The Manual: How to deal with incest, rape, paedophilia, abortion, drug addiction, dysfunctional relationships, depression and suicide.

There are no sirens, no screaming, nor yelling. Somehow a 38 year old’s foolproof suicide attempt failed. Somehow a 36 year old’s dysfunctional relationship of four years and the drug addiction that came with it is all over. Somehow an 18 year old mother’s newborn child survived a difficult birth and microsurgery. Somehow a 16 year old’s parents failed to notice their daughter’s abortion. Somehow a 13 year old thought it was normal to have a sexual relationship with a man six years her senior. Somehow an incestuous paedophile, who abused his granddaughter between the ages of 9 and 11, lives with himself somewhere in Bendigo.

There are birds chattering and the faint noise of passing cars, like waves gently making their way into shore. Somehow Debbie Jennings, 39, sits before me outside her East Geelong home. She looks like she could be any hairdresser; jeans, a simple black jumper, eye liner, mascara and shoulder length hair. “Sitting here talking to you, I’m amazed I’m here, I’m amazed I want to be here.” We are sitting on a couple of old chairs in the gravel of her car port, surrounded by an assortment of furniture and a shopping trolley. Inside, her vivid artwork adorns the walls of her modest unit.

SUICIDE

Her hair was abnormally short when I first met her in early 2008. Debbie had just survived a suicide attempt which her doctor could only describe as a miracle. “There was no medical explanation as to why I had survived,” she explains.

In the couple of years leading up to her suicide attempt, Debbie was forced to face her demons after a life time of suppressing them. At the age of 36, her destructive relationship of four years came to an end and she acknowledged that she had become a drug addict. At the same age, she finally told her family about the abuse she had suffered as a child at the hands of her grandfather, which they refused to believe at the time.

“It’s probably the hardest time, is being off the drugs, these two years. You band aid things with drugs.” “Coming off the drugs ... everything’s raw, everything comes back, and that’s when all the traumas come back, because nothing is shielding them.” “You actually have to face (them), and that’s when the grandfather thing came back, the flash backs came back, the nightmares started, my world crashed, my family crashed.”

She speaks calmly and pauses for thought every so often. Seldom did she pause to wipe her eyes; she did this in much the same way she would pause to light a cigarette.

“All I want is to have a normal brain, to live untraumatised, to have a normal train of thought, which I’ll never have completely, but just to wake up and to want to get up, to wake up and to want to live.” “It seems probably so simple to some people, but it was such a hurdle to me, it was just something I’d never think I could grab. That’s why you go to suicide, because it’s just too hard, it’s too hard to deal with.”

GROWTH

After accepting her fight to continue to live, Debbie started the “enormous disgusting task” of untangling the crossed wires in her head.

Her artwork didn’t always grace every room inside her unit. “My psychologist made me realise something. I never used to sleep in my bedroom, I always used to sleep, even (last year), on the couch. I put it together when I was talking to her and I said, ‘that bedroom was another world.’” “And I said to the psychologist, ‘why is that?’ The bedroom was the naughty room, it was the dirty room, and naughty things happened in there. When I put it together, throughout my whole life my bedroom has been messy, and when I accepted what the psychologist said I cleaned up my room and I slept in it ever since.” “It was very hard to clean up but I knew I was getting better. I could do it when I wanted and I could do it myself.”

“Moving on, it’s easy to say but to do, it’s very difficult. It was like a full time job,” so much so that she has been writing a book about her life. There is so much more to her story, but like the working title of her book suggests, she is ‘Just a Girl.’

“I’m no hero for surviving it, you just have to.” “It’s not a choice.” “You can live without your eyesight, without your hearing, but not without your mind.”

SERENITY

“Now I’m serene at everything, and when I became serene, everyone came back wanting redemption.” “When I started to heal was when I let go of any revengeful thoughts, anger.” “There’s no point, it’s been done. It’s about me healing from it. No one else can heal me; a judge can’t heal me, money can’t heal me, compensation can’t heal me.” “Karma comes back around. They have to live with that for the rest of their lives; they know what they’ve done.” “You just leave it to their own conscience, and that’s a beautiful karma.”

It is only through this healing process that Debbie has been able to make sense of her life. “I thought I’ve been put here for a reason and I’m starting to see what it is. It’s helping people live through trauma.” “There is no bloody manual, hopefully my book is the manual, and that’s why I wrote it, because I would have loved to have read something like that.”

“No-one can fix your own brain but yourself.” “The moment I loved myself is the moment everything started going right.” “It sounds really clichéd.”

Skip to the end: Nothing to do with Malaysia at all really, a profile of one of my neighbours from when I lived in Geelong last year.

David's World

Why would someone not want to be cooled down when sitting in 60 degree heat in four layers of fireproof clothing from head to toe for over an hour? And why would they pay around $100,000 AUD for the experience? I don’t know, but I feel as though I should because I would do it too.

In any case, David Wall seemed pretty disappointed that a blown engine robbed him of his chance to sit in the hot seat this weekend and race at the Merdeka Millenium 12 hour race here at Sepang. Instead, we are sitting in a prison cell-esque room. It is far removed from the opulent setting where one might imagine a racing driver to relax.

Features of the room include four walls, a floor and a roof, all in Malaysia’s finest concrete; not the German metal he desired. David is sitting on one of the Eskis that is strewn around the room, along with a few bags, pillows, a clothes rack and a coffee earn. It’s 10 p.m. and he seems quite tired even though he didn’t get to do his sitting today.

Despite this he seems quite happy to give a surprise interview. Twenty minutes prior I had talked nicely to the guardian of the tunnel and simply walked past the guardians of the gate that lead to David’s world, as though I belong here. He truly belongs here though, and he’s practically been here since he was born.

“I’ve been at race tracks since I was two weeks old,” he explains.

David entered his world through his father, Des, who has been racing for over 30 years. His world consists of making the hot seat go as fast as he can, and to never stop.

“I’ve basically raced from the time I was 11, in go karts, to the time I am now, which is 26... I’ve raced every year and haven’t had a year off. So, the plan is to keep continuing like that.”

So how do you practice sitting without a seat? “It’s basically a focus thing, there’s not really anything you can (do to) train for it. Really the only way you can make it better is (your fitness.) Over here the heat’s an issue, so when you get half way through a stint you start talking to yourself, it’s sort of funny, you don’t talk out aloud, you keep telling yourself, you know, stay focused, what ever makes you keep your eye on the job... That goes back to fitness training, if you’re fit enough you don’t get quite as fatigued as you would if you’re not fit.”

Aside from going to the gym, the other activity that takes up David’s time is his job as a civil contractor. “Unfortunately it’s still full time. One day, if I could make a living out of motor sport, that’s the... agenda of the whole thing. But like anyone I’ve got to pay bills, so at the moment I have to have a full time job.”

Given the cost of mere participation in motor sport, David is lucky enough to have an understanding wife in his world.

“My wife, Amy, her motto is whatever I spend on motor sport she gets to spend the same. But... I’m a long way ahead of what she’s spending, but ahh, I think I’ll just leave it at that,” he says with a slight chuckle.

His wife and motor sport are about all that is taken into account with his daily routine: “I go to work... during the day, then I go to the gym until 8 o’clock at night, then (I) normally come home, spend an hour, relax with (my) family. Then... the next day... (I) do the same thing. It’s the same thing like that for months on end. The joy you get when you go to a (race) meeting is you get to relax and you don’t have to train. It’s basically my life.”

Any possible threat to David’s life posed by the dangers of the hot seat is clearly over-ridden by his sheer determination to succeed. He had a major accident at Oran Park in Sydney’s west once, and carried on competing the very next day.

“I blew a left front shock, and went in backwards into a concrete wall in a Porsche in fourth gear, knocked myself out for two minutes, the whole deal, but I basically raced the next day with a head ache.”

However, he likes to put such accidents into perspective compared to everyday life.

“To me you’re actually safer on a race track than you are driving down the road to get the milk.”

David’s everyday life revolves around getting the milk for his family as well as racing. Although as far as his personal pursuits are concerned, he has a clear philosophy.

“If I had a dollar and I had to spend it to get a drive, or I had to spend it have dinner that night, I’d buy the drive.”

Who is David? Where did his world come from?

Skip to the end: A brief look at the inner workings of a Australian GT driver, David Wall.

Truly Nature?

The feeding of the animals seems to be one of the ways to draw a crowd, but I see no art in it. However, the practice of tourist boats vying is undeniably prevalent. Whether it be eagles in the sky or fish in the sea, they know where to go. The wait of expectation is all so unnatural. I’m slightly put off but I do it anyway, still, nothing beats an elephant charging towards you. One must do what one must for one’s food. Although is it better to see than imagine? I never imagined seeing a monkey steal a bottle of fruit drink and knowing how to open it.

Skip to the end: How long can you feed wild animals for before they lose their wildocity?