Can I be brutally honest? May 31st, 2021 Topic: Bravery
Hi everyone. I just realised how grim the long silence after the previous topic of “Death” might have seemed to those who follow, but I am here to tell you that everything is okay. I am here to break that silence once more.
It’s been months since I’ve last written anything here. There’s been a lot on my plate between then and now, so writing hasn’t felt necessary. To be honest, I didn’t even know what to write about. I felt like none of it really matters, since even without writing about them, I can dwell in my thoughts on my own. But that isn’t the point of writing this blog. The point is to be brave and write, even though it feels pointless, but as we all know, thoughts and the process towards them are never pointless. I felt like I’ve met new people and sharing all this personal info with them is just going to be TMI, but frankly, that should not be my concern. If it was my concern, I wouldn’t be writing for me anymore. Plus, if writing this blog is letting me to reveal the most ‘me’ things there are and if that feels like too much for some, then those people probably shouldn’t know me at all.
One of the things that has happened during the past few months, is that I finally found myself a therapist. Today was my second session, and I was excited about it — or anxious (I still have a hard time figuring out which is which). But after the session ended and I was able to conquer my fear by reading out loud a very personal letter, the anxiety turned into happiness. It felt like I’ve just started to study in a school where the main subject is me. Doing constant work every week by doing homework and tasks given to me by the teacher (a.k.a. the therapist) to hopefully in the near future to graduate as a bachelor of ‘me-ology’? ‘I-ology’? Wow I haven’t google that, hopefully it doesn’t mean something awful. The point is, I’m finally getting to know me better.
And to know me better, I want to talk about bravery and the best way to get to bravery, is to talk about the letter. The first homework I got from therapy, was to write a letter to my future self and in that letter, I’d list all the things I want to tackle and hopefully overcome in the therapy. I chose to write to myself in 5 years. That is an awful long time, considering that two years ago none of us would have thought that our life looks like this now, so double that and put some extra on top and try to envision what you’d like to tell to that person. Difficult, eh? It took me almost a whole week before I could get my head around what to do with the task, because I was thinking it all wrong to begin with. Sometimes, it’s hard to recognise the things that are so obvious to you, which later revealed to be the whole point of the letter — to sort those things out. If you have problematic or even toxic behaviour mechanisms and though processes, the best way for me at least was to write them down and really separate them from myself. So I wrote an honest letter. So honest, that afterwards I wanted to have nothing to do with it.
When the therapy session began, my therapist asked me to read it out loud. Instead, I started talking about other stuff, what had happened during the last week and the anxiety that the letter had brought up. I tried to keep the topics interesting and captivating, so that we’d just forget about the letter and I wouldn’t have to read it. You know, that moment in elementary school when your whole class had done presentations about some shit that wasn’t going to be relevant anymore when you reach high-school, and you’d be the next one in alphabetical order to go present your shit, but then the recess starts and you sigh with relief when the teacher tells everyone that the remaining presentations are to be held next week or something — that was what I was hoping for and that was what I subconsciously tried to achieve with my blabbering. But the weird thing is, there’s no one else on my class, so sooner or later I’d have to read it, and sooner would be better since we could move to bigger topics. And don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t just blabbering about stories of my favourite Pokémon cards, I was opening up about real things. But in the end, nothing ended up being as real as the honesty that came with reading out loud that letter. When I mentioned earlier that it’s the best for me to write things down to separate them from me, I probably lied. The actual best thing is to also read them afterwards — that’s when they materialise as separate things. If I’d just write them down, I could just throw them away and not think about them ever again. And writing all these thoughts down here is starting to help me see the importance of this blog, because one day when I read all these texts out loud, I’ll understand what I was trying to let go of with this process. In the end, it could be that the letter was just the synopsis of this whole blog.
At the very end of the session, my therapist wanted me to do an exercise, where I was supposed to imagine myself doing what I love doing the most. First of all, it was quite difficult to settle on a single thing— the one that I like to do the most. Chilling out with friends? Reading comics? Playing games? Jerking off? Probably not the same as your list, so stop judging… But I ended up with a broader topic — creating. The one thing I value over everything else, at least in that moment when I had to decide what it would be, was the sheer joy of creating something new. Would it be a song, a story or a drawing, literally whatever, I do find immense joy in those moments. On the flip-side, I also find extreme despair in there too, when things aren’t going as I’d want them to go, but that’s a topic for another day.
As I dwelled in the realm of my thoughts thinking about the thing I love to do the most, my therapist asked me to picture a resource or a strength that I’d love to have there. And maybe you can already guessed what I ended up with?
Bravery.
Creating something — anything — takes a great amount of bravery. The creation is often so very personal, that you have to be brave to let it out, not talking about even showing it to others. And it’s bravery that’s been fleeing from me in the past years. I’ve been able to take huge leaps to a better direction, but from my point of view the route often seems like a slow trail, like a slug’s. But even slugs get somewhere, right?
In other news, this slug has also spent a lot less time on social media during the past few months. I even deleted Instagram from my phone for a while! I guess I’ve been able to focus more on other things, but I’m trying to find a balance between that online presence and this irl one again. So for you also, if you’ve felt overwhelmed in the online platforms, remember to be honest to yourself and take some distance from it — it might really help. Heck, maybe you’ll even want to get back there at some point!
And also in other other news, I’m moving. I’m saying goodbye to Helsinki in a few weeks and relocating myself in Tampere! So I guess, congratulations Tampere?
I’m happy if you read this entry after my prolonged break from writing, it means a lot to me. And hopefully through this, I will regain some of that bravery to pursue doing the things that I want to do.
Thank you.
