Endless questions

Yesterday was a funny day.

I've been having fun and feeling super well for the last week or so, obviously dealing with the lawsuit and the ongoing exam week have increased my stress levels temporarily, but other than that, I've had a great time. I've met interesting new people, hung out with some of my older friends to refresh our friendships, connected with my brothers and spent time outside, and so on. But yesterday, yesterday was funky. I, spontaneously, met with an old friend and went to a coffee shop to catch up. Now she has always had some issues and her life hasn't exactly been easy, but yesterday, it was so visible and apparent just how many issues and problems she has, and it started to trouble me a lot. Like, a lot. There are no easy cures, and I want to help her and everyone else, but don't know how... 

I've often been like a psychologist friend - I like to listen, and my friends know they can trust me. I'm a Finn which means I don't talk over others, so maybe people feel at ease when they explain their problems and troubles to me. Sometimes people just need a pair of ears that'll listen, sometimes they want a shoulder to cry on, sometimes they want moral support. I don't usually mind being a friend therapist, since I know that these people have a hard time and they do need someone who'll listen, and they're my friends, obviously I want to comfort and help them, to the best of my ability. I've also always been very sensitive to people's emotions and to all these little social cues that show how comfortable or uncomfortable the other person is, what bothers them and what tics them off, what makes them happy, which topics we should talk about, what kinds of jokes amuse them, how much I can talk about certain issues and things, are they being honest and so on... (This is also a big reason as to why I prefer IRL relationships over online ones - body language, the tone of their voice and so on mean a lot to me. It's a whole other conversation on its own.) So I guess I'm kind of safe to talk to, since I know how much I can push the other person..? 

In any case, people often come to me for either advice or support. This doesn't even apply to only my friends and immediate family, but even to new acquaintances! And even when I was a child, people often talked to me as if I'd know how to help them and make them feel more at ease. I remember one particular situation, I was around eleven and taking my bike out of the shelter at our block of flats. I met a neighbour I hadn't seen before, a woman, around 30-years-old, maybe. For some reason, we started talking, and she started to open up to me. At the end of our conversation (when I was already desperately wanting to flee), she asked for my age and was shocked to hear that I was only eleven. Even though I look younger than my age, she said that I seem like an adult. This is just a weird example of how people often open up to me, haha. It's odd, but I hope I can make them feel better. I want to help them, and if lending my ears is what makes them feel better, I can do that.

But I've started to wonder and question, for the longest time, what is wrong with our world? What is going on? Why are so many young people sick, so ill that they can barely withstand their everyday lives? I don't have any science to back me up since I haven't researched any of this, just wasted many hours of my life pondering all kinds of things, and I have my own subjective experience with all of my friends and their problems and illnesses. So take the things I say with a grain of salt, these are all just based on my own life and my own, limited knowledge...

But, almost every friend of mine has some mental illness. Oftentimes, they talk to me first and later start going to a psychologist or a therapist. So I've known these people for a while, and I'm fully aware that they're not just "faking it" or "doing it for attention". In fact, most of them have clinical diagnoses which confirm their illnesses, and I can see with my own two eyes that something is wrong. Severe clinical depression, social anxiety, hallucinations, anorexia, panic disorder, burn-outs (we are only 18 or 19!), OCD, and many things related to their illnesses, like suicidality, self-harming tendencies, obsessive behaviour, panic attacks, extremely bad body-image, lack of self-worth, tics and so on, and so on, and so on... Abuse, family-related issues, religious cults, bullying. One friend called me when she was literally standing on a bridge, and she wanted to jump. I've never ever ridden a bike faster than then, lol. We walked for hours, just talking and talking and talking, and she cried a lot and I hugged her a lot and so on. After that, she decided to see a therapist. And at one point, this one friend often called me when she was having a hard time. We also spoke for hours, either on the phone or through messages. It wasn't only once that she told me that I was literally keeping her alive. 

I'm not trying to boast here like "hurr durr look at how special and important I am, I'm keeping my friends alive, I'm the best", but just trying to prove a point, a point of how goddamn bad it can get. These friends are having a hard time, and some of them have been having a hard time for years. And remember how young we are! Even during middle school, two girls and I were very close, and we made a promise to not hurt ourselves. I've never had any self-harming tendencies, but they have. We were in middle school. And that girl who often called me in times of trouble, I can't remember how many times I've comforted her at school during her panic attacks... It's all so crazy.

So, I've heard a lot of my friends' insecurities, fears, illnesses. I've heard a lot of how and why they've formed, and I've supported these people for years. And let me remind you, almost all of my friends have a diagnosis. These people are completely normal-looking girls, most of whom go to high school or have graduated already. They come from different places, have different backgrounds... But the thing that connects them all is the fact that they're ill. They're unwell. And it has, for so long, baffled me. Why are people so sick. Why does this happen. Why is this so common these days.

I know that people are people and have always been - we aren't any more "prone to mental illnesses" than we were before. Evolution isn't that fast. People just probably seek help more often and easier than a while ago, when there was a huge social stigma around the topic. And, we get diagnoses easier. You don't have to be psychotic or down-right suicidal to get one. But it doesn't explain, why they're so prevalent and common, even in young people who are supposed to have all this privilege and wealth. (Most of us aren't "rich", but obviously wealthier than the people in third world countries.) I can't help but think that something is wrong with the current society. When talking with people 10-40 years older than me, they don't recognize mental illness as a regular thing. Obviously, they know of people who are depressed and so on, but they don't remember their friends and peers being so sick as these days during their teenhood. Yes, there was a stigma, but severe illnesses would still have been visible, no matter how unheard of or taboo they would've been... Even if you wouldn't have been able to slap a label, "clinical depression" or "schizophrenia" on them.

Most of my friends have professional help. Some have been visiting psychiatrists or psychotherapists for years now, and medications are also common. They have professional help. Why doesn't it help? People can't simply be cured, but you'd think all those years would've eased up the pain at least a little by now.. And still, one of my friends had to be hospitalized a while back. What is going on? Why are they so ill, what can I do, what can our society do, what can they do? They have the wish and will to get healthy again, to "cure themselves", no matter how hard or time-consuming it may be. They don't want to be suicidal anymore, but to no avail. What's going on... I feel powerless. I'm no professional, I try to use my knowledge of those friends and my own sensitivity to figure out what I can and should say, but I can't.. heal them. And it's incredibly, incredibly stressful and hard to be this psychologist friend. It's both a curse and a blessing. I care about these people, obviously, and I worry about them, and to have them talk to me and open up to me is heavy. But I'm not going to complain since to some of them, I'm the only person they talk to, and I can't take that away from them. I might be the only way they know to easy their pain. I just... I want to help them, but my capability is limited. I don't know what to do, and it's not exactly my responsibility, either... I just want them to feel well.

When I think back at yesterday, I feel so troubled by this friend. She has never been an easy person - competitive, obsessive at times. But yesterday, maybe because I hadn't hung out with her in a while, I could really see just how obsessive she can get. She's obsessed with comparing herself to other people, looks-wise, personality-wise. She wants to be better than everyone else, but feels as though she was the worst and puniest of them all. When walking through the city center, she pays attention to everyone looking at her, feeling proud of their attention... But at the same time, she feels like she's the worst person in the history of humanity. It's conflicting. She lives through the viewpoints of others, and the decisions she makes are all shaped by the thoughts of others. Even when it comes to choosing a dress. ("Does this look stupid? What will other people think? Do I look better than them?") She has a boyfriend, and she's incredibly jealous and insecure in the relationship, even though it (and he) makes her very happy... It got very tiring to spend time with her, since she's so completely aware of everyone, comparing and judging and being both self-conscious and judgemental towards others. It was.. well, eye-opening, I guess. And she knows she has issues, she even said it to me. She knows it's not her personality, that she's no "mean, judgemental bitch". She's very nice, actually. But it's a deep-rooted issue, and she doesn't know how to fix it - neither do I. I've had my own hardships with body-image, self-worth and self-confidence, but it's a long road that I can't take for her... She'd just need to start to let go of what others think, and start forming her own view on herself. Through her eyes, her accomplishments, her dreams and goals. She admitted to me that she has an obsession with her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, that she reads her blog and has read it for years, and hates her with passion. That it's not normal, it's an unhealthy obsession that she hasn't been able to talk about with her psychologist, but could admit to me since she knows I don't judge. What can you say to that? What can you say?

Needless to say, this has been bothering me, and yesterday the weight of all my friends' pain just really wore me down. I'm an optimist and my firm view of the world is that the world, life itself, and nature are all neutral, neither good nor bad. And good and bad are both subjective, there's no universal truth... Every human is born a neutral, blank slate, just like nature. With time, we form our consciousness and start shaping our morals, and then every human becomes a shade of grey - no pure black, no pure white. How grey you are depends on who's looking... Upbringing, society, environment, genes, they all affect your sense of morals. But ultimately, you're the one who decides your own actions (at least if you believe in indeterminism). And so, I've kept an optimistic attitude towards my own life and my own choices in life. I'm sure I'll manage. And I'll try to keep myself a lighter grey, in my own eyes at least. But these sorts of things, these sorts of tragedies just really make me question... Is the world really inherently neutral? There are no people purely good, but.. Ah. Why has life treated my friends so bad? I don't believe that the world's bad, or that there's such a thing called destiny, but... If I didn't think like this, I'd start to believe that the world is rotten. Thank god I still have faith in myself, and in the neutrality of the world. My poor friends have been treated wrong by many people, and their lives have become unfortunate, which has led them to this place. I'm sure they can recover, I just don't have the ways or any shortcuts. But why have people treated them so bad, what's up with these "darker" people who find pleasure in bringing others down and treating them like shit? And yet again, why are these illnesses and disorders so common? Obviously it's not as simple as: "mean people have been mean and my friends have gotten sad and become ill :(". It's not 1+1=2. No simple reasons, no simple solutions.

I have my own theories. I'm very critical towards social media, and I think what this boils down to is this: pressure. Pressure from social media, pressure from education, pressure from the media, pressure from our parents, environmental pressure, economic pressure, pressure related to hobbies, pressure related to "success", pressure related to looks and appearance, pressure related to wealth, pressure, so much pressure. It's a freaking pressure pot here. And it's all due to our current way of the world. I'm not trying to get all conspiracy-theorist here, I don't think this is all an evil plan conducted by the mean higher-ups, I don't think any of this was conscious at all. Humanity has been prone to mistakes before, too. I think that this focus on capitalism, wealth, success-stories hyped by the media and social media, this effectiveness-focused world in which pure, cold cash is valued the most, jobs are tiring and numbing, the internet does the things for us and provides us with mindless, easy entertainment (and a lovely platform for anonymous hate, it's like we're forgetting one another's humanity and bringing each other to the level of a vile animal, like in warfare), this crazy way of life, focusing on "faster! more! harder! better! more! more! more!" (and this is not to impersonate a woman having hard sex), gives us all this pressure from a young age. Fix climate change! Fix economic struggles! Fix our debts! Fix our country! Fix religious conflicts! Fix the tensions between superstates! Fix antibiotic-resistant bacteria! Remember to get good grades in our ever-more-effective school, that brings about no flexibility or freedom, oh no, just effectiveness and speed! Remember to study hard, your entire life depends on it! Btw, you need to make money as well! Oh yeah, and do this while looking fly as fuck with all this fake strength and a lovely facade of a perfect life, since likes, clicks, views and comments determine your value as a human being. No wonder people get burn-outs, WHEN THEY'RE 18-YEARS-OLD.

The jobs we have are focused on effectiveness and numbers. The way hobbies are seen, they're becoming more and more competitive and results-based around here, so even they add on to the pressure. That facade of a perfect life reaches even to our pastime and our hobbies that are supposed to be relaxing and fun: even they're supposed to make us look more desirable and admirable. And when we see people on instagram, we're jealous. God are we jealous.

I know we like to bash on young people. Disgusting, lazy millennials and "gen Z". Y'all are LAZY. When I was your age, we worked hard and didn't waste our time playing stupid games... Lazy shits. But games, the internet, movies, anime, tv-shows, drugs, blah blah blah, they give us easy entertainment to numb our brains, or to get a quick rush before returning to the old, stale, uncomfortable numbness, or the harshness of reality. Escapism. Easy. 

We also have this culture of forgetting each other's humanity when we're online and anonymous. Internet celebrities have to force an image of perfection and good looks, but they don't have to be nice - on the contrary, we like "insta baddies". We like people who are "just being honest" and people who "take no shit". We like to hear people roasting each other (= insulting one another until the other gets quiet because you really hit a weak spot, I think it used to be called "bullying"... hmmmmm...), and in the worst case scenario it's not witty fun with a slight hint of mockery, it's down-right bullying. With other people cheering you on. Oh yeah, we love drama. We love following people's careers and lives falling down, in real time... A little mistake and you'll find yourself getting called out by this huge group, oh how problematic you are, you deserve to be shot! Yeah, let's ruin their life! Justine Sacco, anyone? And we have lovely steampots of people whose lives haven't gone so well and who've turned bitter. We have lovely sub-reddits, lovely Discord groups, lovely extremist tweets, because people who are bitter, angry, and feel cornered gather round. And the steampot just might explode.

We snuggle in to our little bubble and echo chamber, we can slap our hands over our ears whenever someone says something we don't like - why would we have to understand different opinions when there're millions of people who agree with us? It's very easy to forget the humanity of our "opponent", or the person who we're talking to and who disagrees with us, since we're all divided by screens and kilometers and wi-fi connections. There's not a person, not even a face behind all these words, it's an enemy, enemy whose chains of letters are wrong and disgraceful. Go to literally any comment section in any Youtube video ever, a huge chance that there's a major fight there. And it's not just people getting angry over each other's "imbecile opinions", nah, we like to get a little personal here. "You fucking nigger deserve to get beaten and shipped back to fucking Kenya where you came from", "No one wants a disgusting pig like you", "I bet you don't get any pussy with a fucking face like that you gay motherfucker who deserves to get his ass violently raped fag". Ok I made all of these examples up. But it is how it is. We don't attack one another's stupid opinions, we attack each other personally. And I'm betting my money that most people wouldn't do that face to face. Besides, denying and refusing to listen to someone's opinions is harder when you're meeting in real life.

Oh yeah, and I could take all these movements and isms here as well.. One of the reasons why I don't call myself a feminist or any kind of ist, really, is that things go a little overboard too often. I don't want to associate with people who share the same label with me, but don't actually agree with my views and/or see the label/movement/ism/whatever completely differently than I do. Besides, I don't feel like I need a herd of people to support my opinions and to agree with me - I don't need to slap a label on top of my opinions, nor do I need to have a group to back me up. (I can explain my opinions with my own words if someone wants to listen.) But some people do, and they get too.. too crazy with it. They identify through labels and groups, and those labels define them, and they're too easily brainwashed. No matter whether it's extreme right or left, I don't like it. I don't support it. These people get so caught up in the group, the label, the name, and they start opposing everything outside of it. They can even start fights, online or offline, and sometimes you feel like you're literally walking through a minefield. I doubt this sort of extremism and these angry political movements would be as common without the internet - it's too easy to find questionable information, questionable people and questionable movements. The pots stir and people get angrier than they would've needed to. The most important question is though, what is trustworthy news and information? How can I find it? How can I know it?

Also, what is this mindless and easy entertainment I've been talking about doing to our brains? I can say that my memory has gotten worse as I don't have to remember anything - I can just google it. And in schools, teachers are noticing how restless their students are getting. I've been talking to some elementary school teachers and they say that the change is imminent.

Yeah, you could say that I'm a little critical when it comes to social media and the internet.

(Although, I'll never stop enjoying cat videos. And I do enjoy debates, memes, entertaining videos, different media, music... It's just.. I don't know. HNNNGNGH I'm too young to figure out answers!)

Yeah, all of this has just kind of left me feeling a little. Meh. Like I said, I'm an optimist... but only when it comes to myself, kind of. I believe that I'll be okay. But I don't shut my eyes from the negative things, either, I'm not an entity in the middle of nothing. What happens in the world has an effect on me, too.. And I don't know if I'm feeling optimistic about the world. I don't know, there just are a lot of places where I feel like we've gone the wrong way. Really, the wrong way. And maybe the outcome is visible just now, when people are becoming unwell and so many people are sick. I want to help them, I really do, but I feel like this is about more than just me and a couple of my friends. I think something needs to change, fundamentally... But as someone who doesn't really belong to a movement or have any isms, I can't just go all "one girl against the world" and try to change everything, ahaha. Besides, I'm just a stupid, young girl, how would I know what would be the best decisions. 

I guess all I can do is remember that social media is just that, social media, not the whole world... Instagram likes mean nothing to me. Followers mean nothing to me. This fake, artificial popularity means nothing to me. I'm not going to let it get to me. And I can't fix the world. I can't even fix one friend. All I can do is fix myself, keep fixing myself, keep growing, keep improving, keep remembering what's the most important... I'm glad my mom has taught me to value humanity, and to value everyone, despite their shortcomings, differences or even crimes. I've never really been a part of the hate-train, not even online (besides, when I comment on videos and stuff, I do it using my own face and whole name, ahaha. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't really hate on people). I just... Sometimes it gets to me, the absurdity of this all. The absurdity of my great, awesome, normal friends being so fucking sick, most of them. And based on the internet (and you should never base anything on the internet), it almost feels like not having a mental illness is the minority now. It's crazy. It's bad.

I've been lucky not to get any illnesses... Sure, I have my own troubles and problems and issues, but not to the point of a disorder. I'm mentally healthy, and god am I grateful for that. I've been bullied and I've had issues with self-image and self-worth, and I'm a very lonely person in general, but it's never been too severe and I can still handle it. It's not like, crippling, or something along the lines of that. And I'm a pretty balanced person, being able to overcome occasional melancholy and even downright sadness pretty quickly. My mom called me "resilient". (My friends say that it's scary how little I fear, or how calm I am lol.) But even then, I'm not invincible, I'm also emotional and pretty sensitive... And the insanity of the current state of things, and the personal pain of my near friends, it really, really hurts me. It really hurts me. God, I want to help them, but I really can't. It's not like I had superpowers or something like that. Not an allmighty god, unfortunately.

Yeah, these are the things that I've been thinking about ever since yesterday. I'm glad I got to vomit them on this blank page. Lol, I know no-one reads this blog, but it's just for me... To feel more at ease, to get this frustration out somewhere. This is my way of venting, since I sure as hell can't talk about this offline - I can't talk about the things my friends have told me, they've confided in me, I won't talk! 

But at least one friend has gotten way better - she has had a haaaard life. She has been bullied for her entire life, and for years, she had absolutely no friends. After kindergarten she was put into this terrible school, and her class consisted of maybe ten people. They all disliked her, and she had absolutely no friends (due to her parents' lack of money, she didn't really have hobbies, either). She was all alone in the world. We met at the stables, she had to saddle up this pretty moody horse, and she gathered up the courage to ask me for help (since I was in charge of helping riders with that particular horse). She was very shy and insecure at the time, no kidding. Afterwards, she has told me that I looked nice, so she was okay with approaching me. We started hanging out at the stables, and later, off the stables, and now when I'm turning 19 (JESUS NO) and she 20 (WTF), we're still friends. She had trouble back home, too, her mom once said that it would've been better if she hadn't been born... That was the cruelest thing I've ever heard. It was bad. But, their relationship is all good now, and she got a job as she did so well in her practice at that said place, and she has a boyfriend, and some new friends... And most importantly, confidence. Much more confidence. In hindsight, she's told me that I was really, really important to her. I was literally her only friend for years (besides, she met her boyfriend on tinder and I had inspired her to download it, ahaha, I get some credit lol!). She means a lot to me. She's a really, really good friend, and I'm very comfortable with her, besides, we can trust each other 100 %. But also, she's a story to me. A success story, if you will... That things can get better, and that I can help people at least a little, even if it's by accident. I mean, I didn't mean to be of help to her, I didn't even know she had no friends back then. But I helped her. And that helps me as well... Things can get okay.

I want to help. I don't know how. I want to keep myself sane amidst all this madness, I want to live a satisfactory life, I want and I want and I want, but it's not all just about me. Man, I'll just escape into the wilderness, become a doctor and help people like so and live in the middle of nature, petting my dogs whenever the insanity of this all gets to me a little too much, ahaha. 

But things can still get okay. That one friend is proof of that...