maajailm

[maajailm]

Andalucia - everything felt so strange in the beginning, I was ready to arrive in lush green nature all around me, but it was the end of the hot summer and there was nothing green left besides the pine trees. There was even no dirt, the ground was just sand. For some reason I got so afraid that I had followed my heart and it had led me to the wrong place. But the heart is never wrong, I slowly fell in love with it all. I must have thought “life is beautiful” a hundred times every single day.

there are so many beautiful moments here that you simply can’t remember everything or even write it down or save it in pictures or recordings or drawings I think all that’s left is to just take in the moment and then let it go. 08.10

we think we need so much but honestly you can get by with owning so little. a handful of people who understand you, a moment for yourself in the sunlight and silence.

i’m manifesting a happy life for myself 10.10

this is all just the beginning 22.10

I don’t know anything yet. I’m still scared of a lot of things. I still have no idea of much I maybe should know by now. There is still so much to learn and unlearn that it’s incomprehensible and discouraging and beautiful and scary and wonderful all the while. I am so fucking young. A whole crazy magnificent life yet ahead. 28.10

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Madrid. When you close your eyes and spread out your arms while you’re sitting on a motorcycle driving on a highway it feels like your flying. I realised I was just as nervous sitting on the motorbike as I was while taking the bus to the city on my own. Lots of beers, lots of cigarettes and joints and lots of laughter. Much less of sleeping. The morning, 28th of October, with two hours of sleep, Gonzalo - the Spanish Eagle on the motorcycle - took me to the airport for my flight to Sevilla. I was exhausted, but completely wrapped by an intense and deep calmness. I got on the bus to central Sevilla and the windows were open a little, there were so many palm trees on the sides of the roads, and I just closed my eyes, letting the sun and the warm wind wash over my face. It was such a serene and holy moment, I felt like everything in my life had been just leading me to this place, I felt like I’ve come home.

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crazy bussisõit Ukrainast Varssavisse, 11 tundi hilinemist. Uber, hiigelsuured hiigelpikad varssavi tunnelteed. see tee meenutab mulle hirmsat moodi koduteed tallinnast, see on nii veider, ma peaaegu et ootan et taksojuht keeraks sõidu lõpuks minu kodu teeotsalt sisse ja kogu viimane kuu oleks olnud üks suur uni. ma vist igatsen natuke eestit ja tallinnat ja kohilat. terve lennujaam kihab elust, kõik teevad midagi ja lähevad kusagile, ma hõljun vaikselt kõigest läbi. i need a cigarette. ma vist haisen natuke, tahaks duši alla minna. tõin endaga midagi rasket kaasa, ma lähen ju ometi madridi, muretuse linna, päikesemaale. raske on aru saada sellest, aga äkki hetkes elamine seda tähendabki. a raw extract from the notes on my phone, written in the airport of Warsaw. this is how I've captured most of my thoughts in the past years and how I'll probably continue forever. nothing is ever as black and white as for example photographs make it seem. honest unedited transcripts from certain moments remind you of it all, not just the strong feeling of happiness, or freedom, or heartache. every single moment that I also describe here, has been lived through a kaleidoscope of emotions and sensations. i often have to remind it to myself as well, getting too nostalgic about certain times.

[maajailm]

I am so afraid that life is never going to feel like I imagined it to be, I am so afraid I will not know to choose the right paths or the right people, I am so afraid of not being able to define or determine right, I am so afraid of missing out on my life while going unaware of who I am and what's going on. Every moment, every person, every place feels like a random coincidence. It all feels superficial - like this could have happened to anyone, anywhere, anytime and it's driving me insane. I might as well be watching a TV-show. I miss feeling real. I think I've forgotten how to give meaning to my life. three journal entries from the beginning of july, right before heading to Vaunieres, 2018. sometimes maybe it has to not make sense for a while, in order to get you to the place where finally it does.

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Besides all the scary stuff, the two weeks in Ukraine were lovely. Diana turned 20, we ate a lot of mushroom pizza, had countless cigarettes in bars and cafes, and laughed A Lot. I kept texting with Thomas, and we decided to meet again. I bought tickets to go to Spain, Andalucia, for one month, passing through Madrid to pay a visit to the crazy Spanish group from the Macedonian project. There was this one moment I fell ill with a fever, and I was absolutley sure I had gotten Lyme disease from a tick bite a month ago, but the doctors told me I was fine. Then the moment I realised I am at the heighest weight of my life - 68 kilograms, making me feel heavy both mentally and physically. Then another when we were on a train from Lutsk to Lviv and a giant tree had fallen on the train tracks, so all the men got out from the train to lift the tree together. Then one when we went to Diana’s tattoo artist to tattoo her sleeve, and she blacked out on the floor of the pharmacy afterwards. And then when I was supposed to leave Ukraine and take a bus to Poland, we were sitting right in front of the bus in the station not realising it was THE bus and I missed it. Then I booked another bus and that one ended up standing on the Ukrainian-Polish border for 11 hours, when the whole drive was supposed to take 9, no one speaking English to explain what was going on. I still made it to the flight I was supposed to get from Poland. Made it to Madrid. My love for life and my trust in the Universe growing fast.

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"You know I saw this strange dream about you that really gave me the creeps. You were doing a volunteering project in this school, and you invited me to come visit you. But it wasn't a normal school, because it was abandoned. You showed me around the school and I was starting to become more and more creeped out. Finally you asked me if I want to see the project that you were working on, and you took me to the school garden. And I mean... that was just messed up. You were digging holes in the garden, and you told me you were digging out relics - skeletons, bones... It was all just messed up, it just gave me the creeps. I wanted to ask if you are okay?" That was one of the first things Diana told me when she and her father came to pick me up at the airport in Lviv at 4am. I told her about these strange moments of zoning out and thinking about death, it was just such a freaky coincidence. Diana lives in Lutsk, a lovely little forgotten old Ukrainian city. At the time she was in Univeristy, so during her study hours I had lots of time to myself. Ukraine is really something special. Everything seems to be so old - the houses, the people, the public transportation... When you want to take the bus, you step inside and just give a handful of coins to the person sitting in front of you, who then passes it on to the person in front of them, until the money reaches the bus driver. You don't even get a ticket back. It doesn't make much sense, but everybody does it and it works. During one of the first days I was there, I took the bus to meet up with Diana after her classes, and we decided to do some sightseeing. There is exactly one sight in Lutsk, which is a big castle from the middle ages. It was such a lovely sunny day, we were taking pictures and humming this song where the main chorus goes "Why does it always rain on me?" when we started feeling a storm coming up. The sky got covered in dark-dark storm clouds in a matter of minutes, there was a lot of low thundery rumbling, all the birds started circling close to the ground and we agreed to meet up at a friends place to not be out during the storm. We didn't get to walk for too long before those grim clouds started pouring, and then we we were running. We were soaking wet with one minute. We looked at each other while we were running and we both went "Why does it always rain on meee??" laughing hysterically. The rain just got heavier, the sky sounded like it was going to crack open, we saw lighting striking around us. It was something straight out of a movie. We were getting closer to her friends place, just crossing the square in front of Diana's university, when a clear lightning bolt came straight out of the sky and hit the roof of the building right in front of us. We just stopped dead in our tracks and grabbed each others arms, I've never been so scared that something terrible is really going to happen to me. I just felt frozen but my mind was screaming to keep running, so we ran, faster this time. We did reach her friends house without getting struck or killed in any other way, but Dianas cell had died and the gate had locked automatically as a saftey-hazard because the power had gone out. We just stood there, soaking wet and scared as we were, and couldn't think of anything better than to scream for her friend, hoping she would hear: "Olya! Ool-yaa!" Nothing. So we finally decided to try to get home, we were really starting to get cold. It wasn't pouring as hard anymore and the bus stop that we needed to get was close. Of course, when we were about to cross the road to the bus stop, we missed to see a car coming which didn't stop for us until the very last second, giving us a last terrifying fuck-we-really-are-going-to-die moment. Besides for a group of unnerving gypsy women creating some havoc on the bus, the thing didn't crash and we made it back. We bought some chocolate from the minimart and warmed up in the bed watching a movie. Whatever it was, it was scary as fuck, it seemed to be over, and it felt good to have been in it together.

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13th Septmber, after a day of travelling from our little town beside lake Ochrid to the airport in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, we took a connecting flight together to Warsaw with our little Estonian group. They were all flying back home, but I was continuing on. I was going to visit my dearest Diana for her 20th birthday in Ukraine. Just moments after we entered the airport in Warsaw I got seperated from my Estonian friends without being able to say goodbyes. I hate prolonged and lenghty goodbyes, but I also really hate not getting to have a proper goodbye at all. Leaving them still felt immensely freeing somehow, later I came to know it will become one of my favorite feelings while travelling. Just leaving places and people behind, and in a way the person I was as well - having the possibility to recreate my entire being again and again. There was also something strange going on during that time, many differnet times during the stay in Macedonia I had moments where i zoned out and saw myself and my surroundings from above, with this thought passing through my head, that "oh..i will die soon". It didn't feel scary at the time, or even strange, it just sounded so obvious and natural in my head. I wasn't necessarily worriying about it, but the thought stayed in the back of my head. And it wasn't long before it turned out that my instincts were definitely right that there was something lurking in the shadows.

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An European Youth Exhchange through my exprerience - in other words - lots of awkward selfies, awkward group presentations, awkward posters, awkward group activities, realizing this kind of traveling is not my thing, and the most beautiful moments of connecting, sharing cigarettes and joints, getting drunk from the cheap wine from the hotel bar, so many moments of laughing to the point of choking over the silliest jokes, everybody falling in love with each other, or kissing each other, or hooking up, everybody just having fun without a care in the world, just swallowed by a collective feeling of aliveness.

The week we spent in Macedonia definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, and I’m so happy it wasn’t. It felt more like a big party, with occasional half-hearted group activities, but the main focus being definitely on the party. I still grin when I think back to some of the most absurd and ridiculous moments I’ve ever experienced. It was unbelievably fun, but I understood instantly I don’t want to continue traveling only doing projects like this. While the international environment is really something special and you definitely make lots of connections, you completely miss out on the everyday local life that’s happening outside of the project. It was the thing that gave me the courage to start thinking about planning a real hardcore backpacking solo trip.

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lake ohrid, connecting macedonia and albania. we were living right on the shore, in a hotel filled with young adults from all over europe. it was a place of stunning concentrated beauty. some of my favorite memories are of me always trying to sneak to the lake alone, just to sit and look at the water and have a cigarette. the sunsets were simply breathtaking. september 2018

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everyone reminds me of someone. i leave a place and it feels like leaving all the places ive loved before simultaneously again every place together at once. i fall in love with someone and it feels like i already know them, i already know everyone, feels like i am falling love with everyone i have fallen in love with again, all of them, just put together into this one person. it feels like ive been in this world for a thousand times before, like ive touched a thousand souls and been to a thousand places and i still dont know the answers and i still feel just a little lost. it feels like im the person others have searched for, the balsam and sunshine and the messenger and the lover and the One for so many people and i really do love all of them, but sometimes its just too much.

text from the notes on my phone, written in the airport sleep-deprived and hungover, leaving macedonia and waiting for my next flight to ukraine. on the pictures: Teo, Johannes, Renata, Marilis, Martin, Karita & Mateo

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beautiful moments are worth nothing with people who don’t appreciate them the same way as you do -from the notes on my phone, 2nd day of the 10-day youth project in macedonia. realising it’s going to be different than what happened in france. that maybe those were the happiest weeks of my life, and nothing is going to be as beautiful ever again.

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The thing that has always scared the shit out of me has been hurting people. I’ve been so obsessed with it at times that I’ve forced myself to stay in miserable situations and relationships, hurting myself far more than necessary, just to avoid hurting the other. I think it had it’s start in my early childhood, when my mom often had depressive episodes and I always felt responsible for them in a way. It made me grow up highly aware of the emotions of people around me and learning how to act and adapt according to that. It got worse when I was on the verge of becoming a teenager and had my own first experiences with depression. It was often like this - my mom would ask me something like “why don’t you smile and laugh and sing and talk as much anymore? it’s because i have failed as a parent, isn’t it?” It made me hyper aware how i was expressing myself, and etched the belief deep into me that i am a burden to the world when i am not making everybody around me happy in all the ways i can. but it’s funny how it is in life - often the very thing you are the most scared of finds its way to you, to stare you straight in the eyes. it was like this with me in relationships. i fell for somebody, they fell for me, i crawled deep into their heart and then i was done and i wanted to leave. i always ended up hurting the other, and it fucking killed me. so imagine, you’re in a relationship with someone who always told you marriage doesn’t make sense and love doesn’t exist, but one drunken night he sends you a message that he hopes to marry you one day, and you think that “shit..okay..maybe it is him?” and then you meet somebody new and you realise that it was never him at all, and now you have to tell the person who never believed in love until he met you that he was right. because that’s exactly what happened. three weeks after I returned from france he came to visit me in tallinn. he understood right away that something was off. i couldn’t hide it. i couldn’t kiss him. i told him i feel different about him, i couldn’t bear to tell him that i fell in love with somebody who showed me what happiness truly means. he had already bought his plane ticket back home, which took off exactly in 11 days. he cried in front of me on almost all of them. we still tried to make it work, we went camping, we hitchhiked through estonia, and it was horrible. to both of us. we left from estonia on the same day - he was heading back to germany, i headed to my next journey, a youth project in macedonia. we said our goodbyes and i felt like i could breathe again, even though it took a lot of more time to convince myself i wasn’t a monster. the picture is from our hitchhiking trip, making coffee in the morning outside of our tent pitched in the tall grass by the sea / 29th of August 2018

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9th of August, I was invited along with a best friend and her parents heading on a family trip to an island in Sweden. Of course I went, with all this new free time and endless possibilities at my hand. It was a beautiful piece of the world, and I loved it, but little did anyone know I was suffering almost unbearably at the time.

Just before graduating and heading to France, I lived through some of the unhappiest months of my life. I was severely depressed and I despised myself and how I was living my life, trading my happiness for money, doing 13-hour shifts at a restaurant that I hated. The place, the coworkers and most of the clients just made me feel worthless. But in a deeply sick way I enjoyed it a lot. It was the perfect chance for me to finally starve myself for a long enough period of time to actually affect my body, without anyone monitoring what I eat. I went for days just drinking water and coffee, motivated by the same feeling of worthlessness that ate me up every day from the moment i stepped inside that restaurant. I lost a lot of weight. My mom started being so suspicious, and I put an insane amount of effort into hiding what I was really up to. I mean it worked, I looked great, I was so proud of myself. I felt the most beautiful I’ve ever felt when I was in France. Ah, France… I genuinely refound my happiness during my time there and gradually I started eating more as well. And more. And more. Until I couldn’t stop anymore. It makes sense after all, you can’t blame the human body for being greedy after three months of deliberately being starved.

When we were in Sweden, I had reached the worst part of the cycle. I’d gained back all the weight I had lost with the past months and I still couldn’t stop. Whenever there was a moment where no one would see me, I felt the need to eat, anything that I could get my hands on, until my stomach physically couldn’t fit more. I saw a monster looking back at me in the mirror. I wanted to die. I made myself promise I was going to get back on track, and starve myself to an even lower weight as soon as I got back home. I was in hell, and I was there alone.

During our last morning on the island, while I was having breakfast on the terrace in the crisp autumn air, I felt a certain kind of realization. That my binge eating was not only a physical need or an addiction, but a fucked up way to punish myself. It was my means of self-destruction. And there were many things I was trying to punish myself for. It made so much sense. I thought to myself, fuck, it’s time to stop, i have to forgive myself. I thought that I can’t go through this coming year like this. I thought the most important thing for me now is to start living life for myself, and to go places that are good for me and only me, not for my parents, not for Andre, even if it hurts them. And I was going to hurt them. This morning my whole mind shifted. I thought that’s what feeling born again feels like. I felt a hollow happiness starting to grow in my stomach. I was starting to feel the freedom awaiting me.

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so i decided it's time to share something i was struggling alone with since i was 11 years old. after 9 years of living in a lie in front of every single person in my life, i figured that starting to drag my demons into the light might be the only way to heal. and if i want to talk about my travels in total honesty, i can't leave this part out anymore.

i have a severely fucked up relationship with food that i am lieing to every single person in my life about. no one knows and nor will no one ever know, i will keep denying it to anyone who might ask, also because i look nothing like a person who could have an eating disorder. i feel bad when i eat even when it feels good. i am always looking forward to a future where i starve myself long enough for it to actually start to show. ive been obsessively thinking about eating and not eating and hating food and eating too much and hating myself and starving myself and getting better and getting worse in secret for years and years. and i don't even want to get better because i am not skinny yet. its so fucking awful but i can not imagine living without these thoughts. and i cant wait to change into the person i've always dreamt about being. even if i know it kills my body and my soul. im stuck with it.

an excerpt from the notes on my phone, 9th of June 2019. i couldn't have believed that by now, half a year later, i've shared this with three people in my life, and i am just writing a blog post, on the internet, for the whole world to see.

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home - the place where i feel the most fucking low

-from the notes on my phone, 8th of August, back in Estonia, 6 days after returning from what felt like the top of the world; to the very bottom of it. not all moments have been glamorous.

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my favorite picture of me and Thomas. the very end of these three weeks, sitting in the train station, just moments before he took his train back to Toulouse. I wasn’t sure if I’m ever going to see him again, since I was still in another very serious relationship at the time and because I was just at the start of my travels, I was working on unbinding all the ties I had, definitely trying not to create any new ones to hold me back. I felt grateful and happy and anxious and sad, and I remember thinking this quote from Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Gray’s portrait” over and over again in my head: “Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.” end of july 2018

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covered in mud and happy, another day of digging the trench at the source, photos taken by diana / july 2018