There is so much going on.

I received incredible news today. I had been hesitant and hadn’t talked a whole lot about this but by the convincing of my professor I had agreed to apply for a TA position that she was offering. The class is cognitive psych, not by personal focus, but she’s a dynamic professor and that makes all the difference when it comes to the subject matter.

I actually was in her office today because I had to turn in a paper late. Ironic timing. We talked for a few minutes. She asked my opinion on a number of topics regarding the class and I gave her honest feedback. She then asked if I was still interested in the TA position and when I said yes she told me I was hired on the spot.

So yeah. My third job. An official assistant teacher. Duties include:

Proctoring all quizzes and exams
Designing class activities and movies for the class
Maintaining office hours for students to stop by with questions
Running study groups before exams
Keeping track of every students grade and posting all grades online

But the best part, and the part that makes this job such an incredible offer, is that I will be assisting the professor in designing a new Cognitive Psych class for the following year and helping pitch the idea to administration. The new class will be designed as both lecture and lab so I will be helping to design all the labs.

This is absolutely it. This is my admission into grad school. They’re not going to turn down a student who not only served as a TA but helped design a lab cognitive psych class.

I am so excited about this offer. It is not a paid position but I receive a good deal of credit toward graduation and like I said, this is my admission into grad school. It’s perfect and I am so proud.

I’ve been so eager for a new school experience. There’s so much about the academic system that drives me up a wall, god I fuckin hate elite academia but I love what I study and I love how I apply my studies.

A year and a half and I graduate. A year and a half and I am out of this place.

I think about it everyday. I’ve finally reached the point in my life where I welcome change. I’ve let go of a lot of my fears and I have decided that I am ready to venture out on my own. A year and a half. I finish college and I find a grad school.

I’ve got my hopes set on Rhode Island. There is a graduate program in holistic counseling that I would give nearly anything to get into. This program is made for me and utilizes the field of expressive therapy with classes in art therapy, dance therapy, holistic healing, and Jungian analysis. There are similar programs in schools located in Mass and New Hampshire. Rhode Island looks like the top choice and I don’t see why the school would turn me down. A year and a half. I want to be on my own.

This life, I hardly recognize. Today was a whirlwind of excitement, connection, and activity.

The goal of my life has been activity over passivity. It is too easy to live life passively, too easy to live inside yourself and never step outside of your own fears and boundaries. It is very difficult to initiate change and transformation but sometimes all it takes is one step outside the circle, maybe just one move that everyone tells you is completely irrational or completely selfish…and then it all falls into place and you’re living a life that you never thought you’d be strong enough to live.

I’ve spent my entire life terrified of change and terrified of stepping outside of myself. I don’t feel like I have any wise words on the topic. I spent a lot of time today thinking about what I could say about change but the only thing I have to say is that change rests upon finding something that moves you. Must find a source of passion and then do everything possible to dance your life to the beat of that passion.

These days I keep myself very busy. I’m working two jobs right now and it seems like my second job at the yoga studio has become my second home. But I love my work and I feel like I am living for my work. Outside of work, outside of school and my practice, I find myself enjoying my own company and not even wishing to change this. I enjoy the time for myself, it feels much needed, and it feels like the possibility to be a new experience each day. I do so much reading. I do little writing but hope to get back into that during the winter months. I’m going to keep up this isolation for a little while longer until I feel that I get everything that I need from it. And I’m not completely isolated, I go out once a week or so, it’s just hard to match my schedule up with friends.

I think back to my life just a few months ago, god I was living such a fuckin mess. I was having breakdowns about once a month, my anxiety was controlling every facet of my life, I was KILLING myself at that fuckin store and going to school full time and working full time. And that’s not even mentioning any of the emotional drama.

And I just walked away from it all. It wasn’t easy and I walked forwards but had my head looking backwards every step of the way. I think it’s finally coming together, working out for everyone that was involved in certain situations. I think that I am finally coming together.

I don’t share much these days. I realized this and with the realization I just had to go and create this rare public post.

I wouldn’t know where to begin with this. I was trying to go to sleep and then it just completely floored me all that have gone on in my recent life.

Over the last 4 months of summer I have done three things that completely changed my perspectives on life.

1. I broke someone’s heart. Or “cut” a person, the term that this individual saw fit to use.
2. I set myself up to get my heart broken. (I started this a long time ago I didn’t truly face it until recently exposing myself.)
3. I quit my job.

It’s amazing how all these things fit together. There are so many patterns to life and every time I untangle them it’s just this amazing feeling of connection.

I’ve often lived my life chained to sentimental value. Sentimental value is not something I can really explain, but I recognize that it is directly related to fear and comfort.

There is a lot about me that I do not easily reveal and that seems to take a lot of people by surprise. Most people don’t realize what a romantic I am, or what an idealist, or how effortlessly I am guided by feelings of sentiment. People also don’t tend to realize how insecure I am, the frivolous and superficial qualities that I question, the amount of fear that I let rule my life.

Everything going on in my life right now is about change. I have been so miserable and so bored for as long as I can remember and this period of initiated change is long overdue.

I am questioning everything.

It’s very scary to rely on yourself instead of relying upon others. I still need a lot. I need attention, I need inspiration, I need romance, I need sex, I need desire, I need friends, I need people that I can relate to….but I think finally I have learned that first and foremost I need myself. And what that means is learning myself and learning how to rely on myself. Being active as opposed to passive.

I had to walk away from sentimental value. I had to walk away from someone who had dear immense sentimental value to me and who will always hold that place in my heart. I hurt the person and I will never justify what I did but I recognize that it needed to happen to get both of us to where we are now.

It was not about not liking this person, or wishing them pain, or getting pleasure from witnessing their pain, it was about recognizing that something had gone sour and that something didn’t quite fit.

I had spoke of this in the past: that people pass in and out of our lives to work with us or against us in very specific times. But I never truly utilized this concept until I accepted that the person I loved was no longer working with me, it felt like they were working against me and I have no doubt that this was not intentional, it just was what it was and it stopped being useful and I’m sure that I stopped being useful to them and I thought it could be restored because I proposed that in itself there must be power to love, or to sharing a history together, or having helped each other in the past. I had to accept that people pass in and out; people become useful and useless. It’s a mistake to constantly cling to the same person, it demands too much from the person and from the self. As soon as demands start rearing into the picture, it isn’t about love it’s about fear or control. Everything ebbs and flows. Constant movement spiraling inwards and outwards. It’s a shame that I had to learn this lesson under such harsh context but then again lessons learned in this manner are never forgotten.

I still have trouble letting go. I have so many issues with control. I am such a control freak and it’s all about what feels safe and what feels terrifying. Being in charge, being in control, exposing here and there only when I want to, only when I feel that my vulnerability or sensitivity will be understood or well received is a cop out born from fear.

I had to push people away and dive deep into my own recesses. I’m still down there somewhere, trying to answer all sorts of questions and to recognize even more patterns that have made up my life.

In doing this I also have to learn how to share myself, how to expose myself.

The deepest level of vulnerability, the area that requires the most heightened awareness of sensitivity is the realm of sexual and romantic intimacy.

I’ve been around. I’ve fucked around. I’ve done a lot of things that exposed myself but that really barely scratched the surface.

I have a really hard time working with intimacy, letting go and exposing myself to intimacy. I’ve shared a number of really intense, gut wrenching, intimate moments and yet they’ve been here and there, pieces, fragments and shards.

I had to put myself on the line for intimate context that was not going to go anywhere. (This is a dumb statement to make because where does something really go? It’s all subjective.) I exposed myself and my vulnerability in a context that was bound to end in pain. I had never done that before, I had always held back and only now am I realizing how much I missed out on.

Everything cycles. I broke someone’s heart; I got my own heart broken. I learned what I needed from both these situations. I am still working on the application from both these lessons.

We tend to learn things only in reference to extremes. We don’t forget what hurts the most; we don’t forget what brings us pleasure like we have never known.

I am trying to venture into the middle ground because most of us don’t really know what’s there.

About a month ago I was obsessed with notions of love and hate. I was trying desperately to define both of these. And we all know which one of the two is easier to define; there are so many more words in our language to describe hatred than there are to describe love.

I’ve realized that everyone that I hate (and I don’t use this word lightly) used to be people that I loved or trusted. And it’s so much easier to stay on the opposite ends of the spectrum: I hate you or I love you. What is really difficult is to accept the big mess and muddle of emotions: I love you and I hate you. It’s such remedial and halted thinking to see things only as black and white, or to not accept all the shades of gray that make up our emotions, experiences, and connections.

I won’t surround myself by people who can see only monochrome. That type of thinking lends to my obsession with control and desire to either be validated or not to be judged. (And this of course stems from fear.)

I have purposely been vague here with everything that I wrote. The details really don’t matter because we can’t suspend them in time to analyze them. Whenever we try and do this it usually just throws things around in circles, patterns are worth noting, details are easily forged or forgotten.

I’m not going to forge or forget my life, I’m going to try and face it.

We formed a Psychology Club on campus. I ran against 3 other people and was elected as the president. I had to give a speech. I am very excited about this and look forwards to proving myself as a leader. I have a lot of good ideas for the club and I feel confident that I can do well.

I think that since I won this, it's a good sign for tomorrow's election. I'm sick of all this election bullshit, it really makes me sick to my stomach. That's all for now about that.

"Good love never dies, it only hurts when we burn our eyes,
from starring too long at the sun.
You have to throw your hands up and let the night come.

..... ....... ......

Tell me what can I say, to keep you in my life?
They say good love never dies, it only hurts when we burn our eyes,
from starring too long at the sun.
You have to throw your hands up and let the night come,
Take your chances and let the night come."

---Liz Phair, Good Love Never Dies

Dear *****,

You told me that you cancelled out your email account, your LJ, and disconnected your phone lines. You hinted as if you did something even more fatalistic than the cancelling of accounts.

I'm not worth it. This is absolute bullshit. You need to calm down. I never wanted you out of my life. You are the best friend that I have. Don't give me this power over you, if you did anything to hurt yourself, I will not be able to live with myself.

I have not used you. What kind of elaborate ploy do you really think I would create here? Talking to you for over 2 years? And what would I use you for? Sex? Would I fuckin fly out 3000 miles for a goddamn good lay? The sex is wonderful with you but I wouldn't fly out there if there wasn't something deeper between us. And I did not use you for my ego, again even a good ego stroking would not be worth the fuckin 8 hours in the airport and on the plane. I didn't nuture our friendship when it was just convient to me either. I fell in love with you and while things are a little different now I still love you deeply as a friend and we will never even be "just friends" because we've experienced so much together.

You said that you were upset with me because I seemed to shy away from any intimacy that you brought up in our last conversation. I backed away from the sexual intimacy, you continue to corner me with trying to get me to admit sexual feelings to you. And it's not even that I don't have sexual feelings for you right now, it's that it hurts for me to engage in them.

Things got fucked up between us. There were a lot of factors, the strongest factor being our inability to communciate deeply and incombatibility with the way we handle relationships. I can't force my feelings. Something changed over the last few weeks, in my mind I started to feel for you as a friend, as a past lover, roles slipped a bit because I had been repressing my own feelings of rejection for too long. This was a natural progression, it directly you and it wasn't directly are relationship, it comes down to who I am right now and what I want from life. Something needed to be changed with our relationship and over the last few days it seemed to be going so well. I loved the email that you sent me, just you being yourself and telling me what was going on in your life and what you were thinking.

I don't even understand what triggered this outburst of yours. I see that you went into Paul's journal and read his poem. Were you checking up on me? The comment that I made in regards to his poem, you completely misinterpreated the perspective I was coming from. Had you checked the date and maybe if you remembered the email you sent me from a few days ago, you could realize that I made that comment in his LJ directly after reading the email you sent me acting as if our friendship was over because you couldn't be a good friend. I was reading his poem as a reflection as if you had completely pushed me out of your life, not as if my feelings had ended for you.

Don't do this to me. Don't throw away our friendship without allowing me the chance to explain what it means to me and why I need you in my life.

You ruined my goddamn night. I can't sleep now. I'm going to be up all night wondering what you are doing across the 3000 miles. Hoping that you haven't hurt yourself, hoping that you didn't flip out in a fit of anger. I know your fatalistic nature and it's going to haunt me all goddamn night. Do not put me through this. I have never in my life been able to hold onto a good friend, do not leave me on these terms, at least allow me to express what the relationship has meant to me.

And please, at least act your goddamn age here. You are an adult. You are 31 years old and there is no reason for you to be acting like we are in goddamn middle school. Adults COMMUNICATE! They don't go deleting their email accounts, live journal accounts, unplugging their goddamn phone line. You will not get away from me like this. I won't stand for being pushed away on these terms.

You want to know fatalism? I can be just as fatalistic as you and I can play this goddamn immature game if you want to. You want to see who can stoop the lowest? Who can be a goddamn martyr for love? I'm not going to let you leave me like this.

I'm sorry that I hurt you. I'm sorry that you can't seem to handle me not wishing to talk about fucking you, not able to handle me talking about you in the lover sense.

You want to talk about using people? What does this look like? I have to call up your goddamn phone and beg to your fuckin answering machine for you to pick up and talk to me? You won't allow me to explain myself and apparently this is all because you feel rejected by me because my feelings have changed. You can't handle our relationship without the sex? Without me talking dirty to you online just to get you off from 3000 miles away? I know that we had something deeper here than just sex but if you toss away this friendship I am going to feel used and rejected.

Please calm down and communicate with me.

Today is my last official day of summer vacation. I start school monday, bright and early at 8 pm. It's a shame, I completely wasted away today. I've been working every day this week since tuesday and will not have a day off till monday and today I just couldn't force myself out of bed. So I slept for most of the afternoon, literally. Now I feel sick because I overslept so much. Bad cycle. I'm doing close to 40 hours this week of work. And just about every night this week we haven't gotten out till 11 instead of 10:30. Work is very tense right now, everyone is doing the job of at least 2 people, it's ridiculous we just do not have enough employee's because the company treats us all like shit. We have an insane amount of people that need to be hired before the christmas season and it's so hard to keep people. It's very tense. That's all I can say.

I am getting excited about school starting. The classes I am taking are below and it's every monday/wednesday/friday but the spaces inbetween the classes are a little odd.

8-8:50 Human Biology Lecture
10-10:50 Theories of Personality
12-12:50 Math for Liberal Arts
2-2:50 Psychology of Adolescence

It'll be wierd because I have a break inbetween each class. I suppose that will give me time to recharge as well as always finish up work that is due. But ideally I would have a 2 hour break inbetween somewhere so I could grab a longer lunch. I don't know, I'll have to see how it all works out with the breaks. It's hard for me to set my schuedle because I like doing the short classes and the mon/wed/fri set up. My classes themselves should be very stimulating except for Math. But math isn't even so bad because I adore my math professor. She is just a wonderful woman, very friendly, completely dedicated to her job, and I respect her a lot. She is the only professor that I will be familiar with. Oh yeah and it pisses me off because I realized that both my psychology classes are being taught in the same class room by seperate professors. I don't like being in the same class room.

Bah, I just got home from work actually, now I am going back to finish this entry and it looks like I have to kiss my social life good bye. I'm going to be taking on more friday nights at work. There is just no one to do the service desk closing on friday nights. I was looking at the schuedle for next week and they put nobody on to close guest service desk. So I offered to take it, out of pity I suppose. I'm just going to tell them that I'll do most the friday nights from now on. I need the money, it'll get me 26 or so hours each week. I'll try to request one friday night off a month so I can at least go out to the open mic then. I'm going to miss seeing everyone. :(

Oh well. Work. Work. Work.

<lj user="xxxmariposaxxx> and I will be going to the Indigo Girls concert on Friday Nov 5th! I am so excited and I got us good seats! We will be sitting center stage, in the 13th row from the front. That's a pretty good seat. It'll be a drive to the concert, about an hour and a half to Stamford CT. But I have been wanting to see the Indigo Girls live for quite a long time and I seem to keep missing the local shows. So now I found out long in advance and I already have the tickets. I am so damn excited!

Been doing a lot of research for my zine. I keep finding stats that I believe everyone needs to be familiar with. These below stats are taken from the book "Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assualt" by Patricia Searles and Ronald Berger. The study that the stats are in reference to was conducted in the mid 90's.

A survey of 6,159 college students from 32 American institutions found that:

54% of the women surveyed had been victims to a form of sexual abuse
More than 1 out of 4 women were victims to a completed rape or an attempted rape.
57% of these rapes occurred on dates.
73% of the assailants had used alcohol or drugs prior to the rape
55% of the victims admitted to using alcohol or drugs prior to the rape
42% of the victims never told anyone about the rape.

And you just gotta love this next one....

In a study conducted through American high schools the following was revealed:

56% of the girls and 76% of the boys believed that forced sex is acceptable under some circumstances. For example if a boy takes a girl out on a date and "spends a lot of money on the girl."

32% of the girls and 31% of the boys believed that it was acceptable for a man to force sex on a woman if she has already had past sexual experiences.

Oh my and does it get better....

79% of girls and 87% of boys believed that it was ok for a man to rape a woman if they are married.

47% of girls and 65% of boys believed that it is ok for a man to rape a woman if they have been dating for more than 6 months.

And this is why American culture is shit. How the hell did we teach teenagers that rape is ok after a guy has spent money on a girl or if they have been dating for 6 months? This is the result of a sex crazed culture that does not illustrate healthy sexuality. Being sex crazed is not the issue. I am sex crazed and I do not rape. The issue is that we emphasize fake sexuality in the form of playboy cutouts, sex as a commodity, and men and women as having different sexual temperaments.

Sex is everywhere in our culture and yet is is all bullshit titillation. We do not show real sex nor do we show real people having sex but we have no problem showing our youth music videos of pimped out pop stars bumping and grinding to poor quality music.

My tentative hypothesis for why Canada and America has higher reported rape per capita rates than the similiar economic standing european countries is that our western culture highlights more fake sex and bullshit titillation than Europe. And I believe it is also in refernce to our cultural standards of alcohol and it's "cool" and "adult" factor advertised to teenagers as oppossed to European countries where alcohol is more a part of day to day life that is seen growing up and lacks the exact same "cool" factor.

Alright. Now that I got that rant out of my system I believe that I can go to bed. Comments are appreciated.

A few weeks ago I posted rape stats by country in reference to research that I was doing for my zine. Today I found the per capita stats for rape by country. Like I figured, the U.S does have more rapes than similiar economic standing nations. But what I did not expect fo find out was that Canada leads the industrial nations as highest rapes per capita.

I am sharing the below data, I just chose to post the countries that I wanted to compare. The source is the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems for the years 1998-2000. They are vague when listing what constiuted as the population that they were tracking these figures for. To my knowledge the percentage is based aganist 1000 men and women of legal age for each country. It does not say that they specificaly counted only women and or ruled out children or the elderly. So I'm not sure how confident anyone can be with these stats and again it is only reported rapes. But I still find it to be really fascinating.

Canada: 0.74 rapes per 1000 people.
United States: 0.30 rapes per 1000 people.
United Kingdom: 0.14 rapes per 1000 people.
Spain: 0.14 rapes per 1000 people.
France: 0.14 rapes per 1000 people.
Netherlands: 0.10 rapes per 1000 people.
Germany: 0.09 rapes per 1000 people.
Russia: 0.04 rapes per 1000 people.
Italy: 0.04 rapes per 1000 people.
Japan: 0.01 rapes per 1000 people.

And just for comparison I am listing the murder rates for those same countries.

Canada: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
United States: 0.04 murders per 1000 people.
United Kingdom: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
Spain: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
France: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
Netherlands: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
Germany: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
Russia: 0.19 murders per 1000 people.
Italy: 0.01 murders per 1000 people.
Japan: 0.00 murders per 1000 people.

I am interested in hearing what others think of these stats. Particularly, I want opinions on why Canada would outdue the U.S on reported rapes while they overall have a lower general crime count than us.

Jason took me to a lovely beach last night. We went at night, caught the remaining sunset wisps. It was an amazing sunset. It always amazes me how orange the sky can turn. The sky can burn and catch on fire.

Beaches are romantic and highly erotic at night. I was sitting inbetween Jason's legs with his arms around me. I was really turned on and kept asking him what he would do if I just threw him down onto the sand and straddled him. And he got shy. Silly boy. I still managed to get his pants unbuttoned and unzipped...hehe, but he kept pushing me away. Too many people he said. But it was dark and nobody would have really been able to see much. Oh well. If the weather holds up, we will go there again tonight to catch the sunset.

On a less postive note, I am getting really frustrated with my inabilty to climax. It's not him, nothing he is doing or not doing, I have enough experience to recognize when someone is correcly pleasuring me and he goes well and above but there seems to be an element missing on my part. I don't know why this should be such a matter of complication. I can climax fairly easy enough on my own but my body doesn't seem to want to if there is a person watching or doing the work. We'll see what happens. It's my own issue and I should know how to get over it but I don't know. I do worry that if I was to finally be able to climax with a partner that I would become a very selfish lover and want most the attention focused on me just out of the excitment at being able to climax. And I get very fearful of being a selfish lover. That is part of the issue.

I'll have a lot to think about and remember when I return home. I fly in late tomorrow night so today is my last night here.

Made it to Seattle as smoothly as possible and all in one piece. Security was one hell of a fun time...or not. Took about 20 minutes because of course I had to be the girl with the bag that kept setting off the damn machine. Hence I had to be taken to the side and my bag had to be searched. Luckily both the security guards were very pleasent and were just as polite as I was being. Heh and lucky for me that it was a woman going through my bag, taking out items that were likely to set off the machine such as my batteries and jewlery. She whispered to me, "don't worry I promise not to take out your toys" and then she winked. Haha. Oh the stories of my life...they never could figure out what was setting off the machine, maybe it was the toys except that I doubt they contain much metal. But finally they both just shrugged at me and said I was fine. How interesting.

My first flight got delayed 20 minutes but I made it to the connecting flight on time. Flying is still a massively uncomfortable experience for me but my body is taking it better.

I made Jason a necklace and he looks mad sexy wearing it. Things are going well between us. I think things feel a bit more natural and free.

He bought a removeable shower head just for me. Oh the joys that simple water can bring....that was really fun and exciting. Those things seriously need to be advertised for their masturbation purposes. It's a shame that I can't ask my father to install one at home. Somehow I have a feeling that he would read right through that.

Alright. That's it for now. I'll share more at a later time.

Work has been sucking so fuckin much. I am exhausted to the core from tonight and last night. Ugh. Double and triple ugh. It's been a fuckin zoo at that goddamn store but hopefully shit will settle down for tomorrow. I cannot bear to even think about the Christmas season....old ladies and holiday fabric....not a good combination at all.

Tomorrow is actually my last day at work for a week. Go mini vacation!

I fly out monday night for Seattle. I will be returning home Fri night. I requested Sat off to make it to the Pete Serge show.

I am already having nightmares about my flight. Seriously, I HATE flying. It's a miserable experience for me, completely miserable. And I have a feeling that my flight to Seattle will be from hell. I'm not going to get in to Seattle till 12 or so. My layover is in Chicago and it's only 55 mins....that on top of the fact that 40% of Chicago's incoming flights are delayed an average of 30 mins is a very dangerous combination. I am trying to tell myself that I will not miss my connecting flight to Seattle but I have a bad feeling. There better be another flight there in case I do miss it, but I don't know, it is awfully late at night. Bah, if I have to spend the night in the chicago airport I will never travel again. Seriously.

I am excited about seeing Jason but I just hate the fact that seeing him means spending the day in the airport.

Monday before my flight I buy my books for school.

My summer is just about over. School starts on the 30th.

I was unable to save up the money that I wanted to for over the school year. So I am going to have to end up adding in another night to my work schuedle. I'll be doing every other friday nights which is going to be an awfully long day for me. I'll be in school from 8-3 and then work from 5-10:30. And friday nights are my open mic nights with the friends but oh well.

That's all. I should have exciting stories to share after my trip. Well, if you like those kind of stories...which most of you should. :)

I was doing research on rape as a global issue for my zine and I just had to share these stats with people right away.

For the year 2000 Reported Rapes listed by Country: (I'm just taking the time to list the top 10 countries)

1. United States: 89,110
2. South Africa: 53,008
3. Canada: 24,049
4. Australia: 15,630
5. India: 15,468
6. Mexico: 13,061
7. United Kingdom: 8,593
8. France: 8,448
9. Germany: 7,499
10. Russia: 6,978

Source: Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1999-2000)

What does everyone think of those stats? Bear in mind that these are only the REPORTED rapes which were determined by authorities to meet the description of rape. Meaning that date rape and campus rape, likely aren't factored in to their true degree.

Second important thing to remember is that in some countries rape is just a fact of life and it doesn't recieve attention as a social issue and so the stats can't accurately assess that. But the point that I really wanted to make was rape stats in America compared to similiar economic standing countries. You add up the rapes of Canada and America and it is double all the rapes of the industrial European countries.

The connection that I draw between rape as an American issue compared to rape in similiar European countries is our cultural views of alcohol and sexuality. And I mean those to be seperate points even though they often go hand in hand. The countries that have alcohol as a healthy cultural component, tend to have lower rape rates. I still have to search for an up to date stat of how many American rapes involve alcohol or drugs but I know the number is high. And I'm not saying that drinking or doing drugs leads to rape but I am saying that the American mindframe of being drunk or stoned along with alcohol as a forbidden teenage activity leads to increased abuse. And also the countries that have more open sexuality have lower rape rates.

Americans really need to start focusing on the issue of sexual violence in this country. Currently we are at 1 in 4 women being victims to sexual assualt. What will it take for Americans to focus in on this issue? 1 in 2 women being victims to sexual assualt? Every woman being a victim?!?

Fuck America. We hide our true social issues and bury them real fuckin deep with bullshit social fears.

Blood on the moon tonight. That is what it is called when the moon has a reddish cast. I don't know what causes this. Women who happen to be menstruating at this time are supposed to be further in tune with the moon goddess. So just call me the wise woman of the moon tonight. Seriously, I would like to hear myself referred to as that. I was called worse things at work tonight...

In all honesty, I have no wisdom to offer tonight. I'm crazy and tense. Work stressed me out. I wanted to stay at home working on projects, I was very much in a creative mood today. I'm working on all sorts of little nifty craft projects. I want to send gifts out to people.

This night is driving me crazy. I really don't feel well. I'm very on edge and tense. I am definetly going to blame it on blood on the moon. Is the moon bleeding on everyone else's side of the world? If not then it must be bleeding just for me. That thought will really fuck me up tonight.

I want something that feels mystical tonight. I want to put feathers and beads in my hair and then I wish to draw a circle and have sex under the moon. This cannot be done without feathers and beads in my hair. Seriously, I would look hardcore with feathers in my hair. I want to make feather jewelery but my cats would attack me.

I'm going to try and find myself later tonight. I think I got lost in the moonlight.

I wish I had the ability to put into words the sheer intensity of connections coming together. It's just amazing to have known someone through this medium and then a year or more later end up naked in bed with them.

I wish I could trace all the threads of connections.

I used to heavily believe in destiny. And I still do but I do not belive it as something pre planned. Because very little can be planned in advance. I do believe we shape our own destines but I also know that there are invisible threads that we cannot pick up on. If I could map out these threads, I think I would be in complete awe.

I have learned that people from my past never completely leave me. Especially lovers. They are always reincarnating. Wild.

I had a really really intimate night. It was a perfectly natural progression which I am very pleased by. I am more impressed with gentleness and enthusiasm.

I am so lucky because every guy I have been with in a serious manner has been unique. I was really reflecting on that today. This again emphasizes the fact that I am not capable of having just a casual fuck, or a non intimate sexual experience.

Heh, it is too funny that he even considered that I would be out of his league. I don't think anyone has thought that about me before. I am making progress with recieving compliments.

Cuddling for hours with a beautiful and sweet guy makes every lonely night I've ever had all worth it. I'll always appreciate the little gestures. The little touches and compliments.

That's all for now. I am so damn exhausted. Good exhaustion.

Oral: you appear to be overly passive and dependent, wanting things to be given to you instead of working for them.

Anal: you appear to have a good balance of self control and spontaneity.

Phallic: you appear to have issues with controlling your sexual desires and possibly fidelity.

Latency: you appear to have a good balance of knowledge seeking and practicality.

Genital: you appear to have a progressive and constructive outlook on life.

Freuds theorized that there are 5 stages of psychological development. At the oral stage the main issue is dependency, at the anal stage the main issue is self control, at the phallic stage the main issue is sexual identity, at the latency stage it's skill development, and at the genital stage its creativity and productivity.

Freud theorized that psychological problems are related to problems during one or more of these stages. For example, being too cared for or too neglected causes someone to be orally fixated, too much or too little control causes someone to be anally fixated, insufficient parental role modeling causes phallic fixation.

An orally fixated person is either irrationally dependent (expects what they want to just appear) or irrationally independent (always refuses help).

An anally fixated person is either irrationally self controlled and servile to authority or has no self control and is compulsively defiant of authority.

A phallicly fixated person is either a sexual compulsive (sexually innappropriate/promiscuous) or sexually repressed.

Freud did not classify any latent fixation but I think it is as plausible as those at the other stages. I speculate that people that like to learn and acquire knowledge without any purpose or people that are compulsively non curious represent both dysfunctional ends of the latency spectrum.

The genital stage is the final Freudian developmental stage and according to Freud people don't all succeed at this. Freud believed the ideal for human happiness is to be happy in love and work, problems in one or the other cause unhappiness.

Like any personality system, Freud's developmental levels are just a theory, so, be speculative about your results.



I liked this quiz! I think others should take it and share their results with me!

Most everyone seems to have someone in their life that represents death to them. Those particular and carefully chosen individuals that represent something cold, immobile and annihilating to us. Often we are drawn to these people, seeking comfort, love and approval from them. Even if we don’t quite like them, even if we can tell ourselves that nothing about them matters, we still remain transfixed on an obsession with analyzing or hating them. Like a junkie and his drug of choice, we fret and we flow, we walk and we run, always headed back to our symbolic representations of death. I always looked at this as a natural streak of masochism that defines what it means to be human, what it means to seek out love and the simple contact of flesh on flesh. When I think about the matter more deeply, I understand that the nature of seeking out representation of death, obsessing and pining over these individuals that hurt us so dearly, that threaten to destroy all that we stand for, is not out of masochistic instinct but is pregnant with lust for liberation. Out of the need to forever be casting aside cocoons, blossoming out into the world as something new, liberated, changed, and evolved. We hate others out of desire to prove ourselves as something different, something stronger or better. We love others out of desire to create something that can be possessed, and we seek out our representations of death to belittle, coerce, or plunge us into liberation.


Those are just some thoughts lately....been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and writing.

"Any system was a straitjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly. I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at ones self. In laughing even at ones need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty."
--Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

That is a philosophy worth living by and we would all be so much happier if we could learn to laugh more, shrug off contradictions, and always be on the look out for beauty where we might least expect it. That's my advice for the day.

Just got back from seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. First movie I have ever been to that recieved a standing ovation.

I find it difficult to write a review for this. It was a really good movie but I believe people have to take it for what it is. There is footage in the movie that I question, there are parts that seemed staged to me and there are details that I question. But overall I believe that every theme he brought up is valid. I learned some new pieces of information but the major points he brought up I was already familiar with.

He did a fair job of presenting the major themes that need to be examined. People are making complaints that he didn't go into enough detailed explanations but had he chosen to do that this would have been a 6 hour movie. Another major complaint is that the film is one sided. And yes it is completely one sided but again, had he chosen to present both sides to the equation this would have been a 6 hour film.

All people should go to the film expecting to get in return is questioning and an overload of thoughts. The movie should make you think, it should make you question and wish to dig deeper into the current administration.

My concern with this film is that it is going to be blown out of proportion as some liberal democratic icon. I fear that people will take this film as absolute and utmost truth and not bother to dig deeper into the very complex issues that it portrays.

A 2 hour flim cannot sum up the history of 4 years. It left out a lot of important ties and details and it really only hit upon the surface of core issues facing American society.

I am not saying any of this in criticism of the movie, for what it was I think it was wonderfully constructed and presented. I reccomend that everyone goes out and see's it but I think it absolutely must be emphasized that you take the movie for what it is and that is a surface look at the Iraq war and the Bush administration.

To really understand the conflicts and issues going on right now we would all have to devote an insane amount of time to reading and research. And I wish I had the energy to do that but I really don't. The film made me think though and it did make me wish to look into some specific details and for that I feel it was highly successful.

Oh yeah I lauged and cried during it. I feel that any truly good movie will make me both laugh and cry so this one passed the test.

xxxmariposa and lunaticxfringe visited me sat at work. I love visitors!

Got a great surprise Sat at work. Our store got our inventory score from a few months back. We did very well, so well that all workers who have been there for 6 months or more got presents!

A $50 gift card and our choice of a teal, pink, or purple official Jo-ann's shirt. Oh yeah and a pizza party. Woo-hoo! This is very exciting to me. I picked out the purple shirt, it will look hardcore styling on me. Sexier than my navy blue one. The $50 gift card excites me so much and it'll likely be gone in 2 weeks. I am buying an unfinished book shelf because I ran out of room for all my books. I am going to paint it and do something to make it look cool.

I got complimented by a customer Sat. It was kinda odd, after I finished up this guys order he said something like, "I hope you don't mind but I have something to ask you." And right off I started thinking, "uh-oh this guy is going to ask me out and it's going to be all awkward because he has to be at least 20 years older than me..."

But it wasn't quite that. He said, "so how did you get your style?" He did it in a really humble manner. Like he stepped back and bowed his head lightly when asking.

This was all very interesting. I didn't know what he meant by style. I thought he was referring to the way I look. Not like you can have much style wearing Joann corporate wear and of course the sexy green apron but I figured maybe he was talking about my hair, makeup, or earrings.

So I asked him for clarification. And he said, "the way you interact with your environment. I was watching you and you are just amazing."

Again I couldn't tell if he was flirting with me or what. I told him that I wasn't sure how to answer his question. He just smiled and told me I was meant for customer service and that he wishes he had my smoothness and people skills.

I was flattered. He was a very nice man and meant well. So I told him how nice it was that he pointed that out. We wished each other a nice afternoon and I thanked him for shopping with us.

I enjoy interacting with customers. It's very much me putting on a fake mask but it's fun and it comes very easily to me. I do wish I recieved more recognition for it from the higher up's but oh well.

My other highlight from Sat was this really cute guy in the store. He was shopping with his mom. And right when I saw him we made eye contact and it felt like my heart was fluttering. He was so cute and he just had this look to him...like playful. I thought he looked like someone and didn't really know who. Then I realized he looked like phluffhed, except with dirty blonde hair. And this made everything much more exciting!

They shopped for about 40 minutes and I was scared I wouldn't see him before he left. But then they came over to my register and he looked a little nervous. He was totally trying to play it cool. And I was trying not to check him out too much in front of his mother. It was really exhilerating though. I know he liked me because he kept sneaking peeks and was very distracted with what his mother was saying. I thanked them both for shopping with us and smiled at him specifically when telling them both to have a great evening. It made me really happy because I don't often feel like guys are checking me out and liking what they see and he was just so goddamn cute. That was as exciting as the $50 gift card and shirt.

The other excitment in my life right now is the new zine project I am working on. It's going to be very sexy and super intimate. Collections of erotic writing and reflections. Stories I haven't even given anyone the full details about. I think this is going to be some of my best writing. My only concern is that although I am not using anyones names I clearly write about experiences that can be traced. My email address will be on it and that is pretty well known. I see no way to avoid this and have decided to just take the risk. There is one person who I know would be very uneasy if he ever stumbled on it but of course his name will never be in it. Everyone knows who my first fuck was so that gives it away quite easily. I suppose I will be very careful in who gets a copy of the zine although it will be sent to a few distros. I have to write this though. I'm hoping to have it done in August.

That's all.

Today was a really tiring day. Early afternoon I got my self esteem shattered by shit that I don't wish to talk about here and all day I was looking forwards to heading out to the movies to see Fahrenheit 9/11 with a bunch of friends but plans got changed and I was the last one to find out. Plans were changed to tomorrow night and I always work Sat evenings except when I request it off 3 weeks in advance. So that was a misunderstanding and a bummer for me on top of a bleak afternoon. It wasn't anyones fault it just sucks that it didn't work out for me to be able to be part of the plans.

I really wanted to go out tonight and I wasn't invited to anyones alternate plans so I was just going to bum around the house. Which isn't usually so bad, I have plenty to do here but I just wasn't in the mood. I've been feeling very ill today and a movie would have been nice relaxation for me.

I was just lonely and bummed out when my parents got home from work. And they were nice enough to offer to take me out to dinner and we made plans to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this coming Monday. It was really sweet of them to take me out and it was appreicated. I can count on my parents for that. Certainly not the same as hanging out with Kerri, Andrew, Dan, Sarah and Pete but it got me out of the house and there was good food and light conversation which was pleasent enough.

It's important for me to do something every fri night. Just because I work 17 or so hours over the weekend and fri is one of my two nights off each week. Something I miss about being in a relationship are the few nights of the week that are assumed straight off that we would go out and be together. Even if it was mainly me tagging along to see some of his friends it was still known that I would be getting out of the house and be in his company. It was a nice pattern though.

I'm hoping the rest of my night goes smoothly enough. I have to try to keep busy even though I don't feel well because I start feeling bleak and restless when I am idle.

I am stressed in response to my doctors visit yesterday. There is the worry in my mind that something is seriously wrong but what I fear even more is that it is depression. And depression doesn't leave me many options. It's awful for me to consider living like this forever. But I've got it dead set in my mind that I am not going back on medications. On the other hand though, I get days like this where I recongize that I am unstable and I keep myself under control it's not like I wish to do anything to harm myself but I get super sensitive. Like I drop something and start to cry even though nothing feels sad. That never used to happen on my anti depressants but on the other hand I would get sad about something and wish to cry as a release and I just wasn't able to. Paxil made me feel dead inside and I actually do not trust that drug and wouldn't reccomend it to anyone but besides that I had tried similiar drugs and they made me very sick. So no more drugs unless I was honestly going to harm myself or others.

I'm going to try and do some writing tonight. I have a few zine project ideas that I haven't touched and if I can funnel my emotions into that everything will be good tonight.

Hope everyone else enjoyed their friday night.

xxxmariposaxxx, my friend Sarah and I had such a goddamn fun day out today. We woke up early and travelled out to Mystic CT to first visit the Aquarium and then do some shopping around the Mystic Village. It was so much fun and excitement.

The Aquarium was an awesome experience. I had been there before, years ago. It's fun for children but it's certainly something that can be appreciated in a different light by adults.

We saw the following:

* Belugas
* Penguins
* Sea Lions
* Seals
* Star fish
* Sharks
* Frogs
* Puff fish
* Coral
* and so many more fish that I don't know the names for

We got to pet:

* Sting Rays
* A baby alligator

Sting rays are really slimy. They had this whole open pool and you stick your hand in and hold it there and eventually they will swim under you and then you pet them. The baby alligator was 8 months old and you could only pet the top of it.

We saw a sea lion show. They did really cool tricks. It's really amazing how they are able to train them. They showed us how fast they can swim, how high they can jump, and how they walk across land. They were so damn cute and all appeared to have obvious personalities. It was a really good show.

The beluga smiled a lot and it smiled at me.

One of the exhibits that was up was called "Savage Ancient Seas" and was about the marine repitles around during the dinosaurs. They had models of their skeletons hanging up on the ceiling. There was one over 45 feet long.

There was another exhibit called "Noah's Flood and Ancient Shipwrecks." And that was about the major flooding that created the Black Sea and the Phoenician culture.

It was all surreal. It just kept hitting me that there is so much life out there that I will never understand. Just community after community of unique deep sea creatures that I will never really understand. And so much historical imprints left all over the world that I'll never get to feel and make sense of.

I wish I could learn everything. I wish I could digest and understand all that knowledge. There's just so much out there and I'll just die never knowing about it all.

On the other end, I like the mystery of life. I like the fact that I can't comphrend a community of sea creatures that glow irridescent blue. Or that I can only vaguely imagine the life of a culture wiped out by the formation of the Black Sea. It really is humbling.

The aquarium did make me sad. I feel very divided inside when I watch the animals and I did a lot of thinking about this when I got home.

The animals all seemed happy but they really don't have anything to do all day. And it's just so obvious to me that they are not free. They are not in their natural environment and while clearly they are being taken care of here they are not free. The makeshift habitats they have are lovely and clean but are nothing in comparison to having an entire ocean as home. It just seems like they can never be given enough space to roam, not in comparison to a natural environment.

Of course a lot of the animals I saw today are actually endangered specices. So I understand that by being preserved in the aquarium they are actually safe and cared for but it's our fault in the first place that they cannot all live freely in their natural habitat.

It's just sad. Our preservation of life is really just a symbol of our destruction. The fact that we need to keep animals locked away just to keep them alive.

We fucked up big time. And it is every bodies fuck up because we still feed into destruction. The law of cooperation is so evident in nature and keeping any spirituality or religous thoughts out of it but simply in terms of natural cycles, can anyone truly comphrend what the punishment is for a species that took all and gave nothing back?

As much as I respect science I strongly feel it is a field of domination. We seek to explore and understand for the goal of power. Knowledge is power yes but does power have to be domination? It seems the more we learn about the universe the easier it is for us to justify domination. It would be one thing if we used our scientific knowledge to maintain and restore the world but I don't see evidence of that and things are only getting worse and now it's under the guise of "sustainable development." Our way of life is development and environmental genocide all in the same stride. Development does not seek to sustain, it seeks to dominate and rule forwards.

It was basic incompatibilty from the start. Oh well. We can only preserve a planet we are destroying for so long. In the mean time, we can only hope to see as much of it as possible before there just isn't anything left.

Damn, I am so down right now. And my day was really fun it's just now that I think of it, it's symbolism for everything that is wrong with our culture. *sigh* And this is frustrating for me because I know I am not clearly explaining or defending any of the beliefs I outlined above but I don't know how to illustrate a global perspective. It is frustrating.

.... ..... ....

I had a lot of fun today with Kerri and Sarah. It was the first time we all hung out without boyfriends present. We had fun girl talk. I love girl talk. I never really had female friends that were open in talking about their bodies. I think girls sitting around and talking about their cunts and clits is cultural revolution and revitilization.

I have no idea what global revolution and revitilization would look like.

Who's been commenting in your journal?

1	xxxkaliaxxx		917 comments	27.75% of total
2	poetpaladin		321 comments	9.72% of total
3	kerriana		173 comments	5.24% of total
4	audiguy		152 comments	4.6% of total
5	trebyl		142 comments	4.3% of total
6	anthalus		119 comments	3.6% of total
7	phluffhed		115 comments	3.48% of total
8	summercamp		103 comments	3.12% of total
9	armenhayden		97 comments	2.94% of total
10	xxemkayxx		94 comments	2.85% of total
11	cowboypete		78 comments	2.36% of total
12	butisitiambic		69 comments	2.09% of total
13	crazykidben		68 comments	2.06% of total
14	re_set		53 comments	1.6% of total
15	laverick		47 comments	1.42% of total
16	indelibleink		40 comments	1.21% of total
17	xxxmariposaxxx		38 comments	1.15% of total
18	charcoaldove	0.03% of total

These statistics were generated using the LJ Stats Web Interface by mpnolan. Original idea from scrapdog's LJ Comment Stats Wizard.

"Sensuality isn't worth a hair more than spirituality, and it's the same the other way around. It's all one, everything is equally good. Wheather you embrace a woman or make a poem, it's the same. So long as the main thing is there, the love, the burnining, the emotion. It doesn't matter wheather you are a monk on Mount Athos or a man about town in Paris." Herman Hesse.

I read this quote the other day and loved it. Herman Hesse is one of my favorite authors and it's a total male perspective quote but it brings up good points about sex and spirituality.

I am writing a neat entry about my past sexual experiences but it's not finished yet.

More updates of the Orange County gang rape case. I love the fact that slander is now allowed in our court rooms and that defense lawyers are allowed to set up their own plasma television screen and make the rape victim watch herself on televison while then asking her if she likes doggy style sex.

Read the article here: Article

I am so fuckin angry about this whole thing.

I swear this Cavallo asshole deserves to be killed. He must so be getting off on this shit, I'm sure he masturbates to that poor girls videos day after day. Fuckin sicko. I'd like to shove some pool sticks up his ass.

I am so impressed by the strength of the girl to stand up aganist this asshole. Honestly, I have no idea if I would have her same strength. I wish I could contact her and write her a letter and let her know how strong I think she is. I heard that protesters haven't been allowed in front of the court room so this poor girl may have no idea how much support is behind her.

If these boys don't end up serving jail time I don't know what I will do. That is hardcore scary shit. These boys raped and sodomized and unconscious girl with fuckin pool sticks, cans, and a lit cigarette and this was all before they hit 18 years old. Teenage guys are supposed to be fantasizing about blowjobs not raping girls with pool sticks, I know that these boys have to be seriously deranged and it is almost certain that if they are not locked up from society they will rape and murder women when they are older.

Fuckin sick shit. I am so upset about this whole case and I was having such a good afternoon.