various languages, etc. The number of rehearsals I attended for jazz ensemble, orchestra, senior band and various types of dance, not to mention sports, rivalled the entire number of scheduled school classes I had. I was eleven years old when I developed a plan that would make general education less generic and more effective for the individual. I couldn’t understand why the school faculty wouldn’t listen, although I do recall the principal saying, “There’s something wrong with that girl!” as I left his office.
(I recommend reading The Indigo Children by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober. This weird existence will make a lot more sense, and you’ll know me a lot better. There are many, many written titles on the topic but still I find this particular title a great introduction.)
Yep, I was the “troublemaker”. Not intentionally, but I was certainly perceived as such by the strict faculty at the Catholic school I attended. “Triple F”, Father Fred Franklin, the principal of the school, belonged to an order of brothers that had only run all-boy schools. This was their first co-ed school and he was simply bewildered by me. In a Year Eight report card, my maths teacher wrote, “Melissa has incredible potential. The rest of the class might have too, if she would stop talking to them all throughout the lessons!”
Ultimately I became the school captain. Poor old Father Fred was stuck with me for a whole year. Clearly, everyone enjoyed watching this poor man’s tortured struggle!
My final year in high school was a nightmare. Most people did five Higher School Certificate subjects in their final year. Because I could, and they were trying to keep me busy, I did four the previous year and another six in my final year: ten math/ science subjects because, according to my teachers, that would “take me further”.
School started in February, and one week in, I was diagnosed with glandular fever. A month later, I was raped by a young man who apparently had been stalking me for some time (you learn that in hindsight, of course). In April I was diagnosed with Ross River virus, which is quite similar to glandular fever, except it also feels like you have hot sand in all of your joints. I wasn’t well. I was sleeping 14–16 hours a day, just trying to stay alive. School took up all the rest of my time, and what a waste of time it felt like.
Aside from the emotional hurt, I sustained significant physical injuries from the rape. This guy had planned the whole thing for months, so he was pretty organised in its execution and ultimately tried to kill me with a piece of wood, through the end of which he’d hammered nails.
In Australia, if you suffer trauma or serious illness during your final year at school, they can give you “special consideration”, which gives some official room for excuse if your marks aren’t too hot. A guidance teacher recommended I apply for it. I was rejected because the rape “didn’t occur during an examination period”. As for the illness, well, I might get over it before the end of the year.
Regardless, I graduated and got a university scholarship into engineering. Great course; just not for me. I was so sick of memorising formulae. For the first time, I seriously addressed my career. I had never actually given any thought to what I wanted to do with my life. When I had had that all-important appointment with a guidance teacher and she asked me what I wanted to do when I left school, I answered, “Nothing.” These days I’m inclined to think that it was the correct answer. Nothing can be very pleasant, provided money is not an issue.
But I was cruising. I was following the script, the expectations of others. Damn it, I was conforming! Conforming, because it was easier than identifying where I needed to go. I left engineering and after a stack of research, decided I wanted to do a business degree in marketing. Despite my high marks, they wouldn’t let me into the course because all of my subjects had been math/science. (Pffft! “Take me further”, right!)
I decided to revert to that Latin proverb: “If there is no wind, row.”
So I landed in the waiting room of the Dean’s office in the Marketing Department, prepared to argue my case. He was too busy, he couldn’t see me. So I camped there. I would watch as he walked in and out, calling to me as he passed, although careful not to make eye contact, “No, no, I have an appointment,” or “No, I told you my schedule is full!” On the fourth day, he walked out of his office and with a resigned look said, “Melissa, you have five minutes.” We both knew the decision before I’d even entered his office. I started my Bachelor of Business-Marketing the very next day.
Later that year I was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
As you do with such diagnosis, I went into a state of shock and despair for a couple of days. When I saw the oncologist and they began talking about treatment, one thing became evident: I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I knew I needed to know more about what was happening
This time I went to the Dean of Science at the University. It was a lot easier to convince him as a nineteen-year-old with cancer. He customized a science course in human anatomy/ physiology for me, no doubt specially tailored to help me comprehend my own physical predicament. And there I was, doing a double degree.
I loved it! Just loved it. All my life I have had an affinity with the human body; I could sketch it, sculpt it, paint it, and convince my own to do any number of athletics: gymnastics, dance, you name it. I loved the simplicity in its symmetry, yet its utter complexity in symbiotic function.
All my life I have pushed this body of mine. Being tall and muscular, I have always loved the myriad sensations of movement, exertion, total relaxation, stretching muscles, even the muscle soreness of overexertion. So yes, I was and still am athletic.
As a child, and even more so as a teenager, I was alarmingly, or as my mother put it, “embarrassingly” thin. I ate all the time. No eating disorders, nothing like that; just a phenomenal metabolism and huge energy levels. I have always physically “moved” and it has always been my salvation. Even now I weight train and run between five and seven kilometres, several times a week. I joke that it’s my stress management, but really it’s no joke. I was only twelve or thirteen when I came to understand that if I didn’t get rid of this excessive, pent-up energy, it would get ugly. Or rather, I would get ugly. So I use it, and with each footfall, I pound the stress into the pavement.
When I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, I started to train specifically. In all the sports and dance I had done, I had never trained “sport specific” because I was never just involved in one sport. With cancer, I entered the singular sport of survival. I would be at the gym, listening to people’s petty bitching about how someone else looked or acted. A lot of these people were in dire need of an altered perspective! I recall one lady, when her trainer asked her what she wanted to look like, pointing at me and saying, “I want to look like her.” I thought, Oh no you don’t!
Even at my sickest moments with cancer, when the pain and the utter exhaustion were unbearable, I had it in my head that if I moved, I would survive. As long as this body was still in motion, I would survive.
Every day I made sure I did something physical. There were days when all I could endure was to go from my apartment to the mailbox and back. Each step was agonising, firing hot shots of nausea up my throat. Rushes of fever would leave me lathered in sweat. I would finally fall back in the front door of my apartment, wallow in self-pity for a few minutes, then get on with life…because I still could. I was still moving.
Under the direction of my doctor, a brilliant guy who had been a bit of a Doogie Howser, I underwent the usual medical treatments associated with cancer. He had flown through school in record time and started university at fifteen or so. When I met Greg as my doctor prior to cancer, we had become friends. Instinctually this felt wrong, and no doubt professionally it was, but I loved his company. He was enormously charming. Although it was clear that I wasn’t quite getting the full
