Secrets and Lies

She says, 'Some days I feel so angry, I could kill everyone. But right now, I'm taking codeine. I don't feel anything'.

He says, 'No, things aren't going so well, her parents are here, it's not good, she takes it all out on me'.

She says, 'This is where she bit my finger', turning her hand down and showing a missing nail.

He says, 'Some days I feel so empty, so alone, this self-loathing makes me hit myself. My mother had postnatal depression when I was a baby. I'm too scared to talk to her about it'.

She says, 'I can't talk about the girls father, they might hear, they're at a sensitive age'.

He says, 'I've been a serial monogamist my whole life, I want to experience something different, a freedom to explore relationships inside and out.'

She says, 'You betrayed yourself, you were deceitful to only one person, yourself'.

He says, 'I think I should be able to fuck anyone. They want it, I give it to them and they like it rough'.

She says, 'He told me to leave, I'm 40 years old and I had to go home and sleep at my dad's house. I transferred $40,000 out of the bank account. I've been in enough relationship break-ups not to walk out empty handed this time. I'm taking the bed too'.

He says, 'I used to be a prostitute, I got paid really good money. I was good. I miss that life. I miss the money. Now I have a legitimate lifestyle, legitimate partner, I'm broke and bored'.

She says, 'Some days the office politics gets me down. There is four people in my workplace... He doesn't know how to communicate, so he gets her to leave nasty notes on my desk'.

He says, 'I'm not scared of dad anymore'.

Out amongst the walking wounded
every face on every street
you and me and him and her
some days I think I could go insane.

Catharsis

Catharsis is a form of emotional cleansing first defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It originally referred to the sensation that would ideally overcome an audience upon finishing a tragedy. The fact that there existed those who could suffer a worse fate than them was to them a relief, and at the end of the play, they felt ekstasis (literally, astonishment), from which the modern word ecstacy is derived. While seemingly related to schadenfreude, it is not, however, in the sense that the audience is not intentionally led to feel happy in light of others' misfortunes; in an invariant sense, their spirits are refreshed through having greater appreciation for life.
The term catharsis has been adopted by modern psychotherapy to describe the act
of giving expression to deep emotions often associated with events in the individuals past which have never before been adequately expressed. (encyclopedia, the free dictionary)

In that moment she couldnt decide which was causing more pain. His betrayal or apparent ambivilant attitude to her distress. As the anger constricted around her throat, tightening her chest until her breathing became laboured she knew she must act or be overwhelmed by this weight of emotion that was squeezing the life from her like a tightening hand grasping a puppet.

In that moment of insight the need for action stood out. Move. She walked purposefully to the back garden shed, removing the axe, searching unsuccessfully for a pair of gloves and then alighting the stairs and trudging up the weedy paddock.

The first piece of offending furniture fell with a crack from its place and one swing of the axe splintered the back and rattled the frame of the cheap veneer shell. Then the fury overcame her and she screamed, 'Bastard, you fucking bastard', over and over again as the axe fell and the drawers lay in splintered ruins. Collecting each fragment of the hacked remains she walked down the hill and dumped it in the centre of the clearing, rolling an unused petrol drum over to the site she threw in books, tools, crumpled papers and the fragmented chest of drawers.

Searching the shed, her eyes took in paint cans, tool shelves, an old computer stacked precariously, crates of old newspapers before resting on a petrol can. The vapourous fuel sloshed from the can dousing the material, shimmering in a mirage of evapourating fumes. She carefully lit the end of a roll of paper and held it above the drum before dropping it into the can. In a moment, the space between the inhalation and exhalation, nothing. Then the fuel exploded upward in a fireball and her eyes instinctively turned away before returning to see the remains engulfed in flames.

Morning Star

I met a man. We met purely by chance, a fleeting, casual encounter. The title of the nondescript reddish-brown book he was reading caught my interest. I had been reading on the same subject the night before. I smiled, we exchanged a few words. Tonight with the moon full and pulling at the centre of the earth, I felt the tug of fate at my heart. Standing above, looking down on the surface of my life. He was there again today. I had not noticed much about him the first time, except his foreign accent and that his eyes had engaged with mine, kindly, he smiled thanks when I brought him coffee, his upturned face lined with artistic sensitivity. Today his eyes searched for mine, held and smiled a smile deeper than recognition. There was a moment when I stopped and looked back, unguarded, my smile reaching out and touching his gently. We looked at each other for a long time, long enough for our souls to come to the window and gaze out. His were dark, soft, gentle and searching mine. His mind had been deep in thought, I could see from the depth of colour of his eyes, almost black. I recognised it immediately. I dropped my eyes to his hands which held the book that had brought us together in those first few minutes, weeks ago. 'You've nearly finished.', I pointed at his bookmark marking the last quarter of the book. He shrugged, 'I have five books at the moment that I'm reading... this one...,' he opened the pages to a passage, placed his finger on it, 'I read a bit, then ah well, I spend days thinking about it.' I nodded, smiled, touched his shoulder gently in understanding and left. I wondered if I would see him again. Hours later, he was in my thoughts, along with the careless, laughing throw away comment I had made to my gay friend, 'That man is my next lover, you know'. It had been in a series of critiques we had been making on each man walking through the door that day. I had been joking but something about him had made me notice him, that meeting, the next, nothing really, yet?

Driving home, late, watching the full moon rising, he was there. I imagined his name, trying each one out with his face, his birth sign, his accent, what was his accent, eastern European, French? We had barely exchanged any words. I shrugged to myself and banished the futility of fantasy from my mind, but he stayed along with all the lingering memories of lovers past, men that I still loved but circumstance had separated. In the distance, the light at home, glowing golden lantern in the entrance way. The dark track lit by moon dappled trees reflecting light and casting long, ghostly shadows into the darkened scrub. In that moment, interrupting my thoughts, an owl flew over the car, sweeping the top of the headlights before vanishing into the luminescent bushland...