Davina

I never wanted to contemplate the possibility of losing Davina. I held onto the thought that she would always be online and we would always resume where we left off, just chatting and laughing and sharing as if no time had passed at all. When I'd ask, she'd be honest about what was happening to her. She'd tell me of the sequence of procedures, the gruesome and intense pain she was in. I can't imagine what kind of strength she would have needed to endure what she did. We'd type out strategies to feel better somehow, working out how to live mindfully and make music. In spite of whatever was happening to her, she would always ask about me.

I loved being with Davina so much, I loved being at her house. I loved that our history expanded back way into the 1980s, when I was a late toddler with my hair in tight ringlets. We constantly collated our memories of Studley Park and Kew Primary, sharing photos, documents and stories of us hanging out by the peppercorn tree or playing Eliminator, a simplified version of four-square on the basketball courts. She was so warm and loving, always bringing a doona and tattered plush squirrel along to school camps. She belonged to the Double Helix Club and shared my love of slime, stickers and the newly-opened Science Works. Her June birthday parties were legendary, with damper by the Yarra River, awe-inspiring science tricks performed by her dad and extravagant spreads put on by her mum. Kabana and cheese were a Davina staple.

Davina was the original conversationalist, always open to taking a turn around the oval to analyse music, friends and family. I missed her badly when she went to Europe in 1995, but when she returned, she presented a hand-written travel diary to us all, complete with ticket stubs stuck fast with contact on the cover. I loved that diary, the details of the places she visited in her familiar print, often in green or purple ink. I'd keep all the postcards she'd later send to me, sweet and brief reports from her adventures in Tasmania. What she made was always a profound influence on me and more to the point, all the stories I ever wrote about friends frolicking about Europe together were actually dreams of our own adventures. I always imagined we would travel together and we sort of did, going roller skating and to Madame Tussaud's when it toured Melbourne.

She loved and understood music in a way that I loved and understood music. She always encouraged me to write and share my songs with her. She engaged with my theories and insights into Queen, always being open to listen to songs that I loved. She gifted me a cassette dub of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and we openly insisted that Oasis and Babylon Zoo reminded us of each other. She sang, played the piano and the recorder and played Theonie in the original musical theatre production of the Crystals of Ashagri. When I became depressed after not receiving a more substantial role in the production, she consoled me for literally decades, insisting that it only happened because I was needed in the orchestra.

We spent so much time together, listening to music and exploring seedy chat rooms like The Park. We'd spend a lot of time on MS-DOS too, playing Pickle Wars or Wacky Races on my 1000 Games CD Rom. We'd later develop an addiction to Bejewelled on MSN. Each night, she'd suggest we'd start another game: "bej?" Our talks rolled on for hours and each night, she'd always cry out when the birds would start chattering, signalling the end of yet another night and another failed resolution to "fix our hours". The friendship would roll on from platform to platform, from ICQ to Myspace, Facebook to Instagram. The chats always just picked up where we left off.

I've been thinking about our nights out together, partying together over New Year's Eve, watching Jackson Jackson at the Evelyn, the Cat Empire at the St Kilda Festival and dancing at Cherry. I've been trying to salvage these moments and the truth is that more details come to light each day. I'm always thinking and remembering Davina, tripping over reminders and conversations that we had. They're the kinds of things we would have reminisced about, but there are also the new things that really had nothing to do with the past. I know that I'll never stop wanting to talk to her. I know that I'll think of her whenever I see a squirrel or the birds start waking up in the morning. I'll always love her and think of her in a very present way. I'll try to preserve all that we shared. Davina knew what it was to love and remember.

Locks II

I lived in constant fear of him finding my diaries. It was a fear that only ever increased with age. I started filling notebooks as an 8 year old and by the age of 25, I was running out of places to hide them. At first, I insisted on diaries fitted with a cheap tin lock, convinced that this would successfully deter his obsessive attempts to violate my work. Once he tampered with them with manicure scissors, I realised that it was preferable just to ask my dad to lock up my writings in the filing cabinet. Those notebooks remained inaccessible to me and they are locked up still, with pages unfilled.

I would later type up stories, encrypted with passwords on Microsoft Word and Creative Writer. I once failed to do so and it resulted in him going through my piece, changing all the nouns to HAM. It was a reference to the name he obsessively called me, much to the amusement of my mother. Despite my efforts, that familiar scene materialised all too frequently: his standing over me with book wide open in hand, reading out loud, only stopping to obnoxiously cackle in my face. The memory of it is more painful than any other aspect of his systematic routine of verbal and physical abuse. Now I have been free of it for six years, I never stop asking myself why I wasn't protected, but he was.

I have been reminded of that aspect of my past in recent times, when friends ask me why I publish such personal details in essays online. I start to feel emotional and defensive, in much the same way I did then. It makes me suspect that I must have been encouraged to stop writing as a child, if only to stop that destructive routine that had emerged with my brother. I can't articulate why I still wrote obsessively, but I am moved by the thought that I persisted in light of such fear. The irony now is that the external publication of such work is my only hope of redress. Instead of the routine humiliation that once came with exposure, I am now comforted by the readership. It is my only sign that there might be a willingness to acknowledge the extent of my pain. There might be some unspoken remorse.