Me:  In my whole life, I don’t remember ever hugging someone who I was safe with. And you’re my white knight…I never thought this moment would come.

Him:  I knew it would.

Me: Of course you did. You always know .  Did you know from the very beginning, that I would love you some day? … I remember how in the beginning you used to sometimes ask me if I loved you. And I used to say ‘Believe me, you will know if I love you!’

You were so cute when you would ask that.

And you have a strong mind, you have a strong will and you’re decisive, but you are sweet and loving and gentle.

And I am weak-willed in most matters and I’m indecisive. I feel like I need someone more dominant and decisive helping me.

And you are a most wonderful and endearing blend of modesty and self-confidence; I love you so much.

Every month a screaming fear stabs me through from back to front, like an inextinguishable jagged sword of flames searing me in two right through the middle. As if my body is doubling over inside itself in anguish and screaming “For the love of God, don’t leave me!!” Wringing itself into a knot, gripping onto my insides with such a violence!

My body seizes up, writhing in despair within itself, as if it is straining to grip excruciatingly onto elusive and denying parents, onto something loving and soft, something safe, gripping onto an illusion of love and screaming “Don’t go!” Oh God it hurts!! Reduces me to a little child, in agony, lying on the couch, weak, worn, crying.

“I need love and softness and warmth,” the little girl said “And I need hugs. Since my birth, my agony and fear have been insufferable without these!”

And my body, desperate for love and softness and warmth, hasn’t understood, that physically torturing me every month does not bring love and softness and warmth.

When you are invisible, you write and people don’t see your words. When you are invisible, you speak and people speak over you, you cry and no one hears you, you take your stand and people walk on you. When you are invisible, you can enter into a room of people, unobserved, and listen and watch. You can read other people without them knowing, you can know them and see inside them, through their words, through their behavior, into their heart, without them even knowing that they are laying themselves bare before you – they can’t see you, they can’t feel you, to them, you are not there.

When you are invisible, unperceived, you can feel a man from across the room, looking into his face, you can feel his pain – you can be moved to tears by his sorrow and yearn to comfort him, but you cannot move, you cannot even speak to him, because you don’t speak his language, because he is a stranger, because he has no idea what you know about him, things you should not know – and he cannot see you.

When you are invisible, you can see a small boy being tormented by the misguided comfort of an adult. You can hear in the boy’s cries, you can feel his tears, he wants to be left alone, but the adult relentlessly “comforts.” Inside, you cannot understand why the adult persists as the child’s cries grow more strained and loud, and all you want to do is shout at the adult to leave the little boy alone, to relieve his escalating stress and the overpowering frustration that gives rise to his wailing and tears. But you cannot, because you are no one, not to be believed, you are invisible.

When you are invisible, you can sit in a classroom as the sound of students’ chatter, the squeaking of chairs, the rustling of papers lulls your mind to sleep, until you sink completely into the depths of the sea of your mind, inside of you, where a deep current carries you very far from your body, in complete serenity, in stark contrast to the loud chaos of the world around you; all of the voices and the noises become as a soft and distant drone. You sit and look around you – you can see the other students, the teacher – you can see from your depth what they are doing “on the surface.” Although they are sitting so close to you, you are looking upon them from so far inside, contemplating the phenomenon and silently asking yourself in your mind “Where am I?” They carry on chatting with one another as if you don’t exist and you are as a spirit hovering in the room.

When you are invisible, you can see all of the things that the visible people can’t see in one another; hidden evils, veiling façades, false pretenses, unperceived misunderstandings, intimate shames, secrets, sorrows…but you must keep it all inside, because since you are invisible, no one believes in you.

*Tunisia/Finland-090704/030505

Why do I fall apart when he stays away for days and days? More importantly, why does he stay away from me, why does he leave me…alone…wondering…writing…

“I sit alone here in my dark, silent room, writing to you by candlelight and staring out the window at the falling snow; each little snowflake living its brief moment in the light of the street lamp, lingering or hastened through this limelight at the whim of the wind, passing thus away, back into the dark space of night, becoming again invisible, forgotten.

Here I wait for you. I’ve waited for you all day. You said you would come. You did not come. I ask myself in my solitude ‘Did he forget me?’ I ask myself ‘Why does everyone forget me?’ like a small girl left waiting alone outside in the cold after her school has closed for the day and all her classmates have long since been picked up and taken back home to the warm embrace of a family. The small girl stands alone, shivering in the cold, unclaimed, abandoned, orphaned…scared. Nobody wants her, nobody remembers her – not even her own parents.

As I stare into the night, white with falling snow, deep inside me I feel this pain – my brief time in the light of your love is done.

I ask myself, ‘How many days will he desert me for this time? How many weeks?’

I ask myself, ‘Why did they forget me? Why did they leave me alone, waiting?’ Time after time, I only find one explanation – I am not worthy.”

*Finland-050505

I stood along the edge of the walking path overlooking the Central Park Reservoir, the occasional sound of snow-muffled steps of joggers passing behind me as I gazed out over the unexpected expanse of water in the midst of this urban jungle. The sound of banter between friends and affectionate whispers of love-struck couples approached and faded behind me as I stood looking out over the water. I closed my eyes to savor the cool fresh air on my skin as it contrasted with the welcome heat of sunbeams on my face, bathing me in spring warmth. I opened my eyes only to admire the birds of the water, sleeping, flying, swimming, bathing, bobbing and ducking, deep-diving, not quite posing for my pictures.

What a delightful day for a walk around the reservoir!

The Finnish autumn is setting in again, and with it, the usual feeling of emotional desolation, fear, loneliness and despair come creeping inside me morning by morning, more intensely with each passing day. What is it about the dark morning chill that seems to torment me with my solitude and fill me with emptiness? What is it about the Nordic autumn that leads my thoughts to the edge of dying and overwhelms my once love-filled heart with a desperate fear that all society, all family, all humanity has left me behind and forgotten me?

I wake up alone in my bed morning after morning, like every day of every season, but only with the onset of autumn does the full reality of my alienation and estrangement in this world come crashing down on me, filling me with ever-increasing despair and loneliness, replacing my hopes and sense of meaning with a desperate sense of futility and abandonment.

The dawn comes later and later, the darkness extends ever-farther into the day, ever-so-gradually snuffing out the light of life…and the chill in the air…how do these things bear with them these tragic emotions and place them into my heart? And why am I always alone? Why always excluded on the outskirts of lives?

This time last year, I sunk into a deep depression for weeks. I cried profoundly, every day, I don’t even know why, there was no logic. I could not control my tears and, of course, being alone, there is never a need to even try.

This year I am so much better. My depression was so severe last autumn, and my inexplicable crying so frequent and intense that it drove me right into the arms of my fiancé, at least in my imagination. Still now, I am only in his arms in my imagination, but at least we are close in heart and in mind. That is the only thing that keeps me from falling apart again. Still, I am left with an intense loneliness, a yearning to be with him that is tearing at me more and more each autumn day, and the fear growing in me of the autumn’s foreboding of a cold, dark and wintry death.

10.10.2005 Finland

My very best friend calls me “big-little girl.” This is because no matter how many years I live, no matter what experiences I go through, deep inside where I don’t let everyone see, I am still the girl I was when I was 6 or 8 … and I relive the same fears and tears that I did when I was so young.

On Friday morning I woke up from a dream, which led my mind back to a time when I was 10 years old and my father had taken his girlfriend, my brother and me on a trip to Maine. We were all staying in a nice little cottage there by the sea. The cottage had just two bedrooms and a bed in the pull-out couch in the living room area. The first night, I had chosen one of the bedrooms to sleep in. My brother slept in the other bedroom, while my dad and his girlfriend slept in the bed in the living room.

I remember I felt scared being alone in the bedroom, so the next day I asked my dad if I could sleep out in the living room. I felt scared and alone and that is the only reason I asked to change rooms. So, the next night my dad let me sleep in the living room; he and his girlfriend slept in the bedroom. I hadn’t understood they would leave the living room. That night, as I lay in the bed in the living room, I cried; I cried like a small child standing alone in a crowd after losing its parents. I wanted to go back into the bedroom again and my dad got angry at me. I didn’t want to be alone. All I knew was that I was scared and left on my own…and that is why I was crying – I didn’t have the solution.

After I had been crying for some time, my brother spoke from his bedroom to my dad “Dad, Lucia’s crying…” and I heard my father shout angrily in response “I really don’t give a shit!!” and I cried even more.

As I lay in bed recalling this moment on Friday, I felt that too-familiar scared loneliness again and I began crying – a 10-year old girl all my life, to this moment, and all the world, my father.

Finland-071105