If anyone from the Sha'tar actually read this, I'd get keelhauled for that subject line.

I was thinking of being deep and contemplative and going over everything from the past few months in one good and thorough go, but truth be told, it would have been boring as hell. I also put it off for ages, and now spontaneously chose to get writing, when I have about ten minutes to do it. I think it's very appropriate. Most of the things I have to tell have always been simple, small, spontaneous and ultimately unimportant.

So, I work at a dry cleaners' now, and live alone in an apartment with only one neighbour, a grumpy old guy who has a habit of using a circular saw behind my window at seven on weekend mornings. I spent half a year playing World of Warcraft and not doing much else. Now I'm back to playing Vampire, too, and while I did make up with Mira for a while, it didn't stick, and I lost a few friends, likely permanently this time. It was my call. I don't regret it. And I'm done being sorry, for a lot of things.

I've deleted my OKC account, and ceased being Romanova or anything similar in most places. I'm finally out of love and sorrow alike, and while I accept I'll likely fall again sooner than in another five years, and I'll fall hard, I don't look for it, I don't yearn for it, and I don't want it. For the first time since ever I find myself turning attention down. Telling people I like them, but they have no chance.
Telling people how things are, on my terms, and how I want them to go on. I'm harsh when I need to be. I apologise when I need to, not when someone else needs to hear it. This is my life. I'll do what I damn well want to with it, and I'll stand up for myself.

/end rant

As wonderful as he was, Damiaan was a princess with a bean under his mattress, and I needed to not love him to see it clearly. Still, relative to time spent together, he likely taught me more than any other person in my life - so far - and I'm grateful. I miss him at times, and wonder how he's doing. But I go on, because this is my life, a part of it is over and the sweet memories are still only memories. I do wish we could talk sometime though, just to compare notes.

All's well that ends well. I crash-landed, but I'm up again and the balance is positive.

It seems the falling-out with M is the permanent sort. She and her husband both have cut me out of their lives completely, without as much as a word. I no longer get invited to our regular Thursday night games, something that has been in the past used as a less-than-subtle means of telling people they shouldn't ask, either. And I'm not about to. Considering it never became completely clear to me what it was that made her fly off the handle, despite the fact that the last words I got from her were "fuck you", followed by sad diplomacy and apologies from her husband (which in my mind seemed to pave way to future reconciliations, but apparently not), well. Go if you must. If a friendship depends on such small things, if it cannot last a single different opinion and if arguments cannot be settled with a sorry and a hug, I hardly think it's friendship at all. And this is not worth my while; fuck you too.

Seeking  a roleplaying group in the capital area.

Otherwise, it's been quiet. I've had a terrible flu, but that's clearing up as well. I've sought a few jobs, with poor results. I've sought a few more without any results at all so far. I've waited, and waited, because seemingly every potential employer out there needs at least a few weeks to make any kinds of decisions, if they bother to take my calls at all. I'm not even expecting anyone to return them, even if it's the tenth time I call and the tenth time the right people are away, or with customers, or in conferences, or at home on sick leave, because nobody wants to call up a potential employee. No, I need to be stupidly persistent, even if that makes me feel like a bloody nuisance.
They want bus and taxi drivers in Helsinki, and construction workers, and call girls. Each group has a more or less obvious reason I don't want to join. So I seek work by walking around, when I can, and calling around, when I must. The best jobs come from places that aren't hiring, officially at least.
Technically, I of course already have a job, but that's more like a side project. Not one to feed you full-time anyway, running karaoke three times a weeks tops. But it's a safety net. And the people who make it possible are part of that same net. Partly because of those people, I at times wonder what ties me to Helsinki in the first place. Some of my friends live there, but not the ones I see most frequently, and with the game group gone, I have no real need for regular visits either. It's the capital, it has the most of everything - but Amsterdam's a capital too. So's London. And I bloody well swore I wouldn't go abroad in a while again, yet went already once. Why not just leave? There's got to be some crap job out there that actually hires through the Internet, one that I can get without physically going abroad for it, so I'd have some safety when leaving. I suppose I could arrange somewhere to live, I've done that in the past. If I don't live with the people I love the most in any case, why should I limit myself by choosing to live somewhere specific?

How I would just want to be happy. To be able to be with the people I love. But in the case of E&E, their life is their life now, and that little town is not my home, no matter how long I spent there. It's a strangling little trap that I don't feel comfortable in even for one full day, despite it being the stage of so many bittersweet memories. And in the case of D... We've all seen what happens if we go down that road. I can be sensitive at times, subtle and even accommodating, but there are other times when I'm the opposite, and I suppose that won't change anytime soon. Every human being leaves tracks wherever they go, physical as well as emotional. It's like scraping off a bit of ourselves on every conceptual surface we encounter. We don't leave any of our daily interactions completely untouched. Will there ever be a day when you could stand having my mark on you?
I wonder if I'm starting to say too much. Or if I've said too much a long time ago, if this is too personal in terms of something that's on public display and could theoretically be read by anyone. Comments are welcome. And while I did initially make the resolution to never take away anything I'd put here once, I've decided sod that. If something's inappropriate - and I'm certainly not the best judge of that - I'll take it away.

Oh, and one more thing. felis_lynx said in her journal that she thinks a man can be beautiful as well as handsome. I wish to add: so can a woman. I've seen many women who best qualify as handsome.

It's rather ridiculous to think that this post sprung up from World of Warcraft. Considering what that game has been compared to; anything from the surest goodbye to your social life through selling your soul to various entities including the Machine and the Devil to voluntarily picking up AIDS. Yet I feel profound and melancholy, like a good and proper emo kid, despite having left Azeroth only about ten minutes ago, non-permanently.

I had a bit of a falling-out with a friend of mine today, and that started me on the road to deep, cold waters again. It hardly helps in the long run that she's a woman with a volatile temper, one that she cannot truly control; more than likely, she will apologise in a few days to come, and feel ashamed for lashing out on me and others. The right thing to do of course is to forgive, give her a reassuring smile and a pat on the shoulder, and never speak of it again. Sadly, it won't take away the fact that it will  happen again, and repeat itself infinitely. And I'm not immune. It hurts every time, even though logically, I should just let it slide and move on. But her barbs are as vicious as you can expect of someone with a supreme mind and a feeling of being cheated, let down and generally treated badly, and they always hit the mark; I have a hard time thinking logically when my heart bleeds.
Now I'm left wondering what's to be the future of this friendship. I acknowledge the fact that a friend, who's in the past months become very dear and important to me, has more than one problem; the first being her temper, the second being her inability to handle being replied in kind, and the rest I won't even go into. But are those problems solvable? Her husband has made his choice, and has to bear the shit she dishes out; it is his duty. But a friend can walk out. And if nothing changes, despite my best efforts as well as those of other people - do I have to take it? I won't be broken again, not under anything, and maybe it's a steep cost, but that includes other people's troubles.
Time will show whether she'll try to pour the guilt on me, to make me apologise for being hurt and offended. If so, I'm out, for a while at least, to allow her to do a bit of thinking in her own peace. No matter which way you twist this, I am not the one to blame here, and I'm not about to pretend to be.

It all has me rather sad, and thinking about a multitude of silly, semi-related things. Like how sorrow seems to be the purest of all emotions, even when mixed with others. The one always easiest to recognise, separate from other things, and almost touch. No matter what emotion I think of, they all can be stained - all except sorrow. Love loses something when paired with, say, jealousy, hate or fear. Even joy and hope change love when mixed. Hate turns a different colour when combined with greed. Not so with sorrow. I find sorrow is always just itself, in the middle of anything. It's either present or absent, and sometimes measurable in some rough sense, but never anything else.
It's present in me for a lot of reasons. I find it curious that I'm not afraid; by all means, I believe I should be. After the revelations, after the sad bit of truth that I saw when a few customary, conventional trappings were peeled off. No, while I'm many things at the moment, including anxious, restless and self-absorbed, as well as sad, I'm not afraid. There's been no great experience of enlightenment, mind you, don't mistake this brooding rant for such; just a quiet, little realisation of how empty everything is, how hollow the framework of my existence. It's almost amusing how I didn't expect it at all. It's just one little question I've asked so many times, but always avoided and gone on in spite of: what do I live for?

There's no universal meaning of life, not at least that I could believe in, but for each of us, there's something that makes us strive onward, continue, progress, achieve. Sometimes it's a love for a work that no-one could do quite like them; sometimes it's one god or another, or a duty to something like their children, or parents, or country, or whatever. Sometimes it's even a someone, although that's rarely a good reason to live. I haven't found mine. And I haven't even defined any of those things in my life that it's commonly found among. I have no idea what I "want to be when I grow up", although I grew up a while ago. There's no such driving passion that would clearly point me in a certain direction, thinking "this is what I want to do for the rest of my life." I've tried my hand at a trade or a few, and failed to find any of them satisfying or stimulating. It's about time I picked the next one, but I don't want to run headfirst into another wall. I've few enough brain cells as is.
What do I believe in? Someone put it well somewhere online, something like "I'm extremely convinced I have absolutely no idea what's going on." God will show me its face when I die, if it is so inclined. Or then I will rot away to feed a new generation of corpse worms, stripped of consciousness in such a way that is hard to comprehend or even think of for someone who's still so very... conscious. Or I might be reborn as a walrus, having no idea I was once a human being with human thoughts and emotions. I think about it a lot, and wonder at times if there's a divinity I would be wise to appease, but I sate myself at being convinced I'll never know in time, and don't ultimately care all that much.
No duty binds me absolutely, because I have the questionable honor of being one who doubts her alliances, and puts them to test. My parents will more than likely die before me, in fact one already has. I have no children, and intend to have none, and even if I did, I consider living entirely for another person to be a misguided and ultimately destructive way of life; this also handily rules out the possibility that I'd ever live for love and nothing else. My ties to my country are flimsy. Granted, I'm a patriot, and would defend my homeland to the death if it came to that, but while it doesn't, I need something else as well. So why do I live?

For the moment I live simply for the experience of life in itself, and if I was less ambitious, it would hardly be a problem. I could just devote my existence to experiencing everything possible between Heaven and Hell, and live the life of an Ecstatic, or then I could wander off into the world in search of the truth and live out my days at some monastery somewhere, or perhaps a tropical island with lots of intoxicants and a very relative sense of time. But no. I'm an orderly person. I need my rules and laws, to the point that I set them for myself, put myself inside a box to feel safe. I need something linear, a path to follow with clear, tangible rewards like money, prestige and standing.
When you let go of limits, strip life to its bare essentials, you tend to realise how much of what you held onto was pointless, there only to provide something definite and solid and make you feel proud of yourself for having made a choice, however small one. Society demands decisions, it wants us to know what we want and what we do not, so when we don't, we pretend to. When I came back from Holland, I realised I'd basically packed my entire existence in a bag and left, with no true intention to return, no plans and nothing but the future ahead of me. Unwittingly, I'd let go of a whole bunch of rules I'd set for myself, and now that I'm back here, I can't in good conscience pick them back up and pretend I never ditched them in the first place. My box became as wide as the world, all directions are open, all roads beckon and I feel the wind at my back. Where to step? I've never known less than I do now.

At once, it is both saddening, and awe-inspiring. It should be frightening, but it isn't. I recoil, but not because I was scared of moving out; only because I can't possibly choose. I simply want to stare and marvel at the enormity of it all.

Call it an open letter, or whatever the Hell you want to. But while this is for all eyes that care to read, about yours truly and the secrets I choose to divulge, above all this is for one person. I trust I need not name him.

I am back at home again, back in Finland and trying to distract myself from the fact that I won't be able to sleep until very late, due to having stayed up until the wee hours, made even smaller by time zone difference, last night. I sit at my comfortable table, with my familiar laptop, wearing clean clothes, breathing fresh air, hearing silence. Nothing is out of place or unexpected, everything belongs, everything is orderly and controlled and appropriate - except myself. I'm at home, no longer feeling at home here. I felt something break at takeoff from Schiphol, and I feel homesick for a land that is not mine, whose language I do not understand, whose customs I haven't grown up with. 

I said I'd miss D, to him, when we were sitting at the station waiting for my train, but I never said this: I miss everyone else as well. After New Year's Eve, I can't not miss them. I felt so... How to even explain this. I belonged. For that one day and night, I was one of them, and I can't undo the memory. It was a wonderful feeling, warm, welcome, even... magical. Conversations that went on interesting despite being only half-intelligible to me, fireworks that made the whole town (yes, I challenge anyone calling the place a village) look, sound and smell like a warzone, a shared bottle of red wine without glasses, guard duty, political commentary, love, friendship, humanity. I was happy. I truly was. And I want to thank everyone for it.
E, E, S, S, S, J, W, R. And not a chance I'd ever again mistake the identities of the two who look alike.
It doesn't take background or upbringing to be a squatter, I understood. It takes attitude and intent. You're defined by who you are, not who you were. Hence, there's not a chance I'd ever again feel like a middle class pretender, either. I was one of you, if only for a very short while, and I'll remember it always.

My tears dried out on the train, and haven't returned. My sadness is gone. The almost physical ache of longing for someone's presence will of course linger, but I feel a curious, quiet joy where there should logically be bitterness, sorrow, and perhaps anger. Am I senseless in my stubbornness, my utter and complete unwillingness to give up? Am I crazy, stupid or both to plan ahead and organise my life with regard to returning? You tell me.
Fact remains, however, that I feel energised, determined and generally boosted. Absurdly, considering everything that happened, I feel like I could live off these feelings and memories for another year if I must. Everything went to Hell in a handbasket, and yet I find myself on the better side of it. Find myself capable of feeling gratitude.

A few days ago I said Holland was growing on me, becoming closer, more important, and sneakily crafting the ties that bind. It finished on New Year's Eve. I want to live in that country some day still, and truly become part of it. On my first visit, all it gave me were doubts and prejudices; on this second one, it took my heart and soul.
And frankly, when a Dutchman admires a Finn for being liberated, can I, the Finn of this story, take that as anything but a hardcore compliment?

I miss you now, D, mere hours after my departure. All that you've taught me. All that I've found and figured out and experienced, seen and learned, with you. I would not give away a day, even the lowest lows on the roller coaster that life seems to become whenever you and I are within a touching distance; the good parts so far outweigh the bad. I suppose... When someone gets under your skin as thoroughly as you get under mine, it becomes impossible to shield yourself from them. Pain comes as a side dish with pleasure. I'm not saying goodbye. Ever, if it's up to me.

I'm coming back home to greet January, and I'm not in the least happy about it. But I hope some of you people appreciate having your gaming company back.

I'm now, more or less officially, a squatter.

That, and in a broader context, just being here, means many things, and I have yet to decide what to make of some of them, or the combinations thereof. As far as I can say I had expectations, they've at least been met, but then, I hadn't decided on all of them either. It's quiet. Slow-flowing. This place has its own pace, it's own rhythm, and I'm not quite used to it, or part of it, yet. I'm not used to having to think what day it is because nothing really defines the boundaries any longer. I'm not... used to being so free of outside influences, free to decide on my own what to do, when to do it and who with. And while I've been repeatedly told to make myself at home, in many different words (and actions; connecting to the housechat qualifies in my thoughts), I still feel more like a guest, and have a hard time taking liberties with things like food. Homesickness, though, is less than what I'd expected, and that feels welcome. It's easier to be here than it was to contemplate leaving for the last few days.

People have, in general, received me well, and that's alleviated a lot of my initial fears. Tension remains, though, where I expected it the least - or perhaps the most, in a certain way. It's hard to live with D. Harder, no doubt, on him than on me, but hard nonetheless. After so much time alone, being the lord and master of his own space, now having to share it with another person and having to take my opinions to account... I feel he bites down far more than he lets on.
Granted, there are many annoying things around, like the skinhead kids throwing fireworks at the house, people inside who say one thing and do another, just general human relations, but saying none of it is my fault qualifies as deception, either between us or just inside his own head. Then again; my patience has its limits as well. And to say none of my annoyance is because of him is no less a lie. I suppose what needs saying is that, in my opinion at least, even lovers are entitled to not love everything about one another. I don't like how afraid of hurting me he is.
Oh, he'll read this sometime in the future. And he'll take it personally. And I'll tell him not to, and he'll take even that personally. How I wish I could truly convince him that he doesn't need to apologise for his every action - or rather, explain and report them all. We're both tense and nervous, if for different reasons, and that's ideal for raising stress levels; and the harder we try, the harder it becomes to relax, and the easier it becomes to say and do all the wrong things. In both directions. As much as I hate the connotations of this particular saying in this particular context, 'hosumalla saa vaan kusipäisiä lapsia.'

So am I happy with the choices I've made? So far, yes and no. Surprised with that answer? Not in the least. Time will show us many things, so I won't say anything more on that first impression. The country itself, though, is growing on me; and while the lifestyle still feels alien to me, it has its own appeal. Things, like smoking indoors, that last time didn't quite qualify as a bother, but that I was nonetheless very much aware of, go unnoticed half the time. The language has started to creep into my brain as well, even if my first Dutch word (excluding the ones I learned and forgot last time, and profanities) was 'afwasmiddel' - dishwashing liquid.
Bottom line is that the difficulties are what I expected them to be, and I'd hate to leave. I discussed with W, a Polish art student roommate, yesterday, and she called me a nomad. I wondered for a bit and then refused the title, because my life on the road is not so much a conscious choice as it is a combination of semiconscious wanderlust and unfortunate circumstance; it's not the way I want to keep on going. I want to settle down for a while, spend some time in the same location with at least some semblance of constancy, and while this might not seem like that at a first glance, there's more solidity to this life and place and group and even relationship than there's been to anything during this past year.

Tomorrow's the time for a bureau run again. Paired with New Year's Eve, it puts at least some kind of a schedule in place for a while, and makes it easier to remember dates. If all goes well, I should have a Dutch social security number soon enough, and at least somewhere to start with a job hunt; but again, I won't say more on the future before the present catches up to it. I'll just hope for the best in every regard.

Writer's block. There's something I should write, a reply to a message board post by a friend, but I can't get around to it. I can't really wrap my head around anything verbal at the moment, not even the games I play on a daily basis.

Convalescence is going well. It seems I'm even recovering faster than expected, which reassures me somewhat, regarding my immune system as well as the flight I have waiting for me. Sure, I still think I'll sound silly when I get to Holland, but it'll pass, and hopefully by that time I'll already be able to eat properly. I hate watching every bite.
On the downside, I feel constantly drunk, with all the annoying effects like dizziness and unsteady walking, but without all the fun parts. I'm so medicated all the time I'm not sure what I should be feeling. My tongue is half numb, and I can't taste things properly. But at least now I can already open my mouth all the way, and the cuts on my lips have healed.

Still don't know if I'll miss Christmas or not. The fun parts of it anyway.
And I'm still gripped by mounting dread. In a sense it's true that when you have no idea what in life to call a priority - except, in this case, love - you can do pretty much anything with it, leave without regrets, because you have nothing to lose. But in another sense there's always something to lose, and in this case I guess I could call it my fragile balance - I've achieved a modicum of happiness and comfort. I feel more like myself than I have in years and then some. D has done much to help in that department, but how will the positive influence of having him around and the negative influence of not being home balance out? Will I be as painfully homesick as I was in England? Or was it about England in the first place, or just about everything that was wrong otherwise and came out triggered by the alienation?

These pills are making me sleepy. I feel dull, robbed of my best edge and judgment. Like I was running on half power. I hope I can stop soon; feeling stupid has never been a preference.

How I wish I was already there.

I'm just thinking. These guys have had me visit them thrice so far, for the same reasons. The first time around, the abscess was there, but the doctor persistently told me it wasn't, and prescribed antibiotics. They didn't help much, as I suppose should've been expected. The second time, with the same doctor I might add, the abscess suddenly was there - it was no different from the first time - and had to be cut open. I figured he'd fucked it up still that same day, when the anesthetic wore off. In fact I was suspicious already at the doctor's practice, since I was only spitting out blood, nothing else. Now this other guy seemingly succeeded at doing what should've been done two weeks ago, albeit impossibly painfully; I actually feel better for it. Nauseated, because of the blood I'm swallowing, but better.

Now if I was an American, I'd know the answer to this immediately, but as a Finn, I have to ask; is there anyone I could sue for damages?

It's not like this costs me much, bearing the benefit of a lifetime medical insurance, but still: people get paid loads of money for mistreating me and making problems worse. Shouldn't there be at least some kind of  consequences?

D calls this my "psychosomatic malaria", and I still don't know whether I should laugh or cry at it. Suffice to say, it started as a flu precisely the day my last period started, and my next period is maybe a week away, while this bastard disease (so far, nobody knows what) still endures.

God I hope it won't do so for long. Today was, in a word, awful. I'd like to respect people who've actually had to endure rape, but somebody, somewhere, put it so well I can't help quoting: the only thing worse than rape is surgery. Besides being invasive of one's privacy, it painfully puts things in holes that aren't supposed to be there in the first place. And while what I went through really doesn't count as much, compared to, say, heart transplants, considering I was wide awake all the time, it doesn't fall much short.

I can't remember the last time anything would've hurt as much as opening that goddamned abscess. Thanks to topical anesthetic, I hardly felt the cut itself, but when he opened it to get the pus out... With those spreader things... I fucking cried, and moaned and writhed in pain. Thinking back on it, I think I had my very first panic attack right there and then. Or at least so I would think, appearing pale as a ghost afterwards, positively ashen - okay, so my mirror was a bus window, but the guy sitting in front of me (and looking like Conan O'Brien) was perfectly normally coloured by comparison. That, and the uncontrollable weeping, the fact that I momentarily lost all ability to articulate, and could only breathe in short, shallow gasps.  Even an hour after the actual operation, I was still teetering on the brink of tears, and definitely can't and won't physically talk to anybody today.
If I was afraid of doctors before, this definitely solidifies my heartfelt terror for the white-coated profession.

Yeah. "No hurt feelings." 110€, thanks, for sticking knives into you and making you swallow pus, blood and local anesthetic for a few days hence. Well, at least I'll be losing a bit of weight over this... I haven't really been able to eat since Sunday.

Wonderful world.