lascaux

You are so welcome!  The little bit of SG-stalking that I've done here makes me think I stumbled on a gem of a person finding you, thank you for being open!  I spent so long going through this and being silent about what I experienced as a result.   That is awesome that you can be friends with your ex, and is an accomplishment even when there isn't an outside force getting in the way.  This has been crazy ride!  My ex and I don't speak, and he's been nothing but rude since we split.   He is also a radio personality in our little town and is kind of a pseudo celebrity here.  He gave me a ton of crap about doing SG during the time we were together, but has been mentioning me in social media ever since we split (always with reference to SG), in a way that makes me think that he's using my adventure here as a way to promote himself and his "brand".  He hung out with/knew a bunch of SGs and SG photographers prior to me getting involved, but totally balked when I wanted to do it.  Somehow now that we have split, he sees nothing wrong with promoting himself by referring to me as his "ex who is a Suicide Girl" which is even more funny because I have not acquired that title, but he gives it to me when referring to me on social media, most likely to make himself look special. I too am often bitter and sad that I found SG, because of the incredibly complex relationship I have with it, the people I've met here and how completely unprepared I was to deal with what came with it.   I loved it so much back when I first started this journey, and SG as a whole has changed a lot since then, in ways I'm not so sure I like - I wasn't prepped for that.  I was so not ready to deal with how people who supposedly love me would turn my fun pastime into something shameful, ugly, hurtful, painful, et cetera.  I was not prepared for my boyfriend to go from thinking I had a cool unique hobby (when he met me) to having full-blown panic attacks, meltdowns, ultimatums (a few months later when we were officially together).  To me, it is such a simplistic, pretty thing - it's a bunch of beautiful girls admiring each other and the amazing photography we create when we work together as a group of individuals who all love the same things - unique, fun, beautiful people taking amazing photos of other unique, fun, beautiful people.  I know there is sexuality behind it and that there are people who use this as solely porn, but that's not my problem.  I don't make it for people to jack off to, I don't look at other girl's sets for that purpose, and quite frankly, I don't care if someone else does do that, but the possibility that it is porn and not art is enough to send most of the people in my life off the deep end.  It's silly, simplistic, assumptive and only promotes the idea that a naked female body is porn - always.  Since I know a lot of people who know and have had relationships with Suicide Girls, it was mind-blowing to me to watch those exact people treat me differently, like an object, the second I went from "a normal person" in their life to "a SG person".  Those same people who claimed to have respect for and be friends with Suicide Girls treated me like a different person once they knew I had pictures on the site.  It has been really insightful, somewhat sad, mostly a study on psychology and what makes people tick, but in the long haul, it's resulted in me feeling really disappointed in most of the people around me.  I quickly realized how stunted they are in their thinking, and how archaic people's ideals are.  And I think it's really pathetic that people shame what gets people off, mentally or physically.  It gets me off mentally to go through the process of shooting a set - meeting the photographer, merging ideas, picking your location and outfit and lighting, designing the mood, this is all an artistic process and most people here simplify it to stripping down in a few shots to turn people on, and it's so much more than that.  It's actually not physical for me at all, and SG is not really a sexual place for me, it's a community. But if what I created excites someone in any way, that makes me super happy, and if it get's someone off, yay!  Because I don't see anything wrong in enjoying beauty in any way - physical, mental, psychological.  It shouldn't ever be a shameful thing, and I don't think anyone should ever doubt my ability to do my "real job" because my "side job" is sexual in nature.  Even though that isn't my goal, I just like being able to make something that is beautiful to someone in whichever way they interpret it.  I've accomplished my goal in setting a scene, I've channeled my incredibly complex self into the "view" I created, I did something to someone's feelings and physiology and made art out of a moment in time that would have otherwise disappeared and faded away forever.  This is like the longest post ever, but I thought I should share this since yours is one of the first posts I've seen that really reflected my experience here.  You are so young and seem to have an unnaturally mature view of the world, that has been my experience most of my life and it's always a struggle - you never quite find a good spot because you're always a little ahead or a little behind the people you associate with, rarely is someone on the level.  I will second that things happen for a reason - I don't like to think that the people I love may leave me because they can't handle who I am, but if they do, it's for the good of us both.  It's no good for anyone to be overwhelmed by their situations - most people are overwhelmed by the things that "people like us" do, and that's the result of their conditioning.  People who are open and artistic usually feel stifled and controlled by the options around them.  My personal conditioning has led to me find that most people follow a strict ideal of life as a whole, whether it suits them or not, and they will follow said crap until their dying day, when they sadly admit to having failed themselves as individuals and lost every opportunity to follow their dreams and now they must make peace with the compromises they have made to fit in.   That will not be us though!