Tag: inner journey

Without bitterness

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It’s like waking up from a nightmare, but it wasn’t a nightmare, it was my life. At times I’m experiencing emotional vertigo when I think about all the stupid mistakes I’ve done in my life. Why did I always make the wrong decision? For what reason did I waste my talent and time – and myself, like that? I’ve already been writing about this, how I regret my whole adult life and everything in it until now. It is without bitterness though, I know it’s not been totally wasted – it brought me here. To this amazing place of enlightenment and growth, to my very core. But I can’t help feeling sad when I think about it.

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Möja, Stockholm archipelago, 2011 at a friend’s wedding

I know it’s a little extreme to regret a whole life, but it’s how I feel. I don’t regret making the art I’ve made  though, so there’s that – except for the creepy-cute cupcake drawings from 2012 (career low-point):

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Even if I’m writing about my past right now in this very moment,  I’ve stopped looking back. Ever since I had closure on something really difficult, I’ve closed the door to my past. But I just can’t shake this feeling that I’ve wasted so much time. And it’s been so many years since I went to trauma therapy where my life started to change for the better – year by year. The process of trauma recovery and growth is very slow and takes a lot of strength and will. I feel proud of myself. If I look at this process, year by year, I can see all the important steps I’ve made:

1998-2008 – living in total chaos with abusive relationships, traumas, self-abandonment and playing different roles to make other people happy, being stressed, depressed and lost while my art career takes off and I have a little breakthrough and success (which won’t last long)
2009 – my creativity blockage starts, feeling mentally paralyzed, moving to Stockholm to escape my problems, it feels amazing for about 6 months
2010 – giving up my art career and losing myself completely, depressed and isolated
2011 – diagnosed with PTSD
2012 – trauma treatment at Danderyd hospital, breaking the creativity blockage by starting to work with digital art
2013 – another trauma treatment at another clinic, experiencing a big wake up call, feeling like my whole life is a lie, wanting to break free but don’t know how to because I have no income and nowhere to go
2014 – breaking up with my boyfriend, leaving Stockholm and my old life behind, moving back to my hometown to start from scratch because I’m broke and kind of homeless (living temporarily in my parent’s house)
2015 – creating a new life for myself by taking control of my situation – finding an apartment, work rehabilitation, self-empowerment work by making research and self-therapy, shaking off an old thinking style based on fear and avoidance. Painting again. Starting a  long-distance relationship with Johnny from California.
2016 – Finding my inner strength, reconnecting myself to my body and core, start using my intellect and stop belittling myself to make other people feel more comfortable around me, creating boundaries and being more clear about them, getting my anxiety and stress under control with meditation, acceptance and a new sense of awareness. Making important closure so I can move on and leaving my past behind (killing the last PTSD symptoms).

10 years:

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016

What will 2017 mean to me and my journey? I can’t wait to find out. I hope 2017 will be about finding a job so I’m able to invest money in new art projects. The money issue is really the last problem I have yet to solve, the only thing left from my past to take care of. It shouldn’t be that difficult. I’ve come a long way since everything in my life was a cluster of chaos, stress and fear. This is why I am able to regret my past 20 years without any bitterness. Finding home is not easy, but home is home. And I wouldn’t want to be without this discovery for anything in the world. I am home. What could be more satisfying.

Regret

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This week has been intense even if I barely left the apartment at all. I don’t think I’ve met anyone other than my dad this week. I’ve been isolating myself on purpose. To go through this process of self-empowerment – to really break through the old layers of self-images, false convictions and warped perspectives on myself and the world, I have to have the biggest dedication to the task and an intense focus – otherwise I won’t find any clarity and enough strength to actually change my behaviour and way of thinking. I love to be really focused, to make research and to dig deeper into something that fascinates me. I would make an excellent scientist if I had any talent for logic. But I don’t. My mind is too wild and free.

There is, however, an overwhelming side effect to go this deep into the process of healing; the clarity and the realizations makes everything you’ve gone through look completely real and raw, in some kind of harsh daylight. I can see every mistake I’ve ever made, every bad decision, every toxic relationship and its destructive anatomy, every persona I’ve ever created to adjust to a life I felt trapped in and I can see why it was so hard for me to break free – and it’s painful. Overwhelmed with emotions and nowhere to direct it. I have cried a lot this week, but I’m not sad, not really. I’m just waking up, and it’s a rude awakening. It’s a constant stream of awakenings when you are healing.

But I do feel a lot of regret. In fact, I think I regret everything in my whole adult life up to the point where I fell in love with my best friend last year. It was the first time I’ve ever felt truly seen, by anyone, ever and it inspire me to look deeper into myself, beyond who I have been and who I wish to become – it was the first time I saw myself that way.

I’m sure it’s unhealthy to feel regret, to feel nauseous and claustrophobic while thinking about the past, but I can’t help it. I regret it all. The relationships, the sex, the lifestyles I had, the way I saw the world, my taste in music, clothes, friendships, how I acted on social media, blog posts, selfies, old flirts and flings, phone calls and Skype talks. I regret food I use to eat, routines I used to have, art I used to like, celebrities I used to look up to, attitudes I had and belief systems I followed. I regret it all.

But I’m not bitter – in fact I feel liberated. I feel free.

I won’t isolate myself much longer, I’m soon done with this phase of the process, I can feel it. I’m gathering new energy, pure and raw, that’s why I need solitude and silence to clean the old energies out of my system.  Then I will start making art again, for real this time. And perhaps be a little more social.

I see my feelings of regret and the way my heart gets a little panicked when I think about everything I used to be, know and believe – as a perfect guideline to my next destination on my inner journey. That way, it will be a positive thing.

Building an invisible house

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self_empowerment

I made this image to illustrate my process of self-empowerment

I’m taking big steps in my self therapy – which I will refer to as ‘self-empowerment’ from now on. I am on a different journey now than during the years I lived with the PTSD where the cruel symptoms ruled my every day life.

During my abusive marriage, 2003

I might not be the smartest person in the world, I might not know much about anything really – but I am an expert when it comes to the process of losing the connection to oneself – and finding a way back. It’s been taking me about 15 years to accomplish that.

My old journey was to overcome PTSD and my new journey is all about reclaiming life and the power I lost to other people by accepting (and encouraging) a submissive position.

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2009

It all comes down to vulnerability. For a long period of time, I was trapped in various situations where it was forced on me from many directions. Vulnerability became the texture of my identity – and so also the visual expression of myself. I couldn’t see it. I was busy reliving trauma every day because of the PTSD (that I didn’t knew I suffered from at the time). But the vulnerability was the only thing I could offer men in relationships, I confused it for warmth and love – and so I attracted the narcissists, the aggressive ones, the assholes, the ‘strong silent’ men without any empathy – and the broken souls in denial with a tough exterior to overcompensate for their own vulnerability issues.

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2010

I payed the price for their repressed pain or for their lack of emotions – and I let them. I gave them my vulnerability as a currency so they could buy my loyalty, love and sexuality with it, over and over, without losing any of their own currency. I cared so much, they didn’t care at all. I risked my life for them, they neglected me and took no risks at all. I thought that love would either ‘make me or break me’ – they thought of me as a submissive addition to their lives which had no real influence on their hearts. Indifference is a perfect armor, it allows no emotional risks at all. I can’t relate to it  – it’s a blind spot for me. I was an easy target for their selfish conquests when it came to what my vulnerability was worth – and  how it was perceived. They were addicted to it – and it made me look weak so they could look stronger, better and smarter.

Therefore, the first step to self-empowerment is self-forgiveness. I have forgiven myself for being so careless with my vulnerability and for letting men do whatever they want with it.

And with self-acceptance – where I am accepting both my weaknesses – and seeing my vulnerability as something precious that I have to protect and maintain (which, ironically, makes it shrink) and my strengths and resources (where vulnerability is a great one if handled with care) – I have a good foundation for what I need to achieve success, happiness and self-fulfillment.

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2015

It’s not a random coincidence that my recent artworks all have houses in them – and that I registered my new website as “The House of Mia Makila”. I am slowly building an invisible house around myself – a protection of inner strength and an uncompromising integrity – an empowerment of everything I am – to myself and to the world.

Iceland (digital)

Iceland (digital)