Life Update: Stuck In Old Ways
New year, new me. The mother of all New Years cliches. People have been making New Years resolutions, promising to themselves that they'll change their ways and become better people. This year will be my year. This year I will start taking care of myself. This year I will not let myself down. And two weeks later, they have already forgotten about all of those promises.
This Is So Hard For Us
Many a time you hear people talk about the struggles of having a loved one who's mentally ill; how challenging it is for the family and friends to live with the constant stress and pressure of someone really important fighting their inner demons. There's a lot of support groups meant for family and friends of the mentally ill, where they can share their experiences and sympathize with each other.
Scratching The Surface
The year was 2017 when I started cutting myself. I was a second year student in higher secondary school, 17 years old. The autumn of that year was when I first noticed myself getting bad: the first symptoms of depression, soul-crushing anxiety, dissociation in math class – and the overwhelming urge to rip my skin apart.
Maybe I Should Try Giving Up
"Have you considered doing everyone a favor and killing yourself?"
You Cannot Take This Away From Me Anymore
"So, you said that you've experienced childhood trauma, right? It doesn't seem like it comes from your home, though, because as far as I've understood it, you're relatively close with your parents. So what do you mean when you say 'childhood trauma'?"
The Hurt Once Caused Is The Hurt Of Every Single Day After Today
Trauma survivors are often called things like 'dwellers' by people who don't understand what having mental trauma actually means. "Don't dwell on the past, you should focus on the present!" "I mean yeah, the fact that that happened to you sucks, but why are you so focused on something that is in the past? You can't change it." You know those sentences, you've heard them hundreds of times. The idea that you could still be hurting because of something that happened to you years ago is very foreign to people who've had the fortune of not having to deal with immense amounts of trauma in their childhood. But for some reason, these are also the people who claim to know the most about your situation.
But Who's To Blame?
The world is unjust, we all know that – especially those of us who've had to suffer more than most people. It is really hard to find justice in a world that is so divided, polarized, filled with so much evil and malice. But sometimes, that is not good enough of a reason for us. Sometimes we need more than that, a guilty party, someone to put the blame on.
Life Update: Love Crossing Borders
Hello again. The first post of November is a kind of a life update, following the almost three-week break I took of writing and making art. Posts like this won't become a regular occurrence: my focus isn't really to go over the current events of my life, but whenever a little explanation is required, like in the face of a sudden hiatus, I will be giving you a tiny update on what I have been up to recently. You will find all posts like this one under the label 'life updates'.
"Sometimes, Bullying Is Okay"
You're on Instagram, mindlessly scrolling down your Explore page without really focusing on anything you're seeing on the screen. Until, when one of those TikTok rip-off reels somehow succeeds at capturing your attention. You click the video open. There's a young teenager, filming themself with their phone. They're wearing some type of cosplay costume, they've done their makeup, they even have a wig on. The kid is smiling, they look really happy. They step away from the camera so that you can see the entire costume they're wearing. They twirl around, making the poor quality skirt fly in the air. The kid faces the camera again, puffs their cheeks and does a cat-like pose with their hands.
Language Matters
The role language plays in my life has always been a bit bigger than the average Joe's. My passion for language started as soon as I learned how to read, which happened at a very young age because my parents were both Finnish and literature teachers and massive bookworms. Reading was something we all did a lot in my family, and my parents always had at least one book that they were reading at that time. Hundreds of books, huge bookcases...I was brought up in an environment where stories and language were constantly visible in my everyday life.