The Weekly(ish) Update - Issue 0007

The Weekly(ish) Update
25th September 2009
Issue Seven

I have spent a fair amount of time ‘thinking’ this week about some of the things I have done in my life up until now, I have spent a fair amount of time reminding myself of the things that have impacted on my life in both major and minor ways, but in doing so I have not really made much progress forward from where I was last week.

Part of that is due to me still being in a huge amount of pain, the pain was actually so bad on Thursday morning that I went to hospital and spent the morning getting all sorts of tests done after I mentioned I had chest pain, with pins and needles all down my left arm, which are apparently symptoms for a heart attack. The tests didn’t show anything to be life threatening, so I was sent home, and I think just knowing that whatever is wrong with me isn’t going to cause me to drop dead has actually helped me relax a little bit since then, as no one has been able to tell me yet exactly what is causing the pain, which has been very frustrating. The pain has since eased a little in the last few days, and my physiotherapist now seems to think I have torn a muscle or tendon near my spine, as we seem to have located the source of the pain and are working on a single problem now, but there is still a ways to go before I am completely mended and back to one hundred percent.

I mentioned to someone the other day that when I was younger I could chain smoke three packets of cigarettes whilst I drank a couple of bottles of spirits with friends, or spend up to a thousand dollars in a night, abusing my body and I hardly ever got sick, even though I knew it wasn’t good for me, but it seems now when I am trying to be healthy that I am encountering more health issues than when I wasn’t trying, which I guess would be ironic if I didn’t feel that at least some of the pain I am feeling is self-inflicted.

I have done a lot of crazy shit over the years, things that only people within those moments would truly understand, things that people on the outside would look at judge through their own reality, decide who in their minds I was without ever taking a moment to get to know me, things that are only a part of who I really am, but things that make up how I have arrived at the point in my life where I am today, things that allow me to push myself to want to achieve more.

It’s funny, I can go for months, years even, without giving a second thought to the things that I am doing, or have done, and yet at other times I am consistently questioning, or being reminded of, everything around me.

I am lucky enough to have met some incredible people on my journey, and because my journey has taken me in many directions I have been lucky enough to met many incredible people from all walks of life, people who I have learnt through my life to respect for being who they are because they have learnt through their lives how to respect me for being no more than who I am, we respect each other for who we are.

There are many people in this world who have little or no respect for others, but I have also learnt that those people also have no respect for themselves, for a variety of reasons, and the worst is they do not realise their options, that they in fact have options.

At certain times in my life people have helped me through some incredible situations, some without even having to be there physically, simply because I knew that they would be there if I needed them to, that they would do for me what I would do for them in the same situation, that they could see the situation and just be there with me through it, and this week I have been remembering some of the things that I have been through to get to where I am today.

I was watching television the other day and an advertisement for the finals of the Aussie Rules football in Australia came on, it showed a team walking out on to the ground in front of a huge crowd, which started me thinking about when I worked there, how much I enjoyed doing security for all the different teams, how lucky I felt hanging out with some hugely famous people in the dressing room, from various sporting codes and walking them up onto the ground in front of up to one hundred thousand people.

I started there with nothing, and I discovered everything. I had all my possessions stolen from me within twenty four hours of being in Australia, and I became more and more embarrassed by my situation as I bounced from place to place, random scenario to random scenario, and I began to work harder and harder to create a life for myself because of everything I went through, everything I had been through away from everything I had known in New Zealand.

I was literally homeless the day I started my security course, and that part of my life, but things just fell into place from there. I started working in some of the roughest nightclubs in Melbourne, made friends with some of the roughest people in the country, people who killed other people over money and drugs, before I was lucky enough to walk away from them and begin work at one of the city’s most prestigious universities, which led me to work at various events like the Formula One grand prix, The Presidents Cup golf, Moto GP bikes, V8 Supercars, The Olympic Games, in very prestigious positions when these events were first held in Melbourne, and over the following years, to eventually having my photo taken with HRH Prince Charles at Government House, and working with Her Majesty the Queen of England and the commonwealth games, before I chose to put myself in another situation and return to New Zealand, after a fantastic career that spread over more than ten years.

I can’t not mention the most important job I have ever had, I job I did between my major event work and working at Government House, in which was at the most unlikely of places. The most responsibility I have had, ever, was when I was working at The Royal Woman’s Hospital, where I was trained, amongst other things, to be solely responsible for the medical oxygen that fed a ward full of premature babies in their incubators afterhours, and be the first to respond to all other emergency situations within the hospital at all times, which because of its nature meant a massive range of situations, regularly.

But it was my job at Government House, and friends I had around me at that time, that set me up to want to achieve more from my life. It allowed me to settle down and become very happy whilst I was there, after spending most of my life till that point drifting in and out of other people’s lives, whilst there the people who were around me showed me that being me was okay, that what I had discovered within myself allowed me to want to do something more, which meant I could finally go ‘home’.

I achieved a lot when I was in Australia, and I have since achieved everything I wanted to do upon my return to New Zealand, and more, because I now have a relationship with my birth fathers side of my family, I have renewed the relationship I briefly had with him before I left to go to Australia the first time, and have managed to spend time with him, his wife, sisters, friends, family and everyone he associates with, becoming a part of his life, and thus him becoming a greater part of mine.

I have spent more time with my birth mother, been able to share a Mother’s Day and Christmas with her, and include her as a regular part of my life, to be a regular part of her life, regardless of our past and continuously evolving relationship, I now appreciate our time together more.

I have spent time with my sisters, my nieces and nephews, met my brother, and shared both good and bad times with all members of my family, including my adopted parents, who I am now spending more time with than I have in twenty years, time that is allowing me to put together a plan, get to know my two nieces, and remind myself of everything I have achieved up until this point of my life, time that I appreciate because I know soon I will have embark on the next stage of my life, a stage in my life that I hope will give me lots more wonderful memories of how I became who I am.

Till soon.. Stay safe.. Be You!!!

.K