I’m working on my self therapy tonight, trying to map out how to kill the expectations that are holding me back, all while listening to Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart of course.
Category: ALL POSTS
Seen on my walk today:
My beautiful city, Norrköping, Sweden
A golden texture
Swirl
The blue popped
Random surrealism
Surprise.
Green
Dream girl
Bright
Hearts for sale
Patsy Cline – The Wayward Wind
For some reason I have this song on my brain today. Maybe the winds are a bit restless today, I have to go out for a walk to find out.
Expectations
I’ve spent a couple of days with more visits at the clinic and making research about something that I think is the essence of most of my misfortunes; expectations. I have high expectations of myself, I expect bad things to happen when I feel vulnerable (PTSD symptom), I feel like I have to live up to other people’s expectations (that’s why it’s so hard for me to be myself around other people and why it’s so easy for me to lose myself and my inner voice), I create a dreamlike world full of expectations in my head and reality has no chance to live up to it – and I expect the worst outcome when faced with a problem (catastrophe minded).
This is a good topic for my research – and it’s a key to many locked places inside my mind. Maybe it’s even connected to my art and one of the reasons why it’s been so hard for me to work since I got a little successful 10 years ago, because I suddenly felt there were new and higher expectations of me – both from other people and from myself as well.
It’s surely one of the reasons why I stayed in all those destructive relationships – I was chasing their approval by trying to match their expectations instead of leaving when I felt like they didn’t appriciate me for who I really am. I call this chase the dance of death and now I can see how it’s deeply rooted in my behavior because I am so sensitive to the pressure of other people’s expectations. To not live up to them has made me feel worthless and not worthy of their love. And I’ve been rewarded for losing my self-respect while chasing theirs – and punished when I’ve demonstrated self-respect while going against theirs. No wonder I’ve become so messed up.
But I am not that innocent, I have high expectations of other people too, and I’m especially brutal with the expectations I have of a partner, mostly because I am so sensitive to what I’ve experienced in my past relationships. As soon as they disappoint me, I think I am close to a new betrayal. And that’s when I freak out – and things get complicated.
Trust and faith are good tools to overcome this fear of betrayal, but it’s hard to trust when you have a damaged soul. I’m doing my best. I’m trying not to expect it. To not look for it. To feel like I’m on to something. Expecting betrayal can make you slightly paranoid and leads to unnecessary suffering. I’m happy I am now aware of all this, it will be so much easier to overcome it.
I had built so many expectations before Johnny came here, what we were supposed to do, places to visit, we would be happy and enjoying every minute of the two weeks we had together. I was blowing up expectations like balloons. But reality popped the balloons when I got sick and we couldn’t do all those things or visit all those places together. I got frustrated and annoyed so I couldn’t feel happy all the time. My expectations transformed from the light and pretty balloons to the heavy weight of a ball and chain, tied to my ankle like a reminder of what a failure I was for not being able to live up to my own expectations. Johnny saw this and made me see how silly it is. I had created my own sense of failure after creating expectations where there’s no room for the unexpected or any reality. Johnny thinks the best way to stay away from expectations is to have the attitude of “engaged improv” (to be spontaneous and present). I like that. But it’s hard to change from being someone who’s all about trying to control life by building expectations (good and bad) to the relaxed and bohemian ways of engaged improvisations. But it is a motivation to let go of any form of expectations. Mine or theirs.
There are so many ways to break free, both mentally and emotionally. I’ve gone through many phases of self-liberty and independence lately. And I’m gonna continue until I feel like I can live my life without having any weight of my past holding me back.
Radical openness
Sometimes I get these really sweet messages from strangers and people who appreciate both my art and writing that makes my whole heart glow of gratitude. People seem to respond to my candid nature and my genuine passion for sharing my innermost thoughts in order to connect with the world.
– female reader
We live in a time when our integrity is compromised by ego trips on social media or buried under social pressure of not being “good enough” as we are in our true nature. And we overcompensate with things that makes us feel better about ourselves but don’t mean that much. Making deeper connections is what matters, a chance to share ourselves and our life, love, happiness, our fears and the juicy parts of the mind and heart with other people is what we all hunger for. But for that to happen, it takes two things which are tied to each other; courage to be vulnerable. That’s when we can open up and start sharing ourselves with other people. And the sharing works like my reader described it as “medicine” – for both sides. Integrity is not about closing our hearts but protecting the beautiful energy we have to share with one another.
La Linea Scura – Ludovico Einaudi
The scent of time and love
I’m at my parent’s house, I couldn’t bring myself to go home to an empty apartment. I feel sad but at the same time happy and grateful for the moments we’ve shared together in real life, so far. When you are building a home together in a long distance relationship, it is impossible to take anything for granted. Time. Love. Life in general. A long distance relationship is a good reminder of how precious life is – how rare it is to find someone you can connect with on a deeper level – and how time can work both as a highway to common goals and as an invisible wall of limitations and restrictions.
I am thankful that I live in a part of the world – and in a time where time difference as a concept is merely a nuisance and not an impossible obstacle. We are always connected through chats, emails or Skype. It is possible to create an everyday life together through those channels, but of course it lacks many dimensions.
I’m thinking about the sheets in my bed. They still have his scent. My whole bed smells like him. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or if it will make me miss him even more. I don’t want to go home right now. What is home anyway? At the moment I’m not sure.
Outside, summer is making one last performance. Blue skies. Sunshine. Heat. But it doesn’t fool me – I can feel a new season comming. And with Johnny gone, I feel like there’s a new season waiting for me in my life as well. I’ve been so focused on our time together (and the involuntary foucus on all my health issues this summer) – now it’s time to go back to dealing with the restoration of my life. Reclaiming things. Explorations. Working on my self-empowerment. Finding a job. Getting back into the art world. Make more paintings. I have a lot to do.
But right now, I just want to go home to those sheets.
Dream flowers at the airport as we are saying our goodbyes
The threatning suitcase
There it is. The reminder of the distance between us. We’ll be leaving for the airport early tomorrow morning. Every minute feels even more precious now than before.
The slow process of becoming truly naked
It’s been raining all night, the world outside my window is wet and covered in a misty glow. Johnny is still sleeping, next to me, the bed is warm and so is my heart. He will leave the day after tomorrow. It’s ironic because I’m starting to feel a little better – and we’ve just found our own perfect groove. Building a relationship where you have half a planet in between is harder than I thought, but also exciting and very rewarding. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t really love each other, then it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Nothing has ever come easy to me, I’ve always been fighting for the things that matters to me, so I am used to struggle – but this particular thing requires a lot of patience and that’s not my best feature. If you’ve found true love, you want to surround yourself with it all the time, it’s only natural. But this way, we’ll prolong the first delicate stages of a love story – and that’s beautiful. Every time we’ll meet we’ll know each other so well but at the same time be like strangers to each other in some aspects. We know each other to the core but there are so many things left to explore in the physical world. And we’ll get to do that in little chunks of time, every year.
What I’ve learned from these two weeks with Johnny is that it takes time for both of us to acclimate to each other when we get together – it takes a week or so to leave the worlds we know – in order for us to create our own. In our world he is not a guest in my apartment, but home. In our world nothing is perfect or done because of expectations – we try to avoid it as much as possible because we are both sensitive to the pressure of it. It is hard to let go of it because of course we both have expectations and visions before we meet, of how it will be like.
To be naked together takes time – and I don’t mean physically naked. That’s where we feel most at home, in the nakedness of each other’s hearts and minds. That’s where the heartblood flows without any resistance at all. Into every moment.
Caught in the rain
The Cardigans – Communication
I woke up with this song playing in my head.
The Superpower
We had another long and amazing talk about creativity. I love these discussions, I need them, I crave them. We continued talking about why we aren’t being creative right now. Why he’s not writing, why I’m not into the flow of painting. We established that being able to bring magic to the world by making art (in whatever form) is like a superpower. This superpower makes you special, makes you stand out, it elevates you from the crowd, it makes you fly, high above reality and everyday life.
But here’s where we have different approaches to our superpower. I am more comfortable flying than I am being grounded. Johnny is more comfortable on the ground than up amongst the clouds. He’s comfortable with the idea that he can fly, whenever he wants to – I am uncomfortable with the idea of having to land and spend time in the real world waiting for that special moment when I’ll get to fly again. “A superhero is a superhero because he can transform himself from an ordinary person into a superhero when he needs to. If he would be up in the air all the time, flying around, he’d just be a crazy person, flying without a cause, without a mission”, Johnny said. It made sense. I haven’t seen it like that before.
I need to accept that I can’t ask from myself to be creative all the time and to not judge myself whenever I can’t find that flow. I need to be grounded at times in order to be able to transform and illuminate myself. I can’t be on a superhero mission all the time. Then it wouldn’t be special or the most private, intimate and wonderful thing I get to share with myself.
I have been forcing myself to use my superpower when all I needed was to be grounded and wait for the right moment to fly. And I’ve been afraid of crash-landing. Of broken wings. To have my superpower being taken from me. I’ve been afraid of losing my direction amongst the clouds. Of flying too high. To get burned by the sun. I have been confused about how to use my superpower and when – or when to stay grounded and enjoy life on Earth.
I have to learn how to use my superpower in the correct way. Then I’ll be able to transform myself when the right moment appears. When I’m on a mission to create magic – something rare and beautiful that isn’t a product of expectations or pressure, but the expression of freedom and joy. Just like flying.
Pink Elvises
Co-builders
Here we are, trying to build a future in only two weeks. Overcoming bumps in the road, working out the kinks, getting synced, finding our rhythm, facing facts while holding each other’s hand.
We are building something new that hasn’t existed in the world before. Like two co-builders. It’s hard work and fun play.
Do Ya – Noel Nathan
Fantasies vs reality
I’m getting worse in my health again. I give up – I just have to accept that we won’t be doing all the fun things I had planned, in the four remaining days before Johnny returns to the States. I feel frustrated.
But ironically – when I surrender to the reality of things instead of pushing for the idea of what should have been, I feel less anxious. I’m thinking about what my therapist used to say: “your fantasies will always kill any sense of genuine happiness because reality will never be able to live up to them”. As an artist and a person who loves to spend the days inside her own head, it’s a harsh truth to take in. “No artist tolerates reality”, Nietzsche suggested. It’s a difficult balance for any artist to live equally inside their own head as in reality.
I’m always chasing magic. The magic in other people. The magic in feelings. In situations. Within myself. But the paradox of chasing magic in everything is that I sometimes miss the magic of reality. The one I’m not chasing.
It’s tragic and funny at the same time. A perfect subject for a short story. I might write it one day. But I’m not planning on it because then it probably won’t happen.
Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism
A night of moving shadows.
Marina and the Diamonds – True Colors
A crash course in “us”
Things rarely happen the way you plan it, but the unexpected always brings something positive with it. This time with Johnny has been bittersweet – I wish I wasn’t so sick and it has made me feel trapped in my own body, in my apartment and in the passivity of waiting for my health to improve, but it’s also been pretty perfect, because we’ve been spending so much time together talking – defining who we are as a couple, what we want to achieve with our connection and the direction in which we want to walk together. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been tough at times. We only have a couple of weeks to figure these things out, then he goes back to the States and it might be another year until we’ll get to build an everyday life together in the same place again. These weeks have been like a crash course in “us”
Our honesty and directness are crucial – we can’t afford to be vague about who we are or what we want, we already have the language barrier, time differences and painful pasts we want to avoid revisiting. Our talks can be brutal at times because we challenge each other, in a positive way, to get to the realness of each other and cut through the layers of insecurities and imagined expectations that’s been forced on us by other people. It hurts to let go of fears by facing them. You’re bound to get your ass kicked by them before you’ll able to triumph and rise above. It hurts to get your comfort zone crushed. To let someone inside even though you are still healing a damaged, delicate heart. It’s confusing to let go of preconceived ideas of what you should be, do, say, or act – and instead just be and see what happens when you are showing your bare bones for the first time. Will you be able to move or will you fall apart?
But the brutal nature of honesty together with the smoothness of intimacy makes the relationship vibrate with life and energy – and there’s a clear sense of movement and progress and that gives me the biggest sensation of relief and satisfaction.
“You have to work hard for the things you want otherwise it’s not gonna be what you want but a compromise or something else and you’ll end up dissatisfied”, Johnny says. And it’s true. I’ve worked hard to achieve my dream of becoming an artist. Whenever I’ve had to compromise in my art I’ll end up losing my true artistic voice. I’ve worked hard to just be me without having to sacrifice or compromise who I am in order to fit into other people’s expectations of me which leads to depression or getting caught in traumatic places. So I understand the importance of the hard work. I just wish my mind wasn’t so full of little wounds, created by the traumas and the PTSD, it makes the hard work feel even more difficult and hard. My traumas are connected with love, intimacy and vulnerability. But that’s also where the magic happens in my art. That’s where I feel at home. Naturally it gets confusing at times. I need these deep talks with Johnny, otherwise I’d probably freak out and just give up when the trauma wounds are too sore or bleeding. But I’m lucky we share this open-hearted connection and that we both want to change and adapt to each other without losing our integrity. Change is hard work – building a home is hard work, but also so rewarding. I have been breaking free from my past for several years now, but now I’m actually breaking free from who I used to be in that past. I still don’t know exactly who I am when it comes to love and relationships – “great” Johnny says, “let’s find out together!”.
Underneath my skin
We are having long and deep discussions about creativity. It’s like injecting life into my veins. It feels so good. We talk about his writing, my art, my writing, our differences and shared processes. We are both in transitional phases. Changing. Evolving from something familiar and old to an unknown expression. I’m restless about it, he’s not. “You can’t rush it, you just have to absorb and digest new ideas and visions, while leaving the old behind. It takes time”. I can’t help thinking that it’s also exactly what I’m doing with my past.
I’ve been without skin for over three years now, since the last break up when I also broke up with my own past. It was a painful experience to step out of my familiar skin to become naked and fragile – both to myself and the world, in order to change and grow. The same goes for my painting. I’m changing skin or at least shedding a layer or two. I feel awfully sensitive and a little exposed.
I use to live in a skin that was colored by what other people expected from me. It was a skin of a mother to the men in my life, the skin of delivery machine, their whore, nurse, the good girl. It was the skin of the artist who produced artworks to sell instead of saying something important. My skin tore up easily because of the metal from the delivery machine and it was melting from all the pressure.
Manic Mandy by Mia Makila, 2013
To be without skin makes me feel so vulnerable. I can’t go back and dress myself in my old skin. It doesn’t fit anymore. I just have to heal and take care of the new, thin layers of skin – produced by life, time and the peace I feel inside. The more peaceful I feel, the stronger the new skin will become. Both on my body and in my paintings.
Sometimes I flinch when Johnny touches my new skin, not because it’s painful but because I feel so sensitive. But his touch is the best cure. His love helps it heal. Our home makes it grow stronger. My new sense of freedom lets it breathe. I’m slowly accepting myself and the new skin that’s emerging in the rawness of my metamorphosis.
So I am without skin, but what a lovely feeling it is to let the inside get a chance to take a deep breath before it’s covered by new layers. It has been a time of self exploration – to find out what has been hiding underneath something that was suffocating me for so long.
The first day out since I got sick
A master plan and how to destroy it
I never realized that the fear of my own past has created all these walls of protection. After nearly 20 years of being non stop in either destructive or dead relationships, I’ve become sensitive to so many things when it comes to relationships. It would be easier just to spend the rest of my life alone – without anyone by my side. It would be easier to isolate myself completely. I don’t fear loneliness – there’s nothing worse than the loneliness you feel in a dead relationship anyway. I always have my creativity. My art and writing will always be my company. I would live only by my own rules, my own expectations and fulfill my needs without making any sacrifices for anyone else. I would feel safe in my loneliness because there wouldn’t be anyone there to hurt me, to leave me or to destroy my sense of happiness. I would be lonely but free – and I could make art all the time. I would become a hermit genius who produces like 10 000 drawings a year. I would create an amazing legacy.
It is a tempting thought. Somehow like it’s a loophole – it would guarantee a pain free future. My life would be a trauma free zone. I would outsmart the unknown and create my own destiny – and the magic word would be ‘avoidance’.
But it’s only tempting for a minute.
I look over at Johnny while he’s not aware of my stare and for a second I’m a little annoyed. Who is this man who makes the avoidance seem like a bad idea – who challenges my idea of becoming a hermit genius artist and instead wants me to be in a relationship again even though I clearly suck at it? I could ask him to leave now, then I would pursuit my plan of loneliness and avoidance and it would be the last time I would be this close to a man ever again. I could ask him to stop loving me, because I am too damaged anyway. It must be hard to love me. I have my freak outs, my days of tears and sadness, moments of ugliness and darkness. What does he see in me anyway? Is he blind? Stupid? A masochist?
Suddenly he notices my stare and gives me a smile. Oh crap, don’t smile, don’t look so happy. It makes all these thoughts seem so delusional. I smile back. Great, now I’ve done it. Now it’s too late to ask him to leave. This happiness makes it feel impossible. I don’t like it. How can my magic word be ‘avoidance’ when I just want to explore everything in life with this man? What’s wrong with me?
He comes over to me, puts his arms around me and I suddenly forget about my plans of loneliness and solitude. He whispers in my ears: “I know you feel scared, I know you feel naked and vulnerable right now. I understand. But I don’t want to put you in another cage. You’ve known too many cages already. I want you to feel free. I want to make you happy. I never want to take from you, only add. This is the first time in your life where nobody is demanding something from you, more than to be yourself and it freaks you out. But I am here. I won’t leave. I am here.”
His words feel wonderful inside but they’re equally scary. Because the antidote to avoidance – is trust. And here it is – I either trust him or I can go on with my plan of avoiding everything he represents to me. Love. Pleasure. Happiness. Sharing. Or I can go for all those things and trust that everything will be alright. But all that comes without any guarantees. Without any walls of protection.
Surreal things we saw today
Surreal things we saw today, going to the clinic (hopefully I’ll feel better soon with the new medication)
True love – is watching Disney classics together at 1 am
MIA MAKILA 
