December 29, 2015.
Appropriate Behaviour was the name of the film I watched the night I felt cancer in my right breast. It wouldn’t be medically diagnosed for another 36 hours, but I knew what I felt.
I sat between two friends eating dark chocolate and sipping red wine staring at the ornate ceiling of the Capitol Theatre, and recounted so many beautiful moments I had throughout a festival that did so much to shape the person I am. Being permitted entry to the inner sanctum that was the MIFF ‘team’ was like having a lifetime backstage pass.
MIFF was more than a festival, and much more than where I worked for seven years. It was where I created lifelong friendships, fell hard in love for the very first time, kissed a famous actor, ventured far out of my comfort zone, and where I learnt I’d become an aunty to twins. I spent my youthful (and slimmer) twenties being part of this Melbourne institution, and there was little that could dull my buzz. My MIFFs were full of monumental moments so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the single most largest life shake up I’d experience would occur during one of these festivals.
I remember watching the film and thinking how fitting the title was to how I’d been living. I wasn’t proud of certain choices I’d made, and regularly tried to cover up those feelings with alcohol. However my addiction wasn’t alcohol; it was Charlie. But that is a far longer story.
I arrived home after the film and poured a glass of wine and lit a cigarette. I stood in the kitchen, stretching to clear out a dull pain in the middle of my back before crossing both my hands over opposite breasts (see Madonna on the left). There was no ignoring what I felt and my heart began to race. There was a hardness to the lump that was unmistakable, and each time I went back to feel it I hoped I’d imagined it.
Jumbled Genius 