Chapter 6: Underground
18+ / Explicit content.
We flew in first class. I watched the businessmen negotiating all around me. Their pinstripe suits looked very important. I was wearing the 5XL Jordan tracksuit my dad had given me. Ranan gave me permission to drink one beer.
“God, this tastes good.”
Ranan laughed out loud.
“We’ll keep it at the one, though.”
The plane had been in the air for about three hours. We talked about religions for a while. I explained that the Earth was actually Hell. Ranan told me stories about how people used to spread Christianity by the sword. Cutting off people’s heads. Fighting over the right way to draw a cross.
“See how crazy it all was?”
I kept quiet. I couldn’t find the words.
“And it’s still happening.”
Ranan grew serious. I tried to explain that I didn’t care what anyone believed in, as long as they didn’t hurt other people.
“I believe that too, but you can’t go around with a sword. Using swords is crazy.”
After a brief conversation, we put on our headphones. We picked the new Batman movie to watch. After half an hour, Ranan tapped me on the shoulder.
“This seems like trash. It’s ridiculous. But then almost all movies are.”
I didn’t know what to say. Ranan didn’t appreciate the art of film whatsoever. That much was already clear from our previous conversations. Yet it turned out that Ranan loved art. He’d been awarded an artist’s pension, even though he was a doctor, a professor, ex-military. I just couldn’t understand what kind of art he might enjoy. He outright laughed at the movie industry.
My parents were waiting for me at Helsinki Airport. Mom’s tears had messed up her make-up. She was worried because some of the doctors suspected I had developed schizophrenia. But Ranan had told her he was one hundred percent certain that this boy did not have schizophrenia. He’d told her, “I taught your son to paint sober.”
My dad was smiling. I was bone tired.
“Which one am I staying with?”
“You’re going to Lapinlahti Hospital at first.”
I looked at Ranan, scared.
“No way?”
“Just for a while. It’s part of the deal.”
“What fucking deal?”
We all walked to the parking garage together. I saw Ranan’s old car, a blue Volkswagen Golf. I was mad at him. Why was he lecturing me about life? He wasn’t successful.
My mom was driving. I stayed silent for the whole drive. I wanted to sit in the back seat. Outside the hospital, my mom bent down to smell the beautiful flowers.
“Come and smell these.”
“Don’t care.”
They escorted me to a small room. A young man was reading a book in there. I slammed my bag on the floor in a rage. The boy got up.
“Henkka, hi.”
“Emil.”
“We’re gonna be roommates.”
“I’m leaving in the morning. I’m not staying here.”
“This hospital saved me. I had anorexia.”
I inspected the boy. He did seem very thin. A male nurse wearing yellow Crocs walked in.
“Emil. Do you want some supper?”
“No. I wanna go home.”
I climbed into bed and slept like a log that night. All thanks to the multicolored pills, of course. How else? I was filled with rage. They’d taken away my cell phone again. I’d get it back in the morning, apparently. Otherwise, I’d have called my friend Jori to come pick me the fuck up. I could have done with a couple of beers in the company of my best friend, who I hadn’t seen in years.
A sunbeam was shining through the window. I checked the clock in the corridor. It was 8 a.m. I packed my things in a hurry. There was no one in the corridor. I walked to the nurses’ break room, where two female nurses were lost in their phones.
“I just came to tell you I’m going home.”
“You can’t leave just like that.”
“I was told I’d only be here one night.”
“Have some breakfast first.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Wait a second. I’ll make a phone call. We’ll fill out the paperwork so you can go home.”
The woman pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her white coat. The minutes dragged by slowly. Two large, bald security guards came in. They took me by the arm.
“Let’s go.”
“What! What! I’m going home.”
The men led me to the end of the corridor. Then down the stairs. We arrived at the closed ward.
“Fuck you! I’ll sue! Fucking monkeys!”
“You can’t just leave the hospital.”
“Fuck that! I didn’t know I was in prison!”
They showed me my new room. It was a dark, cramped rathole. The Head of the Department came by to introduce himself. A rugged face, a gray beard, thick brown glasses.
“Hi, I’m Risto.”
“What happened? Why am I suddenly here?”
“You were in an open ward, but you tried to leave before we’d had a chance to examine you. Until we know your full background, we have to keep you here by law.”
“Oh. OK. Well, take me back to the open ward, I’ll stay there.”
“We can’t do that anymore.”
“What a fucking joke. It just never fucking ends, does it!”
I sat in the windowless room. My thoughts were racing from one image to another. I didn’t even feel sad. My life had been a total rollercoaster. Now I was wearing yet another wristband with my name on it. And it wasn’t to go to an amusement park.
At breakfast, I covered my toast in butter. A pregnant Somali woman and an emaciated girl were sitting next to me. I felt bad for the pregnant woman. What was she here for? I tried to catch her eye. She looked down. They took my pulse and gave me new pills. They were a different color from the ones at UCLA Hospital. The newspaper rack had today’s copy of Helsingin Sanomat on it. I didn’t want to read the news, it felt too upsetting.
After breakfast, my mom came by. She brought me some Fazer chocolate. I took the chocolate and went back to my room. Mom stayed behind to talk to the doctor. I munched on the chocolate. A nurse opened the door, screamed:
“Emil has slit his wrists!”
The doctor and my mom ran into the room. I was startled awake. I had fallen asleep on top of the chocolates. The nurse thought the chocolate smears on the sheets were blood. Mom tore into her. I smugly asked the nurse to change the sheets. I asked her if she actually worked here or if she was just another patient. The nurse did not find it funny.
Later that evening, the same nurse let me have my phone back for a while. Apology accepted.
Over the following days, they ran loads of tests on me. They suspected a brain tumor or a mental illness of some kind. My family was called in on Wednesday to hear the results. My brother was sitting anxiously in the hospital meeting room. The doctor initiated the conversation.
“We have established that Emil displays manic depressive tendencies. In other words, he has bipolar disorder. It’s characterized by intense mood volatility. The illness manifested as mania in the US. Drugs played their part in triggering the illness. During a manic episode, the patient loses their grip on reality.”
I listened intently. I was being declared certifiably insane. The doctor went on.
“Emil studied art. Bipolar disorder has a direct link to creativity. It’s the illness of great artists, according to several studies.”
Dad interjected solemnly, “I guess regular people can have it too, right?”
They handed me a pamphlet explaining what bipolar disorder was. How the patient’s loved ones could support them. How the patient should accommodate the illness in their life. I threw the pamphlet into a trash can as soon as we got to the corridor. I wasn’t going to take instructions on how to live my life like some halfwit. I was a person, not a robot that needed programming. I guess that was proof of what Kian had said: “You’re not easy to walk all over.”
I wanted to call Ranan and ask him, “What the fuck is bipolar disorder?” Maybe he could explain it to me. Then again, he never said anything about any diagnosis.
About a week later, they told me they were moving me to another room. My new roommate was a 52-year-old man. He was wearing a dark suit and fancy patent leather shoes. I wondered why the suit. We were in a madhouse. What the fuck did he need a suit for? Oh, right. We were in a madhouse… I felt like laughing for the first time in a long time. The man opened his mouth.
“My wife left me. She got half of everything I owned and custody of the kids. I had an expensive lawyer. It didn’t help. What are you in for?”
“I dunno. I guess I’m sick. I don’t wanna be here.”
I looked the guy deep in the eyes. They were warm, the eyes of an honest man. He looked like a model in a Dressmann commercial.
“So I’ve been thinking. I’m gonna rip out those bars and grab a beer at Molly Malone’s. Wanna join? I’ll buy you a beer.”
I froze.
“I think that’s probably a bad idea.”
Two hours later, the man tried to rip the iron bars out of the window with his bare hands. He didn’t really get anywhere with it. I promised to stand guard in case any nurses came in. After trying with his bare hands, he started searching the drawers in the room for a screwdriver. Surprise, surprise, nothing but dust bunnies anywhere.
I woke up around eight in the morning to my roommate putting on a tie and shining his shoes. Nothing surprised me anymore. I burrowed under the blankets until someone came to pick me up for breakfast.
I spent my days sleeping. The meds drained all my strength. They also gave me fast food cravings. My mom brought me pizza and burgers every day. I ate them between hospital meals. They weighed me every week. The medication caused me to gain weight, increased my appetite. I’d never had issues with my weight before. I gained eleven pounds in one week. I was hungry all the time.
I was sitting in the hospital lobby, holding a newspaper from a few days ago. I felt up to reading it now. The worst of my delusions had gone. Of course they still surfaced occasionally. They’d been replaced by anxiety and an intense fear that often overwhelmed me. My best friend Jori was coming for a visit. I felt nervous about it. How would I explain everything? After ten long minutes of counting my drops of sweat, Jori arrived in the lobby.
“Holy shit, Emil! I’mma visit you every day. Did you see how hot that nurse was? Go for that ass!”
“I can’t fucking do that. You know where I am, right?”
“I mean, they can’t put you anywhere worse, can they?”
I cracked up. We were both in stitches.
“You’re fucking crazy!”
“No one’s crazy!”
Jori had an incredible ability to break the ice. This wasn’t the first time. Or the last. He made me feel better in no time. We started talking about basketball and our friends’ engagement news. I started feeling kind of nostalgic. Jori didn’t ask any awkward questions. He’d talked to my parents already. He made me feel just a little bit more normal. I grabbed a magazine out of the rack. It was Alibi. Such a trashy true crime tabloid.
“What the fuck! Alibi! We’re in a mental hospital and people read Alibi? Who’s the crazy one here?”
Jori cracked up. “Fucking hell.”
“This is exactly the kind of bullshit I’ve been dealing with.”
A doctor came over and nervously took the magazine away.
“Was that yours?”
“It got mixed up in there by mistake.”
“So it belongs to one of the doctors. Well, that explains everything.”
My friend tried not to laugh and failed.
“This truly is a madhouse.”
We talked about the summer coming up. All the things we could do. Several hours later, my friend had to go home. I had to go back to my doghouse. I couldn’t find it in myself to be grateful. How amazing it was to have such a good friend. I was using up all the energy I had to keep myself from dissolving into dust. For the first time, I thought about what my other friends would say when they heard I was at Lapinlahti. I looked up at the ceiling in my room.
After three long weeks and counting pills, I was finally told I could go home. I’d have to come back in for daily observation at first, though. I was packing my duffel bag. My roommate, whose name I had forgotten dozens of times, and can’t remember now as I write this, gave me a CD. He had dozens of them. I was allowed to pick one. I was moved. I chose a Nickelback album solely based on the cover.
He wished me good luck. I felt sorry for him. He’d tried to bribe the nurses with a Patek Philippe watch to get out of here. They’d confiscated the watch. His father had given it to him. I often had to reassure him that the watch was safe. I never quite figured out what was wrong with him, but my instinct told me there wasn’t an inch of violence in him. He definitely had anxiety to spare, though. Maybe he was suicidal.
I almost forgot to mention something important: he didn’t speak Finnish. He was from the UK. That meant he was in the same situation as I had been in America. Not that you can really compare Lapinlahti and a “hospital” in an LA slum.
I was lying in my room at my mom’s house. I couldn’t watch movies because they made me feel ill. I was too tired to even listen to music, read newspapers. All I did was sleep. Sometimes I told mom my head was exploding. She held me in her arms for hours. Long enough for the panic attack to pass.
Mom told me she’d talked to all my friends. Mauritzio had said, “We always knew Emil was different. In a good way.” Apparently, I’d always been kind of an outsider, lost in my own thoughts. Mom reminded me of all the good friends I had. Apparently, Niklas had told her what kind of movies I should watch. What books I should read. Jori was planning to take me to the gym. I myself couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Mom and I walked to Lapinlahti every day for my appointment. Mom waited in the lobby as I was being interviewed. My friend Juhis had brought me a wooden cross pendant from Brazil. I wore it over my t-shirt every day. The doctor asked me if I was religious. I explained that the cross reminded me that I had a friend who’d walked down narrow alleyways just to pick out this cross for me. It meant I had a friend who’d thought of me on the other side of the world. My answer brought a warm smile to the doctor’s face.
In my heart, I felt bitter. I couldn’t understand why I had to go through so much bullshit. God hadn’t listened to me in America and he wasn’t listening to me now. At least the cross looked good. But on some days, the pendant felt scary.
In the evenings, I visited my dad. My mom and brother always drove me even though it was only a couple of miles away. According to the doctors, I needed therapy. “But not quite yet.” I was still too weak. My dad’s dachshund understood me. She always came to sit in my lap. I gave her scritches for hours on end. She never pressured me one way or the other.
Lying on my dad’s couch, I think I finally realized that my book was no good. I found it hard to accept. Had I been totally talentless all along? After all of my teachers’ efforts. I thought about looking for my older work on my computer. But I didn’t. Maybe I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to read it anyway in my medicated stupor.
Niklas and I were sitting at Café Esplanad. I could see the question in his eyes. How had Emil turned into a 265-pound fatso? No one ever mentioned my weight out loud. The meds made me look like I’d been on a year-long drunken binge, all day, every day.
We talked about Jessica. We came to the conclusion that all I ever saw in her was a way out. I’d been a lying asshole in every way. She had every right to hate me. She was never going to grab that coffee with me, either. Niklas also told me that Tom had said Jessica was trashy. I told him I didn’t believe that. According to Tom, Jessica liked hanging out with B-list celebrities. Shopping with Paris Hilton. I wasn’t sure if this was Niklas’ way of helping me, or the truth. Not that it really mattered in the end.
Niklas also gave me a long lecture about the selfishness of suicide. “Leaving everybody else behind to suffer.” He read me like an open book. After an intense conversation, we went to Stockmann. At the department store, Niklas carefully picked out a pile of Blu-ray movies for me and paid for them. One of them was a classic, Smoke.
Before we went our separate ways, Niklas gave me a hug. I tried to ask him about my book. “Was it that bad?” He said it wasn’t a project he’d be interested in. “Too bleak and oppressive.”
He was honest, which was a good thing even though it hurt. Niklas was intelligent. He tried to understand the world I’d ended up in. He’d felt anxious after reading my book. And even more anxious after seeing how I was. I didn’t have an explanation for him, since I didn’t understand either.
My weight was starting to bother me. It added to my already low self-esteem. I started jogging on my own, though I took my phone with me just in case. I was afraid of a bad panic attack. I’d ballooned into a pig and my self-confidence was at zero. At first I ran down Valhallankatu to Restaurant Mestaritalli. All of 1,300 feet.
I couldn’t shed the weight despite all my efforts, which depressed me even more. And I don’t mean that a fat person would automatically be depressed or that there’s anything wrong with being overweight. I believe that ninety percent of overweight people are happier than I was. I’d just always felt insecure about myself. My sporty appearance had been my knight’s armor. Now I needed my armor more than ever, but it had disintegrated in battle.
Jori and I hung out at different cafés. He told me about his difficult childhood. Sometimes his family couldn’t even afford decent food. He knew I came from a wealthy family. I’d never had problems like that. I couldn’t relate to Jori. I didn’t have the energy. I told Jori about the rape. He was at a loss for words. All he could say was “fucking hell”.
Looking back, a bigger reason for how I was feeling was my mistakes in America. I just couldn’t see it at the time. I looked around at the customers in the café. Could anyone see how much pain I was in? There was only pain and a hundred question marks. Could anybody else tell? You could definitely see it in my glazed look. The meds took the spark out of my eyes.
I slept in my mom’s back room. I’d turned into a 13-year-old child who only saw monsters in his own bedroom. Mom never asked any questions. Just tucked me in. I woke from a nightmare in the middle of the night. Jumped up.
“Mom, my head’s gonna explode.”
“Just breathe.”
“I had a bad dream.”
Mom grabbed benzos from the kitchen. I took two.
“I had a bad dream.”
“Tell me.”
“I was on a boat. It sank and I fell into the sea. I could hear trumpets on the beach. There were mermaids at the bottom of the sea. Every time I touched one, they became paintings. I lay on the seabed on top of the paintings.”
“Drowning means good luck.”
Mom was trying to console me. I was scared to close my eyes again. The nightmares were so awful, and they came almost every night. We’ve all had nightmares at some point. These nightmares were like something from another world. If I’m honest, the way I see them in hindsight is… They came straight from Hell.
I was lying in my room. Niklas sent me a text. “Tom says hi. How r u?”
Tom and Niklas used to text me every week. It felt good. My friends cared. Tom and I had talked on the phone, but I found it difficult to talk to him. It brought up too many memories. When Tom asked how I was, I couldn’t tell him the truth.
On Friday, Niklas announced that we were going out for dinner. Niklas’ fiancée, Sari, and someone called Laura would be there. Laura was a nice girl, he said. That sounded scary.
“I can’t and don’t want to.”
“No buts, let’s go.”
We were sitting at Strindberg’s. I ordered meatballs and mashed potatoes. Niklas had the meat and potato hash. I didn’t say a word for thirty minutes. I nearly fell asleep at the table. After Sari and Laura went off to the ladies’ room, Niklas told me what was up.
“Sari and I have been thinking you and Laura would make a great couple.”
I realized they felt sorry for me and wanted to help.
“I’ve been quiet the whole time.”
“Laura will give you space. Trust me.”
“This makes no fucking sense.”
“I mean, you’re holding a pretty shit hand at the moment. You’ve just come out of a mental hospital. Maybe you need a little help.”
We both cracked up. For ten seconds, everything felt good again.
On Sunday, I was sitting with Laura on a green bench at Esplanadi. I told her about my issues, though I didn’t mention the reasons that had led to my total burnout. I knew Niklas had told her everything. This was a total set-up. And Laura was adorable. She just wanted to help. Laura was a make-up artist. She told me she felt insecure about powdering beautiful faces all day long. Even though I liked her, I sent Niklas a message saying Cupid’s arrows had missed this time. And could he please sort out the mess he had made. I didn’t have the courage. And it’s not like Laura was even slightly attracted to me.
Afterward, I went to a pub and had a couple of beers. Some doctors had warned me against drinking alcohol. But it’s not like I could feel much worse than I already did. I’d reached rock bottom. Which was a bit of good news, I guess. On the other hand, the beer didn’t make me feel any better, either. Who knows what might have happened if I had eleven pints? I doubt anything good.
At a party with our friends, Niklas took a dig at me in front of everybody.
“Emil went to Hollywood too. Didn’t make it though.”
Again with this. He probably didn’t mean it maliciously, but it hurt anyway. I wasn’t exactly feeling great about myself at the moment.
I was anxious about my first therapy session. My mom drove me there and back. My therapist was Lila, a woman in her late fifties. We drank peppermint tea. She’d seen my medical records. We talked about drugs, and anger. She made me hit a punching bag. Told me to visualize my enemies and beat them up if I wanted to. I started pummeling.
Take that, Matias. “You’re the reason I’m here!” I yelled.
All my elementary school friends got a taste of my fist. I was drenched in sweat. After five minutes of pounding it out, we started talking.
Going to therapy kept triggering my panic attacks. I was happy to reach for a bottle of pills for relief. I wondered why we never talked about the sexual abuse. We did talk about the bullying. Who knows, maybe it was too big to tackle in the very beginning. The therapist tried to explain that I had poor boundaries. That I didn’t know how to set boundaries. She was probably right.
I’m not an expert on therapy. But my nightmares, the panic attacks. They were about something more than a lack of boundaries. Night terrors like you can’t even imagine.
I was walking down Museokatu. I had forgotten my umbrella. My shoes were full of water. I decided to call the man who had flown to America to get me home. Maybe he could still help me. I had a feeling he could.
“Ranan. About these pills. There’s so many of them. How long do patients usually take them?”
Ranan said, “For as long as they’re all right in the head.”
He told me he was coming over next week to sell my dad a painting. Maybe we could see each other then. I had mixed feelings about this.
I saw the painting on Thursday. It was great. Ranan stood beside me as I was admiring it. Lots of different shapes and colors. I praised the fruit basket in the middle.
“Some people see a person there, but you can see a basket too”, Ranan said in a kindly tone.
I tried squinting, but couldn’t see a person no matter what. Ranan pulled me aside and into my dad’s study.
“How have you been? I didn’t want to ask in front of the others.”
I was honest. “Pretty bad.”
He repeated what he’d told me on the plane. “Maybe this will all turn into valuable insight later.” I found no comfort in that.
Queuing at the local convenience store. I started sweating. The queue wasn’t moving as fast as I’d have liked. What would I say to the cashier? The candy shelf was caving in on me. A tabloid headline ripped right through me. I dropped my shopping. Took a pill from my wallet. Called my mom. “Will you come get me, quickly? I’m gonna faint. I’m at Töölö Market.”
Once my mom arrived, I went into shock. “Mom, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Why can’t I just fucking die?”
We drove straight to a private clinic to see a doctor. They said they could admit me to the hospital again. Mom refused. “I’m taking care of my own son.” The doctor prescribed me some sedatives to be taken every four hours. Quiet walks in nature.
“Will I ever be normal?”
“Do you mean healed?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like a desk drawer, you know? There are all these papers mixed up with each other in there. Now it’s time to sort the papers out. And they’ll always be in there. They’ll just be in order in the future.”
The doctor impressed me. He would be my doctor from now on. Heikki had a rugged beard and a worn blazer. He gave me permission to have a beer now and then. There was something bohemian about him. He showed a polite interest in my art studies. Once he smiled and said, “Without bipolar it’s probably pretty hard to write anything all that revolutionary…”
I spent the next year lying on a couch. Beset by panic attacks. The fact that each panic attack was slightly less intense than the last brought me some consolation. Therapy with Lila was painful. We used cards with pictures on them as tools. I had to pick cards according to how I was feeling. I hated all the thought experiments. I wasn’t really feeling better despite thousands of “cognitive” exercises.
I had lost the will to live. In the evenings, I often prayed to God. “Please take me away during the night. So many people die when they don’t want to. I’m ready for angels to take me away.” In the mornings, I was full of hate.
One evening, I poured a bottle of sleeping pills down my throat. I wasn’t sure how many would be enough to make me fall asleep forever. Then I hesitated. Was I sure I was ready to go? Well, the pills were in already. When I woke up the next day, I thought about it like I’d popped a zit last night. My cheeks were just kind of red and my stomach was upset.
Jori and I went to the movies a lot. They took me someplace else for a while. I had a panic attack at a Mads Mikkelsen movie. We left immediately.
“Sorry about having to leave.”
“The movie was so shit, I’d have left anyway.”
My friend was my walking stick. I always leaned on Jori before I fell. My friends kept supporting me even though I wasn’t getting much better. I must have been a heavy burden for them, but I believe Jori had a feeling I was going to be fine. I’m not sure he could have kept going otherwise. I gave nothing back. I never asked about Jori’s own life once.
I was lying on my mom’s couch in a medicated stupor. I sent a text message to Jessica in the US. I apologized. “Things kinda went to shit, all my art stuff and everything else.”
Surprisingly enough, she responded. She sent me a touchingly kind message and hoped I’d get better soon. So much for Niklas’ analysis…
I guess I got even more depressed after that. This was my first honest message to her. How the fuck could I have been so stupid? The only thing that could fix this was a time machine, and that hasn’t been invented yet.
My life was full of question marks. I’d been looking for a relationship. A 29-year-old without a single romantic relationship under my belt. But intimacy caused me anxiety. I’d never had sex sober. I had a backpack full of skeletons. I was scared that if a woman saw that side of me during sex, she’d never look at me with desire again.
My star sign is Aquarius. If a woman ever moved in with me, I’d probably be laying bricks to separate our bedrooms within two weeks…
Jori wanted to do me a favor, so he picked me up from my mom’s house and took me to a strip club. I think I actually managed a smile here and there, and my friend saw that.
A week later, he wanted to go to Tallinn with me. We had to book a cabin for the ferry ride over, since I might have a panic attack on the way. We drank beer in the cabin. At the harbor, a cab was waiting to take us to a brothel. We drove thirty miles to a place in the middle of the woods outside Tallinn. To several brothels, in fact. We acted like we were car shopping. Maybe you need to test drive more than just one car…
I probably shouldn’t say this out loud, but my friend turned out to be a pretty decent therapist. Without any training in the field. Definitely better than Lila. Obviously, it was shocking to see these people selling themselves. On their breaks, they did homework, studied. We did talk about all this with Jori on the way back. And at least we treated the girls with respect. But I’m not gonna defend all my choices here.
Jori watched my drinking as well. He kept a strict count of how many beers I could handle. I believe Jori had a hunch that if someone didn’t do something, I’d string myself up. And he was right. My friend brought a smile to my face.
I was back in Lila’s office again. Her office had moved from Kallio in Helsinki to Matinkylä in Espoo. I don’t know why I was only sent a text message with the new address. The room felt dirty. There was a painting on the wall with an old lady hiding under an umbrella. The picture made me anxious. Lila told me she’d been thinking about a career counselor for me. She’d come with me to the employment agency.
I sat in silence with a burning rage simmering inside me. As if I couldn’t figure out for myself what I wanted and didn’t want. I knew I had to find a job, I just didn’t care. I was suffering from hellish nightmares and panic attacks. I was way too sick to work. I was also getting sick of all the thought experiments. Anyone would get anxious if you viewed their whole life through the lens of their childhood. Dug up their past to analyze their behavior, then billed them for it once a month.
I’d been given an IQ test by another psychologist a week before. Lila had suggested it. Lila was taken aback by the results, even though she’d called me smart multiple times. The psychologist had deemed me highly intelligent. I don’t know how a result like that was possible, since my head was full of chemicals.
I also don’t know whether it was intelligence or sheer stupidity that made me text Lila that I was taking a break from therapy. In plain English, I was never going back to that office to talk about any more bullshit. There was no humor, joy, or laughter in that shit. And besides, my friend was a brilliant therapist. My conversations with him were at least as deep as my conversations with Lila. And his responses made me laugh. I believe the most important job of a therapist is to get the “patient” to realize they are important just as they are. Do you even need a therapist for that?
Nowadays there are sex therapists too… Just out of curiosity, who are they supposed to be for? People like me? Hell no. Your pathetic superficial bullshit is exactly what puts pressure on people like me.
Because I refused to go back to Lila, my mom had heard of a traditional bodyworker who lived in the countryside. She drove me to Martta’s place. Martta’s small and humble cabin was close to Salo. Near our family’s summer cottage.
Martta was an 88-year-old super granny. She was chopping wood with an ax when we got there. She led me to the bed inside the cabin. Her strong hands relieved my muscle spasms. She told me my back was full of knots. Afterward, I found out that she suspected I had cancer. But the knots gave in. She was shocked to hear I’d been hitting a punching bag in therapy.
“You heal people with love, not hate.”
I quickly realized Martta was some sort of spiritual healer. But she wasn’t woo-woo in the slightest. She had her feet firmly on the ground. After a massage, she’d always offer me home-made pastries. To tell you the truth, Martta was a better masseuse than baker. She didn’t use any sugar.
I visited Martta every two weeks. It sounds crazy, but she seemed to take and hold my pain in her own body during a massage. She felt ill after every session. A wise person once said, “Those who do not believe in magic will never find it.”
I opened up to Martta during the sessions. She gave me the answer I’d wanted to hear from Lila.
“You’re no different from anybody else. We all have our struggles. They come and go. But they help us grow.”
Lila would have marched me straight to the employment agency if she’d been the one saying those things.
My dad was constantly pressuring me to find a job. “Just try it. It’ll take your mind off things.” He meant well, really. Finnbody gym was advertising for B2B and membership sales reps in the newspaper. I was scared stiff, but I made the call.
The interview was at their Tikkurila gym on Saturday at noon. My mom promised to lend me her car. I had a tendency to have panic attacks on public transport. Driving allowed me to go at my own pace. If I felt an attack coming on, I could pull over, stop the car, roll down the windows. I don’t actually know if I was even allowed to drive on the medication I was on. No doctor ever mentioned it. Which is pretty insane if you think about it.
I got to the gym fifteen minutes before the interview. I poured a couple of tranquilizers down my throat in the restroom. A trembling little boy stared back at me in the mirror. There were ten other applicants. We listened to an hour-long lecture about the company. I found it hard to concentrate. My palms were sweating. I was deathly afraid they would ask me a question. Everybody had to introduce themselves in turn. Explain to everyone why we were so into the sports industry specifically. I didn’t give a fuck about the sports industry. I told them I’d played basketball, won two Finnish championships. I couldn’t have looked less like an athlete with my glazed eyes.
I got the job. I’d be based in Pitäjänmäki. The gym there was in kind of bad shape. I took solace in the fact that bringing in badminton or floorball contracts meant extra bonuses.
For the first few weeks, I was a nervous wreck. I sat in my own little cubicle making client calls. I was too scared to go into the break room, so I ate lunch in my cubicle. I took my anxiety pills three times a shift. Wore sweatpants and a Finnbody hoodie. My appearance bothered me. I’d ballooned to 270 pounds.
I had bouts of nausea in the mornings. My shift usually began at noon and ended at 8 p.m. Which suited me just fine. Working turned out to be the best therapy for me. Dad and Martta were right, it gave me something else to think about. I was slowly learning to deal with people sober. But my will to live had been extinguished.
Occasionally Jori would come to Pitäjänmäki to work out. He pushed me to work out, too.
“You’ll lose twenty pounds in a month. You used to be so fit. Let’s just fucking do it together.”
“Yeah, maybe we should.”
But the truth was grim. I didn’t lose any weight. You couldn’t fight the meds. My strength had seeped out of me. I used to be able to bench 300 pounds, now I was lucky to push 165. Every month or so, my jeans grew tight at the thighs. I was starting to lose hope when it came to my looks. Many antidepressants cause weight gain and low libido. And what does that cause in turn?
My next step came when my brother moved to Germany. I moved out of my mom’s place into my brother’s studio on Töölö Market Square. Even though her place was huge, I needed my own space.
On my first night in the studio, I felt the walls closing in on me. I was afraid of my own mind. It was in such fucking chaos. My night terrors made me scared to fall asleep. I was afraid I was developing schizophrenia. My mind was in control of me, I wasn’t in control of my mind.
Evenings were hard. I watched trashy TV and munched on oat bread with cheese. I became a hermit. I went to work. Sometimes to cafés with Jori. Apart from that, I sat at home all the time. I didn’t dare to hit the bars, the crowds scared me. And I couldn’t talk to women. I was scared to touch alcohol. I was convinced I’d go crazy after a single pint.
Jori consoled me on the phone.
“After you’re done with all this shit, we’ll get drinks and go MMF some hooker.”
I was amused by my friend’s way of helping me. Sometimes I wondered if Jori ever saw my sensitive side. On the other hand, maybe he wanted me to bury my sensitive side. Life might just be easier. Who knows? But I also had no interest in sex thanks to my latest meds.
Sanna had been my friend for over a decade. She lived in Lauttasaari. On Sundays, I used to sit on her balcony eating chocolates. Sanna was a beautiful 32-year-old single woman. We’d never been more than friends. Sanna knew all about my skeletons. She was a career woman. It bothered me that she hadn’t found a man. I never felt brave enough to ask if she wanted a family. I thought it might be a sore subject. She was dating a married man. She had a crush on him. I tried to explain to her:
“So, you have a crush on a married man who lies to his wife every night. Doesn’t seem like a very stand-up dude. He should divorce her if shit’s so hard. What a clown.”
Despite dozens of pills, I could still have a surprisingly coherent train of thought sometimes. Sanna didn’t want to hear it. She knew I was right. She never asked how I was. I told her how I was feeling when I felt like it. My doctor had warned me against sharing everything with everyone. I might regret it later.
So, I should probably stop writing this book. The End. JK, let’s keep going…
I don’t think Sanna truly understood what I was going through. The radio was playing “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
A young female client was waiting for me in the gym lobby after lunch. My palms were sweating again. I shook her hand.
“I’m sorry, I just washed my hands.”
My palms were kind of moist.
“Helena. It’s OK.”
“Emil. I’ll show you around the gym first.”
“Cool.”
We started the tour. I showed her the spinning room, the yoga room and the gym itself. Then we had a coffee at the high-top tables in the lobby. Helena thought sixty euros a month was kind of expensive. I noticed she was wearing a ring, so I gave her two free week-long passes to the gym. Hey, I still got paid.
“You can take your time and get to know the gym with your man or lady.”
“Or lady?” Helena chuckled.
“Well, you never know.”
“No, you don’t. So does this come with the free personal fitness consultation?”
“Yes. Two of them. I can introduce you to the coaches if you want. We have female and male coaches.”
“Don’t you do any consultations?”
“I guess I could. I do have these love handles. I’ve noticed browsing Facebook doesn’t help. Usually what I do at work is eat pie and browse Facebook.”
“That’s what everyone does.”
“If I’m honest with you, there’s not much else to do here. You can’t really sell gym memberships like coffee.”
“You need to find a more interesting job.”
“I don’t feel too good. I suffer from panic attacks.”
“My sister is the same. She says it helps if you tell people.”
“That’s why I told you.” Smiling.
She bought the membership. Being open about my shit seemed to help with her.
A get-together at my friends’ place in Punavuori. Pizza, soda water, chips. A strong smell of pot wafted through the apartment. I was overcome with nausea.
“Wanna hit the balcony? We’ll open a window, it’ll get rid of the smell.”
“It’s not that.”
I was looking for my hat.
“We want you to stay.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m tired.”
Mauritzio called out after me.
“Dude, call me when you get home. Yeah?”
“Yup.”
I left Pete’s place and went straight out for a long walk. I was strolling down Fredrikinkatu. The shop window displays gave me anxiety. The people at Restaurant Kynsilaukka scared me. Would I ever be able to sit in a restaurant without worrying about what to say? Enjoy a good steak without overthinking how to hold the fork? Eat wearing a hat? Just because I fucking felt like it?
A gay couple walked toward me. They were wearing matching green jackets. I wondered what they thought of me. How had I become such a fucking wuss? Would I seriously stay a zombie forever? Would there ever be a day when this fucking nightmare would simply be over? And how had it all begun?
There was an electric piano in my little brother’s apartment that I played around on. In the evenings, I listened to Eric Clapton and Jeff Buckley. Sometimes, I wondered whether Jeff could have swum back to shore if he wanted to. I was ninety-nine percent sure he could have.
The magic of music was incredible. Different artists were talking to me through their music. The message was clear. Keep going. You’ll find your way back home.
I found solace in Eminem. But I wasn’t ready to take in his message. He had the kind of courage that I lacked. I only listened to a few of his songs all the way through. I could tell he’d gone through things similar to mine. I could put two and two together from his lyrics. But he seemed to be thriving now. How the hell had he done it? I listened to his song “Deja Vu”.
I was microwaving a meat pie for lunch at the gym. Ville, a coworker of mine, walked into the kitchen.
“Holy shit, some maniac is shooting up a school in Kauhajoki.”
We turned on the radio. There were multiple fatalities. The killer was still on the loose inside the school, carrying a gun. I was instantly overcome with anxiety. The break room filled up with listeners. Everybody kept repeating: “How can anybody be that sick? He’s going to Hell. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
I was starting to feel ill, though I didn’t understand why. I swallowed several pills in the restroom. Waves were coursing through my body. I left work two hours before my shift ended.
I got home. Turned on the TV. Psychologists were analyzing the killer’s state of mind on every channel. His childhood. The senseless violence. My mind was in turmoil. I managed to catch a thought. Got scared. I felt sympathy for the shooter. I felt sorry for him. He was a victim too. “What the fuck? Am I a bad person?” I kept asking myself. I had to turn off the TV.
I had to find a way to stop my thoughts. They were racing ahead like a steam train. And I wasn’t even on board. I’d been left behind, running by the railway tracks. I tried to grab a handrail and failed. Fell over. A panic attack washed over me. I poured even more pills down my throat.
That night, I didn’t sleep for a minute. The killer had found his way inside my head. I found the world unbearable. I’d never wished ill on another person in my life. Well, I’d been jealous of people multiple times. I wasn’t thinking about that, though. I believed I’d never done anything wrong. I just couldn’t understand how I could feel sympathy for the killer, too. He’d probably been in Hell for a long time without any help from anyone. Not that it gives you a right to violence. So utterly senseless to destroy other people’s families. Why couldn’t he just shoot himself? Did he think about a big sister crying, asking why her little brother wasn’t coming home from school? These were somebody’s siblings. Such immense evil.
The following weeks were hard. Once again, nothing made sense whatsoever. I realized I was too sensitive, but still. I couldn’t be this sensitive. I didn’t dare share my thoughts with anyone, which hurt my heart. I wondered if Jori would understand me? But I couldn’t take the risk, so I kept my mouth shut, which just added to the pain. Was the Earth one big Hell after all?
I got a sad phone call. My grandma had been taken to the hospital. It would be her last journey. She had always been there for me. She’d had her own struggles, even tried to kill herself when she was young. She loved telling the story of a cousin fixing the roof of Laitila Church. He’d fallen off the roof. Everybody kept asking, “How did you manage that?” The cousin had sternly answered, “It’s a person’s private business how they fall.”
I arrived at Meilahti Tower Hospital. My mom was in the room with my grandma. Grandma was lying in bed, almost lifeless. Her eyes were closed. I stood at the door, frozen stiff. “Come sit with Grandma on the side of the bed.” I couldn’t speak. “Eeva and Esa will be here soon.” Mom’s sister and brother.
“Could I have a moment alone with Grandma?”
My mom said she’d go to the hospital café to buy a tabloid in the meantime. I stood beside my grandma, opened my mouth.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you in recent years. I’ve just been having a hard time. I’m sorry about that.”
I remembered the many moments I’d spent lying on Grandma’s couch, complaining about life. If only I could get those moments back. I couldn’t even remember the last time we laughed together. Grandma always understood and encouraged me. What had I given her? Nothing. I felt like a miserable loser by her bedside. I couldn’t change our last encounter even if I wanted to. Grandma always talked about how artistic I was. I just had a bad piano teacher. I should still continue to play. “But I don’t know how.” “Keep practicing, you’re so musical.” I wish I could go back in time.
I looked at my lifeless grandma.
“Grandma, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad now.”
At that moment, Grandma grabbed me by the hand. Squeezed. Her eyes were closed. It was her way of saying: “Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
It was the last time I saw her. I was told she hadn’t reacted to anything for days. I didn’t find it necessary to tell the others she’d taken me by the hand with her last ounce of strength and squeezed it three times. It was between me and Grandma.
You saw the icon on my book’s website. My grandma gave it to me when I was thirteen years old.
A week after my grandma died, I let myself into her house with my own key. I’d been tasked with measuring the length of her piano. A home care worker had been coming by her place for the last year. I didn’t stop to think. I smashed the plastic medicine container with a wrench. Threw the meds into my backpack and ran. I didn’t even recognize every bottle. The pills tried to look at me with contempt.
Mom’s sister nearly raised a stink with the home care people. I quickly admitted to taking “one” sedative.
I had started kickboxing lessons with Jori. I could go for free, and I gave Jori loads of weekly passes.
Jori had met an Iranian girl, Siru. Siru had come to Finland as a child refugee. She’d recently moved from Turku to Helsinki. Jori told me stories about how Siru’s father didn’t want to meet him at first. Siru should marry a Muslim, not a Finnish man. I found that odd. Hadn’t Finland offered Siru’s family safe harbor from war? Wasn’t helping people what mattered most? But I liked Siru. She always thanked me politely for her free aerobics gift cards. It made me feel good. I felt useful for the first time in a long while.
My boss called me in for a reprimand. She felt I wasn’t aggressive enough as a sales rep. I closed about thirty contracts a month, which I thought was good in the circumstances. People in Pitäjänmäki didn’t have extra cash lying around. We were pricing ourselves out, though we still had nearly all of the local businesses as our clients. But apparently that wasn’t enough. A competitor, SATS, was opening a branch close by. We needed to double our profits. I thought that was ridiculous. At the end of the meeting my boss said:
“Oh, and I’m moving you to a commission basis. You can make more money like that. We’ll turn you into a top salesman.”
“Well, fuck”, I thought to myself. On Tuesday, I announced I was quitting. I had to fight for several months to get my outstanding commissions paid. Finnbody left a shit taste in my mouth, even if it had been my first step toward healing. I think the company went broke later on. I can see why. They could have at least cleaned the gym once a week. And fixed the broken equipment.
I was listening to Elton John and let my imagination run free. Out and away from my small studio. I wanted to buy a new record player, but I was broke. Being out of a job didn’t help. I felt like a burden to everybody. I also felt bitter and envious of my friends. Their lives were so easy. Work, home. Cooking with the girlfriend. Sex, movies, planning vacations together.
Of course, they all had their own troubles that I often knew nothing about. The problem with anxious alcoholics is that they tend to be shitbags who think the universe revolves around them. Opening my eyes might have helped my anxiety. I just didn’t have the strength to broaden my horizons.
I took out the Elton John LP. It was on its last legs. I wasn’t sure whether the record player was broken and kept scratching the albums. I turned on the radio. “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who was on.
Doctors can talk all they want about brain chemistry and serotonin deficiencies, but this song explains “bipolar affective disorder” better than a thousand textbooks. But hey, sorry, we’re not quite at the end yet. And I definitely hadn’t gained any insight so far.
My conversations with Sanna were getting awkward. I didn’t enjoy shopping with her. Sitting in cafés with her.
My future was shrouded in a haze, and I didn’t have the courage to walk through the forest. How could I find my way home from the heart of a forest? There was no one listening to prayers. Why didn’t someone else just hand me a map?
I thought about throwing myself off the balcony more and more often. It was just a thought experiment for now, though. I hadn’t tried to kill myself since the pill overdose. And that wasn’t really a serious attempt. I’m not sure what it was. Cowardly stupidity.
I was at the movies with my dad. Then we went for a pizza. Dad suggested I could start studying at the Marketing Institute. It might go well with my film studies. He promised to pay for it. It was hard to find a job in the Finnish movie industry that paid more than being a cleaner. And an alcoholic pill addict isn’t the hottest commodity on the job market either…
There were about twenty students in my class. Some younger than me, some older. Our subjects were creative writing, marketing and Finnish.
I had been diagnosed with severe dyslexia in high school. I think my final Finnish grade was the equivalent of a D. Barely a pass. Who knows what grade they would give this story? Let’s hope my old teacher reads this. “Writing isn’t your forte.” Obviously, the English version has been edited and translated. Well, maybe it would still be a D. Just with a plus on it for good effort 🙂 And the teacher’s comment would be, “No smiley faces in a serious text!”
I’ll change it into a middle finger. Fuck you.
All of us can write. No one should ever be told “this isn’t your forte”. About anything.
Hey, I’ve only just noticed. I’ve been too focused on my writing. I’m in Töölö Library right now. It’s as good a place as any to type up the full story. There’s a beautiful woman sitting right in front of me. Her laptop is open. She’s studying something. Let me try and see what it is.
Psychology. Haha! For real, I’m not even joking. Should I say something? Close my laptop? What would she think if she ever read my novel? Would saying hi be a lost cause after that?
Maybe I should try to write a thriller after all. Then Solar Films could adapt it into an even worse movie. Three hundred thousand Finns would go see it. I’d finally achieve something revolutionary. I could wear red glasses and look all cool. But I don’t know how to write a thriller. Can I even write? I don’t know. Why am I typing this at all?
If I’m honest, sometimes I’m overcome with profound insecurity. Am I full of shit? Can I do anything at all? I’ve made it this far and I still feel stupid. But I can’t overthink it. I’ve already made it. That’s what matters.
Where were we?
Right, marketing studies. Let’s keep going. Wait, no. You get that this story is written as it happened, right? I’m not confusing you or anything? Most of the sentences and opinions here reflect the way I saw things at the time. I’m ashamed to be typing some of them out today. I hope you see what I’m trying to say.
New attempt. Let’s go. Marketing studies. I’ll try not to intrude on your reading experience again.
Our first class was creative writing. We had to write short stories and commercials. Then we’d trade our pages with the other students so that everybody could read everybody else’s work. We had an hour. I stared at the blank sheet of paper for fifty minutes. Then I wrote a poem about a man who wanted to die, but couldn’t find bullets for his gun. He threw the empty gun off the balcony in a rage. The gun hit his brother in the head. The brother died in the street. The depressed man broke down even more. He moaned to the police, “Why couldn’t I be satisfied when things were only partly fucked-up?”
I could feel the piercing stares of my classmates. “Who wrote this poem?”
I continued to write poems over the following weeks. Felt the teacher avoiding my eyes. I put all my rage into the poems. Every poem was about death. Now and then, the teacher did praise my creativity.
Our first group assignment was to create a mock ad campaign for Dove. We had to use disabled children in the ads. For equality. I told the teacher the idea was both contradictory and naive. He snapped at me:
“It’s a playful Dove campaign. For a good cause.”
We were divided into groups during the break. Members of my group suggested photos of disabled children holding hands. It would say “Dove” on top. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I told them I’d make my own campaign.
“I don’t like your ideas.”
“Well, what’s your suggestion then?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t care less, honestly.”
I could see the unspoken question in my classmates’ eyes. “What are you doing here?” I was wondering the same fucking thing.
I went home and called Niklas.
“I’m so fucking over everything.”
“C’mon, dude.”
My friend tried to lift my spirits with encouraging words.
Monday evening at school, after many poster presentations. Legless kids, a blind kid, a kid with a developmental disability. Dove would bring them all together. Just buy the soap!
It was my turn. I was nervous. Terrified. My palms were sweating. I walked to the front of the class. Presented my drawing. It portrayed Times Square in New York. There were monkey cages at the bottom. In the cages were teenagers and mirrors. The kids were oiling themselves with fat. Taking Instagram pictures, weighing themselves, looking up at the billboards on the skyscrapers. Billboards with nude, fat-free models on them. Bikini models, thin as rails. In one cage, a young girl was busting open the lock with a wrench. In the next panel, she was getting on a bus. A slogan on the side of the bus said, “Be yourself!” The license plate said, “Dove”.
All the students burst into laughter and applause. The teacher looked at me sternly:
“Where are the disabled kids?”
“There, up on the billboards.”
The class cracked up again.
“Emil, what are you trying to advertise? This wasn’t the assignment.”
I had a panic attack. Went back to my spot. My classmates voted my work the best. I didn’t know what to think of the teacher, who kept reminding us he had won several advertising industry awards at Cannes. He thought he was better than us. Two weeks later, I went home during recess and never went back. The whole thing had started to piss me off. The teacher often said that copywriters changed the world. What he meant was, copywriters sold people stuff they didn’t even need.
I didn’t see how this was any different from telemarketers. It’s just that “copywriter” sounded like a more important title. Advertising industry parties, slick designer dress shirts. Something about it all did fascinate me. They were still sending monthly invoices to my dad. He thought I was still in school, learning how to make ads for supermarket casseroles.
Oh, and we had a Finnish teacher too. She kept emphasizing how important it was to structure your sentences correctly. How you should write and how you shouldn’t write. What was proper Finnish and what wasn’t. This whole grammar Nazi thing was the final nail in the coffin.
Of course, if somebody had offered me an actual job at an ad agency, I’d have jumped at it. And I actually ended up in that situation within a month’s time.
My dad set up a meeting with an advertising agency for me. Hasan & Partners. “They might have a job for you.”
I was waiting for my dad’s friend Ami in the conference room. An attractive woman brought in two slices of cake. The door closed. The room felt oppressive. Time slowed down. My palms were sweating. I couldn’t think of any other way to calm myself except to take a big bite out of the cake. The strawberry tasted fresh. Ami stepped into the room.
“Oh, I see, you went for it already. I haven’t even tasted it yet.”
I was nervous. I didn’t understand how rude I was being. Ami gave me a long lecture about the advertising industry. I’d brought my student short films and some pieces of writing with me. Ami looked through them leisurely.
“Emil, you’re talented, but if I hire you, I’ll kill you. I can’t do it.”
I could see how things looked from Ami’s point of view. It was like a woman wearing stiletto heels was applying for a job at a construction site. I wasn’t fit to work.
I looked at Ami with glazed eyes.
“I can write car commercials too.”
We’d just been talking about car commercials. Ami gave me a serious look.
“You would never be happy here.”
Ami could see my disappointment.
“Believe it or not, I’m doing you a favor and helping you by not hiring you.”
“What do you mean?”
“My employees can’t do what you do.”
Despite everything, I believe Ami meant what he said. I walked home from Punavuori, disappointed. I was still scared of having panic attacks on public transport.