Tomorrow could be boring

Living out of bags

I once read somewhere that Bobbi Brown keeps pre-packed bags ready for all occasions. That sounds so wonderful to me right now; I want to do that when we have enough room to keep pre-packed bags in. The flat is officially on the market and we've got the first person coming to view it this Friday. Half our posessions are already sitting in Timo's mum's garage, waiting for us to find a proper home to settle down in.

Recently I've been travelling a little bit more again; back and forth between Surrey and Poole, London and Leeds, mostly. Just came back from Leeds this evening. I'm tired, but over-tired so that it's difficult to stop thinking.

When I was younger (a phrase that immediately conjures up an image of a wrinkled old prune, which, I hasten to add, I am not, though occasionally feel like), I travelled with a much less conscious awareness of the little discomforts and nuisances one encounters. The wonderful child-like way of experiencing the nasty stuff as it happens rather than worrying about it in advance or getting unduly stressed out about it afterwards. Although I did get my first ever migraine on a trip to France when I was 18. It was such a frightening experience and then I had a very long train journey to La Rochelle the next day, which felt like torture. I was scared because I'd never felt so ill (but as a true testament to how laissez-faire I was about that sort of stuff back then, I didn't actually go to the doctor until back home in Finland some weeks later!).

After nearly 20 years of migraines, I'd never really considered that they could be treated because nothing I'd ever been given had worked. And there could be a huge gap, even 6 months when I wouldn't get a full-blown migraine, so I'd slowly start to think "pff, it's not so bad, maybe I won't get one again" until the next one would hit and I wanted to head back to France, but via time-travel, back to the guillotine days and have them chop my head off. The pain and nausea is indescribable and half of my face sort of paralyses, a bit like in a stroke. Then, providing all goes well, I pass out and wake up feeling groggy, sore, disoriented and craving something sweet. If all doesn't go well, you don't want to know.

Anyway, as an almost incidental aside into investigating why since last summer I've had benign, but annoying vertigo, my consultant sent me to a neurologist.

The neurologist turned out to be a lovely chap who'd been to Finland (I always find that a good sign, haha, only half-joking) and prescribed topiramate, one small dose to be taken daily. Possibly for the rest of my life. Depends if it works and depends if I get side-effects.

Now the trouble about side-effects is that technically you should read them to be aware of them, but in reality, it's sort of better not to, because you could accidentally create the side-effects by having suggested to yourself that they could occur.

But I'm pretty sure that before topiramate I would not have lost my return ticket from Leeds, accidentally packed the remote control from the hotel room I stayed in (!), or spent a whole half an hour on the phone to a colleague last week, convinced it was one weekday when it was in fact, another. One of the side-effects has to do with short-term memory. I don't think there is anything wrong with my memory, but something has made me even more scatter-brained than normal. This should be entertaining. As if travelling wasn't stressful enough.

Or it could be the stress of selling this property. I don't feel it on a conscious level. I just feel this diluted sense of "home". As though the concept of a core safe-haven is eroding from underneath me without a replacement in sight. One of the things I really need to stay healthy is a private, secure, cosy nest. Now this has turned into a show home - to a place people will be coming to "view" and evaluate, somewhere that isn't our home any more and we must begin to say our goodbyes to. And I have no idea how long this process will take and when we'll be moving and where to. At least we have a rough idea of the general area, but that's it.

I've toyed with the idea of getting a caravan for a few months. It would certainly solve the bag problem.

The trouble with being a science student

I read a lot and I think a lot.

I don't want to live forever, but I'd like a way of knowing what happens to the world, the human race, the Universe and everything.

There are days when I wonder what the point of living is, given that it's likely we'll [the Universe] either crunch or expand out of existence anyway, so even if we somehow [rather improbably at this point] manage to colonise space, there will be precisely zero left of all of our weighty human efforts at the end of it all.

Of course if there's a crunch, there will hopefully be a new Big Bang as a result of it (which makes one wonder how many Universes there have been before ours), but that'll be like shaking the celestial Etch-a-Sketch and starting again, with no trace of our "achievements"; just the building blocks everything is made up of.

Have a nice day!

Driving, the deadly dance

Driving on the motorway is like a deadly dance where one must instinctively know all the possible steps. There is no choreography - only intuition and reactions. The focus it takes to move confidently and safely in fast traffic creates an odd sense of serenity. A layer of my brain; perhaps the one that's normally occupied by irrelevant distractions and damaging over-thinking, gets sucked into keeping me alive instead. (My macabre side now expects that saying this out loud means I will one day get seriously injured or die in a road traffic accident. Let's hope not).

I'm not talking about over-confidence. Far from it. The resources demanded seem to free something up; like removing all the background interference. And that's where the thoughts start flowing. The landscape, cars, noise (and the music I'm listening to) all merge into a symphony of focus and clarity. I can't be the only one this happens to: I seem to get some of my best ideas and best thoughts - and do some of my best problem solving when I'm driving at breakneck speed. (This certainly does not apply to juddering in an endless queue on the M25).

Given that at 70 mph my Smart starts to rattle a bit and at 80 mph (which of course I wouldn't actually admit to reaching because that'd be over the speed limit, so let's say, theoretically, at 80 mph) you get a real sense of driving a toy car mounted on a turbo engine, it's a little crazy that this is when I feel the least anxious, worried or jittery. Only when there are bad cross-winds do I snap fully into "oh crap, better slow down and keep this thing on the road", and out blows the meditative state.

The way I've come to call this meditative state in my head is "singing". It feels as if there is a release from the mundane; as if at all other times, the world and I are out of sync, but when everything is whooshing past, suddenly my thought waves and surroundings are aligned. And the road and everything around me is light; and my mind is singing.

You'd think there were no supermarkets here... or something

Considering that this year (in stark contrast to last year) I feel very well fed indeed, one might find it a little surprising that I apparently needed to stockpile food today. Alas, it wasn't just any food - today was our annual visit to the Finnish Christmas festival, held at the Finn Guild in Rotherhithe. Timo and I now have the bread, mustard, porridge, lingonberry preserve and, of course, chocolate to see us through the winter season. Or thereabouts. I've asked him to hide the bulk of the chocolate until Christmas. I'm going to try to be good.

Unfortunately they'd sold out of one of the key products I use in traditional Finnish seasonal cooking. It's nothing that amazing; it's a type of syrup, but there really doesn't seem to be an English equivalent. Bugger. Maybe I could ask for someone to send me a tub of it.

I really enjoy the long process of making really old fashioned Finnish Christmas dishes. I don't even attempt to make all of them for one occasion, but there are a couple that take up to 2 days of preparation and cooking time. It's a kind of journey, deeply filled with nostalgia. Smells, textures, ritual. Especially since I seem to have a bit of a knack for it all; everything tends to come out "just like my grandma made them". I still have some of her handwritten recipes.

Looks like I may even be able to have 2 to 3 days off for Christmas this year, which would be absolutely amazing. Such a luxury! The downside of having any professional involvement in retail is that you're there to make sure everyone else's Christmas is great.

This time of the year is bittersweet. Last year's fledgeling attempts to inbue positive thoughts, warmth and fulfillment where all those hollow, sore spots were was a success. I hope to add more this year. And the next. And perhaps, bit by bit, the strangulation of old pain will lessen to nothing more than a chilly undercurrent.

The only thing that truly sucks about being away from Finland

I've been here, in England, for almost 14 years. I've just got used to saying 13. The one thing that completely blows about being over here is how much I miss my closest friend Tuulia. I miss our daily interaction; how by just spending time together we could make each other feel better about ourselves, gain perspective about our problems and feel accepted and understood. Our friendship started in University, all those years ago and we only spent a year or so getting to know each other until I left. Yet somehow, we were close from the moment we met. It has never happened before or since.

I'm not alone and abandoned here by any means. I've got a reasonably wide circle of people with whom I connect on variety of levels. And there's Timo who has built a nest with me in our studio and with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. Something about the way in which we are so natural and raw and loving with each other has helped me unlock the final doors to my real emotions. They'd been barricaded for over a decade, if not longer. I don't have to be afraid of my feelings any more.

Now, with the new job - a job where all of my education, life experience and work experience come together and combine with the release from having to try to mold myself into a company culture, or a job role that wasn't quite the right fit... I already feel liberated and like I can breathe freely. And the potential to excel and to achieve great things is shining like a lighthouse in the horizon. I am elated about all this. Even if nothing spectacular followed my initial job role, I'd be elated. Just to be able to be ME at work, not some kind of construct, or to hold back because others might get intimidated. The new company I work for relishes talent and develops its people rather than the other way around. I have been given permission to grow. It's the biggest gift I've had for years.

Then there's the stuff from last year and 2004; the illness thing that my last entry referred to. It's really all behind me now and sometimes I have to almost pinch myself. From desperation to this; it feels miraculous. It didn't come without some hard battles and I've learned to praise myself about those things. Not to focus on what went wrong, but to focus on what went right.

Apparently denying your true self and repressing your feelings can be a huge source of stress. No wonder I feel like I have been reborn. In so many ways, on so many levels. Sometimes I find myself grinning just because I enjoy eating a good meal without pain. Or because I can go for a long day out in London, come back and not be utterly wiped out. Or because I don't have to hide anything from anyone. Or because I never have to crave for closeness; it's there even before I need it. So many things are good right now.

And yet, there is that one utterly shitty thing about my life. My life doesn't include enough time with Tuulia. She can write an email to me that makes me laugh and then I find myself crying because I am reminded of what I'm missing. Perhaps this is overly sentimental of me, but so be it. I miss her so desperately. Seeing each other for a week or so once a year is not enough. Some years we've managed twice, but it's not common.

In my ideal, dream life, I would be spending some time out of every year in Finland - not just a week once a year, but a few weeks here and there. The only way I've thought this possible is by starting my own business, or working freelance. But there might be other ways. Only time will tell where the road I'm currently on will take me, but for the first time ever, I can feel everything heading in the right direction all at once with nothing being compromised by the journey. I wouldn't have thought this possible, but apparently it is.

So, silver it is then

Boo. Finland lost the ice hockey Olympic gold to Sweden. Meh. Silver it is then.

In other news, I'm beginning to get quite antsy about my start date and training schedule at the new job. I'll be doing a bit of a road-trip, which should be fun, but with a week to go before it all kicks off, I've now reached the stage where I just want to get on with it already.

Today I'm washing laundry, cleaning perfume making equipment, making some nice pasta thing for dinner and later we'll go to watch Memoirs of a Geisha at the cinema. During the week, I've got some chores to get through (going to the dentist for the first time in absolutely ages. I'm really anxious about dental treatment and not looking forward to it at all).

I guess I'll also have all the good stuff of "not going to work" - maybe this week I'll finish some of my half-read books and maybe I'll even get my Black Mage up a couple of levels in Final Fantasy Online.

Grumpy now. Silver. Bah.

You are here too

This time of the year makes me melancholy in a deep and cutting way. After it is over, I always forget exactly how it feels (because I want to forget) and in the end, I always remember exactly how it feels - because the cycle of life is such, that this time of the year has the inevitable tendency to re-occur.

I remember the bad things, all in a flash. They appear to me in dreams, half-digested, half-felt, they appear to me when I'm eating a bread roll, they seep through my eyes when I watch, or look at something harmless and unconnected. When November's days get shorter, colder and darker and threaten with the imminent arrival of December, that's when I remember.

Curiously, every year thus far, since the death of my maternal grandmother on Christmas eve long ago, has managed to add to the bad things quota. The worst events have certainly involved death, but I now realise that last year, another stone was added inside the coffin of Bad Things Before Christmas. The mental despair and physical pain I was embroiled in and the anxious undertone to the, then, fledgling relationship Timo and I had, have left their marks. What adds weight, I think, is the knowledge that I now possess; that I was right, they were wrong, and that at the time I naively thought everything would be better in January when in fact I had almost a whole year's worth of suffering ahead.

I recognised the taste of that fear and pain from back then when again, today, I had a flash-back moment. I see, I thought. You are here too now.

Undoubtedly the worst of all Bad Things for this time of the year is the sequence of events that led to my mother's suicide.

Waiting for a cab in front of the hospital after chemotherapy. Mother defiantly smoking, her birdlike fingers red raw from the icy November breeze. What does it matter if I get lung cancer too? Perfectly manicured, bright pink talons clutch the cigarette stub.

Going to the laundrette with her sheets and towels. Cutting her thinning hair. I hate going to the hairdresser. You do it.

And in the end, the police, the corpse grimacing at me from the mortuary, the cremation, all that and more to come. All that and more.

In the hope that this year will break the chain, I have cautiously dipped my toes into the festive spirit and homely feelings. This Christmas will be spent in two ways at our household. First, a very brief break from the madness of running a store (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). We will have a very private, very basic small celebration. Just the two of us, in our flat. This time last year we hadn't moved in together yet, so this will be a first.

Then, at some point before New Year, we will drive down to the coast and spend a couple of days with Timo's mother.

Today, I bought a small Christmas tree for our flat. It looks sweet, but slightly apologetic; as if it's somewhat embarrassed to be calling itself a Christmas tree. But it has potential. And that's enough for now, I think.

Shit and leeches

There is a wonderful thunderstorm out there, watering my garden for me. Well, it won't get the containers very well and I'll have to do them myself later. It is just such a relief to have the back of the unbearable heat finally broken by soothing rain. The air feels more breathable already and once the lightning will subside the world will seem livable-in again.

Something else has come to its storm before the calm. I've had to squeeze, what appear finally to have been the last reserves of mental energy I had left, to fight with my GP and get him to refer me privately. More specifically, my last few medical visits went like this:

Few weeks ago, I'd once again spent several nights in a row with debilitating "attacks" and despite having gone to work as normal, I felt that things were heading the wrong way again.

I begun to seriously worry that nobody would listen to me and that both my doctors (both the GP and the GI specialist at the hospital) had now written me off as an IBS/psychosomatic or even a hypochondriac patient. Nevertheless, going to the GP after a bad time was really the only thing I could do, especially since the emergency services had also failed to investigate my attacks any further, so off I went, to the GP. Once again.

Other than being able to obtain more painkillers (without which functioning normally would have been out of the question for the last few months), I didn't honestly know in what way going to see my doctor would actually help.

I had, however, figured out, by a process of elimination, that I had one last straw - to try the abdominal ultrasound again; after all, that had been the one diagnostic test that I'd been really unhappy with and had told so to my GP so immediately after, pleading for it to be redone. At the time he had refused to re-refer me, putting his entire trust on the competency of the NHS hospital staff and choosing to ignore his patient's instincts and accounts.

Timo came along. He has been with me during several key tests and visits, which is wonderful for two reasons. He's provided so much loving support that many of the uncomfortable or distressing experiences I've had to go through haven't seemed half as bad, but even more importantly, he has acted as a witness for what has been said to me and for how I have been treated.

So we sat there. I had decided to draw a detailed chart of where my pain occurred, how it travelled through my torso and into the mid- and upper back and I'd also written a step-by-step account of what happens during an attack and a description of the cycle of pain and symptoms at other times.

My GP glanced at this paper, but didn't read it. He pushed it towards me a little; a frustrated gesture of rejection. It then lay on his desk as his hands motioned in tandem with his lecture: "Look, you have had blood tests, an ultrasound, x-rays, Barium swallow CT scan, Gastroscopy, Colonoscopy and so on. So many tests! How many more tests do you want? Do you want a big needle poked into your liver? We haven't found anything physically wrong with you. Your hospital consultant has written to me and together we have concluded that this looks like IBS. We can't find anything physically wrong."

I responded: "I hate hospitals. Hospitals make me anxious if anything - they are the last place in the world I'd want to be in. I hate tests. Of course I don't want any more tests and of course I don't want a needle in my liver. All I am saying is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I know that I have something physically wrong with me, but it's just that nobody has found it yet. Please could you refer me privately to have an abdominal ultrasound, since that is the one diagnostic test that I feel was very poorly performed and I just need to have it done again, if anything, just to put my mind at rest. I fully accept that I may have developed a stress-related condition on top of what is actually wrong with me, since my body and my mind have gone through enormous amounts of stress in the last 10-11 months this has gone on. But if I have IBS, it is not the main issue. I am stressed because I am ill, not ill because I am stressed. I am definitely not depressed about anything except about being ill. In every other way, I am in fact happiest than I have ever been in my life in every other aspect; in love, looking forward to the future, full of enthusiasm for our plans and hoping to have an interesting career. But being debilitated and in constant pain is ruining my life."

He looked frustrated and wore one of those expressions that people wear when they are not really listening to you and are just waiting for you to finish so that they themselves may speak once more.

He said: "You are convinced that you have something physically wrong with you. But you have not. In my experience and in all my years as a doctor, I have never seen a case with the severity of the symptoms staying more or less the same with no significant move to better or worse - and then to have gone through all these tests and with them coming back clear.... that wouldn't have turned out to be psychosomatic. You are putting yourself through this stress; you create the stress for yourself and your condition is psychosomatic. You could perhaps try Homeopathy, or some other kind of treatment. But the medical science does not have all the answers. Have you thought of what your life will be like if you spend the rest of it convinced that there is something physically wrong with you, looking for the answers, wasting money on painful and expensive tests - when instead, if you accepted that you didn't have anything physically wrong with you, you could get on with your life. You are doing this to yourself. Until you accept that this is psychosomatic, there is nothing more I can do to help you."

Timo and I looked at each other in horror. His expression was restrained, but angry. Timo doesn't usually get involved, but he spoke up: "I think what she is saying that would it be possible... I mean could you entertain the possibility, that perhaps one of those tests had been wrong?"

"Of course one of the tests could have been wrong, but she has had so many, I mean, really, if you want to go private, sure, but as long as you are out there, convinced that there is something wrong with you and offering your money to people, there will always be those who will be more than willing to take it away from you. You will be throwing money away."

I re-iterated that I was not prepared to back down on this. That I was utterly conviced that my problem was not psychosomatic. That I wanted to put my mind at rest and have the abdominal ultrasound re-done.