Gok Wan doesn't empower me. He doesn't build my sense of self-esteem.

You know what did though? Good goddamn sex done by good lovers whose touch on my skin made me tremble all over, whose kisses on my neck and stomach and thigh talked about how beautiful they found me. Being seen and celebrated for exactly who I was was immensely empowering in a way that being bound and stuffed and brushed and polished into some illusory version of that never could be.

Women feel depressed because we are constantly presented with a gulf between who we are and who we are told we have to be in order to be praised and the whole thing is so insidious and toxic that it makes me curl my lip in disdain. I sneer at you hypocritical beauty standards and your peddlers!

You know what else I enjoyed? Eating cake and licking whipped cream off my fingers and donning silky underthings that hugged my curves. Locking my jiggly bits into the Spandex love-child of a corset/those slimming-aid plastic pants did not feature in any of that.

You know what I would consider a celebration of women?

Mainstream clothing manufacturers creating garments that allow for bus and booty and encase them lovingly in fetching tops and well-cut trousers that don't force you to make choices about whether you'd prefer something that fits your waist or your hips. (To say nothing of course of equal pay, access to good but affordable childcare and generous maternity and dependency leave pay/allowances)

Also media articles about body truth that aren't merely obsequious loads of hypocritical bollocks - paying lip service to the concept of 'real normal bodies' while illustrating this with bodies that fit the body ideal in terms of shape and size.

I am not stupid and I deplore being made to feel stupid by the obvious contradiction of being told to 'feel good about your body/ your body is appealing' while only being shown pictures of people who are a size 12 at the heaviest range of the spectrum. This isn't about accepting yourself or being valued. It's merely about AGAIN being told how to dress and how to look to be accepted.

Because the sentence 'You Would Be So Pretty If' will never, in any world, be healing.

I remember a particular summer many years ago, when my Dad was still alive.

The sunlight on the grass, and the hood of our little white car, and my tall father all in white getting out. I'm sitting on the stone steps leading up to the balcony and watching and knowing that something is wrong but not being able to put a name to it yet.

Later the wrong has a name, snake, but in the interim it's just a flash of brown in the grass. My father about to step on it because he doesn't see it. Someone's scream stops him. Not mine, my grandmother's perhaps.

The air around us still as glass. The snake sliding harmlessly away.
The feeling I don't have a name for, about how differently things could have been had the scream come a split-second later. How close we walked to danger.

Another tale, another moment, a snapshot of a war.
Not a memory because I didn't see it, but nonetheless as vivid in my mind.

It's Sarajevo. The 1990s. People are queing for bread, and two neighbours meet, exchange words, courtesies. One says to the other: "Oh don't worry, I'm going to be queing anyway. I'll just pick up bread for you too. You go home and have a rest, you can queue for me next time". A brushing of hands. A bag handed over. Smiles exchanged in the doorway, perhaps.

The man queing. Sunlight on cobblestones and the bomb that exploded which nobody foresaw and killed all the people in that queue, just like that. His wife, [my friend's grandmother] watching it all from the window.

Those are some of the things I thought of today.

Countless incidents, accidents of fate. The woman who ran for the bus and missed it only to see its top half explode a minute later. The people stuck in the train behind the train which blew up.

How suddenly the fabric of the world changes. The accidents that lead us to or from danger. The strings of coincidences which determine whether we live or die.


I was on a bus to Kings Cross this morning. The bombs had gone off by then although I didn't know. Just the rushing of fire trucks and police cars and sirens and roads blocked off. I just figured it was a bad traffic accident and with a string of curses [for transport in London does suck plenty, and it's not unusual to have disruptions] turned around and set back trying to work out how to get to my work. I only started to get clued in when I got a text message inquiring over my welfare, when my sister rang to see if I was still alive.

I got into the office at 11, having walked most of the way, which was a brave but wasted effort because we all had to close down the service at noon and evacuate at 1. The nerves had hit me by then, along with the enormity of what had happened. So I did the British Yugoslav thing and had a cup of tea and a cigarette while I let things sink in.

It was still early when people were confused and the exploding trains were put down to *power surges* which is bullshit because power surges don't happen five minutes apart on lots of different locations and then by synchronicity blow up buses too.

This is the reason why I use the underground as rarely as possible. Because I can't stand the idea of being in the tunnels, so far below the light and air. Trapped there, whizzing in cans of steel. Scary enough even when nothing is wrong.

I was shaken with the knowledge of what happened to people there. Not many casualties, not right away, but it's just as bad to be injured to discover limbs blown off. Bad too to have carriages filled with the stinging smoke, to not be able to breathe, to be smashing tube windows to get oxygen. Bad to have to walk along the tube tracks, through the tunnels and see bodies and not know if they're alive and when you'll make it back to the surface and air.

I know what smoke tastes like. I remember fire, being in fires. Not being able to breathe. How it stings the eyes and the throat. I wouldn't have liked to be in those trains, in the tunnels. I'm alive, but it could have been me, because it was people just like me. Regular people, going to work, that's all.

And the lines between us are blurred. I know the taste of smoke, though i didn't taste it today. I know the feeling of fear, though today I wasn't scared for myself. And my heart goes out to everyone who experienced the stress firsthand today, not to mention those that got injured, or died.

It's a miracle that there wasn't a greater loss of life. But it doesn't make injuries less devastating, it doesn't make what happened less traumatic or shocking.
It doesn't take away the fact that people are going to have to use the trains tomorrow, descend into the same underground to get to work, again.
Of course we will. We get on with it. People are resilient and Brits don't seem given to hysteria.

I must say, I'm proud of Britain and Londoners today. The emergency services reacted promptly, they were on the site in five minutes, everything was well organised and the victims were given good care.

I am proud of everyone who was obviously stressed and shaken but not hysterical. Who stayed as collected as possible in the circumstances, who will doubtless carry on stoutly in the days to come.

I am proud of all the people who have emphasised the importance of Muslim culture and people, how they are a part of this community and our country and defused any tensions. [That wouldn't have happeend in Belgrade, there would have been vigilante reprisals before the blink of an eye].

Everyone I know seems to be OK. I am grateful for that, and many other mercies.

It's been a long time since I last cut. I don't know how long. I've never bothered counting the days or weeks or months, and always discounted notions such as *clean* or *SI free* because I never felt tainted or oppressed by SI in the first place.

It was something I did because self-inflicted physical pain seemed like a damn better deal than the uncontrollable emotional pain I didn't know how to fix. I did it because I was trying to survive, because for a long time it was the only tool I had, the only language my pain spoke, the only thing that stood between me and implosion.

I've never felt guilt or remorse, or shame about hurting myself. I was always very clear on why I was doing it and I never felt like a weak or bad person because of it. Never thought I failed something or someone by cutting, because I knew I was a strong, resourceful person surviving.

I'm terrible with dates, with pinpointing events in time and space but I tend to remember the events themselves with great clarity. Such as A phonecall of rage. And then picking up the nearest fragile breakable thing to throw, and how from that moment it seems that everything from throwing it, watching it sail and shatter with loud perfection against the wall, to slashing my palm on a shard, it all seemed bound in this intricate dance.

There are moments when I still miss it. I miss the notion of smashing my fist against the wall, I miss the release of it. It was such an easy way of venting rage, the bitter grief that built and hid under the skin.

And when I run into someone who has a spiderwork of raised and callused skin on their inner arm, or the straight, raised scarrs across their upper arms I think and I feel a glimmer of dark, wry amusement (I expect the bleak humour endemic to the Yugs) because I know exactly what I'm looking at, that I'm seeing a signature as distinctive as a brand.

Yegh.

It is easy to keep moving here because there is so much to do, so many places to go and people to see, so little time to do it all in. The lulls are dangerous. THe slumps. When I stop. And the destructive hubbub in the back of my mind gets loud, broken-toothed like a ship wreck lifted by the waves.

Not really feeling like I can talk about most of what's going on.

Dealing with anger is hard, possibly the hardest bit of this. I feel like my mind is coming apart at the seams but for once that is not due to my kin.

I've been kind of expecting this, hard shit is here and the challenge is in learning how to live with it, and trying to live with it in a new way.

Had to go for blood tests yesterday. I think the nurse was new at it, as she had a bit of a mishap with the needle. I capitalised. It was like legal SI. I was just watching it all in a semi detached, very amused way going *heh. cool*. Poor girl felt really bad about it and a wee bit panicky and I was doing my best to reassure her that it was no big deal. I've got a fairly impressive looking bruise by way of souvenir.

Blood works show hormones are still a bit out of whack but my blood sugar has gone right down to being at the lower end of normal.

I am tired. I would like to just close my eyes and sleep forever.

( Visual dream stuff )

If I was a noise I would be something bright and clear that cracked and sundered slowly like a work of art. Ice or glass or frost, gently coming apart.
Like a Jenga tower.
A house of cards.
The constructions of ash at the end of a burning cigarette.

I am so angry and I am trying to find a way of channeling it that does not involve sharp objects. It's hard, but that's not really unexpected.

I am tired and I hurt. I want everything to end.

But aside from that I'm great.

Well my modem has thrown a fit and died. I was hoping it would spontaneously resurrect but this has not yet occurred.
I swear dealing with it is much akin to trying to reason with Yugoslav bureacracy.

So I've given up.

My family is driving me nuts with their old seamless ease but I am fighting back.

I was finally starting to crack under the pressure of people going *Don't you dare put on any weight* while simultaneously bringing me cake, so I finally broke down and had cake. However, I impressed myself by being constructive about it and went and swam for an hour (did a kilometre, yay me). I have impressed myself further by resolving to do an hour of exercise at least every second day, but preferrrably every day.

I went to water aerobic today, and I swear I was the only person there not in thier late fifties (aside from the instructor) but hey, that's ok for many reasons. a) the flabbiness of my thighs did not look out of place b)I did not feel particularly unfit c) it wasn't crowded.

I had very bravely left my glasses in the changing room, and my sight without them is pretty poor. One eye is decent, and it dominates and I could see the instructor and what she wa doing even from ten metres away although she was slightly blurry. My bigger problem was that half the time I could not hear what she was saying, so I mostly took the cues from the people around me.

All the beatuiful snow has melted into slush, so wlking to my mother's house (whose computer I am now using) was like wading through a swamp. Shoes, feet, socks, everything soaked.

My muscles ache but in a good way, in a you're getting fit rahter than we're going to become inflamed mwahahahahaha way.

My mother is showing fairly bad responsiveness to anything I have to say, but this is not unexpected and I am coping with it okay. It is hard though, of course it is.

*Mom please don't talk about my body or my weight, because it is not helpful to me right now, but is in fact making me feel stressed* was greeted wiht a flare of:
*I've had enough! I can't say anything to you! All i say and do is wrong, you'd thnk I was your worst ennemy the way you treat me* and so on in this vein. Got sorted out eventually with only a minimal breakdown from me.

With grandother things are harder going, they always are, and every day is a struggle in some way. Things about her which drive me nuts are way too numerous to list here, but one of them is her constant whinging and melodramatic moaning, as well as her insistence on shuffling around and doing things, while pretending she is only doing it for me. I know she is probably really too old for me to change much about tht dynamic, and I am being vengeful and childish and instead of trying to sort it out vexing and punishing her in return by not being in the house, not telling her where I am going or when I will be back.

It is not constructive because it will find some way of making things harder on me eventually, but just for now, I can't be doing anything else.

And I am coping much better than in recent visits. I judge this from the fact that I am not suicidal and I've had ample vexation.

I know my grandmother is striking out in turn because she keeps telling me how awful all my clothes are and how unattractive I look. Plus the fact that she is *showing her affection* by baking me a cake (after I had explicitly asked her not to do so). Why my family can't show affection say by making an effort not to shred my nerves instead is beyond me.

it is probably a good thing that I don't know any proper swearwords in Russian otherwise I would have used the foulest language known to me by now. There are times too numerous to count when I cannot stand to be in the same room as that old witch lest I lose it completely. (Of course, I am spending a lot of time by myself or out of the house and it is cool).

My grandmother is an absolute terrorist when it comes to food. One of the reasons that she insists on cooking all the meals, or getting all the food from the fridge is because she cannot stand the thought of anyone else being boss in her house of her kitchen. Plus she hides food like a squirrel so I don't get any fancy notions of offering it to my friends. (The downside of course is tht she frequently forgets where she has hidden things and we are only pulled to them months later by the stink of rot).

There are moments when I think I could cheerfully murder the lot of them, but these are nanoseconds. I work past my rage and my angst back into patience and love and my ever more likely nervous breakdown.

So in case no one hears from me for a while it is probably a matter of the fact that I can't get online rather than that I have offed myself or some such.

I am really pretty ok, my moments of emotional rollercoastering are only isolated incidents and not the general tone of matters. Overall I am doing really well and managing to have fun. :)

Emotions on overdrive.

A lot of stuff being processed, a lot of stuff surfacing.

We interrupt this post for an announcement from Nina's semi-rational brain which is temporarily back in power

To anyone I have been a bitch to the past couple of weeks, my sincere apologies. Really. I realise I've at best been sulky and moody at worst a nightmare and a royal pain in the ass.

I am sorry for any nastiness, I really am. It is a testament to everyone's characters for being patient with it. I appreciate it.

I realise that Dina is swimming around my head a lot of late. That I am dealing with much of the fallout from that relationship now, by projecting it onto my current, (on the whole) healthy friendships.

Because for the formative years of my life, and up to 2001 those who meant the most ot me, those who I loved the most and who claimed to love me, left me, or betrayed me, or both.

that hurts. I hurt.

I realise in a part of my mind that I expect betrayal, or rejection, or abandoment even now from those I love. Because part of me fears that I've been lulled into a false sense of security and ease and this is just a calm before a storm, before all the things come crashing down.

I feel needy. Needing to be soothed and reassured I guess, because it does help a lot, even if for a little while and I'd feel guilty for it, except I realise that it is better to be needy and speak about it than be needy and keep it inside.

It is difficult to feel my rage inside, my paranoia, my irrationality and oversensitivity and not get swept away. It is like being buffetted by waves while trying to keep footing on slippery shore. I am not certain of precisely what it is I need half the time... other than that i need... something.

I know there are no guarantees in life beyond death and taxes.

Horrible shit may happen. I may end up being rejected, abandoned, betrayed and so on by those I love, those who are meant to love me whether unwittingly or through some grand design.

It helps, it really does, to feel that people care enough to sit through a bad mood with me, or put up with me in spite of my bouts of BitchFiendFromHell.

It makes me feel that while I may indeed at some point be abandoned or have all my worst fears confirmed, it won't be today, and it won't be at the drop of a hat.

chants to self: *crying is healthy and good. crying is healthy and good*

I have a difficult time with anger.
I always have done.
Anger is not an emtoion I am at all comfortable with.

To feel high levels of anger over an extended period of time (the past couple of weeks) is very troubling for me. It's like the grandmother of all PMS that just goes on and on and on.

I feel fury. Rage. Some of it I have valid reasons for. Some I don't. Some of it I am holding onto probably just out of sheer perversity and bloody-mindedness.

I have a conflict between what I feel and what I feel is fair, ie. I disown or deny most of my anger because I feel it is unjust. But I cannot deny that it is there. It is taking root more firmly.

The positive upslant of all this is that the anger for once is not directed at me. Yet, while i can recognise that self-destructiveness is an inappropriate channel for those emotions I think excessive rage at the external fits the bill as well.

I had a dream about my father. In my dream, I was pacing up and down, having a rant and throwing things and he was just watching me with amusement. He said: *Do you want to be angry with me, also?*

I replied that I'd been angry with him for fifteen years, and that now I'd prefer to be angry at people with loud shirts and offensive shoes.

I do not like myself when I am angry. It does not represent a state of mind I feel particularly proud of or at ease with. The best I can do is not act upon it, or deflect it or keep it silent. I can smash something non-sentient. I can write angry letters and then destroy them. I can swallow most of my viscious comments. Silence is my friend.

My feelings towards L, have flared up again and are becoming consolidated into absolute loathing. Not something I am entirely at peace with either, no matter how justly deserved the anger in this case. I would prefer to be able to let it go, to just move on, forgive and release. I would prefer not to be seething with my resentment and bitterness and rage.

I could work on this, and at some point I probably will have to. Until then, I am just focusing on containment and damage control.

today my rage is the colour of poppies and arterial blood, a bright, vibrant red. it is quick and free flowing and inside of me today is neither hawk nor wolf but fox, strong jawed, lying low but ready to snap.

the amount of anger i have sloshing around surprises me. it makes intuitive sense considering how long i blocked all wrathful feelings for... but all the same...sometimes i have a hard time not defining myself in terms of just one aspect of me.

like the *nice* person. or the *angry* person. survivor is prob. the best word although doesnt fit in its entirety. i dont want to be someone who survives, i want to be someone who lives.

i was thinking today that i get frequently angry at people when i am feeling defensive and read into their words what i know they arent and wouldnt say.
like: *your texting is useless* becomes *you are useless*.

water days. water days. bleh.

why why why? i dont know. perhpas old habit, ingrained conditioning, because most often in the past there was so much criticism and it was all about me.

my father's inability to teach me, break things down to a level i could understand was *you are stupid*. and i was frequently fat, and selfish, lazy, bad.

and l... oh yes, he was a source of verbal/emotional bashing. clumsy. useless. stupid. too talkative. too enthusiastic. too happy. that was actually a criticism. for real. i was too happy.

heh. well i took care of that one of late, didnt i?

achievements today: help housemate lug four boxes of stuff down six flights of stairs. not bad for a woman who dented herself falling the same flight of stairs yesterday. i got a parcel today from my mum. :) it was french books on self-injury, a hardbacked comic and an article from a magazine. she came across them in france when she was there with my stepdad and made me smile. it is so sweet.

and yes, kind of sweet too that because of my dissertation she is taking an interest and reading up on all the literature. who knows, it might even end up being helpful. not that she knows about the relevance it has, personally, to me.