how broken Mum was.

We moved to Burpengary, and mum began a relationship with my "stepdad", and they were together nearly 10 years.

Their relationship came to a fiery end, and we left. Mum bounced on to another bloke. This fella had ties to bike gangs and got mum into pot. And then speed.

They split, and we moved, moved and moved again. I counted it once. I have moved nearly 40 times. Most before I was 20. The rest of the family ostracised us as we slid. Us kids innocents caught in the cross fire.

Men came and went, but one particular parasite hung around. Marty. A Maltese speed addict/dealer. You may notice I omit most names. Not this one. I hope he is still alive suffering in a gutter somewhere. Death is too kind for him.

We were in the original 'way town', the housing commission ghetto near the Caboolture hospital. Slowly we lost everything, many to hock shops, many to theft by the people mum housed, and some precious memories to Martys cruelties, tying mum to a chair and setting alight her mementos and photo albums of our and her life, to get her money for drugs. To this day I still have few photos or memories. Absolute poverty. Violence. Drugs. Stealing food from the IGA. Police ignoring the goings on... or turning up 5 hrs late. It was hell. Just hell.

Then my "stepbrother" was killed in a freak horse riding accident. Fucked us all right up.

I had enough, packed up my brother and we moved out into a family friends house, from our pony club days. I think I might have been 13 or 14. I worked my guts out to support us, struggling with managing my brothers rage, trying to study... how far we had fallen. I still to this day remember turning mum away in a thunderstorm, she was homeless with two puppies and living in her car. Fucking still kills me.

Then a friend saw our plight and offered us somewhere better to live. We moved, again. But, the people we moved in with had their own issues. The wife began a relationship with my brother. Yep. She was 24, but he was 14. My brother left and sought out my dad. I left and moved in with my boyfriend and his family.

I discovered he had been cheating on me and I had to leave. With nowhere to go, no family I knew how to find.. I reached out to my exstep dad : I moved into his brick shed. I was back to the only real home I had ever known.. and then my friend Daniel was killed in a car accident.. I worked horses, studied hard, fell in love again, and moved out with my boyfriend.

Everything I had lived through hit me like a brick wall when the dust had settled. Mum kept cropping up and fucking with my head and then blowing out again. I got depressed, skipped school, ate and ate and watched foxtel. The man dumped me because I wasnt the girl the first met. I was shell shocked. I stayed with my friend Lee. And did plenty of self destructive things.

I graduated high school with an OP 8, despite everything. Then promptly packed my bags and fucked off to the Northern Territory and worked on Tipperary Station. I got into a Bachelor of Agricultural Science and tried studying at the same time as working. Yeah, nah. Didn't happen. I was in self destruct mode, and I went pretty wild. I don't regret much of it though. So thats something. Then I started writing to mum, we started talking things out, and I started the very long process of healing.

I came home and started driving tow trucks. Yeah little chick towing machines. It was a good time.  I met my first fiancé  Mick through work and my time as a rural firefighter. We got engaged at the Caboolture rodeo. Then we moved to Geraldton, way over the other side of Australia in Western Australia -  and drove road trains. Then Micks dad got sick. Bowel cancer. Mum was sick. So we came home and looked after Micks dad while we slowly drifted apart. And then separated, shortly after my grandfather died.

Mum had cleaned herself up so I moved in with her in redcliffe. She was sick. Her entire small intestine had died, except like 37cm. So her quality of life  wasnt great. But still she worked at Endeavour Foundation... I was drowning in debt from my time with mick, and a mate of mine heard about it. And offered to help me get a job in Kalgoorlie underground. And fly me there. I would pay him back after i started working. He wanted more than money though, and he assaulted me. I was shell shocked again, and demanded he put me on a plane to Broome where my friend was driving for the company Mick drove for. I wasnt ready to put my tail between my legs and go home. Or go through a trial. So I left the next day. Rang my mate as I landed in Broome. He came and got me, bob tail, in the kenworth prime mover. I crawled into the  sleeper cab of the truck with bottles of rum and didnt leave it for three days but to wash and use the toilet. I ended up two up driving the road train for a season with him. Mum got really sick, so I flew home.

I then spent years nursing mum as she slowly died, busting a gut in a tow truck to pay 2 lots of bills. Mum started losing her mind. I had to leave. I got my own place just down the road from my step dad. That christmas and new years, she was a danger to herself. I had her involuntarily committed to the mental health ward. Little was I to know, it would be her last christmas alive. Three months later, in march, she left this world.

I was reeling. Catatonic. I had stuck by her to the end and through hell and high water. So i slept straight in bed at night and I have ever since.

I started seeing Grant, my husband, and the father of our beautiful girl, in January the following year. By July we had moved to Gin Gin, we both had jobs in the mines.

How he has stuck with me through my rollercoaster ride out from under the black dog and his shadow has me fucked. I tried leaving him a dozen times, was suicidal the week of our wedding. Cried the way through the whole ceremony because mum wasnt there... he is my fucking angel that man. We bought a house. I got horses again.

I started and never finished another uni degree. Left an electrical apprenticeship, with an electrical engineering uni cadetship in Orange NSW when his dad was diagnosed with terminal Multiple myeloma.

Mums two brothers committed suicide. There is very few of that side of the family left. That I knew of.

I came home, and we eked out a living. I fell into traffic control, and ironically, am kicking ass as a Traffic Management Designer.  Mostly from home, so it works great with our beautiful daughter.

In the last few years, things have been pretty great. Except for, I had massive anxiety when I found out we were pregnant, I remember a particular panic attack when I felt trapped up here and couldnt drive into our driveway. I was convinced with my poor mental health I couldnt do this parenting thing on my own with him working away, 3 hrs or more from family and friends. My Pop died. My Great Auntie Neita died. My Uncle Ray committed suicide. My Uncle Beren died. I was relentlessly bullied at work by Supervisors. Started a business. Discovering how dodgy Civil Construction is and removing my Company from all works with non ethical companies.

My daughter doesn't sleep well. 3 years of sleep deprivation knocks me about. Medically - we don't have an answer. Treated silent reflux. Removed tonsils and adenoids. Sleep schools. Sleep studies. Melatonin. Sleep psychologist. The battle continues. These days, she yells at us from her bed instead of coming in here. So that's something. I think.

Had a total nervous breakdown when I was 32. Packed a bag and booked myself into the Acute Mental Health Ward in Bundaberg. They didn't take me in though. I stayed home and worked some stuff with a Psychiatrist got good medication and life is gold now. Gloves are off now that my chemistry is good.

Firm believer in better living through Chemistry.

Mindfulness. Medication. Mediation. Marriage. Motherhood. And fucking Mark Manson. That's what's saved my life.

So, had you asked me, say, 10 years ago, would  I be here now - married, property owners, entrepreneur, mother, equestrian... I would have laughed. Biggest problems I have these days is my shit spending habits, Facebook, sweary Engineers (who are usually Irish.... Weird) and a lack of sleep. 

So there is hope, you eventually do shake off the black dog. I am hoping to go finish a psychology degree eventually, and I can tell you all one thing, for free, (jokes it's all free) on my introductory post::

"you are the sum of your experience. Stop hating on yourself, you literally don't have the wiring for anything beyond your field of experience. How you perceive, react and behave is the sum total of your experience. To react, perceive and behave in a different way, you must first have different experiences."

My epic husband gave me that and more. I grew as a person and shed the bastard black dog like a skin. But grief, ah grief. Its a mongrel. You never ever get over someone dying. Sorry. You just learn to live with it, rather than 'in' it. The norm with the obvious hole where they once were eventually changes, so slowly and imperceptibly, eventually you are living in a new reality, where it doesnt hurt as much, and you have grown as a person.

The choices you can make are the experiences you give yourself to help you rewire.

Choice. It's everything. But only when you are capable of actually being consciously in control of what you are doing.

But, that's for next time.

Em, x.