The winter mornings in Canberra were white with the terror of possibility, threatening as a blank sheet of paper. Pages slowly shifting, pulled by unseen fingers. Years passed like this: in obscurity. A childhood of absence sent me within myself. Into the feral imagination of a creature raised by the vacant face of television. Days in suburbia washed over me in watercolour, drowning me incrementally. Bert Newton – round like a sundial, telling me it’s morning, then selling me an ab-doer. Beyond that I was on my own. My mind was a wasteland of jingles, political slogans and catchphrases. The language of the 90s, selling us a dream that was made for only a few. Our house had no CDs, an old tape player in my bedroom the only music. At night I would play the Priscilla Queen of the Desert soundtrack to drown out the sound of our neighbours fighting. Anything before that was muffled by the TV. Sophie Monk, Sara-Marie, Paulini. A new micro-celebrity every season, all plucked from the same obscurity as me. I started high school and the anxiety hit, scalding, bubbling inside of me. I threw up on my white school uniform more than once. The next morning it would be washed clean and returned to my cupboard in silence. That year my mother started draining the washing machine into the garden – in spring the Hydrangeas bloomed a violent purple.
Beautifully written Eric