The Journal of Lee Davis-Thalbourne

So, for the next few days, erinkyan is out of the state, caring for a friend, and so I've been home alone. After discovering that despite my cool new computer case having better fans, it's still not good enough to really play, say, Starcraft all day without the Graphics card moving past 95C on a day like this.

So... I realised that erinkyan had often lamented that his room is constantly messy and full of crap. After a quick call to make sure it was alright, I decided to actually get his room into gear.

I have since unpacked 2 boxes, consolidated a whole bunch of CDs into a single box, organised his bedside drawers, moved a whole bunch of wooden slats out into the garage, unpacked and hung a whole lot of clothes, moved a bunch of sheets and blankets into the linen closet, found several missing remotes, found one of my pairs of missing glasses (of which I'm still not actually sure how they migrated into one of erinkyan's bags), found out where all the tweezers had gone to, cleaned up a whole lot of rubbish, changed the sheets, applied several extension leads to provide power to the TV and DVD players of which I'd now found the remotes for, collated all his arts supplies, moved a whole lot of disused boxes into the top storage section of his wardrobe, vacuumed the floor and made sure all his rope was properly wrapped up and put away.

It was totally awesome. So, how clean is my room?

Well, if I have to be totally frank, I haven't really started on my room yet...

So, in a sudden realisation that we have far too much stuff in our garage, I've realised that it's time to get rid of stuff, and I'm going to happily offer my friends first dibs!

So, what's on offer?

( Heaters! )

( Toys! )

( Bowling Ball! )

( Car Cover! )

Oh man, has it been crazy.

So, in the last few weeks:

1) I've moved to a new, extremely shiny place
2) It looks like I'm getting promoted at work - They're planning to move me to the Premier call centre (Where they deal with important customers). Took a while, but I'm looking forward to it :)
3) I went to my cousin Paula's wedding, which was a beautiful affair.
4) Been absurdly busy getting house in order. No matter how many times you move, it still takes forever to get the house the way you want it!
5) Put a deposit down on a brand new couch. It is comfy and so incredibly soft, and has cup holders and storage space, and it shall be mine!
6) Spent a long and terrible two weeks with only mobile internet. For probably the first time ever, I have actually gone through my entire mobile pack this month and then some!

I am certain that there have been other noteworthy things, but I am le tired, so I honestly cannot remember them all.

So, hi! I'm alive!

So, me and Erin have been househunting for a good month or so. There's been a lot of houses seen, a lot of Real Estate Agents strangely really liking the two of us, but still not being able to convert to actual places, which has been a little frustrating.

But, that's come to an end. Yesterday, we got approved for a house. And it's not just any house. It's a modern, beautiful house. A house with a garage with inside access, a house with air-con and heating, a house with a huge dining/living/kitchen area... It's the kind of house you look at and go "Man, this house is way too awesome for us to be able to get it".

And we got it. Oh sure, we had to match someone else's upbid on the rent. But this place? Totally worth it. And today, I go to the bank to buy the bank cheque for the bond, and get the money for first month's rent. We sign the leases, get everything out the way, and it's ours. For the next 12 months at least. But I'm so totally cool with that. The best part? It's about 5 minutes away from my current place. Still in Zone 1. Still accessible with the same bus even!

It's going to be an awesome house, and I cannot wait to get the stress of moving out the way so we can actually enjoy the house.

So, after the recent Dreamwidth invite code release, I now find myself with 11 Dreamwidth invite codes. So, obviously, anyone who wants one is more than welcome to ask! Same general rules apply, same as the rest of code giveaways - Friends before Friends of Friends, Friends of Friends before Random Strangers. If in doubt, post and ask - the worst I can do is say no! :)

So, I follow Mike Stuchbery on twitter, and he's been trying to help his civics students get into politics a little bit more, get engaged in the process. In particular, he's set up a blog for his students called Aussie Democrazy, as well as setting up a Twitter and Facebook. Now, I know that a few of you are happily into politics, and I'm sure a few of you would be happy to help a few kids get engaged with politics, so here's your chance! In particular, they're asking a few public questions to give the kids some insight into why we find politics so interesting. Also, they're trying to convince a few politicians and political journalists to do some interviews with the Democrazy kids.

Honestly, it's a fantastic idea. We keep despairing at how people aren't engaged with politics anymore, that we don't have people who really care about the process. Well, here's someone who's doing something about it! Using the power of social media to help students find a reason to be passionate about politics. I would have loved something like this at my school. I definitely recommend people have a look at their work, it's fantastic!

I have often felt that certain people in my various social groups are "natural connectors" - they're people who seem to have their fingers in so many pies that you'll often meet random strangers who know them, even though they come from completely different social groups. It's always a bit weird when it happens.

Today I had an interesting experience on the other side.

I've made several posts about Steve's death, and I made the decision to make them public, partially because I wanted to grieve publicly, and partially because I knew that a lot of people who knew Steve read my posts, but might not be on my Friends list, and I wanted Steve's friends to know. I did the same thing with my Uncle Michael - I wanted my family to be able to read what I'd written about him, so being public with my grief was important. With my Uncle, it turned out that a few people found my LJ, and left messages (and a couple of people commented about it at the funeral). Thanks to those, I learned a lot more about my Uncle.

Today a random person friended me on GTalk. It was someone from a forum that Steve used to frequent. He'd been a constant internet friend of Steve, and he'd noticed that Steve hadn't talked much for the last month. He'd started doing some research with what little he knew about Steve, and eventually found my posts on Steven, and then, of course, sent me a chat message. We ended up talking about him for a good hour, and honestly? It was good to confirm a lot of stuff about Steve with someone who'd known him for at least as long as I had, even if they'd never met him in the flesh. That someone outside of his physical presence had worried about Steve enough to hunt down and find out what happened. That he had enough of an impact on the places he hung out that he did not go gently into that good night.

And then, Steve's friend posted to the forum that he frequented about Steve's suicide (You need an account on the forum to view the page). In less than half a day, that thread is already at 4 pages long, of people who knew his posts, of those who never met him, of those who played against him in the online world. All these people who knew Steve, who I certainly never knew about. All those people who you always worry will never get to know. Now they knew, and more than a few people were crying at the news.

I'm still not over Steve's death, and I know there's still a lot of processing that needs to go on, but for the first time in a while I honestly feel hopeful about Steve's death. In life alone, he has touched people all around the world, not just those in his hometown.

And it has shown me that the path I tread, the attempt to keep as much of my life and emotions in the public sphere as I can, to publicly process all the crap and shit that's happened in the past while? It's helping people. As strange as it is to be the connector now, I'm glad to be there. I'm out there enough that I can be a beacon for people.

It's worth it, all of it.

I've been helping Erin out this weekend with a few of our friends with moving his stuff over to Clive st, and part of that has been ticking an additional thing off the list of things I haven't done yet.

And that is drive a van.

At first it was a little terrifying, since it's a Rent-a-Bomb van, and feels really rickety, but I'm starting to really enjoy the experience. Travelling up high, in something huge, with the big-arse steering wheel... I can see why people like driving higher-up, it's a totally different experience. The only problem with this van is that it's so very, very uncomfortable, since my legs are a little too long for the seat.

Honestly, I'll be kinda sad to give it back...

As I have mentioned previously, here and elsewhere, my brain has this thing it does. When I'm upset, or I don't want to deal with something, or I'm generally feeling negative, my brain runs away. It has learned that it can stop feeling bad by making me do things, by keeping my mind occupied. My brain also discovered this really fun trick at work, in that when I project happiness on a call, I am happy, for all intents and purposes, at least on that call.

In short, it's part of a very long history I have of not facing up to emotions, especially the negative set. This, ladies, gentlemen, and others not of the previous two persuasions, is not a healthy thing.

So, since Steve's death, I haven't really been actually dealing with it. There have been points where I let some of the emotion out, but dealing with it? No, not really. So, a couple of days ago, I was talking to one of my workmates about it, and the undealt-with issues decided to tell me in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to just be able to ignore it.

Last night I went over to erinkyan's place to drop off a couple of things, and it came to a head - Erin asked the dreaded question "Are you okay?", and I finally admitted that not, I wasn't, not really, not even at all. I cried for an hour, as erinkyan tried to push me to talk about the pain, the sadness, the anger. All those bubbling emotions trapped in my head that my job simply doesn't let me release.

Let me say, by the way, I have never been more happy to have erinkyan as my boyfriend than last night, when he asked me to go through a visualisation with him, to help me actually experience all the pain and emotions, before pushing them all out. It helped so much to have a place where I could safely feel those emotions.

Today, I have also chatted to someone on Lifeline, and after I finish this post, I am going to go see erinkyan before his date. But before that, I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to make a big, poignant post about Steve, the same way I did for my Uncle. I couldn't do it then, because I still didn't have the whole impact of emotions. But I think I can try now.

My strongest memories of Steve were from our time together in the SVGA. He first started as our Librarian, at a time where we really didn't have a particularly decent library, so he ended up sorta being a member without portfolio. And a member without a portfolio, you find, tends to get stuck with a lot of odd jobs. Steve I recall helped make the SVGA's logo (seen here, he helped in (my time's) everpresent attempts to purchase a television for the club, so that I wouldn't have to lug televisions around. Once I moved out of home, I remember being so grateful that he was willing to drive me and my televisions home.

I remember Steven getting drunk at uni camps, and remembering that he never really seemed to get much louder, although he was always a very happy, very silly drunk. At parties he'd get right into conversation, about games and geeky things. You could tell that he was an intensely bright man, tempered perhaps only by shyness, by his own quietness, but explain something to him, and you very rarely had to explain it twice, and that was something I respected about Steve a lot.

But when I look back on the time I spent with Steve, I find that I remember a lot about the events, a lot about what he did, but not a lot about Steve, the person. At the funeral, they mentioned he was an intensely private and quiet individual, and I can't say I disagree terribly about that. As much as he was a constant presence in Korner, as much as he was a mainstay in the SVGA, I didn't get to see a lot of him, in particular. I know that he often had a wicked sense of humour, as the quiet people often do. That, like me, he could latch onto a joke and run with it. I remember more than anything that he always seemed to have a good heart, was always happy to participate, always happy to help out. He was always there.

And now, he isn't. Now he is gone, by his own hand. His mother made a request at the funeral, that we respect his choice to end his own life, to be willing to let go. I want to be able to respect that choice, and I think I'm closer that now than I was since my last post. I will miss him, a lot, I will miss having such a good person in my life. I'm not sure how he saw us, but right now, I would proudly say that he was, and shall always be, my friend. Had he asked for anything, I would have done my best to make it happen. When I visited him in hospital, I told him that, should he ever need to talk, about anything, he could call me, and I would listen, and I would have. I wish we were closer, but I guess there's no sense in wishes like that now.

I miss you so much, Steve. I hope you know how much you were loved by your friends, I hope you know that people had to stand at your funeral, so many people came to pay their respects to you. I wish the turmoil in your life could have been resolved by those around you, but clearly this was not to be. I hope that, if you are anywhere, that you are finally at peace. Thank you for being part of my life, however brief it must be. I don't think I can let go of you yet, but I will try and move on. Farewell, Steven Williams.

This morning I listened to a voice message from my friend David Allen. Apparently he'd been trying to get in touch with me for a couple of days because he had some really important information that he wanted to give me in person. My friend, Steven Williams, killed himself a couple of days prior. David told me that his mother had asked that I be told, mainly because I visited him in hospital after his previous attempt.

More than anything else? I'm angry at the world right now. I'm angry that a good friend of mine, a friend that I had always enjoyed the company of, and of whom I had good memories of, is now gone, forever. I'm angry that, whatever help he was getting, what supports he'd gotten in place since the last attempt, clearly hadn't helped. I'm angry that I'd thought he was recovering, when he hadn't. I'm angry more than anything else because yet again the world has taken someone I loved away from me, and it's so fucking unfair.

I want to sit down and remember the good times. I want to do that poignant post where I sit down and remember all the good memories and impressions I had of the man, but right now I can't get past the fact that I'm going have to attend my second funeral in as many months, that I liked Steven and that he was one of my favourite people in Korner and now he's gone, that I will never know why he's gone, if there was anything that triggered it, if there was anything I could have done if I'd have known at all, and it's all just goddamn fucking unfair.

To be fair, I've only known about this for about 4 hours. I'm still working through my feelings about this. I feel a bit useless because I'm coming to this late, and still don't actually have all the details. I plan to call people later on tonight, so I can get more details, find out what's going on, if the funeral has been planned, etc.

For the time-being there's not a lot I can do except try and work through the grief, and that's what this post is kinda for, I guess.