Up and down

Last week was awesome! I was feeling so good, every day. I walked for hours, on the weekend I went shopping with Ktiraam, cleaned my wardrobe and visited family and saw my viking. ♥ A week ago I had reduced my medication because of the restless legs (went from 450 mg to 150 mg in 2 weeks) and WOAH, it made me feel better (not just the restless legs, but everything)! What a huuuge surprise!

On monday I started to get a little tired. I asked for an extra day of work at my workplace, so now I have 3 days a week of work (4 hours/day).

... and then it hit me. Again.

When it's the good "season" you so easily forget that you are depressed. You just feel so good and so healthy that you think that now, I am getting better, this is so great! But then it always comes to an end so suddenly. =( Tuesday I woke up with sore muscles, stomach ache, upset stomach and a racing heart. I felt like I was gonna throw up and couldn't even move properly, it just made me feel sicker. I felt like I was gonna have a heart attack any moment, my chest was aching.
I saw my psychiatrist and she tried to calm me down. Yesterday I spent all day doing absolutely nothing! I sat in front of the TV, on the floor and tried to calm down, just concentrating on relaxing my muscles and breathing. I walked outside, slowly, trying to relax and think of nothing, I slept two naps, I was so so tired... today is better, but life's still shaky.

This is so hard. Every time I think I am getting better, this happens. And it stops everything. I can't do anything I want. I wasn't eating very healthily last week (too much sugar and fat) and I know some of that is at fault so I've been eating really healthy this week (dark rye bread, tea, vegetables and soups)... tomorrow we have a party at my brothers and I know they have all kinds of yummy foods and drinks and I also know that I can't enjoy any of them without feeling worse again. ;_;
But I am going to enjoy the company, it's just so difficult to try to explain to people why I act so weirdly sometimes, but it's really hard to act normal when your heart is beating too fast, your hands are shaking and your muscles are trembling and you feel like you can't breath. Sigh. And it makes me feel really sad when my family doesn't understand me.
And... when you've had depression for 4 years, people are tired of hearing about this, they don't want to hear about it. You can see from the look on their faces that they think that you are over exaggerating what you're feeling ("oh no, not that again"). It's so frustrating when all you want, is to just feel normal!

One day at a time. Little steps. Maybe I'll feel a little better tomorrow again.

Finally it's here

Spring! ♥

Went out with my camera. Took loads of photos. It was cloudy and a little gloomy, but the details... aaaaah, pretty pretty flowers. And all the little animals. Everything waking up and coming alive again. I looove spring! 

Bumblebeeeeee! ♥

Tiny pretty blue flowers.

Liverwort. ♥

Blue tit! ^_^

The gulls of Lahti. There are thousands of them!

The ice is finally melting. ♥

Crocus.

Weird red/pink flowerplantthingy.

Duckduckduckduck

Common goldeneye. ^__^

Memories and dreams

I visited Italy during the summer 2007. The year itself was the hardest of my life, which soiled the memories somewhat. But the yearning and dreaming of going back to Italy has stayed with me. I went to the trip with my ex and no matter how things ended with him, I will forever be grateful for him for taking me on this trip and booking every single day-trip that I wanted to go to. =)

I've only shown a few of these pictures online before this, which is kind of a shame, because I really like the pictures... so I decided to post this memory post.
I visited Italy, Cattolica (a small coast town in the east coast of Italy below Venice) on August 2007. I was in the town very little because I had booked every trip possible during the week. I visited Firenze (Florence) for a day, Venezia (Venice) for another day, the Frazassi caves for half a day trip and small vinyard in Toscana the other half and spend a night in a beautiful homestead in Toscana, eating a festious Italian meal. Yum.
What a trip! ^___^

The view from the balcony of the hotelroom at night. Ocean
and more ocean and warm, salty ocean wind. Ah!

The beach close to the hotel (you can just see the hotel at the
end of the beach). I only visited the beach when it was already
closed because it was way too hot and crowded for my taste in the
 middle of the day.

The Frazassi caves, HUGE caves with these stalagmites and
stalactites in caves that went on for miles and miles and miles.
... 42 miles, if I remember correctly.

The air was almost Nordicly cold in the caves, which I absolutely
loved. I also seem to have no claustrophobia, because I loved
those caves. ^__^ Then again, the caves were pretty big. The
biggest one is so big you could fit the St. Peters basilica in it.
It was HUGE!

Firenze, at the Piazza Della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio with the
Michelangelo's David's (replica) statue and Bartolomeo's
Bandinelli statue. ♥

View from the Piazza Michelangelo on top of Firenze. The
view was just incredible! You can see the famous Pridge Ponte
Vecchio and the church Santa Maria Del Fiore.

Another picture from the Piazza Della Signoria,
one of the MANY statues on the square. The
cote where most of the statues were, is called
Loggia Dei Lanzi and this statue is Perseus
by Cellini. I completely fell in love with this
statue, so much so that I had to buy a small
replica of it to take home. ♥

Galileo's tomb in the Santa Croce church.  The
whole church was full of these incredibly beautiful
artistic tombs. Also Michelangelo and Dante are
buried in the church but I didn't get photos of
their tombs because taking photos was really difficult,
flashes were not allowed inside the church.

A close-up of the HUGE and magnificent church
Santa Maria Del Fiore, one of the most known
churches in the world.  If you are interested
of architecture, this building is one you should
look into, it's history is so thrilling.

Santa Maria Del Fiore from a little farther away. You can
almost see half of it. It's so HUGE that you cannot get
a picture of the whole church from this close.

The cote Loggia Dei lanzi from the Piazza Della Signoria. You
can just see Perseus on the left hand corner and the many
other wonderful statues there were... and all the people.
There was no place in Firenze where there would not have
been a huge crowd. =D

A close up of  one of the statues in Loggia Dei lanzi.
"Hercules fighting the centaur Nessus" by the sculptor
Giambologna.

View to the beauuutiful hills of Toscana. We drove hours
along roads in this view. Unfortunately I have a really bad
travel sickness so I wasn't really enjoying the trip in a car. XD

The view to the hills at the village where the Italian meal
was served. It was just so breathtakingly beautiful. ♥

City of dreams.
Venice. This is a view to the famous Rialto bridge. The whole
immensely huge bridge is full of little stores.

View to the city itself from the canal that leads to the city. We arrived
there with a tourist boat (the trip was woooonderful!). The big
building in the middle is the doge's palace.

A square where the gondola's takes on passengers. There was
a gondolier singing here and it led people to this place. It
was almost magical, like a jump to the past.

One of the many many many canals in the city.
It was so beautiful I took several hundred pictures
just like this one.

And another canal and another condola.
The whole city of Venice is set on water, on top of
this marshland and has no roads, instead
there are these canals that you can travel
on in the condolas, or by the small walkways that
crisscross the city with little bridges over the
canals. ♥

View from the Rialto bridge, to the "main canal" of the city.
This was the place where in ancient times there goods were brought
into the city.

The huge and beautiful church of San Marco at the San Marco
square in Venice centrum next to the doge's palace.

The famous bridge of sighs. The building here used
to be a prison, where the prisoners were sentenced
to live for the rest of their lives. When they were walked
into the building, people could hear their sighs of
desperation from the bridge, that is how it got
it's name.

I hope you enjoyed this little jump into the past. I have sworn to one day return to Venice and Firenze, I say fell in love with those towns and there is still so many things I had no time to see. ^_^ Dreams...

What the future brings?

My (step)sister has a daughter. She is 15 months old and the light of our whole family's life. She's always smiling, hugging and playing. She never cries. she's a sweetheart. ♥

Her mother is a beautiful blue eyed Finnish blonde with a heartwarming smile. Her father is a handsome very dark skinned, black haired Nigerian. They both adore their daughter. Her hair has started to grow, it's dark brown and curly and soft as silk. Her eyes are almost black, they are so dark, she seems to notice everything. She's starting to speak, when she learns more, she's gonna be  multilingual. Her mother teaches her Finnish and English. Her father teaches her English and Igbo.

She's like an adorable mix of her mother and father. Her nose is her fathers, her mouth is her mothers, the tone of her skin is like milk chocolate. She is learning to walk.

♥

Last week my sister and her daughter were coming to see my stepmom and father for easter. They were coming by a bus to the Helsinki train station. My sister was pushing the stroller where her daughter was sitting. There was a group of 20-something drunk men on the way. They let her pass but stared after her.
One of them yelled: "Is that a niggerbaby with you?"

... She is 15 months old. And now it starts?

I am so scared for her. What she will have to go trough. Only because some people are so fucking stupid! She's the most beautiful, wonderful, gentle little creature you could imagine and she most probably has to listen to words like that for the rest of her life.

Last summer a Finnish actor, Chike Ohanwe who has a Nigerian parent, was attacked while he was at a beach, sunbathing. There are more and more news about attacks of racist nature in Finland. A few months ago a man shot an immigrant in his workplace, a restaurant. After the "true finns"-party won the parliamentary election a year ago, racism has shown a new and dangerous face to the public.

Suddenly it seems it's completely okay to bash people, to call them names, to threaten them, even their lives. Members of parliament have openly said racist comments, they belong to extreme right-wing groups. It's given a permission for those angry racists who have before stayed quiet, to come out and yell, offend and even hurt. The horrible thing is, that these people seem to get no punishments. It's a horrible example for those who seem to have waited for a rolemodel like that.
Then there's Anders Breivik. When is that going to happen again in another country? With people like the "basic finns" saying that it's okay to hate those different from "us"... us usually being white straight men? Some people actually dare to admire Breivik. Sick!

I hope the Northern Europe is not sliding into the hands of racists and extreme right-wing people. On the other hand over a million people (there are 6 million of us in all) voted in the Finnish presidential election this year for a gay president. So there is hope. ♥

But as long as a 15 month old baby can be called such names without anyone doing anything about it, without batting an eye, there is something terribly, horribly wrong with the people in this country.