Bounce Me Higher

I guess I'm in recovery mode. Came close to a relapse, but no cigar - I won the battle this time. To admit this, I'm not saying that everything is peaches and cream, because that is so far from the truth that it is laughable. But things will be improving, and I am feeling more optimistic about it now.

Had to be said. I never intended this journal to become the scrapheap of my mental health issues and self-help mantras; I pulled the plug on my former journal because it became just that. However, sometimes writing something down makes it solid. "I will get better" in my head can just as easily change to "I'm fat" or "University is too hard" or "My father doesn't love me". But the same sentence written down can't morph into something bad unless I let it.

So I won't.

Oh, I decided not to audition for Beauty and the Beast. Auditions were encroaching, and I had a particularly hard week leading up to the audition weekend. I eventually decided that it was too much effort, pain, money and time for such little reward - with politics the way they are, there was no chance and no way that I would possibly get Belle. I might have gotten ensemble, but things are complicated and it would have been given begrudgingly.
I have decided a better option is to try for The Pajama Game, being put on by UMMTA, the University of Melbourne Musical Theatre Association. I might have a chance at a role, it will be closer to my base of operations and who knows.. I might even make some friends at uni.

When I was littler, my family would go to Apollo Bay for two weeks every summer. We'd stay there with most of my extended family (Dad's side) in this big, old beach house. There was a huge willow tree in the backyard with some kind of raft nailed to the branches - our treehouse. Nobody worried that we'd fall out of the tree or get polio from rusty nails. There were chickens in a little run at the back of the yard, and sometimes they would jump the fence. We would chase them with sticks until they got scared enough to jump back into their run.
Each day all of us children would go to the beach as soon as we'd been slathered in sunscreen, and swim and play all day until we were so tired we could do nothing but drag ourselves home to bed. We'd peel our sunburnt skin off and compare it, and poke our hungover uncle asleep under the pool table. We would beg the adults for money to run off to the carnival or buy fish and chips.
But the best part was the trampolines. Every summer, the highlight for me was going trampolining - usually we'd only do it once, but I would look forward to going to Apollo Bay all year because of the trampolines. They were big, Olympic sized trampolines set into the ground so I couldn't fall off and hurt myself. I would jump until I felt sick, whirling, flipping, somersaulting.. screaming and laughing the whole time. I loved the way my hair would swish around my face and I was weightless for a couple of seconds. Adrenaline and endorphines galore. I loved it when my knees would buckle after being on it for ages; I'd land on my feet and crumple down to my knees and fall over on the trampoline.. a giggling, jiggling mess of a girl in socks and leggings. I loved it.

I'm beginning to crave it again. Definitely literally, but maybe figuratively as well. I want things to happen. Good things. Things that are so intensely wonderful they make me laugh and fall over. Things that make me smile until my face hurts, and I feel like my chest is going to burst open and rain little love-hearts, stars and flowers on everyone.

My shrink suggested today that I should take a.. patron of sorts. Perhaps an older man to provide some sense of companionship, in exchange for some sort of sponsorship. Nothing sexual, nothing untoward, nothing like that at all. Nothing that Lucien would have a problem with, of course. I suppose I'll have to explore the option further with my shrink, he said there were more people looking for that type of companionship than I would think. The idea freaks me out somewhat, I suppose I have changed a lot in recent times. Lots of things that I thought I'd never be able to do are suddenly things that I have done without looking back. I guess I'm growing up a bit.