"Me too."

It's been a while since I wrote in this little safe space of mine, and I've been looking for a way of getting back into it since it ended up in the, 'It's all a bit too hard' pile around the middle of last year.

It's February, so it's a little bit too late for New Year's Resolutions, too late for best moments of 2014 reflexion-style posts.

It's February, so it's definitely more of a looking forward time of a year than looking backward.


The thing that finally got my out of my shell and caused me to re-open the dialogue in this blog is a post called "Coming out again why more queer folks with mental illnesses need to speak out." It spoke of the truths of how many people in the queer community take their own lives, and some of the reasons for it.

Our voices could save someone’s life.

So where do we start? [...] It can be as simple as saying “me too” when someone in your community talks about their depression instead of just nodding; it can be as simple as saying “I know what that’s like” or “I have that too” or, most importantly, affirming that they are not alone.

I realised, when I started writing up this post, that I didn't yet have a tag for LGBTQIA, or even LGBT. I just had one for bisexuality. Which made me think that I've been doing my share of keeping my stories to myself, or sharing them only with a very limited audience, often within my own home.


So here is my voice. Here's my story:

My name is Nicole. I am a cis-gendered woman living in Melbourne, Australia with my two cats, my partner (man), and my fiancee (gender questioning). Towards the end of last year, my partner and I had a not!wedding--which suppose makes him my not!husband as well as my partner--because the laws of our country won't acknowledge legal ceremonies involving multiple relationships or gay ones. I should probably make a photo post of that beautiful day to post on here. Maybe now I actually will.

Outside of my home, I have a second house where my girlfriend lives. She is a beautiful young woman who is hesitant to walk down the street holding hands or kissing me because of the reactions we get from people in cars driving by.

As a bisexual woman in multiple relationships, I notice the differences in the way that other people view my relationships. I notice the way that I feel more "safe" walking down the street or in the shopping centre at night with one of my boys by my side. And, like my girlfriend, I notice the looks that we get from other people when we forget ourselves and hold hands, or stop to kiss because one of us has said something unbearably sweet.

I notice the pause, the hesitation in my voice when I go to my therapist or psychologist. So often, the topics that come up will intersect with the loves in my life. I find myself using gender neutral terms for all of them, or else casually dropping in the word "girlfriend" like it's the 1980s and "girlfriend" is a term used between women of a certain age group. I tell myself then that I'm not exactly lying if it's their misconception that leads to my obfuscation.

But who am I really hurting there? If I get a bad response from a non-LGBT friendly psychologist, I can just go out and find another one. Yes, the inconvenience and upset of needing to do that will be mentally taxing, but surely it's better than invisibility. Invisibility that I myself am perpetrating deliberately.


But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.


I regularly see psychologists because, as well as being part of the queer community, I also suffer depression. Depression that, last month, culminated in my having to quit my full time job of 8 months due to said depression. I was lucky because I managed to leave that job on good terms and with references intact. I was unlucky because I couldn't quite manage to make myself hold on until I had something else to go to.

Depression is something that I have suffered with, according to this blog, about two and a half years. Although I'd had episodes of depression before that, the period between September and December 2012 was the darkest spell I'd had up till that point.

For a long, long time, I saw the treatment of antidepressants to be as bad as the condition. There were storms of weeping and anxiety as I feared that I would be irrevocably changed by taking that kind of medication that would then addict me so I could never come back off it again. It led me onto other types of medication such as St John's Wort which, sadly, was a stopper at the very best and seems an alternative from a long time ago now. It did not work for me in the long term.

As anti-antidepressants I am, I ended up on them between April 2014 and January 2015. The condition came to a head when I realised I could not imagine that any side effects from the antidepressants could possibly be worse than the depression itself. I had hit rock bottom, and I didn't care. Not for myself, anyway. It was my loved ones that, I'm glad to say, gave me the strength to ultimately make this decision.

In January, I had an appointment with my doctor that my fiancee attended with me. Together, we articulated how the antidepressants were keeping my lows at a reasonable level, however the highs were nearly uncontrollable so as to be almost manic. I speak fast and loudly anyway, but when my boys were having trouble telling where one word / sentence ended and the next began after half a dozen or so years together, we knew we had a problem.

I am currently surviving without medication. I"m not sure if this will continue to be the way, but I do know that I'm not up to going back to full time work. I have been lucky enough to happen to fall into a position with perfect part time hours for me that is not too far away from home. I have a nifty little car to get me there and back and audiobooks to keep me company. And, of course, the reward of a bath once I get home, with the cats making sure not to be too far away.

This story is far from over, but I am still here to tell it, and will have the strength to continue to tell it.

Widening the Scope Pt. 2: One of the best posts to come out of Tumblr

So, people may have noticed I've started using Tumblr again. It comes and goes ;) I wrote this post because I saw something on Tumblr a couple of months ago that I didn't simply want to disappear as so many things in Tumblr do.

Already this month, I've written about strength as it relates to characters who are male and female. Now I want to pay attention to a different kind of diversity and, dare I say it, one that is closer to my own heart.

When I was a teenage bisexual girl, I found that there were a lot of books that related my experiences with guys, but none that would give those strange and outlandish feelings I had for girls any credence. Oh, there was Sarah Waters and the book that the BBC mini-series brought out into the spotlight, Tipping the Velvet.

(Also Fingersmith and, to a lesser extent, The Night Watch.)

That was... kinda it. More commonly, there were starting to be books that would feature a side character, or best friend of the main character, who was gay. I think that Holly Black's Ironside was the first book I read where the gay side character featured in a romantic relationship of his own. 

It's not a fun feeling when you pick up a book only to find that the characters that should be there for you to identify with, at least in some books, simply aren't there. 

Polyamory is the other minority that just doesn't get a lot of play in books though, I will freely add, that it has gotten better already since two years ago when I wrote this post.

I mean... people are actually talking about it now. O.o 

Which brings me to the Tumblr post that inspired this babbling:

Hi Sarah, I really appreciated your response on asexual representation and was curious about your thoughts on the lack of poly representation in YA lit. (read more)

What follows is a well considered question asking to the cultural attitudes that may still too much influence what can and can't be published in YA literature. 

What Sarah Rees Brennan did was reply with her own carefully considered responses, even going so far as to post, 

Here is a non-comprehensive but awesome list of YA books with LGBTQ and poly characters I found! http://goforitgenevieve.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/long-post-about-lgbtq-and-poly-too-ya-fiction-is-long/ (Linking to this one rather than the one at gayya.org because it has a few indicators of favourite books and content, but gayya.org is fantastic and amazing and everyone should read it!) ... So these are my (imperfect!) thoughts, summed up with I think it can be done, has been done, and I truly hope it will be done more.

Which even I didn't know about, so I'm more than happy to share about it here.

As if that wasn't all amazing enough, Melissa Marr weighed in with her own opinion:

"I’m always happy when folks comment on the poly resolutions in my Wicked Lovely books.  Yes, Radiant Shadows has a poly resolution.  So, too, does Darkest Mercy.  Sometimes the answer (in both life & fiction) is that what looks like a “love triangle” is actually NOT. Sometimes a person can have a healthy, happy relationship with two other people." (read more)

When people pull me up and ask me why I read so much YA fic, why I think it's so important: this. This is the answer to all those questions.

Christmas and the Aftermath.

Merry Christmas, Solstice and other festive tradition you may follow.

For anyone who has ever celebrated Christmas, you know it's a stressful time of year. This year, I celebrated it with my immediate family and both of my boys. Introducing my mum to these important men in the same room for the first time was actually probably one of the least stressful things of the day. My brother and sister adored my partner, who they were both meeting in person for the first time.

I may just have the very best family in the world.

Boxing Day was celebrated with an early trip to the local cinema with my fiancee for the first (of many, I hope!) viewings of the movie Les Miserables.



This is not a movie you will go to see because Anne Hathoway is gorgeous. Of course she is. But that's not the focus of this role. The focus of this role is someone that life has treated incredibly harshly. The fact that this movie is a musical means that that horror needs to be depicted in such a way that the main song for her can be understood and empathised with.

Well! Let me tell you. I've been a fan of Anne Hathoway's since The Princess Diaries, when she was a lot younger and so was I. Her role in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland excited me because it was such a different role for her. The Dark Knight Rises had me watching trailers for months before the movie actually came out, and the movie fulfilled for me every promise previously made in Batman canon between the lead character and Catwoman in Batman Returns, another movie directed by Burton from 1992.

This role blew them all out of the water. I'm not going to say a whole lot more, because we are still three days after release date and I know a lot of people wouldn't have seen it yet. Maybe I'll say more on my second, third or fourth viewings ;)

The day after Boxing Day, my partner's daughter flew over from Perth to spend a couple of weeks with us. Melbourne, being the fickle place it is, dropped about 10 degrees and was downright chilly by the time she arrived. Luckily for us, we had a spare jacket for her. Strangely enough, something that is quite well fitting on my partner's shoulders doesn't fit so closely on his eight year old daughter.



I had already made the decision before she flew across that I did not want to be unwell during her stay. A sobbing maudlin mess does not a good carer of children make. It was with this in mind that I made the promise that I would stick to my regime of faux anti-depressants (St John's wort) for a solid two weeks, starting well before

Why is this? you may say. You seemed to be doing so very well on them the last time you posted them. Surely the original two weeks is almost up, you may say.

You'd be correct to say so. But this person over here was just smart enough to decide, 'Well, Self, you seem to be doing well again. Don't need those tablets anymore.'

Big mistake.

So big, in fact, that this ended in a bout of four hours sobbing on my fiancee two days after I stopped taking them, and a shaky several days thereafter. I haven't learned to be happy without assistance yet. It was, maybe, cocky to think that a couple of days would have made all the difference.

So, a solid couple of weeks with them to help me before talking about stopping them a second time around.


As for writing? I have a few ideas brewing, but it's still holiday season! Come back to me at the end of January.

Melissa Marr and polyamory.

I just recently purchased one of the signed hard cover editions of Darkest Mercy, waiting patiently -and sometimes not so patiently- for it to be shipped over and arrive here in Australia. When it did arrive, I hugged the book to me for a while, and then commenced reading it. Had I not had work towards my English Honours to get done, it would not have been closed again before I finished it.


I was raving about this series online last night, but the re-tweet I just received that acted in reply to a separate question just about made my morning.

Me: @melissa_marr did polyamory!!! An author of YA fiction did polyamory without stuffing it up!! 
Melissa: Belated reply 2 "what r the boundaries in YA?" RT: @persephone20: "@melissa_marr did polyamory!!! An author of YA fiction did polyamory..."

Two things are amazing about this. One: an author that I think a lot of -and would love to study next year in regards to the re-emergence of faerie fiction, particularly in YA fiction- read my comment and replied to me, and Two: it feels like times, they may be a-changing.

That a YA author would not only just bring out a series of books where a polyamorous trio featured as part of a main section of plot, but would then announce that it is a boundary that can easily be crossed in YA seems like a fantastic step into the future for me.

For a while now, I have been looking with dissatisfaction at the common 'love triangle' trope that seems to appear again and again and again in both books and TV shows in the YA genre. Lately, that trope's been becoming a little bit more interesting in such TV shows as Glee where one side of the current love triangle is a girl who's in love with her best friend (another girl).

I guess for me, seeing polyamoury being written into a book like this, without fanfare or controversy, feels to me like I imagine it might have felt to others when the first gay/lesbian couples started appearing in novels as just another option on the kinds of romantic relationships that can be had between people. In Melissa's books, this touching relationship was shown as neither good, nor bad, but just as three people who happened to all love each other individually, having many of the same concerns within that trio as would be had between a couple.

In short: Go Melissa. I think you're doing a great job and I cannot wait to get my hands on the last of the manga books in your 'Desert Tales' series.

Polyamory in fiction, and other things.

I love Melissa Marr.

After at first being loaned the first book in the series by the friend of an ex-housemate of mine, I have since sought out that book, the rest of the series, including the eBook editions that have been promoted on her livejournal and graphic novels that she's released in the same world.

But the reason I make this post is because of a conversation I was having with yesterday (one of many, so many, conversations) about how the gay element is getting represented more and more often in teen shows. We had it in Buffy, which was the first time I really noticed it but that reveals my age more than anything else. There's been Skins; at the moment there is Glee, and we were talking about an interview where they'd posited introducing it in The Vampire Diaries (which I think could be amazingly interesting, if only because it's something that wasn't acknowledged in the books). 

At this, I believe my retort was that it would be nice to see polyamorous... arrangements represented, then lightly tagged that it would probably be another couple of decades until we got to the point with polyamory in the media that we are currently at with gay representation. At which the fast becoming stock-standard of polyamory, Big Love, was paraded, and I grouched about that, then went to bed.

Heading gradually back around to the first line of this post: I love Melissa Marr. On the eBooks that I have collected from her is the mini series 'Stopping Time' that follow on from her full length novel Ink Exchange. Now this is a great little bit just because it shows the love felt for one character by two different characters, without the need to make it into a love triangle where one gets the girl and the other.. well, doesn't. And as I'm reading this morning's review of the conclusion to Marr's series -linked by Melissa herself- I find myself getting a little excited. 

Certain... "er... arrangements" are said to be satisfied in this book. Pairings and... "er... arrangements", and this gives me hope, not the least for a new variation in an old staple of young adult books. But also for having a chance to see my lifestyle represented in the fiction I choose to read. 

 And while there's a part of me that can't help but think I've horribly re-contextualised Marr's meaning in the writing of this .... arrangement, for myself I choose live in hope!