The Anti-Cool Girl

For Rhiannon, Tayla and Isabella.
She made each of us, and each of
us is an incredible woman.

Oh Rosie. Not even born yet, and already on the run. How exhausting. At a time when you should be concentrating on not growing an extra thumb, you're being tossed around in your mum's belly while she tries to jump-start an overheated hatchback by pushing it down a hill.

I feel for you, I really do. I know that it's 3am right now and all you want to do is sleep. But your parents are currently trying to escape the clutches of some violent bikie drug dealers, and they're having a little trouble getting the car started, so you may be up for a while.

You see, your dad, Tony, recently decided to take control of the family's financial future by securing a job in the petty drug-dealing industry. It makes sense – he already had extensive contacts from all the drugs that he and your mum, Lisa, had been, you know, taking. And with a three-year-old daughter at home (your older sister, Rhiannon), and another baby on the
way (lucky you!), your parents needed to start bringing in some cash.

Now, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea right up until the moment your dad took all the drugs instead of selling them. Not surprisingly, the whole endeavour stopped seeming like a good idea when your dad found himself in a scary amount of debt to some very scary people, and they got word to him that his legs would be broken if he didn't pay back the cash. This is why you've now woken up at 3am to the muffled sounds of your parents trying to haul arse out of Balmain without being seen.

You truly are one lucky foetus.

You're meant to be born in four weeks, and despite the looming due-date, I know that you're still on the fence about whether or not you'd like to come out at all. I get it – even being a bun in a dangerous oven has to be better than whatever the hell is going on out there. Your instinct to bunker down in that womb and never come out is an understandable one.

But I'm afraid you have no choice, Rosie. Oh, you're going to fight it: you'll be three weeks late. You will rip your mum's junk to pieces on your way out (to this day, whenever you mention your birth, she gives you a look of horrified disdain that suggests you came out wielding an acid-coated machete). And, as a last-ditch effort to avoid what you somehow know is a less
than ideal situation, you'll wrap the umbilical cord around your neck and stop breathing for over a minute.

You will make it abundantly clear; you're not interested in whatever the outside world is offering you.

But a slap on your wrinkly blue back will force air into your lungs and it'll be too late to go back in. You will be born, Rosie. Your mum will be screaming, your dad will be drunk out of his mind, and you will be born.

I wish I could tell you that things are going to be easy outside of that belly. I wish I could tell you that you aren't about to face years of confusion and chaos. I wish I could tell you that your parents won't abandon you, or that you'll never wet your pants in a supermarket while drunk.

But I can't tell you any of that. I can't promise that your life will be surrounded by a white picket fence, when I know that isn't true.

I can tell you this though, Rosie: although things are going to get much, much worse before they get better, they
will
get better. You're not always going to be an almost-human on the run from drug dealers. Things are going to change for you, I promise. You'll never learn to cook, but you will eventually grow into a semi-functional adult. So get comfortable (or at least try – the car is going to break down several more times tonight) and let me explain how this all goes down.