EMMA SPEAKS

20/11/23

I forgot I had this account. Essentially a live journal for young me. Every time I read old journals I’m struck by the stress and anxiety I felt. I always look back to see the young me so worried about things that aren’t even important. The most intense and emotional moments get replaced with new more intense and emotional moments. I look back and think young me had it easy. But really, I’ve just acquired more knowledge and life experience.

2023 has been the worst year of my life

It’s been a year of pain. It started with terrible mental and physical health battles, having to leave a 6 year long relationship with my first love, losing contracts and my business suffering big time, getting blackmailed to leave a teaching job I loved, losing all the close friends I had through my ex-partner, my grandfather dying, all 4 funding applications I spend months preparing getting rejected, a debilitating existential crisis, my savings draining away, someone stealing my hard work and ideas and profiting off them.

The list is arduous and I feel like shrivelling up inside a shell.

But in this pain, there really has been beauty.

A trip to Italy, reconnecting with old school friends and finding girlfriends and a support network that I’ve always dreamed of, the Barbie Movie, running, starting a book club and rediscovering the love for reading again, gaming alone and having fun.

22/03/20

I hate social distancing. It is officially the worst thing I’ve gone through since I had my heart broken four years ago. Oddly, it’s kind of similar to that time. Feeling alone, feeling pain, knowing that no one truly understands how you’re hurting. That’s what it’s been like for me. Work is very boring because I’m alone in the office and only there for a few hours due to regulations. The rest of the time I spend at home hiding from the harsh reality that the projects I put off because “I don’t have enough time” are really put off because I have trauma about failing.

Being at home has been so triggering, having to face my anxiety and realise how much fear I have every day. I’m good at suppressing it when I have a lot of work to do, but in this silent period, it’s screaming at me. “You will never be enough” “Someone will always be better than you” “If you worked harder you would succeed” “Push yourself to breaking point, at least then you’d have done all you could to make it” These terrible voices have only been flickers for the past year; now they don’t stop. I know I can’t believe them, doing so would only send myself into burnout as I have done many times in the past. I hate being a perfectionist. I hate wanting to be the best and knowing I never will be. 

In my social distancing period I have been formally introduced to BTS and it has been a triggering and confusing experience. I remember first being introduced to them by this cute Korean girl at my school back in 2013. She had a picture of them on her folder and I said they were cute. She sent me some fanfic of them and I never read it, I was busy with exams and university entrance scores back then.

A few days ago a girl who I went to uni with sent me videos of them. She said she needed a friend who was “in the army too” and she’d decided it would be me. I was alone in my bedroom for 5 days at this point, so a boyband obsession sounded great; I hadn’t had one since One Direction peaked in 2012. I watched some music videos and was amazed at the talent; it was pure art. The live performances, pushing the human body into another level of existence. Jaw droppingly amazing. I moved onto funny videos, they seemed like such fun. It reminded me of the One Direction video diaries I had once memorised every moment of. Then onto a video about who is who and backstories. This is where things took a strange turn in my brain. They were too perfect it wasn’t real. They could do everything. Sing, rap, act, play sport, make films, play guitar, write 300 songs in a year, all while dancing like fucking perfectionists not missing a beat. It scared me. A lot. I dreamt that night about never being good enough, I couldn’t even stand in the room with them.

I woke up full of anxiety, worse than I think I ever have. I knew that no matter what I did, I could never come even a hair close to the talent they have and it scared the shit out of me. I told a few friends because I needed a release, which is when things started to change. My friend sent me an article about the Kpop industry and my heart broke. It talked about the “factories” these young kids are put in. The immense pressure to perform. The training for utter perfection. The restriction of phones, relationships, sex. The staggering rates of suicide, heart attacks and mental illness in these young performers. And my heart just broke. Why is this allowed, why does this happen? Why do we think it’s all ok and just love the content these performers come out with? And why can’t I stop listening to their music? Even after knowing what so many Kpop idols go through. Is supporting them ethical? I don’t know. I just want them to be safe and happy.

I’ve never liked going to sleep. I enjoy sleeping and I definitely dread waking up, but the process of going to sleep is something I’ve always hated.

As a little girl I would lay awake in my bed for what felt like hours staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t tired and sleeping didn’t feel necessary when there were so many fun things I could be doing; like playing the keyboard or reading my Barney books.

The older I got, the more I hated going to sleep. I would lay at the end of my bed and read young adult novels in the beam of light cast from the corridor. Slowly graduating to more mature ways to pass the time, like reading xrated fanfic and googling sex questions.

I hated going to bed. It meant choosing to turn my brain off. It meant saying, I’m content for today and it’s time to wait for my body to turn off. Ew, no thanks. The idea of waiting in the nothingness for sleep to arrive, sounds worse than waiting in line for a table in Chinatown on a Friday night; at least you can chat in line.

But then you come along, and falling asleep becomes a ritual we share. Surrendering to the nothingness doesn’t feel like waiting alone anymore. In the moments of waiting with you, I experience the a subtle joy that allows me to release into sleep. Your exposed back, a little colder than my body, presses against my chest. I reach up and twirl your soft copper hair, feeling the strands glide through my fingers smoothly. My face rests in the spot between your shoulder blade and your neck. Feeling the softness of your skin and being lulled by the rhythm of your breath. With inhales we expand into each other, and with exhales into a place of unconsciousness.

As the blanket of sleep washes over me 1 2 3 kisses on the back of your neck. The ends of your hair tickle my lips and my senses are engulfed with your scent. Uniquely you, you smell like you. Nothing in the world could describe it. There is no better smell. I want to kiss you again but the unconsciousness is pulling me into the depths of sleep.

I like this.

Well it seems I’m stressed when I’m not acting and I’m stressed when I am acting. What career have I chosen?

The show I’ve written and am in, is opening next week and I still feel like I haven’t done enough work on it. I’m not sure I feel confident in my ability to showcase my best self, and I feel like I’m letting people down including myself. But at the same time I feel excited and happy to share this show, my baby, to the world. I have such a supportive team that I’ll be forever gratefull for. God has blessed me so much during this process and I just need to chill out.

Living isn’t easy

It takes effort

Every day. Wake up. Get dressed. Do hair. Do make up. Eat breakfast. Get in car. Drive to work. Work until morning tea. Eat a snack. Drink a coffee. Work some more. Eat lunch. Move car. Answer some emails. Back to work. Finish work. Drive home. Come inside. Clean up. Watch some tv. Have a shower. Eat dinner. Talk on the phone. Scroll. Watch some YouTube. Go to sleep. Repeat every Monday-Thursday.

I’ve been stuck before, in this cycle of life. Watching as every person I know seems to take steps towards their dreams. I want to scream. I hate it. Why can’t I be like them. Why can’t I achieve my dreams. Why do I have to sit here, in this barren landscape as I watch them over there in rich green pastures. Frustration turns to anger and anger to resentment. But not towards them. Towards myself. “You’re a failure” I tell myself day after day after day. My boyfriend tells me to be kind to myself. To count my blessings, I do have a really great job that allows me to create.

I am a woman and I have body hair.

For the last few months I’ve let my armpit hair and all my body hair grow. It’s felt liberating and wonderful. It came with this calming feeling that I didn’t need to endure constant razor burns, ingrown hairs or spend my money on painful waxing. I could just be naturally me.

My family has hated it but they tend to just let me be with only a few rude remarks that cut away at my self esteem. But I won’t stop being unapologetically me.

Yet here I am, at 12:27am wanting to shave my body. Wanting that hairless feeling again, that kind of fun nakedness. I keep thinking I’m betraying my natural self if I shave, that I’m just caving to the pressures of society if I do. Yet I only want to shave because - I want to. It’s a weird paradigm I find myself in. While I want a naked, free kinda summer feeling on my legs and armpits- I don’t want to waste an opportunity to show people you can be unapologetically you with your body hair. It’s all kinda confused my in my tired brain. Guess I’ll make a choice tomorrow in the shower.

I never understood rage until this past week. I have raged more than what I even thought was possible. And triggers? Yeah they’re real - and strong. Two times this week I have felt rage trickle through my body, heat up all the receptors in the skin of my chest.

Once I let it out, it felt terrible, I blacked out and couldn’t even remember the rage. I was triggered from work, sick of spending hours in retail over Christmas, reliving the constant abuse I’m not allowed to respond to.

The second time was tonight, luckily this time I didn’t let the rage out, it still felt fucking terrible. A customer snapped at me. Who knows what she was dealing with but I wasn’t having it. My body filled with rage, I just stared at her, for a solid 10 seconds, then turned around. This was a better choice, but the feeling of rage is sooooo terrible. I never want to feel it again, but I seem to be stuck in it.

Right now I’m in the middle of the ocean. I don’t know which way is forward or back. The worry comes like waves, sometimes they’re consuming, yet other times the ocean is calm.

I spent the first few days with fear constantly in the back of my mind. Everything I did was slightly overshadowed by the feeling of not knowing what I was doing. The crippling fear of the unknown, the fear of failing.