Balance Awareness Week, 2022

I’m sitting on a small rock beach at Wangetti, between Cairns and Port Douglas in Australia.

There’s balancing rocks everywhere. Allowed by the council. The insta-famous Gatz balancing rocks.

There’s a foreboding, for me.

Others would see it differently. I can see how it might be considered fun, and the challenge of creating your own rock stack exciting. There’s a family to my left busy creating rock stacks. Smiles litter their faces. Fingers point. Hands rest on hips once they have accomplished their mission.

But to me, the rocks are all shades of darkness, mirroring my Meniere’s journey and the destruction of my balance cells. My Meniere’s journey that has scarred my heart and mind. And my inner ear. My journey that I pray that nobody ever has to travel. Cure for Meniere’s disease, please come soon.

I study the balancing rocks with more focus.

Rocks of black.

Rocks of brown.

Grey rocks. So many grey rocks with an “e” like the rain clouds – melancholy, but an enjoyable melancholy that builds up until it releases, like petrichor, the smell of the rain after warm, dry weather. Satisfying. The grey with an “e” of deep thought, philosophy and ponderings. The grey with an “e” that helps you to discover parts of yourself that you never knew existed, and can vanish without leaving a bitter aftertaste.

Gray rocks. So many gray rocks with an “a”. Never enjoyable. A very dark gray. It’s self-judgement, doom and gloom, forever hanging around and within. It wants to drag you into the dark abyss of the colour black, that absorbs all colours … the colour of self-condemnation, the colour of depression.

The rocks first caught my gaze as my husband and I travelled to Port Douglas to catch the Quicksilver boat out to the Great Barrier Reef the day before.

‘I want to go back to the rocks tomorrow,’ I had said to him.

Memories of my journey with Meniere’s disease flood my mind and my throat tightens. Vertigo. I so hate vertigo! I could cope with the ear fullness, hearing loss and tinnitus. But not the abhorrent, unpredictable vertigo.

Balance. I chose to have my balance cells destroyed in 2004 to stop the violent, horrendous, soul-destroying vertigo that would last up to 4 hours at a time. I would be hit with episodes of vertigo at least 40 times a year. I was totally debilitated, unable to move. I would stare at one spot of the wall for the entire time trying to gain some sort of control over the vertigo. I never could. My husband would selflessly empty my vomit bucket numerous times, and take me to emergency at the hospital for an injection of Stemetil and a bag of IV fluids. I was exhausted for days afterward.

I looked to my right. And there was my husband creating his own rock stack.

Tears pooled in my eyes. I felt like he was making the balancing rocks for me, for the journey I have been through, relearning my new balance using my eyesight. Successfully.

In reality, I know that he is creating a rock stack because it is fun.

I wipe the tears from my eyes and place the final rock on top of my husband’s rock stack. Joy fills me and I smile.

And there it is. We have created a rock stack for my Meniere’s family, and for others who have vertigo caused by diseases and traumas.

I lift my gaze to the ocean and inhale deeply. What a journey I have been on. What an awesome family I have where I receive support, always, and who deal with my lack of balance with humour to make me laugh.

I am beyond thankful that I no longer have vertigo. An answered prayer.

I walk to my left and move amongst the balancing rocks with care. The ground is uneven and … rocky. Any normal person could easily lose their balance here. But I’d hate to be the reason some rock stacks are knocked over due to me losing my balance.

I laugh to myself at the irony.

I take one final gaze at the works of rock art. Ephemeral art. I know that researchers are working on devices and gene therapies to cure vertigo.

I look down and find a heart shaped rock. Good things are coming.

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Julieann Wallace is a multi-published author and artist. When she is not disappearing into her imaginary worlds as Julieann Wallace – children’s author, or as Amelia Grace – fiction novelist, she is working as a secondary teacher. Julieann’s 7th novel with a main character with Meniere’s disease—‘The Colour of Broken’—written under her pen name of Amelia Grace, was #1 on Amazon in its category a number of times, and was longlisted in 2021 and 2022, to be made into a movie or TV series by Screen Queensland, Australia. She donates profits from her books to Macquarie University, where they are researching Meniere’s disease to find a cure. Julieann is a self-confessed tea ninja and Cadbury chocoholic, has a passion for music and art, and tries not to scare her cat, Claude Monet, with her terrible cello playing.