I am in bed, sick with anxiety. I’ve reached a point where I no longer have a clear place to go to in my mind, because I am changing. My old consciousness is dying, the person I used to be is fading. But I haven’t found a new way of thinking yet, my new consciousness is not fully developed yet. I feel so fragile. I don’t have a home inside my mind right now because everything is changing.

There is no solid ground. My emotions are raw and at times absurdly exaggerated – it’s like my mind lacks any filter or structure. I feel every emotion as it is, without any limits, with maximum volume, always gravitating towards the wounds in my heart.

The rage I’ve been trying to repress is there, I can feel it glowing with fire somewhere inside. I don’t want it. It’s uncomfortable and feels foreign to me. Unnatural. I’ve never been able to express my rage, because I was always afraid of being punished afterwards. I don’t know how to deal with it since it feels so unfamiliar. At times I feel like screaming and destroying things to get it all out of my system, but I know it wouldn’t be enough. And it scares me. I want confrontations. I want justice. Closure. A chance to stand up for myself,, face to face with the ones causing me pain. There is no other way to get closure on the rage, but perhaps I won’t get a chance to do this, because they are too uncomfortable with facing their guilt and they don’t want to take responsibility for what they’ve done to me. It’s easy to be a coward and it takes strength to face your own guilt.

So the impossible nature of the rage turns into a bitter frustration – a silent black spot in my mind. Like it doesn’t exist more than in my fear of the thought that it would happen again. Their abuse. Their disgust and contempt of me. The rage turns into fear – the fear turns into isolation. An unnecessary self-defense strategy. And that is my prison. My fear.

I am so scared of love. At times I feel like I just want to give up. I’m constantly waiting to be betrayed or humiliated. All I have known in my heart is pain, this new happiness doesn’t seem to fit inside the pain, it’s pushing it all out and for some reason I’m making so much resistance.

But the happiness is there. The love is strong and solid. I feel ashamed of my freak outs but I feel safe and allowed to be who I am, with my weaknesses and the fear and all the ugliness I see in myself. He loves me, not the idea of me. I feel naked and exposed. But free.

I need to get out of this place where my fragility is the midpoint where all my experiences meet. Changing is so scary, but healthy. But at times I feel like I’m slowly losing my mind where there is no structure or reality right now, just old and tired ways of thinking that doesn’t work anymore and a vague understanding of who I am changing into.

I just have to hold on. I just have to keep moving forward.

One of my favorite songs.

You are pointing your burning gun at me. Aiming straight at my heart. I know you want to kill me. Or love me. To me, it’s the same thing. I want you to kill me that way. I want to explode together with whatever comes out of that gun. I want to dissolve right in front of you, to surrender to the moment – and to the danger of it. But instead, I try to hide behind my shadow. My fear. The gun is still burning. My words are black.

No light is brighter than your promise to shoot me. I’m blinded. Trying to look away. But I can’t.

I’m staring right into death. Or love. Whatever. That’s when I feel your bullets hit me right in the heart. Bullets of fire. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to.
I can feel how everything is destroyed. Or saved. Or whatever. Blackbirds, blood moons, lion breaths, rotten flower beds – like fireworks above it all. Exploding within and inside.

And I realize – I don’t know the difference between love and a beautiful murder.

A morning with U2.

Ever since I was a child people have been telling me that I’m “too curious” and sometimes they’ve even asked me to stop asking so many difficult questions. I have never figured out why some people don’t like curiosity or why or when people stop asking important questions without any obvious answers (the best kind).

For me it’s unthinkable to stop asking questions or questioning the obvious or exploring the unknown. In fact, I think it would dangerous if I would lose my curiosity and my strive to learn more and try to make sense of things. Then my mind would be closed off, shut down and I wouldn’t be able to grow and develop myself anymore. I believe that if we constantly want to grow and maintain our inner selves and if we try to expand our empathy and intellect, that that’s the true core of our existence.

I usually use gmail drafts as digital post it notes for thoughts I want to remember. I went through some of the older drafts and found this, I don’t remember why I used caps lock, if I was upset or excited.

I don’t know if this drawing by Greg Ruth is of a man or a woman but I feel so connected to it somehow. I just wanted to share it with you.

This horrible and grim fairytale was my grandmother’s favorite to share with me as a little girl. No wonder I grew up to be a horror artist.

(skip the intro)

I was talking to a gallery owner yesterday and as we were deep into a conversation about my art he said something that I’ve been told all my life: “I guess you are a little crazy, like all artists are in some way!”

I always laugh and say “Of course I am crazy!” But I never really understand what they are referring to because to me “crazy” is to be out of control and irresponsible, and I can’t relate to that at all.

In fact, I feel like I’m ‘uncrazy’ and free of what society is trying to force upon me – norms, narrow minded ideas of how I am supposed to live my life: “eat-sleep-work-consume”, celebrating holidays and traditions, believing in mainstream values and ideals and not questioning things, but just going along with whatever everyone else feels comfortable with.

I can’t do that. My soul is too free in spirit, my heart is too alive and my mind is too curious about life beyond the hamster wheel of everyday life.

And I’m not scared to explore darker human themes in my art, such as fear, anxiety, rage and sexuality.

But I guess it’s easy for people to label people like me as a little ” crazy” because it’s easier to put a distance to a free spirit than to make an effort to be one. Because it’s really hard work to stay free and it takes a lot of dedication and effort.

It’s easier to just let go of any resistance and fall into the pre-made ideas if how a life should look and feel like. What kind of sex you should feel OK with, what kind of music you are supposed to consume, what kind of opinions you are supposed to have, taste in clothes, routines in your everyday life, where you are supposed to travel to feel like you are still alive and curious, emotions that are OK to show and emotions that you have to suppress.

I can’t do that. I tried to live like that in many of my old relationships but I always ended up feeling like a guest in my own life and Iost my sense of identify.

I am OK with being labeled as “crazy” because with it comes a freedom of being true to who I am, even if I’m included in a group of human beings who act and think in ways I can’t relate to like mentally insane people, society oucasts, killers and criminals. Perhaps people mistake the word “crazy” for “free spirit”in this context. Because there is nothing sick or criminal with staying true to who you really are.

It is so liberating.