stuffedandfilled

[stuffedandfilled]

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.

Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.

Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.

Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.

I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.

Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.

But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

[stuffedandfilled]

6. Helmikuuta

Rhyming lines

Do we need every single fine line intertwined, every dot set aligned, every drop of an aged wine washes our palatines, every storyline redefined, turn every chorus line into a sign, put up spiky shield like a porcupine, redesign all our declines?

You have no one to outshine, you are a moonshine, a sunshine, even a feline

You can follow the shoreline, the skyline, you can go anywhere without a deadline, and there's nothing wrong to be borderline

[stuffedandfilled]

5. Helmikuuta

We are lying side by side counting sheeps and stars

and argue which one is more tedious, to be still or monotonous

We fall silent and your eyes dart away, the shade of brown I have yet to understand

You are clear and eloquent, but still there are brailles I try to trace in your lashes and fingernails

I wonder if you'll be mad if I tell you

Sometimes I intentionally make myself forget how to spell A to Z and mispell one word for another yet I selfishly want you to understand

[stuffedandfilled]

If I tell you what I fear

would you join me in fear

and we'll stay there, sinking deep,

me into my own

and you'll develop your own.

[stuffedandfilled]

23. Marraskuuta

Today we had several babies and children coming to the ER. There was also one woman in labor with eclampsia, and an elderly who was dyspeptic and slightly feverish. They did not perform widal on the last patient but was pretty convinced she had typhoid. Dengue, typhoid, and gastritic (or dyspepsia as we couldn't call it a gastritic episode without having an endoscopy first), the three top, most common cases I found in the ER.

I was a little overwhelmed by the variety of patients that we had today. I was tailing the doctor in charge, listening to patients' complaints, finding different presentations in different patients who suffer from the same disease.

We had a baby with fever who wouldn't stop crying, we had a middle scholer who got animal scrathes all over her arms and leg, the woman in labor was 3 years younger than me and she was going back and forth from standing to sitting to lying down, trying to cope with contractions. The oldest patient was lethargic and could only mumble her answers.

Another baby, only 5 hours old, was sent to the ER because she had a respiratory distress, but it went away before long and the baby was put under observation for several hours before they let them go. Her father, a new father, couldn't stop tearing up and crying in silence. When one of the nurses asked him what's wrong, he said he didn't know. He didn't know whether he's terrified or happy or sad, but he just couldn't stop crying. Two beds away from them were the elderly woman and her husband, they stayed in silence, exchanging glance every now and then. Across from them was the middle schooler, trying to explain how she got scratches all over her body in details. She wanted to pick up a newborn kitten but its mother got very aggressive and went crazy at her.

It was a fascinating sight. Also a crazy audio mix. From red, thin, baby skin, to plump skin with scratches, to old and wrinkly arms. From a baby's crying, to an eager chatter, to silence and soft whimpers. Realizing that everyone will go through every single scene of that, that the elder was once a baby and the baby will one day prefer silence, is unsettling. And yet also reassuring.

The obscene scenery felt like a tap on my shoulder. A friendly "I've told you". It really dawned on me that my life, as well as everyone else's lives, will change and there's nothing we can do about it, that we will live, look, and sound different every day, that everything is an ongoing proccess and there's no way we will stuck in the same place all our lives. That we should go with the flow of life and let ourselves sink. That we should not worry too much about what's ahead because everyone has been there and none of them were there for too long.

Mainly, I got assigned to insert iv lines on adult patients in the ER. And everytime I was about to make the puncture my hands will tremble and sometimes it got so bad that I couldn't get the needle in. I tried practicing beforehand and I still was very nervous. I tried to picture the proper angle over and over again in my head it still didn't help. I tried counting to five, double checking each vein, going over several candidates of veins, tracing them with my fingertips countless of times and yet I still found myself shaking. The only thing that could stop me from shaking is when I told myself that if I fail, it will still be okay, that I would still have other veins and other hands to try out, and even if I couldn't make it with this patients, there will be another patient on another bed, another scene I can and will move to.

[stuffedandfilled]

17. Marraskuuta

A Little Note

I learned the hard way that sometimes people think they make sacrifices just because they punish themselves and are suffering from it. If only they can see how mess up it is, how utterly pointless and hurtful it can be.

Often times they punish themselves and that's it. Or maybe they punish themselves and sacrifice other people. You don't fix a broken glass by picking up one of its pieces to tear your skin apart. And sometimes you don't even have to fix it,

at least now I know I don't.

I can get a new glass that works better, a bigger one, a smaller one, or one that is not made out of glass. I can't fix everything, I can't heal everything, I also can't lie that something is not broken because something is, but it is not the end of everything.

[stuffedandfilled]

7. Marraskuuta

-- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- -

Frankly I

often don't know how to provide a smart reply

to your electric clear eyes

after our conversations about blue sky

fruit fly

bow tie

and delicious shepherd's pie

Just like right now I

am not quite sure how I can verbivy

the amount of high

I get from your pieces my tips get to identify

Truly my heart and mind are yours to occupy

Even though sometimes it's hard to get by

and perhaps our laughters may run dry

still I don't want to bid goodbye

[stuffedandfilled]

24. Syyskuuta

After a long conversation,

an elaborate explanation,

After caffeins,

After nights and days wondering,

looking

only for the sake of looking,

After a decision,

one I thoughtfully made

After pictures of gauges, open wounds,

vials, diagrams,

a list of antibiotics inserted peroral or through iv line.

There are questions,

and in my answers I hear only wrongness

and silence,

see only shame and time unwisely spent,

See shadows,

and a smug look, subtly laced with disdain.

[stuffedandfilled]

24. Syyskuuta

Today's morning sky was low, covered in thick white blanket of clouds. I could have touched its wet air and white fog had I stretched my arms and tip toed.

Today's morning ground was solid and dry, covered in dry leaves, mostly orange but sometimes green, fell prematurely because the wind was violent and the trees couldn't help but move in sync.

I took a walk, knowing that in half an hour I would be back sitting, typing, staring, adjusting, staring. And in half an hour, my neighbours would be done facing their backs to the sun, taking laps, rocking their cats on their breasts, chatting over a cart full of vegetables and eggs.

This morning, the sky was dense and white and blue, the ground was sturdy and noisy, everytime I stepped on the wrong side they hissed back. I saw flowers blossomed and leaves laid flat, broadcasting nature's beauty of life and death. Watching its humor through a cat who was craddled and another who was not fed.

Watching farmers turning the ground upside down, chickens busily pecking peebles, and myself naturally jumping from happy to happy, and happy to sad. Measuring its depth, length and breadth, tip-toeing with my arms stretched.

[stuffedandfilled]

11. Syyskuuta

Do you want to paint our hearts white?

and I'll go to your place every night

with brushes and pens, and a story to recite.

I'll put my hands around your heart,

counting each pulse and rhythm, feeling its weight

before I decide.

If I go to your place every night

would we fill our hearts with polite

conversations and a quiet

hum to invade every corner of its room?

Should we end our sentences

with three exclamation points out of pride

or fright

or delight?

If we paint our hearts white

and we make it bright

would you cover my eyes and hold me tight

at night?

[stuffedandfilled]

9. Syyskuuta

Can you feel the absence of everything?

the subtle blow of loss

It is soft,

like a steam out of a heating milk inside your pot.

Would it be almost healing,

to say that I find your name almost

too far from enough?

Even if I shout it out with a robust

strength, each syllable will soon be lost,

reduced, talked and glossed

over, unstored.

[stuffedandfilled]

3. Syyskuuta

Tucked in bed

neatly,

under the blanket

I breed dread.

Heightened senses

spent in prolonged stares.

Doubts unshared.

Questions I keep in head,

I should've asked you instead.

[stuffedandfilled]

September's Rambles

I cried myself to sleep last night, yet it was the best sleep I have ever had in years. The kind of dreamless sleep that you just unconsiously fall in to.

It's mesmerizing how you can find comfort in the little things in life.

Like the way my cat held my hand tightly throughout his daytime nap, and how my other cat nuzzled his head against mine later this afternoon.

There's this song that I've been listening to non stop and it lulls me to sleep at night. I guess sometimes I miss being serenaded to sleep. I'll link the song down below in case you (whoever reads this post, I think no one does but sometimes I am wrong) want to listen to it too.

I took a quick walk around the neighborhood this morning to help me get rid of a looming sadness. The weather was perfect, the skies were cloudless and bright, the wind was soft and warm, and the street was quiet and empty. I listened to a podcast because I was feeling a little lonely. How could one balance a need for human interaction and an excessive longing to be alone?

I reckon my parents named me Matahari because they wanted me to be their little miss sunshine. It's hard to see myself bearing any resemblance to the mighy sun, except when it is sunset and I am standing on the shore because I'm in love with the ocean and from time to time I do find myself wanting to drown and disappear.

I have a lot I need to work on and many of them still remain untouched. Out of those that have been touched, I have decided to try my hardest to be honest to myself. I figured the lying and pretending part was the most exhausting. Orchestrating that kind of self betrayal does not make me a stronger or a kinder person, and it certainly does not help me hate myself any lesser.

Lately, I got overwhelmed a lot. My youtube playlist is full of the slowed and reverb version of songs I listen often because even familiarity has now become too much and I need them to be stretched and slowed and carefully spelled.

My sister's 21th birthday is coming in a week. I can't believe that she's an adult already and does not need a lot of pampering and protection and pep talks anymore. Not having to do all that makes me feel a little lost because being an elder sister have been one of my identities for so long.

September is here and I am just coming.

[stuffedandfilled]

2. Syyskuuta

House visit

Another shot injected

Gentle sun-kissed

glow

a revived old habit

Maybe I should come up with a list

of August's favorite

Keep them short and sorted

and leave everyone uninvited

[stuffedandfilled]

20. Elokuuta

August flies by much faster than any other month. A month that lies in between summer and fall, a month with an ever changing weather. I've gone to sleep all bundled up at night and got woken up to some huge sweats, I have also gone to bed wearing shorts and woke up with my legs half numb because of the cold.

August has been rough and lately I have not been very kind. I've been mean and inconsiderate. I've said things that I should've just kept to myself. Every morning I wonder who else am I going to hurt today.

Today was no different. I still failed to restrain myself from saying mean things and I got really mad because someone was trying to run away.

However today I also tried to be more decent to both everyone and myself. I tried to count to ten whenever I get upset, and count to twenty whenever I feel like berating myself for the mistakes that I'd done, because I believe in a second chance, or in a hundreth, millionth chance. As long as I keep trying, I'll give myself every chance.

There are more to August than terrible consequences of climate change and terrible temper. There were forgiveness and understandings. There were some lovely phonecalls. There were this new band called Stonekeepers that I recently discovered and a dress that I've been eyeing for weeks but couldn't really bring myself to make the purchase. Even on my hardest days, I was never short on love and blessings.

[stuffedandfilled]

31. Heinäkuuta

I want to end july with a hope because after it ends, another month begins. Much like the sun that rises after a dark night, an end is just a new beginning.

I want to be acutely aware of the vastness of life, that life exists before me and also after me, and through all that time love, hope, faith, and kindness prevail.

I want to be so small, life engulfs me completely.

I want to take every step with courage and humility, with faith and cautions, with hope and submission

because after July ends,

August begins.

[stuffedandfilled]

29. Heinäkuuta

Through all this,

I may live another day,

or I may not,

but either way I'm alive now.

And perhaps it is fine

that my day and myself

are flawed and all,

It is fine

that I can't swallow everything

whole.

I am alive.