Profile
- Physical description
- Family
- Marital status
- Hobbies & interests
- Residence
- Work, study, life
- Travel
- Links
Some personal details about my insignificant self. My life in the real world has been utterly boring to date so I really don’t have a biography as such.
Physical description
I was born in November 1970 and was named Suzanne Bronwyn McHale. My nationality is Australian, of English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. I am around 162.5 cm tall, or just under 5 feet 3 inches (62 inches), of medium build.
My hair is brown, and is my only beauty asset – the only feature on which I have regularly received compliments throughout my life! It is long (just below my shoulders) of one length, and quite thick (it can get rather frizzy and unmanageable).
My eyes are multicolored – they have a blue-grey rim, then a green main part (ciliary zone), then brown and gold around the pupil (pupillary zone) – photos of right and left irises. I think they are also centrally heterochromic going by the description in that Wikipedia article. I used to describe them as hazel-colored, but now am not sure what they are!
I am short-/near-sighted (myopic) and wear glasses. (My sister also wears glasses.) I have been thus since I turned 13 (1983); curiously my sister also was prescribed glasses around the same age. My eyesight has more-or-less stabilized since my mid-20s.
My weight is variable! I’m carrying a bit more than I would like (my figure is best described as “lumpy”) – currently around 65 kg – but the last time I tried dieting as an 18-year-old, I became anorexic then bulimic for 5 years … I still would like to lose some weight, though (up to 10 kg), but lack the will to try (I do have more pressing concerns!). I am, sadly, not one of those people who can eat what they want and never gain a gram.
My looks I would describe as average: not beautiful, not ugly. I don’t have a flawless profile, skin or features.
My blood type is O Rh(D) Positive.
My mental health is variable. I am prone to depression and melancholy. Depression first started to affect me in 1986 and would ultimately lead to me dropping out of Year 12, as well as messing up the rest of my life. Bouts of severe depression have alternated with a milder despondency, where I feel dead inside and unable to gain much enjoyment out of anything.
From 1988 to 1993 I had an eating disorder for 5 years (initially anorexia, then a form of bulimia), triggered by my attempt at dieting in 1988. In what seems to be typical fashion I went from one extreme to the other, becoming an exercise fanatic (up to 7 hours a day of scheduled exercises at one stage!!), obsessed with maintaining a strict routine and, for my parents, very difficult to live with. It was not a pleasant time for anyone. It is as though a different personality took over from my normal self. I also did not menstruate for those 5 years – this did not upset me, though I effectively entered a sort of menopause and lost bone calcium!
Family
My parents were born in the 1930s; both are retired. Dad was born in England then emigrated to Australia in the 1960s. There he worked as an Airworthiness Inspector with the Department of Civil Aviation. Mum was born in Australia and worked as a nurse. I have one younger sister who is 18 months younger than me. My grandparents are all deceased (the last, my maternal grandmother who I was closest to, died in 2000 aged 102).
Marital status
I am single (and likely to remain so, given my cantankerous and difficult nature), so I am a “Miss”! I have no interest in marriage and children, and am quite content with that! I have never been “in love” (whatever that is). Like most women, I admire nice-looking guys – but from a safe distance!
Hobbies and interests
My hobbies mostly involve using the Internet, maintaining my website and fussing with my computer. I also enjoy daydreaming, reading, writing and drawing.
For physical exercise I mostly do walking and some bicycling, as well as some strengthening exercises (push-ups and such).
I only began using the Internet, and a computer, in 2001. Before that I was too nervous of them to try! The Internet is my sole lifeline to the outside world and my only means of interacting with other people (I have no friends my age or social life in the real world). I created my first website in September 2003.
My interests are hard to define (everything and nothing!), but there are a few things that are consistent. I tend to focus on several main interests and have many more in the background.
- Main interests: science fiction, spaceflight
- Lesser interests: astronomy, aviation, dinosaurs, history (natural and human), military stuff, science
Residence
I have spent all my life so far in a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I live with my parents in the same small house that they have occupied since 1968. The suburb, like many others, is being ruined by inappropriate development (see my Crimes against architecture page).
Living in Australia is generally good – certainly preferable to many other countries – but it is too far away from the rest of the world! I hate the sense of isolation I feel in Australia; travel to other countries is expensive because it is so far away. It is getting too overcrowded no thanks to various governments’ obsession with economic growth and thus population increase. There is continuing drought and water shortages, which bodes ill for the future. We are also close to the hole in the ozone layer so there is lots of skin cancer, and it gets horribly hot in summer (and will get warmer through the rest of the century no thanks to global warming :-().
That being said, I am still grateful I was born in Australia – there are many dysfunctional countries I am thankful not to be living in!
School
I (and my sister) attended the same school, Kilvington, for all our school years (1976-1988 for me). I began to deteriorate in Year 11, and did not complete the final year (Year 12, 1988) as I had a nervous breakdown, due to being unable to cope with study, and the unpleasantness of certain classmates who were ostracizing and gossiping about me. I was the only one in my year group not to graduate.
I only had average grades and was not good at sports. With hindsight, I wish now that I had made more of an effort to be involved in activities, but I was not interested then, so I have no medals, awards or anything. The only subject I excelled at – and got some admiration for – was Art (painting and drawing). I was also good at English.
I believe I would have been a good student had I been motivated! I recall having some type of aptitude/IQ test in Year 6 and surpassing all my classmates, but nothing came of this.
I have not been to any school reunions (held every 5 years for each year group).
An aftereffect of my unhappy departure are recurring dreams in which I return to school but never finish what I am there for, skipping classes and eventually quitting or giving up – literally running away in the dreams. These dreams are simultaneously set both in the present and past, with the people I was at school with appearing in them as they were then; vague and shadowy dream-characters. This “unfinished business” still haunts me and I don’t know if I will ever resolve it – perhaps being successful at some other endeavour might end the dreams, though this prospect currently seems unlikely.
I happened to find the Facebook Kilvo Girls group and have discovered quite a few of my classmates are on there.
Work, study, life
I have not done very well at all in the real world, so far; my life is embarrassingly bereft of any achievements. I have not had a career to speak of, so I have no title or profession, and this is another reason I am reluctant to interact with people – I literally can’t describe myself as anything! (Other than as “a human”.) I look back upon my life up to this point with regret at the wasted opportunities.
I did not go to university.
Dad helped me get an apprenticeship at AeroSpace Technologies of Australia (ASTA – now defunct) but I only lasted two months in 1989 due to my mental problems. After that I got a menial job in which I spent twelve awful years until I left in 2001 before I had another nervous breakdown. I hated it and wish to forget it. The only reason I remained there so long was due to inertia (it was only meant to be a temporary job until finding something better – that did not eventuate). I also managed to complete a one-year secretarial studies course at a TAFE college in 1990, though most of what I learnt there – before computers and the Internet became mainstream – is outdated now (except for typing)!
After leaving the awful job I effectively became a recluse. I have no idea what I will do and have given up as I can’t see a future for myself; inertia is too strong. I have no identity as I can’t describe myself as anything. My life so far has been meaningless. I have no skills or do anything useful. I am a insignificant individual amongst nearly 7 billion others. If I were to die now I would have nothing to show for it.
I want to have more than an ordinary life – for my own life to have meant something, to be remembered – but I don’t know how to attain this. I don’t know where to start. Time passes inexorably and I get older.
What do I daydream about? Many of my dreams involve going to other lands – or other worlds – and discovering lost civilizations and wonderful things. Or embarking on daring adventures such as skydiving from space or being the first human on Mars. Impossible dreams.
Realistically, I would probably be suited to a job where I could sit at a computer and not have too much personal and public interaction. A stable government/public-service-job with regular hours might suit me; unfortunately in the current climate of recession and increasing unemployment, this seems an impossibility!
Travel
So far, very limited. My family visited England twice in the 1970s, meeting and staying with Dad’s relatives. I also went to New Zealand for one week in 1987 for a Year 11 school holiday (see my NZ holiday page). That is it, to date. I have been in the one place all my life and sometimes feel trapped and isolated. Conversely, leaving my familiar environment is very difficult and I would probably find traveling and strange places and people very stressful.
During my second holiday to England with my family to visit relatives there, I sent my school classmates a postcard. The front of the postcard shows a RAF Javelin fighter jet, and I wrote on the back: “Dear Mrs. Flowers and girls, this is a jet and it’s got these brown and gray colors because it matches in with the trees. I wrote a book aboute [sic]: THE CRAZY PLANE and I will show you when I return to school. Love, Suzanne”. I can only wonder what my classmates thought of that … The “Crazy Plane” was some sort of cartoon character I made up then, and drew (I think that holiday was when my interest in aircraft emerged).
