It was sort of nice and therapeutic painting the old cubby. Pulling down torn posters and pictures cut from Dolly and TV Hits - cringing the whole time, pretending I wasn't to blame. Pulling out so many staples and ten-year-old blu-tack, then finally painting over drunken, secret and incomprehenisble scribbles that covered the walls and ceiling. A patch that memorialised Em and I becoming blood sisters in 1998, a little square marked out with texta framing bloodied fingerprints - proof!
And pseudo-wiccan spells scribbled under the window - the remnants of a melted candle on the sill and staining the carpet. And so many expressions of lust/love/confusion/hormones. What a weird time high school was. Reacting to a reaction. Every emotion amplified and stretched tight, making it so vulnerable to attack. We were all so easily wounded.
The house has transformed so much it is not so hard to say goodbye to it - 'cause it was also the site of stressed and unhappy times. But it is outside, the dam, the land and out gardens which pull on my heart. I know there are bits of that place in me, and parts of me are embedded forever in the seemingly bottomless dam - which we would spend whole summers in. Part of my souls still plays down on the other side of the dam bank, amongst the chinese scrubs and the half-burnt stumps that created cavernous bunkers. And a part of me is sitting on top of the water tank and then leaping down onto the dam bank, exhilarated with my fear and my courage, encouraging my town-friends to follow me.
In the cubby too, hide innocent and not so innocent memories. Chris and I bravely sleeping there, scared to turn out the small fluro light for fear of the wolf that almost certainly lurked beyond the door. Experiments in witchcraft and a night when I was 14, ridiculously drunk on brandy stolen from the pantry with Jenna and Shelly.
Painting the cubby, I thought about the possible family that might make our home theirs. The new memories that will be created and the new worlds that will be imagined in this place.
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