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Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
You’re scaring us and all of us, some of us love you
Achilles, it’s not much but there’s proof
You crazy-assed cosmonaut, remember your virtue
Redemption lies plainly in truth
Just humour us, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?

Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?
The self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken
Remember the pact of our youth
Where you go, I’m going, so jump and I’m jumping
Since there is no me without you
Soldier on, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?

Loathe the way they light candles in Rome
But love the sweet air of the votives
Hurt and grieve but don’t suffer alone
Engage with the pain as a motive

Today, of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above

Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, jump now
You are absent of cause or excuse
So self-indulgent and self-referential
No audience could ever want you
You crave the applause yet hate the attention
Then miss it, your act is a ruse
It is empty, Achilles, so end it all now
It’s a pointless resistance for you

Achilles, Achilles, just put down the bottle
Don’t listen to what you’ve consumed
It’s chaos, confusion and wholly unworthy
Of feeding and it’s wholly untrue
You may feel no purpose nor a point for existing
It’s all just conjecture and gloom
And there may not be meaning, so find one and seize it
Do not waste yourself on this roof

Hear those bells ring deep in the soul
Chiming away for a moment
Feel your breath course frankly below
And see life as a worthy opponent

Today, of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above
Crowned by an overture bold and beyond
Ah, it’s more courageous to overcome

You want the acclaim, the mother of mothers (it’s not worth it, Achilles)
More poignant than fame or the taste of another (don’t listen, Achilles)
But be real and just jump, you dense motherfucker (you’re worth more, Achilles)
You will not be more than a rat in the gutter (so much more than a rat)
You want my opinion, my opinion you’ve got (no one asked your opinion)
You asked for my counsel, I gave you my thoughts (no one asked for your thoughts)
Be done with this now and jump off the roof (be done with this now and get off the roof)
Can you hear me, Achilles? I’m talking to you
I’m talking to you
I’m talking to you
I’m talking to you
Achilles, come down
Achilles, come down

Throw yourself into the unknown
With pace and a fury defiant
Clothe yourself in beauty untold
And see life as a means to a triumph

Today, of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you’ll rise above
Crowned by an overture bold and beyond
Ah, it’s more courageous to overcome

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A mental image I keep coming back to is a dinner party in Los Angeles in the 1970s. The living room features a conversation pit, the house overlooks the city, the colours are brown and orange, the overhead light is off, the smoke is heavy, the jewellery noisy, the fabrics loose, the alcohol on the rocks, the carpet shaggy under bare feet.

It’s strange, the things we romanticise, isn’t it?

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This year marks six years since my grandmother died, and I’m still bitter about the fact that there was no eulogy at her funeral, nothing that marked the occasion as one specifically relating to her. She was functionally agnostic, and her funeral was exclusively religious. Her grandchildren spoke only English, and her funeral was only in Greek. Listening to the beautiful eulogy at her sister’s funeral served as a reminder of how we were robbed of a final chance to remember her. So I’m writing my own eulogy now, almost six years after her death at the age of 86.

She came to Australia at the age of 23, and while it’s easy for me to consider that as the start of her story, it wasn’t. She was born in a small mountainous village and grew up as one of seven children. She was allowed to go to school until she wasn’t anymore, her access to education getting cut off at the age of 10, because education wasn’t for girls.

It’s easy for me to while away the hours wondering how things could have been different for her if she’d been given the same opportunities I have. If she’d been allowed to go to high school, and graduate. If she’d been allowed to attend English classes once arriving in Australia. Did she ever wonder this herself?

I don’t know how much the war defined her pre-teen years, because I never asked. I’m ashamed of that now. The focus was always on my Papou’s narrow escape from the Nazis, and while it is an exciting tale, it’s hardly the only one worth remembering. Did she see the boys from her village rounded up? Did she hide? Did she pray? Did she thank god when her family emerged relatively unscathed?

I don’t even know at what age she and my grandfather started dating. But they did, and they got married in 1953 before boarding a ship that would take them to the other side of the world, to far more opportunities than they’d find in their small village.

What were her hopes for this new country? Did she envision spending fifty years cleaning the trains that carried other people to and from their oh-so-important jobs in the city? Did she ever look at them and want to swap lives?

What did she regret? What was she proud of? Why didn’t I think to ask her any of these things when she was alive? I know why, in part. When you’re young, your relatives only exist in relation to you; they’re not their own people with their own emotions and histories yet. Then you’re older and self-involved in a different way, and then suddenly the opportunity to ask these questions is ripped from you.

I should’ve asked you questions
I should’ve asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt
‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me

I know the basics. I know enough of her personality and our family history to go back and fill in some details myself.

I know she loved to laugh and use pet names and loved cooking for her family. That she loved Princess Diana and called every cartoon ‘Mickey Mouse’ regardless of whether it was a Disney cartoon or not. That she was so militant about dyeing her hair that I only ever saw grey hairs towards the end of her life. That she had no interest in attending church, and that she lovingly made fun of my Papou for being so devout.

I know all of these things, but it will never be enough. I know all of these things, but I still like to occupy my time by coming up with alternate realities; realities where she was a beautiful young woman in the 60s, without a husband or kids, sitting in cafes in Athens with friends, or attending parties in beachside towns and dancing until the early morning.

Or even realities that almost exactly mirror ours, with minor details changed. Ones where she was allowed to learn English. Ones where she didn’t have to scrub on her hands and knees and clean up after others for half a century. Ones where she’d grown up in an era and a culture where women were given the space to be their own people, not defined by familial relationships. Not reduced to mothers or wives or daughters.

There’s a lot I don’t know, but I know she loved me. Loved her grandchildren, loved her children, loved her husband. But did she love her life? Did she look back on it and wonder the same things I’m wondering now? Or was she grateful because it led her to us?

For what it’s worth, I’m grateful that her life led her to me.

And if I didn’t know better
I’d think you were singing to me now
If I didn’t know better
I’d think you were still around
I know better
But I still feel you all around
I know better
But you’re still around

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Drag queen and fracker RuPaul Charles has a saying that he’s quite fond of, which is, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else?”

Like everything else in the queer community, the belief underlying this catchphrase has prompted a fair amount of discourse. Many salient arguments have been made against the idea that people aren’t worthy of love until they love themselves, and on an abstract level, I absolutely agree that everyone is deserving of love, regardless of how they feel about themselves.

On a personal level, though, the quote resonates, particularly because I interpret it as “if you can’t love yourself, you might find it difficult to accept love from others” rather than “if you can’t love yourself, you don’t deserve love”.

As I get older and continue to ruminate on why I’ve never been in a relationship, I’m realising that while there are external factors at play, I am often my own biggest obstacle. Having very little self-esteem and self-belief makes it almost impossible to believe that anyone could genuinely like you for who you are, let alone love you.

Loving yourself, believing that you have value and worth and things to offer someone else, would surely make it easier to accept love from someone else, and to reciprocate it. I think. I’m certainly not speaking from experience here, just idealism.

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A friend of mine took her own life the year after we graduated high school.

We’d drifted apart somewhat by then, but were still friendly; I was meant to drop by her house that day to give her a course reader for a subject I’d dropped and she’d transferred into.

During the early days of high school, however, we were as thick as thieves. She was one of those rare people who are effortlessly cool but also genuinely kind — nothing like the cool girls you see in the movies.

YouTube was still brand new, so we discovered so many things together that are now relics of a bygone internet age: Charlie the Unicorn, Shoes, End of Ze World. Hearing about videos from that era makes me think of her to this day.

But what we really bonded over was music, and to a lesser extent, movies. We went to so many concerts together, just three (the two of us plus a third friend) 14 year olds running around venues surrounded by much older people, squeezing our way to the front, not caring about any potential hearing damage.

So many songs make me think of her. Phantom Limb by The Shins and White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes, because we misheard the lyrics and they became inside jokes. Anything by the Klaxons, because we went to their show and bought ‘Klaxons are Kunts’ t-shirts and then hid them from our mums, never daring to wear them in public, but just buying them made us feel badass.

Movies like The Royal Tenenbaums and O Brother Where Art Thou? that she loved before any of us had heard of directors like Wes Anderson also make me think of her, particularly the latter’s soundtrack, with songs that in hindsight take on new meaning, like Alison Krauss’ version of Down To The River To Pray.

In fact, most of my memories of her can be filtered through pop culture artefacts. As time passes and I get older, I forget more and more, but these pieces of art keep her memory alive; if not specific memories, then memories of how I felt when I was her friend. And for that, I’m grateful.

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Unfortunately, therapy and too much time alone in lockdown have made me someone who spends an inordinate amount of time analysing their own feelings, actions and personality. Fortunately, nobody reads this blog, so I don’t feel too bad about indulging that particular habit here.

I think one of the most key factors of my personality is my need to feel seen. Why else would I have started sharing details of my life online from the age of 14? Why else would my first semi-successful article have been about my experiences as a fat person?

I keep a folder on my phone of screenshots of nice things people have said to me, because when I’m sad, reminders that sometimes, people think of me when I’m not standing directly in front of them, reminding them I exist, are comforting. I have no idea if this is weird or not.

I have no idea if other people cherish moments when friends remember things about them the way I do. Why a close friend remembering my birthday six weeks in advance fills me with shock and awe. Why I devote time before my birthday worrying people won’t remember it, and time after analysing who indeed forgot and trying to work out why they did and what it means.

It explains why I was so fixated on the fact I didn’t have a single best friend after the age of 14, though. No one person who knew everything about me, knew my history, my quirks, my flaws, and still liked me and consistently made me feel seen. As you get older, I suppose that for most people, the person who serves that purpose is your significant other, but I wouldn’t know. Sometimes I worry that I’ll fall in love with the first person who expresses genuine (read: obvious, because I’m terrible at recognising it, probably because I can’t believe anyone would see me that way) interest because I’m so thrilled by the prospect of someone seeing me but still wanting to know more.