What am I doing here?
Lately, the question has been popping up several times a day. It’s a rhetorical question: of course I know ‘why’ I’m here in the practical sense, so that’s not the issue. I never wanted to live in Finland and I really enjoyed the idea of using English on a daily basis. My country of preference was either Sweden or Britain. As a Swedish speaker, Finnish was always difficult, and it was all the more laborious because of my brain fog. The socially awkward Finns added to my social anxiety, as well.
From an early age, I had a desire to be in the UK, and even spent a year in the late 80s studying for an interior design diploma combined with art history and an A-level in art. I dated English speaking men but there weren’t many in Finland. When the last one gave me the boot, I started to feel quite desperate. I wasn’t getting any younger, for a start. But I really hated the dating scene and I needed to stop looking to stay sane. So I said to myself, I’ll have just one last look, and then I’ll give up, because that’s how it’s meant to be. Well, two hours’ later I met Martin on a small dating site for spiritually minded people, and he was very quick to decide to come and see me in Finland. He had had a career as an IT-expert. At the time, he was house sitting in Spain while also practising to become a professional artist.
I was granted a permanent disability pension in 2001, and it was supposed to make me feel more settled, but instead I fretted over my poor finances and the lack of a companion. I had a very close relationship with my mother, but she was an alcoholic, so life with her in the background was a constant roller coaster. That’s why, when she passed away, I felt liberated. It’s only now that I have gained a perspective and forgotten the bad times, that a deeper grief has emerged. She was such a charming, special and intelligent person, and there was a unique understanding between us even though we were quite different as well.
I had moved to the coastal town where my mum lived in 2005 when another romantic relationship crashed. I had to move out of Helsinki quite quickly and my mum managed to find a council flat for me in her town. I was very sad to leave the city, but at the same time, life as a disabled person was easier in the small town. My house was horrible, it was like a cardboard box lined with plastic, but at least it was close to the beach. In this place, there was plenty of coast line with beautiful cliffs and beaches and a lot more sun than anywhere else in the country. Moving around on a bike was easy although it has to be pointed out that it wasn’t so great for my spine, and fatigue didn’t allow for any vigorous cycling. We met up a lot so we did have quality time together over the years, but I also remember often feeling frustrated with her because of some of her mannerisms. When she was drunk or tired, she became annoying, and it also triggered negative memories from my childhood. When Martin had a bit much to drink he was perfectly chill, yet it triggered the memories related to my mum’s alcohol abuse as well. Those were times when I was a bit hard on him, and he had to promise not to overdo the drinking.
When Martin came along, I had just broken up with the social services. Since you can’t live on a basic pension, I had to frequent the social services on a regular basis and beg for help with this and that. Unfortunately, the petty officials in this town were especially difficult to deal with. While everything went smoothly in the city, now I had to run to the SS office all the time for absolutely everything, and was often given false promises. For instance, they would promise to refund me for medications I had to pay for out of pocket but it would often take several days longer than they made me believe. When I asked for a vacuum cleaner, they said I could just clean by hand. A big row started when they were dredging my finances, and I decided I had to cut them out of my life. I even talked about the issues on the radio. My dad came to my rescue and helped pay for the energy bills, and then a few months later, Martin appeared in my life. He came to see me, and never left. This meant that we were able to share living costs right from the start.
A couple of months prior to Martin’s arrival, my mum and I had had a rather fool hearted idea of buying a car in order to have a bit more of a life. My dad helped with this also, but the monthly insurance payments were insane, over 60 euros. My mum and I had to share this between us, but she never had much money either. I hadn’t been driving since my years in France in the early nineties, so my mum coached me into driving again. This turned out to be incredibly useful for the future. When Martin said he wanted to come and see me, I was able to pick him up at the air port, and we were able to get around together in a way that would never have been possible otherwise. When he died, I was able to pick up driving again under my mum’s supervision. So getting that car was invaluable.
I remember faffing around at the airport on the 6th November 2009 and then seeing Martin standing outside, looking at his mobile phone. He was wearing a lumber jacket. He looked up and smiled when he saw me. And the rest is history.
Martin proposed at Christmas. He offered me a woolly ring with the promise of a better one that we could look for together. In the end, I couldn’t find anything suitable, and we ended up having the rings made for us. Martin had some small savings at that point that he was generous with. Again, my dad helped a little bit towards the wedding that we planned in Wales the following August. My mum fully approved of Martin and my dad was grateful someone had finally snapped me up.
Our time together in Finland was amazing. We had so much snow that winter, and in the summer, the weather was incredible. I enjoyed going for walks now that I had company. Martin rented a studio where he painted in the day time, and then in the afternoon, we would go for walks, often with my three cats. In the summer we were packing up my house, and we went swimming in the evenings. It really was glorious and I wish I could say that life in Wales was a match to our time in Finland. During those eight months in Finland, my only worry was that Martin would give up on me, and it took me a while to feel perfectly secure. For a few months, I didn’t have a worry in the world (or almost, anyway, since insomnia was bugging me a great deal).
Martin, my mum and I:
I was excited to leave my uneventful life, and I was so fortunate to be ‘rescued’ by a knight in shining armour who was such an intelligent, generous and kind person. I learnt that sometimes, it’s perfectly ok to receive help on this level. But chances are it will only happen once, and then you will be called to re-empower yourself again. We had a good marriage in Wales but we were very poor and things were not easy on a practical level. I had a whole new culture to get used to. And then of course, four years later Martin died and I was thrown into a black hole that I had to crawl out of with teeth and nails.
Photos from the very last days in Finland in July 2010:
So here I am now. I live in a secure and controlled environment and the house I live in is a reasonably decent standard modern house. It’s rather poky, like Welsh houses often are, but I have very beautiful, open views from the upstairs windows, and it really helps me with my mental health. I also have a garden, which obviously helps me get out of the house. It’s amazing to be able to step outside whenever I like without having to go through massive preparations. This may be the closest to an English manor house that I will ever get, so I’m trying to be grateful. I can see that the point of being here is having a home, because it’s definitely the best home I’ve ever had, and I doubt I would have this quality of life in Finland. Ironically, I exchanged nature for a house, and as years go by, I’m feeling more and more stuck.
I was finally diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome hypermobile type in 2018, and then with menopause, the symptoms that have followed me throughout my life deteriorated. I was also diagnosed with Restless Legs Syndrome (Willis-Ekbom Disease), which really makes my life hell as sleep is such a struggle, I don’t tolerate most drugs, and I just can’t get out of bed at a reasonable time. The final nail in my coffin is the hearing disorder hyperacusis which drains me of any motivation to make an effort to get out of the house. It’s a bitter fact: it had to be this place in Wales that gave me this torturous disorder.
Getting out of the house is a tediously difficult affair for many reasons. But I also have to admit that I find Wales rather small and domesticated. I really like seeing the hills in the distance but I just can’t connect to the place when I go out in nature. I miss the smooth rocks and swimming in the Baltic sea. I miss the smell of the cool Arctic air, the drier climate and the vast expanses of wilderness. In addition, I have had so many really horrible challenges during my life here, and while all of that has taught me a lot about social injustice, it has also drained me of my will to live. I do want to live, but not like this, crippled and stuck. And so now I wonder what I’m really doing here at all? Or to be more exact, where am I heading with all this? Right now, I don’t feel I’m heading anywhere, and it terrifies me. I’m bored to death.
Brexit came along. Would we have settled here if we had known? The country is in shambles. I would say that all those life lessons were horrible but also important to my growth as a person. Sure. I think that dealing with so many issues and complaints in the English language was the point, because I don’t believe I could have done it in Finnish. I always wanted to master English, and now I got into the nitty gritty of it all. It’s all rather paradoxical, because in some ways, all that social shit is more open and accessible here, perhaps because it’s a big country in a state of chaos. I’m a lot more integrated into this society than I could ever be in Finland because there is also the whole world of English language internet.
The important thing for me to remember is that life in Finland as a disabled person isn’t necessarily any easier or more pleasant overall. I know this from experience, and that is why I never considered staying there. Martin also didn’t think there was much hope for him as an artist in such a small country. Sadly for me, the art scene in the UK became overwhelming. I was already tired of the art scene in Finland and frustrated with my limitations, but in the UK, the competition really got on my nerves. I tried to liaise with disability arts but could not find my place within it at all. And in the end, I had to concede that my health was deteriorating and I just did not have the physical and mental ability to make art anymore. A few months prior to his death, Martin had enrolled in a Master’s course at the Art College which I fully supported, but the truth is that it also separated us. Clearly, it marked the beginning of the end.
Genetically, I discovered I have links to this country I was never aware of. I found about eight Scottish and English noblemen in my family tree in the 18th and 17th Centuries when Sweden was an empire. I discovered that I’m a direct descendant from people such as Owain Glyndwr, the famous Welsh freedom fighter and last true Prince of Wales who ruled the very area I live in, but also his opponents on the English side. I even look a little bit like Owain, I think? Of course no one knows what he looked like so this reconstruction I found on the internet is just a guess and the app that turns me into a man is obviously simplistic. But I do resonate with him since I have also had my fights for justice.
But anyways… surely, enough is enough? Surely one could expect some counter forces, too? Where do I go from here? Is this really all there is to my life? Is it just downhills all the way?
