Letting Go

I'm speeding through the garden, my wings buzzing furiously, my antenna cutting through the air ahead like swords. I’d have tears streaming down my face if flies could cry. They can't, but the sentiment is still there. 

I clear the neighbour's fence, almost get taken out by some sheer stockings flapping on a washing line, tumble my way through the leaves of a lemon tree and almost collide with a honeybee going about his work. 

‘Oi! Watch where you’re going!’ he shouts after me. ‘Bloody house flies.’ 

Some call me dramatic, and by some I mean Harold, but I don't care. This is big. This is devastating, this is quite possibly the end. Carrie wants to move out. She told me just now, my daughter, my only offspring, hand-raised from a plump, wriggling larvae, she wants to move out and start her own life! This is too much. 

Harold is no help, I tried to confide in him. 

‘Move out?’ he squinted at me over the top of his copy of Dung Weekly, baffled with a hint of indifference. ‘We’re flies, Diane,’ he said, ‘it’s all out. Quite frankly I don't see how she could move in.’ 

My therapist, Linda, doesn’t look at me baffled. Each session she surveys me carefully, nodding her shiny, oval head as if she gets it. She doesn't get it, she's a dragonfly. Her thorax glistening like sapphires, her wings glinting like diamonds, she is a symbol of beauty and grace. I’m a symbol of carrying over one hundred and thirty pathogens. The only time houseflies glisten is when we’re doused in fly spray. 

I’ve been telling Linda I feel like Carrie has been slipping away from me lately. I feel like I’m not needed, like I'm surplus. Linda says I need to talk to others, tell them how I feel. ‘You need others, Diane,’ she says, ‘we all do. You don't need to struggle alone. Talk to someone, anyone.’ 

How can I? No one cares about my problems, no one can help me, why should I open up? I’m just a middle-aged, working-class, slightly straggly housefly. An extortionate amount I pay this therapist, and for what? Rubbish advice she got out of a textbook, advice that belongs in Harold’s Dung Weekly. In fact, I’ve half a mind to test her advice just to prove her wrong. 

You want me to talk, Linda? To anyone? Fine, I’ll talk. The next bug I come across I’ll let rip; I'll bare all. They won't care- I'll tell them exactly how I'm feeling, then we’ll see who really-’ 

That’s when it happens. There is an almighty crash, so big and so loud i think the world is ending. I have hit something, or something has hit me. Or is it the same thing? I can’t get my bearings, I can't hear or see, I can't even breathe at first. Then the world slowly comes back. 

I’m pinned to something, something cold and flat and incredibly loud. The world in front of me is rushing past at a mind-boggling pace, and when I look behind there is a cabin with a human in it, staring moronically ahead, one hand on a big steering wheel and a finger of the other up its nose. 

Oh no. 

This happened to my cousin Audrey a while back. She was never quite the same after, she forever veered to the left and jumped at loud noises. 

I turn my gaze to one side and lock eyes with another bug, a blowfly, also pressed up against the windscreen in a compromising position. He nods at me. 

‘G’day. How’s it going,' he says. 

My last session with Linda comes back to me. ‘Open up,’ she had said. ‘You have to let yourself be vulnerable in order to make yourself stronger.’ 

‘I’m having trouble letting go,’ I say to the blowfly. 

‘Me too, darl. Don't worry, red light coming up.’ 

‘No, I mean-’ 

Another bug just above me speaks, a wasp, it looks like when I crane my head. ‘Mind you if we get through this one on yellow it’s straight onto Reid Highway and then we’re stuffed.’ 

Then another voice, below and a little to the right- a tiny sandfly. ‘Reid? Don’t be stupid, we’re going westbound. We’re headed to Marmion Ave.'

‘I wouldn't listen to him, darl,’ says the blowfly, ‘he came in headfirst at about seventy Ks an hour, he doesn't know if he’s Arthur or Martha.’ 

The sandfly looks confused, ‘I'm Brad.’ 

‘Anyway,’ says the blowfly, ‘Reid highway is fine, it’s if he takes the Tonkin exit we’re in trouble. If he goes Tonkin Highway, that’s a one-way ticket to the Pilbara, my friends.’ 

They all groan. 

‘The Pilbara?!’ I screech, ‘I can't go to the Pilbara, I'm in the middle of a crisis!’ 

I need to get off this windscreen and fast. Maybe I could signal the driver to let me off. ‘Hey! Hey you! Excuse me!!’ I buzz my wings and tap my pointy feet frantically, ‘I need to get off, slow down!! Get your finger out of there- HELLOOO!’ 

‘Here, love,’ says the wasp, ‘if you wouldn't mind not drawing attention to yourself? We don't want him to chuck the old wipers on.’ He nods down below and when I look I wish I hadn't. A skinny, bristly leg from an indeterminate insect sticks up from under the rubber blade, the way it quivers in the immense air pressure makes it look like its doing a nervous wave. I gulp. 

‘So what brings a nice housefly like you out on this fine morning, anyway?’ asks the blowfly. 

Well, since he’s asking. 

I spend the next two kilometres spilling my heart out, just like Linda instructed. I tell them about Carrie growing up and staying out late, about how she doesn't seem to want to spend time together, doesn't even seem to like to do the same things anymore, how she barely eats at home at all. I told them about her as a larvae, how she would look up at me- I mean being a larvae she didn't have eyes, but they knew what i meant- with absolute trust and love and dependence. I tell them how I miss that with all of my being. 

I get it all out, and I hate to admit, I do find it a little therapeutic. 

‘Sounds like you just need to let go a bit,’ says the wasp. ‘It was like that when my Trevor left home, kids change.’ 

‘I just feel like nobody listens to me. I feel like what I say doesn't-’ 

‘LOOK!’ Everyone turns to look at Brad the sandfly. ‘There! Look! We're saved!’ 

The concussed sandfly is pointing ahead with his one functioning antenna, and when we turn to see there are cheers from all round. A red light. 

‘Bloody hell, he’s right. We’re slowing down!’ says the wasp’ 

‘This is our stop, folks!’ says the blowfly, ‘Get ready!’ 

Sure enough, the car starts to slow, the world comes back into focus, the wind eases off. This is our chance to get off, but I'm not finished yet. I'll need at least a trip to the Pilbara and back to get all this sorted out. I need a plan to get Carrie to stay. 

The blowfly looks over at me, stretching his crumpled wings ready to disembark. ‘Just think!’ he says, ‘Not much longer until she’s bringing you home some of her own larvae to stay for the weekend!’ 

Grand-larvae! 

My mind is suddenly full at the possibility. It hadn't even occurred to me, my very own grand-larvae to hold and to love and to cherish, plump and glistening, looking up at me in wonder, needing me. Now, there’s an idea I can get on board with. I need to let go of old chapters to make room for the next. Put that in your textbooks, Linda. 

I need a new plan to get Carrie a husband. I’m off and buzzing before the car has even come to a complete stop, speeding towards my new life, even if I do veer a little to the left.