TRAP

We’re caught in a trap

I can’t get out

Because I love you too much, baby

Elvis sang about it in Suspicious Minds. Feeling trapped. Feeling scared. A prisoner of love.

It seems like I am talking a lot about domestic violence and love gone wrong these days but I am pleased to relay to you all a good news story regarding this most horrible of issues.

MY SISTER HAS LEFT HER ABUSIVE HUSBAND.

Can I get a fist pump and an AMEN?

She won’t talk about exactly what happened. I would’ve thought being threatened with an axe would’ve made her leave (and she didn’t) so the mind boggles as to what he actually did this time to make her say: Enough is ENOUGH.

She is living for the moment with my parents and although things are still strained between all of us I am really glad.

She spoke many times of a sense of being trapped, of loving too much, of thinking her love would change things, but as we all know freeing ourselves from a love trap can be the most difficult thing in the world to do. I am proud of her for finally getting out.

A weird thing has happened, however. I am feeling an unbridled sense of empathy for her ex. I have actively despised this man for a long time, so what I am feeling is disconcerting, to say the least.

But here’s the thing. What a terrible life he’s had. You really wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. His mother walked out on the family when he was 6 years old and he was raised for 2 years by an abusive father until he was abandoned to the foster care system at age 8. He went to a new school every 6 months as he was moved around from house to house and left school at 15 with no qualifications. He bummed around for a few years – drinking and taking drugs – until he was in a severe hit and run accident which left him with all the money he has. Compensation for a life barely lived? I don’t think so.

He’s cashed up with his own home but he isn’t happy. He’s an alcoholic and a drug addict who can’t keep his demons at bay. My sister believes he will now drink himself to death, that he may be dead in as little as three months. And no one on our side of the fence will try and stop him due to his past behaviour.

I cried last night for a man who has caused my family so much pain. I cried for his pain. For the uneven sum of his life. It just seems like a life lived for no reason at all with so little joy in it that all you can do is gasp when you really and truly think about it.

I’m glad my sister got out, but I’m not glad for the rest of it. Even when you feel they deserve it, it is hard to see someone underlining their pain.

Like The Sun

I need a new quote to get me through the week.

I liked this one.

Hope you do too.

Hope you have a week full of hope and sunlight.

Kookaburra Laugh

On nights when storms are brewing and the sun sets like a Hermes scarf, I see the kookaburras on the wire laughing at the shadows. Smaller birds harass them, attempting to claim their vantage points, but the kookaburras are unmoved. Their ancestry in this land is old, their spirits are sage, shrewd; another day with food, water and flight aplenty is all they seek.

When I first came to this land, as green and new as a character in a folk tale, stunned by the movement, smell and colour of the bush, I saw a kookaburra in a gum tree. I knew the song, even from a place of colder climes :

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

Merry, merry King of the bush is he

Laugh, Kookaburra laugh…….

When you see a creature you have only ever heard of in songs or books before, it makes you do a double take. The kookaburra looked at me with his wise black eye. I looked at him, willing myself to be brave and stare straight back. Somehow in that moment we knew each other.

Can you feel a kinship with a wild thing? With a bird that knows the sky, the sun and the wind better than you ever could? I think you can, I think when you share that moment of connection you realise that despite differences in wings and feathers, skin and bone, we are all the same.

The kookaburras laugh once more as the thinnest stream of light remains. The laugh rises and mingles with the purple dark; a sound that is a bit like joy, a bit like tears.

The shadows grow thicker, purpose gathers, and suddenly the wires are clear as wings cut through the indigo air. Velvet, strong as the light of wishes, ending the day.

* Kookaburra was written by Marion Sinclair in 1932.

You can listen to a kookaburra laughing here.