Rom Com

I have a tradition, when my father goes to his usual hospital: I donate blood to the blood bank. It's there, I usually have to wait three quarters of an hour while he is prodded/massaged/scanned/tested, so it's not a huge thing, just a habit. Every three months, I give blood. It's not the most agreable thing in the world, but it's hardly painful, and it strikes me as so laughably easy to help others in this way...Just lie down, hold out your arm, and then go eat cakes and drink from juice boxes.

Anyway I went this afternoon. Last time my blood pressure was too low, so they wouldn't let me donate, but this time I was fine, so I went in and just talked to the ladies in the donor's room while the nurse set me up. We were all people with this kind of routine apparently, people who go to the hospital twice or three times a week, who know all the nurses and doctors and who have what we think of as a secret hospital life.

It feels like limbo: the hospital is airport-loungy in atmosphere. Potted palm trees, people pushing carts or drips, people taking cigarette breaks outside.

The nurse came to bandage my arm and gave me a juice box. The nice neighbour I had been chatting to giggled when I asked her if she came here often:
"That sounds like a terrible pickup line. We should write a romantic comedy about people meeting at a hospital when they give blood."
"Or while donating organs."
"Or while waking up from an anesthetic."
"Groggy love"
"Yes, that sounds amazing."

We shared bits of our secret hospital lives.

It was nice.

Visiting Greece II

After Athens, AD and I decided to wander around on two islands, Santorini and Paros. Santorini is a volcanic island in the shape of a crescent moon. The sand on the beaches is black, which is very impressive. It's also one of the most touristy places in Greece, so it was quite a feat to get it relatively free from visitors, May being the beginning of the season.

AD and I are both huge eaters, and we ate our way through Santorini. One evening, I slipped on a pretty dress, AD put on a shirt and we went to an excellent and very chic restaurant, which was entirely empty! New food crush: beetroot salad with yogurt ice-cream on top. Amazing.

So what did we do on the islands? We spent a little time on beaches...but not that much. We walked a lot, inhaling the soft, almost sugary smell of fig trees. We rented a quad bike and wandered around the coasts. We climbed up black volcanic rocks and ingested a huge amount of olive oil.

I loved Greece. Before I left, I was pretty nervous. It was my first trip with my boyfriend and we've been dating for six months-it's all very new and freshly painted still, and I was afraid a whole week of twenty-four/seven exposure to Sara would drive anyone mad. But it was wonderful. Even when I got earache on the plane coming home and dragged my suitcase through a rain storm to get home, before preparing for a gruelling week of hellish exams, it was so worth it. I'll never forget the colour of the sunsets, or the way I could feel the past come back to life around me.

Now that I'm preparing for new adventures in foreign countries, I'm thankful I had a true week of holiday, with sunburns, giggles and yogurt ice-cream.

A few snapshots, mostly taken by AD, so they look much better than usual!





Beautiful Santorini and its ridiculously photogenic troglodyte houses...


Enjoying the black sand beach with my partner in crime...


Looking ridiculous with my Birkenstock sandles on our vehicle.


Drying octopii. The fishermen bash them first before hanging them out in the sun. I was both repelled and fascinated by them.

Move that body

I dragged my sister to a Zumba class. It's a fitness/dance thing, mixing lots of different latin styles, and it's really exhausting.

I've done fitness classes this year, but it's only running that give me quiet. My brain stops talking talking, and my legs feel the pounding, and the world has a beautiful perfect silent quality to it.

I'm a terrible dancer (although an enthusiastic one) so I was hoping I could keep up with the Zumba teacher, an adorable Cuban man in his late thirties who could shake his money maker in a way I can only aspire to.

Something happened to me during that class. I lost myself in the music, in the gestures, in the tiredness of trying to keep up with the steps and not succombing to the heat, I found myself in that emptiness I love about running. I was pretty bad at anything requiring a good hip movement, Shakira has nothing to worry about yet, but I loved it.

That's the thing about exercice: I do it because it's the best cure for depression. I would do it if it bored me horribly. And I'll be honest: I don't like "fitness" for the sake of fitness, I don't care if I don't have perfect abs. One of the reasons I hated my bodysculpt class was all the negative body talk: "Come on ladies, let's get rid of that fat!" It was noisy and vulgar. People talked about dieting in the locker room. I'm a recovering bulimic: I don't need people talking about themselves as if they were slabs of meat.

I like the feeling that everything is slowing down and that I'm enjoying my own little nirvana for a while. And if it comes with a healthy dose of Cuban sexiness, that's pretty OK with me.

As I wrung the sweat out of my Tshirt at the end of the class, I exchanged a smile with my sister. She looked happy and worn out and delighted.

We walked slowly home, and I can't lie, I may have practised some of those hip shakes this morning.

Back from the USA!

Because I watched the Cartoon Network as a child in Holland, these vitamins completely won me over.
I <3 Northampton.

I had a wonderful time in America. First of all, I have to say that I love America, I love how completely gargatuan everything is, I love how junky the junk food is, I love how beautiful the country is, I love how nice everyone is. It's perfect. I'm very happy living in Europe, but whenever I go back to the USA I am struck anew by the sheer scale of everything-in a good way.

So I went to visit my aunt and my sister, and I got to visit two college campuses (or should it be campi? Whatever, as any good Freshman would say), Bard College and Smith College.

I'll focus on Smith College because I lived there! For three whole days!

The American Way of Education is just amazing. From the libraries to the gym facilities, to the splendiferous campus, it's just NOT THE SAME THING AS IN FRANCE. The incredible lavishness of it all...Anyway, I intend to talk about this some more, when I'm not ridden with jetlag.

Holland for the day

The lakes, rivers and moats in Holland were almost all frozen. It's been one of the coldest winters in Europe this year. I love this picture because it reminds me so much of the time we skated here, and would then make hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I went to Amsterdam on family business Friday. It was great fun. I love Dutch houses. This is a house in a small village. The weather was pretty atrocious and my photo skills are what they are, but I hope you can see how quaint it looks.

This is the sweet shop where my mother and aunt used to go and eat Drop, which is the Dutch word for liquorice, and ice lollies, which I think you call popsicles in America. My favourites are King peppermints. I think all sweet shops should look like this.


When my sister and I were kids we would go to this playground and push each other on this swing. I missed her so much this time around, I asked my mother to take the pictures thinking of her. And yes, I've gone back to brunette.

What's up? I'm busy, looking for an internship in environmental science, writing a Masters dissertation on Quakers, planning a trip to America this Easter, getting ready to celebrate my birthday. Oh, and falling pretty heavily for someone.

Holland is home to me. Just being there for a day was enough to stop time a little. I love the flat horizon, the endless rows of houses, the growling language, the tall, tall people, the bicycles everywhere.

We all have our Heimat, that wonderful German word that describes the place we call home, not necessarily our homeland or the place we live in, but that mysterious link that sometimes bind us to a place.

My Heimat smells like King peppermint.

Cambridge and London (snippets)

Hello Cambridge! you are so pretty. Let me take somber and depressing snapshots of you.

What can I say, I love food, and I love sweets, so instead of taking nice pictures of buildings, I took pictures of the fudge shop.

Cambridge, the Bridge of Sighs.

So I'm in the Eurostar station, coming home after a lot of work, and some fun too. I went to London to do library research in the Quaker library, which is amazingly quaint, filled with sweet and insane people doing research as well, and filled with the rythmic sound of people turning pages at the same time. The way I like it, baby. And in the evening I have nice dinners with friends who bore with my endless prattling. When you spend 7 hours a day writing, you feel loquacious, you really do. You also seem to think that your arcane subject is FASCINATING. I apologize to my friends, but that's what you risk when you get yourself an over-enthusiastic multitasker pal.

But it wasn't all work. I popped into Cambridge to spend the weekend with my friends N and Am, cuddled baby Sym, ate so much food (damn those triple chocolate butter Belgian biscuits from Sainsbury's) and slept. I needed a break. And my friends made me feel like a Wonderful Butter Biscuit of a Girl.

Those of you who've exchanged emails would have an inkling about why I like anything Holmes. Inside joke!

Can you tell I'm a bit frantic/happy? The internet connection here is prehistoric so expect more pictures at a later date. I'm crossing the Channel back to classes and WORKWORKWORK, but all in all, I feel regenerated. It's all in the fudge, really.

The Jewish Bride

This is one of my favourite painting by Rembrandt, The Jewish Bride. I love the way the man looks at his bride, the way he puts his hand on her heart. When I look at this image, I feel a quiet sense of content seep through me again. Rembrandt has the most wonderful way with light and darkness, and when I stare long enough, I get that dizzy sensation of passing from a darkened room to a garden in summer. At first you blink and there is almost pain, and suddenly vividness becomes pleasurable. The smells of August fill the air, and the low humming of creatures makes you walk that much slower.

This painting makes me more aware of other people's body language.


I always wonder what keeps long-term relationships going. I wonder if it's that look, that hand, that infinite trust, that keeps the light from being swallowed by dusk. Maybe it's finding a person that gives you that funny, heart-twisting splash of sensations.

I love that painting.

HOLIDAY

Visiting the wax museum, I enjoyed a leisurely drink with a fellow soprano.


I'm on holiday! I'm so giddy this will be nonsensical. I had a wonderful weekend. X came to Paris to see a few friends, and although one of them got stuck in England because of the snow, we had a great time. We practised duets and went to the wax museum, and just relaxed together. He was in wonderful shape, looking handsome and contented. He's started seeing someone he likes and is enjoying the research he's doing for his PhD. Anyway, life is good for him. And I liked singing some Fauré with him. He still hates Purcell though. Oh well.

So now I have a few days before I start studying again and I need recommendations: any music I should listen to, any good books, any good movies? I want to catch up.

I'm so happy to get my sister back from the US of A, I'm so happy to be spending an afternoon wrapping gifts and I'm so happy I can waste hours on the internet again.

Blue skies are here, at last

We met at a wedding. I was jetlagged, he was drunk. I fell for him, hard, but he lived in Sweden, I lived in America, he was recovering from a break-up, I was in a failing relationship. It wasn’t very promising.
One evening in Chicago, I sent him a Facebook message telling him how I felt. He answered. And how. He managed to slip messages in my pockets, my choir books, in my passport, without my twigging how he had enlisted the people I knew there. I sent him a package. He sent me the most beautiful postcard/letters from his trip to Europe, filled with people and stories and lust for life. In May I went to Sydney to visit him. He fed me almond croissants on Bondi Beach, the rising sun scorching my white cheeks. He fell in love with me.
By this time I was a complete mess. It took a few months to go home, break up with my boyfriend, fail to complete my masters’ paper, and live at my mother's house, depressed and useless. X came to stay with me in Paris. I was still a mess. I clung to him like a lifesaver. He made me happy. Then my father got sick and spent eight months in the hospital. He almost died for four of them. X held my hand and gave me the best hugs. He also kicked my arse and made me finish my paper. He proof-read it for hours on end, correcting it over and over again. I sent it in, got a good grade. He got a scholarship to Lyon so we could live together for at least a year. I found us an apartment. We were happy. Then he wasn't. At first it was all cheese and concerts and giggles and being young and in love. I studied for my state exam, he worked on his research. Then he fell out of love with me. It broke my heart.
He had been through a lot during the year and a half we’d lived together.
So had I, in an entirely different way.
It was hard to know what would happen. During those first weeks of hell, it felt as if all the bitterness, anger and sadness that come with breakups would consume me and him, and destroy whatever bond we had. I hated seeing myself through his eyes, as a clingy neurotic mess. He didn't respect my studies. I didn't accept his quarter-life crisis, as he called it. He bought a new bike and flirted with a young thing. Typical, I thought, before breaking down some more. I did my best, and so did he. We never said the unforgivable. We tried to respect each other. As soon as my classes were over, I moved back to Paris, I passed my exam with flying colors; he got a great grant to do his PhD. We stopped talking for a month. All this feels a long time ago.
It took seven months. But I know I’m over it.
I was in the bus and one of our songs came on. A song we had both listened to when the other was away, far, when we were doing the long distance thing, writing desperate passionate emails every day, when we were so in love. And I didn’t cry. I smiled. I remembered the almond croissants on the beach, and the first time he roller-skated with me, and our trip to Barcelona and how he told me he was in love with me in front of the Sydney Opera House.
I remembered all the good things. All the negative things are gone. And today I am over the breakup, and X and I are friends. Good friends. I have so much to thank him for and I am truly grateful for every wonderful hour we spent together as a couple. I’m happy to have survived this as best I could and I am happy that he is over it too.
I started this blog as therapy for the breakup. Now it has become something else, I’m not sure what. And I have become someone else too, and I don’t mind not knowing who I could be. If X taught me something over the years, it’s that all trips are more fun when the unexpected and the strange happen. I feel strong and brave and ready for time on my own, happy to take care of myself and to be single.
I’m so thankful for my family, my friends, my blogmates. You’ve helped so much. And thank you, X, for being my friend. And for making me laugh every time I see you. I care for you very much indeed.

Museums go with ice-creams.

When I was a school girl, my sister and I would get Wednesday off school (but we had to go to class on Saturday morning). Every Wednesday, one of our parents would take us to visit a museum. This tradition stopped when I turned 10, because of choir practice, judo classes and all the musical activities my sister was doing, but for five years we would trot off, wrapped in thick winter coats or clad in summer dresses, to go to a museum. My father is an art historian (and my sister wants to be one as well), so he enjoyed taking us to galleries, wheareas my mother, also an art afficionada, was always happy to mix things up a little with science or zoological museums.

It never lasted very long. We weren't allowed to scream, run or make any kind of disturbance, so my parents understood that more than an hour would have made us implode with repressed energy. Museums for me are still sacred ground, echoing the slow footsteps of visitors, a place where you can't talk above a whisper. Paterfamilias would give us technical explanations: how did Rembrandt do his engravings? Why was the blue paint faded? How did apprentices rise up in the ranks? Who commissioned those murals?

My mother is a born story-teller and we would listen to the Greek myths, the Biblical episodes and try not to giggle, because she always added hilarious details. "Do you know who the naked lady is?" she would ask in front of stunned visitors, who then heard my then 5-year old sister make a speech on Helen of Troy.

I have wonderful memories of my first modern art exhibit, during which my aunt stared at a blank canvas entitled "White on White" and told me it was beautiful. My sister and I exchanged bewildered glances, wondering if we had an eyesight defect.

Another time, my father who is a very diffident man with British reserve, took us to the Museum of Mankind in Paris, where there was a special exhibit on demography. My sister (age 7)and I (10) took a test to guess how many children we would have.Among other fun activities, we had to chose between methods of contraception. She chose condoms, and had her chosen number of children, and I chose "withdrawal", wondering what this might mean, and discovered I was destined to have thirteen children. My poor father did not enjoy the walk home after that visit, so full of embarrassing questions were we. "Papa, how do you get vasectomies?"

After museum time, we would have hot chocolate or ice-cream. To this day, after a show or an exhibit, I long for ice-cream. It's become a reflex. Ice-cream goes really well with culture for some reason. I'm a Stracciatella girl, but I've b known to indulge in strawberry sorbet. When the family travelled in Italy, you can imagine the amount of Gelati devoured.

This summer my sister came with me to Berlin and took me to one of the art galleries. She explained many of the paintings to me, in a very didactic way, making connections between painters, telling me about the classes she had followed on such and such, and it was such fun to have a recreation of our childhood.

Whenever I see bored kids in museums, I yearn to take them with me to a fun section, sit them on my lap and tell them all the funny secrets behind the canvases or the sculptures. Like everything, art can be intimidating or boring until you meet a wonderful teacher who opens your mind.

I still don't get blank canvases though...

Family trouble

I've just come back from a lovely lazy day spent with my friend Am, her husband Vic and their cute baby Syméon. They are my age and PhD students, yet they make this parenting thing work. They've been married for some time now, and their parents have been married for a really long time as well. It made me think about my own family and my relationship to families.

Obviously I have a lot to say on this topic, as would anyone. We are molded by our childhoods and most people can be separated in two groups: those who are very close to their parents and those who break ties almost completely. It's hard to stay in the middle.

I'm in a tricky situation.When I tried to kill myself, I hurt my family for ever. They did not read this as my own struggle, my own battle: it was a reflection on their performance as parents or sibling. I understand this completely. If I did not have depression I would read the same mute accusations in my behaviour than they did.

So now I feel I have this huge debt towards them. Although I know that I won't ever try again, I can't take away the worry and the guilt they feel. All the love I can show won't erase their pain.

That's the way life goes, doesn't it? We try to be perfect in our relationships, we try to be in the right, to be the person who's behaving well. And then we're the bad guy. And there may well be no way to make that change.
What has been difficult for me is to accept that I have hurt my family and made them go through hell, but that I need to move on from that. I can't change what I did, but I don't have to obsess about it.

And spending the day with a baby reminded me how free I am. I'm single and childless: the world is my oyster! All the ties I have are my own choice: I choose to love and respect my family and treat them in the best way possible, but I want it to be a choice, not the consequence of something I did three years ago. So while I hope one day they forgive and forget, in the meantime I'll discover the world and become a happy person. In the end, that's what they also want for me.

A moment of bliss

Today, or is it yesterday, I heard a wonderful concert. José van Dam sung a beautiful cycle of Schumann lieder, which got me crying after about five minutes. There's something about Schumann, the poetry he chooses, the piano's soft and furious interpretation, the waves of emotion and pain, that gets me every time. Then we had some lovely French chansons. Normally I'm not too fond of French songs, because the lyrics sound so corny. The way people used to speak changed, yet the chansons keep the same distribution of syllables over the notes. It's slightly perturbing when you are trying to listen to the music. But here the poetry was by Baudelaire or Verlaine, so you're pretty much enjoying the best of French poetry.
He concluded with Poulenc's cycle of bawdy Renaissance songs. Watching van Dam, who will always be for me the most dashing Leporello, winks and makes suggestive gestures while the audience howl with laughter was a great moment indeed.
So I cried, I laughed, and I clapped my hands raw.

I was sitting next to X. We were enjoying it together, as friends. Music has always been something we both love intensely, though in entirely different ways. (He's never liked Baroque so much either). But it was part of the pleasure to be there with him, after all that we've been through together, building a new chapter in our lives, yet still able to smile at each other or mistily grin when we were moved. Here is a man who held my hand when my father was terribly sick for months on end. Here is a man who taught me how to enjoy so many things in life, a good meal with friends, a glass of perfectly dry white wine. And this is the man who once loved me and now cares for me, and wants only the best for me, and who knows that I wish him everything he could possibly want.

So as I cried during the Schumann, I still felt like a very lucky person indeed.

Disguises

I'm wearing my grown-up dress. It's got a big skirt and a slim top, and I pair it with a blazer and some heels. I'm wearing this dress because I spent all day whoring myself out at the Sciences Po Business convention, giving my CVs and asking for money.Ironically, this took place in the Paris House of Chemistry. It feels quite strange, that this is a thing people do every day, when they ask for grants, for scholarships, and yet I find it so difficult. Give me!Money! On my shoulder you can see my big bruise-scratch that I got from tripping over a branch while running with the track team. Stupid. I also have a couple of beauties on each of my knees. I'm clumsy. Here's the thing: I've been covering up a lot of my bruises and of my hurts recently. On the one hand I deal with them better if I pretend they're simply not there. On the other, I know that they will hurt even more when I attend to them. Scary prospect. All these thoughts collided when I had lunch with my friend L from Lyon today. I felt a rush of nostalgia for all the good times we had together and I loved hearing about all the things she is doing. She admired my outfit and told me how old-ladyish I looked. I took off my top and showed her some of my AMAZING SPORT injuries. She giggled. "I guess some things don't change." I'm so used to people asking me to change, to always improve, that I found something wonderful in that shedding of my disguise.

V for Very Painful but Very Worth it

Oh boy, where to start.
I know!
I'll start at the end, when I crossed the line, when thousands of people were cheering me on, screaming encouragements. Well, they weren't cheering me on, but it felt like it.
I saw the 2 hour mark behind me, and I could not believe it.
I ran it in less than two hours; one hour, fifty-eight minutes to be precise. I feel like the Queen of the Planet, if she had such bad pain that she could hardly move. It's not so much going up the stairs as going down them actually. Someone laughed at me in the street, and I couldn't blame them. A guy in my class winked at me:" You obviously had a great week-end."
I certainly did, if not for any sexy reasons.

I would do it again in a flash. Once the pain stops, I mean.

The mean reds

A nod to Holly and to Truman.
After a day of being excruciatingly blue, a girl needs some wardrobe therapy.

Some mean red, for instance. I love this red skirt. It's pouffy, it's girly, it's just a bit noticeable. I like how lounge-singeresque it makes me feel. I just want to grab the mike and start singing a bit of Ol' Cole or some Irving Berlin. It feels like an autumn color to wear.

Or like an antidote to the approaching cold, short days of work.

Crazy how clothes work on us.

days like these

These are busy times.
These are busy years, full of pretense and fun and heartbreak and music and pain and perfection.

And sometimes something happens that makes everything different, and when that something is a someone, somehow it seems like he was there all along.

Happy one month, frog prince! You are a lovely baby and you have an amazing mother. Love to Am!

Boring

I've never been the fun, hot chick. I dated the best-looking boy in my high-school and people would come up to talk to me for the first time, eager to understand how I had pulled this off. How did she get the hot guy? was the unspoken question. She's bo-ring.
And to a high school crowd, I was. I am the nerdiest nerd you can imagine. I wear spectacles, when I remember, but most of the time I bump randomly into stuff. I read political science treatises like novels. I record shows on the history channel on "Pain in Medieval Times". I drink very little, since I cannot hold my liquor. I don't do drugs. I don't smoke. I don't go to bars or to clubs. I don't have one-night stands.

And for a long time I felt boring. These people were right, there was only one way to fit in and it was through alcohol or artificial paradise. When I was asked about my hobbies I would explain apologetically that I was a very boring person. No, I'm sorry, I don't want a drink. I'm boring.

Then I met my ex. He is quite possibly the least boring person I know. He occasionally smokes. He drinks a lot. He has one-night stands. He travels wildly accross the world and meets gloriously eccentric, unboring people. Living with him meant you never knew who he might bring back for dinner. He taught me how to camp, how to travel and how to enjoy adventure, especially all those times when everything goes wrong and you have to improvise. I felt cool by proxy. All the pressure went away. When X introduced me to his friends, they didn't try to discover what hidden gems of awesome my lackluster presentation would reveal. They took it for granted that I was game for anything.


Sara in the lovely town of Annecy. Looking nerdy. Hey, I was camping!

I don't want to apologize for who I am anymore. Maybe my life seems dull to some, that's fine. We don't all live the same way.
I have off days like everyone.

But I feel the opposite of boring these days. I feel free.

Good conversations

We know them when we have them, but how do we get them, exactly?
I always think about good conversation as a matter of rythm. Ping-Ping. Pingping-Ping. Like a tennis match. I can hear the ball cross the net and BAAM! Back at you. Yet it's more complex than that. I remember an amazing conversation with someone in Germany: we were constantly interrupting each other (with that greatest of gestures, the conciliatory hand patting the knee as you break someone's flow just to say sorry, nothing against you doll but I need to say this) yet it felt unrushed, perfect, exhilarating. Another interruption-ridden conversation I recall was just bad-we weren't listening to each other. It was forced. We both knew how bad the conversation was, I seem to remember that one of us just halted and said ruefully :"This is a terrible conversation." And so we stopped it.

As a bad-listener-trying-to-improve, I love hearing good conversations. I try to understand what makes them interesting, try to implement my findings in my own life. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Because conversation is a lot of good manners, a lot of passion and hopefully chemistry. We all know great people to talk to, as opposed to great people to talk at.

Ping. Ping. Pingpingpingping. You start the conversation and it works. You're communicating, arguing, laughing or staying serious, but the rythm is there, the sparkle is there. I'm ready for all these good conversations please.

Eating disorders

I am a bulimic. I think of myself as a recovering bulimic, not as a cured one. Maybe, like alcoholics, we are never really cured, and bulimia is an addiction.

I've been in recovery for about a year, with several episodes of relapsing, but I try to envisage these episodes not as an indictment of my recovery, but simply as relapses that I get over. These usually occur in times of stress, such as during my breakup, or while preparing myself for my new school year. I'll eat a huge quantity of food and then purge.

Last year I started running to combat stress and embrace my body more. I thought that if I could appreciate my body for what it could do, I would stop abusing it-this is encouraged by therapists who practice cognitive therapy. I was following a hand book which uses cognitive therapy as guidance, and it helped me tremendously. This book would encourage me to compile reasons to enjoy my body outside of food. I decided to take up running because it is cheap and solitary. I loathe the idea of an exercice class.
A year later I am training for a half-marathon which will take place in a month. Running has become part of my daily life and has changed my way of coping with sadness and bulimia. It hasn't cured me, it hasn't made me into a perfect Sara, but it has relieved me and made me stronger. However, it has also changed my body in ways that I feel conflicted about: people compliment me on my fitter build, my parents applaud me not for enjoying it but because it has made me slimmer. I don't run to lose weight. I want to accept myself for who I am, without any reservation, and running doesn't change this goal. But when an eating-disordered girl is lauded for looking like she lost weight, it doesn't help her.

My goal this year is to stop listening to these voices. When someone compliments me on my body, I would like to be brave enough to correct them: I am stronger, not slimmer; I am happier and more relaxed, not more beautiful (whatever that means). I know people don't mean it negatively when they say such things to me, but it does contribute to an emphasis on my body as something that should be pleasing to others, not to myself.

Clearing stuff away

Tidying my room...
I have a room just under the roofs, with my own bathroom and a piano. I have most of my art on the wall, mostly XIXth century engravings and a few reproductions, but also gifts from my sister and neighbour, talented artists. I have a bedside table, which I should replenish with single girl fun stuff (but only after my devout Muslim friend N comes for a visit...) and books everywhere, but no longer on the floor. My desk is empty of crap, and I've stored all the funny, romantic letters and postcards I've gotten along the way in a box at the bottom of a cupboard, to read when I'm ready.
I feel so much better.

My most precious item is probably my inflatable moose head, which has followed me from Chicago to Paris, and hopefully to Berlin. And next to it there is the letter S, spray-painted blue with my ex at a time where I was pretty blue, and my father was dying in the hospital. I'd get hopped up on sleeping pills and try to jump on X and fall asleep in the middle of it.

See! I'm laughing about all these memories.

My first boyfriend never spent any time at my place, because he felt uncomfortable here. So no memories there.

Here's to a year of good living, money saving for travel and happy studies.