Subway lust

I was sitting in the Parisian subway, reading a book by French novelist Maupassant. Coming back from the Track and Field practice, I could already feel the burn in my legs and abdominal muscles fade, and I was in that mellow state of endomorphinese that long-distance can give you. I'm told it's like a shot of morphine or heroin. Being quite the neophyte in drug matters, I can't tell you. Someone got in at the next station. I noticed beautiful honey-blond hair and since I am very short-sighted, not much else, and as the person sat down next to me, I apologized in case my running gear bag was in the way. I then found out my neighbour was a gorgeous man. I then blushed and returned to my reading. He started to fumble in his own bag and got out a compendium of Russian poetry, translated in German, so I could read over his (broad) shoulder. Handsome and German-literate? OMG. For the next four stops I wondered if I should ask for his phone number. No, wait, give him mine. What if he's taken? Or wait, I've just come back from my training session, all sweaty and pink-cheeked. I must look like shit. He's really beautiful. Oh no, only two stops left.

As the train grumbled through Paris I leaned back on my seat and purposefully brushed his shoulder with mine, before leaving my arm to rest against his. My heart was beating ridiculously hard. I couldn't believe I had to meet the most handsome man I've ever seen when I felt so high and so unattractive at the same time. He did not move his arm away, but he seemed so concentrated in his poetry, I couldn't decide whether he knew I was making a pass at him or not. And damn it, I had to leave. So I got up, still blushing ridiculously intensely, and left the train.

I turned around to check him out one last time.

He was staring at me. And I smiled lustfully. And he smiled back. And then I never saw him again.

Note to self: next time, give phone number. WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU?

subcultures

I have a class with a eccentric American teacher, who's apparently dabbled in porn (as an actor), is a script doctor, writes sociological inquiries about high-class SM practices and owns a crumbling villa in Morocco. He wants us to write a presentation on a subculture, and he gave us a handout about some of the themes already done in his previous classes:
Pro-ana, gothic lolitas, steampunk, gay skinheads, transsexual Iranians, pedophiles, neo-vampires, dykes and lipstick lesbians, trekkies, nerds, frats etc.
On the whole I don't find it an uninteresting topic and I'm thinking of writing about Furries. But what got me ticked off was the way he described some of the subcultures he supposedly "studies". For someone who's worked in the porn industry, he's pretty narrow-minded, describing transsexuals as people who have to work through their issues and mocking the Amish. Excuse me? Yell about pedophiles all you want, but no one is hurting anyone by wearing Spock ears and nerding out at conventions. GAHHHH. At one point he told a student that queer was a synonym for gay. No context, no detailed explanation. I wonder if I'm overreacting.

Maybe those who belong to a subculture can be even more intolerant than mainstream people. As a sociologist, he has no reason to let any judgement enter his field of work. So, shut up, teacher. Or rather, shape up and open your mind.

Running away

There are days where I run towards things or people. And today I went to my first EVER group run event. I enrolled for the track and field club in my new uni.

I was horribly nervous; I'm not good at sports, never was. Last picked for gym and all that sob stuff. Who cares? New year, new resolution.

We ran 10K as warm-up, did some interval training and then ab exercices. Three hours. I was much slower than anyone else there, but I finished all the same.
So why can't I just feel proud instead of wasting my afternoon? I mean I have lots of work. But I feel depressed and lonely. I feel unfit to belong to this club. I feel that I'll slow everyone down and be an object of scorn or pity. All the procrastinating makes me feel worse. It's a spiral of self-hatred.

Shut up! I want this unproductive rut to cease. SHUT UP, VOICE.

But instead I fantasize about running away from everyone, everything, all my responsabilities, and just get numb again.

In olden days I used to go hug my boyfriend, he would be the voice of reason and of kick-assness.

Now I'm my own coach and sometimes it's rough. But if I manage to get myself out of this mire, all the success will be my own.

How to choose your therapist (or do they choose you?)

My first experience with a therapist was at my university in America, where foreign students were encouraged to talk to someone in case they had adaptation problems. This was a good initiative and since I was homesick (and also without realizing it at the time spiraling down into depression), I booked a meeting with Rachel.
Rachel was a kind person but she was incredibly wrong for me, for several reasons.
1)She was easy to read.
Let me clarify: I could tell exactly how she reacted to all my disclosures and which ones hit home. She was clearly a troubled eater, I guessed that early in our conversations from her way of talking. She was constantly reassuring me about my weight, which is neither here nor there. It's not about the weight for me. It's about loving myself. However, she had a fixation on weight and it showed. I ended up not talking to her honestly because I knew in advance how she would react and that it hurt her feelings that I , a slimmer person than she, should feel unlovable.

2)She was not subtle.
My maternal language is French. I was talking to her in English. This obviously has consequences for therapy. I would often try to explain why some words had a special meaning to me because they were "new", or reminded me of a French word that had impacted me in some way. She would never understand this and always tell me that "it's the same word, just in a different language."

3)She let herself be manipulated by me
I'd like to emphasize the fact that I don't think she was bad at her job, just bad for me. I managed to have her prescribe me the medication I wanted to take to commit suicide. I never told her I had tried to kill myself. I never trusted her enough, because she hadn't been able to understand my deviousness.

My second therapist was a Lacanian psychotherapist who believed that only complete silence on his part would reveal my pain. I quickly got freaked out by the eery silence pervading all our "conversations" and gave up.

My current therapist is a psychiatrist. He is very good at deciphering my moods, never lets himself be misled by me. He avoids any identification and gently reproves me when I try to get him involved in my story. For the time being, he is the right person for me. Funnily enough, I feel that he chose me rather than the other way round: during our first talk he looked at me earnestly, and then told me to come back next week because we had work to do. I felt like I'd just passed a successful test. Yes, you are demented enough for me!
So if at first you don't succeed, try again. I believe many could benefit from therapy, but that we all have different needs. So trying out different methods can be necessary. Or you can be lucky and find someone perfect for you on your first try.

I find therapy incredibly challenging. I often ponder our discussions during the entire week after our meeting. I often leave the office crying or very sad, but it has taught me so much about myself.

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.