Skip to main content

Love Letter


One of my friends requested that I write a post about love. Now felt like a good a time as any for such a post. Admittedly, this post is extremely personal and I have more than a few misgivings about putting this out for the world to see.

I wish that I could write about how I was in a wonderful relationship. My first somewhat real relationship was a whirlwind of emotions but it ended soon after it began. It’s end though allowed me to appreciate the other kinds of love that I am blessed to be surrounded by.

These are the wonderful people around me who have come, in all forms and at all times, to lift me up during times of doubt, worry, pain or loneliness. 

My class loves potlucks and recently we had another one. Since my kitchen has proved to be a good location for such gatherings in the past, I volunteered to host it again. The day of the potluck turned out to be a very emotionally low day for me. I spent much of it crying and then trying in vain to get something done when I wasn’t. But then the love began pouring in. Two friends, one who figured out what was going on and one who I explicitly called because I needed an uplift came over an hour before to gently chide me and my thoughts away from the train wreck they were threatening to become. When my classmates arrived, they let me be a terrible host and started setting things up without forcing me to join them before I was ready. They welcomed me when I was there and yet gave the space I wanted. And as they left, several offered to be a listening ear if I needed one, without asking for any information on what was going on. I wish I had shown my gratitude then.

I have said before that Finland has allowed me to create a new identity for myself and everyone who I have met here has had a part to play in this creation. It is because of the people I am surrounded by that I have had the courage and motivation to continue refining myself into a better version of myself. They have offered encouragement, tough love, and admonished me when I have been unreasonable.

This is not to say the people at home have not been part of the process. My family, for one, is a rock that I wouldn’t get very far without. And my friends back at home have been doing all of these things for a very long time. It took leaving for me to finally appreciate them.

There may be plenty of times when darkness creeps in. But I still know that with all the love I get during those times, I am one of the lucky ones.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And so it begins!

Only 2 more days before I leave for my next adventure! Over these past couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of questions and they’ve followed a general pattern. I thought this would be the perfect place to answer all of them at once. For the geographically inclined, Finland is far north right next to Russia. It is so far north that a fourth of the country is in the Arctic Circle. This means that this part of Finland experiences the midnight sun, when the sun never sets in the summer, and the polar night, when the sun doesn’t rise during the winter. The far north is also known as the Lapland. Turku, the city that will be my new home for the next two years, is in the southwest corner of Finland so my day and nights won’t be as extreme as the Lapland but it will be more extreme than what we experience here in the Midwest. My plane journey to Finland will be a total of nine hours, with a very short layover in Iceland. Once I land in Helsinki, I only have an hour-forty-minute lo...
2 comments
Read more

The Lifeblood of NYC

As you walk along the sidewalk of New York City, you’ll notice that periodically, the cement gives way to a metal grate. Sometimes, the reverberating rumbling echoes through these grates, telling you that a train is passing beneath your feet. Every time I hear that sound, my heart skips a beat. Quintessential NYC, but the real life blood of the city is its metros I’ve always loved the sound of trains. My aunt’s house is in the heart of Mumbai, right next to the railway tracks used by passing local trains. As a child, trapped inside with nothing to do while the adults slept or were busy in the kitchen, I would stand in my aunt’s balcony overlooking the tracks and watch the trains go by, lulled into a peaceful reverie as I listened to them. But watching trains in Mumbai is very different from riding the dark and dirty metros of New York. Metro stations are gloomy from the lack of natural light and filthy from the many people rushing past, spilling their drinks, spitting, sp...
Post a Comment
Read more

Summer (Cottage) Fun

This is a very selfish post. I am writing it purely to relive memories because, even though I have absolutely loved being at home for this week, eating my mother’s cooking, meeting friends and remembering what 30 ° (90 ° for my American friends) weather feels like, part of me misses Finland. I probably wouldn’t miss it so much if it weren’t for a weekend trip I took before leaving to a friend’s summer cottage. It was quintessentially Finnish. (And then later that week we made hernekeitto and pannukakku . You can’t get more Finnish than that.) The cottage was tucked away in the middle of woods. Though there were two other cottages not far from ours, we couldn’t see or hear anything from our neighbors, thus giving the illusion that we were completely secluded from the outside world. Cottages are generally located near a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. This cottage was by a lake. It actually belongs to my friend’s mother who spends almos...
1 comment
Read more