Tuna and depression - clean up before you leave

If there is one thing in the world I promised myself NOT to do, it´s that I would not kill myself. No matter how heavy the feeling, no matter how dark the path or hopeless the future, I would NOT kill myself. 

When I was eleven years old I watched my mum die of an overdose. I found her after school on the kitchen floor. Foam was dripping down her chin on her pale chest, emphesizing the maple white colour of her skin. The blood running from her nose making its way to her bright red lips. Magnifizent I thought, how she managed to chose almost the same colour for her lipstick. She had cleaned up the kitchen. I could not decide weather to admire the blinking kitchen sink or her flipping body and the little shocks running through it. I stood frozen, not sure how to react. Two deep breaths, three deep breaths later I took two pieces of bread. With the orange kitchenknife I smeared a thick  layer of maionaise on it. Hell yeah, I made myself a tuna-sandwich.  Then I called my dad. 

"Just go to your room", he said with a calm clear voice, "it´s gonna be fine". I knew he was right, it would. Upstairs I opened the lid of my record player and put on Jefferson Airplane. Sitting on my knitted bedcover, chewing tuna and bread i watched the black vinyl spin. There were no more noises from downstairs.
She had chosen pills. There were various of them everywhere in the house. Some to calm her down, some to make her sleep, some to wake her up and some to allow her to think other than dark thoughts. She never cooked meals but pills we always had. Since I can remember she was fighting beeing soaked in this spiral of dark and negative thoughts. She had stopped slicing up her skin but never stopped slicing up her soul.

Thinking of her death was soothing. She would not have to struggle anymore with the exhausting things of daily life like getting up, getting dressed, leaving the house.... I heared the doorlock and my dead calling an ambulance. He did not cry, he did not scream. 

Climbing down the stairs I could see him kneeing next to her. Gently he ran his fingers through her dark hair, wearing a warm smile on his face. The sunlight danced on the kitchen sink. "Look, she s finally in peace. Ain´t it beautiful?", he said. 

It´s funny how even nowadays tuna sandwiches and blinking kitchen sinks would remind me of my dads smile and my mums suicide. Things did not change much afterwads, they just went on. But I would never kill myself. I would never kill myself, because I did not believe him that she was in peace.

asymptote - agreeing in difference

People are great. Honestly! Pretty much everyone. I like the kind ones, but way better I like the mean ones, the difficult ones, the jerks and monsters. The reason for this is a pretty simple one: i consider them different from myself. Some show differences in a positiv way, some just scare the living crap out of me. The greater the difference the better. There is literally nothing I could be less interested in than people simular to myself. Just like you or probably most people, I m very aware of and familiar with my own disfunctions, failures and triggers. So there is nothing exiting about that. Therefore people with a completly different and alien mindset attract me a lot. There is a lot to learn and figure and and understand. Challange is attractive. There s no need to agree with their views, positions and argumements but it is a clear reminder these perspectives exist and are to be respected. 

The approach towards these people is always very exiting. I personally have a very hard time beeing open and honest and trust them. It s a good exersize. And to be honest: usually I just stay at a safe distance. But with some of them it s a mysterious spiritual connection. It s like finding a negative, your aenima. The combination would build something whole, something round and complete. It took me some time to understand that respect and appreciation of the others exitence was the reason for this. This offers a solid foundation for a dialogue, a discurs. And while observing and understanding, the two positions move closer and distance shrinks. Like two curves in an axis of abscissas. But people are people and noone is free of angst. A minimum amount of mistrust will always remain. And just like an asymptote we move closer and closer in time, never crossing. As we are not brave enough to stumple into each others beeing and accepting completly.  It s a soothing but at the same time sobering metaphor. What instruments or circumstances would be necessary to manage this remaining distance? Should anyone have ideas or proposals for turning an asymptote into a tangent, please feel free to write. Collision is probably something harsh, but at the same time it sets free a lot of enery. It would be a waste not to use it.

bye bye baby, bye bye - two perspectives on abortion

September 13th is quite a special day for my best friend and me. For each of us in an own special way. This year we happened to spend it together. The two of us have been friends for nearly a decade.  A decade of fun and failure...

Eight years ago we were sittting stoned on a dirty matress in his room, watching Pontus Alvs´strongest of the strange projected on the bedroom wall as he said he would have something weird to tell me. His girlfriend, who he had been dating for nearly a month, was pregnant. She was 18, he 19 by the time. Getting the baby would not be an option he said slightly confused. He would gladly pay the 140€ an abortion would cost. They did not really discuss their positions in this. They did not find a consens. To be honest they did not really communicate the issue at all. She arranged a date with her gynocologist. He drove her home after the procedure.  This was equivalent with their brakeup. 

On september 13th four years ago I got up at six in the morning, putting on warm stuff for the ugly cold weather outside and hoping not to be late as usual. The abortion clinic was about an hour away. To be honest the atmophere around was pretty cosy and i felt way more comfortible then going to the dentist. Warm light probably to smooth the decision. I decided not to get an general anesthesia, a local one would do. And while a nice lady, I had only met once before to discuss everything, was inserting a mini hoover into my lower body, I was thinking how cool it was that she could just suck my problem right out of me. 15 min later, maybe 20, I felt only a little pain and tired but internaly so eased. The next day I had nearly forgotten about it. I would not have to destroy peoples relationsships by admitting my pregnancy. I would not have to deal with responsability and I would not have to take into concideration someone elses point of view. Fucking awesome. I could not have been more greatful.

My decision was made all by myself. I did what felt right for me in this very moment and in regard to my future life. Thinking now about having a four year old kid to take care off would literally freak me out. I m not a mum.

While my best friends girlfriend was brave enough to deal with someone elses reaction, she still did what she felt was expected from her. Maybe she herself would have made a different choice. Looking back at my own choice, I would do it again the very same way. Sounds selfish, right? It might appear fair to inform your lover about the consequences of your interaction but at the end of the day it s still the women dealing with the physical and emotional consequences of such situations. Although sometimes it seems women are expected to feel sorry and broken, to me it was a relief.

And while I was knocking on wood things were solved this way in the past, my best friend said: "If today-me would have been confronted with this situation it would be really ok to keep it. It would have been eight today." Gladly we could get stoned and watch the stars on the beach. Without kids....I wish every women would be free to choose which way she wants to go. I m greatful I am.

unfortunate scars

The left side of my face is decorated with a fistsized light scar. When I was five years old a kid from my neighbourhood stabbed a fork into my cheek. Can you believe a person sucking even as a child? I d rather be spooned then forked.

PTT - Post Travel Trauma

Wanderlust is a serious illness. To travel, to experience and add new perspectives is what infected people live for. Also to see new places, meet people, make mistakes and learn new thigs. There are two approaches to be found among travellers: planners and doers. 

Planners know exactly where they want to go to and what they want to do. People like this book return air plane tickets, look for hostels and accomodation in advance. They check transportation, the money exchange rate and make a list of basic sentences in the native language so they won t have any trouble at any given time. Weeks in advance they browse the internet and travel blogs to get an idea of the possibilities their trip offers. These people are lucky. Leaving with a small set of expections, that will probably be fullfilled they return after a few weeks to their regular homes and jobs and lives.

Unfortunately I don t belong to this exquisit group. Doers are the people I feel more solidarity to. People like us book a one way ticket 24 hours before the trip. Our choice is more emotion- and mooddriven. We go to places and just see what happens. We join people we like, visit places we never even thought about, stay at homes we never thought we had access to and make friends with people so different from ourselves. This approach is connected to  various difficulties. Due to its emotional and intuitive nature, it infects you, connects you and changes you in a very deep and sentitive place. Once you are changed going back and returning to the regular (should you have had one) life is almost impossible. People like us concider this new places homes, see people we stayed with as family and can t wait to meet our travel companions again. It s obvious : getting back home is suffering. It s discomfort and waiting for the next departure. After months of living out of your backpack, owning a wardrobe of ten pieces of clothing, sleeping on muddy wooden floors and eating fresh fruit from the trees, getting back home is reevaluating your old life. All this things you own and never use, the cloths you collect and never wear, the people you remember but dont care about and the structures you follow but actually hate.... it s disgusting and leaves some of us breathless. 

The change within leads to change of circumstances. You try to get rid if unnecessary balast, to ease yourself and get ready for departure again as soon as possible. But till the day you enter a train and or plane again your days are usually struggle. It s impossible for you to understand how doing a job you don t like and living a daily routine is enough for so many people. You don t understand why people waste their time on "friends" they actually don t even like or respect. You don t understand why buying stuff gets people so much more exited then experience. And most of all you don t undertand why they don t understand you. You are getting sick of justification and explaining things for the hundredth time. The things and people you had before will never again be enough. You met people along the way, that you feel more connected to as they speak the same language you do, cause you are driven by the same needs.

These are the feelings no travel guide or blog has ever tried to prepare you for. For the empty feeling of stuff-filled life, for the disgust of having too many options at the supermarket, for the ignorance of superficial relationsships. Trips leave you devestated and confused. It takes weeks and months to recover, get yourself in a more or less funktional mode again and sometimes it just does not. But be aware: everyone who really loves to travel suffers from this ugly illness. People just don t talk about it. Instead of great jungle-pictures i would really like to see every once in a while the red-eyed crying folks getting off an airplane from a place they lost their heart to. Just to make reality a bit more honest and help the realization that home is not a place but a feeling.

Take care. Love

Bad Feminist

Exposing your nipples, while other women are trying to fight sexism? Talking gossip about aweful women, while others are fighting to establish sisterhood? Or listening to Rihanna while your friends put up Beyond Pink shows? Does that make you a bad feminist? 

Maybe you just like your nipples as they are part of a body that you enjoy and treasure. Maybe you talk gossip as some humans are just aweful and women happen to be human sometimes. Maybe your musical spectrum covers music from Daphne Oram to Taylor Swift. Feminism is what you make of it, as long as you care about the issue. This is the approach followed by Roxane Gay in her essay collection called "bad feminist". From gender related scrabble discurs to rape-encouriging language and domestic violence, her book covers various topics. All of them relevant for a healthy social interaction and with a special regard to the female perspective. Always emphesizing the struggle to position yourself as a women in a world that covers all shades from fashist feminism to ignorance. Besides "sisterhood is forever" this is one of my favourite works on this topic so far. Judgemental at times, rethorically unripe, unintented heteronomative but nevertheless critical and reflected writing by a strong female character. If you are too lazy to read you should check out her charming TED talk.
Roxane Gay : Confessions of a bad feminist 

Vagina Pleasure Kit - go fuck yourself, for real!

Treating yourself kindly is essential. It s essential for your own wellbeeing and for the feeling you are able to give to others. Masturbation is a powerful instrument to introduce yourself to your body, your sexual needs and preferences and to an aweful lot of beautiful feelings and emotions.

You are wellcome to cut out all elements and create your own pleasure scenario.

Love it, love it!

Just to give you some ideas:

safer sex

some healthy pleasure

eat it our or spoon someone

or just pure pleasure.

ENJOY