The M-Word

As one of my friends pointed out to me a few weeks ago, I've been spending rather a lot of time talking about marriage. And I guess he's right. I mean, I talk about it a lot with my partner, because four and a half years into a relationship its bound to start coming up. But I've been casually throwing the topic into conversations with other people, and this apparently constitutes a cause for concern.

I never used to have any strong opinions either way on marriage, but I guess given the vehement anti marriage stance I've had the last few years, it's hardly surprising. I have somewhere in the region of eight engaged couples on Facebook, the majority of whom got engaged in the last few years. One set of friends my age who are already married, and another set getting married this month. And I went to the wedding reception of someone I used to work with at the weekend. To top it all off, I've been reading the hell out of xojane.com recently, where the m-word is a regular feature. Engagement and marriage are subjects that are never far away.

Those are just some obvious examples of the societal pressure I'm feeling to get married. I mean, I'm approaching my mid twenties and in a committed long term relationship. Getting married is this thing I should be thinking about doing soon, right? And it's not so much that I don't want to, it's just that the idea completely terrifies me, and I'm not 100% sure where this level of fear came from. Although I can promising you, people actually turning around and telling me I need to get married next really doesn't help. I've been waiting for that moment since I finished university last year and I finally got it on Saturday.

I mean, I've been an adult for a while now, and I've done plenty of adult things (oh hush you!). I left home to go to university, and got a shiny degree. I've sorted out renting a house, and all the boring utilities that go along with it. I got myself a job (two in fact) last summer. I'm in a proper adult relationship where I live with him and everything. And I think that might be one of the big issues. While it is a proper adult relationship in that we live together and share bills and worry about money and stuff, it still doesn't feel like one, not really. I mean, I put used tea bags in the sink just to wind Sam up, and he uses his creepy voice way too much because he knows how much I hate it. Our default method of communication is winding each other up. I really feel you're not mature enough to be getting married if you're still giggling at each others' farts.

All the other adult things I've done felt relatively easy, like they were just the next small step on this journey through the big bad world. And while I occasionally look back and think "holy shit I've grown up a lot", each individual step was almost insignificant at the time and as such didn't feel that scary at all. Engagement and marriage on the other hand, feels like a ginormous step up, and consequently it terrifies the fuck out of me. Especially as my mum has vetoed my plan to elope and not tell anybody we got married until I'm thirty. I'd have stipulated not telling anyone until Sam turned thirty, but that's a hell of a lot closer than my big 3-0.

It feels weird to have strong feelings on this subject one way or another; I spent most of my life not really caring much about it. I was never one of those girls who were adamant they were going to grow up and get married and have kids. Nor was I one of those teens who had their ideal wedding planned in ridiculous detail. I had friends who did though. If I was ever asked about the subject I would tell them "I'd work it out if I find someone crazy enough to want to spend the rest of their life with me". (Teenage me wasn't very aware of ableist words. Twenty something me apologises). Turns out, I found someone who does seem willing to to spend the rest of their life with me. Who'd have thunk it?

And so I find myself battling this societal pressure to get hitched, my opinions on marriage changing every six months. I can go from suggesting Sam and I elope one week to telling him I never want to get married the next. And if I bring up the subject unusually often, it's because I'm trying to navigate my own thoughts and emotions. Weighing up the pros and cons, all to aware that the pressure to actually get married is nowhere near as crushing as the pressure to do it a particular way, the "right" way.

My experience of the process in media (TV, film etc.) is that the wedding is the focus point for engagement and getting married. That it has to be this utterly perfect (expensive) day where you have to keep every single person you've ever met happy. I'm not a conventional woman. All that fussing about with the dress, the hair, the make up, the bridesmaids, the flowers, the photography, the reception, none of that appeals to me. If I got married it would be for the marriage itself, not the wedding. And it seems there are too few roles models for me in that regard. At least, too few depictions of a happy marriage that doesn't involve a house, a car, and a few kids. Possibly 2.5, I don't know what the average is any more. Marriage is more or less a complete unknown to me, and that makes it scary. How the hell can I decide to make this massive, important and mostly permanent decision about my life without knowing anything about how it might be for me?

Which brings me to another thing that scares me about getting married; the prospect of getting divorced. The idea that this might happen to me is horribly distressing for me, and one possible solution is to just never get married. I'm not sure why this prospect terrifies me so much. I know the statistics, I know that it can be as big or small a deal as you choose to make it, more or less. But I honestly don't think I could cope. I've had a few boyfriends, only a few of whom I'd actually say I had a relationship with, and every time I've gotten dumped it's been devastating, no matter how long they were my boyfriend for. And I was the dumpee in all but one cases, go figure. The devastation I would feel if Sam and I broke up would be horrific, and yes, I've had a taste of what it feels like. But as much as I know it would hurt if my relationship with Sam ended, the idea of getting divorced from him feels like it would have an extra layer of horrible to it.

Having a fails marriage is in a completely different league to having a failed relationship. You made these vows, and one way or another, you've broken them. You failed to live up to your promise. Plus, there's paperwork.

When I think about it carefully, there's a bunch of reasons this subject terrifies me. And my research into the pros and cons haven't helped alleviate that. Many of the reasons to get married that I've found are tied up in religion. Many of the advantages over cohabiting seem to assume babymaking will happen at some point. I've never seen a convincing argument either way. Never seen anything to stop the idea of this big grownup thing being to damn scary.

There was more I wanted to say, but I couldn't find the words and this post has languished in drafts long enough. If I can collate my thoughts I might do another post. You have that to look forward to.

Music makes the World Go Round.

I have always been a big fan of music. But recently I have become that which all people hate; a hipster. Ok, I don't have the silly haircut or the glasses or the permanent sneer, but I do seem to have developed the taste in music. I feel I should explain a little.

When I say I've always been into music, I kind of mean it. I have stories from my mum of me dancing in utero.Which is weird. I'm guessing my genuine appreciation of music didn't start until later. Much later, since I distinctly remember the first CD I ever owned being a Boyzone album. There were cassette tapes before that, Disney and the Black Lace Party tape, but they were owned by my parents. The Boyzone album was the first that was actually mine. I had a brief fling with the Backstreet Boys before developing a debilitating obsession with Westlife. I mean, it actually got me bullied, despite the fact they were the most popular band in Britain at that time.

I don't really remember when, but sometime during my first year at secondary school I fell out with Westlife, and pop music as a whole. Over the course of a summer holiday, I went from the country's biggest Westlife fan to being a metalhead, or 'mosher' as we called them when I was young. The only step in between was a breif fling with the Gorillaz, which doesn't have much in common with either genre of music. People were understandably shocked, some people laughed, a whole bunch of people said I'd grow out of it. Well, I've been listening to metal for the last twelve years and I've not grown out of it yet.

In fact the only thing that's happened to my taste in music as I've aged is that it's gotten broader. I used to be such a music snob; I refused to listen to anything that wasn't made with 'real' instruments. Which is kind of sad, because there's a lot of very good electronic music out there. I used to have utterly contemptible views on country music, until I found a whole bunch of country pop that I liked. One of my current favourite albums is a country album. Likewise I used to hate rap, but I've recently found someone who makes excellent rap that is relevant to my interests. Yet despite adding these things to my repertoire, I remain a steadfast fan of all things metal.

My new favouritist thing in the world is instrumental metal. Something I blame Jeph Jacques for entirely. I've tried for a long time to appreciate the more extreme forms of metal and failed. Turns out what was putting me off is the screaming vocals; I can appreciate extremely heavy guitars and drums as long as there's no vocals. Instrumental metal of any variety makes me happy.

Which actually brings me nicely back to what I said at the start, about being a hipster. The reason I lay claim to that label is because I'm having tremendous fun discovering and listening to bands you've probably never heard of. I spend hours trawling through bandcamp and soundcloud, trying to find new and exciting music by smaller, oft ignored artists. And I find stuff, free a lot of the time. Amazing music that lots of people will never hear. This is what makes me a bit of a hipster, the intentional search for music that is lesser known.

I've started using 8 track to build mixes of my new found favourite music, and putting these playlists together has made me realise how much I want to make music myself. I fear it would just end up another one of  those many hobbies of mine, that get pushed aside in favour of doing crap all. Maybe it's something I'll actually stick with, I certainly have the means to do it.

Maybe I'll just stick to listening to music.

Banana Fairy Tales

In my adventures as a wannabe writer, I have done many wondrous and varied things. I have written many, many pieces of fanfiction. Some decent, some dark, some utterly ridiculous. I had no idea just how much I'd written until I found the folder containing all finished and unfinished pieces on my computer. I probably won't share any of it here, though some of it did get imported here from my livejournal. Feel free to go hunting through my archives. Most of the rest of it is written under my usual username, if you have a burning desire to read what 14-18 year old me had to offer (I'd see a doctor about that burning thing though).

One of the other strange things I used to do was write fairy stories on bananas. If you've never written on a banana, I recommend you give it a go. It's a little odd, but oddly satisfying. These fairy stories weren't your usual fare, but slightly odd. I found the transcription of one of these stories amongst my fanfiction, and since it amused me, I thought I'd share it here.

I should write more stories on bananas.

Proof that I did indeed write it on a banana.

Banana Fairytale

Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a beautiful Princess.  The princess was in love with a handsome Prince, but he had a terrible secret; by the light of day he was a prince but by night he was a woman.  This was the result of a terrible curse placed on him by an evil sorceress.  The only cure for his… predicament was for him to receive love’s first kiss while he was in his female form.  Now the Prince didn’t want to live out his life with this curse, but neither did he want to tell the Princess his secret.  Somehow, he thought, I must trick her into kissing me as a woman so that I can end my curse and we can live happily ever after.  To that end, the Prince threw a huge ball, which he attended as a woman.  He/she plied the Princess with much mead and wine and… persuaded her to ‘take it upstairs’.  The two women kissed passionately and the Princess slid her hand up the Prince’s skirt, too drunk to notice he had changed back.  “I’m sure you didn’t have one of those a moment ago,” she said in surprise.  After a moment’s confusion she recognised her Prince and he told her the truth.  “But I like you as a woman was well,” wailed the Princess, having realised her true sexuality.  Just then, the Sorceress appeared, to cause mischief, and she made it so that one night a month the Prince would in fact be a princess.  The Prince married his Princess and they lived happily ever after.

Falling Into Fantasy: February's Pictonaut Overdue

After the initial euphoria of writing my first Pictonaut, I felt invincible. I decided I was going to try and write all the challenges I'd missed in a month. Well, I wrote three  before life caught up with me. This is the second of my Pictonauts, from February's challenge entitled Faces in the Woods. It's more stream of conciousness monologue stuff, only this one is a lot more stream of conciousness than Space Junkie. Also it's a little bit sweary. Still, I'm kind of proud of it. This was also published in the University of Nottingham's Science Fiction, Fantasy and Anime Society's Zine as "Fantasy vs Reality". That's what happens when I have to come up with titles on a deadline. I like the new title better.

Now someone make me write this months' challenge.

Falling into Fantasy

Why the fucking fuck do these trees have faces? I'm not joking, they've got sodding faces. Not the kind you see in pictures on the internet, where a particular combination of knots or branches combined with a clever camera angle makes it look like they have faces. These look like real human faces. Hell, they look like they could speak if they wanted to. They're so real; they look like they could open their mouths and eat me. Thinking about it, they look pretty fucking angry.

And it's not just a few of the trees that have these faces, its all of them. Every. Single. One. I've never seen trees like this in my life, and I’ve looked at a few trees in my time. It's like I've been dropped into, I don't know, Middle fucking Earth or something. I seem to recall that the trees got pretty angry in that and started ripping shit up. Fuck. Maybe Game of Thrones, there are trees with faces in that, and I don't remember those upping sticks and destroying anything. Although, come to think of it, the trees in that are worshipped as gods and are probably linked with some ancient magical power. Shit. This is what I get for reading too many fantasy novels.

Back away, slowly. Nice trees. Friendly trees. I don't want to hurt you. I’m not going to chop you down and set fire to you. I'm a nice guy, I like trees, I'm a regular tree hugger me. Er, that is, if you want to be hugged, I can totally respect your personal space if you don't want a hug.

Shit. Stop talking to the trees. Can trees the trees even hear me? If a man screams in a forest and there's no one around, are the trees listening and plotting to kill me?

Bloody smegging hell, where the fuck am I? I don't remember planning on taking a walk in a wood where the trees have faces. I don't remember taking a walk at all. How the hell did I get here? Crap, maybe I did get transported to some fantasy world. Which is not good, not good at all. Unless I'm the protagonist in this fantasy novel. That would be pretty cool. Except I'll probably have some sort of ridiculously evil baddie to kill, and there'll be lots of danger and at some point I’ll have to utterly lose hope in order to be able to triumph over evil. Shit, that doesn’t sound so good at all. I think I'll just stay right here. Maybe the story will pass me by.

Nice trees...

What was that noise? Oh hell, there are things in this forest with me. Maybe staying here is a bad idea. I should try to find my way out, or at least a clearing, then the trees won't be so damn close. Right, let’s try to find some wide open space so I can breathe.

It's really quite warm here, and sort of dank and musty. Smells a bit like my basement, only a bit more 

green. Does green have a smell? If it did, it would smell exactly like this place. Oh God, why is it so warm here? The air is really oppressive, almost like it's out to get me as well as the trees. How'd the trees even get so big anyway? This forest must be really old for them to have gotten that tall. Wonderful, sentient trees with face that want to kill me and eat me. It would hardly be fair if one of them ate me, I mean, I’ve never eaten a tree in my life. Don't think it would taste nice.

This forest must be the quietest forest I’ve ever been in. There are no birds or little furry creatures or even any little bugs crawling around. Just the noise of me thinking. And breathing and crashing through the trees with faces. Not that bugs would be any better. I don't really like bugs. Why is there no noise here? Maybe this forest is inhabited by some sort of ninja animals. Maybe some of them have really big teeth want to eat me. I'll never even hear it coming...

Awesome, trees with faces and ninja predators that want to eat me. That's really going to help fight the urge to shit my pants.

Wait a minute, it's a bit lighter up ahead. Maybe I've found a clearing at last. It would be really nice to have some extra air, so breathing doesn't hurt so much. A little breeze wouldn't go amiss either.

Shit! Voices. There are people in that clearing. I'll crawl up nice and quiet, see who they are. Maybe they're friendly and will help get me out of here. Maybe they'll want to kill me too. That wouldn't be good.  I can see them now. Maybe if I keep down nice and low they won't see me. I can't understand a word they're saying. They're definitely not speaking English. Doesn't sound like any other language I've ever heard either. Bollocks, definitely got dropped into some sort of fantasy story. It's not one I've read though, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I hope I'm not the protagonist.

Oh God, that guy has horns on his helmet. And they're all wearing black. Definitely bad guys. Those look like pretty big swords too. Nasty. I bet that's some sort of wizard staff as well. Horned helmets, all in black, big ass swords and a magic staff, outnumbered three-to-one; doesn't look too good for me if they find me. Oooh, pretty blue light; definitely a magic staff, that doesn't bode well- shit, they've seen me.

Running flailing time. Shit shit shit shit shit. Oof, hello ground will you be my friend? Ouch, didn't know that light could hurt so damn much, but I guess it is magical light. Can't move my limbs. Fuck, they've caught me. 

Nice bad guys, don't hurt me. What are you doing? No, don’t pick me up, I can walk just fine by myself if you’d just let me…

Oh, didn’t notice that big stone table before, wonder what it’s for. Oh, they’re tying me down. That’s probably not good. Fantastic, looks like I’m about to be sacrificed for something. And I seriously doubt that afterwards the table will crack and I’ll be resurrected like a ragingly obvious Jesus metaphor. I wish I could understand what these guys were saying, even just a word to know why.

Bollock, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks and bottoms.

That, that’s a pretty big knife, nice and ceremonial looking. The ropes are too tight to escape. Fuck. End of the line for little old me. And I have no idea why, or even how I got here. Maybe this is just a bad fucking dream. I know, I’ll try pinching myself awake. OW! Well, looks like I’m not dreaming. Either that or someone changed the rules of pain in dreams just to fuck me over. Which isn’t all that good either.

Yes, yes, yes chanting, mystical spells, blue light. All that shit I’ve read about a hundred times. Get it over with. If I have to die, I’d rather it happen quickly, before I actually do shit my pants. Fuck fuck fucketty fuck fuck. I didn’t want it to end like this. Maybe if I close my eyes they’ll go away. Nope, still chanting. And now the horn-helmet guy has raised his knife. This is it.

Shit.

Jamibu: Rest in Peace my Friend

Words are funny things; they fail you just when you need the most. A friend of mine passed away last week and I’ve been trying to find words to describe how I’m feeling, words to express sorrow and sympathy and support. I’ve tried lots of different words, but not a single one has felt adequate. Not even close. So I’ve decided I will just write words and not worry about whether they’re adequate, because they probably never will be.

Jamibu was a very good friend of mine. There was one time when I probably knew him better than anyone. It’s been a long time since we were that close, but that kind of friendship leaves its mark. Jamibu was a good man; he had many friends and touched many people’s lives. He was also far too young for life to be taken from him. He had been ill for a long time, but that doesn’t ease the burden.

I met James Bullock, though he will always be Jamibu to me, at University, at the Science Fiction Society. I am almost certain he was the one who signed me up, but my first proper memory of him was in the second week of term; we were stood in a group outside Hugh Stewart bar having one of those getting to know you conversations. He introduced himself as Jamibu and my friend John told me I should call him Strawberry, because it would wind him up. I never found out why he hated the nickname so much.

I lived with him, for almost two years. There’s a certain level of friendship attained by seeing someone in their slippers and dressing gown with not much underneath almost every day for that long. A certain level of friendship and ease that is never really lost.

He was delightfully good fun to wind up, which is a trait in friends I find quite appealing, whatever that says about me. He was always so wonderfully easy to talk to. We talked about everything; sci fi, romance, science. I told him some of my deepest darkest secrets, and he told me some of his. There are some things I know about that man that I don’t know how many other people know. He was the person you needed if you wanted advice on new tech, or maybe just a good (really bad) pun. He got me eating eggs after a lifetime of hating him. He urged me to push my boundaries, to go outside my comfort zone.

When I say I went through hell when he got diagnosed with cancer, I’m not really using much hyperbole. Only a few people know that I spent some time in counselling because of it. I couldn’t cope with learning cold, clinical facts about cancer drugs while my friend was living the realities every day. I couldn’t deal with the idea that I might lose him. It almost cost Sam and I our relationship, but I’m glad it didn’t. Jamibu would have never wanted that.

I have been remarkably lucky in my relatively short life, to have been relatively untouched by death. I’ve always been somehow removed from the deaths I’ve known, either by time or by distance. This is the closest it’s come and I’m dreading the day death comes closer than this.

When I found out that Jamibu had passed away, I have to be honest, my heart clenched but I wasn’t that surprised. I knew he’d been ill and the mental preparation had been made long ago and stored away. So for a while, I was alright. I had a few drinks in his honour, and gave my energy over to worrying about Sam. Part of me felt that it was some sort of elaborate hoax, some sort of horrific joke and I’d see him pop up on social media somewhere. Rationally I knew that people don’t kid around with shit like this but it had been a long time since I’d seen him every day, so his absence didn’t hurt, it just made it feel unreal.

Telling people made it harder, made it feel more real, and it started to hurt. Sometimes I’m fine, and he’s just a constant thought in the back of my mind. Most of the time it’s like there’s a dull ache in my chest. Sometimes, depending on where I am, what is happening and who has said what, the dull ache deepens to an almost physical pain in my chest. There are times when it feels like a wound, raw and bleeding. It hurts, but I have not yet shed any tears. I worry about whether that means I don’t care, but it’s entirely possible that the tears will fall during or after the funeral. It might also be something ridiculous in six months’ time that sets me off, I really don’t know.

I think human beings have a tendency to focus only on the good traits of a person after they’ve died, as if including their personality flaws somehow constitutes speaking ill of the dead. I don’t see it that way; Jamibu was a wonderful person, but he had traits that I didn’t like, disagreed with or that wound me up. And I don’t think it is disrespectful if I talk about the flaws that he had, quite the contrary; I believe it disrespects the man that he was to ignore the fact he wasn’t perfect.  I loved that man, but at times I also hated him, because he wasn’t some paragon of humanity. He wasn’t a bland action hero, he was a human being. I want to remember the whole person, as much as I can, for as long as possible.

To preserve his memory, I have done the best thing I know; I have memorialised him in my skin, in tattoo form. I had it done on Tuesday, a week to the day since his passing, which I thought was fitting. I was scared about getting it done, because although I have a number of tattoos already, this is the quickest I’ve gone from idea to actually getting it done, but it felt right. It is the perfect way to preserve his memory for me, and I just know he’d be amused (and playfully annoyed) that I have chosen to immortalise him as a strawberry.

My tattoo at a few hours old. Elvish lettering saying
 Jamibu with a strawberry underneath

One of the things that makes me saddest about his death is that I cannot share the strong faith he had. In fact, his passing to me provides evidence that the God he believed in does not exist. I wish it were otherwise. I don’t have faith or prayers to offer to those who loved him. But I do have hope. I hope that he was right and I was wrong, and that he’s up there somewhere being extremely exasperated at me for my choice of tattoo. I hope he was right so that one day we might meet again and he can say “Really Tonks, a strawberry?”  Until such a time as I can claim to have faith, I will keep this hope close to my chest.

Jamibu’s passing was sad, and tragic, but I think it is a testament to the man he was how his friends have banded together for support, especially those who knew him through Sci Fi. His life and death touched a great many people and we are all doing our best to support each other in this trying time. Last night we held a minutes’ silence at the AGM, a beautiful and fitting tribute. I’m proud of the way we’ve all come together to support each other, and I know he would be too.

James 'Jamibu' Bullock
1987-2012
"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar."

March Pictonaut: Space Junkie

My good friend The Rogue Verbumancer aka Glempy started a fiction challenge. He dubbed it the Pictonaut challenge, and the concept is very simple; each month he provides a picture he has found somewhere on the interwebs, and our challenge is to craft a short story of around 1000 words based on or inspired by this picture. I've been meaning to take part for months, but for one reason or another I never got around to it. Partly because  I'm lazy and have far too many hobbies anyway, but mostly because none of the picture prompts got me really fired up.

Until this month. This months picture immediately set off ideas in my head, but it took reading this post from The Rogue Verbumancer with similar themes to get me started. And once I started I found I couldn't stop. Words came pouring out and I finished this in under three hours (it would have been less, but I had work to do as well). I haven't edited it all, save to correct spelling. I found I kind of like the rambling internal monologue style, so I kept it.

The picture that inspired me to get writing for the first time in well over a year? It's a picture by Chris Cold and Tobias Roetsch and is called "Any Direction".

This is the piece inspired by it.

Space Junkie

Space is really fucking beautiful. Sometimes it's so beautiful that it makes your eyes hurt, your throat close up from the sheer power of the emotions running through you. And they're never emotions you can recognise that put you in this catatonic state, oh no. It’s never anger or lust or greed or hunger. Those mundane sorts of emotions that happen every day. These are BIG emotions. Scary fucking things that you're never sure how to process. They're vast and complicated and you only recognise some elements on the edge of a big emotion like that. Some sort of pride in humanity's achievements coupled with the wonder of life itself. Big sodding emotions.

And when I say space is beautiful, I don't mean the actual space. The black never-ending void that's just waiting to suck the life out of you if you put a foot wrong. That's not beautiful, that's fucking terrifying. I mean the stuff floating around in that airless freezing void. Planets and stars and nebulae and weird stuff that we've not thought up names for yet. It never looks like the pictures we send back to Earth. Those pictures are beautiful in their own right, but they're nothing compared to the wonder of a new planet up close. There's emotion associated with these things when you're actually there. Emotions that are big and scary and complicated and add to the beauty of it. I see this shit every day. New stars and their systems, new space anomalies. Every day for the past ten years, ever since I joined the science division out here. You'd think I'd be used to it.

You never get used to it though. All this wonder and emotion and awe. Veterans on their last day before retiring still have the same gobsmacked look on their faces as the freshest new recruit on their first day.

It wears you down. Being in this constant state of awe and wonder, being constantly moved by what the universe has to offer and trying to catalogue it in a cold and clinical matter. You lose the ability to feel more mundane emotions. How are you supposed to get excited about someone's birthday when your life is filled with constant wonder? Those of us who do this job, we lose something vital in order to do it. There are 5000 people on this ship and we never talk to each other about anything except work. We don't socialise, we don't chat. We barely even remember to use manners or common courtesy anymore. Those are small, insignificant things and we have to deal with the extraordinary on an everyday basis. We've lost the ability to form meaningful relationships, every single one of use. We don't have families. Most of us never bothered to put the effort into starting one; those who had families have lost them.

Space is like a drug. The wonder and excitement is like a constant high. It's the greatest drug that ever existed and you can never quit. Going cold turkey can never work, and there is no substitute for seeing the things we see out here. We're addicts, every single one. Being on leave is more like torture than a reward. When you go back to Earth or one of the colonies, you go back to a place that is so mundane. Boring inconsequential worries fill your time, but they can never fill that hole in your chest where all those big emotions were. Your sense of wonder fades, and you can't take enjoyment in anything anymore. Nothing satisfies except the drug itself. It's not so bad when you're on leave; you know you'll be going back soon enough. A few weeks, a month maybe and then you can have another hit. You get through because you know that you'll get that high back.

But what happens when you retire? You've spent maybe thirty or forty years up here in space. Thirty or forty years on a constant high, the likes of which you cannot get anywhere else but out here on the fringes of everything we know. You go home, tell yourself you'll be okay without your drug. But nothing can ever replace the life you've known. Nothing will ever compare to the things you've seen. You can't function in regular society. You're an addict, and you've been cut off from your drug of choice. So you start experimenting with more conventional drugs. Humanity has invented all manner of powerful hallucinogens and psychotics, just for this very purpose. Even in the beginning, the high doesn't compare to the high you were on most of your life. So you ramp up the dose, start mixing them together until you can't remember your name anymore because of the cocktail of drugs rushing through your system.

Most veterans end up overdosing, those that don't commit suicide. Because nothing can replace this feeling in your chest everyday you're out here; nothing can ever fill that hole because it is as black and infinite as the void itself. That is the price for the privilege of seeing extraordinary things.

The suicide rate amongst retired science officers who've done this job is many times that of the suicide rate in the normal population. That's no secret. But the fact is that the suicide rate on science vessels like this is almost as high. Some people overdose on space; they want to get so close that they step outside the airlock without a suit. Some people just can't handle it; space is just too big, too terrifying and too wonderful for them to cope. Some people just snap. They say if you make it through your first year you're a lifer. Most don't make it through their first year out here. The families aren't told the truth of what happened; in space there are a million and one accidents waiting to happen that can be blamed for the high attrition rate.

Space is dangerous. It is infinitely beautiful and it is infinitely cold and it doesn't give a shit about humanity. Being out here isn't humanity's greatest achievement, it's their greatest folly. We're simply not built to cope with everything the universe has to offer. If you don't get killed by some space virus, or a solar storm, or a landing party gone bad, then you'll get driven mad by the sheer fucking beauty of it all. You wind up a washed out space junkie who's lost everything that made you human in the first place. People aren't meant to be out here. Life is 100% fatal, but space has a knack of killing you quicker and more inventively than any weapon the human race has ever managed to come up with.

I've still got 20 years left on my contract, but I'll be damned if I'm going to die in a pool of my own shit and vomit hopped up on enough psychotics to liquefy my brain. That's not the ending I deserve. I've seen the wonder of the universe, stared the void right in the eye; I'm a junkie, but I'm sure as hell not going to die like one.

So I've decided I'm going to take a walk. A long one, off a short pier if you will, or maybe out the airlock. Maybe I'll put a suit on, and stay out there, as close as a person can get to heaven and wait until my air runs out. Falling asleep wrapped in the sheer intoxicating wonder of the universe. It'll be like being born, only backwards and more glorious.

Yes, that sounds nice.

I'm going out. I may be some time.

International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women's Day. I spent most of the day (and the next day) being angry at people (read men) getting uppity at the fact and trying to explain why we need this day. I was going to blog along similar lines but figured I'd gotten all ranty fairly recently.

So I'm doing something different.

International Women's Day is meant to celebrate women and their achievements. So instead of a rant, you're getting a list of my achievements;

I successfully completed school with grades good enough to get me into my first choice university.

I achieved a good degree in a science related subject.

I got onto a PhD program at a time when funding is extremely tight, even in the sciences.

I have acquired a working knowledge of Unix type systems

I achieved my Grand Prior Award with St John Ambulance, the highest award achievable as a youth member.

I was chosen to be Cadet of the Year for my county, and represented the organisation at a national level.

I have successfully navigated living in my own home, away from parents, and all that entails.

I have gained, and am still working on, a healthy romantic relationship, despite the barriers society puts up.

I have nurtured a number of meaningful friendships.

I have achieved a healthy relationship with my body, despite the cultural oppression of body hate.

I learned how to juggle three balls, and then three clubs.


Achievements of any kind should always be celebrated. Achievements made by anyone. We shouldn't just celebrate the achievements of a select, supposedly elite few. But that is the reality if the world we live in. I believe we can change that, one celebration at a time.