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So Why Are You Guys in an Open Couple ?

A few weeks ago, we happened to change our Facebook relationship status from “It's complicated” (a wink to an xkcd cartoon that many people didn't really know about) to “in an Open Relationship”. While this was more of a coming out for my partner, I've been confronted since several months already to a wide variety of reactions when talking about “being in an open couple”, most of the time rather emotional or centered on the “traditional couple” paradigm. I'd like to take an opportunity to clarify what an open couple is , or rather, what OUR open couple is since there are several definitions. The first reaction we get is “Oh, you guys are allowed to cheat on each other”. Now, it starts the whole topic very interestingly, and it is usually the point where I choke on my drink. In my head it always goes like a big “WOT?” and then I have to breathe in, because I realize that this is not provocation, this is simply being honestly misled and couple-centered. No harm done, but it usually tells me a lot about how ready that person is to get to the core of the topic. So let's clarify that right away. We are not allowed to cheat on each other. Cheating is bad – don't do that. Cheating is to deceive people in order to gain personal profit, cheating is to violate the rules, and we would never do that, nor accept that. Well, I wouldn't. Now try to think of it differently: our game is different, and so are our rules. When I got together with my partner, it was obvious that we had to be in an open relationship because he was looking forward to expanding his sexual and relational experiences. The question was - “Can we do this together, or is it better to remain friends?” It became clear to us that we loved each other and we wanted to expand each others' possibilities, not to restrain them. It was even more important as we were going to be separated for several months. If we wanted to be building a healthy relationship being apart, it would have been very risky to ask sexual exclusivity for two reasons: first, if the relationship would go wrong, we'd feel like we'd given up something for nothing, and second, it gives something to fight against, a temptation to fall in. Considering the circumstances and my former experiences with (more) open relationships, it became obvious that we wanted to build something together, but we both didn't want sexual exclusivity. Until here, I think you all follow me, and you might have been yourself in that situation before – an emerging long distance relationship, or even just a dating situation that deepens slowly into a traditional relationship. But from there on, we get a few more odd reactions. My mom's one was maybe the most aggressive I've witnessed. She started shouting that she wasn't going to start having sex with other men because she loved my dad. Well, mom, I tell you this just in case you continued reading this post until here despite it being all in English, be reassured, I don't want you to have sex with other people and I'm not saying our type of relationship is better for yours. I'm saying it's better for us. I appreciate that we can talk about these things together, and I wish we'd be able to talk about it more, because maybe then you could explain to me WHY you believe that you can't or won't have sex with another man BECAUSE you're in love with dad, because I honestly don't see the link. I can have sex with another man than my partner, and it doesn't affect my feelings for him in a negative way, most of the time to the contrary. When I'm with another sexual partner, I either miss the complicity we share and end up thinking this wasn't worth it (but believe me, I feel no guilt about doing it, I'm merely disappointed) or I feel even closer to him for giving me the opportunity to live this. And when we meet again... we talk about it together. Or not. Next one: “It's okay for you to have sex with other people, but what if one of you falls in love?” That's an überly tricky one, and it can be a place where a lot of bad feelings hide: jealousy, insecurity, possessiveness... And that's something we talked about from the start. No falling in love. It's forbidden. Wait. You believe this? No, you know I'm joking, right? At the very beginning of our relationship (still young now, being less than six months old still), my partner told me that he believed we would eventually fall in love with other people, and that this was unavoidable. Falling in love isn't something you decide to do and it would be utopic to decide never to fall in love again with anyone else. So what if it happens? My questions were then: “Will we have to break up? Couldn't we try to live that together, with a lot of friendship and love for each other?” and the answers were fairly simple. I want you to be happy and if you choose to live a love story with someone else, I will respect that. I'm also afraid to lose you, and I'm able to ask for reassurance and express my feelings to you openly. Thinking about it, does one really gets reassured by trying to control the other person? I don't believe so. Think of jealous people for example, they normally are jealous no matter what the other partner does, no matter what their real behavior is. They are jealous because they lack self-confidence, and they can't trust. They try to control the other one because it reassures them... Now, I don't want to control my partner – I want him to be happy, by my side if possible. My fears are to lose the trust and intimacy we are building, not to prevent him from feeling something for someone else. As long as my relationship with him is not endangered by the situation as long as he chooses to be with me, I think can accept it. So go ahead, fall in love! “Well, this kind of relationship is good for you because you are not jealous.” Say what? I AM jealous. If tells me he's been seeing this girl and they slept together and whatever happened, I AM jealous. It usually lasts five seconds: I get sweaty, I have adrenaline to my brain and I have to say out loud that I'm jealous. Then I cool down, and I enjoy the reality of it: we love each other, we choose to be with one another, and we choose to go beyond a traditional relationship because it brings us both something interesting. I've often heard women criticizing open relationships as being a way for the guy (or less often the girl) to have multiple partners without committing, as being hypocritical and insane. While people in open relationships tend to have more sexual partners than those in traditional ones, it is usually the woman that gets more sexual partners when it's done in an healthy way. You can't force someone to believe in an open relationship if they can only think of extra-conjugal affairs as being cheating, and thus seeing themselves in a couple where they are “allowed” to “cheat”. It is not healthy, and people will get hurt. Though they might learn from that experience and grow, it is a very bad start. I also often heard the “It's okay, but I don't want to know about it” coming from allegedly “open” couples. While they probably fit with the strict definition of it, I feel they are missing out on most of the benefits one can get from an open relationship: talking about it. We don't have such strict rules in our couple, but some people find rules beneficial and take the opportunity to discuss about their needs, their boundaries, their expectations and most importantly, their feelings. This goes back a lot to the first reaction: “You are allowed to cheat on each other.” Nobody allows anything to anyone – while we try to remain legal in what we do, this isn't the issue, he is allowed to do what he wants to and I am allowed the same. But I might refrain from doing something because he told me he wasn't comfortable with it, and would prefer me not doing it. And I might as well be careful when I am doing something new, crossing a new boundary, because I want to get a cue on his feelings, and avoid hurting him (or myself) in the process. As you see, it would be difficult to argue that we are not “a real couple” because we choose to be relationally opened. We are committed to each other and see ourselves together in the long run, to form a family, a core unit. There is no further step, and exclusivity wouldn't bring us anything, therefore we choose not to include that rule in our game. And we're happy to talk about it because we believe that in 2010, there is no shame to have about these things, that relationships have to be redesigned to be meaningful at a time were divorces seem to prove a wreckage of the traditional couple. I often hear that “open couples just don't work” and I wonder how people can still believe in apparent monogamy in our era. Come on, don't we all know now that prince charming will have to pay child-support at some point? And of course, this long post represents a “couple” point of view, but there are many more things to consider, and it isn't all simple – other people get involved with us at different levels and have feelings too, and we are generally concerned with them. I'm not saying we took the “easy path”, on the contrary. If you are curious about this type of relationship in general, look up keywords like polyamory, there is a wealth of resources online. Oh and one last thing: it's not because we have an open couple that I'm going to have sex with YOU either. Or with your girlfriend. And we do not have group sex and are not swingers. Never say never, though.

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein So Why Are You Guys in an Open Couple ?

Downsizing your life helps you focus on real problems

Adapted from a blog post and comments for Evoke

Try living for a week on $5 a day.


Since I started downsizing my life, I had to develop parallel skills. I learned:

to appreciate what I've got
to accept genuine gifts
to step on my pride with humility
to have compassion for people that need money to express their dreams
to face hardships such as hunger, physical pain, exhaustion
to be self-reliant
to be interdependent
to network extensively
to be resourceful
to create value out of trash and to talk about it without any shame
to educate myself and try new things
to inspire others

What does one really need in life? Is it about money? Money is indeed a powerful tool, but it's one of many many resources that one can rely on. There's a lot of other stuff out there: kindness, waste, goodwill, free spaces, trading and sharing opportunities, nature, existing structures..

Be resourceful.
Be interdependent.
Live low - get to the core of the experience...

Now, I'd like to underline a few things:

What I am saying is not an ideal - it is possible and I believe useful in the current wasteful context.

In a perfect world running only on money, it would maybe be abusing from society (or I would earn money from what are currently moneyless activities in my life). In a perfect world running on free economy, relationship to waste would certainly be different and I would have to adapt greatly. And if everybody would be doing now, there wouldn't be much production of goods and services, since I mainly transform waste to create value. My lifestyle is currently sustainable because the societies I insert myself in are wasteful and diverse. Any lifestyle choice must be adapted to the society it inserts itself in. I don't think it would be fully sustainable in Africa, for example.

I rely on a few things for living:

- Working - even unpaid or bypassing money. I obtained some of my computer hardware while translating from Dutch to French, because I was asked to. The person knew my limits (I don't speak Dutch - I could understand it because of some automatic translation tools, patience and persistence) and accepted my offer because the offer seemed good to them. I consider hitchhiking as a professional situation, I represent all hitchhikers to a driver and provide a service to them, being careful to their needs, adapting to their shifting reality - from the spiritual seeker listening to Christian rock to the murderer on parole that just insisted I should sleep with him, from the single mother of five to the expat working abroad to feed his family back in his country, from the Armenian stolen car dealers to the Swiss sex worker. Then I need to carry this work of broadening my perspective, and other people's. Isn't what I'm doing here? Isn't this creating value, even being unpaid?

- Optimizing waste: waste in car spaces, waste in the trash, from food to toilet paper holders, things that I consume or things I give away, feeding the gift economy. Books, furniture, clothes, gadgets, lots of things.

- The power of gift - I seldom say no (I don't say never, because I might have done it but do not remember it) to anyone requesting help to me, sizing my resources. People know most of it isn't money. Still, It can be money (the entirety of my capital is currently lent to a friend from my brother in Germany since a little more than a year, and he's slowly getting out of his debt at the pace that suits him and as I need this money now). That money was lent to someone before, it just changed hands. I do not have a Euro bank account (Tip from 2015: it's not that hard to open a bank account in Germany, also if you're not a resident), so that's how it's managed for now. But most of what I offer to people is intangible in matters of money: go and see them when they ask me to come over to them, if we can't meet up because they have no time to travel, volunteer online and organize workshops and conferences, and accept invitations to do more when it's on my way, carry good wishes, gifts, connect people, listen, support, advice whenever I can, organize information in wikis.. etc. This gives me (at least in my mind) legitimacy to ask for help (but everybody should feel that legitimacy, as a valuable contributing member of society). Think of it as a form of Karma, or Pay it forward situation.

- The beauty of sharing : everything I find or am given can become shared. The 20$ a driver gave to me became a shared meal and a game I bought for a role playing night. That game is currently at a friend's place because he lives in a community that is more likely to use it than me just now. I found over 100$ worth of organic chips in the trash, 150$ of organic good quality bread - they were shared with more than 7 households until now. The step-mom of a friend gave me maple syrup while hitchhiking, and it got shared with about 10 people until now. To me, everything tastes better when it's shared. And of course, people do shared their electricity with me, their toilets, their water, their sleeping spaces, their books, their fridge and freezer, their hugs, their thoughts, their hopes and concerns.

- Downsizing: Walk as much as possible, find free to perform social activities, eat less in restaurants, not watch tv, using a cellphone sparingly (less than 25€ per 3 months), avoid dependency on anything, consume no or very little alcohol or drugs, however common they are, adapt my nutrition to local standards, avoid buying meat products, stop using toilet paper, not having fashion needs, accepting imperfection.

Further thoughts on the topic:

- A few people in my network do not use money at all. Sadly that means they can never take public transportation, or fraud it, which I don't usually do. Therefore, public transportation eats up 70% of my budget.

- You have way more resources than just money. Its called social capital, and of course it makes me and other people cringe when I get to that. But when you live on a low budget in a money-wealthy society, there is a bit of paradigm shift: you deserve to be helped. Not because you're pity-able but because you are a valuable member of this community. To help myself get through this paradigm, I think of my life in a professional manner and put care in all I do. I also try to help people, especially if they ask for help, if not directly, then at least by putting them in touch with someone that can.

- Cheap, nutritious staple foods I sometimes buy: lentils, red kidney beans, chick peas, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, all types of dried peas and beans (and trust me, there are!), couscous and bulghur. But the main expensive things I buy are garlic, spices and olive oil. Learn to sprout stuff!

- You live in an amazingly wasteful country. Curious about techniques ? Google Trashwiki, and you'll get tons of info from the pros. Bakeries are good too. You might find people with experience about this in a local social kitchen (such as Volksküche in Germany) - often part of the food served is dumpstered.

- Many activities can be free, so you do not have to cut down on social activities - you have to rethink them. Board games, poïs, a small musical instrument or playing cards ... Why go for a cup of coffee? Invite your friends for a cup of tea (much cheaper usually), suggest you have coffee at their place, or try to find an alternative coffeeshop where you're not forced to consume to be there, and alternate.

- Accept offered things. It's a good way in starting to give properly.

- Finally, a huge resource: sharing! Organizing a potluck at your place can end up being a great party, a movie night at yours (or at a friend's place!) People put together what they have, collective cooking maybe? You'll be amazed by what you can create together, all tasty, healthy food.

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein Downsizing your life helps you focus on real problems

I don't know... but I'm sure....

Adapted from a blog post made for Evoke"Describe the biggest challenge to food security in your own local community or country -- and an innovative solution that is already underway."I'm unsure how I can answer that - I've seen many countries and many local communities, and nowhere am I now a resident. Every time people talk about "your country", I get a bit lost. My "playgrounds" are Canada and Europe, but it's not like I can single something out as being "my context". So I close my eyes and think of what I've seen and where.In Canada

  • I've seen myself go hungry to college in Montreal when I was 17-18 because my governmental loans and bursaries were not enough for me to buy food. I've seen my brother move in with me and not having money anymore. I've seen myself register to a local food bank and not get called back because I was underaged.
  • I've seen the local spirituality counsellor giving me food tickets to the school cafeteria and I could go to classes with a full stomach once a week. I've seen a guy in my program (not even a friend) noticing I wasn't eating well and sharing half of his mother-love-made lunch with me. I've seen his eyes full of joy to be able to share/help.
  • I've seen buying groups being built in that college and got involved in it. If we buy more, especially long-lasting staple food, we end up paying much less, and sharing recipes.
  • I've seen community-run collective cooking groups, where sometimes food bank resources were integrated in a collective, social activity. I've seen and experimented my first Learning Community through these groups, getting in touch with a wide range of people (single moms, older men, Cambodian refugees, fishermen, etc)
  • I've eventually discovered what is called ACS in Quebec, or AMAP in France and found the idea amazing!

In Peru

  • I've seen kids trying to sell candies in the street, and my group leader offering to give the rest of her food to the kid in the restaurant rather than buying it. It made me wonder for the first time about the problematics of food waste optimization.
  • I've seen people working on Sundays to build out of bricks a community centre that could serve as a collective cooking (comedor popular) infrastructure. I've seen people always saying it was good for "poorer people" no matter how poor they were themselves. I've seen people stopping to work together once they had water and electricity because they felt they didn't need their community to improve their condition anymore.
  • I've seen kids and other vulnerable people work at a religiously-run comedor popular in exchange for food, and getting a sense of community, thus increasing their social capital.

In Scotland

  • I've seen people consuming more frozen prepared food than fresh food, because it was the cheapest option to feed their families. I've seen a danger in that people do not learn to prepare food properly, and a positive side in that vegetables such as broccolis, spinaches, were often fresher when cut and frozen than the offer we'd get for double of the price in hypermarkets further away.
  • I've seen people choosing heroine and crack instead of food security.
  • I've seen resource-less mothers feed their kids on chicken nuggets because they believe it's the the best option.

In Germany

  • I've discovered the joys of sorting waste properly, and through community living, the extend of food waste. I dumpster-dove excellent bread in a bread factory and brought it to a Volksküche.
  • I've discovered squats, communes and alternative economies such as gift economy, applied to food, waste reduction and social initiatives.

I guess I could go on and on, about other countries, about other ideas, a bit different but a bit alike...After reading all the suggested reading, I must admit that I did not come up with a solution for Africa. I feel even less able to change things there now! But I'm sure that whatever I do here does have an impact there. I'm pretty sure there is already enough food in the world, but it's not properly managed. I'm sure people shouldn't endanger their food security to produce export food for the North. I'm sure that my direct action in optimizing waste educates me and my acquaintances, and makes us aware of what we consume. I'm sure that a local, diversified production empower people to support themselves.I'm sure food is connected will all areas of life -health, environment, education, peace, democracy, and so on.I'm quite doubtful about market economy in regards of food - what can't be sold is directly wasted or given to charity, which isn't empowering people either. What is the community would deliberately manage unsellable food collectively?

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein I don't know... but I'm sure....

Collective cooking as a mean of increasing food security

Adapted from a blog post made for EvokeAfter experimenting collective buying groups and observing collective cooking groups in Canada and Peru, I had the will to act and joined a collective cooking group in my "hometown", in a small archipelago East of Canada. At that time, I was living in my car and storing some food in my cousin's fridge. It was really hard to share with her family, especially since I ate weird foods, such as fruit salads and stuff with curry on it. Too much for the traditional food over there.I then moved to Rimouski and started a college degree over there. But I was getting addicted to collective cooking so I looked for groups over there. Two NGOs were organizing some: the women's house and the local food bank. Both were meant for jobless people and were held during the day. I thought... "whaddaheck?", how comes as a penniless student I can't benefit from a collective cooking activity ? What if people would be in contact with such a great practice earlier in their lives, when they learn to secure their food and feed themselves properly?Collective cooking as a mean of increasing food securityWhat is collective cooking anyway? Well it's a small group of people gathering together to plan a cooking session and perform it, sharing the organizational needs, the costs and the work together.Now why would one wanna do that? Well it's usually cheaper than cooking alone. It's fun - you meet people from various backgrounds. It's an opportunity to learn - other people have cooking skills that you don't have. Ultimately, it's time-saving because you cook a lot at the same time and can freeze a lot of food. Plus, it's healthy - the group usually makes better eating choices than a single person would. It's finally an opportunity to broaden your perspectives on food by trying new recipes or new food regimes.In the developed world, most of issues with food security are related to poor food management, to a lack of family education. Malnutrition leads to obesity and is linked with further social problems like isolation, mental health issues, poor education, addictions, etc. Any approach to increase food security must take that in account. And while community gardens are part of the solution, it is hard to fit in a school year, to obtain an area to grow stuff on in the city, to care for on a regular basis.Collective cooking is a smaller commitment, and people's skills and confidence are raised gradually. You're not much of a public speaker ? You can't express yourself easily in a group ? Fine, someone else will lead the meeting - and we'll chat together during the cooking. Next time, it'll be someone else. Some day, it'll be you - so get yourself prepared mentally for it. Don't worry we'll help you. Not very good with numbers? Then don't do the accounting just now. Gimme some help with it next month, and the month after, you'll do it. I'll help you with it. You wanna do a vegetarian recipe? Lets negotiate and suit everyone's needs: 5 to 7 people can reach consensus without too much social grooming. We can all learn to communicate better, negotiate, agree and live a pleasant experience.My entrepreneur experienceSo there wasn't any group to suit my needs. I started to vent my frustration at the volunteer café where I was working and a few people seemed to like the idea. They asked me to organize an info meeting and explain it better, with an example of how it could work, and to collect names and try to make a group. On the first meeting, 25 people showed up and we built 3 groups. I'd be part of the first, a vege-curious one that turned out to be vegan because one of the prospective members was. We were all students, most of us resident at the college residences and so we could use its cooking facilities - a collective kitchen area underused, with 3 stoves for 400+ people.The residences' director heard about us and offered us a freezer and a small locker where we could keep extras such as salt, oil, flour, spices, etc. So we collectively bought some extras and decided to share them with other cooking groups (there were two other forming - a local folk food men-only group and a light foods weight-losing group, all students). They did the same, and within a few months, we had a pretty good commons running.People at college started to push me to make an organization out of it and participate in the National entrepreneurship contest. The deadline was two weeks away, so I gathered the most dedicated members and we decided to constitute ourselves in an association with a small coordination group - get common ownership of stuff, plan potential dissolution and how commons would be shared, learn group democracy, provide cooking groups with as much support and autonomy as possible, get a logo, get a team feeling. So we did, and I started to work on writing the application for the contest. CuisiCégep was born. So we learned from our practice, improved our forms, came up with a little guide for new groups, a training mentorship procedure, organized food-related activity in College such as a sushi conference/workshop, a crab collective dinner, a Valentine's day hunter's Chinese fondue speed dating night, an Halloween's pumpkin decoration contest, we build an organizer's toolbox... Where to advertise this, to get permission for that... It was amazing that some people organizing activities were some of the shyest in the group, flowers literally blooming. Again, the residence director asked me to meet him in his office, this time to offer me a job at the college, and to ask our group to consult in the upcoming refurbishing of the collective kitchen area. Because we started revitalizing it, they decided to invest.Scavengering our paper in the recycling bins, we convinced the college to implement trays to provide an opportunity to reuse printing paper where it was consumed. We co-organized a democracy evening workshop with the student union, and got in touch with a few grassroots networks. When we won the local, entrepreneurship prize, and then the national one, our budget exploded - 2750$ ! We bought industrial pots and pans, lots of reusable freezing containers, and more basic dried staple foods.The pictures do say a little bit about the people, but not so much. They do not show that Jerome, getting the price with me on the right had been kicked out of the residences in the past for an hygiene problem, and that the residency director first refused to let him board his car on our way to the gala. Nor that we had to lend him a shirt and buy him some pants before entering the ballroom. Nor that he's gay, and struggling to adapt the big big world. Nor that he finally got his college degree after 6 years, and now works full-time. Nothing about Jean that joined the group being completely anti-social - "in order to meet some girls", that could not express himself in a small group and that got suicidal later that year - I can't show you he organized the pumpkin contest. Nothing about Cathy who got her first experience in admin that way and got from admiring me to being admired by others. Nothing about Monica, vegetarian gothic loner who expanded her network with a sports student and a police student doing international cooperation. Nothing about that dietetics student who got fired twice from his internships for his end-of-degree internship, and that successfully worked with us in building an hygiene training binder and trained us on food hygiene. Nothing about the group that decided to cook for an elderly house in exchange of half their food paid. Nothing about the tears, the laughters, the crisis, the friendships, the drama, the learning.3 years later...I went back to Rimouski recently. About half of the group is still there, still in touch. Not cooking anymore, not students anymore. The organization is of course not what it used to be - it was high maintenance and I hadn't planned to leave so quickly. But what we had planned was that if nobody cared to become a leader for the collective cooking, the college's social worker could still run it. And she was still running it, with a little 3 groups, with just one meeting instead of two for a cooking session. There were still activities related to food, and people still come to it for various reasons, with their strength, and various needs, and engage in a learning community there. The college still lends cooking and storage space, and even pays to maintain the commons, so that the money owned by the organization goes untouched. There are still people there impacted by what I started there.If it was to start over, I would probably build it in a more simple way and ensure that people would pursue their commitment - since then, I learnt how to pass things on properly, I wasn't that skilled back then. But I guess it's fine after all.

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein Collective cooking as a mean of increasing food security

To all my past lovers...

To all my past lovers, I wanted to share some gratitudeFor without you I wouldn't be who I am, complex and alive for sureSo if you are one of these people I cared to invite close to meBe it in a bed, a couch, an email or on a treeNo matter if we just fucked, or kissed or staredIf we were engaged, or in your engaged me in a dreamLet these words carry the acknowledgement of my pastLet these show that their imprint still lastsThanks for the kisses, these promises of something soft,For hugging me when I was anxious and cryingFor waking me up with a cuddle when it's cold, and letting me get on, learning to be sexyThanks for the tongue, what an amazing muscle after all,For letting me bite you in the neck when pleasure overwhelmed meThanks for the long talks, before after and during sex, for the laughter and for the sweatThanks for letting it happen on the shores of the Loch Ness,Thanks for treating my breasts as if they where precious gemsFor grabbing my hair firmly and making me feel so femaleThanks for the dream of adventure, of a long stretch of steppe,For the long letters that made me cry and wanna screamThanks for making me feel alive with hope and tears, thanks for not being there when I hoped to meet youThanks for believing me when I wanted to make it last foreverThanks for making me discover the joys of giving pleasure, oh, the sweet taste of blackcurrant syrup over your body, and the game, the play, the smiles and the teasingFor improving my immunity, with all that body contactThanks for making me challenge my complexes and for taking initiativeFor surprising me, and for giving it a tryFor hurting me in the end, because it still was worth itAnd you made me feel aliveThanks for lending me that computer when I needed it for universityAnd for bringing a rose on my birthday with threaded sausages on its stemThanks for those first roses when I was 16 - I dried them and still have them in an oil lampThanks for being my first kiss, even if your sister paid us and you turned out to be gayThanks for allowing me to be your only girlfriend, before you died falling off a staircaseThanks for telling me you loved me, even if you didn't (but don't do it again)Thanks for teaching me about free love, and dissolve jealousyThanks for showing me how girls love, or discovering it with meThanks for the Phantom of the Opera - in dreams you cameThanks for the backseat, the pine forest ... and the infamous Paella :)Out on a sexercice mat, our own rituals, our own intimacy thanks for composing symphoniesThanks for kicking me out of your life, and making me learn to accept itThanks for being a bitch I still want my pillow talks with,And for finally coming to me (I thank you in advance)Thanks for crying in my arms because weakness has its strengthsFor making me feel beautiful, strong and sublimeThanks for the slides down the snowy hills behind my parents' houseFor letting me earn all your best marbles and giving me your stamp collectionThanks for the wine, the mushrooms, the LSDThanks for smoking that one cigarette with meThanks for making me read Tolkien and listen to BachFor making me rip the shower curtain at your apartmentThanks for showing me how to get food in the trashAnd thanks for your patience while trying to help me in mathsFor saving me from the waters of St-Lawrence River in JanuaryBy opening your door in Montreal when I planned to jump in GaspéThanks for not insisting that we have a baby, and for telling me you don't want anyFor the day that I read a pregnancy test and was relieved and drowned in depression stillThanks for the rape, my dear boyfriendsThe one I received, the one I gaveThe violence of these lessons cannot fadeThanks for killing me a bit with sex, when all I needed was to die a bitWhen I didn't like myself and my body was my only link to this worldThanks for asking me to marry you, because I'm a princess and a frog at the same timeThanks for beating me up once, and never drink again in front of meThanks for holding my hand and letting me crunch your fingers as I climaxedThanks for not having sex with me, and still kiss me and care for meOh and by the way ! Thanks for running away ! Inspiring me to go to universityGet top grades and read, read, read.Thanks for that year where I watched 236 movies to be a better girl for youFor the blog, for the inn, for the love of SteppenwolfThanks for your blue hair, your dreads, your balding headFor being so small, so tall, so bold and so shyThanks for teaching me respect and to go beyond my complexesThanks for the friendship before, during and after we toed the line togetherFor not calling me a whore when I depreciated myself, and believing experience is a plusRather than being a conservative prick telling me I'm nothing but a dollBecause I can give joy, hope, faith and life with that body of mineWith intimate touch and thoughts I can keep us afloatI can teach you everything I know... but I'd now nothing without you.Thanks my lovers, thanks for making me grow---Creative Commons LicenseTo all my past lovers by perilisk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein To all my past lovers...

Be in my head

Be in my head in this difficult instant. Be in my head with me. Let's start from the beginning. I'll try to be coherent, consistent, straight-minded.I'm in a manic phase of cyclothymia. You know, just enough to be too much. Just so that my fingers can't actually run on the keyboard. Or mayb you don't know what it's like. That's what I'm trying to explain in this post.Breathe in,Breathe out.It is like my mind is a train without a conductor. It's like my brain goes faster than my fingers and so my fingers say: no, we're not going to do that. That's beyond limits.It is the fifth time I take the calming pill box in my hands and drop it. I can't seem to ccordinate my fingers. It's not that I can't succeed. I get distracted. My shoulders hurt because they are so very tensed. I have a hard time writing without making tons of spelling mistakes. I can't write and read what I write at the same time. Actually, I can barely read. I gotta focus. One task at a time. Now my task is to make you visit my brain during an hypomanic episode of cyclothymia.I'm not under panic. I'm unable to focus. I'd like to smoke a cigarette. My shoulders hurt. I'd like a massage and physical contact. I'm restless. I'd like to go swimming just now, or spend some time in the sauna. I need effortless effort to strain me a bit because I can't do precision movements. I haven't gone outside today. I'm nervous about being sick, I feel like it's harder to love me because of this slight handicap. I'm afraid it'll frighten people I love. I feel like crying. My brain won't shut tonight probably, but I won't be able to output anything profitable, desirable, going towards my goal. I'd like to paint with a lot of dark colours, I'd like to draw with coal, I'd like to learn to play tuba.Breathe in,Breathe out.Maybe if I put some music on... Hallelujah! I dream of honey bees. I dream of mounting horses, yeah put the music on. Swallow the pill too. Not a whole. 1/3 is enough, clonazepam so-many-mg, I don't know. The sticker wore off. I'll google it. The music yeah. Hallelujah! Check if Myriam is online. She is. Start talking to her. Google the medication dosage, can't find it. Nothing on the sticker, it's all wore off. I haven't taken much of it in 3 years - 10 pills altogether ? Victory ! Well not tonight, it isn't a victory, it isn't a loss it's just fine....All is just fine and is it the first time that I write automatically in English yeah I think so yeahBreathe... or not to breathe... google the dosage 0,5mg, and I take roughly 1/3 of it but it's hard because it's easier in 1/2 and 1/4. I know Marie will read this blog post she'll smile. I'm a reasonable human being and I do not wis to suffer. I do not wish to make people around me suffer either. I think if I would have a physical job during the day, I could still go to it, but any other job to my intellectual capacities ? Tonight ? I would fade away. It's not a running away, but there's too much data and I must breath and all..Creative, creative work. This book writing thing is good but systematic. Under hypomania, there are outbursts of creativity. actually maybe I'm in mania because hypomaia I should not be so scattered. I wonder why never got the effects of buying lots of thngs while on a high and if I shouldn't drink that maple-whisey bottle. no just joking I know I won't because you know what, I know over 5 0 ways to kill myself. And because I've done them several times in my head in the past, I'm the most powerful person on myself - I won't use any. And since I'm apparently most likely to die of suicide than any other disease, imagine how old I'll live to be. I'm almost immortal.I don't know why Im crying. Gimme 5 minutes.I forgot to put the music on. Hallelujah!!! by Arianne Moffat. Gift from Evie. I'm there, at her place, on the couch, in my room as she calls it. I wanna be in my room soon. But I won't want to sleep there unless I would wake him up with my nocturnal crises. But I really don't have that many. Stop pouring you funky tears! I'm not unhappy! I'm happy I got dumped last Christmas and all those incredibly heavy tears got shed in the Kitchen Casa while he looked nowhere. He sure was special.Wait, I'm starting the music. My shoulders hurt. It's almost started. It's on Quicktime so it's a bit strange. it's underway, but you don't really care for music, do yo ?Now I feel better. I'm much better than when I was 16 - I never hurt myself anymore. I don't get panicked so much, even when maybe I should. You know when I really panicked? It was a year ago. I was in Istanbul. Can you believe a year ago I was off to shave my head in Turkey?Can you believe I wasn't meant to cut it? It was just so that he'd come back. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah...50 feet above ground, I climbed on the cliff and pushed with my feet and got into the hole. The sarcophagi hole. It was so small, I couldn't rest in it. There were three of them. I was listining to Tori Amos - China, all the way to New York, maybe you got lost in Mexico...I counted to a hundred in Turkish, bir iki uç dört beş... then in german ein zwei drei vier funf then in I don't remember. When I opened my eyes, it was raining and I had no wood for a fire tonight. I got down. I fell down. Ironic ironic Tori feeding my hears.Look I'm standing naked before youDon't you want more than my sexI can scream as loud as your last oneBut I can't claim innocenceOh god could it be the weatherAhhh plein de souvenirs c'est quand même bon de tout canaliser... no, you're writing in English tonight. Breathe in, out, in out slowllllllly.So she brought moist wood into the chapel, a bit higher up the clift. Frescoes, and greek graffitis from the 1800's. and a shrine. I put my Buddha on the shrine. I put my sleeping bag on the uneven ground. I'm not that far from the village, I can hear the muezzin...Oh god why am I here If love isn't forever And its not the weather Hand me my leatherAnd that's the moment when I text Ulf telling him madness isn't that bad after all. That I'm on the edge of life, 50 m over ground, on that big rock and I'm going to sleep in a chapel and that I love another asshole than him. And he wants to help me, because that's the best thing he can always do. Try to help people. I'm an inspirer, he's a problem-solver, key in hand solution. I can inspire.Breathe in.It was cold but not that cold. It was long but not that long. I shouted, I cried, I pounded my fists against rocks, I cursed and I prayed, and I masturbated and I fell asleep at last for an hour.Me, and a gun, and a man on my back... Don't worry, we won't reproduce because if we do my genes will get mixed along the way, and if you'd ever meet my parents, you'd understand. I mean, maybe I could reincarnate instead. Too bad I'm not a Buddhist anymore. It was a fun set of things to try to believe in.I'll put the music again, it calms me.She broke your throne, she cut your hairAnd from your lips she drew the Hallelujah[3 minutes pass]I'm scared. I mean, this is scary right? I mean, not this little crisis or what I'm writing. I mean love. I mean yeah still. I'm still fucking scared of love.Oh stop it, I don't need salty tap water in that part of my anatomy.I should get another song. But no, no, no more Tori Amos.Ahahahah Myriam vient de me dire qu'elle avait hâte de me lire! But I haven't told her I was writing right now... I think I'm sending a lot of brainwaves. CAN YOU HEAR ME ? I'm sure you do. Little brother. COME HERE I'LL TICKLE YOU TO DEATH !My breath seems slower. I'm tired of listening to music with just one ear. Damn headphones. But can't throw them away until they're dead right ?Ok I need to change songs again. I can't put a song for each lover of this wicked 2009. This strange 2009. The power of the shaven head.The power of a bold, raw me.You better not challenge me again you fuckingsonovabitch! You and all that you represent can burn along the purification of the fire of 2009. To all the women who came to me to whine saying "He did that to me to", I say you killed me more than he did. If you can't stand in front of a man, how can you stand in front of mankind.My shoulders hurt.In a week, I'll be taking yet another leap of faith. He's almost perfect. Just 1-2 things, and, you know. I'm almost perfect too.I love you, for making me who I am, for challenging me, for making me smile and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. Both.

See original: perilisk, idéaliste à temps plein Be in my head

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