Where am I (and how many?!)

I was shocked to see that my last post has been posted WEEKS ago! Well, I figured I’d update you. I am not sick or anything, and I have not lost interest in blogging! I actually try to follow my favourite blogs as much as I can.

I’ve taken a whole bunch of classes for this semester and I’m simply drowning in schoolwork! Turns out law is even more of word-for-word-studying than you would think. I mean seriously, I’m starting to get why people fail this by the bunch. It really is a lot of learning by heart and if that’s not the method for you, you’re doomed. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve sat and read something, trying to memorize it, and then realizing that “well, this refers to paragraph so and so, but that one refers to article 7 billion and if I include that, I’ll also have to read that other paragraph and… Oh well. Might as well memorize the whole book now! ARGH!”

Other issues I have encountered are, for example, my lack of Latin skills. Which are zero. I truly understand why this was demanded years ago. Especially in classes like history of law or philosophy of law, there are so many latin terms and it’s so tiring to look everything up when others who know latin consider that a walk in the park (same with greek!). Phew.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the challenge and I love seeing the rewards for my work. But I’ll have to admit: I didn’t think it was going to be easy, but I also didn’t think it was going to be THIS hard. I don’t get why people talk about “college life” and all those parties and stuff. WHO has time for that haha

Either way, I’ll be off to more memorizing, and I hope you’ll all have a great day and I’ll be back with more (and more interesting) posts as soon as I can. Until then, don’t forget to wish me luck for the next round of exams!

What is feminism to me?

I recently read a rage-filled fundamentalist post on women’s right to vote (and that women should not have that right) and I secretly thanked feminism for allowing me to be an individual in this society – or any society really.

So what does feminism mean to me? Does it mean “Yay I get to wear pants”? Sure, but that’s really just a side-joke.

It means my husband cannot quit MY job when he thinks I don’t do enough housework. He does not have the ability to cage me at the home and to rob me of my means to make money both for me and for my children (and potentially for him). It means that I will not suffer from the fact that I have no job experience, resulting in the fact that I have only two life choices: Divorce and poverty, or an unhappy marriage. It gives me the security that I have abilities which people are willing to pay money for.

It also means that I can get higher education. I can study at university in order to improve my market value and in order to improve my knowledge. It gives me a chance to decide what and who I want to be. It gives me the security that when everything is lost, my education will still be there.

It means that I can vote. I can vote for the candidate with the best program, the greatest vision, who shares my opinion or, yes, the candidate I find physically attractive. That’s how it is. It means that my opinion will count even if my justification for these opinions is based on superficial issues like looks. I’m not saying this is a good call, but that’s how it is: You cannot chose whether you like an opinion or not, you’ll have to live with others having them.

It means also that I can own things, buy things, make contracts and be a liable person by law. I do not disappear in the existence of my husband once I say “I do”. I am still allowed to exist as a person of my own. This is why I despise people who say things like “Mr and Mrs John Smith”. There is no Mrs John Smith. There might be Mrs Jane Smith.

Feminism means that my body is mine and nobody else’s. Not my husband’s. Not my child’s. MINE. I can do with it as I please. I can pierce it, draw on it, take it where ever I want. I can sleep with whom I want, at any time, or not. It protects me from being raped by my husband without appropriate punishment. It protects me from being forced to do things I do not want to do.

Feminism in its core gives me individuality at the core. It makes me a person with dreams, rights and a future. Feminism makes me human. It makes me – me, just as I want myself to be.

When the patriarchs express that feminism is evil, it is not the feminism they hate. It’s not the pants and the rights they hate. It is precisely the individuality.

Fundamentalist christianity cannot survive in an environment where there is individuality. Everybody must conform to rules and values for it to work. Everybody must submit, men and women alike. Those who do not submit are those who risk the system. Kids who talk back. Women who work. Men who have feelings. Individuals outside that perfect, Pearl-esque set of rules. Conform or be damned. Conform or suffer. Conform or die. Individuality? Uncheck that box as soon as possible. Die to yourself and move the remaining empty shell by the rules of the great puppet-master. Get on the stage and play your role, and by all means, hope it’s over soon.

I am here, reading, writing, thinking. Not because of anything the patriarchs did but because of something the feminists did. They made me what I am today. Thank you for that.

Spring and regret

The flu is going around right now and of course it feels like I caught it. I’m coughing, shivering and my ears feel somewhat infected. Oh well, I suppose it could be much worse, because I feel surprisingly fit. But because today is a “sick day”, I will try to catch up on some writing – something I really neglected lately.

Yesterday was somewhat of a down-day for me. I had talked to my mother and felt somehow weird after that. Not because she’d said anything mean really, we were chit-chatting for the most part. In fundamentalist circles, most news revolve around who’s courting, getting married, having a baby or opening a home business.

There are plenty of news really, the biggest being that my brother and his wife are expecting. This was only a mild surprise by now really, because they had gotten married last summer and that’s really a long time to wait for the good news in fundie-circles. His wife is only three months along, so there are no details as to gender etc! I’m excited for them – I know this was something specifically his wife had wished for and I think he’s very proud too (I didn’t talk to him personally yet).

There’s also a bunch of other news – You know the Wilfried’s oldest? He’s courting that Singer’s girl now. No, not the blonde, the red one. Anna, I think – and Max and Mary, old Smith’s daughter and the Brough’s boy, they’re having their second -  and so on.

I guess spring isn’t just a season of love in the normal world.

I don’t think Mom told me all these things to hurt me – to be honest, there really isn’t much else to talk about. She didn’t think any of it. She didn’t mean to rub anything in my face. She also asked a lot of questions about my studies – how it’s going, how I’m doing (grades not sent out yet! No idea!) and all that. She remarked that it would be good to have a lawyer in the family, in case they ever ran into problems. I smiled at that and remarked that the laws I study aren’t American laws, and while many are similar, I wouldn’t dare to help out in such a case because there are still very many laws that differ from our laws here. Just think of public nudity!

Afterwards I started thinking. You know. I’m sitting here, sipping my coffee, staring out the window. We had new snow just yesterday. My birthday’s coming up soon.

I don’t feel like I achieved much. To be honest, sometimes I doubt I’m in the right place. Sometimes I regret leaving. I think of the life ahead of me and wonder if that’s really what I wanted all along.

If you’re raised to believe that responsibility is not for women, it’s hard to imagine a life in which you’re fully responsible for everything you do. Every bad choice and decision can’t be blamed on your Dad, your husband or even God.

I keep wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to have married back then. Where would I be now? Would I sit with Anna and Mary, gossiping about diapers and housekeeping? Would I read recipes on the internet and pin crafty stuff on pintrest? Would I hug the little blonde girl who cries for me when she scraped her knee? Would I spend the evenings quiet and cosy, knitting stuff while my husband reads the bible to me? Wouldn’t I be happy to be cared for and live my life quietly until the day I die?

I think I would. Sometimes I feel that parallel universes really exist. It feels like there is only a thin veil through which I can sometimes get glimpses of the other side. But here’s the thing: You can’t change sides. Decisions made, your call. There’s no turning back now, only the responsibility you have to carry all by yourself.

Well. But then again – behind my occasional yearning for the known, the safe, that which I have been taught to believe in and considering good and honest – I remember TS Eliot:

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Wouldn’t I be whimpering all the time? I think I would. Nope, I think I’m going to prove Eliot wrong. The world doesn’t have to end with a whimper – but you yourself have to make it bang.

Back to my coffee. Even if this doesn’t work out the way I wished, even if everything ends up completely different from I could expect, there’s still the certainty that people rarely regret the things they do, most often, they regret those which they didn’t do (that’s a quote too, but I don’t know by whom).

Good Bye 2012!

it is funny how views change. I remember, when I was younger, I did not really care about New Years. Not that I didn’t care at all, but it wasn’t as special to me as it is now. I guess I adopted a different view.

I used to sit during the time between Christmas and New Years and come up with dreams for the new year – things I was hoping to do, things I was hoping to see, things I was hoping that would happen. I never really looked back at the past year and in retrospective I have to say that there really wasn’t much to look back at. I was just waiting for great things to happen.

The last few New Years have been different. I don’t really look forward to the new year in a sense that I dream of what could be – I rather spend time thinking about what happened in the old year. And I think that’s a major shift in my world view. I’m not terribly nostalgic or anything, I’m not particularly sad that this year is over, but nevertheless it marks a few great events in my life. It is, for sure, a year I will not forget.

Patriarchs like to put pretty much everything into boxes, that’s what they’re best at. Well I have to admit I’m very much a box person. There’s a little box in my head which I have been putting all those great events of the past year into, hoping that I will never lose them. Finishing school is one of them. Starting university another. The many great days in which I felt like it would be the end of my life but turned out to be real good. The days with friends, laughing in the sun, coffee in the city, getting dressed up for date nights, wanting to scream out all that energy and wishing that we could live in those moments forever.

Recently, D and I sat on the couch, watching a movie, me just slightly asleep, I told him that I wouldn’t mind the least if the world stopping right now and things would be like this forever. He laughed and I asked him why. He said that I wouldn’t want that to happen. Again, I asked him why, and he replied that my butt would get real sore and I would wish that it would end soon. Sometimes this guy doesn’t realize how much to the point his ideas are. The beauty of a moment seems to be not necessarily defined by itself but rather by the collection of moments in each day, good and bad. A moment of relaxation doesn’t come without prior exhaustion, like everything, it’s the balance which makes something remarkable.

Tomorrow night will be a fun night with friends, and after that, a new year will begin. I think I can finally stop caring about the new year and instead treasure these last moments with the old one. Because, you know, very few things in life are for certain and I can promise you, one of them is the new year. It will come along, no matter how hard you wish to stop it, or push it in this or that direction. It will come and do whatever it will, and besides that, there’s nothing much you can change. So let’s all just try to remember one moment in our lives that we want to treasure for the rest of our lives and say goodbye to the old year.

Oh my, I kind of sound like an old lady on TV. Well, please try to see it instead as the thoughts of a 20 something year old who doesn’t know much about old and new years except that we’re all in it together

Of not being good enough

Studying is the new praying. I’m having serious issues with studying; I actually study religiously. That might be a good thing for a normal, worldly person. But if you are from a bible freak family, religiously means something completely different.

There is never an ‘enough’ point, never a ‘done for today’, always one more prayer, one more article, one more book to read. It’s not that hard, studying law. Really, so far a lot of it has been memorizing things. I’m pretty good at memorizing things word-for-word, a great advantage I find when you study something like law, which is extremely memorize-y.

But I don’t find an end of the day. I can’t sleep well anymore because I feel it’s a waste of my precious studying time. It’s all I ever think about. The idea of not getting an A freaks me out. I don’t really know why, I suppose it is because I come from a community where if you didn’t have an A in purity and lifestyle and bible knowledge, you were a fail. It’s very much a “holier than thou” attitude, extended to studying. I feel very much like I did as a teen, wearing my A as a badge of honor. A scarlet letter in reverse, so to speak.

I’m feeling very bad these days. I hardly talk anymore when I see my friends and when I’m spoken to, I only bark “yes” in order to shut them up. I want to find some peace and stop the thoughts from hammering in my brain, stop my mental self from going through the shelfs of knowledge to detect that one little spot where information might be missing. I’m afraid to watch movies and read books out of fear that the new information might overwrite something more important (what the…??).

I’m feeling like my self is pulling me back into old behaviors where I need to be punished for ‘failing’, that failing being not having done enough on that day. I feel like I need some sort of consequence for my disobedience to my home-made plan of how much to do in a day. I feel that I’m actually craving pain on some level, thinking that it would give me motivation to keep going beyond the limits.

And at the same time I hate myself for not being cheerful enough, not being friendly and happy and all those things. I feel the need to apologize all the time, to anybody really. I, again, feel the pressure of conforming to those images of the woman handling everything with a smile and a cheerful attitude. Where they right? Is my place at home? Is this happening because women are not made for this? It’s hard to silence the voices creeping up on me, whispering that I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I should go back to what I’m made for. Suddenly, the biblical bubble looks so comfortable from outside. I have to remind myself that it’s not true and I know it. I have to remind myself

I can do it, I can do it.

Is it working?

I did NOT explode…

…but my brain just might, haha!

I will make this confession – I imagined this to be so much easier. I thought I’d still get around to blog once a week and feel good and all, but now I haven’t posted anything substantial in like two months and I can finally admit that I completely overestimated myself.

University is much harder than I expect – and it’s not even because of the classes. No, it’s because it’s confusing. It’s new people, new contacts and with them, new disappointments. Like that one guy who you were supposed to give a presentation with, only he never did anything and didn’t show up to class that day, leaving you to fill his part as well. Or like the study group which turned out to be shallow young girls discussing their disturbing, yet quite interesting sex lives (is dressing up sexy just to get a guy fall in love with you and then tell him that you despise him just for the fun of seeing his heart break a new sport?).

I wondered about the high rates of failure and drop-outs. Now I can totally see where a large chunk comes from. They fail tests because they don’t show up for class. Because they think seven days is enough to study for a big exam. Because they are young and wild and they still have so much time on their hands and no worries that failing is a part of it – it’s not that bad, they’re all still trying to find their ways.

Only it’s different for me. I’m not “that young” anymore, meaning I’m not 18, fresh out of high school, just testing the waters. I want to get somewhere, I need to get somewhere. I’m 25 and if I manage the average number of semesters to graduate law, I’ll be 32. These younger ones, they can mess up a year or two and still graduate under 30. I guess, simply because I’m older, and more experienced (without sounding patronizing), I have a different view on life. I’m sure they will too by the time they hit their mid twenties. It’s just a point where you realize you won’t be young forever, you won’t manage to live with the excuse “I’m young, I have plenty of time” for much longer.

I thought I’d be better off if I knitted some contacts with the younger group because I feel I’m more on their level mentally (if that makes sense), but it turns out that I feel like a child even next to some 18 year olds but still have different ideas of how I should handle life. And I guess that’s ok.

I now found a slightly older crowd my age (all mid and late 20s) who are first semesters as well. I feel like they understand much better where I come from, though many of them are much more mature mentally than I am. But that’s ok too. Given how “unique” us ex-fundies are, I’d have a hard time finding anybody like me around here. Maybe that would be different in the US where there are good networks of ex-fundies, but not here.

And it’s not just school. Work has become a drag because it robs so much of my time. I get home and I want to spend time with D or my friends, and yet I should do homework, housework, whatever. I’m trying to find a routine of doing the chores and meeting my social needs, but to be quite honest with you guys, my home is a mess.

A few days ago I didn’t even manage to put the dishes into the dishwasher. I had no time at all and I was tired enough to drop. So I left them standing there, rotting all by themselves.

Last week, I didn’t make my bed – two days in a row!

Two weeks ago, I had to go to school with disgusting hair because I had no time to wash it.

And the floor in my bedroom looks like a mix of a library and a paper recycling station. My desk, my beautiful “old made new with my own hands” desk? I haven’t seen that since the second week of school. I am wondering whether it is still there, somewhere under all those books and papers. It might just have vanished into thin air.

Yes, you see, it’s hard, and I would love to add more, but I’m heading off to work now and these five minutes it took to write this post are all I could spare. To everyone who has been through this: How did you manage?!

Revelations in the dark part 2: Dealing with it

In the first post I wrote about my boyfriend D admitting to me that he is bisexual. And here’s part 2: How I dealt with it, how he did, how we did.

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I don’t remember who spoke first. I just know it must have been almost 30 minutes of silence before we started talking. And I remember how I lined up some questions in my head, questions that would determine whether I could deal with it or not. There were still so many stereotypes and fears in my head. It was so hard to even find a starting point to the whole thing.

I asked him if that meant he wanted to see other people. That was simply my first impression, or at least what I’ve always been taught about gay/bi people – they sleep around a lot. D was pretty shocked when I asked him that – surprised even. Of course he didn’t want that. He never mentioned anything like that, and that was not his intention when he told me.

I’ll admit that I still had no clue how to deal with it, and if I could possibly deal with it at all. But at the same time I was happy that he told me about it.

We talked almost all night, him getting only 2 hours of sleep before work. We discussed so many things. Why he didn’t tell me before – a question I could have answered myself. How he knew, when he found out. He said he never “knew” really, he just had an interest but thought all men had that. It didn’t appear to him as something unusual. Only later in life, at the age of 19, 20, he realized that his interest in both naked women and men was not something every man felt. That’s when it dawned to him, but it wasn’t something he wanted to admit to everybody, or even to himself. Nevertheless he didn’t deny himself feeling that way. He just kept it the way it had been: A normal interest, no more no less.

Of course I asked him if and how he ever lived that interest out, and how I could be sure that he wouldn’t leave me for a man – isn’t that a strange question? I mean, he might just leave me for another woman, but that fear I do not have. Maybe it’s because I know I can’t fulfill certain areas of interest simply because I lack the physical conditions for it (you know, I don’t have a penis!). Either way, he told me had actually been in a relationship with a man for a few months. A gay man, who was seeking something serious. He expressed that he felt bad about this relationship, not because it happened but because he felt he set that man up for pain. He said he wasn’t sure if he wanted a relationship with a man in the first place, hence he should not have gotten involved with a man willing to commit emotions and work and hopes. He said he tried hard, but aside from a sexual interest, he could not deal with a man on a daily basis. He said he missed the ‘feminine’ qualities in a partner – D really likes make up and pretty clothes on a woman, and he’s a great listener to female problems a man would never have, he enjoys both girlishness and strong womanhood, female sound of laughter and ‘how women smell’ as he expressed it. Either way, he quickly found that he missed both female qualities as well as female sexuality, though he did enjoy the gay part of the relationship. A few months later, his boyfriend approached him to “take the next step”, which was when he realized that this just wasn’t for him. He realized that being bisexual was something linked strongly to sex, and little more. He also realized that, while he did have gay fantasies in previous relationships with women, the craving for living those out wasn’t very high, while he did have a great craving to have sex with women while he was with a man. A craving he said he could not live with never getting to fulfill if he stayed in a committed relationship with a man. His decision was clear: It was much easier dealing with his gay fantasies in a hetero relationship than dealing with hetero fantasies in a gay relationship. He decided to come clear about all this to his boyfriend, who, as he said, was very hurt but understood. They parted in as much friendship as can be possible when someone leaves with a broken heart.

All this pretty much answered my questions and calmed my concerns. That’s very surprising to me – I figured I would be so hurt if I found out that my boyfriend had a boyfriend in the past. But quite the opposite happened – I’m relieved to say the least. I feel safety. I know he’s been there, I know he knows what he wants. This is not something that might linger and just wait to happen, him cheating on me with a man just to see what it’s like. It’s been done and he knows that while he did enjoy it, he cannot live a life of it, he prefers being with a woman most of the time, both sexually as well as relationship wise. He said that his fantasies do exist still, and that he enjoys them, but if he is in a happy hetero relationship, it is no problem for him to put these were they belong, as fantasies, something to enjoy on occasion, and not going out to actually find fulfillment of fantasies.

I asked him that if he were to be single right now, would he do it again? He said that yes, he would not say no if he met a man who he found attractive, however he would go about it differently. He would put the cards on the table, ne open and honest about his intentions and feelings. And if the other one was ok with that, he wouldn’t mind. His experience wasn’t bad, it didn’t feel wrong to him apart from the obvious hurt he caused, so he has accepted this as a side of himself. However, he said, he much prefers a steady relationship over affairs, and he wouldn’t trade what we have gained so far.

We got to bed very late – or should I say early in the morning? I told him I needed some time to digest all of this. I slept in some the next morning but got up at 9, had my coffee and breakfast, did some googling, reading, thinking. At about 4 PM, I couldn’t take it anymore, sitting there knowing that he was probably worrying at work, tired and sad. I hadn’t been very nice. I got dressed and put on some make up and made my way over to his work place. I usually don’t go over unless I need something, but I decided this was not something I should write in a text message.

I went inside and smiled when I saw him from behind. He hadn’t seen me yet. I walked up to him, but he didn’t realize there was somebody standing next to him, he just kept working.

“Hey” I said.

I saw how he flinched from the surprise, whirled around with big eyes and looked at me somewhat surprised, and happy.

“Hey, what are you doing here? Do you need something?”

“No”, I said, “I was around, shopping, thought I’d come over” (yes you caught me, I lied!)

He smiled, but he looked so bad, so worn out and tired, I could hardly stand myself because I had been such a mean person the night before.

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to make dinner, what time do you get off so I can start preparing on time?”

“Seven, I think… but… you know, if there’s not too much to do, I’ll be off at seven, I’ll text you if I’m late.”

Yep, that was the question I didn’t want to text. I felt that something like “Please come over for dinner tonight” just sounds so serious. Asking that with a smile in person is so much nicer.

He ended up being on time, we ate, talked and slept early.

And that night was a good one, because I could feel a feeling of trust I have never felt with anyone before. Because he could’ve just kept it secret, lived out his fantasies, but instead he risked me breaking up with him over this because he wanted to be honest. I think that’s a pretty good base for more.

The (polished) lives of others

I remember dreaming about life the way I had seen it in those P/QF books and magazines and occasional home making blogs. It’s funny because it was never that way at our house. But I always thought that one day, I would live one of those beautiful lives.

I’d have a pantry filled with homemade juices and marmalade and sauces and relishes. I’d have a beautiful, antique and yet modern kitchen. I’d have a great view from my kitchen windows, and I’d wear a beautiful apron. I’d be… hm. One of those fairytale housewives, I guess.

My life would be quiet, relaxed. I’d be busy decorating a beautiful home, not really worrying about money and how to get by. My husband would be thrilled to see my newest crafty decoration idea and I’d have people come over for tea, who would praise my exquisite taste and the heavenly homemade biscuits.

My living room would have one of those open fire places and no TV in it, a beautiful sofa and a large bookshelf with old books – funny enough, that shelf was filled with books I wasn’t encouraged to read. But hey, who cares, they were only decoration anyway. They would show my guests how polished my education was, how knowledgable and ‘classical’ I was. After all, those classics are the center of a good education!

Yes, people would be impressed by my family and me. After tea, the female guests would offer to help me in the kitchen, but I’d say no. I’d offer them to come to the kitchen with me anyway, and then I would show them the many jars filled with strawberry-vanilla-lemon jelly and blackberry-cherry marmalade and tomato relish (my secret ingredient was a red, sweet apple). They’d look at the jars and go “How on earth do you manage?” and I would just smile and say “Oh, you know, I just can’t stand not using up the things we grow in our garden.” (just to point them to the fact that I had a rich garden). I would fill up the plates with more biscuits, different kinds, and gracefully fly back into the living room, or the dining room. There’d be fresh flowers everywhere. And the women would ask me where I got this and that, where my antique teacups were from, and I would have a different story about everything, an amazing, magical, filled with adventure story.

And yes, my kids. How well-behaved they were, and how clean and neat and obedient and whatnot. How tidy their rooms were, how tidy the house was, how lush the gardens! Yes, I was truly the Proverbs 31 woman.

At the end of the day, my tall dark and handsome husband, who made assloads of money doing something real godly, would put his hands on my shoulders and gently kiss my neck and whisper that I was truly the wife of his dreams and no other even came close to me.

Yes, I would enjoy those moments that made me feel so superior to everybody else. I would brag about it, discreetly, a constant, charming smile on my face, my beautiful hair naturally falling perfectly on my shoulders, my dress so polished and modern. My beautiful husband and kids, my beautiful self, my beautiful home. Oh everything would be beauty. And I would walk past the other P/QF trailer trash and show them that if you REALLY had God in your life, you could be the same. No, they weren’t as godly as I was. They weren’t. I was the true picture of what God did for his followers. Yes, I was better. Better than all of them. I was more sacred, had more godly beauty, more blessed. And they would know, and they’d crawl back into their messy holes and beg God for forgiveness for whatever they had done to deserve less than me.

_________________________________

Thinking back, this makes me despise myself. I always dreamed to be one of those women. You know them, they are in every church. Except, back then, I was the trailer trash girl, crawling back into her hole and into her messy life, wondering why God didn’t give us the money and space we needed, why it was always too much for us to do, why, no matter how hard we tried, we could never have the fancy china and the old books and the crafty ideas.

I was filled up with rage because God didn’t keep his promise. And then we were there, left in the dark, looking at those polished lives of the woman who were truly graceful and blessed.

We were the ones envying gardens and staring at the beautiful kitchens. We were the ones to be gifted that strawberry-vanilla-lemon jelly, with a pitying smile and a “I got more than we can eat!”, or that tomato relish, with a wink and a “A big, ripe, red apple is the secret ingredient!”.

I was the one of the sideline, knowing that they were better, and hoping that I’d join them one day.

It’s not just purity that’s turned into a contest. It’s all of it. Who’s the purest, who has the most godly, most proverbs-31 house with the beautiful stuff in it, who has the best husband, who has most blessings from god.

I was despicable. I’m happy I’m out of that pressure. I don’t have to despise anybody anymore – not the poor P/QF families who think that they don’t need all that stuff to be happy (but actually, they do), not the families who can boast with their blessings of beauty and craftiness and tidiness. I pity them, even. Because both sides are never satisfied. Both sides are striving to show everybody what God can do by hoarding up blessings, both in form of children and of possessions. They think they are beyond materialism, but they aren’t. In fact, they sell it as “Godly, beautiful, set apart feminine lifestyle”.

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As I am writing this, I’m sitting on my made bed, covered  in h&m sheets (I love them!), a room filled with stuff that was gifted to me, that I fixed up. That doesn’t quite fit, is always a little off. Now, I will go into my old but homely kitchen, take two cups out of the shelf – two different looking ones, because we do not have two cups of the same design on that shelf – and make a cup of coffee with my good old-fashioned coffee machine. One for me, one for my roommate. And then, who knows. Maybe we’ll just go shopping. Because, fortunately, we do not have a garden to harvest, jellies to cook, or cookies to bake. No, we are free of all those pressures – at least for today.

I hear the new cafe has amazing cookies. Maybe we’ll try those.

Here’s some news . . .

 

So, I’ve been considering to try to get into law school. My little inside self laughed at me, saying that this is about 50 sizes too big for me, but hey, I could try, I mean, I have no chance anyway but I could try. I somehow lived in this world where lawyers have a hard time even getting into their school and all that. I could never be a lawyer. I better try for nurse, or kindergartener – not saying that those are easy jobs or easy studies, it’s just that they would be so much closer to what I learned in life. I’m not afraid of blood and gore, I can act when somebody is hurt, I know how to deal with kids. A lawyer? Totally out of personality for me.

Well, what can I say.

I got into law school! And it wasn’t even hard!

See the thing is, the counselor I asked about law was from another school, the one I want to go to has a different system of accepting students. Namely, they accept everyone and weed out themselves.

And that’s pretty scary. A young woman at the office – a student herself, she’s just helping out there during tough hours with the paper work – smiled when I was surprised that everyone is admitted for the first semester.

“Most leave anyway” she smiled.

“Well… umm… how many, I mean, is there a rough estimation?”

“Well, many leave after the first semester, because, you know, 13 tests in one week is plenty. And then you can’t repeat some tests, so you have to pass those first try. We got some tests where 90% fail. And then, there’s the final exams at the end of your studies, where again 40% fail.”

Gulp. Well that sounds pleasant. I was told that law is hard and you have to work a lot to pass, but this exceeds my expectations. My friends told me she probably meant well telling me that, as in scaring me so I’ll put in all my time and I won’t end up failing. But still…

Right now I’m at the point where I don’t want to back out from this. I want to try. Just to see. I’ll try the first semester and see. Maybe I’ll make it and don’t like it, maybe I’ll fail, maybe I’ll stay. 6 months isn’t a lot of time to try. 6 months which, whatever happens, will teach me a lot about myself and my life. Yep, totally accepting the challenge. 6 months of law, and then I’ll see what I can do.

Revelations in the dark

My lovely readership, I hope you’re having a wonderful day! After lots of though, I decided I want to let you in on something that happened in my life recently. This happened a while back and I had this post pre-written for a while and edited it a bunch. I hope I could remove all peculiarities that sometimes come with a ton of editing.

Here’s a disclaimer: If you are easily offended by topics such as sexuality in general, homosexuality, dating relationships or anything really (aka, if you are a P/QF follower), the following post might not be for you.

And another disclaimer: I’m posting this because I want to share an area of personal growth and change. Everything I write is written with permission of all people involved. As you (hopefully) know, all names used on my blog are not the people’s real names. I do this to both protect my family as well as my new friends in my new life, so they do not have to deal with any fallout. On occasion, I have been changing places as well (for example, if I write something happened at McDonald’s, it might have been really happening at Burger King – obviously this is a rather bad example as there’s McDonald’s about everywhere here, haha!). I do this in order to conceal the place I live at right now, as people with knowledge of that place might be able to figure out where I am and then who I am. I’m paranoid like that. This is not meant to insult any of my beloved readers, but to protect myself from the very few evil minds from my old life. With recent events of several blogger identities revealed, I’m being even more careful. So please understand that if I do change times, names and places, I do not change the core of what I’m writing, and I do not change things said in conversations as they cannot be traced back to me and my environment. Writing this I made sure not to mention any surroundings that could imply any identities.

Onto the post!

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“What?” was the first thing out of my mouth. My heart was beating so fast, I feared it would jump right out of my chest. I stood up and stumbled towards the door.

“No. No. I need some time to myself.” I mumbled when D grabbed my arm.

“No, please, no, no, stay, no, I’m so sorry, look, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” was all he could get out. The fear in his voice surprised me.

“Just leave me” was all I could say as I closed the door behind me. I went into the kitchen, sat down on the small table on the right side of the room, right next to the window, and stared at the wall.

So this is what actors feel like, I thought. Because this had to be a movie. This was a movie, an I was an actress. And this is what it feels like. I tried to sort my thoughts, but I realized there weren’t any left in my head. Just the pounding of my heart inside my ears, noisy like a drum, and the blood rushing through the veins.

I got up, walked in a circle twice and opened the fridge. Staring  into the fridge makes thinking easier I realized. I grabbed a green bottle from the fridge door. My roommate’s expensive white wine. She drinks a tiny glass of it once or twice a week. I started gulping half of it down, straight from the bottle. Why does she spend so much money on this? It tastes just like every other white to me. I put the bottle back, making a mental note to myself that I owe her a new one. I turn and go another circle, nibbling my lip, peeling off the chapped skin. Others bite their fingernails, I peel the skin off my lips until blood comes. I sat down again, staring at the table. A pack of cigarettes, D’s cigarettes. I take one out, exploring the unknown feeling of a cigarette between my fingers. I light it, inhale, and immediately regret it. 10 minutes and a coughing fit (and, admittedly, another big sip expensive white wine) later, I’m still sitting, nibbling.

That’s when I hear it.

Muffled sounds of crying in my room. And my heart breaks into a thousand tiny pieces. Did I really just run out on D? Did I really react this way?

You know, most of what we do, the ways we react, can’t be changed easily. If we have certain things embedded in our personalities, we act according. If you tend to laugh when you’re sad, you’ll most likely laugh when you’re sad. There are few chances, or moments, rather, where we can actively choose.

It’s like standing at a crossroads. Certainly, your decision will decide which way you’re taking, but also an emotional, a personality crossroads. You get the chance to actively decide what type of person you’re going to be. That’s how I felt.

And I decide that I didn’t want to take that old path so deeply rooted in my personality anymore. I wanted to be that other person. All I had to do was walk down the other path. And so I did – I felt like that was one of those moments where I chose that I’m a different person than I’ve been before.

Twenty minutes earlier, D had made a confession to me.

He had confessed that he is, in fact, bisexual.

I looked at the table in front of me, feeling slightly wobbly. And then shame hit me. Did I run out, drink that expensive wine and try to smoke? No wonder us fundamentalist girls are told the world isn’t for us – we don’t have the slightest clue how to deal with things.

And then came the fear that I had just ruined a wonderful relationship with an amazing person. WHAT – WAS – I – THINKING, screamed my head. I stumbled off the chair and walked to the door still closed. What should I say? It didn’t matter. I felt like every single second standing here doing nothing was wasted, was seconds lost that I would desperately need to sort this out. And so I simply went back into my bedroom. D was sitting at the edge of my bed, just staring at me. I didn’t know what to say, so instead, I just sat down next to him and grabbed his hand. And so we sat, for a pretty long time, not talking, not doing anything.

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I’ll admit that this hit me like nothing ever before. What did this mean for me, for him, for us? Was it my fault?

Weirdly enough, my first association was that he asked me to have an open relationship where both of us could basically sleep around. He didn’t imply this at all, but it was my first thought and it shocked me just how deep the prejudges against gay/bi people are rooted in my thinking.

So how does the story end? Well. Yes, I sort of ended with a cliffhanger, but before you fall off the edge of your seat I want to tell you: I hope you can read my smiles between the lines. That story does have a happy ending. I just figured that this would be enough for now. I want to treat this issue with respect and empathy, and I do want to get this post out. That’s why i decided to take some more time, so I can write more on it in the thoughtful manner it deserves to be written in. But yes, we found our way to deal with this, and we are very happy with it.