Chapter 1. Tell me about yourself

I feel like I should write down what thoughts dwell in the depths of my mind, rather than suppress them. Suppressing emotions is a very familiar act to me, I’m not only Finnish, but born as… what I am not. But it’s not healthy. Let them out. Vent the steam. If a dam has no openings, it will spill over, or break. Keep the kettle lid on too long, the tea is bound to boil over. I need to open up. But I dare not open up in a way that… inconveniences people. That’s how I see it. It never occurs when I listen to other people open up. That’s not an inconvenience to me, au contraire, it makes me feel useful, valuable. If I can’t so much as listen to other peoples’ woes, what good am I? And if I can’t help them talk through tough times, what use am I? But when I open up to others, I feel vile, like I’m taking their time, taking away from their enjoyment. I feel like an inconvenience. And I hate feeling that way.

This computer is no psychiatrist, it’s no therapist, it’s certainly not going to help me with any professional skill. But it is here. Maybe, in the future, reading back on these thoughts, these messages to my future self, I’ll get inspiration for a story. Maybe I’ll be able to finish these stories some day. Maybe not. Who knows.

I like writing. There’s a strange calmness to being able to tap on the keyboard, and seeing the things rattling around in this foggy cloud others might call a brain onto the screen. When I’m at home, or at school, I have other matters to attend to on my computer. But on the train? The internet connection might cut out, my headphone battery might run out, any number of things might happen to cause me to suddenly not have any entertainment at hand. Hell, I might be listening to a Juno Dawson novel, and the knots in my stomach that causes might make me feel so nauseous that I need a break. That’s why I’m starting this now. Wonderland is… a bit much. I’m not saying this as a negative, or a derrision on Juno’s works, I am so glad that I stumbled upon this author yesterday, but… well. It surfaces feelings in me. Thoughts. And I am most certainly not ready to untangle those thoughts. Not right now. Maybe never. Is it because I’m afraid? Yes. Hells bellow, I’m afraid.

I should talk about my past, I suppose, how I ended up feeling the need to write this. I’m a Finnish trans girl. I was born in Oulu, and raised in a tiny town, roughly twenty kilometers from Oulu’s city center. I hated it there. That town was 98% religious fundamentalists by volume, at least that’s how it felt. My family did not belong to their specific sect, but my parents were both devout Lutherans, my father perhaps more devout than my mother. I am the youngest in our family. Real shocker, I know, the youngest child turns out queer. What’s next, I studied in a music highschool and do theatre?
Don’t get ahead of me.
I have four older brothers, one being a half-brother. I always felt closer to my mother than I ever did my father. I think that intensified a hundred-fold when my father started working far from home. He spent very little time with us, only weekends and some odd days here and there. My mother raised us all, though at this point my oldest brother already lived on his own and had children, and my second oldest brother had moved on his own to study in university. She had less to deal with daily. I still wonder how she managed us all on her own, especially after we got a dog. But maybe I’ll talk about my pet history at a later date.

I was a bright kid in school. I think so, at least. In Finnish and English, I excelled. Even in natural studies, religion and history, I was quite good. But maths, that I always struggled with. The first time I had to take extra learning sessions was to understand the greater than/lesser than signs. I could not understand them for the life of me. PE was not my strong suit either, aside from the few days we went to the nearby forest track for some wilderness related excercise. Perhaps unsurprisingly I was very fond of art class and music class. I wasn’t too good with art at the time, I still think I’m not that good, but I think it is to be expected from a kid. But music I did great in. I sang, I played the piano, I played the guitar on occasion. I loved music, beyond all other things.

Two things made it hard for me to do school work. One was my inability to focus on homework. I had failed to do my homework so many times that detention was almost a weekly occurrence. I was unable to focus on it, or find any motivation to do it. I am genuinely surprised that my parents never caught on to the fact that I might have ADHD. It got so bad that I was assigned to always do my homework after school, under assistant teachers’ supervision. That fixed my homework issues, but in primary school, and even into secondary school, I had one significantly larger bugbear that would not go away.
When I started school, things got off to a pretty good start. I got two friends almost immediately, and they hung around with me for almost the entire time I was in school. But it did not take long for me to become to focus of almost every bully’s attention. I was a sensitive child. I was a weird kid. It could have been my love of monsters, and my growing fascination in horror, and weird story telling even back then. It could have been my unfasshionable clothing. It could have been my buzzcut that my parents insisted on until I grew old enough to say ”no”. Who knows. I was bullied. Mercilessly. It got so bad, that, at sixth grade, aged 12, I tried to end it all, in front of other school kids. That quieted things down for a bit. Did I want to hurt myself? I think so…

When I entered secondary school, I went to Pohjankartano. I started studying on the music side there, and while I wasn’t too good at music theory, and my grades started dipping more visibly, I was still able to eek by. Bullying was less of an issue, but it still happened. I think my strangeness didn’t help with that too much. I’m afraid at some point, I wound up becoming a bit of a bully myself. I hate myself for that. The self harming thoughts did not end. I never acted on them, but they were always there.

When it came time to go to highschool, I chose Madetoja. The Madetoja music highschool was in the same building as Pohjankartano, so learning a new place would not be a problem. I actually managed to form a weird little clique for myself there. I was very much the artsy type, so along with the mandatory music classes and musical theatre, I took quite a few art classes. It was around this time that I figured I might want to be a bartender. It was mostly because I was enamoured by the image of a bartender in a vest. I’m still a bit too fond of vests. Studies didn’t get much better for me though. My grades dipped further and further, and quite a few cources wound up getting rejected. I was in a pretty bad way by year three, when my mother intervened. She got me to book a time to the student councillor, who got me to see the school therapist. She talked to me for a while, but I wasn’t fully able to open up to her. She then suggested I go see a different therapist associated with the school. I think that was the first time the idea that I had ADHD was floated around. Eventually I was able to get my act together enough that I was able to graduate. Right as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Finland.

Half a year after my graduation, I started military service. Around the same time, I was accepted into the Lapland University of Applied Sciences. I’ll get back to that one. But first, army. Finland has a term of mandatory service for all legally male individuals. As a legal male, I had to go to army. Day one was the typical ”get your gear, get your rooms, start settling in” kind of day. Day two saw us get our shots in order, and getting a physical checkup. My height was taken, my sight and hearing was checked, and the former got a diagnosis I had heard before: I need glasses. The latter, however, got a new one. One of my ears had a dip in hearing certain frequencies. At the end of the medical examinations, which included hearing and vaccines, was a chat with a nurse. The nurse talked about the hearing dip, and suggested I speak to a doctor about getting some treatment for it. When I got to see the doctor, the medical captain for the unit, he informed me that there was no reason for me to get a checkup for something so frivolous. He did, however, talk to me about my past. He asked me why I was put into the A classification, when before I was put in B (In Finnish military there are five fitness classifications. A = you’re fully able to serve, B = you can serve a lessened military service, C = you’re exempt from the military due to a health related issue, E = you can take a few years off, and then come back for a checkup to see if you’re able to serve, T = you’re a danger to yourself and others if you’re put in military service, and therefore are exempt). I told him that I had been able to lose some weight in between those two checkups, and had gotten a bit more fit. The medical doctor looked at me, and told me that he would put me back in B category, because ”I seemed more like the kind of person to work a desk job than be on the front lines digging fox holes”. He then asked me if I had gone to highschool. When I said I went to Madetoja, he said ”I see! You did seem a more artistic type.”
I am still convinced he put me in the B class for being gay.

Regardless, I was put into the position of the unit’s clerical officer for the following six months, meaning my responsibilities were all behind a computer.

My train is now arriving. It is time to end this chapter then.