About hate and anger

I really didn't want to post this, because I want to be a person who doesn't hate. But I am struggling with that and am confused why. So I decided to write about it. Maybe it will help me to get over it. I gave myself a love therapy session here earlier and it helped. So maybe this will too. But I warn you, it will be a rant. If you came here looking for something sophisticated, you won't find it here.

I'm far from perfect and apparently have  many insecurities that I'm trying to work on. In general I really like people. Many people inspire me and I want to learn from their good qualities and develop myself to become better. I want to see the good in people.

© Yle Areena: Au Pairit Los Angelesissa.

But sometimes I have a bad day and feel disappointed and it's just not that easy. And I catch myself thinking bad and unhelpful thoughts. For example, the other day, I was watching a Finnish reality TV show Au Pairit Los Angelesissa  ("Au pairs in Los Angeles"), and noticed that I thought that one of the girls had a terrible style. She wore a lot of really cakey make-up and spider-like fake lashes, and I just didn't like that type of make-up. But then I thought about it and realised how judgemental I was. She was a teenager which is the best time to try out absolutely any style! She clearly liked her style and it was the way she expressed herself — actually she was great and really smart! After that realisation she became my favourite person in the series. I absolutely hate the fact how quickly I judged her in the first place based on her appearance. Just because I personally wouldn't use some sort of make-up doesn't mean that there's something wrong with that style.

Maybe I was so quick to judge after I was bullied at school, which has made me nervous around certain kind of people. And suspicious about certain appearances. It's crazy and I should try to learn to be less judgemental. And I most definitely don't hate any of my bullies. I wouldn't even be able to name them if I had to.

But there are two people I still do hate. And I don't know what to do about that. So here I am to confess you everything about my unhelpful thoughts.

© Fab After Forty.

The first person really angers me. A few years ago, I was suffering from depression and was really lonely. I asked her if she would like to meet up for a cup of coffee with me sometime. We had previously spoken about that, so it wasn't out of the blue. Although, of course in UK you sometimes suggest meeting up when you don't really mean it. But still, I thought I'd ask because I really needed more pleasant activities in my day and a human to talk to. We were messaging about how we were doing and I was honest with her, about my anxiety and depression. She said that other people's company helps with that. So I asked her if she would like to meet me for coffee because at the time I didn't feel like I had other people I could just meet like that. And then she told me that I should just go to therapy and get professional help and take a gap year. And honestly, I had tried to get to therapy but the queue was 2 years long. It can be difficult for a healthy person to understand how difficult it is to find and get professional help for mental health issues. Often you have to be self-destructive to even get on the waiting list. But I didn't want her to be my therapist. I just wanted to have coffee with a real human being. I am still hurt and angry about that and I hate her. I hate her! And I don't know why. But I never told her how much her words hurt me. She's still my Facebook friend and she keeps posting really inconsiderate and self-boasting comments on Facebook. But maybe I am just so annoyed with everything she posts because I have such strong feelings about that incident and her. I have considered deleting her, but I'm not sure if that's the best solution. 

She reminds me of another person I used to hate. There was a similar incident around the same time, when I was really sad about having no one in my life. I was so depressed and slightly suicidal and I was crying at someone else's home, because I just didn't want to go home alone. And I was told to leave. And I wasn't even angry because I was told to leave. I completely understand how annoying it must have been to have me around that day. I was angry because she told someone who was crying and suicidal to go away. You should never do that. You take the time to make them a cup of tea. If you don't have time to listen to them, you tell them that they are welcome to stay as long as they need to, even if you are busy. Or you make other arrangements. You make sure they are okay to walk home. WHATEVER. Never, walk pass a crying lonely person, offer a tissue. Never leave a suicidal person alone. Would you walk pass a person ready to jump of a bridge? Would you kick out a suicidal person? If so, it's very likely that I will hate you.

©Quotes Lover.

At least for a moment. I don't actually hate her anymore, I don't have such feelings towards her, but I still haven't forgiven her for kicking out a suicidal person, even though I have forgiven her kicking out me.

The other person I notice myself hating hasn't actually done anything like that. She didn't invite me to her Hallowe'en party once, which is hardly a reason to even dislike someone. But I get these same angry and hateful feelings about her when I see things she posts on Facebook. (Because Facebook obviously is the place where the social things happen with people you don't actually see in real life anymore.) And I really used to like her. I've written a blog post in my less public blog about how much I missed her when I was on a summer holiday. And I used to be so happy to see her. But after that Hallowe'en party incident something changed and now everything about her annoys me. Do I need some therapy again? Or should I perhaps just delete her on Facebook and forget about her like she's forgotten about me?

©Rick Quotes.

Wow, I sound really shallow and bitter. I am not proud of this. I just want to let go so bad.

But yes, unfortunately, there are two people I still hate, but I am working on it. People suck and I need to accept it and get over it. This post really sucked. Maybe next time I'll tell you about people I love.

I dyed my hair!

It's spring time* and I needed some change...

*by which I mean: I finally took the Christmas tree down and the sun is shining!

... so I decided to change my hair.

I've never dyed my hair myself before, but I actually really dislike going to the hairdressers because it makes me feel so vulnerable. There was a phase in my life when I would actually cut my hair myself because I didn't trust the hairdresser to do it properly. Thankfully, after many disappointing and expensive trips to various hair salons, I have finally found a fantastic Polish salon where I've always got good service and they have managed to make my very difficult hair look great. But those disappointing salon experiences have taught me to be really nervous about other people touching my hair, so I wanted to learn to dye my own hair.

I started getting my hair dyed when I was 12, because it was the thing to do in the small Finnish town that I come from. "No one" had natural hair there. And I didn't want to stick out that much — I was already getting bullied enough for other reasons. But after I moved out of Finland I've let my natural highway grey, maantien harmaa, hair colour grow back and I've been pretty content with it.

My natural hair colour.

So this time, instead of being ashamed of my natural hair colour, I decided to dye my hair out of curiosity. I wanted to try what I would look like with another hair colour.

I meant to buy a permanent colour and checked what they were selling on Boots.com. They appeared to have some serious problems with their website and Boots Botanics Non-Permanent Hair Dye came up when I looked for a permanent hair-dye. I really liked the colour Palest Oatmeal Light Blonde and I didn't find this colour in the permanent section. Because it was cheap, I figured that I could just go and buy that one as a practice hair-dye. After all, I had no idea whether I would even manage to get it on my head. Maybe it was a mistake to choose the cheapest hair dye in found... But this is what I went with.

Batiste dry shampoo bottle did not come with the box.

I bought two boxes because I had read that sometimes you may need two boxes to dye longer hair. Each box contained conditioning hair colour, developing lotion, enriching after colour conditioner and gloves. To me all of those things sounded awfully similar and it took me a while to identify which ones I was supposed to mix together. Why could they not just call them "developer", "colourant" and "conditioner"?

I did my best at following instructions but actually made a mistake when I was trying to test whether I'm allergic to this hair dye or not. I was supposed to mix one teaspoon of the colourant with one teaspoon of the developing lotion, but I opened the whole cap of the colourant instead of the tiny tip of the cap. I poured too much out, freaked out and posted a Facebook status about it. My Facebook friends provided me with some great advice and moral support and I managed to mix the hair dye and got it all over my hair and nowhere else. 

Although, I had bought two boxes, I only used one. There was enough dye for covering my hair. The dye didn't smell too bad or make my head itch or eyes hurt. The box had some serious claims for a non-permanent hair dye though. It promised to make even brown hair blonde. I was feeling fairly sceptical about these claims, but since I figured that my hair was probably closer to "dark blonde", I gave it a chance.

I let it develop for 20 minutes as instructed before I rinsed it off and used the conditioner that came in the box. 

... Then I spent quite a lot of time analysing whether my hair colour actually even changed.

... Maybe it somehow looked more even? It seemed maybe a little bit more brown? Not darker or lighter, but just a little bit less grey. I guess non-permanent hair dye just can't do much to my hair. People did tell me that it's impossible to make your hair more blonde without just bleaching it, but of course I was rebellious and way too curious not to test the box's claims anyway.

When the sun came up the next day I analysed my hair in my kitchen where I had taken the photos of my hair before I had dyed it. Do you think it looks even a little bit different from what it was? 

 

I was a bit too excited about my little experiment and hair dying experience to even be disappointed that the dye didn't do more than that. The dye was quite conditioning, but if anyone wants to use the same one I advice you only to use it if your hair already is lighter than what you want to dye it to. The Botanics line has some other shades as well, all of them look like natural hair colours.

Result?

When I compared my hair against the sun, I could see that it did actually give my hair the tint it promised on the box, but because it didn't actually change my hair colour it was hard to see whether it had even done anything. But I guess you need a stronger dye to do more than this. The box says that it will wash off in 24 washes, so if it had done more, maybe it wouldn't wash off?

I've been analysing my hair colour a lot know and I feel that I like it more now  — not because it changed, but because now it's an "approved" colour because it came out of a box. No one would be able to sell a lame hair colour. So maybe next time someone asks what my natural hair colour is, I can describe it as pale oatmeal blonde instead of highway grey as they call it back in Finland.

I've already ordered another hair dye to see if permanent hair dyes are able to do my hair a bit more than this. I really like my hair now, but maybe I will be bored again in a couple of weeks time.

What do you think — do you think the colour changed? Do you dye your hair yourself? Any tips to this complete newbie?

Who even am I?

I find it very stressful to introduce myself. Especially when I have to tell people more than just my name. Should I tell them things that I don't even identify with? Not lies, but just things about me that I don't feel that really describe me very well. It would help to keep the distance and stop them from knowing the real me. I am afraid to tell people anything that would let them close to knowing the “real me”. What if they don't like me?

Am I cool enough to pull off these shoes?

Lately, I've started thinking about this problem more. I'm not sure why I feel that way. But then again, I'm not even sure how I would describe myself. What could I tell people? I'm not even sure if I am enough anything to present myself as something.

Then, I stumbled across a tumblr page called "...and that's who I am". There were many pictures with little sentences all ending with “and that's who I am”. I scrolled down the page and saved all the pictures I felt I identified with on my computer. It actually felt really therapeutic. I feel that seeing things that I identify with written on the computer screen made me feel that it was more justified to see those things as something that I am. It kind of felt like I was given a permission to be me. I looked at those pictures again today and I think I might be ready to be brave enough to share those pictures that represent me with the blogger world. It's scary, to show people who I really am, but I think I might be ready to do it. The blogger world is probably tired of “and that's who I am” related blog posts, but this is my first attempt, so I'm going to do it anyway.

I am going to use these pictures as a tool to show my readers who I am. I have saved so many pictures that I will have to do this over several posts. To make it even more personal, I'm going to say something about each picture. Although I will be using pictures I saved directly from the tumblr page, showing these things makes me feel very naked.

This first post will be the deepest and the darkest one.

Are you ready?

Last Friends

Happy autumn everyone!

It must be autumn since they've started selling advent calendars in shops.

Today, I wanted to tell you about something I realised recently after watching a Japanese TV series called Last Friends. But first, I am going to tell you why I was watching Last Friends!

ラスト・フレンズ

A long time ago, I set myself a life goal to visit all the continents. I've so far visited several European countries, and set my foot in North America, but there are still five to go. So since I've been enjoying Asian food recently, and because Asia is not as far away as some of the other continents, I figured it could be my next destination.

My next thought, however, was that I've never visited a country where I haven't been able to understand the local language at all. After studying Swedish, English, German and French it wasn't difficult to understand most of what I needed to understand when I visited the Netherlands and Spain. I have even managed to have a conversation with Tennesseans.

I think, being able to understand the local language - even a little, gives you some valuable insight in the culture that you're visiting. It allows you to understand the things that are not specifically aimed for foreigners and therefore written in English, but also the things that are there for locals. I also don't expect there to be signs written with latin alphabet in countries that don't use the alphabet, and being unable to read anythging sounds like a very scary thought. You also get a lot more respect from the locals if you try and say even a few things in their language instead of just assuming that they will speak English to you.

But I don't understand any Asian languages! Not even a word! I've only studied Indo-European languages before and would be very interested in learning a language that belongs to another language group. Fortunately, my mother tongue is Uralic so that should give me some perspective and make my language learning a little bit easier.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

But there are so many Asian languages to choose from!* I wish I could study them all, but that's impossible. It's better to start with one.

First, I decided that I would want to choose a living, lively language! With a lot of speakers, so that I wouldn't spend a lot of time learning a language I could not actually use in real life. I've spent some time over the past years doing some background investigations in languages such as Sami, Mari, Inuktitut, and Old Norse, but those are not really good choices for me, if I actually want to speak to real people.

I used to want to study Russian. There were a lot of language courses available in my country, but while I was living there, I was focusing on French and German. But now, I haven't started learning a new language for over 8 years, and I feel like it's time to pick a new language in order to improve my language skills. Unfortunately though, because of the current political situation in Russia, I no longer feel inspired in learning that. And I already decided to pick a non-Indo-European language.

I own a book in Thai. I can't read it. But when my dad and brother went on a holiday in Thailand in 2007 and asked me what I would like as a souvenir, I asked them to bring me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Thai. And they did! I treasure it in my book-case and enjoy how cool the writing in it looks. So, I considered learning Thai, but because of its tones, I would probably be really bad at speaking it, with my very mono-tonic language background. I'm not brave enough to try and learn it quite yet.

I also did not feel particularly inspired in studying languages of countries where they would be likely to kill or arrest me just because of who I am, so that cut out some options. Then on the basis of the food I enjoy the most, I ditched Indian and Chinese. I may have eaten slightly too much Indian and Chinese take-away recently and am not really feeling it anymore.

Lately, I've been really enjoying sushi and Korean cosmetics. Because I know some people (such as the two I live with) who also study Japanese, it felt like a better decision than Korean. Being able to practise a language with other people will make learning it a lot easier and definitely more fun. But if I decide to learn Korean later, Japanese will still be helpful, because they are from the same language family.

I definitely wouldn't starve in Asia.

To be fair, I don't know much about Japan. I know where it is and what the flag looks like, but that's about it. I don't even like manga or anime (which is why I never even considered studying the language before).  Apart from Pokèmon, of course! Sometimes I walk around town with just Pikachu in my backpack. It makes me feel like I have a friend.

Sometimes we go out for drinks.

Sometimes I feel like I probably should have grown past this stage 15 years ago. But maybe they will understand me in Japan. I've heard that they have a lot of weird things in Japan. I look forward to learning more about Japanese culture while I study Japanese.

I started learning hiragana (the Japanese phonetic symbols) last Friday, and am about to start learning katakana (the other phonetic symbols). I've also been watching the Japanese TV series Last Friends -  as I mentioned earlier in this post - in order to get used to hearing Japanese and to learn about the Japanese culture.

I really like the TV series! There are 5 friends who live together in a share house and face problems with life, love, work and relationships. They are there for each other. I don't like watching sad TV series, but this kind of reminded me of Gilmore Gilrs or Friends.

Last Friends!

Although there is a lot of dark things in this TV series, such as, domestic violence, manipulating, threatening and stalking - I enjoy watching their life in the share house. They are happy together and that makes me feel happy too.

But what I realised when watching the series is that: it doesn't matter how miserable some people might make you feel - when you're with the right people you can be yourself. And when you can be yourself - you will be the happiest. And those people who make you feel rubbish don't matter anymore. There's nothing they could do to take that happiness away from you.

It probably sounds simple, but this is actually the first time I've really thought about it. I've always focused too much on the people who don't like me, and it's made me feel like I'm not worthy enough to be happy. But when there's a happy place - like the share house in Last Friends - none of those people aren't there. And none of that feeling should be there either. The friends in the share house protected the house from all bad things getting in. That's how it always should be in life. I wish everyone could live in a happy place. When you're feeling miserable - you're not really yourself. But when you're happy, you can do the amazing things you're capable of doing. And you will be able to shine that happiness to other people.

Giraffe, Aberdeen.

Anyway, smiling is the easiest way to spread happiness around us. There's no language barriers there either.

Is there a language you would like to learn?

* I understand that many of the "languages" I mention, are actually not single languages but larger language groups that contain several languages. At this stage, however, I was only intending to choose a language group that I could choose a language within.

First times

Someone once said that you should try and do something new everyday. After spending a year mostly sitting alone in my room, it sounds very extreme to me. But it also sound like something I should really try to do!

This week I've done many things!

I've drank champagne dressed up in sequins,

There's just no space for unhappiness if you have champagne and sequins.

had a house party at my flat,

There were two of my favourite people and two people I had never met before.
The blinds fell down and the floor I had just washed got very sticky.

broken some rules,

We also polkaed on the beach barefoot.

found a random taxi driver who was just picking up his wife from work and convinced him to take me to the airport to catch a flight that was supposed to leave in 45 minutes.

Miraculously we made it although the check-in desk had already closed when we got there.

And stroked a hairless cat dressed up as a dinosaur.

Thank you, Henri!

It's been a busy week.

Other than that I've come to realise that I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life. But this year has taught me that trying to keep working when life is full of stress and there's no happiness – it's not worth it. If I had known what I know now, I probably would have quit earlier. My life involved long days of trying to keep on top of my part-time job that was there to help me pay my rent and doing all of the uniwork for my masters. I felt too busy and too stressed out to meet friends in my very limited free time which I mostly spent crying alone at home, and as the year went on I became too nervous to even try and meet up with anyone. It was a very lonely year. My job was lonely as well, I was working alone when there was no one else there and my class situation at the university alarmingly reminded me of secondary school. I felt socially lonely – which is even a worse feeling than just feeling lonely when you're on your own.

That's not how I imagined my life to be. When I was little and obsessed with the TV series Friends, I wished that one day my life would be like theirs: I would live with my friends, have fun and they would be there for me when it hasn't been my day, month or even a year.

But basically, after somehow (barely) surviving this year, I want this all to change. I am currently looking for a flat where I could live with friends. Haven't found anything yet, and am mentally preparing myself to live in a cardboard box, but at least I don't want to be alone anymore. I also never again want to be in such a toxic environment that it's slowly killing me. If one day, for instance, I would manage to get a job, where I have to work with complete arseholes who are not treating me nicely and try to smoke me out, I am not going to stick around to see whether they mange to mess up my life or not. All I want from my future from now on, is happiness and I am not ready to negotiate it anymore.

Have you done anything new for the first time recently?

Individuality, equality and diversity!

Big words, guys. But if I'm going to start talking about things without censoring most of my thoughts, this might be a good topic to start with. And I will without a doubt be coming back to this. I'll just write about individuality today, but all three of these topics are interlinked.

When I was at school we had a photo competition which theme was “individually together”. The concept made sense to me then, and it still does. But unfortunately it does not make sense to everyone and it's very sad. So many people are trying to “fit the crowd” and look “normal”. Do what “society thinks is right” instead of being who they are.

Okay, I must admit that I was never the coolest of kids. And still am not. I mean, I look like this in my holiday photos:

It was a holiday in Lewis in 2010!

And surprise, surprise! I was bullied at school. I never really understood why I got bullied. I didn't really think of it at the time, I just did my best at ignoring it. But then I came across a news paper article where the journalist had interviewed a class and found out what kind of reasons will be used as excuses for bullying.

Here are the reasons they listed:

Wrong clothes. Clothes that are five years old, discount store clothes, charity shop clothes, cartoon character -tops, Gothic style, Lolita style, heavy rocker style, or anything that might make you look gay.

Wrong music. Anything ancient or classical. Church music. Anything that the majority doesn't listen to. Basically you have to listen to bands that are on top10 lists.

Wrong hobbies. Guides, computer games, larping, archery, violin, golf, church clubs, fantasy books, Irish dance, martial arts if you're a girl and ballet, riding or piano if you're a boy. Basically you're not “allowed to” have any “weird” or different hobbies – such as dance if you're a boy.

Wrong ideologies. Religiousness, vegetarianism, or accepting gay rights. Basically you're not allowed to enjoy reading or fantasy. Or have much opinions about anything.

Thank goodness I'm not at school anymore. This explains why I got bullied. I could post pictures of myself doing all of those things “wrong”, but I probably don't have to. And I'm glad I did. I never wanted to be a robot who wore what the other girls told me to wear, listened to crappy top10 lists and had no opinions. I had a lot more fun wearing Tinker Bell -tops, going to church clubs and camps, listening to emo music, playing computer games, reading fantasy books and generally just being a weird, opinionated homosexual.

This is how "amazing" the picture quality was in older camera phones.

It was way more fun being weird! My freetime activities were amazing. Here, for instance, I went to a clothes store with my friend and we both chose each other the most awful outfits and then took photos in the changing room. This is what teenagers should do, instead of learning how to became a robot.

And this topic is not only relevant to those who are at school and going through those horrible teenager years trying to figure out who they are while being under constant pressure of not doing anything that wouldn't be accepted by their peers. This is relevant to anyone! No matter what your age is, you can still discover new things about yourself and new ways to express yourself. Start a new hobby, explore new hairstyles or get into motorcycles. There are mums out there who are afraid to get tattoos and piercings or other mums wouldn't let their children to play with their kids. There are grandmas who wonder what their friends might say if they got a purple mohawk*. There are men who really want to wear skirts instead of trousers because it's hot outside. Such things won't change their ability to function as members of society. Those little things that would be a part of their individual appearance would only make them happier and more lively. And happy people can do anything! Those who judge should go home and think about what makes them so angry.

One of my favourite bands, PMMP, released this song 4 years ago.

It is amazing. Here are some bits of the lyrics in English**:

They shout furiously: “No! Men don't behave like that!”

I guess beauty offends them

But although they make fun of my body

They can never touch my soul

My clothes that people make fun of

and my feather boa that is so despised here

need more glitter when I get there

or otherwise I will be unnoticed in the eclectic crowd

There, family cars are not the only cars stuck in the traffic jam

There are buses and limousines side by side

I will not swallow tears but champagne instead

I will dress up in sequins from head to toe

The mouths don't mock and not a single finger rises

I'm not afraid that I won't find anyone

And like a bird I will rise up

I was never a prisoner of my body after all

Seriously it's the best song ever. It's all about equality and being accepted as who you are. Sadly in this song, the person had to leave somewhere else, but that's just something you need to do if you're surroundings are poisonous. But we are all gorgeous as who we are! And all of us are allowed to wear whatever we like, whatever makes us confident and happy. And that's the beauty of it. Life would be boring if everyone just wore hoodies and jeans.

So, who wants to dress up in sequins and come and drink champagne with me?

Featuring Scottish countryside.

I have muffins.

* True story! She came in to book an appointment when I was at the hairdressers.
** I'm sorry, but my translation skills suck. Please let me know if you know how to translate this song better.