Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

One day I couldn’t get out of bed. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t a choice. I couldn’t have gotten out of bed if the fucking house was on fire. I couldn’t move. I didn’t feel paralysed, I was paralysed. Jake was talking to me quietly and gently rubbing my shoulder. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I think he was talking a foreign language, but I know he wasn’t. I slowly came to realise I was crying. Not sobbing or anything, just lying paralysed in bed crying an endless stream of tears. I didn’t have the energy to even care enough to want to die.

He finally called in sick for both of us to work and called our doctor. He dressed me in tracksuit pants and a jumper, put an arm around me and pushed me towards the front door. I shuffled my feet as an automatic response to his leading, but couldn’t have actually moved of my own volition to save my life. Literally.

The next few weeks were a blur of assisted showers, tasteless food and regular pills. After my 3^rd visit to a therapist called Julie in as many weeks, I felt somehow lighter and moving was easier – not like walking in a swimming pool like it had been.

A month after that, Jake cooked my favourite food (burgers) and we sat in front of the box watching hours of ‘The big bang theory’. I laughed for the first time in what felt like years, but had only been a couple of months. That night we made love for the first time in months too, and I remembered why I loved it so much.

From a dark pit of nothing, I felt a nudge of hope, a feeling from afar that things would be ok. It was like the hint of pre-dawn light, you can’t see the sun yet, but you have good reason to believe it was coming really soon.

I finally called my family and friends, and as best I could told them why I’d been ‘off the radar’ for a few months.

It’s strange now to reflect on that. I’d spent years reading everything from 1000 page self-help books to one line Facebook posts about how to tell who your real friends are, and how everyone thinks they have the answer.

If I’ve learnt nothing else, I’ve learnt this – there is no one way to be a good friend/family member. There is no magic formula. There’s a shitload of ways to be a total arsehole of course. Most of my nearest and dearest were amazing, loving, supportive, funny, silly, caring, and basically just there for me. There are no words that convey how much that support meant, but I’m still here, happier every day, and I guess that will have to be testament enough that they’re awesome.

So, various ways to be awesome: cook food, suffer long miserable phone calls into the night, shopping trips, shows in the city, send cards with beautiful messages; send packages full of ‘feel good’ stuff; make time to just sit and drink coffee (even when you’re really busy), Skype when you’re too far to visit.

And if you haven’t heard from someone for a while, try to understand that reaching out can sometimes be the hardest thing.

I know some people reading this, or similar stories like this, that don’t get it. Or won’t get it. Or choose not to get it. Those people who think the answer to depression and anxiety, is to ‘get over it and get on with it!!

Let me say this; the chances of getting through your life without someone you love (be it spouse, child, sibling parent or true friend) having depression or anxiety virtually nil. So good luck. I mean it. You’re going to need it, and so are they.

Jake, you’re the best thing that will ever happen to me. Every love song is about you, every love story about us. The last few months have been really hard, the hardest of my life, but I’m finding my way back.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

Once upon a time there was a doll like child called Isadora. Isadora was a twin. The unusual thing about her twin was that she was trapped inside a Genie by the name of Jim! Isadora, the outie twin, was 5 and Genie Jim had been carrying around the other twin, Pandora, every day for 2 years. Actually, in the Genie kingdom, 2 years is only about 2 bees dicks past a crumpet.

I’m sure your all wondering how the &%$$(! Pandora ended up inside Genie Jim. Its quite a good story actually. Pandora was a curious child of fair to middling intelligence. She was the sort of child who possessed enough curiosity to ask quite a few good questions. She was also a bit of a sticky beak and she sometimes did’nt ask before playing with other people’s stuff. Do you know any children like that?

One day Genie Jim was out on secret Genie business. I suppose he was engaged in wish fulfilment and such. It’s a common misunderstanding that Genies only have one master at a time and that one and only master is given a finite number of wishes. Most people think its only 3 because of the Disney Corporation. The truth of the matter is that wish fulfilment is pretty much a full time occupation for any Genie worth his bottle. Actually, the angels get quite a bit of credit for wishes that are actually fulfilled by hard working Genies.

Anyway, because of that, Genie Jim, as usual, was out at work. Pandora, as she was wont to do, was poking around in her Mum’s office. Pandora saw the VERY BEAUTIFUL EXTRA SPARKLY WARKLY Genie bottle which was Genie Jims home, on Mum’s top shelf. Because of that, Pandora simply HAD to have a closer look at that bottle!  To be fair to Pandora, magical objects do have a way of grabbing your attention.

The bottle was on the sort of top shelf where Mummies put things that are too delicate and fragile for small children to play with. Despite knowing the top shelf was none of her beeswax, Pandora pulled up a chair and stood on her tippiest toes to reach the bottle. Really she was pretty lucky she did’nt fall off the chair. Fantastically fascinated, Pandora inspected the bottle in detail. It was smooth to touch and covered in little crystal tiles that seemed to shine from within. Then Pandora made a big mistake. She peered, with her sticky beak, very, very deeply into Jim’s bottle, so deeply that the tip of her nose poked into the top of Jim’s bottle. Now Jim’s bottle had an automatic, movement activated pixel portal. This resulted in Pandora being instantly unparticlised and  de-discombobulated and SKLUUURPED into the bottle – TRAPPED!!!!

When Jim got home from work, wish fulfillingly satisfied and snails pace weary, he was really looking forward to putting his slippers up on his magic carpet. Unaware that curious Pandora was already inside his bottle Jim went to de-discombobulate himself. This was a major problem because there is absolutely, definitely, only room for one person inside a Genie bottle. In a flash of smoke that stank like prawn heads left over from last Christmas, the universe folded in upon itself. Instead of Jim going into his bottle, the bottle, Pandora and the whole shebang, went into Jim!!!

So that is the story of how a curious twin ended up inside Genie Jim and it explains why Genie Jim is no longer thin and Isadora has no one to play with.

As far as I know, Jim is still out there somewhere, looking for a ride to a parallel universe in order to turn himself inside out and upside down to get everything back to the beginning.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

Once upon a time, I was told the story of my paternal great-grandmother. She loved great-grandad something fierce, though she was a fair bit younger. As granddad aged, she doted on him, cared for him as he disintegrated into decrepit old age. Some say that’s what sent her ga-ga. I don’t know, I think it’s more likely that he’s what held her together all those years … or rather doting on him caused her to avoid having to be rational and make decisions off her own steam.

Anyways, they had a reputation for being quite ‘Bohemian’ for the time. A bit odd and wild–sounds like they had great parties(!) … but eventually great-grandmama seems to have gone a little bit too far into the deep end. I recently found one of her old journals up in mom’s attic … after she passed on. Here’s an excerpt, knda blew my mind, I never knew this story …

“Every day I wake up and I want to scream ‘Oh my God I miss you!’. I sit next to your decrepit skeleton and wish you back. I hold your bony hand and gaze into your unmoving eye sockets and think, my God, what have I done? I’ve scrubbed myself raw, to rid myself of my erroneous ways. My clothes have fallen to tatters as I have not changed since you … left. I’ve given up on clothes anyways, what good are they to me now. I don’t miss them, but oh my God I miss you! One day I’m going to get that paycheck from the Bureau of Agencies and with that I’ll have this x-ray camera un-installed from my eye. I’m done with the Agencies too. I miss seeing you as you really are, flesh and muscle, tears and phlegm. Now all I have is the brutal curve of your bony ribs to curl up against. It’s so cold. I’ll never move from this place. You are my sun my moon. Oh God I miss you!”

OK, so with family like that …. don’t tell ME to stop making sense … pssht, I done that a long time ago sweetheart. What chance did I have? Sense is overrated ain’t it?

So if  you’d like to hear more about me, my family and how I got to, well, where I am now—wherever the FUCK that is!–then come and see me tell my life’s story at Dane Certificate’s Magic Tricks Gags and Theatre on Sydney Road in Brunswick. From 9pm on either14, 15, 28 or 19 November 2014, tickets $15 or $10 concession. Google it.

Oh yeah free entry to anyone who’s taken the Gunnas Masterclass!

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

It was 3:45am when I arrived home from work that night, after a couple of beers I rode my bike back from the pub.

I put two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, having naturally worked up an appetite, and stood at the kitchen bench whilst I waited for it to cook. Feeling slightly drowsy and a little exhausted from the ride home I eventually noticed something out of the corner of my eye, an unfamiliar green blur that sat above my name badge. Not all that worried about it I gently pinched whatever it was and removed it from my shirt. That’s when I heard it; the faint popping sound that you hear when you pop a pimple, closely followed by a gentle splash upon my cheek. Only I hadn’t popped a pimple, I had merely removed something from my shirt.

Now a little more concerned than I had been earlier I began my investigation. I brought my fingertips into my line of vision and glanced at the object that I found between them. It didn’t take long for me to realise that it was a caterpillar, and I would like to emphasize the word ‘was.’ The caterpillar’s empty skin dangled from my fingertips like an empty sleeping bag, half of its insides hanging from what had until recently been its head, the other half splattered upon my left cheek. “Ugh” I cringed, flicking the lifeless caterpillar to the kitchen floor and wiping its insides from the side of my face.

An abrupt popping sound filled the room, startling me, a sound much louder than the sound that had been produced by the exsanguinating caterpillar. I turned. It was the sound of golden brown toast ejecting from the toaster.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

When I was younger, maybe 21 or so, I had this brilliant blue bike. It was such a fabulous bike. Cost me only £10 and I bought it from a dope dealer down by Camden Lock. The wheels were slightly out of alignment and the brakes squealed whenever I squeezed them. But it only took a couple of hours of labour and three bottles of stout shared between me and my flatmate to mend it, and then that bike was mine.

Each morning I would rise an hour or so earlier than needed and every day I would take the long way around to college. Scything down Knightsbridge and past the tight roundabouts that chewed up traffic in a spidery mess before spitting them out again. Past Harrods, with the great golden facade and those little guardsmen, all dressed in their green, delicate velveteen uniforms. I would sail past the traffic lights and enter Hyde Park. As I reached the gates I would stop, and take my helmet off, shaking loose my long red curls before putting my helmet in the front basket of the bike and pushing on.

One day I fell off that bike. I took a corner too hard and too fast and I flew off, up and over the handlebars before crashing down to earth. Stop. Silence. The wind that had been whistling in my ears was gone, and I could smell dirt and crushed grass and the iron in my blood. Everything was still, except the front wheel of my blue bike gently clicking over, still spinning of its own accord.

A passing jogger stopped a few yards from me, pulling her headphones out from her ears and treading up and down, up and down on the spot before meandering over to me, slowing to a walk. I looked down, averting my eyes, gazing down at my scuffed and bloody knees. Because of that, or perhaps despite the humility I felt in that little downwards glance, the jogging woman squatted down beside me, and put her hand under my chin and tilted my face up. I was now eye to eye with this brightly dressed stranger, music still streaming tinnily from her headphones that dangled against her chest. And because of that, because of this gentle little display, this foreign touch that said so little and yet said so much, I began to cry.

I no longer felt strong. No longer felt the city air being flushed from my lungs leaving me bright, so bright and emotionally vibrant. I felt so stupid and alone and so very far from home. I cried, and the jogging lady rubbed my back silently until finally, after what felt a hundred long years of gasping and sobbing and wrenching breaths and sniffles I stopped crying, stopping just as the wheel of my little blue bike stopped spinning and fell silent.