A Girl Called Tim by June Alexander

Author:June Alexander [Alexander, June]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anorexia nervosa, Biography, Anorexia in children
ISBN: 9781742984322
Publisher: June Alexander
Published: 2014-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

10. LOSING MY SENSE OF SELF

The New Year began with me ‘having it out’ with Mum. Living ‘just around the corner’ was not helping our relationship. For several days she had been niggling me, warning if I returned to work at the Advertiser office she would not look after my children. My job was to work on the farm. I decided we were highly incompatible; she didn’t listen and passed judgment before words were out of my mouth.

I know I am wallowing in self-pity and I hate being this way—for my own sanity and good I know I need at least a part-time job working in Bairnsdale. I can’t do the garden (no garden, and no point trying to make one while the house is being built) or anything else round this little humpy. My depression has led me to ‘gorging’ myself this past week—understandable too, but today I must start lifting myself out of the doldrums.

Wanting to please my mother, I pushed aside my desire to return to the newspaper office. Determinedly, I showed I remained ‘Tim’ at heart by becoming a picker in my parents’ vegetable paddocks. This work involved bending over long rows of vines which lay on the ground, picking bucketful after bucketful of prickly little green gherkins for $6 an hour. The gherkins went from the bucket into hessian bags, which were tipped into wooden pallets at the old dairy—now a cool room for the vegetables. From there the gherkins were trucked to Lindenow to be graded for the Melbourne markets. After a few days, my back ceased to ache. The work was therapeutic in a way: I liked feeling physically fit and strong, and in the paddock I was unable to binge. My hands, squelching in puddles of sweat in cotton gloves within pink plastic gloves, were busy and my mind was free to roam. Gherkins loved hot weather. In the heat, the yellow flowers turned into market-sized gherkins, about 10cm long, overnight. Miss one, and it swelled into a largely worthless cucumber. As I picked the gherkins I wondered whose plate they might land on, and whether they would be eaten with crackers and cheese, or in a big brand hamburger. I thought of what I would do with my day’s earnings too. An hour’s picking, I calculated, would earn enough to buy a leg of lamb to roast for our dinner, and four hours’ work would buy a light fitting for one of the children’s bedrooms.

George was working full time at a local quarry to build up funds to get our farm going. My thoughts turned back to the newspaper office. My hourly earning capacity there was twice that of vegetable picking. I liked paddock work, chatting to fellow pickers who came from all walks of life and, despite the flies and heat, being outdoors. But I loved writing; words remained a best friend and I felt comfortable with them. My parents didn’t understand. They believed I wanted to work in the newspaper office because, ‘You think you are too good and above others to work in the paddock.

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