No equality in Parliament

The Finnish Parliament returned to working life again as their Christmas break ended on Monday.

Despite having been on Xmas break the parliament has been hitting the headlines with rumours about female assistants and secretaries having been sexually harassed by male parliamentary representatives. Names of the representatives have of course been visible in the media but none of the allegedly sexually harassed has come forward. The president and the chairman of parliament both have condemned sexual maltreatment, and to my surprise I found out that the law on equality only applies to workers and not to representatives of the parliament. This seems like a peculiar oddity and at the same time a bad flaw in the law in these days when sexual equality is spoken about and regulated and guidelined for here in Finland in every way.

Anyway, I have been down with the most excruciating headache since Saturday afternoon and finally today it was time for my appointment with my chiropractor. I have a tendency to get my neck all tense and then the headache hits me like a sledge hammer, it is no migraine as my migraine medication does no do anything for it and ordinary painkillers only get the edges off it, and as the agonising pain can go on for day and night for up to ten days I sometimes crave for a bullet to end it all. All I have been able to do about it has been to stay in bed in my dark bedroom and wait for it to pass, counting the hours…and seconds avoiding to move and to think. And thinking is not the best thing to do, the rest of the family always enjoy the oddities that comes out of my mouth at these fortunately more rare than commonly habitual occasions of this headache.

Thinking about it right now, it seems a bit like an over drastic measure to take to end the pain with a bullet into the brain but this far nothing has helped, and when you’re there having the pain you just want it to end. This time I was lucky as I had the appointment with the chiropractor so conveniently booked, almost like a premonition. Of course his treatment was not the most pleasurable ones I have been through, and believe me I have been to a couple of chiropractors in my days, but the relief afterwards even though places still are sore and ache but I got relief from the tension, the headache lifted off.

God, am I thankful to be alive and kicking!