Pillowbook "hate is just another word for jealousy"

There is someone I wish really ill upon. I hate her. I truly hate her. It is the strongest negative feeling I have ever had, for I am not by nature, prone to hate. Dislike yes, annoyance most likely, but not true hate.

She is a pampered princess, cared for by all, loved by all. The greatest diva have ever known.

When I first met her I was so happy, for I thought that for the first time in my life I would have a true sister, someone to share everything with, someone that accepts all of you and gives all of herself back. She was sweet, innocent and caring and really gave me the feeling that she wanted to meet me halfway. So despite the fear I had, I opened my heart and showed her who I am and she...threw it right back in my face.

The backlash was horrendous. I was completely defenceless for I had taken down all my mental walls. I just sat there all numb, distantly listening to her raving about me being so mean to her, saying mean things and just being generally mean. It took me a long time to understand what she was saying and when I did I almost started laughing for it was so ridiculous, or at least I thought so.

She was upset about me making a comment on her dessert on evening. She had been eating a cake that seemed very good and when she had finished I said "Oh, that must have been a very good cake because you ate it so quickly!" - for me it meant that she had been enjoying it, for her it implied that she was a fat pig and I was pointing it out.

Then I had tried to flirt openly with her boyfriend, standing very close to him and whispering in his ear. In fact I had been standing not very close at all and we had been talking about her parents house, a subject I find very dry and not flirty at all. The fact that I was madly in love with her brother was of no consequence to her, just the fact that I had talked to her boyfriend was enough proof of my viciousness.

Then I had openly disagreed with her on a matter of art, I n which she deems herself an expert. We had been discussing the placement of a staircase in a medieval house and after a rather long and tedious ramble of fancy words from her that, I thought, really didn’t mean anything I just said that maybe they just placed the staircase there because they needed to walk up and down at this very spot (I thought it was a logical explanation.).

The list could go on forever if I mentioned all the things I had "tormented" her with, but the end results would be the same.

I hate her. I wish her ill in life, and I cannot hide it anymore. Every time I hear something is going bad for her I smile, every time I hear that she is in over her head I am holding my thumbs for something to go wrong. Yet it never does, for she is born lucky and pampered and cushioned.

Then one day I realised that I do not really hate her, I hate what she stands for - everything I have never had nor can ever have...and the word for that is jealousy.

I am jealous of her being so glowingly healthy, while I am slowly wasting away in an incurable disease.

I am jealous of her having lots of money that she has never had to work a day for, wile all I have is huge debts after working several jobs at the same time for a long time.

I am jealous f her having a family that has always been there supporting her no matter what she wants to do, while my family couldn't care less if I was dead or alive.

I am jealous of her always having good luck, while I am constantly overwhelmed by bad karma.

I am jealous of how people adore her at first sight no matter how badly she behaves, while they hate me even before they met me.

I am jealous of her long black hair and petite figure, while I am dull and flat

I am jealous of her artistic skills that seems to come so effortlessly, while I have none despite my many years of trying.

I am jealous of her innocence in not understanding how much she hurts people, while I am too aware for my own good.

...but most of all I am jealous of how everyone came to her defence when she backstabbed me in the most cruellest way possible.

She has made me lose some of my faith in humans.

My jealousy of her has become hate because she makes me in to a person I do not want to be. I hate the me that is jealous of her.

I cannot escape it, for I am not strong enough, yet, but I have decided to try hard, to fight this feeling, this jealousy and maybe one day I wile be able to stand next to her and not wish that the roof would cave in on her and crush her to a pulp before my feet.

but not yet...

Pillowbook "are you bored yet? "

I had a visitor as I was lying in in my hospital bed hooked up to a breathing machine, two IV's in my arm and a nose tube for feeding, who suddenly asked me:
"Aren't you bored lying here and having nothing to do?"

I didn't have anything nice to say because all that comes out is: You wouldn't understand.

Boring is something healthy people do. If you are really, really sick you don't get bored. Because every cell, every fiber in your body is working so hard to keep you alive, focused only on one thing: survival.

Asking a mortally ill person if they are bored is like asking the guy who fought a grizzly, got his arm ripped off and then stumbled through the forest for days in search of help: "Wasn't it boring to walk that distant, there was nothing but forest to see?"

So next time you visit someone very sick, instead of stupid questions, hold their hand and tell them everything about the world outside. Tell them of things you have done and people you have met, or even better how much you like them and wait for them to get better so you can together go and do all these things.

but most of all...just hold their hand...

Pillow Book "transitions"

The other day I was reading a "sermon" from a homophobic about the usual complaints we all know so well. Such as gay people infect others with their sickness and how disgusting same-sex sex is and so on and so forth and while I read it, it struck me so hard that just because a man has sex with another man, or a woman with another woman, it does NOT make them gay.

The physical act in itself, that every hater seem so obsessed about, is absolutely devoid of the feelings that makes you homosexual.

Being homosexual is the physical and mental attraction you have for the same sex, not the sexual act in itself.

Funnily enough, the haters never complain about two women making out in a porno movie with one guy watching, even though logically, this is a homosexual act too.

But I guess that if haters were logical there would be no haters...

Pillow Book "still here"

This time, I regretted nothing...

Pillow Book "can I?"

Sometimes I make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are so big I do not want to face them. I feel like I would just like to leave everything behind and start fresh in some other place. As if the mistake I have made have somehow rotted the very place I occupy and the foul stench of decay is in my nose all the time. So I start over in a new fresh place, with no offensive odours. Again and again.

Then one day I realised.

Despite the distances I have travelled, I wasn't moving anywhere.

For to start over is like dying and being born again, never taking responsibility for the past.

For every new start, what has been is utterly erased, eaten away by the guilt you have. And when you feed guilt, it grows, despite your best efforts to leave it far behind, until it, like a virus, eats everything within you.

Rather than to start over again and again, you have to take responsibility for and learn to embrace the mistakes you make, absorbing them into yourself with the new knowledge you possess.It is proof of your growth, your movement forward.

True learning and insight, can only come from accepting and understanding what has come before.

Be proud of your mistakes, for they only, will move you forward.

Pillow Book "just maybe"

I am not superstitious. Not at all.

Yet, as I laid there in my hospital bed, again, with the weight of an elephant on my chest, trying to gulp in those four deciliters of air that I could manage to keep me conscious and the morbid visions of how my funeral would be if that weight would increase just ever so slightly more, I couldn't help thinking...

Maybe, just maybe, I should have made a wish on that falling star...

I, in my ignorance didn't wish for anything. For I already felt I had it all...

how...arrogant...

From now on, I will make wishes on falling stars...so I at least will not think about it the next time I lie there trying to survive...

Pillow Book "stay"

Maybe a place that can make you cry, of the sheer blueness of sky and penetrating green of the forest, is a place good enough to linger in...until you die...

...

No need to use violence...

...I am just disagreeing with you.

Pillow Book "in between"

I have a very bad memory.

I don't know why.

Maybe it is because I keep pushing forward leaving the past far behind me, or maybe it is that I cannot move forward unless I refuse to remember.

Pillow Book "what do you fear?"

Ever since I woke after my operation and realised I wasn't dead, I have felt a peculiar alienation to the world I inhabit. As if I have turned from reluctant participant to volatile spectator.

Everything people say and do seem so meaningless to me. As if they are missing something vital. I find myself often getting upset or mad at them for their obvious waste of time and lack of effort. They spend so much time on things that does not matter, things that mean nothing, and not nearly enough on what makes a difference.

Life is simple. Be honest to yourself, always put 100% into what you do and always mean what you say. Tell the people you love, that you love them. Tell the people you have problems with, why you have a problem with them. Stop wasting time on quarrels, gossip and material things. They mean nothing. They give you nothing.

But most of all, stop complaining. If you have something to complain about - do something about it instead. Do something about yourself.

It makes me so frustrated. Yet, there is nothing I can say that will make anyone listen, or you could even say that it is arrogant of me to think I have the right to say something.

The only thing I can do is live my life as I teach and hope someone will be touched by it. I will try my very best, but it is hard and ungrateful. I would so much like to help someone but they won't allow me.

Sometimes I am afraid. Feeling that all my efforts going in vain are slowly smothering me. As if the wish to help, brutally refused, turns to something else by the very repeated refusal.

I am very afraid, no, I am haunted by the idea that one day I will go from volatile spectator to indifferent spectator. For there is a place inside of me that I do not like to look at, a dark suppressive place.

It is a place that has always been there and that I have always tried to ignore of fear that it might spread, like a virus. It has stayed contained because of my conscious effort over the years. However, now due to circumstances, I feel as if it has slowly bled out and tinted the surrounding tissue indefinitely. I feel more and more like a visiting stranger in this world. I feel like I am awake in a world of sleepers. Will the darkness inside me spread? Will I one day be completely engulfed? Will the curiosity I have in humans disappear?

That is my greatest fear.

That the flat indifference in me will creep out through its cage and colour me blind. That one day I will wake up and think that one life or another means nothing to me.

But most of all, I fear that I will welcome it.

Pillow Book "Even a child knows better"

When I was in first grade in school I was very often bullied by a boy in my class. Everyone, including the teachers, were afraid of him. Even though pretty short and skinny, he was ridiculously strong and he got insanely angry for very puny reasons. Of course I was one of these kids who detest when some people try to rule others by violence and thus I was very often the target of this kid.

I have to admit that I was terribly afraid of him. He could hit you so hard it was insane, and very often he just didn't stop at one stroke when he started, no he just continued, almost as if he went berserk.

So some time passed and I hated this kids guts. I often thought he was mean and stupid and should just die. As the kid I was I believed he had always been like that, like some kids are born mean while others are not.

Until I saw something that is forever engraved in my soul.

Now, this kid was playing ice hockey and the rink was just on the way home from school for me. One day, as I was passing by pretty late in the evening, I stumbled across this kid being picked up from practice by his father.

I, of course, ducked behind a bush, not wanting to be spotted by the devil himself and decided to wait out in hiding until they had left. However, they didn't leave, instead the father took the sons gear and threw it in the trunk of his car and then he started bashing his kid verbally. How bad he had been in practice, how stupid he was and how he failed in everything he did. The more the father said the louder his voice became until he was almost screaming, as his vocabulary was turning cruder and cruder. In the mean time his son was just standing there being verbally abused, looking at his feet. Then, suddenly, out of the blue the father slaps his son so hard in the face that the kid just falls like a brick to the ground.

Needless to say, I was shocked out of my eyes. My parents have never ever put their hands on me and in the country I grew up in, child abuse is a very serious offence.

So as I was cowering in the bush, overlooking this scene, it suddenly struck my childish mind that MY bully was being bullied in return. Yet, I absolutely didn't feel any triumph whatsoever, just horror and sadness. For despite being mean and violent this kid had absolutely not deserved to be treated like this by his father. Especially by his father.

Then, even worse, the kid just happens to look in my direction and he sees me. His eyes lock to mine and I can see the shame and horror in them. The utter desperation that someone else have seen this scene. Seen him like this, on the ground, beaten by his father.

So I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could away form there. If it was for my sake or his I still do not know, but I was just a child and the entire episode scared me enormously.

The day after he came into the classroom with a blue eye and I realised acutely that, what everyone else assumed to be bruises form training hockey, was in fact bruises from his fathers hands. And it had been so for a long, long time. In that moment, I could feel nothing but pity for the boy that could do nothing against his father so instead he took out his frustrations and fears on other kids.

As school ended that day I wanted to tell him something that would be a comfort, but what do you say? What can a kid say? So I tried my best...I gathered my tiny courage, walked up to him, looked him straight in the eye and was just about to tell him that it was OK and that I was not going to tell anyone, when he gave me right hook straight in the face.

In my newly discovered facts and feelings I had forgotten that HE had not changed anything. All he knew was that I had seen him in his hour of disgrace and he probably thought I was going to make fun of him for it.

So I found myself being violently bashed, repeatedly, by this kid until I was almost unconscious. Never once did I try to hit him back (which I usually did...) because I just couldn't make myself do it. I felt too sorry for him.

The last thing I remember, before I blacked out, was him sitting on top of me, still bashing me with a crazy look in his eyes and tears rolling down his face. I don't know if he knew he was crying or not, but this scene is forever burnt into my retina.

I woke up much later on the school yard and dragged myself home. I must have looked horrendous because my mother screamed in terror when I came in. She tried to coax out of me who did it but I just told her I didn't know - that they had jumped me from behind.

It took me 4 days to go back to school.

As I entered the classroom, he looked me straight in the eye, across the room, as if to ask “Why? Why didn't you tell it was me?”

and I just looked back, as if to tell him it was OK. Then he looked away.

That was the last time he ever hit me again. Or even teased me. Or talked to me.

He would sometimes look at me with this quizzical look, when he thought I didn't know, but every time I would catch his eyes he would look away as if embarrassed.

He quit school that year and moved to another school. I heard later that he got into a bad crowd and never finished high school. Then a few years ago I heard from an acquaintance that he had taken his own life.

This story always makes my heart ache. For the abused child he was, for the lost adult he became and for my own uselessness in it all. Many times, later on, I have thought that maybe there was something I could have done, something I could have said that would have made a difference. Maybe if I could have gathered up my courage and tried to speak to him again it could have changed? Maybe if he had had a friend like me, he could have changed?

But I was just 7 years old. I didn't know what to do, it was too big for me, too complicated. And maybe I didn't want to take the responsibility, maybe I couldn't.

Today, I am not a child anymore. I still do not know what I could have done or could do today, if I would come across something similar. BUT I do know that today, I would try harder.

For the lesson of this story is forever engraved in me.

That,

NO child is born mean.

NO child is born knowing hate. They are taught it.

Therefore, YOU should never judge a child, or any person, based only on his external behaviour.

Instead, find out what lies behind it.

And maybe, just maybe you could do something about it...before it is too late.

Pillowbook "Death is the Road to Awe"

As I was lying in my hospital bed, the night before my possible discontinuation of life, I realised that there was nothing, nothing at all that I regretted in my life.

Except one thing.

I should have been more awesome.

I should have dressed more fabulous, eaten only what I truly like and spoken my mind no matter what.

I should have written more and been less ashamed of it.

I should have been more ME, and less them.

So I made a promise to myself and here I am now, still miraculously alive, and today I know.

If I would face the same moment again, this time.

This time I would regret nothing.

Nothing at all.

Pillow Book "you think I don't know? but I still want to hear it..."

What is underneath the surface might sometimes be more apparent than the things you show. Or is it that you secretly wish for it to be noticed, because you lack the ability to say it out loud?

Maybe, sometimes, even though known, it needs to be said out loud. Do you have the courage?

Pillow Book "refuse?"

I write when I cry, when I am infinitely sad, or hurt beyond belief

I write when I laugh, when I am excruciatingly happy, or fullfilled

I write when sickness wracks my body, when I drown in coughs or sleep is brutally taken from me

I write when it rains, when the sun is burning on my skin, or the cool clouds sail past me

I write when I am abandoned, when my heart screams in terror and the void in me grows

I write when you fill my heart, when you easily take my body and make it all yours

I write,

no, I hold the pen but my stories are written by themselves. They are moved forward by my heart and my mind, with my hand as the medium.

Would I have a choice...

Would I want a choice?

as if, I have a choice...

Pillow Book "sigh"

I am not lonely, I am alone

I am not angry, I am surprised

but

I get annoyed, when you say I am lonely

I get irritated, when you say I am angry

and most of all

I am tired, of always having to defend myself

because, I disturb you

Pillow Book "Rage"

It isn't often I get mad, or upset or even annoyed. You will have to do quite a lot before I even raise my voice.

But...

There is ONE thing that makes me go straight into hellfire rage. That is the people that steals your time and energy.

In this category you have narrowminded, uneducated people, incompetent workers, well-meaning old ladies and all types of administrators.

This world would be so much better withouth these people....

or maybe it would just be duller...since I don't ever get mad otherwise...

Pillow Book "human behaviour III"

Is it not incredible how humans change with social environment?

In the place I am right now, there are many people within the same age group, all reliable adults with high education. People you would think are responsible and grown in their mannerism. But, oh how fast they digress to ape stage when just ONE individual gives them the chance.

For example: If one person stops cleaning after themselves, then suddenly no one is doing it. If one person makes loud noise (like music) in the middle of the night then suddenly everyone thinks its ok to keep doing it. None of these people would act like this at home...but shown the way by one individual they all seem to adapt, all too quickly.

It is as if all the courtesy, humanism and gentleness towards other people vanish in an instant and all they can think is of their chance to be egotistical. As if it is lurking underneath all the time, just waiting to take over.

And why is it that if one person acts reliable and with the good of others in his best, he is never copied but rather ridiculed and laughed at. As if gentleness and kindness is something to be avoided in this World.

Are we born selfish? Do we learn it? Can we be corrected if so?

Hard to say. But I do know for certain that it is much harder to be unselfish than selfish. And humans in general tend to take the easier path, following the group.

Therefore I want for myself to take the harder path. It is more struggle, more pain, more effort. But the rewards are thousand times greater.

and maybe, just maybe I might tilt the World a little, by my effort...

Pillow Book "human behaviour II"

What is the worth of life?

When does it stop to have a worth? Who decides?

Is the value of life universal and constant? or do you have the right yourself to give it a value?

Should you not have the right to give your own life the worth you see fit?

...

In my hospital room there are two other patients. Both very much older than me, but not sicker.

They are there for another reason.

The first woman is around 75 years old and just doesn't want to live. She has stopped eating and refuses to talk, sit or do anything. All day she lies in bed half asleep pumped full of artificial nutrition, water and morphine. Just waiting.

She has herself removed the worth of her life.

The other woman is around 80 years old and without modern medicine she would probably have died naturally several years ago from her body giving in. All day she lies in bed praying to God to forgive her, because it hurts too much. She too, pumped full of artificial nutrition, water and morphine. Just waiting.

She wishes she could remove the worth of her life.

I cannot resist thinking how many people in the world who would benefit from just half of the hospital care these women are getting. People who do want to live. People who put lots of worth into their lives.

Why are we putting so much effort into keeping these women alive? Even against their own will. Is this what we think humanity should be about? Taking care of our old ones? Does it make us feel good that we are not like animals who kill, eat or abandon our sick, old or useless.

Does it make you feel human to preserve life at all costs?

Does it make you feel human to violate the worth of life people put themselves.

...

I know by experience how strong survival instincts are, but I also know it stems from our wills. It is not nature that finds a way, it is our wills. It is also our wills that put a worth on our own lives.

And maybe those wills should have the right of choice. A choice to be respected.

Is it not that what differentiates us from the animals?

Pillow Book "do you regret?"

"Regret is the universal excuse,

when we lack the courage to do the best of what we have."

Maybe you will find me very pretentious but I can honestly say that I regret nothing at all that I have ever done in my life. For I can tell you every reasoning behind it.

Every step I have ever made, even the mistakes, has molded me into the person I am today. Propelling me forward to this moment, where I can honestly say that there is nowhere else I would like to be.

Even the times when I can feel afterwards, that maybe I should have done this or said that I don't regret it. I just decide what to do next. And learn from the experience.

Pillow Book "Relief"

What is it that makes certain words weigh on us, while certain words lighten us?

How can a word make you heart press together in pain.

How can a word make the blood flow faster in your veins in relief.

and how can the same word change your disposition from moment to moment?

Hello

Goodbye

Go

Stay