post-birthday meditations

This is what I looked like yesterday, on the morning of my 19th birthday.

I woke up late to the sunshine and crept through the empty house to make myself a cup of tea and open some presents. My present to myself was a quiet morning, just the radio for company and a bit of bossa nova. I gave my eyes wings with eyeliner and put on my favourite dress, the one I bought in Amsterdam with my own hard-earned money. I still feel like an adult only occasionally, half-heartedly, in brief pockets of time.

Turning nineteen is scary because it's so close to twenty. And twenty sounds like far too much. But I do like this steady flow of time, these anchors that make me stop and go, okay. Nineteen. I've been around the sun nineteen times. That's quite something, isn't it?

amsterdam

My mother took a picture of me talking about the architecture, hence the Silly Hands of Enthusiasm.

Example of aforementioned architecture.

Me trying on the most beautiful shoes in the existence of time. (Far, far, far too expensive. Unfortunately.) 

Amsterdam was everything I'd dreamt of and more. My first day was spent in consistent awe. (I've seen beautiful cities before, but this? I was not prepared to lose my heart so fast and so permanently.) My mother and I kept stopping every few metres to sigh at the beauty of everything. Winding our way through narrow streets, incredible winds and the incessant tolling of church bells, dodging the most reckless cyclists I've ever seen. It was, in short, spectacular.

(Now it's all school and studying again, long days spent girding my loins for revision. It was the best thing possible to get away from it all for a few days, to visit Van Gogh and Anne Frank and then return feeling a bit more like a person than before.)

(My mother took all the pictures, I was too lazy to bring along a camera. 

So thank her, that is if you indeed wish to thank anyone, for the visual evidence.)

road trips and midnight escapes

A sublime weekend, driving up with friends to a red house by a lake.

Blasting our music with the windows down, pitching our tents on the perfect lawn, laughing too hard to breathe, going for a swim first thing in the morning, finding a ukulele and adopting it for the night, going to the sauna around three in the morning, falling asleep with the sun rising, brewing tea over a blue flame, singing until our voices grew hoarse.

How lucky I am to be able to surround myself with the people I love, the people who make me feel safe.

(Maybe this is one of those times I'll remember for years and years to come. Maybe this is what it really is to be young and to be happy, unguarded moments like the one below, captured on our journey back home.)

Soffulle kiitos kuvasta!

july so far

A weekend at Ruisrock festival: wading knee-deep into the sea while listening to Finnish reggae, singing along to Scandinavian Music Group and pounding the dusty ground with my feet, carrying around a massive slice of watermelon and eating it during the worst heat, biking home at 2 am in that incredible warmth.

And before Ruisrock, an impromptu sleepover and brunch the morning after. A reunion. Some gossip (the nice kind) at night in a park, kisses planted onto foreheads and stolen conversations at sunset.

And now there's my first quiet evening in weeks. The house is silent and I am spent and exhausted and happy.


Kiitos Karkki kuvasta!

the first days

 Pictures from a few weeks back. (Those are post-operation prescription meds I'm showing off, don't worry. And oh goodness I look ridiculous.)

So yesterday was graduates and flowers and friends (the kind who make it easier to breathe, just by existing), hugs and tears, cigarettes and mojitos (yes, mojitos; I regret nothing), train rides at night and sitting on a rooftop.

I am now officially on summer holiday and I don't know quite what to do with myself, with this hoarse voice and these aching legs (blame it on the dancing). In two hours I will board a train that will whisk me out of town. Finally I get to read the books I want to read and sleep as much as I want to and work on my summer project, the acquisition of more freckles. Really, I am quite happy.

äiti

My mother and I picking rhubarb near our summer cottage circa 1999.

Today is äitienpäivä (Mother's Day) in Finland, so my mother and I digged through some old photos and reminisced. (I cannot believe my parents' hairstyles and clothes. Shoulder pads, really?)

My mother is the singular most important person in my life. She has been my rock throughout my childhood, the most stable and present thing in my life. She raised me as a single parent - there are so many things to be grateful for.

Growing up is difficult and it's such a relief to know my mother will always be there for me. Kiitos, äiti.

My mother and I three and a half weeks after I was born, a lazy morning at our home in Reading.

i used to say i hate surprises

Some of you might remember this annoyingly elusive post from a few weeks back. Well, I finally obtained a few photos so I can tell you all about what happened.

I'd only just returned from Paris and turned eighteen. My friend, whom I shall refer to as V (because I've always wanted to refer to my friends with their initials) had told me she wanted to take me to see some kind of a show or performance on Friday night, and it was to be a Grand Surprise. So I traipsed into town wondering what it could be, like the gullible little girl I am.

V called me and told me she'd got the time wrong - the performance would start an hour later than she'd thought. She told me to come over to S, a mutual friend of ours who lived nearby. Along I went, only to find twenty of my friends singing me Happy Birthday.

And as much as I go on about hating surprises, this is one I can't not love.

My friend J turned eighteen on the same day as me, so we were given a bottle of wine each to kick off the evening. (Incidentally, I think this picture nicely demonstrates the difference between our respective personalities.)

It was a brilliant evening, made of friends and food and drink and music and the irreplaceable feeling of being fully and purely happy. V had not only planned a party, she'd also asked Antti Autio to come and play a gig for us. (He's one of my favourite artists and his live shows are incredible. My friends are still reminiscing how my face looked when Antti walked in.) V also performed one of my favourite songs for me. (Summer in the City by Regina Spektor, in case you're wondering.)

We ended the night by dancing to the Beatles on the kitchen table, and never have I ever felt as cared for.

PS. Guess where I'm posting this from? From the lazy aftermath of a surprise birthday party to my friend K. We really are lucky, aren't we.

this is an introductory post

I was waiting for my crêpes in Paris and my face was doing something weird.

I've been putting off writing an introductory post for weeks. It's high time I grabbed myself by the neck, as we say here in Finland, and churned it out.

Hello. My name is Iida (pronounced ee-duh), I am eighteen years of age and I live just outside Helsinki. I'm Finnish but I was born in England, and I'm bilingual. I attend a high school focused on the arts.

I write, I read, I take photographs, I sail (tall ships, not yachts). I listen to quite a lot of music, jazz and 60's pop and this thing called indie. Pretty much anything with a bit of banjo and whispery vocals.

I am scared shitless by most things in life. I'm a perfectionist to the most ridiculous degree. I'm also inherently lazy and prone to procrastinate.

I'm chronically awkward and ridiculously self-indulgent. It's my second nature to keep a running record of my thoughts and feelings. Like most of us who write, I feel a desperate need to catalogue and define my existence, to pin down my life for fear of forgetting.

My mother wanted to photograph me in front of La Fontaine Médicis and my face resorted to weirdness again.

I've been seeing my therapist for about a year. I've been having a hard time coping with my (truly terribly low) self-esteem, my perfectionism, my difficulties in social situations, my self-harm. It's nothing you haven't heard of before but I have the misfortune of having to live through it. The good thing is that these days I find it much easier to be hopeful about my future

(And the most important thing about me, the reason I write this blog, what it all boils down to: I'm learning to be honest.)