I have had many relationships in my life. in fact, a part from my two year break and long stretch of celibacy after moving to montana, I have been breaking up and hooking up with people since I was 14. I feel  like I have spent most of my life compromising myself and my own passions for the sake of some guy. when I left Jason and after the shitty aftermath that followed, I resolved to never again apologize for who I am and the things I want in my life. and more importantly to never again compromise the importance of my family and the role finland plays in my life because of any relationship.

I have come to wonder this: why is it seemingly impossible to leave your partner alone in the US for a month or two without them finding someone else? I have heard this same complain from James, the fire fighter and Jacob the mountaineering guide. when I left for a summer to be with my family and in my country, Zeb found someone else after demanding I return to the US immediately. threatening me with the fact he might. at least I was warned, but seriously!? granted we were young, he has changed a lot too. when I left for two months to build our family hotel in finland, Jason was cheating on me and persistently lied about it for months afterwards, causing irreparable damage in me for my faith in any relationship. or in certain people for that fact. which actually turned out to be a good thing anyways, I have since learned to choose my friends better and recognize dickheads like him.

James is taking his turn. voicing his complaints about the fact that he feels like I am making decisions about my life without including him in my plans, or giving him too much importance when it comes to decisions. which is true, I am not including him much, just hoping he’ll be cool with it. I simply can’t. like the inevitable fact that I will probably spend a few months out of the year in Finland. he is not happy. he is also not happy that I don’t talk to him often. cause I really have had no time. literally, and it might be hard to understand. I also don’t understand why we need to talk constantly, I am fine knowing he’s there doing his thing and I am busy here. he’ll have me all to himself back in MT, so chill out.

I can try to explain that once I get on my family’s orbit, the only way to get off it, is to board a plane out of the country. seriously. but why do I need to be there for him while I am here? why can’t people get by by themselves for a while? why do they need my hand holding? why do I have to feel like I can’t leave them on their own for a while? why is this a constant worry, why does it need to be?

in effect, since I have been in so many relationships and since I have become (more or less) jaded to the importance of relationships. if they end, so be it, change is always good and possibly fun. the ending of any relationship is not such a devastating thing to me these days. I think I have become jaded to the point that men come and go from my life. most, I don’t expect to stay and it’s a nice thing if James does. I understand that what particularly makes me jaded, is the fact that I absolutely refuse to compromise things like the importance of spending time with my family and being close with them. the harsh reality of this is that I have to be gone for extended periods of time. I also will not compromise to my mom being able to live in montana for most of the year. these are the two most important things in my life. I hope that James, or whom ever it is I am with, can understand that just because I am gone, it does not need to be the end of the world. and I hope they can cope and be happy that I am doing things to keep myself happy.

I am also in the midst of the horrific realization that my mom is not getting any younger. she is flat out the most important person in my life and has always been my best friend and I am stricken by the thought that a backpacking trip with her might not be a reality anymore. I have also understood that with good luck I probably have another 20 good years left with her. it’s not enough. if I don’t spend more time with her now, and the rest of my family, I know for a fact, it will be something I will regret tremendously for the rest of of my life. absolutely.

our world has changed so dramatically, that we no longer need to rely on a partner to make it in life. we no longer need partnerships to make ends meet, to build a life, business, raise kids, etc. the role a partner now plays in my life is being my best friend and my companion, but I don’t expect them to be my all. I don’t want them to be my all and I absolutely detest any relationship that shapes out that way. sadly James and I kinda orbit around each other because of the general awesomeness of the population in bozeman, but luckily it does not bother me too much since he’s really easy to be around.

surely, I want to keep my happy peaceful relationship, but brutally, I also refuse to give up being with my family. this is also something I would not ask of anyone I am with. when James and I first started dating, I felt like I wanted him around more and perhaps grudged about him being gone for so long, but the reality is, that I love my own time by myself. I don’t want him there all the time. I really don’t. I still want to be independent, make my own decisions, I still want to travel with or with out him. I am incredibly selfish here, and I kinda feel bad about the fact that James has to deal with the result of years of not treating myself well. or that I have always been giving too much to everyone I have been with. I feel badly that then in return I am asking him to accept and bend to my needs. and stop whining about what I want to do with my life. I have been with myself a lot longer than he has been here and I am sorry, but I come first, I always will. and my family comes before him. it does not mean that I love him any less.

I also think I might be slowly realizing that buying a home and building a family in one location is probably not my thing. even if I have kids. I do want this, or some version of it, but what it might look like, I don’t know yet. my life has been, for such a long time based on transience, rather than staying still. just because others are either incapable or disinterested in constant change and evolution, does not mean that I can’t tailor my life to fit my own needs. I want to try to live a life full of change, because it’s the one thing that keeps me and my life interesting and vibrant.

I mean, I have spent a lot of money and years in school and working on my career, that now that I have this amazing opportunity to really make my life work for me, live it where and when I want to, should I say ‘no’ just because someone loves me? like, why should I say no to the opportunity to live in Italy and ski the dolomites for a season if I can? while I can still do it easily?

I have fallen in and out of love lots of times. I have an overwhelming capacity to love, I know this about myself. I also know that there is no such thing as “the one” there are “oneS”. especially due to my mixture of character that is a chameleon and at the same time unyielding. if I so choose, I can love, or not love for that matter. what really sets James a part is the fact that for the first time I am with someone whom I find so agreeable that we rarely actually fight. despite our little spats or one of us just being grumpy, nothing really escalates. that alone is a rare thing to find, although I now wonder, if a huge part of that is me finding inner peace. so to speak. who knows, and if I stay with him, I might never find out, but I am incredibly curious. staying with the same person “from now on” is a hard concept for me, as it might be for anyone.

there are a lot of these things I feel like i have worked on, spent lots of time mulling over and I often feel like most people I have dated, James included, are light years away from far sightedness when it comes to the meaning of modern relationships and the expectations we still place on marriage. and the fact that I know what I need to be happy. these old forms are ancient and I think they also lead to a lot of divorces. but I have never met anyone how did not flat out rebel against all these views of mine, like having separate houses. I have long understood that I will never fit the norm. and that in order to be happy and content in any relationship, I have to be able to mold into a some kind of a compromise where I am not miserable. and what I need to be happy, certainly rarely fits the standard.

it’s hard to explain. it’s hard to explain to those who share this motherland and it’s harder to explain to anyone in the US. I think my step-dad would understand. maybe my grandpa might too, but he was long gone by the time I realized I yearned to hear it from him. or tell him how much it meant to me what they did.

this little piece of land matters so much to the handful of people that live here. it matters little to anyone else. the people who inhabit this cold and bitter slice of land are moved by the stoutness of their desire to defend this soil. the fathers and sons of this country have many times over bled to keep what they claim to be theirs. theirs to share. many of whom I know have since passed. in the past few years, since I left, I begged my grandmother to record the stories she used to tell when I was a child. these stories are engrained in my childhood. I knew what they fought for. but I never really understood the meaning of this until I was older. I thought surely, everyones granddads had been to war, in their own backyard. I always assumed it was a part of our the natural history that repeated itself.

much later I understood the profoundness of these acts. had they not, my life would be wildly different now. in fact, I might not be here at all, and if I were, we might live under Russian communist rule. instead. I got a life of luxury. instead I got to choose what I got to do with my life. they gave me a choice. true freedom. true democracy.

I miss my country terribly. I miss being here. I miss being with my family. I miss being in their light. though I have been gone, and I feel like a foreigner in finland, when I come together with my family I make sense. my life makes sense, I am grounded, I am no longer lost, I am no longer wondering, I am home. I can taste the dirt in my blood, my motherland. there are many things that affect me incredibly. little things make me cry. little things move me to tears. the holyness of the bravery and the misery of it all. I am proud. and I am thankful.

me and my mom had a sing-a-long at the hotel yesterday. every song was filled with words of how dear this land was. how it meant nothing to someone, but how it was everything to them. how irreplaceable it is. how nothing compares. sometimes I feel like I have no real home or nationality. but when I come here, I understand. when I walk into the church, when I walk through the grave yard, it’s like I can hear them whispering. the honor. they lay here because they lived and died for us. not jesus, but these women and men, they build this country and I owe them everything I have today. it’s bitter sweet flavor, a heritage that runs in my veins, something I can hear when I set foot here. these old roots.

I’ve never felt such stout patriotism. inkling to the stoutness of religion, I feel it when I light a candle at their grave to remember what they gave. there is this deep sense of grave and a of bravery. a gratitude in their silence.

it’s a real bitch coming this way, in fact it’s fucking painful and awful. for about a week I feel nausea and like I am walking around in my sleep. the exhaustion gets so bad that I often feel dizzy and when I go into small spaces like elevators or bathrooms, I feel I might fall down. it’s really weird. feels like you are on a sail boat at all times. the routine is that I can’t sleep at night, my body is awake and does things like makes me get up and poop at 2am, I have to pee like 5 times in a night when I don’t pee at all during the day. my stomach also growls with hunger in the middle of the night, but during the day I lose my appetite and forget to eat anything.

the evenings are the worst: social hour. by 6pm I am so tired and dizzy, I literally just pass out. like I was drop dead drunk. having one beer really does the trick and my speech becomes slurred. literally the exhaustion gets so bad that I feel nauseous and the evenings are the absolute worst. BUT if I make it past 10pm, then I am wide awake again. though falling asleep is never an issue, the problem then becomes staying asleep. couple first nights I wake up around 2 or 3 am. wide awake. this gets better in about a week. but during all that time I just want to get some sleep, but my body and everything is so fucked up, it’s just not happening. so I just really feel ill for about a week. I hate jetlag.

today I woke up at 8am. FUCKING AWESOME!!!! I was thrilled to see the time when I got up to poo. god bless normalcy.

it’s because of this (and some other factors) that I sincerely, from now on plan to make my trips here last anywhere from a month to three months. I can do this. I can do this now and I should take advantage of the fact that I am able to come here how ever much I like. I have realized that fall is the best time for me to be here. it’s shitty in bozeman after october usually. yes, sometimes the skiing is awesome, but really, the best season for me in the united states is from january to september. I am focusing my sports. skiing the winter (byep starts up in january too), skiing the spring and summer into mountain biking season. rafting and whitewater follows and by september the H2O fueled activities die down. the waters stop flowing.

I have held a strong belief that all women are crazy. um, to be specific, I used to believe that 90% of women were crazy, and the rest seemed to maintain. however, I have come to believe that we are all crazy, the only thing that truly sets us apart is variable levels of control we excercise over ourselves. some of us manage to understand that we must keep our crazy bottled up and try to behave normally.

then there are those of us that drift in and out with such veracious pace that I cannot be sure if the moments of sanity are simply misinterpretations. bless the hearts of many women I know, they are mostly absolutely insane, but I often love their hearts nonetheless. some of us are also so far removed into our craziness that even an old friend could not point out how crazy your friend truly is. I could not even begin this conversation.

oh boy.

so many things to be against. so many things to campaign about. so may things to stand for. so many things to hate. what for?? it’s exhausting. fighting your whole life is exhausting. why not just be happy? when you move to montana you forget about all this. the fighting.

it’s also amazing to have a conversation about anything outside portland city limits and how someone can possibly be so blind to understanding that everyone in the world does not share her beliefs. and she has no patience to understanding why. why I can’t only eat organic. why recycling is hard. why I own a car in montana. why I don’t want to buy used clothes for my sister and brother in finland for christmas. and why they don’t give a shit if it’s made from organic cotton or not. why homeless dogs are not dying because it’s cold outside. why I have a roof rack on my car. why the buffalo roam.

also hard to point out that her boyfriend will never be what she wants him to be and seems to be slowly losing his last brain cells. it will NEVER get any better! either you decide to give it a rest (or you should for everyones sake!) or you must leave him, but you cannot keep trying to change a 40-years old man, let alone bitch at him about everything he does and does not do..?? why stay with someone whom you have to nag at all times to do this, do that, do everything my way, because it’s the only way. and by the way, you will not be given any leeway into whom you might be as a person. no excuses! if you can’t tell left from right, is that cause for ridicule? I would never dare to tell james to get off the computer like a mom telling a 5-year old to go clean his room cause quests are coming over. but quests were not coming over. no one was coming and we were leaving. why? why? why? I also do not at all, for a second understand why you would EVER, under any circumstances allow relatives in your baby’s life if you wholeheartedly stand against who they are, what they believe in and how horrid you believe they are. I hope she can eventually make good choices for her child and not follow the same path her mother took. but the apple only falls so far.

I woke up before the sun to get on the road. it being 20 below outside, I layered with long johns, ski pants, down jacket, ski jacket, my big black diamond gloves, a fleece hat. I was well on the road when the sun started dawning in the sky behind me and was beginning to light up the frozen morning sky. as I was crossing ridges and saddles down into the valleys of I-90, heading west, I was so moved by the stunning beauty of the frozen peaks and the vast valleys I cried a little. I realized how much I have come to love montana. I always have, but now it has come to have a more profound place in my life. thought I have struggled in bozeman, I have also become more attached, have finally adjusted and it would be incredibly hard for me to leave the state, go back to living anywhere else. much less portland.

as before, and a few times over, portland blows my mind. it’s a busy city with so much happening and so much going on. moving to bozeman was a huge adjustment to get used to the fact that nothing happens most of the time. here something happens all the time. I love portland, and when I made it here, once again, I was overwhelmed by this feeling of coming home, but to an estranged home. i don’t want Portland to be home anymore. I don’t want to yearn to be back here anymore, like I often have. i understand now how much I have changed. culturally I am in a very different place than I have been, to a point that I feel like there’s no sense in trying describe to someone how different life is on the far side of the mountains. I live in paradise.

I passed through Cour d’Alene lake and my familiar spot where I used to sleep the night on my way to montana, just to break up the drive, and more importantly because from there on out, I wanted to savor the scenery and take it all in during the day in it’s breathtaking glory. I chuckled to myself at the thought of how much I yearned to be in montana then, how much everything has changed since the pain that drove me there, and the fact that I am in montana now. I am in paradise.

arriving in portland also still gives me a slight nagging feeling of knowing that dickhead is in this town. STILL. somewhere. there are a lot of people in this town who hurt me. tremendously. I understand that there will be less for me here year by year and I think I like it that way. I am fine with it. I think because of the way I left, I will probably always feel like there are debts in this town that have never been paid. things that will never be resolved. it has been a couple years now, maybe some things never die. I never knew I could hold a grudge for that long, but then again I never knew someone could do the things he did. maybe I will never forget or forgive. there’s no reason to forgive, but should I forget?

I am not sure that I should ever forget. there’s a universal expectation to move on, forget and not to care at all anymore, but how can I? why should I? should I? I doubt that I will ever be effected by him any less. I doubt that I will ever become numb to him. he will always have had a huge impact in my life and I will always hate him just the same.

it also brings me huge satisfaction to see my choices and what I have made out of all that misery. I have an amazing relationship with someone I love deeply. I have a very healthy and balancing relationship that allows me to be happy and content. maybe James is what I have needed all along? or.. at least by now I can recognize the good thing that he is. and perhaps my rollercoaster of a life needs him to allow me to be me. I don’t live for drama, in fact I want my home to be a peaceful place, a haven, if you may. where ever we are, when we are together, feels like I am home.

when I was logging miles under the big sky, I also reveled in being alone. I love traveling alone. I always have. even though through out my life and travels, I always wished I had someone to share it all with, now in my thirties, I acknowledge that traveling alone out of necessity has eventually turned into loving to be alone. LOVING to spend time with myself. loving life hanging out with me. I have always been my best friend and I believe it’s a true blessing and a gift. being able to be your own best friend is a sacred blessing. no matter where I go, I am always having fun because, well, I showed up. and most of the time, if I am having a hard time, the best cure is to take sometime for myself.