Ofrecer amistad a el que pide amor es como ofrecer pan a el que muere de sed.

You ask me. Again.

‘What?’

You repeat yourself.

I don’t say anything.

And you really need me to explain my silence to you?

‘I wish I could reciprocate,’ you say.

Fuck. Your eyes are so big and I can see myself reflected in them.

I’m crying. If I concentrate really hard I can (almost) convince myself the tears are coming out of your eyes. Or am I crying? No, not yet. 

‘Are you alright? You’re face is trembling.’

Really? Yeah. I think I’m having a stroke. What the fuck do you think?

I lie there looking at my reflection in your big, bright, beautiful pupils, feeling like a picture of a pale, rotting cadaver in a beautiful, crystal picture frame and trying to straighten my face out as it scrunches up more and more tightly with the pain of it all. Again.

You lie there in patient silence, waiting for me to finish. You’re use to it. How many times have we been here now?

And after a few moments, miracle of miracles, I stop quivering. I stop screaming all those words you’ll never hear. Just in time, too. Calmly as possible, I tell myself:

Suck your stomach in. That’ll help. Straighten up. You look hunched. God, what am I wearing?

And finally, I say it. Not very loudly, and with very little conviction, but nevertheless, thunderous applause for my bravery breaks out in my mind as soon as I manage to utter those fatal words. Again.: 

I’m fine.

Love: an exercise in Narcissism.

I get knocked down, not all the way down, but I'm kind of hanging on a weird angle and would appreciate a helping hand. Oh Danny boy, Danny boy...

The Melbourne French Theatre is being quite uncooperative about any possibility of helping me.

They don't offer anything in the way of playwrighting scholarships and don't seem too willing to compromise. Oh well. When Frenchie and I have five illegitimate kids, some with disabilities, all with three heads and socially crippling French laughs, I'll know how to get the A Current Affair team onto for financial support. After all, this is all their fault.

Speaking of financial support, I'm about to undertake the massive task of writing a new play for No Strings Attached, but I've been robbed of any commission purely because I'm still an emerging artist. God Damn. The best bit is the play PJ (Artistic Director) wants is one about the struggle of the disabled artist. There are times when not even the most cliché of writers can stand to drink from the cup that bares the richly bittersweet taste of irony.

'Next year will be better' is officially my new mantra.

'Didn't you say that last year?' seems to be the universe's response.

It's times like this when one must begin one's journey along the winding road to inner strength and peace. Beginning with a banana and pecan pudding.

Surely we've got some wine somewhere. 

Or would that be to cliché?

We all wanna be big, big stars, yeah, but we got different reasons for that

My parents were very cruel people.

My father was a violent alcoholic, and my mother drugged me with fairy tales and love.

Nowadays I can't decide which one of them I hate more.

We all want someone to blame for the way we are.

I am pathetic. Sitting here with a quarter-finished monologue for the Beg Borrow and Steal project and a nowhere-near-finished full-length play on my screen, knowing they need to be done, but just sitting here, staring. And yet I feel like I'm being productive. It's a writer thing.

I'm not normal. Saturday I went to a friend's 21st and found myself having to fight the urge to get out my notebook and just sit there writing for the whole night. It could have been worse... I've been known to have my notebook on my lap, even on the dancefloor. Single? Why, yes, I am.

I am happy. Sometimes being stuck in between those two people: the extrovert and the quiet thinker is literally painful, but in the end I like being me and I can't be anyone else anyway, right?

I'm indecisive. The minute you leave me alone in peace with my thoughts, suddenly I want to go clubbing and vice versa. 

But somehow I get by. And that's the best anyone can hope for in the end, isn't it?

We all want someone to blame for the way we are,

but the lucky ones also want someone to thank.

I guess this is where we move on to the blogs about my feelings, right?

So how do I feel?

A little bit grumpy and scalded. Try pushing a wheelchair over a small bump while carrying a cup of tea and see how it makes you feel.

Other than that?

Fine. Well, I've been told that my 'fine' is far from the 'normal' fine, but I'm fine.

Angry, frustrated, confused, scared, excited... both happier and sadder than I have ever been before.

Have you ever felt homesick, but homesick for being away from home?

Does that make any sense?

Who am I talking to?

I have. I do.

I think I need to get out of here for a while. Or maybe a long time. See the world and let it see me. On one hand, I'm desperate to go back to France to see my loved ones over there, but the idea terrifies me. Firstly because I'm scared I might go and not ever want to come back. Secondly, I'm scared it may not be as magical to return as I have been imagining it for the past three years. And thirdly--ho, thirdly--well, frankly I'm afraid I might wind up in bed with a certain someone. Actually, after three years of playing with each others emotions the way we do, I think if we were given the oppurtunity, we might not even make it as far as the bed. Wow, blogging really does open you up, huh?... 

We'll go into this in more detail later, but basically there is a boy who sends me very nebulous messages about giving me his heart and soul and running away with me, and I might, at one stage, have reciprocated and now no longer know whether I reciprocate or not.

Pathetic, I know. But in my defence, he is French. And a guitarist. Ah, you see? Be not so quick to judge. 

So, I either stay here, feel bored and even trapped and mope about one person, or I go to France and possibly wind up desperately poor and most probably unhappy with another one.

OR

I get the best of both worlds. I could just try being enough for myself, translating some of my stuff and running off to the French theatre of Melbourne. 

I have been in a wheelchair for ten years, so would you think me crazy if I told you I swear that sometimes I can still feel, hear myself running?

I think we can all hear and feel that, if we let ourselves. Maybe it's just a bit easier for me because I don't have to fight to hear it over my 'real' footsteps. 

It's a dream, it's fate, whatever you want to call it, trying to pull us back to it.

It's our hearts, isn't it?

That's how I imagine it.

Imagine if the sound we've come to recognise as a heartbeat was in fact a 'heartstep'

Yes, it's my heart. And I think it knows where it's going, even if the rest of me doesn't yet.

So I'm have to give it that  little green flashing light that says 'WALK'

Maybe if life were a traffic light, it might look a bit like this:

fear

indecision

faith

No idea what's going on with the text direction on that article.

I'll fix that later.

Well, I probably won't.

So anyway, Hi. I just remembered I made this blog so I thought I might as well put some stuff on it. All bow to my unfailing logic.

I suppose I could start off (again) by doing an introduction of myself, but I am so complexly simple that to do it "properly" would: a) bore you b) confuse you and c) scare the shit out of you.

So I'll be brief 

Kelly 

20 years old for about four months longer

Loves writing, theatre and languages (to make a short list)

Dreams of spending the rest of her life as an artist (writer, perfprmer... whatever comes up) and an interpreter (French just as soon as I get myself prepared and Auslan once I am actually able to sign inteligably)... also speaks Spanish but not well.

Can make you cry when she tries and often makes you laugh when she doesn't mean to.

Not a Disability rights activist-- more of a... humanitarian with a disability

Might sound like she speaks without thinking a lot of the time, so you'll just have to trust me... she does think...

and...

she is the kind of person that has a 'word of the day' screensaver.

Nuff said?

ps: this is the only photo of mw I could find. don't bother trying to brush that hair out of my eye. trust me. doesn't work.

Ya gotta start something someday somewhere, Kid.

Late one night these words came to me,
and though they didn't wash away my fear, they gave me the endless gift of the clarity
of knowing that nothing will ever be clear.
So maybe life's not the results, maybe life's the plans.
And despite what i've been told, maybe life's not what you hold, maybe
life's your hands...

"closeyoureyesopenyourheart"

My name is Kelly. I look like me and I'm about my height. Sometimes
I think
someone forgot the "ready, set" and just screamed "GO!" and in
many
ways, I'm
thankful for that.