Turbulent.
That's a pretty accurate word for the last week.

Skipping around between having the time of my life and feeling like shit is pretty draining. I don't particularly want to mention the second, so I shall merrily skim over that part, saying only that I am severely emotionally drained and feel both more and less alone than I have for a long time. It's a rather confusing state.

One thing related to that I will mention, however. When poor little me is sad, poor little me can't eat. And my fairly high metabolism speeds itself up to cope with all the effort one puts into moping. When my mum woke up, came downstairs and said hi to me this morning, about half an hour after returning home, she followed up with 'you look thin'. This kind of worries me that it's obvious. I can see me getting yelled at about it from people who know what went on.

But enough about that.

This New Years, as with last year, I left the country to be with my lovely and wonderful internet friends! Unlike last time, however, I was in Germany. First time there. Although I didn't really see a lot, I rather liked it. Sightseeing wasn't especially the idea of this meet up, though, so I can forgive that. Who cares about looking at things when you can just hang out, chat and be ridiculous with a rather fantastic bunch of people?



And when I say 'ridiculous', I mean it. An example being these guys singing/bopping along to the 10 hour version of 'What is Love?' This must have gone on for over half an hour, I'm sure... That is until one of them got fed up and turned it off, much to my amusement but to the distress of all the others

As with last year, we celebrated New Years three times. First for Finland, which was a 'huzzah, let's drink to that!', second for Germany, which was your proper New Years thing with all the usual fireworks, alcohol and kisses, and third was for us Brits and the real start of the year (because GMT is real time and you all know it) was our traditionally loud and half-forgotten rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

My time there was fantastic (in between my moments of going 'woe is me!', of course.) I love these guys, they are like my family. As much as I love my 'real' family, they know bugger all about me. This collection of misfits from the internet know more about me than anyone in real life ever could. As a collective, I owe them so much, even if the occasional individual will inevitably irritate the hell out of me, but isn't that always the way with friends? I care for each and everyone one of them, and it makes me so happy to know that they care about me too, even when I'm being the single most frustrating creature on the planet.

At this point, I feel an obligatory 'resolutions' mention, as I actually have some which I intend to stick to. None of that 'be more organised/healthy/outgoing' stuff, because that's the kind of thing which, well... It's boring and you never do it in the end. So here are my three:

1. Stop thinking that I'm shit - Yes, that is the actual wording of that one. The idea here is to stop putting myself down all the time. Far too often, I just call myself useless or pathetic and just brush my own comments off. But they can't be good. Along side that, I have to stop thinking I'm doing everything wrong and expecting to be chastised for it, especially including reading every possible negative response into any reaction I get.
2. Learn some fucking Finnish - Again, this is the actual wording. I'm rather loving this. But yes. I want to learn some fucking Finnish. I decided this about a year ago, but I'm still very rubbish at it. Now I've been given a real learning-book from that fantastic Finn, I can start to do things properly. Don't get me wrong, the lessons she gave me were useful, but a little bit all over the place. 
3. Learn to be me - And this is the big one. And it can't really be done without the first 'resolution'. But it is very, very important. Somewhere along the line, I lost myself, and I kinda need to find me again since I can definitely no longer live through my now ex-girlfriend. I want to finally follow my ambitions and get to a place where I can be happy

I've got a bunch of draft-posts that I've started writing and then gave up on for one reason or another. I'm so ashamed of myself, not managing to write anything properly in a while. But hey, life likes to get in the way of things.
The last little chunk of 'life' that separated me from the world of blogging was a spontaneous 2-day trip down to London. Six and a half hours on a coach both ways, and I'm aching now. What was I thinking?
I planned my little trip with intention of doing some research for college, like hunting down street performers and visiting museums and such...
And I did, to an extent.

The plan was to go to Covent Garden as soon as I got into London, but that failed when I found myself automatically veering off towards the Gatwick Express.
"No," I told myself, "You're not going to Finland. You're in London. Go to Camden or something."
So I did.
After a mooch around the wonderful Camden (and buying an earring and resisting the temptation to go get my ear pierced again right there and then), I went to my usual hostel. At this point, I realised that I had a lot of time to kill since I didn't have my mac with me. Oh dear. What is a girl to do?


The next day, I found myself, quite by accident, in the British Museum. Like you do. It was less than useful for my college work, so I went to go look at mummies instead. I would have gone to the V&A, but I couldn't remember which tube station was closest.
I ended up there, by the way, by again attempting to go to Covent Garden. I should probably work on my directional skills.
Then fun stuff happened.
While quite happily sitting on the floor in King's Cross, reading The Grimmerie, I got attacked so menacingly by the wonderful Marie and Gav. We ventured to Camden on a (thoroughly successful) Nerd hunt and wandered down by the canal, back along to King's Cross. Not too long after, they left me at Victoria station for my journey home.

And yes, I'm cutting this short as I am under orders to watch Pushing Daisies!
So, until next time....

ohgod. I haven't posted anything in a long while. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, it's that I didn't have words for how amazing my summer was.

In July, I went back to Finland ♥
To the people who haven't been to Finland, go there! It is officially my favourite country. Finland is love. I've only been to Helsinki/Vantaa, but I want to go exploring. I want to see Finland in the snow. Not the snow we have here, but the proper snow that you could probably drown and/or bury yourself in if you fell over in it. I want to go running around in the woods, looking for fauns and moomins and other such probably imaginary things. I want to go and shove myself into a proper sauna and almost die because I'm English and tend not to try and cook myself for fun.
As such, I'm currently (and rather badly) trying to learn Finnish so I can go and frolic to my heart's content.

But, back to the point.
Again, I stayed with the lovely Salla, and I went to the Plague Picnic - An Emilie Autumn fan meet-up for the Finns. It was rather fun, watching them make fairy wings and scarfing down cakes, but, of course, with them being Finns, they spoke mostly in Finnish, so I just sat there and and understood every 200th word or something. Eventually, I got put in charge of a camera, so I had something to do. It was really fun, though. I loved it.
Again, I spent far too much money on sweets, but it is completely worth it. Unfortunately, I didn't come home with any Missä X as the airport shops didn't have any...

A week into my little adventure in July, me and Salla jetted off to Belgium to go to ICMU (International Chat Meet-Up for those not in the know). Now, that was a fun gathering. It was brilliant to finally meet all of these people I've been chatting with on the internet for well over a year. I'd met a few at the New Years meet up last year (Or this year. Or both...), and they'd all met each other before at various other gatherings, and now I feel like I'm properly part of the group.

The fabled 'cuddlepuddle'

Near enough straight after ICMU, another meet-up was planned - Another NYE gathering, this time in Germany. With any luck, I'll be able to go to that and see all my wonderful friends again.

In August, I went off on another little adventure, this time to see Amanda Fucking Palmer in Edinburgh. Now, that doesn't sound particularly adventurous, but when you take into account that, because it was during the Fringe and everywhere was expensive, I couldn't book anywhere to stay the night. Luckily, Amy, my shrunken elf of a friend, came along with me at the last minute. After the gig, we ended up having a wander and then stumbled across a midnight tour of the vaults, which we ended up going on because a) it was a way to kill time and b) I love going in the vaults. After that, we sat in a pub until the train station opened, then went and sat in there and waited for our ridiculously early train back home.
The gig was amazing. I've been waiting for ages for a chance to see AFP live, and she certainly didn't disappoint. I only wish that we could have been down at the front instead of sitting up on the balcony, but

• Amy is tiny and wouldn't have been able to see at all
• I managed to almost cripple myself by tripping over a chain fence and slamming myself into the floor, hitting my leg and elbows that hard that I thought I'd broken something.

By the time I'd actually had some sleep, my neck had seized up too, making me think that I'd given myself whiplash or something. But oh well. It was completely worth it.

In more recent news, it was my birthday yesterday! I'm now 22, which seems almost impossible to me since I believe that I stopped ageing at 17 or 18. There's no way I'm old enough to be 22.
I don't have much to say about my birthday, since nothing especially good happened. It was my first day back at college and that, combined with not sleeping enough all weekend, meant that I was far too tired and unwilling to do anything exciting. Ho hum.
Last week, though, me and a friend went to see Bitter Ruin as our birthday thing, as his is coming up soon too. We were quite sad that Bad Pollyanna, who were meant to be supporting, dropped out, but BR were fantastic. So fantastic that I bought all of the merch. All of it. And then some.

So there you go!
That's pretty much everything I've done since last time I posted.

Ohh, and I stopped with my film posts 'cause I didn't want a whole row of them with nothing else, but I have an account on iCheckMovies if anyone cares about that.

I should be writing an essay right now (and, in fact, I am), but I want to write down my thoughts as they come to me. It's going to be a fairly long flight, so I don't want to forget them. I've been on the plane about 45 minutes and I've nearly eaten a whole bag of Missä X. It's a little upsetting as they are super tasty and I won't be able to get any more until I go back to Finland, which will be god knows when. Ok, yes, I have another four packets in my case, but that's not the point. To begin with, I was munching them down to distract myself, to try to stop myself from crying again. It's the most painful thing, leaving your love behind in another country. Of course, that's understandable, understandable. Yes, it's perfectly understandable...

Something has changed within me, something is not the same….

Ahh, Wicked...

I'm now over half way through this essay, and my stomach is a little sore. Not the organ itself, but my skin. 

ARGH, WAX BURNS?

Serves me right, I guess. My back is tingling a bit too, but that is ever so lovely. Not especially looking forward to having to carry my college bag again, but I guess we're both in the same boat with that one!

71% done and I just want to sit and stare out of the window. It's a little difficult as my back isn't really agreeing with the twisting, and also it's dark out there and all I can see is the red flashing light at the end of the wing. It's nothing like when we took off from Helsinki-Vantaa airport when I could see the city below and waved goodbye to such a lovely country, or rather 'I'll see you soon.' There's no way I can stay away from there for too long. I just couldn't. Now now.

The plane is turning now and there's that slight disorienting feeling. I'm not sure where I am at all, but there was an announcement about putting up the drinks trays for landing. Can't be landing soon, it's only 21:30. That's English time. Feels like 23:30. I'm a little sleepy. I wonder how I'm going to be able to stay awake until 06:00 tomorrow to catch the megabus… Just keep writing, I guess. There's no way I can really fall asleep in the airport anyway. Would they even let me stay there all night? I'll just have to find out when it comes to that. Having to stay awake, though, means I have to write my essays since I'll have nothing else to do. Can't even go on the internet because it'll a) cost me money and b) kill my battery. Can't imagine that the airport would let me plug in my mac anywhere. Ho hum.

Oh, I'm so tired. This isn't fair.

Well, saying that, I should have wrote my essays before I went away to Finland, or even written more while I was there. 

I did try to write while I was there, but I just wanted to be with Salla all the time, and writing an essay is, well… not being with her. Just writing that now is making me get all teary-eyed again. Oh, what am I going to be like tomorrow when people ask me about my trip?

I wonder if they sell iPods for a decent price at the airport….

Seatbelt sign is on, and we're going down.

Hello England.

Oh, where to begin!

The thing that is most vivid in my memory is the view from outside the window as my plane left Stansted. The lights of civilisation below me, contrasted against the blankness brought by the night, like clusters of man-made stars.
You can say anything you like regarding the beauty of nature, but, to me, those lights were more beautiful than any mountain, any forest, any natural landscape you could find.

Of course, I was never supposed to be flying anywhere from Stansted Airport, but the weather likes to play tricks on us humans.
I suppose my flight back from Gothenburg had to be cancelled.
There's no way the universe would have let me have had such a, dare I say it, perfect time.

Perfect?
Hmm... How to explain...
Well.

Have you ever wanted to expect something, yet been so very scared that everything would go horribly wrong?
Have you ever then had that 'something' turn out to be better than you ever dared to expect?



My brain is, as usual, failing me. It doesn't want me to talk about how I hated the feeling of being 'squashed' on my flight from Edinburgh, or how I managed to become almost immune to it on the two flights that took me home. Nor does it want me to talk about how I made real Swedish meatballs or how a new card game was invented, or how I managed to spent a total of well over 24 hours in the corner of the most comfortable sofa in the world.

I want to promise that I will write about it later, or tomorrow, but...

All it really wants me to mention is one person.
Just one person.

And how much I miss them.



Give me a night's sleep and I'll try once again to amaze you with tales of snow, Crobin and Hallonsoda.