Trauma Doesn't Make You Stronger

 Childhood trauma changes everything about us. It paves the path for the rest of our lives, which makes it almost impossible to "just let go of it", like so many always keep telling us. The abuse you face in your early years forever alters the way your brain develops and functions, not only for the time being, but also for your adulthood. Your childhood will always stay with you, no matter if it was good or bad. Especially prolonged childhood trauma has a long-lasting effect on the way your brain works. If the abuse had started when you were barely old enough to go to school, your brain is going to be wired according to that, simply because it has never known anything better. The abuse is the norm for you, and so the trauma that is caused by that abuse also becomes the norm. The survival mechanisms that have been activated in your undeveloped child brain will become part of its everyday cognitive functions, and that will further continue to be the case even when the abuse is ...

 Discrimination comes in various shapes and sizes, and I am no stranger to quite a few of them. Being a member of several marginalized communities, I have faced all kinds of bigotry in my time. Granted, I do want to make it clear that I have had it relatively easy when it comes to discrimination like homophobia, mainly because of my very loving and accepting family. In some ways, I have been lucky in these experiences, especially when compared to some of my loved ones. Though, that doesn't mean that I have been completely let out of the hook.  The first time I heard the word "retard"   and its Finnish equivalents was not when it was directed toward me. To my recollection, it was the late 2000s, and that was a time when it was generally accepted and even encouraged among kids to use this ableist slur to describe themselves, their friends, and anyone who just was a bit different. I am pretty sure for me, it was one of those instances. The word really started to mean somethi...

 Weak. That is a word I've heard people describe me with for all my life. I can't recall the first time it happened, but it must have been pretty early on, maybe in kindergarten already. Weakness and sensitivity have – at least for me – almost been each other's synonyms. They're sisters, very close ones too. Overly sensitive people get labeled as weak because of their emotional reactions to things that others can just "brush off" and "not take so seriously".  Don't take everything so personally. Learn to take a joke.  There's a lot of 'taking' involved in these phrases that have been thrown my way. It is always me who must take things a certain way, or not take them at all. This has always been a problem for me. Why must I always be the one to take the words and actions of other people in a way they want me to take them? Why is that always my responsibility? When does it become my fault that others have abused me, hurt me, violated me...

 The older I'm getting, the more I find myself liking autumn. This makes it sound like I'm actually old, when I'm literally in my early twenties, but you get the point. When I was a teenager, I used to despise this season. I guess it reminded me of the school year starting too much, so the entire period of autumn got a bad name. But as I am growing and finding what it's like to have your own life as an adult, fall is becoming a time I'm more excited to experience year after year.  One thing I really love about living in Finland is that we get to experience all four seasons – at least for now. They are all very distinct from one another, the flow from a season to the next is seamless and fluent. The nature dresses herself in new clothes every season, the colors of her coats and skirts changing from white to green to vibrant oranges. The air gets chillier, and I can wear my scarfs again. My favorite season, winter, is on its way, and I can smell it in the wind blowing...

 Gender is a very interesting thing. I have, without a doubt, done my own fair share of self-exploration in terms of my gender identity, and it has been a confusing journey, to say the least. Without going into too much detail for the sake of remaining on topic of our current chapter, I will say this one thing: the concept of manhood is very dear to me, and something I feel a strong connection to, without actually identifying myself with it.  I think we don't give language enough credit for what it's able to convey, and it is no different in terms of gender either. Language is a beautiful man-made set of sounds and rules, only bound to each other by some arbitral agreement we as the human race have at some point come to. This translates to gender very heavily, and we are now becoming aware of this connection as we are trying to break free from the gendered norms our language has set for us as individuals and societal communities alike.  As a linguist, I love language for...

 Whenever my girlfriend calls me things like "beautiful", I have a meltdown. Not because I think it's adorable when they say those sweet things to me, but because it triggers the shit out of me. It is so frustrating how my trauma prevents me from receiving genuine compliments, which leads to extremely embarrassing situations. Imagine telling your partner to stop calling you beautiful because it makes you suicidal. There's not a lot of things that I hate about myself more than that. The amount of trauma I have surrounding my appearance is kind of unknown to myself too. It seems like an endless pit of triggers, self-hatred, and disgust; one I can never get to the bottom of. It is hard for me to even talk about it, because the topic is so fragile to me that sometimes referring to it alone can cause an episode.  It would be an understatement to say that I've been made to feel ugly for the majority of my life. The word 'ugly' is a very special one, though, a wo...

 The last year of my university studies before the eventual collapse of my mental health and subsequent suspension of my studies was an extremely wild one. It goes without saying that uni and college culture is more or less focused on partying and getting wasted, but I would argue that the Finnish university students take this mentality to a new level. There is not just a lot of alcohol involved, drinking has been mobilized by capitalism and turned into a money-making machine that pumps out artificial student traditions that you have to take part in and, most importantly, get shit-faced in.  It was my third uni year in a row, and I was in a depression pit so deep I'd forgotten what the stars even looked like. I wasn't eating properly, I was in a constant state of dissociation, and I had just started taking anti-depressants again after a two-year break. Nothing seemed to fill the void my mental agony and the never-ending stream of literature and linguistics essays created in my...