Rebecca Jessen's Blog, page 6

TEN (Ghosts)

Rob Montgomery ‘The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You’ (De la Warr Pavillion, Bexhill, East Sussex)

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When I met Eleanor I was on the verge of becoming who I would become for the rest of our life together. She caught me on the cusp and held me there. It seems we spend so much of our lives looking back, on who we could have been, what we could have done. But for the longest time, Eleanor had changed this in me. I didn���t need to look back anymore, for there was simply nothing to look...

NINE (Stay)

Two doors up from me a lady sits in a waiting room chair beside an open door. She is reading a copy of New Idea. Her glasses slowly slip to the end of her nose. It is early morning by this point. I get a glimpse into the room as the nurse walks me down the corridor. There is a man in there sleeping.

I don���t have a night guardian, but every thirty minutes a nurse pushes open my door and shines a light to where I am lying on the bed. I lie on my side facing the window with the hospital blanket...

EIGHT (On A Sunday)

Mum cries out from the bedroom down the end of the hallway, and I know he is gone. Her cry is one of a grief so complex it still haunts me to this day. My older brother is there with her, he was the one who answered the phone. I sit with my younger brother and sister in the lounge room. Tears start rolling down my cheeks and they won���t stop coming. My brother is playing Tony Hawk on the Playstation. My younger brother and sister have no idea their dad has just died.

Mum comes into the lounge...

Eat Your Words Festival & AMP Tomorrow Maker Grant

This Sunday I will be giving a free talk about my experiences as a debut author and how I went from finishing a creative writing degree to getting my first novel published. I’ll also be doing a short reading and be giving some tips about making the journey from unpublished to published writer. You can check out the full program here,��there’s a bunch of fantastic local authors giving free talks throughout the day and I hear there’s even pizza at the end of it all! Details for my session are b...

SEVEN (heaven help my heart)

Mum wakes us up early on Saturday. She tells me she���s going to the hospital with my older brother. That she���ll probably be gone all day. She leaves a twenty dollar note on the kitchen bench, kisses each of us goodbye and leaves.

It is March 2006. I���m fresh out of school and studying at TAFE. My little brother is nine, and my sister only five, a week and a half shy of her sixth birthday. Her birthday will forever be stained with this loss. I feel for her. I feel for them both. Their dad l...

SIX (one of these nights)

Mum always tells me I was born during a cyclone and I never know if she’s being metaphorical or not. When I was born, my family lived in the eight block town of Bogan Gate. Dad was in the army, so we got moved around to strange places a lot.

In late January 1988, Bogan Gate was plunged into darkness as Mum went into labour. The local hospital lost power and the next closest was in Orange, over one hundred k‘s away. Mum and Dad’s blue Ford Telstar was broken down at the time, Dad says they had...

FIVE (how about this weather)

It was my family’s first Christmas since my stepfather left. I still remember that day so clearly. Somehow, his absence had impressed upon the family dynamic with such force that nothing would ever be the same after that.

Mum started drinking early that day. Earlier than usual. Maybe it was because she needed a way to deal with the chaos of our lives, or, she finally had a reason to. Extended family came and went throughout the day and in the late afternoon my dad arrived with my older brother...

FOUR (delete everything)

Delete everything.

I’ve loved you since August. For what it’s worth, my intentions have always been friendship. I feel the need to reassure you now. I’ve loved you since August. I should know better. I felt stuck. I still want the night, if possible. I’ve been listening to ‘Little Red Corvette’.

What they don’t tell you at the record store is that every failed relationship ruins at least two good LPs.

Delete everything. I’ve loved you since August. I’m trying to get more control. I felt stuck. B...

THREE (highway to hell)

It’s the end of December and we’re driving home from the northern beaches. We’ve been to Palm Beach, Mum wanted to see where they film Home & Away. My older brother drives in front of us, along the highway, it’s well into the evening now and we’re all sun-tired and weary. Mum sees an opening in the next lane and swerves over, overtaking my brother and laughing as she does it.

As we get closer to home we drive past a motel on the side of the highway. Out the front a neon sign reads ‘Pets welcom...

TWO (the magic mile)

We lived at the end of the magic mile, bordering a dense forest of trees, if you ended up at the Sizzler, you’d gone too far. Lansdowne Caravan Park was a refuge for all the kinds of people you’d expect to find in such a place. There were a lot of people like us, poor families with parents that always fought and kids that terrorised the streets, single dads with five o’clock shadows and unhappy dispositions. Of course, at the time, I never thought of us as being any worse off than anyone else...