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Happy New Year! I feel I can more properly say that now because on Friday night, I took myself down to the Horizons coctail lounge overlooking the (highly smoke-affected) sunset and I finished Silent Harmony. I feel like, since beginning of NaNo, I've kinda had just EVERYTHING on hold in favour of finishing this thing, so now I have it really feels like a new year. I was just thinking earlier today, with some actual nice weather this week, I'll be able to take my laptop to the botanic gardens as I've always planned to do and do some wri--no, wait, there's nothing to write. WELL THEN.

Random old dude came and tried chatting to me when I was literally five paragraphs from the end I MEAN. I know I'm on my own in a cocktail bar on a Friday night but PLEASE. NO.

Just as I'd finished and was posting my margarita of triumph to Instagram, another random sat down to start chatting, this time an Aboriginal chick. One of the most interesting conversations and fascinating people I've ever met. She started out by saying how I looked intelligent, because of the Word doc and clearly not being on Facebook or whatever, so I said YEP just finished a novel I've been working on since I was 18! So we got to talking about how words and language are sexy, and how cats are better dependents than children, and how nice it is just coming down to the beach and getting a cocktail/wine. She's a nursing technician mostly working in elective surgery but sometimes shoved into Emergency, so with my sister-in-law as a nurse we talked a bit about how you see the best and worst of humanity in a job like that.

Came back around to language again, which led into herritage, me being of bog-standard white Aussie nothingness while she was brought up in a Jehova's Witness family. WTF says me? Cos that's weird enough normally, let alone Aboriginal Jehova's Witnesses. Oh yeah, says she, because I was adopted into an English/Irish family. Well, 'adopted,' cos I was one of the Stolen Generation, and oh dear my glass is empty, lemme just go get a top-up, can I get you another one? Oh, no, I'm driving and this is my second cocktail for the evening already and also holy shit???

JUST

CASUALLY DROPPED IN THERE. STOLEN GENERATION.

FRIG

I swear she was about my age, but nope, 46. She's since found her biological family, including two or three siblings, and SEEMS to have a good relationship with everyone. Including the English/Irish Jehova's Witnesses. Like, all through our conversation she used 'Mum' to refer to either or. idk it was in parts refreshing and disturbing to hear her so casual about it? Like... I've never met one of the stolen generation. The only time I've ever encountered them has been on TV, when they're generally very angry and bitter and, in a lot of cases, guilt-trippy. So to meet someone who's just chill with her life, it's like... idk. Good onya for being able to get your shit together, thank you for not having a chip on your shoulder towards all white people even tho you have literally the best reason in the world to be pissed at white Australia... yeah. I said none of this at the time because I was still in the middle of processing HOLY SHIT and by then conversation moved on. Like I said, just casually dropped it in there.

More casual chat, how scary bushfires are, how I live in the Hills and have my own place, she's living in a Housing Trust home which I thought was... odd, for a nursing technician? Dunno how much they earn but I would've thought it could fund a rental place. Turns out she's recently (I got the feeling no more than a year ago) gotten out of an abusive relationship, and left with just her car and the cats. She went to get Government support and they've given her the Housing Trust home, which I was pleasantly surprised by. She did the heartbreaking thing of not blaming him, or rather, trying to blame him but feeling guilty for doing so. He had scizophrenia, but chose to take marijuana instead of his medication, and that made him paranoid that everyone, especially she, was out to kill him. Like, driving past roadworks and saying she paid them off to make him crash into the roadworks and die, that kind of thing. Bashed her up badly, hence the finally getting out.

So I told her she was incredibly brave. For getting out, for asking for help after it, for keeping herself on track and holding down the job even in the midst of all that. Just, so brave.

She said she still felt guilty for leaving him, cos he was unwell. He needed help.

Yeah, I said, but it's not your job to care for him. It's not your fault. It's not your job to look after him.

It was like a lightbulb moment for her. She just looked at me for a moment and went, 'Nobody's ever told me that. That it's not my job.'

GIRL. GIRL. I can't even. I'm glad she's finally heard it, at least? More importantly, she was very drunk by this point, but very much of the thinking over her words and still making intelligible conversation kind of level, so hopefully she remembered it the next morning, too.

So there you go! That was the night I finished Silent Harmony! Most fascinating conversation ever. You go, girl.

'narti originally stuck this at Dreamwidth cos she lives there now.