The Other World

What is the real amount of effect a person's mind can have over the person's body?

After finishing my progesteron I waited for my periods to show up. For eleven days I waited. The doctor gave up before I did and prescribed me birth control pills (the universe has one fucked up sense of humour if you ask me...). Last night I stopped expecting the bloody periods and took the first pill. Today, while standing in a queue to school lunch, what of all things happened? My periods began. On their own.

So, I'm wondering; was it my constant vigilance and expectation of periods that actually kept them away, or was it all just a mere coincidence?

Well, at least I have periods now. I almost feel ashamed for having to continue on the pills now that I started and thus continue the chemical control over Nature's own cycle.

- - -

Guess where I'll be on Monday at 9.30 a.m.? I'll give you a couple of hints; it's a sight most people never get to see, or smell for that matter. It's something our teachers seem to share veeery different views about. It begins with an A, and ends with a Y.

Autopsy. On Monday morning. I can hardly wait. I think it's safe if I say the same thing for the rest of my class as well. Of all the extracurricular activities advertised to us, there has been a very limited number of participants from our class, the active and über-social party animals mainly. And then a small list goes around the class, titled "those wishing to come and see an autopsy". The result: every single name, all twenty-one of them, are on the list. I think we have a morbid class.

As for the teachers... our anatomy teacher said we could do well and arrange the visit ourselves if we wished to go see one. Sure it would have been less confusing anatomically had we studied the entire human anatomy first, but I think we all have quite a good idea of the organs and such based on our high school human biology course. One of the teachers just gave us a few tips to cope with the smell, and was even willing to re-schedule the class we should have had on that Monday and moving it on Thursday.

Then there was one teacher who, in my hymble opinion, isn't too comfortable with death; instead she (with a tone e x a c t l y like that of my mother's when she was trying to convince me out of something she very much disapproved if she wasn't able to command or threathen me to do otherwise) loudly wondered why we wanted to see the dead if we haven't even seen the living. Of course she remembered to say it would cost so much to the school; the one arranging the visit corrected her saying she had already checked it and that it doesn't cost anything, to us or to the school. I'm telling you, you should have seen that disappointment on her face. During the rest of the class she kept snapping at people. I think she fears death, irrationally enough to try to make us think like her. Not working for me, that's for sure. I'm even with my own mortality, hence the tattoo on my wrist, which my mother tries her best to ignore and make snide remarks about in a fading voice if only she finds a chance to do so.

I just signed the papers required for my mother living in another part of Finland to sell the house (for further background information concerning the mayhem around the building, see the entry 'The plot thickens...' in 15th of September).

The couple we're selling it (and the lands and the forest etc.) came at my place today and brought the papers me and my sister both have to sign, giving our mother the right to decide for us; in other words, her signature alone makes the bargain official and legal. I used to go to school with V; he's a year older than me. This makes me wonder one thing: is he doing things faster than he should or am I being left behind? I think it's the latter mainly, but quite frankly I think V's girlfriend M being pregnant may have an effect on the matter.

Once I first heard they would want to buy the house I suspected either or both of their parents might have their fingers on it. Both V and M coming from a conventional area of southern Ostrobothnia it would make perfect sense that when a 22-year-old knocks up his 20-year-old girlfriend the result is that their parents want them to do what is expected from them: to buy a house and get married. As far as I know especially V's parents who are trying to push them to the calm harbour of marriage (surprisingly enough; usually it's the girl's parents trying to make their daughter "a respectable woman").

M is a friend of my sister's, so when she told me her friend wasn't too eager to get the house I called my mother the same day saying that if M is being pushed to do what their parents want them to do I won't sign a single paper and take her misfortune my burden. But later my sister told me that she's already planning all the things she wants to do to the house, which room will be the baby's room and how she'd like to decorate the rooms... she does want it herself, too. So now V and M are happy owners of their own house. Good for them; maybe life will be good to them as well as to their unborn child.

- - -

The house... a lot of things happened in the place I grew up in.

I learned to walk.
I learned to talk.
I found out the realities of life.
I wandered in the nearby forests dreaming of being the long-lost princess of the queen of the woods.
I kept running away screaming from butterflies every summer.
I shared secrets with my friend.
I escaped from the cruel world in books.
I lost my virginity to myself.
I consider the possibility of being a lesbian for the first time.
I lived under costant fright and insecurity due to my father and his alcoholism.
I feared for my own safety, and that of my siblings, and that of my mother, the only one obliged to look after me.
I dreamed of a better life and cried for hours.
I threw up on purpose for the first time.
I cut myself for the first time.
I left it at the age of seventeen, my returns becoming more and more rare.
I visited the house for what is very likely the final time last Saturday.

- - -

By the way, I've met M once before. I have to say that for the first time in my life I saw for myself what is meant when people always say that a pregnant woman is glowing. M looked absolutely gorgeous and happy, touching her belly every now and then. A pregnant woman is beautiful.

Going to two schools at the same time sounds very noble and respectable and makes me seem so very hard-working but the thought escapes me in days like these.

I'm exhausted after a weekend at my mother's (whic alone is an exhausting experience) and then I kept having more and more deadlines to meet today. Well, eventually I ended up skipping only one class of a course I think I should get for free after three years in the university, but I did manage to finish all the things on time.

Hurrayh to me!