experimentation. sometimes it doesn't work out, but the process is necessary.

guedouar is a sanitary napkin. in morocco, menstruation is sometimes referred to as a bloody diarrhea.

what am i trying to say?

i think i am trying to question or challenge my unconscious guilt.

i think it's possible that i feel guilt with regards to some of the women who were in my life in the past. one of these is my mother. another was my father's girlfriend, the first long-term one after my mother, the one living with him when i moved in. i'm not sure, but i think i may have on some level felt responsible or partly responsible for their sadness and pain in life. and that in a way, i may have 'punished' myself by not allowing myself to have the things that they themselves were not allowed to have.

my mother was unhappy, and i have the impression that when she became pregnant with me and married, she felt her life ended. maybe my presence at my father's affected the self-esteem of his girlfriend badly, maybe i contributed to her contracting cancer. a kind of cancer that took away her uterus and period, part of her life as a woman, an important phase of life.

i feel exhausted and do not want to go on with this. when i thought it was just in practice, to start to examine the thoughts, there was no pressure in writing it out. and now, i just feel exhausted and like i don't want to do it. i want to be allowed to just stop now.

i think many of the women in my father's life had very low self-esteem. i don't think any of them would have wished to affect anyone else with their problems, and i think they tried to face life as courageously as possible, as far as keeping their issues to themselves and doing what they could about them. however, i think it's possible that how they really felt about themselves, their bodies, appearances, might have had an effect on me. perhaps my father also suffered this kind of low self-esteem, which may have been why he teased me about my looks - he was really criticizing his own features or influence.

i also think that the attention my father showed me, and the things he said to me when drunk about these women might have represented attitudes they picked up unconsciously, reinforcing their low self-esteem, and my own unconscious feelings of guilt. later, i would come to identify with the role of 'less attractive woman', the one who was 'not enough' in one way or another, the one settled for. at the same time, i have also put myself in my father's position, of drawing long-term relationships in which my problems are the focus, and in which i am trying to leave because i want something different.

i don't know if i should try to contact my father's old/present girlfriends, or his sister, to find out some of the answers. maybe they are still suffering, maybe that is what happens, it just goes on and on and there's nothing to help them. and maybe it will be the same with me. but i do not feel stable enough to handle those kinds of interaction.

i do feel that these women deserve an acknowledgement of their suffering, of their reality. they deserve compassion and understanding.