Good Night? Asylum stories part I

The rain is raping the windows, I'm way too tired to wake up at 6 am for my alarm. I don't actually need to... I can still sleep a little, so I close my eyes and next time I open them Alina is taking her towel of and puttig her clothes on. She's my colleague and I she's skinny, not like the proper anorexic or her Russian name intends, but normal skinny. I feel a jealous spike in my heart for that, why I'm not. And I also feel the spike from yesterday, I don't know if she's truly what she seems to be. I mean she's the type who laughs too loud for her own jokes, is nice when there's many people present but complains about everything when she's alone with me. Furthermore she never talks about herself in the manner of telling things that means a lot to her, make her happy or that she wishes to do in the future. I try really hard to decide to like her because otherwise my summer will be really boring and lonely... maybe even horrible. I try not to care.

I crawl up. My skirt is secondhand, my shirt is secondhand. Every single piece of my clothing takes me back to the beginning of 1900's My aim is to be recognized as a church guide without the tag, not to be overly neat and polished - look like a typical guide who's just telling things that happened instead of making them an interesting experience. Sometimes I even avoid telling too much because some people just can't handle the information that well and they get lost in it, forget to listen and loose their spark for the whole thing. 

In the 1700's, a hundred years earlier than this building was standing here there was houses for the mad people. The term mental sickness didn't exist even though mentally sick people did. They were just viewed as crazy, unworthy material for the society and taken away from the normal people. 
   I think of them while I walk down the stairs, this used to be a hose for the personal in the 1800's onward, it's crazy old building the personal has changed, I live there now with others. I can easily imagine the restless souls around this hill who have died three hundred years ago and how the nurses two hundred years ago must have been seeing ghosts and imagining things because this wasn't nice place back then. There wasn't red painted walls and curtains on the windows - at least not in these windows. If they even had windows... I don't know if they did.  

In Finnish we say "seinähullu" which means stone cold crazy but if you translate it word to word it means "wall crazy".  People now days think that the wall crazy becomes from those manic episodes when you ran against the walls, we have also saying "run on the walls" which means that someone is hyperactive... so people think it's some kind of a mixture of those two but they're wrong. Stone cold crazy becomes from the treatment they used in asylums in 18th century - they chained the aggressive people on the walls. They had enough chain to eat but other wise they were on the leash and according to the Frech model they were sleeping upright, standing and their excrement were never cleaned. And they were living like that, for years. 
   I close the door and look at the tree that grows up from that old house bottom. People were crazy back then. It could have been me in there, it could have been any of you in there. These people who were mentally ill didn't have any kind of worth as a human beings, they were worse than animals according the time's sense. I mean there's a piggery just down the hill and I bet they had it better than the patients here did. They had worth, these patients were just the embodiment of the evil, they were sick because of their sinful life or the wrong their parents had done. There was no way to help them, they would be like that forever, crazy, dangerous and contagious - that's why they needed to be brought on the small island. Away from the pure people who were good citizens, listening and taking in the God's words. 

What a crazy world. Or not, I think how useful that kind of power must have been for some people and then I feel it, the bittersweet taste that tells me that world hasn't changed that much during these last three hundred years. We still have the world full of chained dreams and empty wishes that cannot be granted because we're so afraid and selfish for the most part. How much are we loosing from the good because of this hell we collectively cling into, just because chance is scary and giving something up for the better is so hard? 
   The most painful part of this story is that not all the people getting segregated in asylums on lonely islands where all the connections to the outside world are lost were no not crazy, mentally sick and the least driven mad by evil powers. They were the ones thinking differently... sure some of them got lucky like Olof Norman but he was higher class anyway. You cannot say the about Menocchio in Italy two hundred years before him. 
   Norman was a priest who stated that the government and church should be separated - do I even need to say what the "doctors" of the time thought. "The doctors" were priests for the most part because other folk healers had gone underground because of the witch hunts. They couldn't really say that his understanding for reality was totally gone because he was a holy man and there for it was unheard of that they would question their own power by really saying that he was taken over by evil. However the thing was that Sweden (which ruled Finland at that time) had lost its power position over Europe, they had economical issues because of the war with Russian and the king needed country to be united and somewhat stable. So disagreeing was the ticket for prison because of your opinion. 
   Others weren't that lucky, they didn't need to be kept happy, silent and somewhat contempt. They didn't get their family with them and lost all the connections because they were taken over by evil and therefore dangerous, bringing shame to the family and surely not something to be close to. 

I'm feeling the rain on my face and my clothes are letting everything through. Why care at least I can feel it and suddenly getting wet feels like a privilege. I'm not chained on the wall. 

What's new after this story? I'm going to see Cat today and I'm fucking exited, I took my friend's scale out of the closet because I left mine in Phuket... and I've been standing on it way too much. It's not ruining my mood though, so for a change they're just numbers. Right? Just numbers, but it doesn't mean I'm not happy over the 4lb I lost - of course I am but not in that manic way that I need to lose another 4 by tomorrow. I can hear it and kind of feel that but what's the point? What for? It will drop and probably stay down a little longer than it would if I fasted today and ended up in binging cycle. It's funny how I need to experience everything before I believe it's not worth it... so I'm ok. Can't wait to see Cat, she's like the mom to me I never had and I haven't seen her since I left. She tried to call me yesterday but I just couldn't pick up because I'm going on the island today as a surprise. I've got everything covered with one old colleague from last summer and Cat has no idea that I'm coming so I just couldn't risk it by picking up that call. She's so damn sneaky that she would have known I'm up to something.

Eve - more coming later... me too, I always wonder how it must have made them feel and how it has affected them. I know my life amazing at the moment :D, that's why I feel like I need to share it because for the most part I enjoy it. If I didn't it would feel wasting in some way.... and like I wouldn't be thankful for all these amazing things and people. I am.

Sam - I know, I should write a book... I am, trust me. I'm such a person that all kind of weird things happen to me all the time so that's a crime if I won't publish it at some point of my life. I have the same thing with breakfast, I've never been good with that... I've been trying to learn but it's just not my thing.

<3 nbsp="" p="">Love you all!!