Wondering
Being admitted to a psychiatric facility once is enough of a troubling and traumatic experience. Especially if your stay gets prolonged, ranging from several months to over a year, the ward will most likely become a place you never want to find yourself in ever again. And for those who get the proper help they need on their first and longer ward period, there might not ever be a reason to go back – and that is always the end goal.
Don't Worry, This Is A Loving Punch
Violence is never an act of love. It's a myth that we have been force-fed, especially women and female-presenting people. That the reason that boy is being mean to you is that he just likes you. We've been conditioned to expect violent behavior out of the people closest to us. Almost everyone has some type of experience this with this, I'm pretty sure.
Spewing Out Slurs
Discrimination comes in various shapes and sizes, and I am no stranger to quite a few of them. Being a member of several marginalized communities, I have faced all kinds of bigotry in my time. Granted, I do want to make it clear that I have had it relatively easy when it comes to discrimination like homophobia, mainly because of my very loving and accepting family. In some ways, I have been lucky in these experiences, especially when compared to some of my loved ones. Though, that doesn't mean that I have been completely let out of the hook.
Too Weak To Take It
Weak. That is a word I've heard people describe me with for all my life. I can't recall the first time it happened, but it must have been pretty early on, maybe in kindergarten already. Weakness and sensitivity have – at least for me – almost been each other's synonyms. They're sisters, very close ones too. Overly sensitive people get labeled as weak because of their emotional reactions to things that others can just "brush off" and "not take so seriously".
Tinshoegirl
I think I was around five years old when I first heard Kaija Koo's song "Tinakenkätyttö". I was hanging out with my then-best friend, and she had the song on her tiny Sony Ericsson mobile phone. She played it for me, and I fell in love with it instantly. For some reason, I only came back to it years later, when I had already entered elementary school. I rediscovered the song through my mom; she's a huge Kaija Koo fan, has been as long as I remember. We used to listen to her albums in mom's old Peugeot car that had a CD player. One of those albums that mom had was the record where "Tinakenkätyttö" was initially released on. I could feel myself traveling back in time, to my best friend's tiny bedroom, sitting on her bunk bed and kicking air as the crackly speaker played the song for us. A simpler time, I thought. I think I was around ten at that time.