Visiting Former Me’s Grave
My life wasn’t always like this. The future that I had envisioned for myself was a lot different compared to the life I’m living today. The why’s and how’s of where I am right now are very painful to think on, but I think the time for it has finally arrived. You have to start somewhere to get to where you want to be, after all.
Watch the speedpaint for the illustration featured in this article and listen to me reminiscing on the life I used to have, everything that I have lost to trauma and illness, and how I’ve chosen to cope with the loss. You can view my most recent YouTube video that expands on the topic of today’s article directly in the embed below or by clicking this link that takes you to my YouTube channel.
grave.
When I graduated from lukio* in 2019, I enrolled into university straight thereafter. I have explored my experiences of being a university student and their correlation to how I started working on the project and how my health collapsed in previous articles. You can read those articles underneath the tag university by entering the keyword into the search bar of the blog overview, or by clicking this link. To sort of summarize things a bit, I enrolled into uni to study general literature, general linguistics, Finnish, and Swedish. My goal was to become a Finnish and literature teacher as well as a Finnish as a foreign language teacher for refugees and immigrants. That was the life I was working towards, that was what I wanted from my future. Although art has always been a constant force in my life, for the longest time, I wanted it to remain as nothing more than a hobby for me. I stopped dreaming about the career of an artist when I started going to school at the age of 7 and discovered the wonders of academia. What I am doing right now couldn’t be farther from what I actually wanted to do. That is to say that, to some extent or another, what you see me working on didn’t come to be because I wanted it to. More so than anything, it came to be out of a necessity, from the desperate urge to survive and persevere, despite all the odds that were against me.
University and the field of academia was what I wanted for myself. My thirst for knowledge and passion for learning used to override my desire to create every day of the week as I was working on new essays for my literature classes. The need to learn and understand the human condition through the only thing that truly separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom—language—was my most important purpose in life. Everything else was secondary. I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else than standing in front of a classroom of students and teaching them the grammatical cases of the Finnish language, and reviewing their papers on the novels they’d chosen to read for my classes. I had dreams about the graduation ceremonies where I was the Finnish and literature teacher of the lukio I worked at, and I watched my students walk on the stage to receive their diplomas and white caps** with tears in my eyes. Finding teaching in the years I was at uni was, and remains, one of my best experiences of adulthood. There was nothing else out there for me, I was certain of it.
The year 2022 changed my life in ways that I haven’t even fully realized yet. It’s been over four years since everything came crashing down, and I still find myself thinking about what exactly happened in desperation to understand it all. The summer of 2022 brought me the diagnosis of BPD, my first real suicide attempt, and the suspension of my university studies. Since then, I have had to completely resign from university, hitting the last nail on the coffin of teacher-me. I was never able to finish either of my uni degrees, and now that I have officially resigned, I will never get the studies that I did complete back, even if I someday choose to enroll back in. This happened, like the majority of the tragedies of my life, out of my personal control and particularly forcefully too. Leaving university behind once and for all was my only way to some type of regular income, as the social security benefits continue to be hacked by the right-wing government of the country. I had to say goodbye to the dreams of becoming a teacher for good simply to afford to stay alive. That, if anything, is an example of an unjust world.
I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to claim that this sudden departure from the world of academia triggered this massive wave of grief to wash over me. I lost something that used to be a daily thing for me in my life, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Granted, going back to uni was never really something I even thought about simply because of my health and extensive trauma in educational institutions, but having it ripped away from me by the same system that enabled my abusers to traumatize me this heavily is a devastating loss if anything. I couldn’t even make my own decision on whether I fully want to step away from the life I had been building for myself, much like I haven’t had the luxury to choose anything that’s happened to me. I’m getting sick and tired of being thrased and thrown around like a puppet doll, both by the system and those who personally wronged me. I have never had agency over my own life, and I still don’t. I think that’s what hurts the most about this, in the end.
But you have to learn to let go one day, and I hope this is the beginning of me coming to terms with that fact. Grieving the loss of a me who could have been the best Finnish and literature teacher some Kid has ever had is what I need to start working on. Pretending like the hurt doesn’t exist is only denying the reality and choosing to live in a lie. No matter how much it hurts to accept the reality, sometimes that truly is the thing that saves you from the worst of it all. I think I’ve allowed myself to keep everything inside for way too long; now it’s the time to finally face the music, as they say.
I hope you’ll welcome me on this journey of letting go of what no longer serves me, and letting in what has always been there to keep me afloat.
Lighting the candles,
ichigonya
⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅
CHAPTER 16: GRIEF — BEGINNING
___________________
*Lukio is a secondary school in the Finnish education system, coming right after last basic education level, lower secondary school. Lukio students receive a comprehensive education on academic subjects and art subjects, they are 15—16 years old when they enroll and 18—19 years old when they graduate. Lukio is somewhat comparable to the American high school, but its educational level is regarded as higher than high school and its unique structure is significantly different compared to that of high school’s.
**The white cap, ‘valkolakki’ in Finnish, is the graduation cap lukio students receive after completing their degree and matricular exams.