I think this blog needs more pickachurres.

So. This entry will be pretty shitty and if you don't like shittyness, fuck off. I feel bad now and I'm about to tell cyberspace why.

As you all know by now, I'm totally obsessed with my own and everyone else's looks. I'm a typical, superficial teenager, but at least I have enough common sense to realize this myself. Anyway. I also know that no matter how hard I try, I'll never look like a model and I'll never be "beautiful", at least not in the eyes of the general public. Tough titties. It took me some time to realize this but I'm pretty okay with it now.

(Electricity just went out in our neighbourhood. I like these laptop-thingies. Won't be able to actually post this until tomorrow morning, though. If I even decide that you're good enough to read it.)

And if not, I'll just become one of those girls who says with false pride in her voice "I'm proud of the way I look, I really am", thus rendering herself the admiration of her girlfriends, who are still at the infantile stage of "Ohmygod, I'm so fat. How did you get so thin? It's so unfair!", but who at the end of the day comes home to approximately twenty-seven Snickers bars because she really isn't proud of the way she looks, she really isn't.

However, I'm still this attention whore and I can't seem to get enough praise for my physical being. (Wondering why all three points on my list were about male attention to my looks? Here's your answer.) Maybe it's something from my childhood, who cares. I'm here and I'm shallow. You, dear readers, seem to have understood this and you also seem to accept it, maybe even appreciate this fixation and the humorous confusions and stir-ups it leads to. Fine. I'm here to entertain you. I am also a Chandler Bing-type clown with juuust the right amount of excessive self-humour to make everyone uncomfortable and sad. Now on to my point.

I won't even begin to touch on the subject of media and the modern society's fixation with the "beautiful" woman. (But I can try: DON'T YOU STUPID ASSHOLES KNOW THAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN? The image in your head of Heidi Klum or Jessica Alba or whoever has been given you through decades of thorough indoctrination and brainwashing. And don't tell me it's biological, because according to genetcis, you men would all find Roseanne very attractive. Please read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf for further or any coherency in this paragraph.) Wondering why all feminists are ugly? Because we get bitter after a while. "How come She gets everything for free? Just because She's thin and has fuck-me eyes doesn't mean She deserves that [insert unfairly distributed good or service here] more than I do." It's enough with just one or two incidents like this to make a woman bitter. It starts as a little notion in the back of her mind, a notion which this woman is forced to entertain by her common sense and self respect. The next time the choice stands between this woman and a She, the woman has a fire in here eyes, an intimidating urge for the above mentioned good or service. Therefore, the law of everything's shittyness (or just a cowardly person's action) makes it so that the woman is once again disappointed. It's a circle, a spiral heading downwards.

I really wish I could make that more understandable and less discriminating but I'm too upset now.

This evening I was thoroughly disappointed by a long-time acquaintance (note the dramatical absence of the word "friend") and what pisses me off the most is that I actually cared so much. Not about the source of the insult - I have no fantasies or dreams about the person's empathy or intelligence or whatever. But why did that get to me so much?

All my life I've been taller than most people around me. In elementary school, I was the tallest person in my class and I can't say that I was proud of it, because even then I realized that my influence over the lenght of my body is extremely limited. However, I don't think it bothered me. The comments about my length were usually those of admiration, both from boys and girls, from children and adults.

By junior high, my position as the tallest girl in the class was pretty much edged in stone. As a tall girl you might feel
a) Different
b) Masculine
c) In everyone else's way
d) Too loud, too annoying etc etc

Not being exactly model-thin didn't help either. (Here is where I have to watch myself very carefully not to make this entire entry about myself and how bad everyone should feel for me.

On the other hand, I warned you from the start.) The point is that I've felt bad about my length for most of my life, and I've been frighteningly much like Snickers-girl in the beginning of this entry. Yeah yeah, I'm tall like a model, but all women and girls around me have always been (and are still) pretty damn petite. As much as I love them, I didn't have a role model to show me that I'm not disgusting just because I can't borrow a pair of jeans from girl X in my class when there's a party somewhere. I honestly hated my physical being for a very long time (and sometimes I still do). This probably backfired somewhere along the road, making me the person I am.

In a greater perspective: WHY do I feel bad about being "too tall"? I'm not even freakishly tall or anything, just taller than average I guess. Is it because it Just Isn't Normal? Well, person-who-insulted-me, you if anyone should have some or any compassion with people who Just Aren't Normal.

Being "too tall" is such a small and banal thing. It doesn't affect my health in any way, and I can still walk inside a house without constantly hitting my head against the ceiling.

Now, some justification. For the record, Person, being "too tall" hasn't bothered any of my admirers so far. As much as I bitch about it, they DO come by from time to time. And I don't think they're falling for my awesome personality. Purely physical, know what I mean?

Still-

your physical being is such a small thing. Your body will once die, whereas the memories of your soul can live on forever.


I hope I can leave this shiznit behind me now. I also hope I have the courage to publish this in the morning. But most of all, I hope this made any sense whatsoever to you when you read it, because it made a lot of sense to me when I wrote it.




EDIT: Whoa electricity.

First week of camp over. Feels SO good to be home again, home with my computer and my friends and the cat. At the same time I miss it there already, the beautiful ancient forest and the lake. Oh, and the people! I love them.

This year is already better than the last one, socially speaking. I know some people since before and I recognize most of the faces there. And since I have a firm basis of acquaintances, I feel more secure and confident when making contact with others. I also feel like I've just clicked right back into place at Barnens By (The Children's Village) in Hästveda, Sweden.

It's still a bit early to tell, but I think last year was better when it comes to my workplace. I met great people there, and I was never isolated or exploited, being the newbie and all. This year I'm working in a different house/cottage/whatever and it doesn't feel quite as good as the old one. BUT it's still way too early to be sure. This week I've been forced into the lives of these 22 children, trying to substitute for the guy that worked there before me. I don't think I was quite accepted as one of the "real" camp leaders. They must have realized that I'm just a wannabe, and naturally, that affected theirbehaviorr and attitude towards me. Not that they were The Kids From Hell (at least not most of them), they just sensed my insecurity and used it the way children do. I hope things will clear up later next week, when I'll meer a new busload of children who are petrified of me and all of the other new things at camp. Mwahahaha.

Speaking of my new workplace, the camp leaders of my house ("Sjöstugan") are really great. I'vconnecteded with most of them, and you can tell that they make a great team. The supervising leader, M1, appeared to be this deaf bitch with an attitude problem. Now I know she's a funny, pregnant deaf bitch with an attitude problem and excellent leading skills. I'm beginning to like her. Oh! Don't tell anyone she's pregnant. It's a huge secret, and also the reason for her leaving the Village. That means there'll be an open spot next year for a female leader with some experience. Harr harr. Anyway, I hope I'll learn to love these people just like I learned to love the Chef, P, R, F, L, H and N last year. The Chef is so funny. Note to self: hang out more with the Chef.

I need to tell you about the hunks of the Village! (Sounds like I'm telling you about the gay HQ of New York City... But I'm not.) First and foremost, we have G, one of the male leaders of my house. He never wears a shirt. He is a triathlon master. He has a big star tattooed on one of his boobies. He is MANCANDY. Haven't quite learnt to love him yet, I think I'm intimidated by his general hotness. (Not a joke.)

There are so many cuties there, and everyone is serious husband material. WhyBecauseue they're all great with kids. Ylva told me that it's a biological thing, that women find men who can take care of children attractive, just the way men like women with wide hips because they can give birth to many widdle juniors. Anyway... This Monday, after work, I decided to go to the leader's cabin (aha! CABIN!), The Block, to make phone callll. As I came in, this guy is playing a HUGELY OVERSIZED violin. Looks bizarre and if I had the energy to google it, I'd tell you what the instrument is called in English. But I think you can picture it. Only, he's not playing it the way you play a violin, he's kind of doing it guitar-style. Since it's about as big as he is or bigger, he doesn't put it in his lap (ouch), but lets it stand on the floor with the fat part down, playing it just like that jazz guy played Carrie in that episode of Sex and the City. YES, I do realize that the TV-guy was impersonating somebody who plays the badaboom-violin. ANYWAY. He asks me if I'm going to call someone, and since I am, he offers to stop playing. I tell him it's okay, and he says he can just plaquieterer if I ask him to. I'm like, WTF dude, I said it's okay, don't be so sucky-uppy! But I smile (because he's cute) and make my stupid phoncall.

Right now you're probably wondering why I'm giving you such a detailed description of my encounter with pling-plong man, and the answer is basicallybecausese he'll never read this and I'm bored.

So, as I start putting my shoes back on, I decide to take a chance take a chance take a chan-chan-chance and ask him how long he's been playing. He says he's been playing it for a long time, but not a lot recently. The problem was, apparently, that you have to play it often and much in order to build up a thick layer of skin on your fingers. He had a gig next Friday, (i.e. this Friday) and had to prepare. I took another chan-chan-chance and asked him to play something. He started improvising a little. It sounded very nice and very jazzy, from what I could hear besides the Whitney Houston power ballad played at the Mölle cabin's outdoors disco. I shook his hand and left. AWESOME DUDE. His ""name is AG. A is for his real name and G is for Gränsen, his cabin (should I forget).

A few days later I had to go to his cabin and borrow some ice berg salad (encounter No 2). Me and my girls also saw him playing beachvolley one night (in his TRUNKS). That was fun. Then I saw him when I went to hide candy in his cabin, for our kids to find, and I tried to be funny and said "I'm becoming a regular guest here now, *insert nervous laughter here*" and OMGZ LOL!!111!! he said "Good". GOOD! HE LOVES ME! HE WANTS TO KISS ME! HE HAGIRLFRIENDREND. Never mind, what happens at camp stays at camp. Okay.

Last night, a "before-party" was held at the Block. Some of the leaders were going to Hässleholm (a tiny town), to the closest night club. It's called Upper Deck, orGeek'sGeeky. Anyway, my previous mentor-leader-guy, DJ Fred, was deejaying (shocking), and AG and NB were going to play their instruments (badaboom-violin and saxomophone-ah). Me and my girls got thete too late to hear any of the live music, but the party was rocking when we sat down outside. Talked a lot to Hugo (last year's PE teacher) and his friend. There's this murder game with water guns going on between the leaders, so everyone wears a small gun, shooting at random people. Hilarious. Didn't see much of AG, just when he smiled and nodded at me rather early ineveningneing, and then when my fellow wannabe-leader shot him with her gun. Funny. Most of the people were a bit tipsy, so things were quite interesting. However, me and the chicas decided to retire at about 12:40. After chilling at our place for a while, Ylva left for her own room and me and Lecille started getting ready for the night, changing to our PJ's and packing the last stuff.

Here comes to fun part :D:D:D :
There's a paper attached to our door, a kind of tag board. Very popular and very interesting. It's also fun to scare people as they are writing, since the door opens inwards, and me and Ell can hear everything outside it. Anyway, we heard someone writing on the tagboard with the attached pen (Ell is very organized) so I opened the door, just in time to see AG and his friend Albin-o leaving the Office and giggling their way back to the Block. When I checked the tag board, I could only see a tag saying "Albin-o + Ung i sommar". Ung i sommar is the program allowing us newbies to be wannabe leaders for a month, and thus also our common nickname. Can get a bit confusing, since there's 11 of us. I thought it was cute but boring, as are most tags left by drunken chefs. However, this morning, Ell brought my attention to another tag! It said "AG + Ung i sommar" and was surrounded by a heart! Oh! I'm assuming AG is referring to me, since his cabin doesn't have a wannabe of their own. My teenage heart is going crazy right now! Oh! Oh!

Right.

People who know me well know I'm not serious. I'm just bored.

Top 3 moments of male affirmation in my life so far (no specific order):

The guy at the Starbucks across from The Globe Theater in London gives me a lemon muffin. I was sitting between two of the hottest chicks in my school and he gave it to ME. MEMEMEMEMEME.

A handicapped man sitting in a wheelchair led by his assistant exclaims, in the lobby of the library, loud enough for everyone to hear: "What a pretty girl! I like pretty girls. Don't you like pretty girls?"

French town called Antibes, right between Cannes and Nice. I'm walking to the beach for an evening swim. Not looking very hot, if I may say so myself, but hey - I wasn't planning on getting lucky. As I walk past the marina, I spot two guys speaking American English and drinking Heineken in the sunset. Looking awfully good. As I get closer and closer, their conversation gets more and more silent, only to die out totally when I'm like 10 meters from them. I walk past them in my flipflops, shorts and t-shirt and with a towel around my neck. I think I was actually afraid they'd start laughing. HOWEVER. When I'm a few meters behind them, I hear: "Aw, that's fuckin' poetry, man." Yeah.



Oh what the heck.

My GOD it was hot today. Me and Ell were walking through town, searching for patches of shadow to walk in. It was fucking unbearable to walk in the sunshine. And tomorrow, along with next week, is going to be even warmer. Yay.

I just realized that I haven't read a single book this summer. Why? Because I promised myself I wouldn't read anything before The Great Gatsby. I'm supposed to read it for English, during the summer. Yeah. I'm bringing it to camp on Monday, hopefully I'll be so bored I'll force myself to start reading it.

Yeah! Camp on Monday! I'm weirdly excited. It's not like I love working nine to five, or that I'm happy to be away from most of my friends, but I enjoyed working there so much last year. I'll try not to have too high hopes and be disappointed. Hey, I'm always disappointed. Let the high hopes roll.

Yesterday was one of the worst days of my life.

I've been chatting to this guy from Lund. 22 years old, good writer, funny and friendly. Really great, right? It's not like I was looking for a new Erik or something, I just wanted to chat to someone. SO... after only a few days he gave me his phone number and said that I could send him a text message whenever I was online so he could go online too. That was a good system I thought, since he had the same, weird sleeping habits as I do. So we chatted for a couple of days, and he was realy keen on meeting me. I insisted that I wasn't looking for anything romantic or anything that would lead to an IRL-experience, and he seemed to accept that, only to ask me again in a couple of hours. When I said I didn't know what I wanted, he started analyzing it, making it a very big thing. Making it seem as though I had a trust issue or something.

This only made me want to meet him even less, so the next time he asked me I said that I just wanted him to be my internet friend. He was already kind of upset, but it got a lot worse. I don't remember the exact order of things but I remember signing out of MSN Messenger because I couldn't talk to him anymore. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - I mean, we've known each other for five days! "How can this be such a big deal for you?" But he seemed to take it so seriously that I felt like I couldn't just walk away for ever and ignore him. For some reason, he was so much more serious about it than I was.

He sent me two text messages, telling me that he really wanted to talk, "the anxiety is gone now", and could I please come back so we could solve things because he really liked me? I enjoyed talking to him too and I didn't want to finish things like this (I guess I was affected by his seriousess - what "things" were there to finish?!), so I came back. He asked me over and over again what I wanted, if I only wanted us to be internet friends. I told him that yes, that is all I want, and "why do you keep asking me that question all of the time? Do you think I'll change my mind?" He said that no, he just wanted to be sure about my decision.

He also said that during the half hour I'd been gone, he had slit his wrists again, something he hadn't done for six months. He said that it wasn't my fault, but that most of the anxiety he had felt before was gone now. I was scared, terrified. I asked Ell to come online and I told her about what the guy had said. She too said it wasn't my fault, because we had only chatted for five days. It couldn't possibly be me.

After a few minutes, he had worked himself up to this rage, he was extremely upset and wrote that I was evil, that I had used him from the start and that I had never meant to meet him. I was confused and angry and of course, I realized that this reaction was totally out of proportion to the things he was talking about. Of course I never meant to meet him - I'd told him that from the start. I only wanted to talk and flirt with him and that's it. He knew about this because I had told him about my bad experiences with internet crushes, so I understood that something was really wrong with him.

It's weird that you can care about someone as much as I did about him after only five days of sporadic chatting. I really liked him becasue he was so sweet.

After the namecalling and things, he said that we should just take five minutes and not talk. I agreed, thinking he might calm down from all this drama queen-ness. After seven minutes I asked if he was there, and he wasn't for another two. Then he said that he had to go. I asked him where he was going, and he said the emergency psychiatric ward. He said he was sorry and that he couldn't take this anymore, and that it wasn't my fault. I was shocked and didn't really know how to react. Then he told me that he had slit his wrists again, deeper than ever this time. He had to get to a hospital. I started crying and feeling dizzy and told him to go there quickly. I asked him to send me a text message when he was there.

I haven't felt that bad in a really long time. I started hyperventilating and doing irrational things, and decided to call Ell and ask for help or advice or whatever. She said she would come over. For this I will be eternally grateful.

While waiting for her, I started watering plants and stuff to keep myself occupied. It was so bizarre and I couldn't believe what was happening. Ten minutes after the phonecall I got a text message saying "I'm there now. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!". I was relieved, thinking he would have some professionals to help him now. In the middle of picking strawberries, Ell came in to my garden.

We talked and watched a movie. She helped me forget what was going on, and when I remembered, she explained it all and made me understand it.

For a while, I was sure that the guy was just faking it. I imagined him sitting alone at home, texting me and being a fucknut. After I got a message asking me to come online, I really started to wonder. How could he be home an hour and a half after going there? Did they really let him go home that soon?

This morning I got a mesage from him, saying he had updated his blog on LunarStorm and that it explained everything. And it kind of did, it said that he had borderline (between psychosis and neurosis), which was why he had been acting that way. After reading the blog I spoke to hom for a little while on MSN, and he said that he still wanted to keep talking to me. He wanted me to understand that he hadn't hurt himself because of me, and that it would never get as bad as it was last night again. I'm not sure what to do. I have been give the advice not to talk tgo him again, because it will only get worse. And really, the only reason why I would eventually keep talking to him woul be that he's funny and smart. But is that reason enough, if you should weigh the pros and the cons? Besides, I don't know what his doctor said. Maybe he too thinks it's a bad idea for us to keep talking.

I'll try to analyze this some other time. Right now, it just feels good telling someone.

Hi blogreaders!
Okay no, that's a really bad phrase to start with. I think I'll go with: I saw a great movie tonight. I bet you have all seen it before me and well... That wouldn't be strange at all since it is from 1984. "The Breakfast Club". A group of 5 teenagers are put in detention on a Saturday (!) because of these different things they've done. All of the high school clichés are present: the prom queen, the jock, the bad boy, the freak and the nerd. They're supervised by this crazy, creepy teacher with a really bad taste in clothes, and even though the movie is very tragic, it's such a feel-good movie. Oh. I'm loving it already.

Great news: internet homie/rapist Grrblt is coming to Malmö to hang out with us for a couple of days next week! It's gonna be great, except for the fact that my parents might come home early and find a stranger sleeping in their bed. Uh. Well, we'll fix that. No prob. HELP please. That's a scenario I don't want to see. And no, don't tell me to just tell my parents about Grrblt because trust me, they would never understand the difference between internet rapist and internet homie.

Bought a CD online. Feels so good. I can actually do that now that I'm 18! Buying drinks and cigarettes wasn't that big, it's easy to get away with that when you'runderageed if you just go to the right places. The bigger thing waactuallyly like, signing up as a blood donor (Swedish readers:

http://www.geblod.nu) and being able to shop online. And I admit that buying that CD (The Strokes - Is This It) online was totally and utterly unnecessary because I can get it cheaper at Skivlagret just ten minutes from here, but where's the fun in that?

Speaking of music, last night I saw a commercial on TV for "The Ultimate Dirty Dancing" which gave me this unbelievable urge to download the soundtrack. It's awesome, as is the movie. You have to love the beginning, where Baby is riding in the car with her parent and her airhead sister. Her mom is the same actress who later plays the part of Emily, Lorelai's mother in Gilmore Girls. <3!!