I’m feeling exhausted again.  I can’t express it in any other way than with violent attacks of crying. It’s a release of so many emotions and processes I’ve collected since I’ve moved in here and could start my new life. In only 3 months I have created 6 artworks and over 10 sketches – and a plan for my future career. I am slowly building a very beautiful and solid relationship with a man on the other side of the planet. It is so much hard work but also the most amazing and extraordinary experience.  Also, I have continued to grow and explored my strength and my new freedom. But sometimes my past comes back for a visit – and collides with my new life and the happiness I’ve found here. I quickly fall through some kind of black hole – and into the trauma again where everything I’ve been walking away from suddenly makes sense again .  When this happens I lose everything I’ve been building for myself in these last few months and I feel just as helpless and powerless as I used to feel. It makes me sad but mostly it makes me furious,  to know I’m still that fragile and vulnerable when it comes to my past. But I guess letting go of a traumatic past and 20 years of suffering is a slow process and doesn’t happen over night even though I wish it would.

But one good thing that I’ve learned in these last few months is that I am allergic to anything that feels familiar to me when it comes to my past – feeling submissive to someone,  feeling owned or trapped, to let myself be hurt by people who wants to see me hurt, being punished for who I am and for being happy, being questioned because I demand things for myself; respect,  space,  a voice,  value and appreciation.

I can never go back to the way things were then. I can’t be part of anything destructive or damaging.

I can never go back to a life that made me feel like I’m just a guest,  like it’s not mine, like I’m just following other people’s wishes and desires – which would destroy me in the end.

The collision between my past and my present is very painful and loud and when it happens I immediately go to a very dark place. The familiarity of the uncomfortable and forced situations and the injustices are swallowing all the light I’ve found in my new life until a breaking point where I feel like I don’t even want to exist anymore. I have become allergic to my own past and the person I used to be.

I am working so hard on building a new life and a new career for myself,  after being mentally paralyzed for many years and I’m feeling proud of myself.  But my past is still just a thought away.  I need to be stronger and to keep it at a bigger distance. Nothing can ruin my new happiness. Nothing is more important.  Nothing.

There is a certain rhythm to melancholy and it is in perfect harmony with my own heartbeats. I am in sync with the dreary days, the grey skies, the rain, the thunder and fallen leaves on the pavement. The rhythm is a soundless soundtrack, an invisible backdrop for my inner depth and the theatre it holds in there.

There is a beauty to the unspoken, like a language without words but so much more complex and advanced.

It’s where the wild things are. It’s where the edges of thoughts are not defined and blurred with dreams and unwanted nightmares.

A timeline of impulses.

A parade of desire and fear. Sometimes dancing together like Fred and Ginger.

It’s where the wild things grow. In the stillness.

Into unexpected pictures moving in the rhythm of slow motion and melancholy.

Fighting the gravity of my past.

Some days are a solid and real world of their own. Days with their own core, with their own sense of space and time, and where there’s room for details that other days are hiding in their speed or the lack of it.

I woke up this morning and found the most beautiful love letter waiting for me. I stayed in my bed for a long time, just feeling the words melt into my reality as I was waking up. I realized how being truly loved has opened up something inside me, perhaps every closed door. I even feel closer to myself. Like I am celebrating my freedom with a new self-intimacy that I’ve never experienced before. And now I can see how vital that intimacy is for me and for my art. I need it to be able to express whatever is stored inside my hidden places and I don’t have access to those places without it. Now, I can see how I lost the intimacy to myself, so many times in my past. It happened every time I sacrificed my self-intimacy when I was hunting for love, or chasing something impossible while losing myself in the chase. No wonder that I couldn’t create art for all those years.

It’s the first time I’m not chasing anyone or anything, but instead love has found me and I’m enjoying the present moment, myself and what I actually do have in my life right at this moment. Perhaps losing everything in life makes you appriciate everything more – and you also learn about what you don’t need. I don’t need that much really. Just the man I love, my art, my connection and intimacy with myself, to be able to live without feeling guilt, shame or looking for appropriate punishments – and some books and movies.

Life is amazing and some days are a great testament to that. Like this day.

“Attraction” by Mia Makila, 2013 [digital] – click to enlarge