June has been a peculiar month. After those wonderful warm and sunny summer days in May there's been hardly any signs of summer in June - last week, whilst most of the country was celebrating Midsummer, we even got a little bit of snow and hail around many parts of the country.

Personally I've also been having one of the most severe PMDD months in a long time; it should be a kick in the butt to so clearly see that when I don't exercise regularly, my PMDD flares up thousand fold - but alas, when I'm down in the abyss already I have no strength nor motivation to even try and climb up to the bright daylight. I have been writing a blog post about my life with PMDD, but ironically, while in the eye of the storm for some two weeks now I haven't been able to muster the energy or concentration to finish the post. I'm so looking forward to being able to breathe easier again in couple of more days....and once again I'm swearing up & down that I will take care of myself better in the coming weeks in order to not have this monthly monster attack me again this strongly.

Here's to July and fresh starts once again. As comical as my endless fresh starts are, it's a good thing I still have it in me to try, eh :)

 

Sunday shots

I see dead people

At the end of last year and during the months rolling towards spring this year I had reoccurring dreams about an ex-boyfriend from my youth. This person and I dated for three years in our mid-twenties, were engaged for the last year of our relationship, shared a home.....and then broke up. The breakup wasn't abrupt or anything too dramatic; we were young, I had already back then the insatiable lust to see the world whereas he never wanted to leave the area where we were both born and bred......and during the years we were together I had grown increasingly tired of the endless party lifestyle that he was so much into. Granted, where I grew up we were all products of our respective up-bringing and the Finnish alcohol culture: every weekend was about bar hopping with friends and getting drunk, it was not very productive nor  was it pretty. I wanted to stop doing all that -- I would've loved spending my weekends with my boyfriend snuggled up at home, watching movies, cooking, chilling....but my boyfriend thought this was boring. And so, the beginning of and end started creeping in when I began staying home at weekends whereas my boyfriend kept on going to bars and clubs and getting wasted every single weekend. It was time for me to move on.

We didn't really keep in touch after our breakup, not frequently anyway - I think there were a few phone calls and the last time I remember speaking with him must have been back in 2006. I heard it from mutual friends back home that he had become an alcoholic - the kind who did not work and was seen hanging outside the town liquor store with his fellow local drunks. I thought this was very sad, but I wasn't all that surprised - the writing was on the wall decades earlier. I felt sorry for him, and even more so for his mother because she was always the worrying kind -- and I could only imagine she must have had countless sleepless nights wondering where her son was; whether he was alive, whether he was eating, whether he had a roof over this head.

My dreams of him last year started out of the blue and became so frequent that by April this year I was freaking out. I couldn't understand why I was constantly dreaming about him when I genuinely wasn't thinking about him during my waking hours -- as anyone, I might have a passing thought of him couple of times a year, wondering how he was doing - but not more frequently than about any other friend or relative from the past. In the dreams he almost always appeared together with my own mother and sometimes with my brother too - both of whom have passed away long time ago. This made me uncomfortable and I began thinking that something may have happened to him. During Easter, one morning after waking up again from a dream where my boyfriend and mother had appeared, I couldn't ignore it anymore..... I started doing a little research online -- it's amazing what you can dig out these days with Facebook -> mutual friends > archives of local newspapers.

It took me couple of hours but after following the internet path of a few leads I soon found myself staring at a page of a local online newspaper from November -- and there it was, the obituary of my ex-boyfriend. He had passed away in early November. He was 45 years old.

That moment when I located his obituary was a weirdly calm and "now it all makes sense" kinda moment. It may sound crazy, but I strongly felt that my ex had, for some reason, wanted to let me know that he had moved on from this Earth. Since Easter, I've had just one dream about him --- it was within the next 2-3 days after finding his obituary......then, nothing.

How freaky is that ? It is not the first time I've had some form of strange dreams that have turned out to be some level of premonitions...

 

Now then......
 

Some time later I had a bit of a strange dream again: in the dream I was still employed by my previous international employer, and they surprised me by telling me that they were going to finally send me back to the U.S. ! I was ecstatic ! The bizarre part was that I was told my brother was going too (he's not alive) and while I reached the airport my mother (not alive) was waiting for me there too -- she was going to the U.S. as well ! There we were, all three of us, dragging our luggage and heading towards the gate that read JFK New York.

My sister (she is alive) appeared in the dream too - I had to break it to her that all of us were moving to the States and she was unfortunately going to be left behind...she was crying inconsolably whilst I was trying to comfort her, all the while sensing her pain and feeling so bad for her because she would not be able to come with us.

Yeah - waking up from that sort of made me wonder if I had just seen a premonition about my own impending death.....but...naah, I think I'll just take it as a sign that a trip to New York is in the horizon :)

Source (interesting stories here too)

10 years ago today

Kesäkuun neljäntenä päivänä vuonna 2004 istuin Miamin lentokentällä sekavin fiiliksin. Kädessä oli paluulippu Helsinkiin Frankfurtin kautta - ja tällä kertaa kyseessä ei ollut kesäinen lomamatka Suomeen kuten aikaisempina vuosina, vaan pakon sanelema paluumuutto pohjolaan viiden Floridassa asutun vuoden jälkeen. Lähtö ei tuntunut kotiinpaluulta, vaan siltä että minua oltiin lähettämässä pois kotoani, kauas rakastamastani paikasta - mahanpohjassa kipristeli, kurkussa kuristi ja silmiin nousivat vähän väliä kyyneleet. Mitään ei ollut tehtävissä, ja kun kävelin lyijynraskain jaloin koneeseen joka veisi minut Atlantin väärälle puolen, olisin mieluummin kävelly lankkua pitkin itse Atlanttiin.

Tänään, kymmenen vuotta myöhemmin, kaipaan yhä kotiini meren tuolla puolen joka päivä, enkä voi käsittää että vuosikymmen on kulunut ja olen yhä Suomessa. Mitään ei edelleenkään ole tehtävissä, siitä pitää huolen Yhdysvaltain maahantulosääntöjen tiukka kirjo. Toivoani en voi kuitenkaan koskaan menettää, pakko on uskoa siihen että jonain päivänä vielä paluu kotiin onnistuu - ehkä mutkien kautta, ehkä vuosien kuluttua...mutta jonain päivänä !

On June 4th 2004 I was waiting to board a flight from Miami to Frankfurt and further on to Helsinki. Unlike during the previous five years though this wasn't a trip to meet family in Finland for the summer, but an against-my-will relocation back to my homeland which, ironically, did not and still does not feel like home at all. When the flight was boarding and I took my seat on the plane, my heart was heavy and my eyes filled with tears. Instead of getting ready to fly across the Atlantic I might as well have jumped into the Atlantic, such was the depth of my devastation for having to leave my true home.

Today, ten years on, my longing has not diminished an inch. It is with me always, sometimes stronger, sometimes hovering in the back of my mind. It is funny how you can almost feel physical pain due to the fact that you believe you are in the wrong country and unable to live life where you feel content. The one thing that keeps me going is hope for returning one day - this is one dream that I am never going to give up ! My life might take me to other places, my journey back home may be long....but one day I'll return, one way or another !