I'm leaving Helsinki for one and a half months pretty soon, in three weeks. Alone. In the back of my mind I wish to leave a lot of unfinished business behind, and things that are thrown in the air, plans that never happen, for the effect to be stronger. I want it to rip me open, to teach me who to miss, and maybe how to make people miss me. If my life is going to be as restless as it is in my dreams, I will have to learn that goodbye is always a step towards the next adventure. I love you baby, but you gotta understand that when the Lord made me he made a ramblin' man.
I'm trying too hard to write and it gets me down all the time. I'm trying to write about people I've met and people that came back, but the story doesn't unfold quite right. Too many secrets when there shouldn't be any. When I think about the three weeks left here, about these wonderful people who make me happy and see the fire burning inside me, it makes me want to leave even more. Not to leave, but to get the fuck out of here. I've been having nightmares, though I feel so lucky everyday, I feel like anything can happen and it would all be amazing in the end. Then the nightmares come, they come from somewhere deep enough, somewhere dark enough for me not to understand.
All the hugs I get are never enough and four cups of coffee does nothing. The day is already half over when I wake up. I got sick a few days ago, maybe my body was trying to tell me to stop. It makes me want to go even faster. So fast and far that the reasons I should slow down won't matter anymore. They could be words crossed over.
When I kick the door open and face today I will be smiling, I know it will be all good and real and important, but this feeling keeps on digging in the back of my head. I'd leave permanently if I was a little more secure about things, only a little, it doesn't take a lot. Ever since I was a kid I dreamed of leaving every place where I arrived. It's not the places or that I couldn't settle for a while. It's the fire burning, the crossroads where you can choose your roads, and you can take any of them. With time you'll know it's up to you, you can make it anywhere.
High school was the same - I thought about dropping out two times. It's not that I don't want to learn, no, it's the only thing I want. School feels irrelevant, insignificant. I know that everything that's meaningful is in your head, but surroundings can either help or complicate life. You can learn pretty much anything if you've got a library card and access to the internet. Wednesday at school I collapsed just a little, tiny bit, I dreamed about getting in this school for years and it was always my aim to go this way, and now it just isn't as mind-blowing as I thought it would be. I've decided to come back next fall and see if it's still like this. If it's not inspiring, motivating and fun, I'll quit. What is the point of a degree, if the journey to get the paper is dull and painful? I can learn so much more from somewhere else. I can do it myself. I imagine myself in the library, reading anything and everything that comes my way. I imagine myself on the road. I have a lot of problems with lists and compartmentalisation, and I don't want to lean on things such as degrees or genders etc. I can't live with the way people see the world as black and white. I don't want to play safe. Every time I hear "You should get a degree, it will help you to get a job in the future." there's a little whispering voice inside me saying "What if I don't want it that way. What if I don't want to settle down with a casual job. It doesn't make my heart beat, so what if I don't do anything you tell me. What if I was so free you'd fear me."
I close my eyes and think about all the things I do not want. I visualize them rolling by my eyes. The routines I don't want to form. The TV-sets I don't want in my apartment. Multitasking. Unpacking after an adventure. Wondering if high school students think you're cool. People who won't say they're sorry. iPads. Push notifications. New gadgets. Apartments in the suburbs. People that think forever is an actual, valid word. If you don't want these things, any things, attitudes or routines, then they can never burden you. Then I think about the road again, I think about the people that make it easy to breathe and what I have learned from them. I think about dancing in the middle of nowhere. Then I am free.
Hank Williams - Ramblin' Man
