Winter nights

Some winter nights are tranquil. Masses of clouds travel fast in the sky and the cold is not unbearable. I stare at the moon and distant stars and try to decipher the meaning of their shapes, the hidden stories in the shadows.

Some nights I am happy. Other nights, the pain spills out and covers my skin with goosebumps. I listen to music and remember dead friends and dead pets. I try to wrap myself in the comfort of music and imagine the notes as an ethereal embrace, the ghost arms of those who once loved me.

I'm tired. Two nights ago I re-watched a short film I had made with a friend. He needed to make a short film as a dissertation, and I found myself starring in it. I thought the DVD was lost. Recently I found it again.

Watching my much younger self in the film I experienced an overwhelming wave of sadness. She had no idea what life had in store for her and I wished I could hide her in my embrace and tell her to be strong, because she is someone I love, appreciate and admire more with each passing year. But we can only travel forward one second at a time, and so I watched her and shook my head. If she knew what her life would be like for the next fifteen years, maybe I wouldn't be here now, writing this blog entry. Maybe she would have thrown in the towel and stepped off that building eleven or twelve years ago like she planned. I don't know what kept her going. Hope? Stubbornness? Anger? Whatever it was, I am glad it served to keep her here. I've seen what suicide does to those on its ground zero. It's not pretty.

I'm trying to develop a strong inner core so that the outside doesn't rule my inside. It's very hard.

I wonder what you saw in me all those years ago, my dear Virve, and decided to make me part of your family. We never did meet, but the fact you considered me trustworthy enough to confide in me is the greatest praise I can think of.

I am tired, love. Tired of this life that it seems to run in two modes. One is the crippling routine mode, the second is the kick in the teeth mode. I keep pushing my hand inside, and like a blind person, I fumble about inside my inner darkness until I pull out wonders. I sink my hand inside the river of Lethe to pull out the salmon of Wisdom. I push my fingers into my wounds to study the nature of my despair, the taste of my blood, the root of fear inside me. Then I share my discoveries here. I know most won't understand, and that's okay. The soul's journey cannot be shared. But even if one person understands, that's enough. And you did understand.

I miss you tonight. You, and all my dead pets, and the father I never had, and the innocence I cannot regain.

I miss you. But maybe the music I listen to is the embrace you never gave me in flesh and blood. Now your ashes travel the world, and I'm here, writing and remembering.

Thank you for believing in me when I didn't. I still draw strength from it. I appreciate everything you ever did. I wish you were here so I could say it to you, but maybe you know. 

When I kiss the stars good-night, I kiss you too.

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1984 dreams

Today I came across something I had forgotten I have in my possession. Some childhood Barbie and Ken dolls of mine. I thought I had given them away. One of my dogs had chewed them and they are mangled at places. Probably that's the reason I kept them. I had forgotten them, yet as soon as I opened the bag and saw the splendid dresses, I remembered them.

Right now I don't know what to do with them. They are not in good shape to give them away, and I don't want to throw them away. It's so strange. I feel I am holding dead people in my hands. It hurts and I don't even know why. No, not dead people. Dead dreams.

I went online and found them in pristine condition. It's pointless to buy them again, even if I had the money, and I obviously can't undo the ravages of 30+ years of time. It's the nature of reality. But at least I can remember what they looked like when I was holding them in my hands and life had not crushed me in a hundred different ways and I was full of dreams bigger than life itself.

And I still hope. I don't dream as big as I dreamed back then, I don't hope in the same way, yet I hope. They didn't take that away from me. Not completely. And I know how hard they tried.

I don't expect others to understand why I upload these photos. But I need to do it. It's a form of apocatastasis. 

From Wikipedia: Apocatastasis (/æpoʊkəˈtæstəsɪs/, from Greek: ἀποκατάστασις, apokatástasis) is reconstitution, restitution,^[1] or restoration to the original or primordial condition.^[2]

Barbie Dream Glow 1984

Barbie Jewel Secrets 1985

 

Ken Jewel Secrets 1985

And perhaps the last Barbie doll I had ever bought. 1988 feeling fun Barbie. In 1988 I was ten years old.

Who would have thought one day they'd knock me flat on my ass...
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Forgiveness

Twice in the last week I've had to deal with the matter of forgiveness. I thought I was dealing with it. In reality it seems I had just pushed the anger and hurt away, at the back of my mind.

The first person I have to forgive is my father. I am working on it. It's next to impossible because forgiveness is a very special animal. It's easy to forgive when the damage inflicted to you by a person is minimal, or you have found a solution and it does not affect you anymore. But when the damage done has shaped your life to what it is now, and the past choices of that person still echo in your present situation ten years after his death, then... then you want to take the ossuary with his bones, fill it with kerosene and light it up. You are sure it will make an excellent fire, and that's the only kind of gesture that reflects your true feelings for him. 

There are those who say that once a person is dead, we should forgive them and move on. I consider that a grave oversimplification. So because they're dead, that means they didn't screw you over royally when they were alive? Hitler is dead too. Should everyone just forgive him because he's dead? That's the weird trip you get into with forgiveness. You can't forgive them when they've wronged you, when their decisions destroyed parts of your evolution and potential. They can't be absolved just because they are gone. The consequences of their actions are still part of your life, so forgive them how? And that's the paradox, because that is the exact case that forgiveness is needed, not in the sense of forgetting, but of moving on and not giving them power over you anymore.

If the person you need to forgive hasn't wronged you or hurt you, then you don't need to forgive them. You simply need to get over your ego. Forgiveness is needed when that person has left scars so deep that shaped your whole life. It's required when the damage done to you can't be undone, when their decisions have affected you deeply and profoundly and stolen from you your most valuable possessions; time and compassion. The one is the currency of life, the other is the currency of humanity.

If my father had been less of an asshole, my life would have been very different. He, too, would probably still be alive. I wouldn't have lost 14 years of my life trapped in a job I hated, without getting any stamps. I wouldn't have been forced to return from UK; I would have been able to get an MA and would have been working for the past 15 years in a job that would have paid me and given me social security. I would not have to deal with his sister taking me to court because she wants to appropriate more of his possessions. Perhaps I'd even have a companion. When your life has stability and security job-wise, it's not a giant leap to find someone. Right now I am where I am, doing what I am doing, and know that this man is more than 50% responsible for these things. I have a mother who's alone and slowly getting older and can't deal with everyday life, no job, no MA, no relationship, no previous job experience... The list goes on. I got social security for the first time this year. I am 39. And he has the nerve to ask for forgiveness when he has destroyed me, he has the nerve to think he can be forgiven when he ruined my life. Just because he died. So a bonfire with his bones seems like an excellent idea. Right?

The problem with forgiveness is that it takes a leap of faith, a gigantic motherfucker of a leap of faith. You need to forgive someone exactly because they did those things to you. You need to say, "I will deal with this mess and I will do it on my own terms". Because this is how you take the power back in your hands. As soon as you decide there is something you can do instead of being angry and accusing the other person of how they destroyed your life, you stop being a victim of that person or situation. From a "waaah waaah oh poor me" mess, you become the "come any closer and you'll see if this bitch has any fighting left in her" kind of person. Because truth is, that bitch (me) has a lot of fighting left in her. But she should do something better with that fighting spirit than bash the head of a person who's dead. 

I am trying very hard. Trying to let go while what I want to do is somehow get hold of him and yell at him, stomp him to the ground. Trying to move on when I see children with fathers who are there for them, who care, who help, who try to understand. I stare at those fathers, with their failings and mistakes and good intentions and wonder what planet was my father from. I wonder for the umpteenth time why, as I wrote in my previous poem, "I was raised by wolves". Why there wasn't a single safe adult in the family I grew up. And what the fuck it is that I'm doing here. 

And now I have to forgive him. How the fuck am I supposed to do that? 

I am just so tired. But I need to keep going. There is no time to lose. There just isn't any time for self-pity. I need to stop being a victim. And the only way one can stop being a victim is, curiously, by faith, and by letting go.

The lyrics of the very beautiful song are here: 

Chelsea Wolfe- Sick

This suffering brings me closer to you

and time is broken and moves slow

your pure heart, your white light

I should be put to death for ever being cruel to you

you washed me clean like no one ever could

come closer now and step right into

the wide mouth, the sharp teeth of the one you love

I'm not the kind of sick that you can fix

don't you worry about me baby

I've got no enemies and I've got no time

the song, we carry on

even though you pushed us down

we carry on

when you try to blind my eyes I can see tenfold

It's nothing that my heart can't take, 'cause your hate has made me strong

and stronger men than you have tried to break me

stronger men than you have tried to break me

leaning toward the golden days

forget about the older days

and everything we left behind

to stand here in another life

we carry on, even though you held us down

we carry on, with the song

we carry on, even though you pushed us down

we carry on

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Letters to the dead

This was part of an email I sent to my late friend on the day she died. I didn't know she was so seriously ill. She never read it and now she is not here anymore. Or maybe she is everywhere and everything, her atoms travelling the entire universe. So it's time to share that email with the world. We never talked again, but at least now I know what I have to do. I have to make sure I don't give up, like she never did, although large parts of her life were living hell.

"...I can’t for the life of me understand what I am supposed to be doing here on this planet. I am 36 and still don’t have any idea what my role should be, how to respond to any role, what it is that the world needs me for, why I am here in the first place. I do know that if I go, this world will be poorer, and I am not saying this due to any inflated sense of self-importance. From that aspect, my creations are far more important than I am. I brought them here from the dreamland, from the collective unconscious, and I filtered them through my experiences and my unique point of view. No-one else will manage to bring the same things here and express them like I do because no-one else is me. I don’t know if I am a good writer or not, but I love my ‘children’ like any parent should love theirs. Such a pity our parents were such complete failures. Maybe if I had a different childhood I wouldn’t be looking for meaning, because meaning would have been self-explanatory. A psychologist once said to my friend A. that only children from dysfunctional families look for meaning and a sense of belonging, because they never had this offered to them. A happy child feels they belong here, they have no doubts or fears or questions of that kind. I am not unhappy with my share, I do count my blessings, and I can’t change the past. It doesn’t really matter now, and I would miss the weird, quirky individual I’ve grown to be due to my fucked up childhood. But the feeling of not belonging drives me batty and gets me so very depressed. I guess we all have our demons and the better we get to know them, the better company they keep us during those long sleepless nights.

When I feel very depressed, I always dig up my older writing and read it again. Older heroes, some of them created when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, most of the story plots not valid anymore, because as I grew up I added elements and made it more and more complex and less teenage fiction… Still they are mine, they are my first creations, written in Greek on paper that by now has yellowed and creased and has been read hundreds of times. Inevitably, trying to acquire a sense of belonging, I fall back to my creations, I go back to familiar space, just like you would resort to your music. They are my safe space, the place I built in this world for me because this world didn’t have one reserved for me, or wasn’t willing to host my being. I belong there, to my stories, not here, and maybe that’s the problem. Children who grew up feeling unloved and unwanted open their hearts and look for alternative worlds in which they are important, cherished and protected. They grow up to be gifted individuals because to escape the outside, from a very early age they turn inside. Most of them, through the inside, they discover and open the door to the Other, they pierce the Veil and go to the Other side. These children are always with one foot here and one foot there, changelings that one side doesn’t want them and the other side can’t have them. They also bring gifts here, gifts from the Other side in the form of art and innate understanding. Outsiders, lost children, weirdoes, outcasts and social failures, forever struggling to fit in and make sense of this world. I am so tired of this world, tired of my legacy, tired trying to fit in. I read my old stories like a child would run to the cupboard and embrace the dress of its dead mother, trying to get a whiff of her scent, trying to feel her close, trying to feel loved and safe. That scent is getting less and less each year, until the child isn’t sure if they can indeed smell something or it’s a ghost, a comforting memory cause they have nothing else to hold on to. I feel like that child. I have no mother or father, no siblings, no-one. We’re all isolated in our bodies and our minds and we live separate existences, and then our paths cross with people we come to care about and then we’re alone again. We’re always and forever alone and that loneliness sometimes kills me. It’s like the cat you love so much and caress and keep close and sometimes that same animal turns and claws at your face for no reason. 

Don’t worry about me, I’ll keep going and keep trying. I miss you, I miss you so much though we haven’t met. I need you to be here. Please be here. Don’t go away and leave me, it would just make life even more unbearable. I care about you so much and I don’t even know how that happened. I really don’t, you sly, subtle Finnigami.

We’ll talk again soon, I’ll write you a normal letter.

I am sending you a chapter of my story. As I’ve said before, I don’t write something for someone, but I do write things because of someone or something. Can you guess who that piece refers to?"