Letters of My Life: F goes for Friendships

The most important thing in my life: Friends. ^_^ I'm the kind of person who comes easily along with 98% of all people. However, I choose the actual friends really carefully. Mostly it happens unconscious, by intuition. I see and feel quite soon after meeting, if this person could be the kind of person who I could have as a friend. It's pure intuition, but it works almost always.

The reason it's easy for me to come along with all kinds of people is that I don't have the need to make that much of a noise about myself in new groups. I'm the person who is usually aside, watching and reacting, enjoying situations through listening. My participation as an introvert is very "silent", if you based your opinion of me only to your hearing sense. Also, the more distant I find people, the less I talk in the group situations.

On the other hand the distance is good, as it helps to come along with people. On the other hand, those who like their friends loud and extroverted rarely feel any connection to me. I'm just some "mysterious" person who's always there, but who they probably find difficult to approach. I assume. Though sometimes there are seasons I feel it'd be nice to make friends more easily, in the end I find this way to be better. To me it's not about the amount, but the quality. Like they say. ;)

Like I mentioned, the more distant I feel the other people and their subjects of conversation, the more silent I am. On the other hand, if I end up to a group that my intuition finds weirdly close, I might be actually completely different - way more talkative. However, it's obviously not that simple, as each group has also those who represent the opposite feeling. For example, it sometimes makes me sad that in otherwise distant group there is a person or two who I get the vibes of "closeness", but as to me it's the whole group atmosphere that effects to my talkativeness, I once in a while have this feeling that something important is slipping away. In groups where I feel more connection, the one or few distant people don't make any difference. If you read my earlier post about introverts and extroverts, you know already that it's not about shyness. However, I don't quite have the perfect word to describe how the group atmosphere effects. Like the group was either some kind of a cliff or a bridge between me and the other person. I hope you know what I mean. If not, then, no can do. x)

Though all my friends are a bunch of completely different kind of people with almost nothing in common, after thinking about it a lot I've noticed there's still some mental and social attributes I can find from most of my friends.

• Very strong open-mindedness. I have many attributes that are different from the masses - in goods and bads -  and many people seem to find it easily uncomfortable, though it wouldn't need to be.
• Somehow all my closest friends seem to have extremely strong sense of nurturing and caring about people and other animals. Also they're extremely sensitive. I love sensitive people, who still are confident about their sensitiveness instead of considering it as a weakness.
• My friends are also very contemplative. At least most of them - if not all - spend huge amount of time by thinking about the world and their own life, wanting to become conscious and learn more about the world.  At times this increases less or more mental pain in them, but at the same time it makes them very strong people who all have their personal way of life without caring too much what the society demands from them.
• Notable part of my friends are geeks way or another, whether it's about video games, books, or something else. Not all, though.

Those are the things that come on my mind now. There must be more, though. I was planning to write also about what kind of friend I am to my friends. However, my hand hurts because I've been nerding around all day. ;) Besides, I don't think that would be much interesting. If you disagree, mention about it in the comments, please. Or if you're my friend, feel free to describe me. It'd be super interesting and fun. I can take criticism too, mwahaha. ;) But write it with a name or a nick I can recognize you from, because I don't take any anonymous trolling.

Letters of My Life: D goes for Dysmelia

Just a random dysmelia hand.

I was going to have my D for Dreams, but as I have completely own blog for my dreams, I decided to have the D for Dysmelia.

Dysmelia is a rare congenital disorder referring to the limbs. I have it, and it often gains attention by new people I meet. The thing that people notice first is the fact I don't have left arm at all. About 20-30% people pay also attention to the fact that I don't have an elbow. Making it impossible for me to bend my arm from the parts that require the elbow moving. But extremely rare people notice that I have malformations also in my fingers. My thumb has one muscle less than typical people. Obviously it doesn't show outside unless you're a professional of the subject. Also the bones of my little finger and ring finger are connected much earlier than normally they would, making it impossible for me to move my ring finger without my little finger moving too, and vice versa.

There are many forms of dysmelia. It can be missing a limb, like in my case. It could be any other limb too, or parts of limbs. Another form is malformation of limbs, which can show in even more variety. Like I described my elbow and fingers. The third form is polymelia, "too many limbs". Which I don't have. Could be useful, though.

The person with dysmelia has these things since (s)he's born. Every year 60-80 children in Finland are born with dysmelia. It's caused by something going wrong during the pregnancy. Therefore somebody losing a limb because of an accident doesn't have dysmelia. That's completely another thing though it'd look outside the same.

So, what can cause a woman to have a child with dysmelia? One thing is that it can be caused by inheritance of abnormal genes. Dysmelia can also be caused by use of teratogenic drugs like alcohol or many medicines during pregnancy. Environmental chemicals and ionizing radiation are known to cause dysmelia as well as infections and metabolic imbalance during pregnancy. In my case the doctors have told that the most probable reason I got dysmelia is that my mom had an overdosis of the vitamin A. She used to eat lots of liver, because back then doctors didn't know the risks and therefore didn't warn about it. Nowadays pregnant women are told to avoid eating liver during pregnancy.

Dysmelia has many different levels of severity. Those effect to the fact how much special needs the child (and adult) has. It could be anything from only one malfunction of a toe to missing all the legs and hands. However, dysmelia itself effects only to the physical body and doesn't effect to any mental attributes like intelligence. Of course, if the mother has for example been influenced by radiation, it's possible for the child to have dysmelia and some other syndrome that effects the mental attributes. But it's not a rule.

When I was born in 1986, the old fashioned doctors told my mother that I would never even learn to walk. Though I had perfectly normal legs. Back those times people with dysmelia alike to mine would have been just institutionalized. My mother as a nurse of course didn't see any logic in the doctor's claim, and raised me as I was a normal child who just had to learn new ways of making certain things. And I'm extremely happy, because I grew up to be just as independent as those who didn't have dysmelia. Nowadays I don't even remember it unless somebody makes a comment of it.

And in the end I want to tell something to the parents of a dysmelia child: never underestimate the physical capability of your child. Instead courage him to learn to do things by himself. There are always ways, they just needs to be found. For example, I shave my armpit with my toes. Yes, exactly. Pretty cool, and I bet almost nobody with two arms could do that. ;)  Worst thing you can do to your child is to make him identify himself as a handicap. Always search for the positive sides and your child will grow up as an independent self-confident person.

Letters of My Life: C is for Consciousness

Consciousness. The word which can be understood in so many ways. To me the most important meaning for this word is consciousness about what's going on in my own mind. However, without excluding any other meanings of Consciousness, whether it was spiritual, social, rational, or any other.

Consciousness of my own mind has played an extremely important role in my life. Most of that hasn't been nice. Actually at worst it can be even haunting and horrible to become conscious about certain things of yourself, especially the darkest sides. (Yes, everybody without exceptions has them, it's all about being aware of them.) As I used to go to therapy for years and though the few first years were horrible (yet extremely self-educating), I became kinda addicted to keep myself conscious about all the things that goes inside my mind - liked them or not.

To give you an example: When I started to realize in the start of my relationship with Chris that I was an extremely (unhealthy) jealous person, it was really hard for me to accept. Who'd want to admit something like "I'm sickly jealous person who makes my girlfriend feel bad and untrustworthy - and I must stop, instead of putting pressure on her"? Denying it was an easy and more pleasant way at starting. But as I became more and more "the jealous girlfriend monster", I realized our relationship was at stake if I didn't figure out what's the thing causing my jealousy and work hard to change it.

It was extremely difficult for me to deal with it especially because my greatest vice is Pride. It's not easy for me to admit I'm wrong even if it was obvious that I was. However, my personal Pride was less important  than my love for Chris. So I kicked my ass. Hard. I found out that behind of my jealousy there was my great lack of trust towards all people in general, therefore including Chris. And the lack of trust towards other people was actually deeply connected with my lack of trusting to myself.

Well, it's a long story about how I managed it, but it took about a year of active conscious self-searching and concrete practice when I was finally free. Yes, I use the word free because only after I sincerely stopped feeling jealous, I realized how much I had wasted energy on pessimistic and passive-aggressive way of thinking. The quality of my life got way better, and the happiness has increased x10.

Though I won't spend hours writing about how I did it, I can tell that in the end all the things I learned can be crystallized in these sentences: "I have no rational reasons to doubt her loyalty. And if she'd still end up cheating me, it'd be her loss, as it'd just reveal me that I was too good for her. Then, I'd only be free to continue searching for someone much better."

It takes a lot to learn to really believe in sentences like that, if you used to be a person who didn't trust really anyone. Knowing that isn't enough, but you honestly have to believe in it too. Otherwise it could at worst become only a tool you use to blackmail your partners, and inside you'd be just as dark, anxious and insecure as always before.

Sometimes we still talk with Chris about how I used to be, and we've both been so happy about my change. It's difficult to believe that I really used to be like that. Like it was someone else. Sometimes I even feel a little bit weird about the fact that nowadays I feel no jealousy at all. Like. Never. Swear it through my own life. Always remember: the fact is, that in the end the greatest thing that drives a lover to cheat is the lack of trust by their other half. Being jealous is like pushing your loved one away.

That was only one example of the hundreds times when my will of being self-conscious has helped me. Such succesfull experiences when repeated, make you easily kinda addicted for consciousness. It's a long lasting drug-alike euphoric feeling, when you finally beat the monster that was haunting you for years - or even your whole life - until that beautiful day when you realize that you're free.

Letters of My Life: A is for ADD

I've had ADD (which is like ADHD, but without the H of hyperactivity) all my life, however I got diagnosed only about half year ago, at age of 25. Getting the diagnosis felt extremely weird but at the same time it helped me to understand many things. Also the medicine has increased my ability to concentrate. Which has been a huge deal for me, especially when it comes to studies. I can handle the uncomfortable social situations when I'm supposed to listen but can't concentrate at all. Because I'm so used to them. But at studies it's double as uncomfortable when you can't concentrate no matter how hard you tried.

For a person with AD(H)D it's not a matter of will or amount of interest to the subject but a neurological inability to concentrate, and it can't be effected with willpower.

Letters of My Life: The Start

Related to my latest post, I decided to keep my blog updated little bit more often by starting with the classic idea "letters of my life".