Hello there!
Come on in, stay, ponder with me a while!
I am indeed Rebecca J. Rawson and it is my pleasure to welcome you to my online home, back in the wilds of the blogosphere, outside the algorithmic constraints of social media.
My return to last place and time online that I knew freedom of thought, sound reason and common sense existed. My place of residence in the cyber-verse, where the paths to walled off gardens of superficiality all lead back to the heart and soul of my home in the wilderness of thought.
Having sporadically aired my thoughts across various online platforms since the late 1990s, while also dabbling in blogging since 2007, some may believe they already know who I am, my style of writing and creativity…?
Nevertheless, I feel a proper introduction to Rebecca J. of The Uncouth Exposé may be necessary as I begin this new season of writing and creativity. My personal invitation for readers old and new to join me, while also providing somewhat of a forecast for the new season ahead.
As so often happens in life, I experienced a stormy seasonal change during recent years. The kind of change of bittersweet upheaval that is rare ever foreseen, a culmination of lived experiences that led to a breaking point and unexpected transition. Altering every facet of my life, who I am, how I write and what I create.
This is the season I am determined to put the real back into REALity!
And as far as introductions go…
Paying homage to good manners at least somewhere in my otherwise prickly little patches across the cyber-verse just seems the right thing to do… at least once perhaps, maybe?
Straight up front, you will just have to excuse the mess!
This website is the online home of a real flesh and blood human!
A biological human woman, who is pristinely messy, spectacularly chaotic, perfectly flawed, ferociously passionate and experientially opinionated. A largely silent observer of life and human behaviour, with a natural bent toward recording details in extreme excess. A writer prone to delivering information in overload, too wordy and far too long winded for most.
Unashamedly, I must confess to being more than a tad unhinged at this point in my life. Yet sharper in mind, clearer in understanding and more observant than ever before.
Maybe I should also confess to being a frustrated writer, leaning a tad too well into rant.
And admittedly, I have not a single fuck left to give at this point in my life!
You see, I am a middle aged writer who has never published in full or consistently due to constraints that will become abundantly clear as the first chapter to my new season unfolds. A memoirist, a realist, a factual truth telling writer who will simply be far too much, of too fucking real, for a certain to be… quite justifiably… overwhelmed majority.
(Ahem, formally introducing myself and extending an invitation for you to join me was my homage to good manners, I never said anything about skimping on any appropriate and well placed profanity!)
In short
As a realist, one of my personal philosophies is that we all have a story which can offer hope, solace, visibility, validation, encouragement and support to others. Along with so much more of ourselves that we have within us to offer, in the way experience and the knowledge we all acquire throughout our lives.
Offerings of fresh perspective that each one of us do need at times. At the times that our perspective can only be shifted through tapping into an outside source. Someone with a vantage point that we cannot not access, that is not known or accessible within ourselves.
The uniqueness of experiential wisdom that every one of us accumulate throughout our lives and can be of benefit to others. Including a robust elixir we call laughter, good stiff shots of whatever is best to soothe our ails; the most powerful medicine for any human soul. (Albeit, deliciously dark laughter of an acquired taste at times, but bloody good medicine for the soul nonetheless.)
This website and associated social media is where I intend to share fragments from the thousands of unpublished pages that I have written since my early twenties. Creatively written thoughts poured out from the prolific writer I discovered within me at that time, a writer within who continues to write, critique, research, edit and collate. Providing me with a form of relief, a purging of ponderings grounded in fact and reality, yet which society has consistently demanded I keep to myself.
But the time has come for me to tell the factual truth about my life to the world!
The time has come for me to put my ability to write to beneficial purpose, in defiance of a stifling betrayal. Having been taught that seeing the factual realities in the fictions of this world, and being able to call them out in writing, are my greatest defects and deficits… in essence my most heinous sins.
Sharing whatever of my stories, thoughts, opinions, beliefs, simple pleasures and dark laughs I feel like sharing. Exposing every one of my own flaws, my screwy hard wiring and the prejudices I have rightfully formed along the way.
Leaving no stone of ‘What Actually Fucking Is’ unturned or off limits.
Sharing whatever it is that just might offer hope, visibility, validation, encouragement and support to anyone who can find something of worth.
If you are looking for the real in a superficial world, and are not afraid to peak into the darkness to find and acknowledge the light, then please do consider joining me…!?
But I must warn you, my style of writing for this season can be summed up effectively in one word I mentioned earlier. One word, which will absolutely continue to be hurled my way with an infinite array of accompanying descriptors; by a great many critics this season.
TOO!
So, for any readers who prefer short, sharp and maybe not shiny in this case… more like somewhat tarnished with a distinct tinge of jade maybe… the latter adequately provides all the information you may need as an introduction and invitation.
And look, any long time readers knew full well that “In short…” was a punch line!
Because the word short and the way I write, are simply not compatible!
But for anyone who prefers substance, diving deep and going long, feel free to continue.
Let’s go long
While I know exactly where this literary journey begins and what follows this invitation for you to join me, I have no clue where this is headed. Your guess is as good as mine, as to exactly where we are headed and where it actually is that this journey may end…!?
Factually speaking, I barely recognise myself as the middle aged woman I have become, the 53 year old woman I will be at the time I publish this introduction.
Admittedly, Doubt dances around me, mocking my self-belief and snatching away what potential I see to take hold of… but I say Doubt be damned and he can now piss off!
At 53, I do not have the time to get better acquainted with the innately hardwired version of myself I have rarely acknowledged. Nor do I have the patience left to tolerate anymore of Doubt’s continued antics, his arrogance and foolishness; before publishing what I believe can be of benefit to other people.
I mean lets highlight the bleedingly obvious, shall we…!?
As long time readers know, and new readers will soon learn, I am not quite your average Aussie sheila, or Gen Xer for that matter. My Gen X experience was somewhat different to the stereotypical model so often portrayed.
You know, the Fuck Around & Find Out (FAFO) free for all of adolescent rebellion taking full advantage of self-absorbed and overly entitled elder generations; the bitter sweetness of parental neglect savoured by many.
Like many others I signed away all my rights to teenage rebellion, the individuation we require to discover our own unique purpose and paths to follow in life. Surrendering my FAFO rite of passage as a Gen Xer, as means to stay safe, through fearful compliance and cloaks of invisibility.
Factual truth be told
Call it what you will, midlife rebellion or midlife crisis?
I confess without any shame that I am experiencing both!
You see, I have come to realise rebellion is a non-negotiable rite of passage in this life.
The birthright of individuation from parental figures and elder generations.
A rite of passage, an exploration of self that is necessary to find path and purpose.
Which if stifled and not permitted during adolescence, it is merely held over for ‘When The Time Is Right’. The unspent misspent youth of adolescent rebellion merely held in trust. For anyone not permitted to entertain that rebellion and individuation at the time in life generally reserved for that journey to occur. (Greater thoughts to explore on another occasion!)
At 53 years of age, I categorically am allowing the 17 year old version of myself who was forcibly shut down mid rebellion to embrace what she was denied. With my middle aged self overseeing the proceedings, adding her experiential wisdom to what now unfolds.
Age 17 being the first and only blink of time in my life that I even attempted to allow my innate self to stand upon any stage in this world… the factual reality that it has never been safe for me to do so.
I may be 40 years overdue for my non-negotiable rite of passage through rebellion, which should have begun being increasingly permitted from 13 years of age. Nevertheless I am bang on time for the crisis of midlife awakening by Reality Incarnate, Dark Humour and the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.
Two phases of life, rites of passage meshing together as they collide!
Oh, what a shindig to behold, the moment unspent misspent youth and midlife crisis collide…!?
The sweetness to be savoured, from the acidic bitterness of teenage rites through the passage of rebellion maliciously denied.
This’ll be…FUN!
The midlife FAFO
Inevitably, the writer within me is embracing unbridled freedom for the first time ever, in exploring unchartered potential. Free to write from my heart and soul as I never have before. Finally having escaped an internalised prison I have resided in for half a century, unfettered and gag-free.
Having been brutally provoked into violently ripping my self-protective filter from my sewn up mouth, defiantly destroying it, ensuring it can never be fitted to me ever again.
The acronym FAFO, ‘Fuck Around & Find Out’, is undeniably juvenile… 100%!
However, permit me a moment to spend just a tad of my unspent misspent youth?
Not only has society by and large ‘Fucked Around’ with my life for five decades, but throughout my own fight for survival I have silently observed how other people are treated too. (No woes, pity parties or any dismissive victim cards about it, just a cold hard and emotion void facts.)
I have witnessed firsthand how society as a whole fucks around with the people least able to defend themselves. The factual nature of a brutally cold species that chooses which children and healthy adults to break. Who is vulnerable enough to exploit and who is broken enough by life to conveniently cast all the sins of society upon; for the comfort of anyone fortunate enough to experience more than a semblance of peace.
Like men, women and children the world over, I was chosen, broken, entirely done over, cruelly tossed aside, rendered invisible by society as a whole to the greatest extent… inevitably… my malleability gave way to an irreparable snap!
So, I kinda figure we can all ‘Find Out’ together, what comes next…!?
Cause I am in the dark as much as you, as to what will be my most immense pleasure in ‘Fucking Around to Find Out’ this season. Finding out what happens when an innate talent that was maliciously shut down suddenly reveals itself to be a survival technique and strength.
A gift to pay forward to my fellow survivors in this world, an innate gift that saved the life of its host. And a gift I hope has the potential to be beneficial to the lives of people who are battling to survive every day, in different yet similar ways.
Silence kills
If I have learnt anything in this life, it is that silence kills while also protecting people who deserve no form of protection whatsoever. Silence that holds legitimate victims of all manner of life experiences, challenges and happenstance in internalised prisons.
You see, the silence of victims not only kills the person holding to it in fear, but anyone who could have benefitted from the stories we hide from the world. Sadly however, our society does not just hold victims silent, it holds survivors silent in fear too.
Fear of punishment and severe repercussions that survivors know far too well.
Factually…
Silence is to truth, what fasting is to food.
Silence, like a fast, absolutely does have a time to be held.
But like any period of fasting, when held beyond what is reasonable in purpose and duration, silence physically kills the person holding to an act which few acknowledge becomes the ultimate act of self-harm… the body giving out naturally as the delivery of the final score!
Intentional or not, no loved one ever sees it coming..!? (Scorching hot sarcasm fully intended!)
I held my silence for the majority of a brutally harsh half a century, before it revealed itself as act of self harm that was physically killing me.
My silence, which possibly did harm to others who needed my story told for their benefit in various ways.
No gloom required
I will make you a promise as I begin this new season!
My mythical pet unicorns will continue to fart sweet scented rainbows in the factually existent catastrophic storms of life. As I write and create from my lived experience and observations of the world around me.
Similarly, I promise that my natural talents in alchemy and illusion will feature heavily as a non-negotiable inclusion this season. Featuring as heavily as always, as the guiding light of new dawns upon darkened horizons, for whoever is in need of a nod toward the light.
My greatest ability as a writer, is to transform life’s sewerage into pleasurably scented fragrances, sweet perfumes emitting visible vapours as rays of sunshine. While working closely with Dark Humour to produce various forms of wickedly laughable elixir for the soul.
Hardwired giftings I will absolutely use to spin factual bullshit of life into golden rays of hope and encouragement. Yet at the same time honouring the memory of my illusionary fictional character, my socially acceptable public person, Rebecca of Sunny Disposition.
The fictional character who has protected me since I was a young child, a part of myself I have now loving laid to her well earnt rest; and will speak about during this season.
But Reality Incarnate
Reality Incarnate has stormed in to take the lead this season, defiant in his resolve to correct wildly fanciful forecasts in Dreamland. Forecasts in Dreamland which frequently get held in place well beyond the roaring cries of Sound Reason in our lives.
Wildly incorrect forecasts created in dreamlands where Common Sense is simply not permitted to speak his mind. The places in consciousness where the scales of Justice Personified are deemed irrelevant. Her weighing of fact and truth, from the information provided by Cause and Effect, it is simply viewed as not valid.
The dreamlands preferred by many, where fact and truth are apparently not required…!?
Oh yes, Reality Incarnate is on a mission during this new season of creativity!
Determined to put factual truth and balance to delusional rumours about rose coloured streams of sunshine. The Happily Ever Afters, which the majority are deceived into believing… the false hopes we cling to far beyond their expiration dates.
The Happily Ever Afters, which tragically, far too many of us only come to realise were false hopes long after allowing our deepest heart’s desires and purpose to expire. With great pain, torturously allowing our innately hardwired hopes and desires to disconnect and fade away.
Instead of allowing the false hopes wrongfully instilled by other people to fade!
Light requires darkness
I believe unquestionably, just as there is no light without darkness in this world, there is no light without darkness in a single facet of human consciousness, existence and all the experiences we collectively call life.
Without any doubt to my mind, there is a balance required between light and darkness in how we learn, grow, acquire knowledge and form fresh understanding.
Darkness being essential to what cannot be learnt, grown or understood in its absence. All the more so, a necessity for what can never be appreciated as spectacular gains to be taken from the brutalities of pain.
Life has proven to me time and again that ‘Happily Ever After’ is merely a mass delusion!
I have never seen a single unicorn fart a sweet scented rainbow in anyone’s catastrophic storms of life. Similarly, wearing rose coloured glasses with blinders, to what factually is in my life, has proven to only breed disappointment.
As for sunshine without shelter from clouds and necessary rain, emotional and mental sunshine without clouds and rain lead to exhaustion, burn out and barrenness.
Ever present sunshine is just as destructive as ever present storms and rain!
Fairies and unicorns becoming the delusions of anyone staying in the sun a tad too long.
I prefer my demons
The demons purposefully instilled in my life, the kind that make us all out to be evil incarnate in someone else’s story. I prefer the sound of skeletons rattling factual truth and my conversations with Death himself.
Because they are who I know in all fact and reality, as my greatest teachers and mentors. My guides to the light of each new dawn upon any horizon I seek in desperation.
Light without darkness is far more blinding, deceptive and brutal than pitch black.
In my experience, what lurks in the darkened landscapes of life is far more trustworthy and predictable than anything I have been taught is good, wholesome and supposedly beneficial.
Ergo, I much prefer hunting in the factual existence of necessary darkness and taming what I find.
In the darkened facets of life and consciousness where I feel safest, in the places where I know there are no illusions as to what I may be met with during my journeys through this world.
Oh, TOO MUCH?
Let’s start to wrap up!
We can discuss the nature of the word too and how I believe “too” gets an awfully bad wrap in this world on another occasion. In as much as how the word too is frequently used far too readily, to imply and point to defects and/or deficits. Rather than taking time to look at what is in excess, as the unharnessed excess of intensely powerful traits, giftings, strengths and unrecognised potential.
But me allow to end with one specific too, in who I am as writer, and a woman… too!
As in any form of ‘too much’ and ‘too fucking real’ you could possibly conceive…!?
Because I warn you there is a whole lot of too much and too real ahead, and I need point out that my complaints department shut down at the end of my last season in life.
Pre-emptively, I have one single reply to any and all complaints.
Whether about my supposed impact on other people’s mental and emotional well being. Anyone who chooses to hold me to account for damage to reputations and relationships. As well as any litigious types who want to have a crack, anyone foolish enough to believe they have legal recourse… which I am quite happy to engage in to entertain!
My reply to any complaints is simple!
Too fucking bad!
I have been too fucked over, become too fucked up and am too fucking numb to care!
My storage facility for other people’s bullshit became so intolerably full throughout the bad half century I have just had, that the heat of human created bullshit decomposing within me, it caused that storage facility to spontaneously combust.
A internalised facility within me which I have no intention of allowing anyone to rebuilt.
Anyone attempting to make new deposits will find that bullshit returned to its rightful owner(s); with a good deal of interest paid in full at the time of return.
Oh, look…
Let’s call it what it is, my every last fuck has either gone up in flames or been brutally shattered to smithereens at this point in my life. I have no care factor left whatsoever, as to what anyone else might think or say at this time in my life.
The relinquishing of my every last fuck being my key to freedom!
The key to permitting myself to explore my full potential as a writer.
The end to what has felt like unfair and torturous delays regarding my greatest gift for a lifetime. My ability to write as only I can, as excessively long and ever so intense; as I absolutely will.
Delays notwithstanding
Obviously, I am a great believer of time and purpose, which allows me to feel content in continuing to persevere creatively into my fifties; and hopefully well beyond.
Admittedly, I have had alot of growing up to do as a creative non-fiction writer, essayist and poet. I have had lessons to learn and experiences to be had before the time was right for me to write effectively.
Which is a fact I have only begun to see more clearly with the guidance of Hindsight. Her not so gentle guidance that began during my mid to late forties.
Oh yeah, Hindsight certainly is a creature of tremendous wisdom and beauty!
Albeit creative expression, the factual reality it that Hindsight can be one helluva right bitch when it comes to salt, wounds and grieving what feels like a lifetime of squandered potential. —A creature of tremendous wisdom and beauty to behold nonetheless!
And being a non-fiction writer who is grounded in the factual nature of memoir, my good friend Hindsight will certainly be weighing in along this journey.
Wrapping up fully now
If that is not at all too much “too” for you, then why not join me…!?
Need I really highlight…
I never could stay with any one thought, topic or interest without digressing all the way through from A to Z before coming back to any point at B.
And obviously, I simply do not do short form content very well either.
In which case, might I suggest you pour yourself a good hot cuppa…!?
A coffee, tea, hot chocolate, maybe a glass of wine or whiskey if you wish, crack a coldie if you prefer…!?
Any which way you choose to cosy down, come and ponder with me a while…!?
