In My Own Time
Author: Bec
Disclaimer: Blue Heelers and its characters are property of Ch7 and Southern Star.
Lyrics: 'In My Own Time' by Delta Goodrem.
Summary: Amy evaluates her life and relationships as the holiday season approaches.
"To be more attractive to women."
As I wrestle with the photocopier, Joss' voice rings clear through the station as he stands up yawning.
"That's my new year's resolution!"
"Even being more tolerable to women would be a godsend." Kelly retorts dryly.
"She has a point." Alex chimes in from the mess room.
"So you're a woman now are you?" Joss asks smugly.
Alex comes out with a coffee and slaps a hand on Joss' back.
"No, but my feminine side really empathizes with Kelly's plight!"
"Are you sure it's not your only side?" Cracks Jonesy.
"Oi Jonesy watch it! I'm not the one who gets smashed on three drinks!"
"As if mate! You'll still be drunk on your first wine from Christmas come New Year!"
"Hey I hope you don't have the impression that we're drinking together on New Year!"
Alex exclaims. "You'll disgrace me!"
"Who else you gonna be drinking with? The vomit in the moldy bathroom?"
"Ahem. Vomit? Moldy bathroom? In my house?"
Susie stands up and advances upon the two boys who quickly back into the corner.
"Vomit? Moldy bathroom? You must've heard wrong Suse." Alex scratches his head. "Jonesy said…um…grommets…in the golden dinner…room?"
"Your lying sucks mate!" Jonesy rolls his eyes. "Maybe that should be your new year's resolution!"
"Whilst you two are still working out that in ten days, I'm going down to Melbourne. Party on!"
Joss fake head bangs amidst groans and laughs.
"So what mischief will you be getting up to Foxy?" Alex's voice rings across the room.
"A night on the town in your short skirt?"
He catches me a little off guard and for a moment I freeze.
"I very much doubt that Kirby. Since it seems that's what you'll be doing, I'd like to avoid the sight altogether, thank you."
I regret my words almost immediately, hearing the unintentional harshness in my retort but there is nothing is nothing I can do. I stalk back into the CI office and close the door.
I sit down and sigh. I'd almost forgotten about Christmas and New Years. To most people it's the festive season where they get to eat delicious food, exchange presents and have a great time with family. For me, it's just another day, usually one that I try to forget.
Whilst most spend it surrounded by aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, I spend it alone. Such is true of how I spend, or have tried to spend, the better part of my life.
And at some times this solitude is been my only comfort. Knowing that no-one but myself, is in charge of what is happening gives me control, control that I lacked for so much of my life. With no one close to me, I know there is no threat that what I want to do will be jeopardized. To achieve this I try to live for myself and no-one else.
But giving myself this control is not enough. Rather it makes me feel selfish, knowing that I am complacent. Knowing that I am, how I am is hard enough but that cannot be changed. What is done is done and you the past cannot be changed. However knowing that others are suffering the same thing when there is something I can do about it is often more than I can deal with. So through my police work, I try to give people back the control on their lives that they deserve. That by default should be theirs, but through abuse of power or misfortune is often ripped cruelly from their grasp.
In doing this, I feel that there is a constant battle within my mind. I want to live solely for myself, so that I am protected and impervious to anything threat that may come to hand but yet, I want to help people who have found themselves in the same situation as myself and give them back their sense of dignity and security. Because of this, I sometimes I feel like I am living two parallel lives.
At work I deal with everyone; colleagues, criminals, victims, witnesses and I fight to achieve one goal. Justice.
At home I deal with me, myself and I, and during this time I fight just get through to the next day.
My head is spinning around and it's making me dizzy.
I'm spinning around and it's making me ill.
You don't understand what I'm going through just to find a way to climb.
Sometimes I do wish for security – the security in knowing that I have love and companionship. But usually I manage to push this want aside, and fill the hole it leaves with work. With files, reports, follow-ups, anything I can do to ensure that others have an opportunity to have, what I do not. Rationalizing that although in many ways, it may be too late for me, I can stop others from getting to the stage I have. Usually this well-worn mechanism troops on without a hitch, but of course there are always those occasions when I cannot push it from my mind any longer and no amount of work can bring avail. These are the times when I fall and wish I had someone to catch me, or times when I see everyone else together, bonded by companionship and love and find myself with no-one. And these times I find myself at my most vulnerable.
Catch me if I should fall.
And even more so while I'm standing tall.
"Foxy!"
I look up, pulled from my reverie to find Alex standing at the door.
"I've off now, managed to pull holidays early."
I'm not quite sure why he's telling me this, but remembering how I snapped at him earlier I make an effort to be friendlier.
"What are you going to get up to?"
His face is open, his smile wide with warmth and friendliness.
"Melbourne. The big smoke. Alone for now, but I'll find some friends down there…unless you want to come Foxy?"
I see the way he smiles at me and I've seen it before. The smiles, the jokes, the 'Foxy' as I walk in the door. I realize he means well, but as strong as the sudden urge is to take him up on the offer, I despondently remind myself that I have thought that of people before. That they meant well, that they only wanted to help. And I again remind myself that many a time, I have judged wrongly. The ultimate bad judgement of course came with my uncle, but things didn't just turn around after that. I didn't suddenly become a guru at judging people and their motives. Rather, I became worse as my vision became clouded by my longing for comfort and love and support.
In the past it has come to the point where I have longed for comfort and love and security so much, that I have blindly put my trust in people and ultimately ended up in pieces. I can't afford to do that again. I've worked too hard, to get myself to where I am now, to finally put my past behind me, for it to all go down the drain.
But deep down, I have a gut feeling that Alex is harmless. Harmless. I want to slap myself. Of all the words I could use to describe him, I pick harmless. It has such a cold, offhand connotation to it, but it's the highest compliment I can pay him. Whilst others define people as nice, earnest, sincere, well-meaning…I've learnt that words like that can lie. There can be discrepancies, grey areas, small things that can turn into the biggest disasters.
And thus, my scarred mind again works differently to everyone else. I think of people in the only way I know how – I think of them in accordance to how much of a threat they are to me, how willing they are to hurt me. It is irrational and unfair and cynical – I know that much. But it is a mechanism that is built into my core so much that it cannot be unlearnt. It is not like training someone to stop biting their nails when they are nervous or fiddling with their hair in anxiousness. Because for me, this is not a comfort; it is a survival mechanism.
One I've learnt, not out of choice but out of need – if there is one thing I've learnt it is that being able to judge people is a necessity. Because the streets are a dangerous place. People are often not who they say they are, not who they appear to be. They lead you to believe that they deserve your trust and for your blind faith you can end up getting kicked in the teeth. Because trust is ultimately trust is not a commodity that can be solely owned by one person. Trust has to be a bond between two people, but the problem with going into a partnership with anyone is that you don't know what the outcome will be. They can offer to buy you a drink and you judge them on their generosity, but for all your trust you can end up semi-conscious, robbed and abandoned for your simple trust in human goodness.
And harmless as I think he is, there is always a seed of doubt. And regardless of the veracity of this doubt, it in due course turns into fear. And the seed of fear can manifest itself in you, and like a parasite suffocate your insides until it is in complete control. I cannot afford to lose that control. Not after what I've been through, fighting for so long to earn it back. I cannot deal with it falling to pieces now. I cannot afford to take that chance.
"Foxy?"
Alex flashes another grin in my direction as I am once again, drawn back to reality by his voice.
"Come on, what do you say?" He urges.
I press my lips together.
"I don't think so Alex."
"Okay."
He shrugs and smiles and walks towards the door with a wave.
"But Kirby?"
He turns, looking surprised.
"Have one for me."
As he walks out, I try to convince myself that I have done the right thing. I just made an informed decision. And I have. But nevertheless, there is a lingering feeling of unhappiness as I see him walk through the door that I just cannot understand. I finally pinpoint it as he exits the station.
Sometimes I wish I could just let myself go.
Sometimes despite everything, all this knowledge and 'experience' I have built up, I wish that I could just give myself up and see where the wind blows.
So much is happening to me.
So much that I can't even see.
So many words of wisdom that I am trying to be.
That just once, discard all the logicality, all the lessons I have learnt in trusting and avoidance and planning and fighting for myself only, and let myself be immersed in his smile, his jokes, his warmth. Because sometimes for that millisecond when he smiles or calls out my name; I feel something. Something that in my world of solitude and isolation is as rare as a red rose in a cold, icy winter. Something that makes me feel worthy; satisfied; like a whole person.
Sometimes I wonder if Alex knows this. I never show any affirmative reaction, nor do I try to return the gesture but sometimes, they are the only things get my through the day. I'd never tell him that of course, but sometimes the only conclusion I can draw is that he must have some inkling. Any other person would have given up chase months ago, yet he is still here...maybe he knows I need it. But maybe he is just being friendly. Maybe I just need to learn the difference. But even if he is just being friendly; being a friend…that bond between two people who call themselves friends, is another thing I long for. Maybe love is too much to ask for, maybe a relationship is too far off the horizon for anything to ever eventuate. And honestly, I don't know if I even want a relationship.
I have moved past the years I spent at my uncle's but it doesn't mean that the scars are gone. I know they will sit heavily in me forever, because they are a part of who I am. Maybe I will never experience what it is to have a real functioning relationship and in a way that makes me sad because I realize that I have never taken part in a real, functioning relationship, my whole life. I realize now that my relationship with my uncle was a complicated mess of mistrust and abuse of power and my relationship with Garth was built on foundations of false expectations, dishonesty and uncertainty.
But maybe with that realization, there is hope.
Because if the only relationships I've ever had, would be termed 'dysfunctional' maybe there is optimism. Because if I have never had the experience of a real relationship, maybe there is a chance of success should the opportunity for one ever come about. However slim the possibility, there is hope. And maybe just by accepting the fact that there may be the possibility of a relationship somewhere on the horizon, however far I can look forward. If I have come this far to be able to be in control of my own life, maybe one day I will be able to know what it's like to have someone else in my life, someone there for me, loving me, worrying about my safety, longing for my company.
Maybe one day I'll be able to gather the courage. Gather the strength to be able to return the smile, or the joke, to be able to take the leap of faith. In ten years, I have pulled myself out of the depths of despair and destruction to be able to function in society, to be able to right some of the wrongs I have been subject to. Maybe in another ten years I will be able to look at him, or look at someone and smile and know that I can trust them. Maybe in ten years I will have the strength to have faith in myself, so I can in turn have faith in others. Maybe ten years after that I will be able to share the holiday season with people I love and people that love me. Maybe if I can, I will be a better person. But for now, I'm just me. Change takes time, but it can happen, although I know it will not happen overnight. So this Christmas and New Year I will again spend alone, but with hope as my companion, it's good enough for me because I know that in time – in my own time - anything can happen.
In my own time I'll take a chance.
In my own time I'll find romance.
In my own time it'll be mine.
After the clouds there'll be the rain.
After the sun there'll be the moon it doesn't matter.
'cause it'll be in my own time.