social self-sufficiency/emotional community/mental support

Like I've expressed before, my greatest treshold thus far in living self-sufficiently/primitively has been finding contentment in the social life of the group. I must admit I've only tried living in few of places like these, but in them I've experienced that I haven't found enough/close enough real friends among my "tribemates": at some point living with the people I've realized we really only share the technical part of the earth-based lifestyle. And life like that doesn't fulfill my social and emotional needs (which I realize that may be greater than those of a totally mentally balanced individual, and thus need special attention and energy from the people I live with). Talking about this with people, I've heard that many have experienced the same loneliness and feeling of being different from the others in such communities, and returned to the city where their friends are. It's a problem for many of us trying to live in the forest or countryside. It's a basic human need to bond with the people one lives with, to feel appreciated and able to communicate deeply among them. Like Björk sings, "being involved in the exchange / of human emotions / is ever-so, ever-so satisfying".

Thinking of this, I came up with the term "social self-suffiency", meaning a community where the social life is so rich and love so abundant, that the members of the community can live there without longing for some other places where they would be loved enough. "Emotional community" means essentially the same thing, that there is also honest emotional interaction between the people, not just talking about work and answering "I'm fine" when one is not. This involves also caring about one's community members, and offering them as much support as one can give without sacrifying themselves (well, of course one can always also sacrifice themselves too, if they love a person really much... but I don't expect that from anyone, it doesn't necessarily make the situation better).

Of course I know that it isn't possible for everyone to be happy, to find enough love in every group. I know that friendship is something that happens by itself, and cannot be forced upon people: and I know that I will not find a friend from everyone. But still I wonder, if there could be some way of aiding me and other earth people to become close with each other, not remain strangers. In fact, I think I know some structures: I've experienced the talking stick and victimization-enabling discussion and flagging practises to create a space where people can open up, feeling listened to and respected.

I remember, in the primi camps I've been, some of these methods have been used... Then why wasn't I still able to feel that my aching for attention and being safe in someone's arms would have be seen and cared about? Hmm... maybe I just wasn't open enough about it. I might have been so ashamed about it, being so child-likely unindependent, that I didn't talk loud and clear about it. I used to feel anxious also about my depression and so many other things, and unable to find anyone to feel these things with me. I just wish that in my life I could help other people if they have any problems like these. I think I'll speak about mental support in the next earth people gathering. Afert all, many of us carry pain like mine, civilization wounds everyone.

I've felt so far that the best way one can aid people beginning to trust each other and opening up , is to do that oneself... Just verbalizing all the feelings and needs one has, honestly, simply, with everyone. It breaks the ice. And usually people are interested, and appreciate the trust one shows in revealing her heart to the others. Sometimes it encourages others to use their voice, too.

Yeah, I'll try to talk about this stuff in Rikkaruoho and in Sweden next summer, and everywhere.

A world that speaks, a world that lives

I absolutely need to be in contact with entities that communicate with me. I need to feel pain and joy with them and feel their pain and joy. I need to feel that all the time. During my time in Kuggom, I have found out that if I don't share a connection with the humans around me, I begin to talk with other beings - the forest nearby or someone further. Sometimes, if I'm lonely, I kind of pray for comfort - and I feel many beings answer. I feel that I need a friend with me who would understand me - and I know that these beings exist in the world, some of whom I've met, some I've not (or have I, in dreaming)? Sometimes I call for them ("calling for my soul / from the corners of the world", like Tori Amos sings) to feel that wonderful wordless direct connection - the ease of understanding that I have with my kin. Because it's sometimes hard to be with people who are too different from me. I miss home, my relations that are home.

Sometimes, when I dream, usually in my sleep, I scatter myself, send myself away, relax so that I kind of fall though worlds. This, I feel, is of the same essence of communicating with the world, melting to be the world... This dreaming is what is me, it's what I do. It's what I am as a river, one swirl in a greater river. (I'm sorry if some of you don't understand my language of thought-flow, but it's hard to speak of this in any other way: if you ask, I can try, though.)

I'm certain this could be thought of as psychotic, or shamanistic. One can call this spirituality, or escapism, a voluntary lie or the truth behind it all: but whatever it is, it's something that keeps me sane. Because I can't live in a world that doesn't talk to me, a world that doesn't live.

I want to reach you

It's so strange when people are ... what's the word? Reserved? Very... not doing many things. Just sitting. And eating. Talking a little. Smiling a I'm-expected-to-smile-at-this-point smile. Doing the same motion tracks every single day. Telling nothing about themselves. Are they really scared?

How much of the time are these people playful? Acting stupid, lying on the floor, howling. Why don't they come with me and play that we are storks.

I don't think it's doing really good for me to be somuch with my schoolmates. So many of them behave like robots. I really feel like asking "where are you?" from those people.

I saw a boy do liquid dance in a video. I think I'll liquid dance through the rest of my life.

self-love and expressing sexuality (and some personal history)

I could continue from the themes where my last post ended.

In my life there have been great differences in the amount of love I've had for myself. It has usually been parallel with the love I've received. As a child, from home I got controversial signs of love, rejection and violence and at school both a little love and a lot of rejection and violence. I've always been praised by parents and teachers and employers when I get good grades, am efficient, strict on myself, silent, polite, smiling a fake smile. Do as I am told. At school I first got lots of friends, then I only had 1 for 5 years, and then at 14 I started slowly getting more and more. Mostly the social surroundings at school were hell for me, physical and verbal abuse.

Until I was 14, I used to hate myself. I hated my body, had anorectic thoughts (but gladly didn't get dangerously thin), was very perfectionist with all my studies and many hobbies, used to punish myself if I let myself down. I had had suicidal thoughts at times since I was 11. I was very afraid all the time, very shy, I was so tense my sister said my hands didn't move when I walked, and all the time I was frantically trying to act like a normal person so others wouldn't get a reason to bully me. Only after getting more friends at 14, I started to see myself as not repulsive and hopelessly unskilled socially, but something beautiful, like that mermaid or forest spirit I had wished I was for all those years. I met with people who loved the weak, horrified being trapped inside the blank, rigid mask I wore to survive. Slowly I became more loud, more powerful,more fearless, and also, more relaxed, and so began a positive spiral, where I would become more sure of myself and throwing more jokes and brave enough to go talk to people, and I got more and more friends. This is also when I stopped giving a shit about my school grades (also because I got politically active and more aware and realized that the school system sucks) and realized that I could really run away from my parents, whose mental problems and violence were hurting me.

This was when I was 17-18. I had also as a teen found comfort from art: most from Tori Amos's and Björks music. I had never encountered unconditional love as strong as what Björk expresses in her music, and never such dreaming and using one's own voice as in Tori Amos. In that age, I realized that some people loved me, some were indifferent, and some hated or despised me. And I also realized that I would be so much happier if I could just love myself in any place, in any company, whatever I would have done, wholly, unconditionally, the whole way. Truly madly deeply :D because - why wouldn't I? I realized that everybody needs that love, and everybody deserves it. Everyone is understandable, because everyone has their reasons - yes, even psychopaths - that's what I think, and it doensn't make me try stop them using violence any less. Every single being is born as real, and being real and honest is beauty - the Greeks used to have just one word for beauty, goodness, and truth. I see it so that everything has pure intentions. Everything in the world just wants to be happy - just to enjoy. Sometimes they could relate to the suffering of others, sometimes not. Sometimes they try to make everyone else to notice their pain, by inflicting it to others. Sometimes they eat the life of another being to live. So, although I could be cruel and indifferent, and kill for food, I couldn't be evil or ugly in any conditions.

I also realized, that no matter how I would try to appear in front of people, they would always see me as I am. Weak, strong, afraid, wild, beautiful. If I wouldn't show my real self - they would see that I was not trusting.

And today, I love myself all the way. And it's very hard for me to understand if I meet someone who does not show me love. I don't try to make them love me, but I think to myself: "they just don't know they love me". And be that untrue or not, it seems logical to me, and makes me happy. Of course I know I can look like a really funny and clumsy animal, but I have inherent beauty, like everything in the world.

Also in the last years, I've noticed that the more I love myself, the happier and freer I am, and the more I'm able to show my love, give it to everyone I love. I can relax in any company, and that means I can enjoy myself wherever I am. I've also been getting much more sensuous, sensual and sexual, towards the whole world.

I have noticed also in sex, that I'm only able to enjoy when I'm relaxed, not worrying, or thinking about any expectations that I could have of myself. And I'm on my way to learning to reject such sexual come-ons that I don't want, and only do what I want.

I'll probably write about this more later, now I could go to sleep, but one last thought-theme: I would wish to see other people expressing their sexually openly and freely. It's actually strange, that really seldom boys and men show sensuality in a flowing, artistic way. It seems they feel they are only allowed to objectify and be dominating and harsh. It is part of their socialization as males - not to show fragility, vulnerability, their true selves.

Same for girls. They can't show sexual activity, "aggressivity", if you have it. I've recently been unleashing my sexuality more and more, and I've come to see it's very powerful. I'm aware that some people see it as slutty to be very into sex and being sexual with many people. It's so strange - why can't women just let their sexuality blaze? We want to fuck fuckit! XD One of my favourite role models in being a horny female besides Björk and Tori is Peaches. She's great! Rock Show, Hit it Hard, it's just so bright, the energy her energy sets free in me... (by energy in this context I just mean feeling energetic, strong.)

Rewild yourself, rewild your lust!!

happyjoyECSTASY + hurtful sex

My spirits have rosen to the sky with the appearance of the sun after winter. I'm feeling much more that the world is open, boundless, much more adventurous, I want to dive in the woods. I'm much more in my element when it's not winter, it feels more the right environment for my kind of animal. I wander and play and jump and sing outside, which I haven't really done much at my school thus far. There's always been so little free time in the light time of the day. Now the day is so long... I can go really far. And I feel the scents of the world.

And some mornings I've woken up at 7am, and walked in the morning mist, the pale sun shining bright, the place sounding like a thousand birds chittering. I saw wild geese and this bird, "tikka", the one who knocks her beak into trees. Wood... pecker?

I feel that the world is so beautiful. That humans really have been gifted a paradise.

I've been feeling extraordinarily happy for the last two weeks, I'm happy from when I wake up to when I go to sleep - although of course I'm always aware of the violence happening in the world. I've been happy to notice, that I don't crave other people's company so much, I'm content in my own playing and dreaming and communicating with the woods around me. I would like this contentment to stay as much as possible - because I do sometimes feel I'm overtly thirsting for someone to see me and love me, I really wonder how that need can sometimes be with me so strongly, because I do meet people who love me very much every week, I know they exist, but in the last year it has been an almost constant feel of loneliness inside of me, that I would need to be with a friend every single day. That has felt like too big a need for attention for a grown-up - I've been thinking if this is just the loneliness I've felt in the passing of all my life that is now just coming to the surface because I'm brave enough to admit it's there.

Some days I've been so happy it could almost be called ecstasy, I've been dancing like crazy for hours, playing instruments, drawing, writing, and been feeling so inspired and energetic that I've been awake for one and a half days at most. I remember what I've been told, that I might be bipolaric, but I wouldn't say this is yet hypomania or anything, I think this is just, being so high about receiving this new view of life which is so full of beauty and joy. Somehow, this spring is my first as a free human after all those years of elementary and high school, where I hated to be. Being in this Kuggom school, learning handicrafts, feels just like learning skills to live the way I want to live.

I'm having a very dear friend of mine stay here with me for the Easter holidays. She's invaluable, I can talk with her about stuff I can't talk about with anyone else. It has felt great to share my distant memories and recent experiences of having been abused/mistreated sexually. I have realized that I have a pattern of both enjoying and suffering from being treated somehow sexually twistedly. I accept and want to be in contact with all sides of myself, also "dark"/cruel/taboo ones. I recognize in myself both an enormous will to love and nurse, and an ability to be unempathetic, to play with living beings as if they wouldn't feel anything, and a side that loves killing, loves blood, destruction, a rage. I think the rage has accumulated in my life... actually now, writing this, it just surfaced. I feel like destroying everything around me. I could shout it out. ------ Well, maybe I'll rather just continue writing. So, I recognize in myself both the abilities to treat other beings well and to treat them completely like playthings, something to tear apart on a whim. And I do express my rage and cruelty through art, and enjoy it (I guess that's called being evil... *grin*)But mainly in my life, I don't want to hurt any being.

So I guess I understand that there is a sadistic part of me. And I've used to think I also have a masochistic side - well, I certainly have, I used to hate myself as a kid, and I tried to be really thin and get the best grades and I used to punish myself when I didn't feel I was good enough. And after being mistreated sexually, it seems I've also developed an ability to enjoy such sex - in fact, talking with my friend, I realized this skill is actually about turning off everything else in myself - all other feelings. I actually just recently was in this situation: I thought I was having sex with a person who loved me, but from her way of treating me I realized she was actually just using me - so then, in my mind, I remember - I slid into a smaller box of feeling, and accepted being used. I actually thought - use me, use me, use me. And I thought I enjoyed it at the moment. But afterwards, I felt such disgust for the person I felt used me, and pain. So I've decided that from now on, for the time being, I'll make sur that I won't have sex where there is the slightest feeling of being used or dominated. And I actually have a lover with whom it's pretty usual nyances of this are present. I'll try to stop being masochistic also sexually and be honest to myself that I don't really enjoyed being treated like that. There's nothing in that that I enjoy. I feel like crying.

And it's so insane - I have so many friends who have been sexually abused. Girls and boys. It's so common in this insane society!

And still, thinking about my sexuality - since I begun loving myself, I've become in all ways braver, more open, and happy, and that has lead to me also being able to release my sexuality, which is very powerful. I feel it's really the same as my joy of life, my inspiration - and it's never something discomforting, I never feel uncomfortably horny, I just feel wonderful, like I could just fuck the world, fuck the fucking walls, anything that's there. Like a cat who walks around purring and rubbing herself unto furniture as she walks past. I think that I also have many experiences of sex as a purely joyful and safe thing, an expression of love. I'm really happy about that, and I try to stick with that kind of sex, that is actually healing, that is one of the most beautiful things that happen in the world.