SICKNESS

Thank you for spreading your sickness.

It’s not enough that I’m not sleeping at night because of the small human being tap-dancing on my bladder; I’m unable to walk more than 10 metres without a break; I have searing pain up my spine from the unnatural bulge out in front of me.

It’s not enough that I’m in a constant state of exhaustion and sickness trying to push myself through these last days of work.

Now your generous gift means on top of all of this I can barely breath through the mucus building in my sinuses and my eyes are constantly blurry because of the non-stop hacking cough. When I sneeze I need half a toilet roll of paper to catch the gunk.

All because of you.

As I saw you trudging through the day, complaining about the burden of being sick, I can only assume that you were oblivious to anyone else.

You leant next to me, coughed onto my desk, spluttered your joys at the fact I’m pregnant and your “how excited you must be” speech. All the while you coated me in your filthy infection.

Then, when I get sick, you have the hide to dismiss it as part of “pregnancy’s tough burden”.

I am going to return the favour.

I have coughed all over your keyboard. I’ve been dumping my soggy tissues into your waste paper bin right under your nose. I used your phone, making sure I breathed as heavily as possible.

Sure, I can’t get you pregnant (no doubt your ovaries are all withered and dried up by now anyway) but I can give you back your flu.

What? Feeling a little headachy?

Suffer - you inconsiderate rat. Here’s hoping that the mutated version of your virus hits you twice as hard…

BOSWELL WHO?

Well, it’s odd. Now that there’s only eight weeks before Nugget is due I suddenly don’t feel so obsessed with being pregnant. In fact, quite the opposite, I’m kind of regretting it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be becoming a mother and it’s everything I’ve wanted.

I just regret that I’ve let it come to this.

For the past seven months the pregnancy has been central to everything I did and only now I’m beginning to wonder - what about me? What happens to me after the baby is born? Who am I now?

I’ve spent my days wondering about whether the baby was ok or whether we had everything ready enough for when it arrived. I’ve wondered what kind of baby I’ll have and if it’ll look like me or like Tom.

But in the past two weeks it’s occurred to me that this entire obsession has left little room for me to just be me.

The panic culminated in a massive breakdown where a calm and collected Tom reassured me that I am not just a baby incubator.

I am still Boswell.

Still, to date my achievements while pregnant have been small and I’ve been frustrated beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.

I’ve watched as co-workers have begun new courses to further their understanding of our profession while I was deemed ineligible. My designs and plans have been put on hold and I am simply sitting here waiting for the time to pass.

I’ve watched as Tom has achieved his goals quickly and efficiently while I sit curled on the ground exhausted and resentful of Tom’s agility. I am incapable of achieving my own small objectives without assistance.

With the daunting prospect of 12 months of staring at a wall I’m wondering just what I’m going to do with my maternity leave. You can only fake interest in something for so long before you go insane and slip into the grips of the beast.

For my entire life I’ve equated getting out there and doing something to achieve a goal as a sign of success. I have never equated sitting around and waiting for something to happen to me as a significant achievement.

And that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m waiting. It goes against every grain of my being to be passive about the direction of my life.

But I have no choice other than to wait.

I’m waiting for the baby to develop enough to be born. I’m waiting for Tom to come and help me cook dinner or do one of many meaningless tasks. I’m waiting for work to end so I can stay at home and wait.

I am dependant on the people and forces around me and I don’t like it one bit.

It’s unnatural. And until things change I don’t think I can shake these blues and the creeping anxiety that comes from feeling lost.

If I were still Boswell as I know her then I wouldn’t tolerate this one bit.

POINTLESS

There are forces at work in Sydney that scare me.

There are forces that seem intent on manufacturing fear and hatred.

There are forces working hard to ensure that a community once unified is irrevocably torn apart.

And I’m scared.

I don’t want to feel scared. It’s something I went to great lengths to overcome. I quit a job and travelled to Canada and spent 6 months getting rid of the fear.

But terrorists are planning to bomb a Sydney train station, more than an hour away from my home.

Now, we are safe in our leafy suburb but, and this is what the voices remind me, I work in Parramatta. Something in my bones tells me this would be a secondary target for the less than ambitious terrorist. It’s a major hub of activity. Any terrorist without the gall to attack Sydney would take this city to be a reasonable second place.

Now I can’t seem to shake one question. Why? I’ve always had a tempered perception of the world. I’ve always seen people for what they are and never been inclined to generalise about races. I’ve disagreed with certain policies and points of view but I have never, to my conscious knowledge, hated someone just because of where they came from or what they believe.

Ironically I’ve been a staunch supporter of allowing people to believe what they want to. If I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have quit journalism with such enthusiasm.

When I disagree I have voiced my opinion but only in the interest of raising dialogue and understanding, not to attack.

And here I am, a walking target.

What’s worse is that if there’s an attack it won’t be personal. It’ll be indiscriminate. They won’t know who I am and they won’t particularly care. All they’ll (whoever the mysterious they are) will be worried about is that they’ve made their point.

But, I’m still struggling to figure out what the point is.

In Israel the point of the attacks from Hezbollah is that they want the Jewish settlers out. They bomb the cities to drive them from their homes. In that sense I understand the point of their attacks (don’t agree but understand their objectives).

In most countries where there are terrorist attacks this is the point of the bombings – to drive people away.

So by attacking New York did the terrorists want the city deserted so they could take over? It doesn’t make sense. What could they have possibly hoped to achieve – it only made them look foolish. Only arguments to flimsy to stand up to close scrutiny resort to violence as a means to be heard. Even then those attacked are twice as unlikely to suddenly see "the error or their ways" just because someone's killed their family and friends.

So what could be achieved by attacking Sydney or Parramatta?

It would only create greater fear, greater resentment and greater hatred towards a people who by-and-large don’t deserve to be treated with such contempt.

The world would fare so much better if only those few inept and weak fanatics were silenced or at least shown the flaw in their logic.