My darling friends, while writing this, one song has given me strength, so I want to share it with you, right from the start.It has given me strength to write my story, with its strong message. It’s in Finnish, but here you can listen the song with English subtitles, and here is my translation:
FREE
Erin & Kaija Koo
I'm fed up with all those
Powers that controls my life.
That take you along and make you
fall in love with them.
I don't know whether it's wrong,
That I refused to die upright,
Because that's how it would have ended up
if I had stuck on yesterday.
Something held me there,
It was so horribly strong.
And it did not want to let me go.
Almost like flesh and blood,
Bigger than the mountains and the sea,
That's what it grew into in my head.
I don't wait for surprise,
I don't hold my breath.
I want to leave all that behind.
This escape of mine has been run to its end.
I'm not brave,
Nor immortal,
But one thing I know,
What my heart has known a long time.
This escape of mine has been run to its end.
I'm not going to feel fear.
Although I'm afraid it isn’t up to me,
But I think a human is stronger than it.
I'm going to let it die,
I don’t give it space to breathe anymore.
I don't owe to it anything more.
I will build my home alone,
I will heal myself alone.
And I will force myself to keep myself together.
I'm not that miserable rag,
Whose heart has been sucked dry,
I won't build a room for it in my house.
I don't wait for surprise,
I don't hold my breath.
I want to leave all that behind.
This escape of mine has been run to its end.
I'm not brave,
Nor immortal,
But one thing I know,
What my heart has known a long time.
This escape of mine has been run to its end.
Although I'm afraid it isn’t up to me,
But I think a human is stronger than it.
I'm going to let it die,
I don’t give it space to breathe anymore.
I don't owe to it anything more.
Translation by me.
You wear your broken pieces beautifully. - Atticus
I love that quote. I have always said that I have had to learn how to build myself again from the broken pieces of my life, as we all so often need to do. Gather the broken pieces and start building a new life, for what choices do we have?
I want to think I have managed to build a beautiful one, with all its cracks and just that tiny bit uneven pieces. My favourite quote of all time summarises it well:
There is crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen
There is this one sharp, ugly piece there, though, in my life, that I understand needs to be there, not painted over, but accepted as it is, part of the beautiful picture, and in a way, making it all the more beautiful by being there. I just wish I knew why I needed that one painful piece. As this one piece does not stop bothering me, with its sharp edges, I have known for a long time I need to get it out. I just have not had the courage nor the strength to do so.
Some of you know fragments of this story happened three years ago, but for those who don’t, a word of warning. This is not a fairy tale story, an airy light happy one, this isn’t something you are used to connect with me, with my rose-tinted, overly optimistic, sparkly glasses through which I see everything. You see, I know from my very own experience that it really is darkest before dawn.
But I let you in a secret; I still believe there is most beautiful dawn, always, after the darkness.
They couldn’t break me in the end, I still have those rose-tinted glasses on. And that’s why I am writing this. I wish that never, ever again a person in Finland would need to go through the same I did. I know it is a wish that cannot be true, but at least I can think that it isn’t because I remained silent.
This is going to be a long, long, long blog post. (So long, I need to divide it into smaller chapters.) If something, I have learnt to trust to my friends all over the world and how they have carried me, taken care of me, taken hold of my hand without asking, and being there. They have taught me, a Finn, to ask for help and that, my friends, is quite some achievement from you. So, I ask you now to keep me company, even if it’s going to take a while, when I rewalk the longest hours in my life – I know I can make through them when you are there.
I need to stress one point, right from the start. I have not dwelled on it, these past years. I have been happy, content, filled my life with love, passion, inspiration, creativity, all thing good and beautiful. I have the most wonderful husband one could ever dream of, the most everything children. We live in a beautiful, old house, with a huge garden, so even if I rarely left home, I can enjoy my life with wholehearted content. While writing this, our cat, softest and sweetest of Sacred Birmas, Mr. Hemingway, who loves to follow me everywhere, who shows his love for me by eating as much antique lace as he possibly can, and who is my very own guardian, sleeps on my legs, warming me. He knows I need comforting. I lie in my comfy bed we have arranged in my study, surrounded by beautiful autumn sunshine pouring in from the two windows, pretty vintage treasures and flowers arranged on selves. Life is good. There is no reason for me to feel dark, ugly bitterness towards life. Life has been gentle to me, kind, delighting me with its astoundingly, delightfully strange twists that always, always end up being something good, something that I could have not wished for better. It has taught me to trust everything will be fine, in the end.
It’s all the starker, the contrast, this one incident, this one fragment of a life that does not quite fit into the big picture. Not because it is ugly; as I said, contrast is needed in everything, to highlight the main point. If something is too pretty and too harmonious, it isn’t real. For being real, there need to be something contrasting it, something that breaks the unreality, cracks the shell and shows how beautiful the core is. I have no need to try to mould the ugly piece into anything else. I just need to understand why, as, after three years of trying, I still can’t figure out. For me, there is too many questions unanswered, too many whys, too many reasons to think it was not at all necessary, as such.
You see, there is some things in life you cannot affect to, but you can usually learn to adjust to. These things are usually the ones affecting only you and your life and you can choose the way to think about these things, how to react, how to adjust, adapt, and it does not have direct consequences on others. Then, there are things that you must, need, or can choose how to react to, how to respond to, but these chosen actions affect not only one self’s life, but also others.
And for me, the true measure of a human being is how you choose to affect others with your acts.
Not very unlike this one, not so very unfamous, ancient principle called Golden Rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. In other words, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", Matt. 7:12. (You need to remember, there’s still a theology researcher there, inside me, who love references, quotes and citations.)
As much as I have had time to think about it through (and there are, believe me, quite a few dark hours of night included in three years), this is the part completely incomprehensive to me. Why they choose to act towards me in a way, I can assure you, none of those would have not, absolutely not, in any circumstances whatsoever, ever in the whole wide world, accepted as decent, righteous, human treatment towards themselves.
You can choose to hurt or not to hurt. With – or even lack of – your behaviour, your deeds, your words. You can choose how to put your words when you speak to another human being, and without needing a degree in human ethics everyone could define there are at least three ways. You can address another human being either neutrally, hostilely, or friendly. Your choice.
You can choose to remain silent, in good or bad. Sometimes words left unsaid can be as deceitful, hurtful, or malevolent behaviour as spoken ones. Sometimes words left unsaid can affect to another human being as much as words spoken.
You can also choose how to act, behave towards another human being. Somehow, you would think that you would be treated with dignity, equality, and keeping in mind, let’s say, basic human rights (so well manifested by for example, United Nations), when you encounter with public authorities in a modern, independent, constitutional, welfare state, like, well, Finland, wouldn’t you?
But as it is, I can’t get over it. It creeps and drowns me night after night, waking me crying, unable to breathe. I have tried to push it down, not think about it, forget it, but still it waits me around every single corner, every single bend, every single night.
They tried to break me. And they nearly succeed. They would have, if they hadn’t taught me well. I was in hospital, being as vulnerable as a human being could be, completely defenceless, and all they could think of was ways to make sure I would be broken into such tiny pieces I could never, ever built myself again. They wanted to make an example of me, I think, although why, I have no idea.
To understand what actually happened and why, and why everything went so horribly wrong, first I need to tell you a bit more about myself. You see, you cannot take one single moment from life and think you can understand the person. Maybe it is the old researcher me here thinking aloud, but I think you need to understand the context. Cambridge Dictionary defines context as the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it. I need to explain the situation within which my episode in hospital took place, so you could understand it better.
I'm not going to feel fear.
Although I'm afraid it isn’t up to me,
But I think a human is stronger than it.
I'm going to let it die,
I don’t give it space to breathe anymore.
I don't owe to it anything more.
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