The Other World

"You, who can't do anything, think you can bring off something like that? How can you ever dare to think about it? If you were capable of it, you certainly wouldn't be in need of it."

Franz Kafka, of himself, in a letter.

They say everyone thinks about it at least once in their life. I have, seriously in three occasions.

I am seven or eight years old. I sit in a room on a chair crying, screaming that I want to die. My siblings are standing in the doorway staring at me. My mother has kneeled next to the chair, and tells me I mustn't say something like that. She never touches me.

I am fifteen. I take a razorblade I bought from the store earlier the same week. I press it against my left forearm, and I cut myself. I always were long-sleeved shirts so no one ever notices. I do it for two years.

I am twenty-one. I am listening to Tori Amos and writing here.

At this moment I don't know how this world could ever have anything to offer me that would overcome the rest and silence death would bring. No more crying, no more worrying, no more loosing direction, no more nothing but eternal peace. This world is filled with evil; during these moments of clarity I see how no one can alone change them. There is no way I could change this world any safer or better place to live. The odds of having to go through the very things I fear the most and the same things that would result in my suicide for sure are very high. So why live and take the risk at all? It's not really worth it all; it's not really worth the constant fear and anxiety and paranoia. I could just end it all right here, right now and know that I would leave this world without blind and ruthless and disabilitating hatred towards the world that made me go through the things I truly fear.

How would I do it? I don't have access to a car or even know how to use one, so my father's methodology is out of the question. The only pills I have are birth control pills (you have to appreciate the irony of that); the package says an overdose of the pills causes sickness, puking and vaginal bleeding. Well, I have the pain killers that weren't prescrbed to me; their package doesn't share the results, merely tells to contact a doctor, a hospital or the Poisoning Centre (unlikely if one wants to kill themselves). I think I have to check Pharmaca Fennica. Drowning; no, I don't have a bath tub. Well, I could always use the sea but someone might end up with life-long traumas after finding my dead body once it's been in the water for quite a time. For the same reason jumping is not an option. And getting hit by a train. The pieces of meat wouldn't be recognisable as a human beings but I'm sure everyone looking at my torn musculus trapezius would know it belonged to a human.

So what's left? I guess it's the cutting I have left. Yes, I suppose that would be it. That one knife is very sharp, and I know more than well where all the arteries are located. I would be able to estimate how long it would take until the blood loss made me loose consciousness, and which arteries should be cut in order to live that long (including the increased heart beat rate due to the situation, of course), knowing the blood is flowing out of me, thinking for the last time, breathing for the last time, seeing something for the last time.

And before doing it, I could say my goodbyes to the few people I thought I wanted to say farewell. Her, of course. And Wanderer. And a couple of you here. And a couple of people at the gym who have always been nice to me. I wouldn't eat for a while, or drink in the end; otherwise the bed would be very messy once they actually found me.

And when would that be? Once people at school began to think where a nerd like me is; I never skip a single lesson unless it's necessary, or physically impossible (even I can't be in two places simultaneously no matter how much I wanted to). Or if I did it right away, it would be my mentor at the convalescent home who would wonder where I am. My so-called family... I'm not sure they would even notice; we're not close, we don't even talk on the phone more often than once in two weeks with my mother.

And who would genuinely miss me? I don't know. When it comes to that so-called family... they would probably miss me because that's what is expected of them. "Poor woman. First she almost looses her son, then her husband goes killing himself, and now her first-born followed her father's footsteps. She must be devistaded... Hey, did you hear what happened in the BB house last night...?" Maybe my siblings would really miss me for a while. And others? Maybe some of you would notice if I didn't update this every week or reply your messages. Don't know about missing, though; how could you miss someone you don't really even know? Wanderer, I think, is the only one I can name likely to miss me, and contemplate my motives. I keep hoping She would miss me, too. I know we're not close even in the vaguest definition of the word; I'm just one student among so many others... but maybe, just maybe, she would remember me sometimes, the girl whose father killed himself, the girl who acted like an ass around Her, the girl with "poignant use of irony" in her texts. Maybe. I want to believe that. I want to believe I'm not completely meaningless to Her, even if I never got the chance to tell her how I feel for Her, share her the feelings that She may find naïve, but that are perfectly real and strong to me. She's the only one I've ever been willing to die for, to kill for, to go to hell for.

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http://darksanctuary.unblog.fr/tag/suicide/

When I over three crossed the line and moved to the Land of the Rising Son, I truly expected to learn to speak Swedish fluently in no time since I would have to use it. Now, the three years later, I have needed Swedish outside school ...hmm... twice. Once at a store when a lady was blocking my way and once at work (I have a vague memory of writing about the incident here some time during last summer). So, since all Finlad's Swedes seem to be more than prone to form their own tight groups everywhere (including the university) in which Finnish-speaking people have no place, I have decided to learn Swedish with kind help from a language course I ordered from AdLibris. After that, once I have a good and firm grip of the basic grammar and have gained a tolerable amount of vocabulary, I will go to some of the advanced Swedish courses provided by the local Swedish-speaking (important that it's the Swedish version so I'll have a native speaker as a teacher) "kansalaisopisto".

The goal is to be able to read a Harry Potter book in Swedish without any help from the dictionary and as little guessing as possible by the end of next year. After that I'll try to read a book in Swedish that I have not read in Finnish or in English. We'll see how this projectish thing gets going.

But not yet; right now I'm somewhere in outer space and listening to t.A.T.u.'s 'Dangerous and moving' album. Yeah, tried to go to sleep and ended up fantasising about Her again. Why I can't let go?

Okay, first day at the very first practice place over. Actually it was over several hours ago, I just needed time to make sense of the seven hours.

Irrelevant ramble about those seven hours: I ended up on the psychogeriatric ward. In my humble opinion, the sanest person is as far as the official records are concerned the most psychiatric of them all. Seven loooooooong hours... and eight tomorrow... Well, it's not really as bad as I feel towards it at the moment. My co-workers seem okay (especially that one; she's absolutely gorgeous), and my duties won't be challenging theoretically at any point of the three weeks I'll spend there since I'm the only one to study nursing. My mentor has the "lähihoitaja" qualification, the other is "apuhoitaja" and miss Gorgeous apparently has tried to get in to the Polytechnic to study nursing. I hope she gets in at some point, she does it all more naturally than I ever can...

But the main point of contemplation lasting for the last previous week. I will finish the two practises I have signed up for, but starting from next spring the Polytechnic studies comes a f t e r the university studies. Last spring I saw no reason to continue to the Master's Degree, since I wouldn't be needing one as a translator. Nursing was then my plan B.

Now, after trying nursing in both practise and theory, nursing is not even a tolerable plan B. I doubt I, or anyone else for that matter, really ever truly believed I had any kind of calling towards nursing; it was the almost hundred percent employment statistics that appealed to me and further encouraged me to apply to the Polytechnic. I applied because I couldn't be sure whether or not nursing would be enjoyable if I didn't try it, and in order to do that I had to study nursing.

Now, after trying nursing in both practise and theory, I am convinced nursing will not be what I want to do with my life. But nevertheless, I won't quit at the Polytechnic after this first year, I'll just sign up as an absent student for two years. That time I will pursue the Master's in English and by the time's up I should have figured out if I seriously still want to continue at the Polytechnic. Probably not but I find comfort in the idea of having one more option open to me (no matter how dreadful they appear to me). No, the new plan B, before neglected due to the thing that it forces me to go back to the place I can say I truly HATE (also known as the junior high), actually seems rather appealing: I get to wear my own clothes, my tattoos woould cause no problems none whatsoever (one of the English teachers has a very nice big eagle tattooed on the left side of their neck!) and I would get to keep a touch to the academic society, the only one that has ever made me feel like I actually belong there and that I'm good at that.

So, now I'm trying to get through the two practises and then go on with the nursing studies on the university schedule's conditions, not vice versa as I've done this autumn. Then I'll continue as an absent student at the Polytechnic and concentrate on the master's studies at the university (once I switch the major from Finnish into English as it should have been from the beginning). And then I'll get the pedagogical studies somehow (if I'm lucky, they may have started providing them here by the time I finish my Master's Thesis on LGBT literature; then I wouldn't have to leave the Land of the Rising Son at all!!!).

Thumbs up, people. I know this all probably sounds very undetermined and as if I have no direction, but you're wrong; for the first time in a very long time I have a target I want to pursue and means I enjoy to get there. So I began and dropped out of the Polytechnic somewhere in the middle, big deal. Maybe that's what I needed to do to understand what I really want, that teaching is not such a bad option after all (as long as I don't have to spend any more time in a single junior high than is required to get the teacher's qualification, of course). Everything seems so clear careerwise. I feel very relieved.

"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe is a rare kind of happiness."
('The Lagoon' by Nightwish)

I agree.

I was stopped today by a man missing a tooth who tried to make me accept the leaflet of the Word or at least a casette containing spiritual songs in front of Anttila. Five minutes later a woman tried to give me the same leaflet.

Why do they do this? Is it the same motivations as when you're very happy and wish to share the feeling with the rest of the world to make them feel happy, too? Do they do it because that what Christianity and possibly especially their church requires spreading the Word? Or do they get paid for that (I seriously doubt this theory, though)? Why do people in general try to make others share their view of the world, force their interpretation (usually just downright rigid and strict and narrow-minded) of this world upon them? Do they get some kind of satisfaction out of it? Out of converting people to intolerance and hatred? Out of feeling superior to those they see as unworthy of place next to their omnipotent and forgiving and kind god they have turned into whatever suits that particular group the best? Do they think they will get a place in some paradise by pushing their intolerant view to other people, thus creating only more hate and hypocrisy?

- - -

The 10th of October, the day of Book and Rose, and the day of Finnish literature, passed a while ago. I plea not guilty of betrayel to a mitigating factor cleverly disguised as an anatomy examination. And next weekend will be the book fair in Helsinki. I wish I could go there but I can't. Instead I can give you a list of books by black writers I think are worth reading. The "very much worth reading" I marked with several asterisks.

Chinua Achebe: A Man of the People (Kansan mies)
***Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
***James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain (Mene ja kerro se vuorilla)
***Alex Haley: Roots (Juuret)
***Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye (Sinisimmät silmät)
Ken Saro-Wiwa: Sozaboy
***Alice Walker: The Color Purple (Häivähdys purppuraa)

I am angry.

Why are you so cynical, they ask. Why don't you think this world is not worth fighting for?

"As a United Nations official with a special brief for humanitarian affairs, I have seen many people around the globe suffering under truly tragic circumstances. But Congo is different. Its long-running conflict has always been a brutal one, having claimed nearly 4 million lives between 1998 and 2004 -- the equivalent of five Rwandan genocides. And although the war formally ended years ago, fighting has continued in the eastern part of the country, where the national army is battling local and foreign militias in a struggle involving unresolved ethnic conflicts, regional power dynamics and the powerful tug of greed, with all sides vying for a slice of Congo's rich mineral resources.

Panzi Hospital is housed in rambling quarters outside the city of Bukavu in South Kivu. Of the 15,000 victims of sexual violence treated there since 1999, an estimated two-thirds or more are victims of the FDLR. One-third of the victims are children.

At the hospital, I met a 16-year-old girl, shy but still determined to tell her story. She had been abducted by the FDLR and held as a sex slave for months of unfathomable horrors before she managed to escape, pregnant and alone. I heard from other women who had been raped multiple times, often in front of other villagers or their families. Panzi staff members tell of a woman who was returning from working her fields when she was accosted by seven soldiers who gang-raped her. The last rapist forced the barrel of his gun inside her and pulled the trigger, literally blowing apart her genitals. We heard repeated stories from doctors and other staffers at the hospital of similar incidents involving bayonets or sticks as well as guns.

This sexual violence is an affront not only to the body but to the soul and dignity of every woman assaulted. It is a stain on everyone with influence or authority in Congolese society. Yet somehow it continues, amid widespread indifference and in a climate of impunity, with no functioning justice system to speak of. Even those few who are convicted and jailed in the attacks are likely to "escape." Leaders of the national and provincial governments, military commanders, the Catholic Church and other religious authorities and cultural and sports figures in Congo must do much more to change the culture that allows this to happen."

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KHII-77W4F4?OpenDocument

And no one who has any authority does anything. They just passively accept this.

I am angry.

Why didn't I check it? How could I be so stupid to promise something under pressure without checking the fine print?

The doctor forces me to go to see a psychologist. All the psychologist only hold their office hours during the day when I'm at school with very little possibilities to leave. So, as a result, she talks me into going to the one offered by the town at a "youth centre". She makes me promise I'll phone there and make an appointment.

I should have known! The minute I call there (like she made me promise) I hear it: the noises and dozens of different voices on the background. I should have known the place is exactly as I feared: an open space with a clear view for everyone in the common room to the front door that one has to use in order to get in.

I'm supposed to be the strong one, the one of all of the children who doesn't need a fucking shrink. But no. No, no, no. That would have been far too easy. No, of course life's a bitch and pushes me into the situation straight from my nightmares; not only do I have to give up the only dignity I have left by going to see a bloody wannabe-Freud, but I also have to be seen by a punch of teenagers whose best way to deal with their natural insecurity and urge to belong to the group is to deprive others, make fun of them and humiliate them publically.

And now... an appointment to an anonymous psychologist in a fucking youth centre situated right next to *two* high schools!

FUCK!!!

Two days with my five-month-old cousin:

I meet you for the third time ever; you look at me with a curious look on your face. Your mother goes to the kitchen ("Are you leaving me alone with her?!"), stays there for a few minutes but you don't start crying. When she comes back, she makes a slightly surprised notion that you're not at all afraid of me. You smile at me; I'm not sure whether you're laughing with me or at me, but at that moment I really couldn't care less.

You're sitting on my thigh. I'm terrified; what if I drop you or keep you in a wrong position. Maybe you sense my fear because the next moment you begin to cry.

Time to go to bed. You're lying on the common room floor in front of the television and refuse to show any signs of tirednes. I arrive and lay down next to you. I put my right hand rest lightly on your chest, look at you in the eyes and begin to breathe steadily in your rhythm and slow down my breath deliberately. Your parents look at us and wonder how you calm down all of a sudden.

Lunch time. You make it very clear eating the potato is out of the question and that forcing you will only make you scream louder. Your mother makes me help her by holding down your other arm that you keep putting in your mouth. Once we've shoved down the required amount (=all that went into your mouth minus about 59 percent that came out) your mother takes you and rests you on her chest. The big tears falling down your cheeks make me feel miserable.

We've taken a long trip outside, and you've slept through it the whole time. When I come back from getting the grossaries you finally wake up. I look into the carriage and you greet me with a big smile and a laughter. Afterwards we play in the common room. I spin the cotton mobile in the air but you stare at my shirt instead. I guess the Nightwish shirt was an excellent choice since you're always staring at it. It makes me laugh ad consequently you burts out laughing your baby laugh.

Your grandparents have forced you and your parents to pay them a visit. Dressing you up makes you cry loudly. I do the only thing I can think of: try each and every one of the toys within my reach. The cotton mobile does the trick: when I straighten my back to hold in in the air and spin it my shirt is in your view again. That's one good design... I hold my hand against yours and you grap my fingers. You pull them and laugh.

The dressing up gets on your nerves again. I lift you up from the ground despite of my feelings of inadequecy and rest you on my chest. You calm down and look out of the window. I'm not sure how to feel or how I feel.

And for a good reason.

Today afternoon, while waiting for a teacher to let our class into the classroom, I was sitting and reading for my anatomy exam tomorrow in the lobby. In time more people from my class gathered around me, and eventually the loud N, V and H arrived and sat on the bench opposite of me. Being afternoon and my class were talking about, the subject of "discussion" turned into sex and with N and V being both mothers, into children. N started the chain of events leading to the title by mentioning she had once read an article about a lesbian couple who had become pregnant with what apparently was an artificial insemination done home. N further continued they had used the sperm of a male friend. What N, V and H then wondered was how the child was technically conceived. One theory involved a man masturbating, a cup, a syringe and two women; the other...

N began ranting and raving about her theory loudly. She, amidst her almighty-and-omnipotent-straight-woman-analysing-lesbians-and-their-womanhood raging, stated that the guy had probably fucked either of the women. "What's the difference", she kept saying, "if a man fucks her? He can just use lubricant, and she can close her eyes and imagine it's her partner fucking her with a strap-on!" I became nauseaous; not only was she utterly blinded by the heterosexual penis-centred mentality, but she also ignored the one thing that makes all the difference in the world. Sexuality (the abstract) and the means to express it (the concrete) are two completely different things, and sex as intercourse or any other physical thing is merely one way to express the sexuality.

She seems to think that it's the result that counts, not the way to get there. If she likes cunnilingus, I'm sure it would make a hell big a difference if the one licking her vulva was a man, a woman or a dog! And I hate myself for not having the guts to tell her so!!!

Warning: From hereown the text may contain quite gross imaginary.

- - -

So. That was it. An autopsy. Tolerable, even enjoyable, if you didn't smell. Lucky for me I have a good cold invading my body at the moment. When I first saw her (the body) I saw her as a wax doll more than an actual human being, although I have to admit that half-open eye was a bit... not nice. Did you know that your entire fat tissue appears perfectly yellow inside the body? No, I didn't know either.

All in all, no bad memories or nightmares following (hopefully...) the day, but a piece of advice to you all:

If someone you know dies and an autopsy is done to them, do not go to see them. They only show the face so you wouldn't see any actual marks, but the procedure is bound to leave some small changes to their face, as well as death itself. Just don't. I'm not saying this because I think none of you could hack it; I can't know, nor can you be hundred percent sure how you'd react. But you don't want your last memory of the person be of them lying on the table, knowing the presence of the Y incision that thin piece of fabric conceals, knowing what has been done to your loved one. Treasure the memories you already have of them when they were alive. The guys in pathology know how to do their job, so if they pronounce someone dead, they really are dead.

- - -

Oh, and Druusi. We were given the possibility to wear the mask but it became relatively clear soon enough not wearing one was a good choice since it would have just made the breathing more difficult. So, I had the perfume with me for fun eventually.

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.