Page 1, The Letter
Page 2, The Idea to Move to Belgium
Page 5, Towards Brussels
Page 11, The Janitor Job
Page 16, Going Crazy on My 34th Birthday
Page 19, Short History of My Life
Page 26, About the Madness Itself
Page 31, First Day
Page 39, Second Day
Page 48, Third Day
Page 51, Fourth Day
Page 56, Fifth Day
Page 59, Second Visit to a Mental Hospital
Page 61, Seventh Day
Page 68, Eight Day
Page 80, Ninth Day
Page 91, Tenth Day
Page 96, The Magic Villa
Page 102, Eleventh Day
Page 107, Being Submitted to a Ward
Page 114, The Turning Point
Page 117, About Being a Patient
Page 126, Out into the World
Page 130, Back to the Beginning
Page 133, About the Writing Process
Page 134, Closing Words
Appendices
This (unpublished manuscript for a) book is based on a letter I wrote to the owner of one certain villa. I wrote the letter between autumn 2013 and spring 2018, and I gave it to him in July 2018. After a long break, I edited the text to a manuscript and tried to find a publisher for it. (More about that and this website on the Why share a story about my madness? page.) Despite the editing, the original letter and this story/book do not differ in a significant manner.
I wish to thank everyone who helped me during my insanity and/or supported me afterwards.
In Kuhmo, Finland, August 2021, Miro Sulkumäki
[Comment: Unlike in the manuscripts I sent to different publishers, this website also has one video and thirteen photos, as well as some comments and online links. Also, please note that this whole yesmadjourney.net website is the English version of my original, Finnish website https://eihullumpireissu.net, which I created in April 2021. As for the quality of my Finnish to English translation: I did my best. Feel free to get annoyed by something – but at the same time, please bear in mind that I have never studied English at a university level. I will read my story – or parts of it – through every now and then, and maybe do some fine-tuning / mini-editing on it. That is to say, I might fine-tune a sentence (hopefully for the better), and/or change a word (if I have found a better one to describe something).]
Jyväskylä, autumn 2013 – spring 2018
Dear Mr villa owner,
I offer you my sincere apology regarding the events of November 2012. I am sorry for all the mess and damage I caused to your villa, as well as for all the inconvenience and financial expenses. Most of all, I am sorry for violating the sanctity of your home. I know that this doesn't change anything, but I did not mean to break into a villa owned by you in particular. I ended up there completely by chance, and I could not even begin to think who might actually own it. In fact, as soon as I saw your villa, I started to think that it had just appeared there – and just for me.
I had gone crazy about one and a half weeks earlier in Brussels, Belgium, where I lived and worked at the time. Before ending up back in Finland – and to your villa – a lot had already happened. I had been in a holding cell once, in a mental hospital twice, one airline company had banned me from flying, I had run around twice without any clothes on – and even the Finnish Embassy in Brussels was involved in my case.
I started to write this letter in the autumn of 2013 – that is, about one year after going crazy – because I felt so bad about what happened. I wanted to tell you why and how I ended up breaking into your villa. Writing this story was also some sort of a self-therapy for me – especially during the first few weeks of writing.
I will tell you honestly almost everything that happened after I went crazy, it's the least I can do. For various reasons, I did not finish writing this letter until now. I hope you will read it in full, and again, my sincere apologies for all that happened.
I will start my story from 2008. At that time – July 2008 – I was 29 years old and I had just returned to Finland from a trip around the world. I was staying at my father's house in the southern part of Finland – and I did not know what to do or where to go next. I did finish writing my travel story and I uploaded it to my homepage, but other than that, I did not do much of anything. A counterculture shock hit me, and of course I had a lot to think about my trip. Fortunately, my (retired) father was often somewhere else than at home – visiting a friend in some part of Finland or whatnot – so I got to be alone for most of the time.
At the end of September, I moved to Jyväskylä. I had couple of friends there, but I did not know the city at all. It is always interesting to move to a new place, but when the initial excitement faded away a few days later, then a certain feeling of emptiness hit me – hard. Even though everything was fine on the outside, I was quite broken. Making a trip around the world had been my biggest dream for years: The thought of making such a trip had been in my head ever since I saw Neil Hardwick's "Paluu Timbuktuun" ("Return to Timbuktu") travel series back in 1996 (I also read his book about the making of the whole programme). Now that I had executed my dream, nothing really felt like anything.
Upon returning to Finland in July, I had been in good physical shape, but by December I had gained almost 20 kilograms / 3 stones. I did not go out much and I often got drunk on beer and/or ate pizza. Naturally, I knew that I had gained a lot of weight, but I did not realise it until one day when I was getting out of my father's car: It wasn't that easy anymore. At that moment I thought to myself: "OK, this has gone far enough," and I started to clean up my act.
I still didn't know what to do next. In the spring of 2009 – after bumping into an old friend from primary school – I got the idea to become a bus driver. The training started in September and I graduated as a bus driver in May of the following year. As soon as I graduated, I got a job and started driving a local bus in Jyväskylä.
My life had some sort of a direction again, and in the summer of 2010 everything looked very good. I used my bicycle to go to work, but I had also bought a car (because my way to work would increase from a few kilometres to about 30 kilometres). A bank had promised me a loan of up to 75,000 euros to buy an apartment: I was going to get one from a "nearby" residential area. During the summer, I went to see two different apartments, both some 25–30 kilometres from the city centre. Fortunately, neither of them were quite what I was looking for. At the end of August my right shoulder began to get really sore after – and later on during – work. In the end, my right shoulder was hurting so much that I had to go on a sick leave.
All in all, I was on a sick leave for almost a year and a half. In the beginning, I tried to go back to work twice, but then I had to give up: My shoulder started to hurt so much – after driving only for an hour or two – that I had to stop driving. I went to a health service, provided by my company, and underwent many different physical examination and tests. I also saw three different physiotherapists and I did physical exercises both at home and at a gym, but it did not help. Sometimes my shoulder was a little better and sometimes it was hurting right from the morning onwards. After about nine months – and about four doctors – I had had enough and I went to see a private specialist. My right shoulder was operated about three weeks after my first visit. It took a few months to recover from the surgery and to get my shoulder in (its somewhat former) working order.
When I returned to work on the leap day of 2012, a lot had changed: I had had plenty of time to think about things. I had also gotten an idea - during previous autumn and by chance - to move to Brussels, Belgium. I had heard that my friend's flatmate's sister's husband owned a moving services company in Brussels, and that he would always hire a reliable person who can drive a lorry/moving truck. When I heard this, I was immediately very excited, and I wondered why moving to Brussels had never even crossed my mind: After all, it was quite a metropolis right next door. Moving there, why not! I had never been to Brussels before and I did not know anyone from Belgium. I was not worried about that though, four years earlier I had moved to New Zealand without knowing anyone there either.
The moving services company ended up in a bankruptcy just before my sick leave ended, but that didn't stop me. After returning to work, I drove a local bus for about four months – and my shoulder felt fine. I terminated both my work and my apartment, drove a bus for one more month, packed my backpack, gave the rest of my few material possessions to friends or Red Cross, and then I was ready to head for Belgium. My plan was simply to live in Brussels, find some work, and just wait and see where life would take me next.
I remember very well how during my last few days at work, I got this bad feeling about going on the trip. This would be my third backpacking trip, and I had not felt anything like this while waiting for the beginning of my two previous trips. As the days passed, this feeling grew so intense that I ended up writing my sister a "death letter" in case something bad happens to me (= I die). In the end, however, I did not give that letter to my sister, even though I met her just before leaving Finland.
At the end of July 2012, two days after my last day at work, I left Jyväskylä and went to Helsinki by train. I spent a few nice summer days in Helsinki with my friends (I was on a sailboat for the first time!). On August 2nd, I boarded a slightly larger Finnlines cargo/passenger ship. The ferry left the harbour at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and the journey to Travemünde, Germany, would take about thirty hours. I looked at the scenery and had a couple of beers: It felt great to be aboard a ship, it had been quite a while since the last time.
Later in the evening I went to a sauna. As I sat in a hot tub, the sun just started to set. Not a bad start for the trip, especially since I had earlier met a really nice truck driver T, who had promised to take me from Travemünde all the way to the outskirts of Amsterdam. Like on my previous trips, I had everything I needed with me, so I had not booked a cabin. I – and couple of other passengers – slept on a corridor floor next to a set of seats.
Approximately thirty hours after leaving Helsinki, we arrived in Travemünde and I hopped in T's truck. After getting to dry land we first visited the harbour shop, and then we started driving towards Amsterdam. It was quite exciting at times to be aboard a big truck at night, there were quite a lot of traffic and roadworks along the way.
We stopped in the early hours of the morning near some big freight terminal and slept for a while (we had driven about 500 kilometres / 300 miles). In the morning, after unloading some of the cargo, T parked his truck next to a large petrol station (to have a longer rest). We talked for a while, then I thanked T for the ride and walked to a hotel which was close to the petrol station.
I spent the rest of the day in my hotel room reading and resting. [It was the first time I stayed at the hotel during my backpacking trips.] I slept well and after eating breakfast, I first took a bus to a train station and then I took a train towards Brussels. The landscape felt a bit weird/funny because it was so flat.
When I got to Brussels, I started to look for a hostel – by asking friendly looking people whether they happened to know one close by. After finding a hostel, I left my belongings in my (shared) room, and went to see the city centre and the Grand Place central square.
I spent my first few weeks in Brussels by exploring the city, looking for both an apartment and work, talking to other travellers, hanging around at the hostel, and so on. I did manage to get one one-time job from Brussels to Wales. We first packed a family's property into a lorry in Brussels. Next we drove to Coquelles in northern France and went under the English Channel by train. Then we drove through the night from England to Wales and slept in the lorry – as much as we could and had time to. After unloading the lorry and carrying all the furniture, boxes, et cetera, to the house, we set out to take the lorry to London. After my contract ended, I spent two nice days in London. Then I first took a bus to Dover, hopped on a ferry to get across the English Channel to France, and finally I took another bus towards Belgium and Brussels.
Upon returning to Brussels, I started to look for an apartment more actively, as I had been in various hostels for about a month now. Some hostels allowed guests to stay only – for example – a maximum of one week, so I had already been in several different hostels (there happened to be a church next to one of my hostels – with bells ringing early in the morning – so I immediately moved to a new hostel).
I finally noticed an online advert for a room in a shared apartment, located on the 18th floor of an apartment building. I became interested in it right away, so we made an appointment. The apartment building was really big. At the street level there were, among other things, a large supermarket, a corner shop, a post office, a bank, a doctor's practice and a hairdresser. The ground floor also had its own entrance area to the residential floors, and one needed a key card to get to this area. There were three lifts in the entrance area, i.e. in the lobby, and there was a small reception desk opposite them with doorkeepers/guards. The entire building had living space for about 1,000 people and it was about twenty-five storeys high.
I went to see the vacant room in the shared apartment – and decided to take it. The apartment was in a neat condition, and the living room/kitchen combo was nice and cosy. The balcony was as wide as the whole apartment and the scenery from it was quite stunning. My room was quite small, but it didn't matter, at least it would be my own. My flatmates would be R from Rwanda – the principal tenant who was a bit older than me – and B from Burundi, who was a bit younger than me. R had survived the Rwandan genocide and ended up in Brussels after many adventures and different countries. R worked at a hotel as a waiter. B from Burundi was quite big and a really nice fellow. He had ended up in Brussels in search of a better life, and he did all kind of kitchen work for a living.
I moved to my new home the very next morning. According to official information, people from about 150 different countries lived in that part of the city. It was nice to see all kinds of people and all kinds of little shops. Although I generally do not like big cities, I really liked the atmosphere of our area. In addition, the scenery from my own window, let alone from the wide balcony, was really nice. (A friend of mine said one day, as we were looking at the city's scenery from the 18th floor, that: "There's the mankind's evolution of the past 40,000 years.")
It was an interesting time in my life. I was on my own, and everything I owned fit into my backpack. R had been living in Brussels for some years, so I met many interesting friends of his. I visited museums, friends, parks, some sights, a street funfair, et cetera, but I also enjoyed being alone at home while my flatmates were at work. I smoked cannabis almost every day. I did try to find a job, every now and then.
At one point, my flatmate R got me a job as a kitchen hand at the same hotel where he was working. When I got there, I realised from the question: "Did you bring your own knives?" that I was way out of my league. I managed the first day of work somehow, doing a bit of this and that – there were about ten of us in the kitchen because of some big party. But my second day of work...
Two days later I was at home. Around noon I thought: "Well, I don't think they'll call me for work today." So I smoked a joint on the balcony, went to my room – and my mobile phone started ringing. "Could you come to work today?" I couldn't really say no to it – the work would start in about two hours. After eating and getting my stuff together, I started to navigate towards the hotel (it was several kilometres away). I was still so stoned during my metro ride that I almost forgot to exit at my own stop.
When I finally arrived at my workplace, I first went to a changing room downstairs. I changed on the professional-looking clothes I had bought the previous day. After taking a deep breath, I climbed up the stairs to the kitchen. But as I entered the kitchen, there was no one to be seen anywhere. I had arrived a few minutes early but the chef (of the previous shift) had already left. So there you are – knowing only a few French words/phrases and still a bit stoned – in a four-star hotel kitchen all by yourself.
My shift had now started but the chef was nowhere to be seen. As the minutes passed by – while standing in the kitchen by myself – I was fervently hoping that the kitchen's phone would not start to ring. I was also really hoping that the people in the dining room would stay happy with what they had – that is to say, they would not get any ideas in their heads about ordering some food from the menu.
Finally, the chef arrived, about 15 minutes late. I'm saved! Or not, he was originally from Cambodia and spoke French better than English. My cannabis high was pretty much over, and I do not think that he even noticed anything. I worked until late in the evening and I did what I could with the food orders, but I was never again called for work – no wonder, I did not even have any training on how to prepare food in a hotel kitchen.
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| Photograph 1. View from a hostel room window. (Only six of all the photographs I took – before going crazy – survived.) |
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| Photograph 2. Somewhere in East London. |
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| Photograph 3. London, the Houses of Parliament and the Big Ben. |
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| Photograph 4. Le Botanique / Kruidtuin, i.e. beautiful garden/park. |
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| Photograph 5. Part of the Rue Royale / Koningsstraat street. |
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| Photograph 6. Nice little pub near one of the hostels I stayed in. |
I had been living in Brussels for over two months now, and I had only done that one Wales job and tried the hotel kitchen business twice. I was running out of money, and I did think about going back to Finland. But then things changed completely. I knew that there was this Finnish Seamen's Mission (in short: "A piece of Finland overseas") in Brussels, and it was located quite close to my apartment. I thought I'd go over there and leave a note on a bulletin board saying: "A 33 years old Finnish man, looking for any kind of work." But when I went to visit the place, I was soon asked if I would like to work there! The Finnish Seamen's Mission had been looking for a volunteer to do janitor/cafeteria work for quite some time now.
The next day I went back to the Finnish Seamen's Mission to get to know the place, other employees and my future job(s) work tasks. The day went well while learning a lot of new things and getting to know people. At the end of the day, I was asked to volunteer for the job(s) and I was happy to do so. For most of the time I would work in the cafeteria – which also had a small shop – and I would also do all kinds of janitor/maintenance work. I could move to the Finnish Seamen's Mission in two days and I would be living in a shared apartment with two young women. The ladies in question were also volunteers, and including me, five of the eight employees of the Finnish Seamen's Mission lived in the building. Housing and the Internet would be free, and I would also get paid ✖ euros per month. In addition, I would have really nice co-workers/flatmates/neighbours. My adventure in Brussels had taken a big turn. For years, I had hoped to one day be a part of some small community, and to do meaningful work for both myself and for the community. This was it!
The Finnish Seamen's Mission building in Brussels, near the European quarter, was like a five-storey high terraced house (buildings on the same street tend to be attached to each other – as shown in photograph 6.) The basement was mostly used as a storage, but it also had a sauna which customers could book if they wanted to. In addition to the kitchen and café, there was a small shop on the street level – i.e. on the first floor – with all kinds of goods from Finland, mainly food and Finnish-themed gift items. On the next floor, i.e. on the second floor, there was a library and one large "living room". The children's day club was held there, and it was used for some other club activities too. The third and fourth floors were reserved as living quarters for the employees, I was living on the third floor. The building also had a nice backyard, and part of the second floor of an adjacent building had been rented for us. That space was used as a "warehouse" and it was accessible by stairs, built in our backyard. The actual church of the Finnish Seamen's Mission in Brussels was a few hundred metres away (I did not get a chance to visit it).
I really liked living and working at the Finnish Seamen's Mission, as long as it lasted, i.e. little over two weeks. My co-workers were really nice, and each day we got to laugh a lot. The people visiting The Finnish Seamen's Mission were almost exclusively other Finns living in Brussels. For many customers, the Finnish Seamen's Mission seemed to be an important meeting place – "a home away from home" – and all kinds of club activities were very popular.
My first two weeks at the Finnish Seamen's Mission went by quickly. Like every year, a large container with all kinds of Christmas and other goods/items was coming in from Finland. We now had two days before its arrival. Some of my co-workers seemed to be stressed about the container a bit, and in a way there was a good reason for it. Our already narrow and uphill driven one-way street would become even more narrow when the container would be left next to our building. We would also need to get as many people as possible to help us unload the container (by using a bucket brigade/human chain method).
In addition to my usual janitor work, I had already worked a bit at the warehouse (= at the house next to ours). During the day, I completed the project, i.e. I made all adjacent shelves more sturdy by fastening them together with thick cable ties, cleaned the rest of the warehouse, made some plans on where it would be good to place different goods/items and so on.
At one point, while going through a cardboard box which had all kinds of miscellaneous items in it, I made quite a discovery: I found an old photograph album. The oldest photographs in it were taken almost a hundred years ago (= around the First World War). I took the treasure to our café and had a look at the photographs with my co-workers. (It was soon decided to send the photograph album immediately to Finland.) While cleaning the warehouse, I also found a beautiful black and white poster/print (its framing glass was broken). The picture showed a pier and a misty lake, the opposite shore could not be seen clearly. I liked the picture a lot, and decided to ask my boss if I could keep it.
I was going to see a film with some of my co-workers and their friends in the evening. After work I told my co-workers that I would come to the theatre on my own, and went to visit R at my old apartment. A nice Sardinian man D, who had moved to B's room, was also there. We talked about a lot of things, and we smoked some pot. After couple of hours I walked to the theatre. Our group gathered outside the theatre, there were about ten of us. The auditorium was really big and it looked very classy. The movie was [at the time] the latest James Bond movie Skyfall.
After the movie, people were trying to decide which bar we should go to. The first bar we went to – which was an old brothel – wasn't good enough for everyone, so we left. We went closer to the city centre to some street which had several bars along it. We split in two, so one group of people went to one bar and the other group to some other bar. I went to visit the bar's toilet right away. When I came back, I could not see anyone I knew anywhere anymore – not even after walking round the whole bar twice. Everyone had left, and no one had waited for me – or told me anything. Now I had had quite enough of this bar tour. I called the Sardinian D and started walking towards my old apartment. Halfway there, one of my co-workers finally called me, but I told her that I was already on my way to my old apartment to meet some of my friends. Admittedly, I was quite upset that people had simply forgotten me, and that it wasn't until now that anyone even noticed it. (The event in question, which happened about one and a half days before I went crazy, might have played a big part on what was about to happen. One of my early childhood memories – I was about 5 years old at the time – was something like that.)
I arrived at my old apartment. Meanwhile, friends of the French miss F – who had rented my old room – had came to visit her. I talked a bit more about Sardinia with D, I felt very much like visiting it some day. (Even before meeting D, I had talked a lot about Sardinia with R, he had stayed there for a long time.) I talked with other people too, drank a couple of beers, and smoked some pot. When the French lady F and her friends left around midnight, and D went to bed, I walked back home. I stayed up late doing this and that with my computer and didn't sleep much.
The next day was my day off. The past couple of weeks had been really hectic. I had not even had the time to arrange my room how I would like it to be – or to buy everything I needed. Now I had the time. I left home before noon and called D to see if I could visit him. I went to my old apartment and smoked pot with D. Normally, I would not have smoked it during daytime – on my day off – in case someone at the Finnish Seamen's Mission would happen to notice it. However, because of yesterday's events, I did not bother to care about it. Also, it would take me quite a long time before I would return to the Finnish Seamen's Mission. So, after hanging around with D, I first went to an Indian restaurant. Next I went to buy a carpet and some other items for my room. I also visited a spice shop and a grocery store. When I got back home, I did laundry, cleaned my room, and put my room in order. I also pinned the aforementioned poster/print to one of the walls, on top of the fake/decorative fireplace. It took me the rest of the day to do all this.
In the evening, my old neighbour and friend from the large apartment building, Spanish S, came to visit me. I showed him around the building, we talked, we had couple of beers in my room, and then we went to a bar. S and me both would have work tomorrow, so we didn't drink much and we didn't stay late at the bar. However, when I got home, I surfed the Internet until the early hours of the morning, so I slept only a bit.
The day my mind got lost. Looking back, it is easy to see that I was not at ease. Even before moving to the Finnish Seamen's Mission, I had already been sleeping poorly for about two and a half months. In addition to the traffic noise, people in the hostels' shared rooms often came in and left at odd hours. In my old shared apartment, I had always had to wake up early, because there was a large glass collection container next to our building where people threw bottles and other glassware, starting early in the morning. Even though we were on the 18th floor, there were also some noise from the traffic – not as much as in the hostels though. In addition to this, I often woke up when my flatmates left or came either from work or from a bar, as my room was located next to the front door and the kitchen.
Now I had lived little over two weeks with two of my co-workers in a shared apartment. Unlike in my old apartment, there was no traffic noise at all, as my room was not on the side of the street but on the backyard side (the first time I went to bed I noticed how wonderfully quiet it was around me). The downside was that – in this apartment also – my room was next to the kitchen and the room's walls were thin like cardboard. There were also a lot of people in the house – starting from early in the morning until the early evening – except on Mondays when the building was not open to customers. However, from the evening on until the next morning, it was really peaceful and quiet around the house. I really enjoyed being alone in my room at night, without any people, fuss or noise around me. But I always stayed up way too late and did not sleep enough: The amount of sleep decreased steadily. In the end, I did not even really notice my (now) constant tiredness anymore: It had become a new, "normal" state for me. In addition, I drank a lot of (free) coffee every day – which I normally do not drink at all.
Then there was the stress from work, I was always very busy at work. Most of the time I worked in the café/shop, and there were always plenty of customers and things to do. In addition, all the janitor's work – maintenance and the like – which had been piling up even before I had arrived, continued to pile up. When I had time to do some of that work, I often felt like that by the time I got one job done, I had noticed two new jobs which should also be done – or should have been done already. I worked too hard and I took my job far too seriously. Since I was a new employee, I guess I wanted to show others – and also myself – that I am good at my job.
Coffee and tobacco reduced the feeling of hunger well, so I usually did not eat much while working – and/or during the whole day. I was also sick with the flu for couple of days, but I went back to work as soon as I could, although I would have needed a bit more time to recover fully (I get sick quite rarely and usually it is related to stress).
What weighed on my mind was that – after living in Brussels for just over three months now – I was in the country (in a way) illegally, because I had not been able to register at my previous address. I was about to get registered, but it still weighed a bit on my mind. In addition, it also bothered me – in its own way – that I was now working at the Finnish Seamen's Mission, even though I was not a member of the church (I had left/resigned from the church the same day I turned 18 and could do so). One of my co-workers – the one who had interviewed me for the job – knew that I was not a member of the church (The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, which is the national church of Finland), but I still felt a bit like an imposter. Finally, I was also a bit worried because I had to keep the fact that I smoked pot – sometimes at my old apartment – completely secret, just in case. (After moving to the Finnish Seamen's Mission – that is, in the past two and a half weeks – I had smoked pot at my old apartment on three different days. The last time was one day = 24 hours before my "birthday surprise".)
Back to the Finnish Seamen's Mission in Brussels just before I went insane. I started work at noon, as the container would not be coming until around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I went to check the warehouse one more time, everything was ready there. My back was sore and aching from carrying all kinds of things around, so I went to see my co-worker W. He got my back fixed, the pain disappeared right away. After that I went to see what condition the sauna facilities were in. Everything there was OK also. I was just about to leave the changing room when my friend Sami called (from Finland) to wish me a happy birthday. (The last time I celebrated my birthday was when I was a child, and I did not expect any of my co-workers to know or remember my birthday.) Sami and I talked about this and that for a while.
After the call, I left the changing room and smoked a cigarette in the backyard. After that, I walked to the back door of the main building. I opened the door and stepped in, at the same time watching and making sure that the door will close properly. It did. I turned around, and was surprised. Totally. My co-workers were all standing in a row, a few feet in front of me. I immediately reacted by thinking: "What have I done wrong now?" Right after that thought, I said two words to them (in Finnish): "What now?" Then things changed, and it took me completely by surprise, again: My co-workers started to sing a happy birthday song. That's when my brain sprained – but I did not notice anything myself.
After the birthday song, we all hugged, and I got a nice birthday card from my co-workers. For some reason, I left the card on one of the kitchen shelves and went upstairs to my own room.
There, alone in my room, I almost immediately started to act in a very bizarre way.
Before starting my bizarre act, I will briefly tell about my life history so that the following events will – maybe – make more sense, perhaps.
I was born in November 1978 in Heinola and spent my childhood there. My father was a sailor, and my mother had also worked at sea. From about 4 years old until I was about 10 years old, I was aboard "dad's ship" almost every summer. My sister, who was two years older than me, also come on those trips, but our mother stayed home during most of the trips because of (I guess) work. Our trips lasted usually two or three weeks, but once we went all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. We were always quite free to do what we wanted aboard the ship, and on most of the trips there were two or three other children aboard also. In addition to general adventuring, playing, and the like, we watched a lot of different VHS movies in a room next to the officer's mess – I particularly liked James Bond movies. During our trips, I saw a lot of interesting things both at sea and in the port cities. Our family also travelled a bit in Finland and we often visited my mother's sister's family in Salla, Lapland.
When I was a child, I went to a kindergarten. I started school at the Seminaari primary school in 1985. I was a bit of a softy for a while, and the other kids could easily make me cry. In December of the same year, our family moved from an apartment building to a detached house. Since I had only just started primary school, and another school was a bit closer to our new home, I should have been transferred there. But that did not suit my mother, and in the end, I got a permission to stay at Seminaari. I travelled the two-kilometre journey to school first by walking and later, after growing up a bit, I used a bicycle. All in all, it was nice to be in a primary school and I got good grades from most of the exams.
By contrast, Kymenkartano secondary school – that is, grades 7 to 9 – was neither a nice place nor a good time for me. Some people started to bully me, not as bad as some other pupils, but in a bad way still. Ninth grade was a bit easier, but nevertheless it felt really great to get out of the whole secondary school.
When I started the three year long upper secondary school – grades 10 to 12 – it felt great to go to school knowing that no one would bully me. But as so happened, only after couple of weeks I started to wonder what the heck was I doing here. In a way, it had always been clear that I would apply and go to a upper secondary school – just like my sister before me – and that I would do the final exams and get a bachelor degree/baccalaureate (and then go to a university or whatnot). I did not know what else to do with my life at that time, so I decided to stay.
After a few weeks, my mind began to change. My teachers were very nice and smart, and I especially enjoyed Finnish (my mother tongue), history, philosophy and psychology classes. (Of the elective courses, I particularly remember the lecture-like class "About the Existing Existence" by one teacher.) On the other hand, those subjects and classes which I was not interested in, they really did not interest me. I had never skipped school before, but especially during my last year I was quite often away from school – mainly home doing something with my computer. I did not worry about not passing the final exams/matriculation examination, even though I studied/rehearsed hardly at all before they were held. I got a mediocre degree from the exams, and that was good enough for me.
Even before upper secondary school, I had been curious and wondered a lot about, well, Life, the Universe and Everything. During the upper secondary school, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I started to think about things even more. I thought at the time, that if there would be anything left after death, it would have to be all the things you had done and experienced during your life. (This thought model + my basic curiosity drove me to experiment and experience a little bit of this and that in the years to come.) In addition to wondering about life and using my computer, I also liked to move around – that is, I liked swimming, jogging and mountain biking, among other things.
After upper secondary school, in the summer of 1997, I went through a driving school, fast. I had observed how people drive and had once driven a few hundred metres myself (with the guidance of one of my friends). I started the driving school one Monday and had about three to four hours of both theory and driving every day. On Friday – of the following week – I had a driving license (for a car and a lorry). During the summer, I also took the entrance exams to study philosophy at the University of Turku, but it became a tourist trip: I had not even read everything from the boring entrance exam books. A few minutes after the exam had started I thought to myself: "This will not work out," and left the classroom.
Next, I had to wait for almost a year for the start of my non-military/civilian service. I had decided not to join the Finnish Defence Forces and to be a conscientious objector when I was about 16 years old [conscription in Finland]. Even though I did not know anyone from my town who had or was about to do the same, and my parents tried to pressure me to join the army, I held my ground. The few friends I had were not so surprised by my choice because – like one of them said – "You have always been a bit of an oddball." While waiting to get to Lapinjärvi for the one month compulsory training period, I worked in a computer store and in a home appliances store.
After the one month training period I did not have a place to do my service in – like a hospital, school, or a library – so I became a "legionnaire". During the summer I worked with other legionnaires at the "Lapinjärvi legion". For most of the time I did forestry work, i.e. I used a chainsaw to clear up trees which had fallen during a storm. Then I used a tractor and drove the blocks of wood to a woodshed where some other legionnaires chopped them to smaller logs (to be used for heating up a sauna, for example). I had nothing against that kind of work – and for most of the time I got to work solo, which was also fine by me.
In the autumn of 1998, I went to one primary school to work as an assistant teacher. I was there until late spring, then my service time of 395 days [347 nowadays] was over.
After the summer – in autumn 1999 – I moved to Mikkeli to study information technology = computer stuff at a university of applied sciences. Pretty much the same thing happened as in the beginning of my upper secondary school: After couple of weeks I started to wonder what the heck was I doing here. As much as I liked computers, I did not want to sit in front of a computer and do the same job for eight hours per day. But I kept on studying, more or less, because I did not have any better ideas on what to do. My mother got cancer again when I had been in Mikkeli for only about six months, so in a way it was good to have something to do. During my studies, I was a tutor and a member of the entertainment committee for couple of years, and I also worked part-time as a computer club instructor at the Mikkeli Prison. I did both my practical training and my study/thesis for the [then] Provincial Government of Eastern Finland.
In the spring of 2003, I graduated as a Bachelor of Business Administration = a computer nerd. After the summer I moved to Sotkamo to join a wilderness guide school. Nature has always been close to my heart, and I had started to go on hikes a couple of years earlier. I wanted to see what the work of a wilderness guide would be like, and at the same time I wanted to have something interesting to do so that I would not have so much time to worry about my mother's situation – her cancer had been terminal for some time now.
Time at the wilderness guide school was really great, we got to do and experience all kinds of things (I especially liked all our hiking trips to Lapland, rope and climbing training, and to fool around on thin ice – while wearing an immersion suit).
My mother died of cancer a few weeks before the wilderness guide school's final exams began. [I was 25 at the time.] I did not graduate as a wilderness guide, but it did not matter.
Right after the wilderness guide school had ended – early in the summer of 2004 – I went on a backpacking trip to the British Isles. First I flew from Tampere to London and spent the night at the airport. My "travel plan" was only to visit Loch Ness in Scotland and then make my way from there to Ireland. Upon arriving to Ireland, I would travel around it and work at a bar or something – should I come across such an opportunity – and I would go back to Finland when I felt like it. I had been thinking about making such a backpacking trip even before my mother died.
Everything I needed was in my backpack and I didn't have a timetable: I decided the next day's "objective" either in evening – or after I had woken up in the morning. I did travel on buses, trains and ships, but for most of the time I just walked and hitchhiked. I enjoyed the trip a lot: I saw, experienced and thought about all sorts of things. People often wondered why I was travelling solo, but I have always enjoyed being alone – and I have never liked big groups of people. After a couple of months on the road, I decided to return to Finland.
Next, I moved to Iisalmi, and I had my friend Sami as my flatmate. He had (a) room in his apartment, and we had been flatmates before in Mikkeli. I wrote a travel story about my backpacking trip and made a website for it, but other than that, I just mourned my mother's death. I drank a lot of alcohol sometimes, and sometimes not a drop for weeks. After about six months, when Sami got a new job in another city, I decided to move back to Mikkeli.
For the next three summers, I worked in one café/bar, and for the rest of the year I worked as a pizza delivery guy. At the end of August 2007, I went on a backpacking trip to New Zealand/around the world (solo again). I had gotten an idea for it when I was living in Iisalmi.
When I got to New Zealand, I did not have a job or an apartment. I also did not know anyone from the whole country. After about a month in Auckland, I met another Finn, called Tomi, in my hostel. He had been on the road for over a year already, and he too was looking for a job. After a few days, thanks to him, I ended up working for a roadworks company, and I was also able to rent one room (out of six) in a big shared apartment. (Living on the somewhat notorious Karangahape Road was an interesting experience.)
I initially worked as an assistant to one of the concrete cutters, then as a traffic controller, and finally as a lorry driver (just like Tomi). I worked for about six months, then I resigned and started to travel around the New Zealand. After a few weeks of travel, I returned to Auckland and started my return trip to Finland. I did consider going to Australia for a few months also, but it ended up being just a thought. I returned to Finland in July 2008, and that is where this story began, in a way.
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| Photograph 7. Me, little being. |
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| Photograph 8. Koiteli, "Dad's ship". |
I should also say a few words about how it felt to be mad / insane / crazy / loony / loco / nuts / deranged / lunatic / mental / psychotic / bananas – which ever word one uses, as the case may be. [I like the phrase "out of one's mind" the best. In Finnish I prefer the word "mielipuoli", literally "mind half" = "halfmind".] First of all: I did not, at any time, understand that I had gone mad – or even begin to suspect it. In a way, I was both deaf to my weird thoughts and blind to the bizarreness of my behaviour. It wasn't until about three weeks later that I slowly began to come back to my senses.
During my madness, I lived in my own internal, often very confusing world: My thoughts bounced here and there and everywhere. (For most of the time I thought in my native language, Finnish.) In addition to the mayhem of my thoughts, my imagination was on overdrive: I could come up with a complex explanation for even a very simple event or a thing – and truly believe it to be true.
Even though I did not think in a normal way, my typical, calm behaviour (pattern) stayed on me – at least for most of the time. As far as I know, I wasn't violent at any point during my madness, and I do not remember wishing anyone any harm. I also did not intentionally injure myself, I did not think about killing myself, and I did not hear any "foreign" or "strange" voices in my head. I did have an auditory hallucination twice, having already been crazy for over a week – and without proper sleep for ages. However, both auditory hallucinations – both of which I heard happening outside my head, so to speak – lasted for only a moment and they were completely harmless.
All the delusions I experienced, from frightening ones to harmless ones (and everything in between), were always true. For example, at one point I started to believe – that is, to be absolutely sure – that I had actually always been a half vampire, and at another time I started to think that I could become Finland's first Mars astronaut. Delusions as these were not frightening: They were rather exciting in a good way, and sometimes – in retrospect – they led to some rather comical situations.
However, all the paranoid feelings I experienced were always bad – and they had different levels of intensity. In the mildest form I could, for example, begin to believe – that is, I was sure – that I was being followed and watched all the time as I was walking on a street. In a slightly scarier form, I was totally convinced that pretty much everything what was happening, was part of a malicious conspiracy, directed at me (in other words, I was the "target" of this conspiracy). In the most horrifying and frightening form of paranoia, I feared for my life = there was nothing else except that feeling of fear, terror. (During that time, no one could have helped me, for I did not trust anyone.)
My different delusions most often lasted for a few seconds or a few minutes. Then they either switched to some other delusions or just disappeared, vanished, in a similar manner as the memory of a dream fades away after one wakes up. My delusions came into being and took shape not only because of the whole situation at the time, but also (I think) because of some of my old, powerful memories. The semi-vampire delusion I already mentioned could be thought to have had something to do with a fun event (at work) in New Zealand. The secret agent delusions I experienced during my madness could be thought to be related – quite a lot? – both to the James Bond movies I saw as a child and to the James Bond movie I saw two days before my mind flipped.
Once I felt like being a character in a computer game, which I liked and played a lot at one time. I also felt a few times like if I was suddenly inside a movie – which had impressed = made an imprint on me at some point in my life, for one reason or another. [I have seen a lot of movies. If you do not recognise all/any of the forthcoming movie references, don't worry, they are not that important.]
Despite these examples, I do not know how or why my delusions were what they were. I guess pretty much all of my life's history gave "building material" for them? (Like past events affect dreams, more or less?)
Even though some of my delusions even started to repeat themselves, and some of them began to intertwine, I was not under confusing delusions all the time. Also, there were many serene – and even happy – moments, especially when I was alone.
For most of the time, my external behaviour must have seemed quite normal – or at least not distinctly bizarre/crazy. Every time I was in contact with the police, or medical/hospital staff, I was calm and relaxed. I guess I understood on some level that I can trust them, and that they are not going to hurt me. When I was interacting with other people, I may have twice looked/felt somewhat menacing, but even then I did not physically attack anyone.
I never really understood where I was at any given time, not even when I was in a hospital, in a holding cell or at the magic villa. When I was in the company of the people who tried to help me, I often wondered a) where we were going, b) why we are in this place, and c) what is that person talking about. In most of these situations I felt like a small child, who did not understand what the adults were up to – and did not even really care.
Although I was usually quite out of what was actually happening, I was not indifferent towards other people: In a way, I was even more sensitive than normal towards what other people were talking and how they behaved. For example, if someone looked nervous, my mind could reason that she/he is hiding something from me – and that he/she is, possibly, against me and on the side of "them". In short: The way people spoke and behaved, as well as their overall demeanour, very easily affected my own state of mind – and therefore, sometimes, even the fabric of my delusions.
Even though I had no knowledge of logical thinking, I could still be quite cunning at times. I also lied several times during my madness, even to people I knew, like my co-workers. I find it quite interesting that when I lied, I often believed in that lie myself, in some way. During my madness, I also lied twice "knowingly" – that is, I was aware that I was about to lie, and I deliberately lied when answering a question. So, based on my own experience, an insane person isn't necessarily stupid: He/she can be one move ahead in a fictional game, of which other people are not aware at all – or do they know, that they are part of it too.
On the physical side, I did not feel thirst, hunger, cold or pain in a normal way – I could "feel" them, but those feelings were mostly sort of in the "background". In other words, I did not pay much "attention" to my physical sensations: For most of the time my body was just a vehicle/a conveyance, just like in a dream. I moved around a lot during the first ten days of my madness, but I do not remember eating more than seven times. I always ate food just a bit, and except for two occasions, I only ate because someone had offered me some food. By the time I finally ended up in a hospital in Finland, I had lost so much weight that it took me weeks to get back to my normal, average size.
I remember almost all of my madness very well, but during the experience itself, I had a few total blackouts. As far as I know, these "outages" lasted from a few minutes up to approximately half an hour – and I do not remember a single thing from those times. When a blackout like this occurred, I always felt as if I had just moved from one place to another in the blink of an eye, like in a dream. (Usually these blackouts did happen when I was walking – or being escorted/driven – from one place to another. Most likely nothing special happened during those times and I was just not paying that much attention to my surroundings or anything, like in normal life?)
In short, being crazy felt like being in a long and very bizarre dream – at least for me, I do not know about other peoples' crazinesses. I will do my best, but still, it is impossible to describe with words how losing one's mind felt like.
One parable of it all would be: It felt a bit like being a small bird and flying into a window.
Back to Brussels and to my 34th birthday. For some reason, I leave the birthday card I just got in a kitchen shelf and walk upstairs to my room. I feel really, really happy. I open my laptop and go online. After a while, for some reason, I get it into my head that I now have a very important question for the singer of Coldplay (I had liked the band for years and I first listened to one or more of their songs on YouTube).
I go to the band's website to see the contact information. Then I send an email, some assistant replies to it quickly, I reply to that one, and so on. I keep going on about wanting to ask Chris Martin one question, personally. The assistant tries to explain that it just doesn't work like that, tell me your question, and I will pass it on. In the end, I do not do so, especially since I do not even know what I was supposed to ask Chris Martin. After exchanging a few messages with the assistant, I stop sending emails and I sort of forget the whole thing. (This was only the beginning of my madness, but still completely out of my ordinary thinking and behaviour, I normally would never have done anything like that – and I did not notice anything being wrong in my thinking/behaviour.)
I stay in my room and do something with my computer. After an hour or two one of my co-workers/flatmates comes to tell me that the container has just arrived, a bit ahead of schedule. So I leave my room and go to help unload the container.
A few volunteers have come to help unload the container's goods, they are mainly friends of the employees or nice regular customers. We form a human chain starting from the container, going through the main building and backyard, and up the stairs into the warehouse of the adjacent building. Throughout the job, I behave in a normal way: I move a lot between the container and the warehouse, keep an eye on everything that is happening, and help when my help is needed. At one point, I even go and help to move a car which had stalled in the (now one lane) uphill street. I ask, or almost order, two passers-by to help me move the car out of the way, while people stuck behind that car just keep honking their horns – like if it would help to solve the situation in some way.
In retrospect, I wonder if I was acting so normal because I had not yet really dived into the depths of my mind? Or perhaps because my co-workers had talked a lot about the container, I knew that it was coming, and I was prepared for it? In other words, I did not have time to act "strange" because I had things to do – I was in a "routine work mode", so to speak?
One weird and unusual thought comes to my mind, though, when I am at the warehouse once again, looking at how everything is going. I first go and get one big table to make it easier to move and sort out all kinds of cardboard boxes (that was a perfectly sensible idea). But then, as we pass cardboard boxes from one person to another, the pyramids of Egypt come to my mind. I start to think that: "This is how they were built there, at that time." [Years later, I suddenly remembered the Asterix and Cleopatra comic book. I read it many times when I was little, and I still like it. In that comic book, Asterix is on an adventure in Egypt, and with the help of a magic potion, it is easy to move large stones in a human chain and to assemble buildings...]
In addition to this, at one point I look at this one huge cardboard box in the café for a long time. The box seems to have come there out of nowhere, and I try to imagine what is inside it. I also wonder if it is meant to be a surprise gift for me, and whether it will be opened today or not. Normally, I certainly would not have been so amazed by any cardboard box, ever.
It takes about three hours to unload the container, my co-workers tell me that it is a new record. I get compliments from others on a well-organised warehouse. Me and a few other people start drinking some beer. I talk to different people about all kinds of things and behave in a very normal way. I also get some tips from a co-worker's neighbour on how to take care of my bonsai tree.
People are in a good mood and mingling with one another. My co-worker W asks me to go and turn on the (electrically heated) sauna. One man comes with me to see the sauna facilities, he has never seen them before. I show him the sauna facilities – changing room, toilet, shower room and the sauna – and turn on the sauna. We sit down in the changing room and we both think that it was nice to get out of the general commotion for a while. We talk about this and that, and at the same time I start to wonder whether he is one of "us" or not. (I have no idea what I imagined that "us" to mean. However, this was sort of a prelude to all kinds of paranoid and conspiracy delusions.) After a couple of minutes we leave and join the others at the backyard. I tell my co-worker W that I am not going to go to the sauna. He is a bit disappointed about that, but then he eagerly continues to talk to someone else.
Next thing I know – and it happens like in the blink of an eye – I am already in my apartment and coming naked out of the toilet/shower room (I may have had a shower). For some reason, I am only holding a little green hand towel to cover my crotch. I go to my other flatmate's door. I ask if she has any candles and if I could borrow some. She gives me couple of candles and a lighter, and tells me – almost with an angry tone – to put some clothes on. I go to my room and put some clothes on. Then I light two candles and put them on the top edge of my fake/decorative fireplace. I go to my flatmate's door again and ask her to come to my room. When she comes to my room, I ask her to make love to me. She doesn't want to. Then I ask her to at least (to just) sleep with me. No. She is very upset about my behaviour, and she even cries a bit. She asks me to tell what on earth is going on, but my thoughts are so messed up, that I am unable to tell her anything. I just sit on my bed and say at least twice: "Everything is okay." Finally, my flatmate leaves my room. [Much later, looking back on everything that happened, this incident in particular weighed on my mind for a long time. We had agreed on certain rules, and I had lived in shared apartments before. Normally I would never have behaved like that.]
After my flatmate leaves, I lie on my bed in my confused state of mind. At some point, I start staring at one of the candles. I think – or actually I am 100% sure – that if that candle goes out, I will die. After a while, this delusion fades away and I forget it completely. [This was the only time during my madness that I (kind of) thought about dying/death.]
Then I decide to go to a bar.
I do not know the surrounding area well, so I ask one friendly looking man if he happens to know a nice bar nearby, and start walking to that direction. There is a man, about my age, smoking a cigarette in front of the bar. I start talking to him about, well, something. The man in question is sometimes amazed about the things I tell him. We go inside the bar. It is almost empty, only one other customer and a young bar lady are present. A bit later both of them come to listen to my weird talks, too. (I only drink one or two pints during the whole time and I wasn't even drunk, but I still talked about... I do not remember what, it sure would be interesting to know.)
It doesn't take long before the bar already closes, and my new friend wants to go to some other bar. However, it is a weekday today, so we cannot find an open bar. That doesn't bother me at all, because – while walking down the streets in search of a bar – I feel absolutely wonderful. I keep saying, every now and then, that: "Everything is like magic." Either this and/or not being able to find an open bar, finally makes my new friend so angry that he punches me right in the face. I react in a pretty much normal way, which is to yell at him: "What the fuck man," and things like that. I do not lose my temper – that is, I do not get madder in my madness – and the situation calms down quickly. My new friend apologises for hitting me and tells me that he has only recently entered the country. Before that, he was fighting in a war.
In the end, we do not find a bar which would still be open. I tell my friend that I'll be getting back home – and at the same time I notice that one of my (top right) tooth is missing a tiny piece. My friend apologises again for hitting me and says, that he would like to talk more with me some other time. Even though I am not angry at him, I tell him that we will probably never see each other again. I wish him well and start walking back home to the Finnish Seamen's Mission.
When I get home, I go up to my room and turn on my laptop. I often chatted online with one of my co-workers, and she also stayed up late sometimes. She is still awake, so I chat with her for about an hour and a half.
At first, we talk about this and that (and even though I was crazy, you could not tell it from the text I wrote). Then my co-worker mentions that she filmed the container being unloaded, and that she has now edited a video of it. I click on the link. Right at the beginning of the video, there is both dramatic (movie) music and some phrases in English (because not all of the volunteers knew Finnish). All the words in the video seem to be directed straight at me: Sentences and even individual words take on completely new meanings in my head. I am totally amazed about it for a while, but by the end of the video, I have already forgotten the whole thing. We chat about the video, and nothing much happens for a while. But then I slip into delusions again:
[ The original chat in Finnish can be seen here.
1) I used the word "käen" (short for "käden") for the word "hand", but it can also mean a cuckoo bird.
2) As for Winnie-the-Pooh, it is a bit more complicated than that. 1) Winnie the Pooh's name is translated as Nalle Puh in Finnish. 2) The Finnish word "puhe" means speech, to talk. 3) Should someone be talking about more than one Winnie the Pooh, that would be written as "Puheista". 4) And finally, in this case, the word "Puheista" can also mean "(unpleasant) rumours".
3) The jacket I mention had been left in my room on purpose by Antti, one of my predecessors, and I had now finally decided to take it for myself. ]
Me: btw, I have a new jacket
Co-worker: !!! ooooo
Co-worker: what kind
Me: Antti left it... it's missing the left pocket... but you only notice it when you put your hand [or a cuckoo bird] in your pocket... oh I'm laughing :D
Co-worker: who is Antti :D
Me: oh
Me: or well, that's what I thought...
Co-worker: ...?
Co-worker: :D
Me: from Poohs [=from rumours]
Me: from winnie the poohs
Co-worker: I don't understand anything but okay
Co-worker: :DDD
When my co-worker asks: "who is Antti :D" I am taken by surprise. I thought she would knew him. This triggers a paranoia: Since my co-worker doesn't know who Antti is, it means that she is not one of "us" (whatever that "us" was meant to be).
I write "oh" to her. I get it in my head that I am not allowed to give any further information about Antti, it is "classified/secret information". I also start to worry, I should not have said anything about Antti in the first place. I think to myself (in Finnish) something along the lines of: "She's not one of us, I should have known it." Well, now I know.
I type: "or well, that's what I thought..."
She is confused and types both "...?" and ":D"
I write back: "from Poohs". Why, I have no idea. All I can say is that the capital and lowercase letters also had their own and important, sort of secret meaning.
I think to myself that I need to distract her so that she will forget Antti and the whole thing, so I write that "winnie the pooh" thing also.
When she answers "I don't understand anything but okay" and ":DDD" I feel really relieved.
In short: I got quite delusional and my thought processes went wild. I also wrote three dots after some sentences, which I never do (I had started to chat online about 20 years earlier).
After my co-worker's last message, I forget the whole thing quite quickly. Our chatting continues as usual and I also eat some (of my birthday) cake which I find in the refrigerator. I slip into some delusions couple more times, but they go by fast and my co-worker still doesn't notice anything. (There can easily be some misunderstandings during a chat, especially late in the night, and we always chatted in a pretty relaxed/funny/goofy way anyway.)
When my co-worker finally goes to bed, I go to the backyard to smoke a cigarette. It feels quite cool outside, so I put on my jacket hood. I look up at the stars in the sky. After a while, the movie Star Wars and the Jedi Knights come to my mind: I start to think that I am actually a Jedi Knight myself. This delusion, too, loses its force quickly, and I forget ever being a Jedi Knight. After smoking a cigarette I go back inside. I use my computer for some time, then I turn it off and lie down on my bed.
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| Video of the container being unloaded, shot by my co-worker, 2 minutes of blank in the end. (This video can still be found online and it is public, so I presumed that it was OK to put it here.) |
I guess I have slept a bit, I become aware that my flatmates are in the kitchen making breakfast. I have this feeling that one of them is angry at me – for some reason. I go to the kitchen and ask her: "Is everything OK?" She answers with an angry tone: "Absolutely not!" Even though I somehow understand to ask her whether everything is OK or not, I really do not understand what is going on. I go back to my room and do something with my computer.
The same flatmate comes back to our shared apartment some time later, and asks me to go with her for a shopping trip (as the driver). My room door is closed, and she does not come inside my room. I answer through the door that: "I'll be down in a minute." She comes back once or twice and asks me again to come with her, and I keep saying that I'll come down in a minute. I am certainly not going to leave my room for any reason, I have become very paranoid.
I now know that I have all kinds of classified information in my room, and I do not want it to end up in the wrong hands. First, I rip off all the pages from my travel diary which have any kind of text on them. Then I start to shred the pages to smaller pieces. I am in a terrible hurry – almost in a panic – to do so before "they" come through the door and get hold of all the information. Once I have shredded all the pages to small enough pieces, I still have to get rid of that. I am thinking feverishly about different options. I am very pleased with myself when I get the idea of putting all the tiny pieces of paper inside my socks – while still wearing the socks. Then I leave my room and walk casually to the toilet/shower room, and flush all the pieces of paper down the toilet.
After all that classified information is gone, I go back to my room and close the door. Next I start to change people's contact information in my mobile phone's address book – in order to protect them from "them". I make up very strange new names for my friends and other people, such as "Snake". (I watched this movie many times with the friend in question – while we were at the wilderness guide school – and the movie's protagonist is called "Snake Plissken".) After changing all the names in the address book to something else, I feel very relieved. (However, I do not understand that nothing happened to people's phone numbers.)
My paranoid delusion about "them" stalking me is not made any easier by the fact that, on this day, a locksmith happens to come to change some of the locks in our building. Even thought I had known this for quite some time, when the locksmith comes to have a look at my apartment's front door, it is no longer that simple in my mind. In fact, "changing the locks" is just a smokescreen: The "locksmith" is supposed to come and examine my computer's hard drive as soon as I leave somewhere. My paranoid delusions are also increased by the fact that there is a renovation going on in the neighbouring house, so I can hear a bit of noise coming from behind one of my room walls. That is a diversion, too: Actually the "renovation guys" are going to quietly drill holes in my room wall, and install microphones and cameras in them. Despite all these treacherous acts aimed against me, I am not scared. I feel almost joyful and think that: "Let 'them' try, I know all of their plans."
After 11:00 o'clock, I chat online for a while with a co-worker (the same one as last night). We chat about music, among other things. (I start the conversation with a YouTube link to one of Coldplay's songs.) Nothing much happens during this chat, my mind is much more serene than before.
Some time later, I go downstairs because I think that my work shift is starting now. [The day before, just before going crazy, I started my workday exceptionally at 12:00 = noon because of the container thing.]
I go to the kitchen downstairs, and no one (I guess) notices anything strange about me. I am immediately asked to go and get some groceries from a shop, say milk, flour, vegetables, and so on. I start to walk towards a shop, but I do not really feel like going to any shop. There is a beautiful park some distance from the Finnish Seamen's Mission, so I sit on the edge of it for a long time. I look at the landscape and especially at the trees, they look very beautiful. After some time, I get back to the Finnish Seamen's Mission and walk straight to the kitchen. My co-workers are wondering why I do not have any groceries with me. I lie to them: "I forgot what I was supposed to buy." My co-workers believe me and they even laugh a bit at my expense. To make my story even more convincing, I ask one of my co-workers to write me a shopping list. Once I get the note, I leave for the shop again – which I still do not feel like going to at all. After walking for a while, I tear the note – which, in my mind, has already turned quite suspicious – to pieces and throw them in the nearest rubbish bin.
I wander aimlessly near the Finnish Seamen's Mission. Then I happen to arrive at some square, and there is some sort of a demonstration going on. I leave that area right away, its atmosphere doesn't feel good at all. Paranoid feelings surface again. I am quite sure that I am being followed and watched all the time. I am still not scared and I take it easy – like if it was just a game. I make a funny prank to one of the conspirators, a woman, who is smoking a cigarette on a street corner. I stop next to her and ask her for a cigarette, knowing full well that she is one of "them" who are watching me.
I have the "company's" debit card with me and I go to visit a cash machine. I deliberately enter the PIN incorrectly, twice, so that if someone should ask me later, I can tell that I could not withdraw any money from the cash machine, and I did not dare to try the PIN for a third time. [I did not occur to me that I would have paid with the debit card at the grocery shop, not with cash.] Just as I am about to leave the cash machine, a woman comes out of the bank – and says something to her mobile phone. I know that whatever she said, it has something to do with me – and that I have just ruined one of "their" plans. I head back to the Finnish Seamen's Mission.
This is now the second time I have come back to the kitchen empty-handed. It begins to dawn on my co-workers that something is wrong with me. I look at my serious-looking co-workers and think to myself: "What is so serious about this?" – at least I am in a very good mood. Then one of my co-workers, sort of my boss, says to me firmly: "Now pull yourself together Miro, you are still on a trial period (for the job)." But that doesn't affect me in any way, and right then I get a call from the truck driver T. I answer the call and start talking to him like if nothing had just happened. To make matters worse, I go to and walk around in our shop with my mobile phone in my hand – even though there are already some customers in there. I talk something with T, while thinking that he actually called me only to make sure that I won't tell anyone anything about his "secret things".
It is now quite clear to my co-workers that there is something wrong with me. My co-worker W and another co-worker start to escort me upstairs to my room. Right at the beginning of the stairs, W says: "Get moving," and pushes me in the back, so that I would go up the stairs faster. I stop as if I had just hit a wall, turn around, stare him dead in the eyes and say: "DON'T... push... me." [I would not recommend shoving anyone, who has been once been bullied, in the back – let alone someone who has gone mental.] Neither of my co-workers touch me after that, and it is actually quite a job to try to get me to go to my room. On my way upstairs, I act like a bad-tempered kid: Just before my room, I sit down on the stairs: I just do not want to go to my room. My co-workers try to get me moving, but when no amount of talking or persuading helps, they threaten to call the police if I don't do what they say. However, threatening me with the police doesn't have any impact on me either.
After a while I finally agree to go to my room. My co-workers start packing some of my belongings into my smaller backpack. I go to my desk, sit on a chair, turn on my laptop, and show them a beautiful landscape photograph I took some months before. Then I just sit on my chair and watch them do whatever it is that they are doing. In the end, I begin to understand – on some level – that I have to go somewhere soon. I open the desk drawer to see whether there are any important items left in it or not. I take out my camera and nail cutters. Then I cut off my camera's wrist strap with the nail cutters – for some reason. Both of my co-workers immediately react very strongly to it, as if it was something really serious. They tell me to stop and put the nail cutters away. I put the camera wrist strap and nail cutters back in the desk drawer.
A bit later, two police officers arrive outside my room. My other co-worker asks them whether it would be OK to follow them to the hospital with our own car, and they agree to it.
The next thing I know, I am already in a moving car with my co-workers. I am sitting in the back seat of the car, and I feel very good, even though everything seems so unreal in a way. I feel like being inside some movie – and that I am playing one of its characters. (The feeling I experienced can best be likened to a certain scene from the movie The Matrix.)
We arrive at a hospital yard. Both my co-workers get out of the car and walk over to the police car, which is a few metres away. Then they start talking with the police officers. I start to feel very playful. Everyone else is outside by the police car, and they are not paying any attention to me at the moment. I get the idea to lie flat down on the car's back seat. My trick works well: From a distance, it looks like there is no one left in the car, and for a while people think that I have ran away. After my trick is revealed – that is, when my co-worker W comes to investigate the car a bit more closely – I am happy to go inside the hospital, even though I have no idea where we are or why.
At first, we sit in a lobby for a while before we – that is, me and my two co-workers – are invited to some room. There we have wait for some more. The whole room seems very boring to me, and I mention that to my co-workers. Only the blue circle on the floor looks interesting. When the doctor finally arrives – with an English-speaking interpreter – things get even more boring. I listen quite indifferently, when my co-workers explain to the interpreter how "This Miro here has been acting really strange today", the interpreter tells that to the doctor and so on. I am not interested in what is being said, I just sit on my chair and feel really bored. I am like a big little kid who is just waiting for the adults to finish talking – whatever it is that the adults are talking about. However, I do note that my co-workers do not speak English as fluently as I would, and they have a much stronger accent than I have.
After some time my co-workers leave. Both of them have a very serious look on their face – for some reason. I am left in the room alone. I feel very good and playful again. I get up and have a look at my room. Shortly after, one nurse brings me some sort of a pill. For some reason, I do not want to take that pill, and it is very easy to fool the nurse: I pretend to swallow the pill, even though I just put it under my tongue. When the nurse leaves the room, I take the pill out of my mouth, put it under a chair leg, and crush it. Next, I switch the places of two pieces of furniture – and look forward to seeing whether the nurse will notice it or not when she returns. She does, and soon two guards show up also.
The guards stay in the corridor and the door to my room is kept open. I am bored, and I would like to go exploring. I manage – once or twice – to go down the corridor for an expedition when the guards aren't vigilant enough. Some sort of common sense does remains with me during my exploration trip or trips. For example, I do not try to press the fire alarm button in the corridor. (Other than that, I played around a lot, and in fact it was really fun – while it lasted.)
Sometime later, after the guards have brought me back to my room, I take off my Finnish Seamen's Mission T-shirt – for some reason (my eyeglasses also disappear at some point, I guess they took them away from me).
Then things get a more serious tone. Nurses take me to another room and the guards follow us. I sit in a chair, and I notice how my fast heart rate can be easily seen at the area of my solar plexus. The nurses have problems with some device, they try to make it work for a long time. They would also like to take a blood sample, but I refuse (I think they are trying to steal my genes or something like that). I agree to give a urine sample, so the two guards escort me to a small toilet nearby. Its door is kept open, and both guards stand in the corridor, about two or three metres from me. I pee in a cup and put the rest in the toilet. Neither of the guards is looking at me when I am about to start washing my hands, so instead of washing my hands, I put some water in the cup – for some reason. Then I hand the cup casually to one of the guards. My trick works nicely, they do not notice anything.
We go back to the examination room. Next I am going to give a blood sample and/or get some medicine, whether I like it or not. The male nurse who is about to use the needle seems to be in a really bad mood. He is also heavy-handed, and I point it out to him in English: "You know, you are hurting my arm?"
The next thing I know, I am already stepping into an isolation room.
I do not know whether they thought that it was better for my own safety or what, but I was put in an isolation room anyway. I also cannot say what happened during this blackout (either), but I doubt that I have attacked anyone. Maybe I just started struggling while they were taking a blood sample and/or administering a drug, or maybe I tried to stop it altogether? One or two things are certain though: 1) my cup trick was exposed when the sample was examined, or 2) the guards did notice what I did. On top of this, there may have been a camera in the first room where I did not take that one pill.
Either and anyway, I have now arrived in a new room, and the door behind me is already closing. I take a look around. The size of the room is about 2,5 times 3 metres (= the room is very small). There is a thin blue mattress in the middle of the floor. In the lower left corner there is a toilet, made of metal, and without any plastic parts – or any other parts for that matter. And that is all the room has. The only way to open the locked metal door behind me would be to drive through it with a tank.
I still feel quite playful for a while. I look at the sweat marks on the floor (from my bare feet), and jump over the mattress a few times, taking care not to hit its edges. However, I quickly run out of things to do and to play with.
What I really do not understand about my situation is that: 1) my co-workers have brought me to a mental hospital, 2) told something about me to some doctor (using English and an interpreter), 3) I am now in a small isolation room in a mental hospital in Belgium, and 4) there is no telling when I will get out of this room and/or hospital. [That would be something to think about even for a sane person in a small isolation room.] The only thing I do understand is that I am in a very small room – even though I have done nothing wrong – and that I can not get out of there.
Through the peephole in the metal door, I can see a small part of the corridor and the door of another room, opposite mine. The corridor is very dark. Nothing is moving. After a while, I try to attract someone's attention by shouting. After shouting for a while, I start to holler out the same phrases in both English and Finnish: "Hello, where is everybody?", "Where are you?", "Let me go!" No answers, only silence. That is the end of my play. Soon after, I start kicking at the metal door. Initially more moderately, using the entire sole of my foot. Then harder, not with my sole but with my heel. Finally, as hard as I possibly can.
Next thing I know, I am sitting by the door, the door is open, and four people are in front of me. One of them is handing me some sort of a pill. I slap his hand with mine, not to hurt him, but to have the pill fly off, I do not want to take it. The man on the right next to him looks a bit – is without a doubt – Coldplay's singer Chris Martin. I trust him, so I take the plastic cup he hands to me and drink its content. Then they all leave and the door is locked again.
At some later stage, I start to shout "S'il vous plait, aqua." (Water, please.) I am really thirsty, but I do not want to drink from the toilet. I get a big bottle of water. What else happened to me alone in my isolation room for the rest of the day/night, let's just say that it was the worst experience of my life.
The next day, my co-workers came to pick me up from the hospital. The plan was to go to an airport and fly me to Finland (to get medical care there). However, by the time my co-workers arrived, I had already somehow managed to leave the entire facility.
It sure would be interesting to know how I managed to leave the hospital, I do not remember a thing about it. In retrospect, I can think of five options: 1) they simply could not continue to keep me there against my will, 2) I have lied to them, for example, that I had just smoked pot for the first time and that I was alright again, 3) an Estonian woman I knew was working (on an internship) in the European Union's Human Rights Directorate, so I might have bluffed that they will be in big trouble if they don't let me go, 4) I have somehow managed to escape, or 5) they have been about to let me go, but I have nevertheless "escaped" at some point. Anyway, I do not have my small backpack or my money belt with me: Therefore I have no ID with me, no money, and no mobile phone – I do not even have my eyeglasses. In other words, all I have are my clothes and my shoes. (In addition, none of my co-workers knew where I had lived before moving to the Finnish Seamen's Mission – and they did know any of my other friends in Brussels.)
So, just a moment after being in that isolation room, I am now walking on a street and it is light outside. I am already close to my old apartment (about three kilometres from the hospital). I am somehow able to get to the 18th floor, even though I do not have a key card to enter the lobby area (during the day, a lot of people walked in/out of the lobby, and sometimes a few people went in/exited at the same time – even though people weren't supposed to do that).
My old flatmate, R from Rwanda, is at home and lets me in to my former apartment. For some reason, I immediately start lying to him that I have been fired from the Finnish Seamen's Mission. (As with during all of my madness, I do not understand my own condition or my situation.) When R asks me why I was fired, I make up a story of being accused of touching one of my female co-workers. When R asks me where all my belongings are, I tell him that they are still at the Finnish Seamen's Mission. I am still (supposedly) so angry about being fired – "even thought I did not do anything" – that I will go and pick them up at some later time. R kindly promises me that I can sleep on the living room's sofa. I ask him: "What if F – (the French lady who rented my old room) – doesn't want me to hang around here?" R's answer is: "Well, then she can move somewhere else!"
I am very happy to have a place to sleep for the next night, I do not think any further. (As for the concept of future, my mindset was pretty much the same as in a dream: One does not think or make plans far ahead in a dream?)
I do not know how much R believed my story, or whether he noticed how messed up I actually was, but R had been through a lot in his life and he did not take things too seriously. I also cannot say whether R, who also had eyeglasses, asked anything about the absence of my eyeglasses. If he did, I have probably just lied that I can see quite well without them (I had had eyeglasses for about 25 years at the time, and without them distant objects appear blurry).
Some time later R leaves for work. The two other residents, Sardinian D and French miss F, both happen to be visiting some other city and/or country. At one point, while using R's laptop, I start to play an online browser game called Travian. (Apart from a few breaks, which lasted some days or some weeks, I had been playing Travian every day for the past six years.) After playing only for a few minutes I start to feel very paranoid: "They" can now track me down because I have logged in to the game! I immediately start my game account's deletion process (which lasts 72 hours) and log out. After that I feel very relieved, they can not track me anymore. (I am unable to take into account the fact that, at the very least, the laptop's IP address and my login/logout times were stored on the game server.)
I do not remember much else about the rest of the day. When R gets back home from work in the evening, we go to a nearby bar. I have a pint or two. For some reason, I introduce myself to all new people by my middle name, which I have never done before. R is a little surprised by it.
Later in the evening, my behaviour at my old apartment gets even weirder, I remember how R is starting to worry about me. (He may have thought that my strange behaviour was due to the "shock of being fired". After all, I had been so excited about my new job at the Finnish Seamen's Mission.)
After R goes to sleep in his own room, I go and lie down on the living room's sofa.
I guess I have slept a bit during the night. In the morning, R gives me a spare key and some money, and then he leaves for work. I go to the balcony and admire the scenery. The weather is quite cool, so I decide to go and find myself a winter hat. I leave the apartment and walk to a nearby clothing store, but the coins R gave me aren't enough for the hat I want. I leave the store and stand outside thinking: "Now where would I get some more money?"
Then I am already at a hospital reception desk – three kilometres away – asking a reception lady if she would happen to know anything about my eyeglasses. I have somehow managed to navigate there, and the whole trip happened in a blink of an eye. (Navigating through the streets of Brussels was a challenge for me, even in my right mind.) The reception lady does not know anything about my eyeglasses, so I decide to leave.
After the next blink of an eye, I am already in a bar, where my old neighbour Spanish S works. The bar is located about halfway from the hospital to my old apartment, and I have been there twice before. S is not at work yet: His shift doesn't start until later in the day, so I leave the bar.
On the way from S's bar to my old apartment, I visit some other bar. I walk straight to the bar counter: There are two customers and a bartender. I say politely and more confidently than ever before to all of them, that I would need to borrow about two euros so that I can buy myself a winter hat. (I myself am absolutely convinced that this would only be a loan and that I would pay it back.) The other customer asks me in English: "What on earth has happened to you?" (I have no idea how I looked). I answer: "Everything is okay." Then I lie fluently – but hardly very convincingly, except for myself – that: "I will get some money on my bank account tomorrow, I will pay you back then." I get some money as a "loan" from one of the customers, thank the man, and leave the bar feeling very merry.
I end up back in the clothing store, with about the right amount of money. All the three nice cashier ladies count my money together, while all the other customers stand in a queue behind me. I get the winter hat I wanted, and I feel very happy about it. I go back to my old apartment. Once inside, I immediately hide my shoes – for some reason – in the back of a closet in the hallway. Then I decide to take a shower.
A few moments later, I rush out of the apartment, completely naked.
I have no idea what happened in the shower. All I know is that I was alone "at home" (= in a familiar place), I went to take a shower, and some moments later I ran out of the apartment in a panic.
In the corridor, I rush through a nearby door to a stairwell (which I had visited once before, just to have a look). I go down two floors in the stairwell to the 16th floor – where I have never been – so fast, that I twist and hurt my right ankle a bit. I open the stairwell door, go left, and run all the way to the end of the corridor. Then I stop and panic for a while, I don't know what to do next. At first I am about to ring some resident's doorbell, but then I decide not to do that, because in a way that too scares me. So I start to whisper behind one of the doors (in Finnish): "Please, let me in, otherwise they'll kill me." Some time later, I calm down a little bit. I sit down, at a spot which feels like the safest one.
That feeling, no words can describe it. I was alone in a familiar and safe place, yet I still started running naked somewhere, just somewhere, because if I hadn't, someone/some people would have caught me and done something really bad to me. The English word "terror" comes closest on describing the emotional state I experienced. Out of all my past experiences, the only one I could even begin to try to compare that feeling with, would be a tandem parachute jump. At the time, I sure was scared, but still, it wasn't nearly as terrifying as that.
Anyway, no one happened to see me running around. Now I am sitting naked in a corridor, on the 16th floor of a large apartment building. The shape of the corridor can be imagined as a stick with an apple placed on one end: There are a few apartments along the stick, and in the apple, there is a semicircle – or more like a 3/4 circle – with doors to four different apartments. I am sitting at the end and on the left side of the corridor, in the beginning of the 3/4 circle, next to some resident's door. Even though I have calmed down a bit, I still keep imagining for a long time, that a SWAT team (or something similar) is coming to kill me. Every now and then I glance towards the beginning of the corridor. I do not dare to look any longer than just a fraction of a second, so that the sniper there – if any – doesn't have time to shoot me in the head. Fortunately, after a few minutes this frightening delusion comes to an end. I calm down considerably, and I even have the wits to take a nearby doormat and use it to cover my crotch. I am feeling fine again. I look up and admire the patterns on the corridor's ceiling.
I continue to sit in my safe spot for a long time. Then I happen to notice that one of the building's guards is walking towards me.
When the guard – who had been on a routine tour – comes up next to me, I start lying to him. I tell him that my girlfriend got so angry at me that she threw me out of our apartment. She is so mad at me that she won't let me back into our apartment. The guard walks to the door. There is some noise coming from a TV inside the apartment, I only notice it now (or the TV was just turned on). I immediately tell the guard that my girlfriend has not said or answered anything to me in a long time. I am quite sure that she won't open the door, no matter how hard you try. The guard believes me and goes downstairs to get a key to the apartment!
When the guard returns with a key, I am just dismantling the doorbell of the apartment in question: I think that it is some sort of a switch to a bomb. That is enough for the guard for today, and he calls in more people. I sit back down and take it easy.
Next thing I know, I am about to get my new pants put on. The pants have been manufactured by making two holes in the bottom of a plastic bag, and tying the carrying handles together. I get handcuffs, too. We take a lift downstairs, and then I am led along the main corridor to a police car outside. Several dozen people – both inside and outside the building – see my situation, but it does not affect me in any way, I feel very good.
We start driving to a police station. I am sitting in the back of the police car, on the right side. One police officer is sitting next to me on the left. It is already dark outside. It feels great to be driving fast down the streets. The emergency flashing lights are on too, and the police officer driving the car looks just like – is definitely – the actor Vin Diesel. I feel like being in a car chase scene in some movie.
So, as I sit in the police car's back seat with my plastic bag pants and handcuffs, I ask the police officer who is driving the car – as if it would be the most ordinary thing in the world to ask – "Could I drive?"
Instead of letting me drive, the police officers put me in a holding cell. (A dungeon would be a better name for it, but compared to the isolation room the other night, it is OK.) On the right side of the cell, there is a bed with chains (so that it can be turned open horizontally). There is no toilet at all. (At some point, I urinate in an empty plastic bottle and put the rest in a corner, one police officer got a bit angry about it later.)
There are plenty of old engravings and writings on the walls. I do not dare to go near the thick metal bars – the cell's "main door" – because I am sure that they have an electric current passing through them. There is a sturdy door at the other end of the cell, and cold air is constantly coming in from under it. I imagine for a while that the door will lead to a backyard – and that I will be executed there at dawn. [This delusion had something to do with the movie Valkyrie?]. One police officer/guard comes and takes a look at me every now and then. I feel just fine. I walk around the cell with a blanket on my shoulders, and sometimes I sit on the bed for a while. At one point, I stare at the floor and the engravings on the walls in awe.
I spend approximately twelve hours in the holding cell. I do not find out until much later that my friend, Spanish S, tried to visit me at the police station, he was so worried about me. He brought with him my clothes – which I had "left" in my old apartment – and fancy looking, brown leather shoes given to me by R. (Unfortunately, they were much too small for me.) However, S did not get to see me. When it turned out that S was an illegal immigrant, he was also put in a cell for a few hours – after which he was released.
I have no idea when I get and put on the clothes and leather shoes S brought with him. Anyway, in the morning, I am taken to some room for questioning – or something of that nature. I am sitting next to a desk and the door to the corridor is kept open. It seems to me that people – both coming into the room or walking past it – are kind of amused by my situation. I do not understand what is going on, but I hope that if I just look down and act as pathetic as possible, then maybe they will show me mercy. (As for the questioning or "interrogation" itself, I remember nothing about it, so I have no idea what the questions were and what/how I answered/acted.)
A blink of an eye later, I am already leaving the police station. (It happened to be a Saturday, so maybe the police officers had/would have better things to do than my case?) My escort and I are about to walk past the police officer's coffee/break room. There are a few police officers in the room. One of them is just about to take something out of the refrigerator. I happen to notice that there is some cake in the refrigerator, too. I stop and lie that it is my birthday today, could I have some cake please? I get to exit the police station with a big piece of cake and a cola bottle.
Next thing I know, I am already outside and walking down a street, near my old apartment. I am very happy about the cake and the cola bottle, and I have no worries in the world. I somehow manage to get up to the 18th floor, and R lets me into his apartment. I cannot say if we talked about something – or whether I ate any of my cake or not – but pretty soon after I arrived, I asked R if I could take a shower.
Some moments later, I am already on the 16th floor – sitting naked in the corridor again, next to the same door as the last time.
The same thing happened as on the last time I took a shower: I go in to take a shower, and after a while I run out of the toilet/shower room, totally terrified. This time R – and also S who had come to see me – are trying to calm me down so that I wouldn't leave the apartment. But I have lost in completely. I am beyond scared, and I am sure that a sniper will take a shot at me through the living room's big window. Despite R's and S's cautious efforts to stop me, I rush out of the apartment to the corridor. Then I go from the nearby door to the stairwell, run down two floors, and exit the stairwell on the 16th floor. Without a pause, I go left and run to the end of corridor, and sit down in the familiar safe spot from the last time.
No one happens to see me this time, either. I sit still for a few minutes (I guess). After that, I have calmed down and I feel fine. I even get enough some sort of sense into my head – for a few moments – that I understand that I should probably try to get back to the 18th floor. I take the doormats of two different apartments – one to cover my front and the other to cover my behind – and get moving. I sneak with my doormats back up to the 18th floor. Then I walk to the end of the corridor. [Had anyone happen to see me sneaking around with my doormats, it would have looked something like this: Mr Bean in room 426.]
I do not know how long I try to hide near my old apartment – for some reason, I do not go and knock on the door – but finally the guards catch me. (R had probably reported something to the security guards.) Even though I behave very calmly towards the guards, one resident becomes aware of some sounds coming from the corridor, and opens his door. After realising what is going on, he gives me a green bathrobe. The guards give me handcuffs.
Me and the guards take a lift to the ground floor. They take me behind the reception desk and ask me to sit on a chair. I do so, and I feel happier than I have ever felt before. I am really overjoyed, I could sit there forever. People walk past me and the guards all the time, and every now and then people come over to the reception desk to take care of some things. When they do, they also cast glances at me. I just sit on my chair and smile.
Two police officers come soon after. The guard's handcuffs are switched to a police officer's handcuffs. I keep smiling. One of the guards doesn't seem to be able to decide whether or not he should start laughing. I do not understand what he thinks is so funny, but I don't mind. The police officers walk me down the main corridor and over to a police car, which is parked next to the building (again). There are dozens of people in the main corridor and outside the building (again), but a feeling of shame doesn't even cross my mind.
The police officers put me – with my green bathrobe and handcuffs – in the back seat of the police car. One police officer sits next to me on the left. Just as we are about to start moving, I politely point out to the police officer driving the car: "Unfortunately I can't drive because I don't have my glasses."
After that, the police officer sitting next to me stares at me for a long time – for some reason.
This time, the police officers take me straight to a mental/psychiatric hospital. This second mental hospital visit of mine lasted two full days, almost to the minute. I only remember a few random events from that time.
I am on a third floor, more or less. There are thick metal bars in the window frames of the smoking room, and from the window you can see, for example, the yard of some school. Some time later, when I go to the smoking room to ask someone for a cigarette, I get out of there right away, people seem so tense. At one point, I go and sit on a chair in the smoking room. I look directly at a security camera while eating a piece of paper, on which I had written something a bit earlier.
There are watercolour paintings on the wall of one of the corridors, some of the paintings look very nice. During my second day, I also get to paint with watercolours. I like it a lot, and I paint a landscape picture. [It looked a lot like the image in the (2012) Travian game one saw after logging in.] While I paint peacefully – and babble something in Finnish and/or in English to a nice female nurse – many other patients just come in, paint something fast, and leave in a hurry.
Sometime later, I guess it is my second night, I ask for a cigarette from a nice nurse. She asks me: "Don't you ever sleep?"
I also remember planning an escape. I did not feel threatened or anything, the planning of an escape was sort of a game for me. As for my escape plans, I clearly remember the following events: 1) I am in front of a mirror and I pluck some of my beard hair away, so that my appearance would look better, 2) I observe how people walk in and out of the main door (of our ward), 3) I notice a fire alarm button in a corridor, but I think to myself that it is better not to touch it, even though it would create a good diversion, and 4) I plan to hide inside a big cabinet in a corridor – more specifically, behind all the bedsheets placed on the top shelf. When they would notice that I am gone and start searching for me – and general mayhem would ensue – I would sneak out of the main door which is close by. I test if I can climb to the top shelf of the cabinet, but it is hard to try to get there, and in the end I don't have the strength to do so. [The Shawshank Redemption is incidentally one of my favourite movies, and as a young boy I was also very impressed by the movie The Great Escape.]
According to the documents, I have left the mental hospital around 15:30 (= in the afternoon). Two of my co-workers have picked me up and we have most likely driven straight to the airport. I do not remember anything about leaving the mental hospital – this time either.
I am now already standing – bewildered – at a busy airport. I have my smaller backpack on my back and I have gotten my eyeglasses back too. My co-worker W has my big backpack on his back. I immediately notice that my hiking tent has been put in the wrong place. My two co-workers take care of the check-in for me. After the lady puts my backpack on the conveyor belt, I begin to feel even more confused. I have no idea why I should go anywhere. It doesn't help in the least that I am wearing a brand-new collared shirt. I never wear a collared shirt. There is something fishy about this. I start to think – therefore I am sure – that there is an evil plot to get me to smuggle something somewhere, without me being aware of it. I start to feel very anxious and ask W to have a chat with me somewhere more quiet, where there aren't so many people around us.
We go and stand next to a wall – close to a big restroom, which is being used a lot by all kinds of people. I try to tell my co-worker about the plot and my suspicions, but that does not work out, because my mind is in such a turmoil. After a while, W urges me to speak my mind by saying: "Speak freely, no one here will understand Finnish anyway." This innocent statement hits my mind like a brick: There is no way W could know a thing like that! I do not want to talk to him anymore, because now I suspect that he is somehow involved in the plot, too. However, W still urges me to talk – after all, just a moment ago I had wanted to tell him something so badly. I keep quiet. He starts asking if it might have anything to do with this or that, and he speculates on all sorts of things. I feel like I am being interrogated, and I just want it to end. Finally, W asks if the thing I wanted to tell him, is that I am not actually interested in women, but in men. I deliberately lie – that is, I know it is not true and that I am about to lie – and answer "Yes," so that the interrogation would finally end. (I do not remember how my co-worker reacted to my answer.)
Shortly after this both of my co-workers leave. The other one is looking very worried and has tears in her eyes. I wonder why she is so upset.
Next I have to go through a metal detector so that I can get to my concourse and then onwards to my departure gate. But after the "interrogation" I am in such a paranoid state of mind that I no longer trust my co-workers. I wonder what they have put in my small backpack? I am so suspicious that I walk up to one of the employees. I am sure that because of my collared shirt, she will think that I am a successful businessman. I ask politely if she could check the contents of my backpack: My secretary packed it, not me. The lady assures me that the security scanning had been adequate, and that she does not need to examine my backpack. This calms me down a bit, and I start to head towards my departure gate.
While standing on a long conveyor belt – looking at all the big billboards – I suddenly start to think that I could be anything, even Finland's future Mars astronaut! This rather nice delusion lasts for a while, but then the unpleasant conspiracy delusions come back. Again, I am sure that something has been put in my small backpack. I leave the conveyor belt and quickly go to one of the nearest restroom's cubicles. I lock the door carefully. Then I open my backpack and take two (or three) books in my hand. These are the ones. I rip the covers off the books and put all the book pieces in a rubbish bin. I am sure that there had been some classified information in those books. Had I been caught with them, I would have been in serious trouble.
My imagination continues to amaze me. Next I start to think that I am a secret agent. I need to get out of this airport. Under no circumstances should I board the aeroplane I am supposed to get on. So after I leave the restroom, I roll past my own departure gate. At the end of the conveyor belt, I turn around and start going back: An honest mistake to miss my gate, and I did not want to walk... After rolling back for a while I leave the conveyor belt again. As a diversion, I go and sit near some other departure gate than my own.
Then I somehow exit the whole airport.
The last thing I remember from inside the airport is sitting by the fake gate. Next thing I know, I am already outside the airport. I am standing near some front doors, in as dark a spot as possible. I see how, a few metres to the right, two young women are just getting into a taxi with their backpacks. I hold the palm of my right hand to my right ear and pretend to talk something to a microphone which is – supposedly – attached to my jacket. Now "them", the agents or such who are trying to find me, will think that I am one of them – and also looking for me.
After a while, I start to move, and walk a few hundred metres towards the city centre. But as soon as I notice two people coming towards me on the street, I get scared and turn around. I walk faster now and after a few metres I slip through a gap in a fence to some empty building space. Then I quickly run to the other side of the yard. I stop and calm down when I see that no one is following me. I decide to head back to the airport and take a bus.
I walk back to the airport's bus terminal and get money for the bus from some nice older man. Then I take the next bus towards the centre of Brussels. Throughout the whole bus ride, I am in my very own world. My mind sees all kinds of secret meanings in almost everything, for example, in some small drawing close to my seat, or in the (random) way how people have chosen where to sit.
I arrive near the city centre at some time in the evening. I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Besides my clothes and shoes, all I have is my small backpack. I think: "So this is what it feels like to be homeless." I start to walk down one of the shopping streets, i.e. a row of shops on both sides of a street. All kinds of items, including shoes, can be seen behind display windows. I stop in front of one display window and cry for a while: I would like to, but I know that I can not get new shoes for myself (I am wearing the brown leather shoes S brought to the police station, and they are too small for me). I do not have socks, and the skin on the back of my heels is being rubbed with every step. My toes hurt, too. (For most of the time the pain stays in the "background": I do not feel it in a normal way.)
I continue to walk aimlessly and after a while, I end up in some small striptease bar. [I happened to live next to a striptease bar in New Zealand – I only visited it once, though.] I am the only customer. I go to a table, order a pint, and pay for it. Some young woman starts a dance performance, but for some reason the situation feels quite awkward/embarrassing. I even take off my eyeglasses so that I am unable to see her properly. All the lights and sounds are really amazing, though.
After wondering about them – and drinking the pint – I decide to leave. A big man standing by the front door – the one who let me in – seems to be a bit angry or something. I ask him if everything is okay between us. He assures me that everything is okay, so I leave the striptease bar. (Only weeks later did a realise, that I had paid the pint with a £5 banknote, left from my trip to Wales.)
Outside the bar, I notice a shabby, brown leather jacket on top of a rubbish bin. For some time, I consider changing my own black hooded jacket for it – as a diversion. But in the end, I decide not to, and move on.
After a while, I become convinced that I am being followed. I also start to suspect that some sort of tracking device has been put in my backpack. I decide to stop and look through all the items in it. I first take out my mobile phone from my backpack. It is not turned on (or its battery is empty). I open its back cover and take out the battery and the SIM card. Then I throw all the parts in a nearby rubbish bin. Now I cannot be tracked anymore, at least not with my mobile phone. [Quite a cinematic thing to do.] I continue my paranoid research. My backpack also contains a money belt with bank and other cards in it, my passport, a camera, important papers – such as old work certificates – and miscellaneous small items. In the end, I decide to take only my driving licence and my passport with me. I put them in my jeans' right front pocket. Then I leave my small backpack, with the rest of its contents, next to the rear tire of some white car, and quickly leave the area. After walking for a while, I also throw my eyeglasses in a rubbish bin – my reasoning being that I look more vulnerable if I am wearing them.
From now on, I will be walking in and around the centre of Brussels until the morning – for approximately ten hours. I keep moving and I do not sleep at all. I feel paranoid many times – that is, I am sure that I am being followed. Every time I get caught up in these paranoid delusions, I start to walk faster – much faster than my normal pace – and I will also turn to a new direction from every junction. I simply can not stop, otherwise "they" will catch me easily.
Even when I am not having this kind of paranoid delusion on me, I still walk here and there aimlessly – for most of the time. During the rest of the evening and the night, I walk maybe as much as the length of a marathon race.
At some point in the evening, I get it into my head that I have always been a half vampire. The street I am on has a few bars and pubs along it, so I enter the fanciest looking one. I go to a table and order a beer from a waiter who comes to greet me. I am sure that this bar is a secret meeting place for us semi-vampires – and all the different foods and drinks are free for our kind.
The waiter brings me a beer and asks me for a certain amount of money. I do not understand what is going on, so I wonder in English: "Oh, do I need to pay for this?" The waiter gets quite mad at me when it turns out that I do not have any money. He grabs my beer and asks me with an angry tone: "Did you think that you would get a beer for free?" I do not answer him anything, and I get out of the bar feeling very confused. (A few moments later I forget the whole incident – and my vampire bloodline.)
Some time later, while being sure that I am been followed again, I decide to hide in some pub. After entering the pub, I notice a woman gambling by a slot machine. I walk over to the slot machines and watch her play for a while. Then I realise that if "they" would rush in here now, it would be difficult to get out of here, this is such a small place. I get back to the street, fast.
There are also some more serene moments. I remember offering to and taking a photograph for two happy looking friends, as they stood next to a big "Respect" light sign and hugged each other.
During the night, especially since I can not see properly without my eyeglasses, different colours and light signs get new meanings inside my head: They are some sort of messages to me. I come up with the idea that white/normal light means good, red means danger, blue means neutral, and so on. All colourful neon signs, such as open/closed store signs, are particularly interesting. I often turn around and/or go to another street if a light sign in front of me feels too scary or confusing.
Sometime later – when I am very confused by the meaning of colours and signs – I go crying into a small restaurant. The workers kindly offer me some food for free (that was the end of about 11 years of being a vegetarian). In addition, they allow me to stay inside – where it is warm – until they have to go home.
Later on I also get a bottle of water from a small convenience store, and two cups of coffee in some café. I am not asked to leave the café either until the owner (?) has to close it and go home. I act calmly all the time, and the café owner's young son is there also. When I leave, the boy uses his hands to tell me to put on my jacket's hood.
A potentially dangerous situation occurs somewhere around the city in the early hours of the morning. A dark car drives past me from the behind, makes a U-turn, and stops next to me. A tinted window – from the back of the car – comes down and some man asks me something. I do not say anything, so he asks me in English: "Where are you from?" I reply: "North," and stare at the cigarette or a joint in his hand, wondering which one it is. Some moments later, the window goes back up and the car drives away.
I continue to walk aimlessly near the centre of Brussels – and every now and then, I walk faster so that "they" won't catch me.
Early in the morning, some sort of sanity pops in my mind: I have a moment to wonder about my situation. I am standing on a street next to an apartment building. Okay. The sun is shining, and I can feel its warmth. Good. Am I hurt? Nothing feels or looks like to be bleeding. Do I feel any pain anywhere? Only my feet hurt. I look at my feet. Looks like I am wearing clothes... And that's all the time I had to analyse my situation, because now doubt creeps into my mind: I start to wonder if I am really wearing any clothes – or am I naked again? Even though I can see and even touch the clothes I am wearing, I still do not trust my own evaluation.
So I politely stop the first person who happens to pass by me: A well-dressed young woman. I say to her, verbatim: "Excuse me, this might sound a bit weird but am I wearing any clothes?" As I say this, I also spread my arms a bit and look down at my feet. The young lady doesn't answer me anything: She just continues to walk, she seems to be in a hurry to get somewhere. I forget the whole incident in a matter of seconds, and dive right back into insanity – and continue to walk, too.
Later, there are some more people walking on the streets. I should cross a fairly busy road, but there are no traffic lights on the zebra crossing. I understand in some way, that it might be quite dangerous. So I ask one passer-by to escort me across the road. I tell him that I have lost my eyeglasses and that I can't see properly without them. The young man doesn't say anything to me, but he kindly helps me to cross the road.
A bit later, I start to feel that I need to pee. I do not want to attract any unnecessary attention, so I try to find a quiet and secluded location. However, I can not find a suitable spot – even a tall metal gate to some park is locked. So I ask one friendly looking person if she would happen to know a nice café nearby, and then I start walking towards the café she knew about.
I enter the café through two doors. There are shoes on the floor after the first door, so I leave my own leather shoes there, too. I open the inside door and walk straight to the counter, there are about a handful of other customers present. I ask the waitress for a permission to use the restroom. I get a permission, and I am so happy to get to the downstairs restroom, that after peeing I decide to clean up the whole place.
First, I take my driving licence and passport from my right front pocket and leave them on the stairs. Then I take off my jacket and my collared shirt, so now I am wearing my jeans and a T-shirt (which is what I always wore at the Finnish Seamen's Mission during work). Next, I take a mop, a bucket and some detergent from a cleaner's cupboard. I put some water and detergent in the bucket, and start cleaning the men's toilets and urinals. After a while, a man comes to use the restroom. That doesn't bother me at all, I keep working. A bit later, the waitress walks down the stairs and stops there. She seems a bit surprised and asks me something. I just point my finger at my driving licence and passport without saying a word. She takes a look at both of them and goes back upstairs. I keep mopping the floor.
I continue my cleaning project for a few more minutes. When I am satisfied with the outcome, I rinse both the mop and the bucket, and put them back in the cleaner's cupboard. Then I put on my jacket, pick up my driving license and passport from the stairs, and go back upstairs. I thank the waitress, take my shoes, and leave the café.
After walking on the streets for a while, I end up in some museum. [I like museums a lot.] My mind is in quite a turmoil. I first look at some brochures in the lobby. Then I start to walk here and there inside the museum, without really stopping to look at anything. Next thing I know, I am already on an adventure in some stairwell, and soon after I end up in the museum's underground car park. I am barefoot because – for some reason – I have left my shoes somewhere. (I do feel the coldness of the concrete floor, but in a way I just don't care about it that much.)
The car park is quite large and one and a half storeys high. It looks like a very exciting place and I start to feel really playful. Every time a car comes in, I hide so that I do not get seen. Then I spy on people – that is, I look at people when they get out of a car and walk somewhere. Sometimes I even get to a push-up position and spy on people from under a parked car. I also move a bit using both my feet and hands, i.e. gorilla-style, and my hands get really dirty. At one point during my play, I start to feel like being a character in some computer game. (GTA2 computer game, I used to play it a lot both alone and with two of my friends.)
After spying on people for some time, I end up in the car park's lift. I try to make the lift work, because somewhere higher up there is supposed to be a secret floor, just for me. Despite trying all kinds of different button combinations, I just can not get the lift moving. [May well be related to the memories of the awesome System Shock computer game: I could not find the access code for one certain lift, so I had to start going through all of its 1,000 different code options...] In the end, I get frustrated and start to take off an ornate wooden frame from the lift's ceiling, perhaps there is a hidden button or a switch behind it? I am getting a bit sweaty, so I take off my jacket and tie it around my waist.
All of a sudden, the lift starts to move upwards. After some time it stops, the doors open, and there is a man standing in front of the lift. He stands there for a while without saying anything. I stay put and smile with a part of the wooden frame in my arms. Finally, the man enters the lift. I try to get the wooden frame back in its place. After a few moments, the lift starts to move again. (One would have needed a key or a key card to use the lift.) I feel very excited, I wonder where we are going next? To my disappointment, the lift arrives back to the same place where it left. The man leaves the lift without saying a word. I start pressing all of the buttons – again – to get the lift moving. Ultimately, I get tired of not being able to solve the lift's enigma. I leave and go to look for my shoes. After a long search, I find them somewhere in some stairwell. I go up the stairs and get out of the museum. My hands are really dirty, so I wash them in a nearby fountain – while some people stare at me.
I continue to walk here and there. My paranoid delusions come back strong again. I change my direction even more often than before: For example, when I turn left at a junction, I may only walk this new street for a few metres, turn back, and go to some other direction from the junction. This is supposed to make it more difficult for those who follow me, namely "them", to keep up with me. [Even though I was being paranoid, they really were after me: I had been reported missing, and in addition, my café and/or museum activities had been reported to the police.]
Some time later, I no longer feel like walking, so I decide to take a metro to the city centre from a nearby metro station. I go inside and stand about next to one of the ticket machines: I hope that some friendly person will buy me a ticket when I ask him/her for one. However, my external appearance might not make me so approachable: I have brown leather shoes, but I do not have any socks on. The jeans I am wearing are a bit dirty and shabby. I also have a T-shirt, and I have tied my jacket around my waist. In addition, my left forearm – more precisely, the bend of my elbow, where blood is typically taken – has a big bruise on it, as well as a mark from a needle. [All that was missing was Iggy Pop's song Lust for life as background music, and I would have been like a character from the movie Trainspotting.] No one comes even near the whole darn ticket machine. After waiting for quite some time, I get frustrated and force my way through a gate without a ticket.
I do not remember anything about my metro ride (it is of course possible that security caught me and I did not get to use a metro). Either way, the next thing I know, I am already walking outside on a street, close to the Grand Place central square. I go to sit at the foot of one of the buildings, near some stairs, and enjoy the warmth of the sun. I also swing my legs around (like a child would). It had been quite cold during the night – even though I had not felt it in a normal way – and now I have nothing to worry about, once again. I see tourists all around the square, taking photos. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to get somewhere.
After a few minutes, I decide to head towards my old apartment. When I drop down about half a metre or so and begin to walk, I notice that my toes, the soles of my feet and especially my heels hurt quite a lot (after a while, the pain goes into the background again).
I stop at the "King's Palace" and stare at the royal guards for a while (from a distance). I resent the fact that there the king is, just sitting in his palace, when some other people have almost nothing. After a while I get moving again.
A few hundred metres before my old apartment, I notice a black, slightly dirty glove on the ground. I feel so happy to have found it! I take the glove with me and wave it in my hand while I walk. At the next traffic lights, I show my new glove to some woman and tell her how nice it is, but she does not seem to share my enthusiasm.
About 100 metres before my old apartment building, a polite young WWF face-to-face fundraiser stops me. He shows me a brochure and begins to tell me something about animal welfare. In a way, I understand it to be quite funny that – out of the dozens of people walking on the street – he happened to stop me. So I say to him in English, while looking down at my shoes and spreading my arms, that: "This is everything I own." I show him my new glove and continue: "...but I just found this fine glove on that street." (I use my other hand to point towards the general direction of where I found the glove.) Then I point at one of the pictures in his brochure and say: "You can give it to that orangutan, maybe he'll have some use for it." I leave the face-to-face fundraiser standing there with his brochures and my ex-glove, and move on.
Once again, I somehow manage to get to the 18th floor of my old apartment building. I am now already at the door of my old flat, but no one comes to open it, no matter how much I knock. My friend Spanish S, who lives on the same floor, is home and lets me in. He tells me that R will no longer let me visit his apartment, I have already caused him so much trouble. I have no idea what S is talking about, so I do not say anything to that. Instead, I ask S for a permission to wash my hands and feet in his bathroom. I get a permission to do so, and the bottom of the bathtub gets quite messy because of my dirty and dusty soles – from the museum's car park – and my soles stay really dark despite a large amount of soap. I apologise for the mess I made. S tells me not to worry about it.
Next, S offers me some soup he has made earlier today. I eat it very slowly, and just a few spoonfuls. While I eat, S mentions at least twice that he should be on his way to work by now. I get a bit annoyed – both because of the previous events and his busy appearance? – and say: "You know what's wrong with this world? Everyone's in such a god damn hurry." (I am not sure if S said anything to that, but most likely he did not.)
At one point, S asks me whether or not I got the pack of cigarettes he sent for me to my hospital ward. When I answer no, S gets a bit upset and starts to complain about how some people are so dishonest. Hearing S speak like that feels really bad and scary to me. I start to wonder if, after all, S is secretly a member of the mafia. Fortunately, S calms down quickly. My delusional thoughts do not grow into a full delusion, they fade away.
S has to go to work now, he is already late because of me. When we take a lift to the ground floor's entrance area, one guard notices me right away. He says that I am not allowed to be here, and starts to escort me out to the main corridor. S immediately starts to walk towards the other end of the main corridor, he looks somehow sad. The guard won't even let me sit in the main corridor, he insists on escorting me out of the building.
After ending back on the street, I decide to go to the Finnish Seamen's Mission. I will show them that I have friends who take care of me, even though they – the people at the Finnish Seamen's Mission – have abandoned me.
In a rather angry state of mind, I walk about one kilometre to the Finnish Seamen's Mission. I press the buzzer. It takes a long time before anyone answers and I can open the door. (There was a door camera outside, so they have seen who it was.) I hustle in, and I am about to go up the stairs to the 3rd floor and my room. One of my co-workers asks me (in Finnish): "Where have you been, Miro?" I answer: "On vacation." Then I say: "I'll just go and get some items from my room, then I'll leave." The same co-worker says: "But Miro, this is no longer your home." I get totally confused because of those words – and freeze. I can not understand how this isn't my home anymore. I just stand there for a moment. Then, I guess, due to my earlier bad mood and now also because of my confusion, I am struck again by a conspiracy delusion.
The employees of the Finnish Seamen's Mission are all in one tight group at the café. I start to say to them, with a rather ominous tone, that: "I do not understand what all of this means, but if you are part of it too, then you can all go f..." Right at the beginning of the letter F – letter V in Finnish – my co-worker W comes from behind me to my side. I only notice it when he takes me firmly – but not in a threatening way – by my arm. He says: "Why don't we go outside, Miro, and talk there." W leads me back to the street, and we immediately start to walk farther away from the whole building. W wants to know whether I have any cigarettes. When I answer no, he suggests that we go and buy some from a nearby hotel.
We walk at a fast pace uphill towards the hotel. When we get there, we have to wait for quite a long time before any of the employees show up. For some reason, W is in a very bad mood. He even mutters out loud to himself: "Is there supposed to be a self-service in here or what?!" Finally, one employee shows up and W gets to buy a pack of cigarettes.
We go out for a cigarette. W starts to talk about this and that, I do not talk much. At some point, W asks me whether I trust him. I look at him for a long time and try to think about it. He seems a bit nervous somehow, so I can not fully trust him. Finally I answer him – and I know I'm lying – that I trust him. Despite my misgivings, after a while I confess to W that I occasionally smoke pot. W immediately asks me whether I am under its influence right now. I understand to answer honestly that I am not – without realising that I have gone mad.
A bit later, I get yet another scary sniper delusion on top of me. I start to look wildly around, feeling very scared and jumpy: We are in the middle of a street, so to speak, and that makes us very easy targets. During the next few seconds, I come very close of "losing it" again, and I almost start running for cover – somewhere. In the end, fortunately, my fear eases, and I forget the whole thing. Of course, my co-worker W does not know what just went through my head. He says: "So, you have lost your eyeglasses again?"
After W has smoked another cigarette, we walk to some café. I feel very relaxed and serene again, and I feel amazed by many things. W buys me a part of a baguette, and we go to a table. I only take a few bites from my baguette, even though W says couple of times that I should eat at least a bit more. While eating slowly, I look through a window, that interests me a lot more than eating. At one point, some people take some furniture out from a van, and carry them to a building. However, for me it looks like if props are being moved – in secret – and I wasn't supposed to see that. I start to feel like being the main character in some movie (that feeling is best described by a certain lift scene in the movie The Truman Show, on which the delusion itself was based on, at least a bit?).
We have waited at the café for the chauffeur C from the Finnish Embassy to come and pick us up (or we have walked to the embassy, it was quite close to the café). Either way, next thing I know, I am already sitting in the back seat of a car. It is already quite dark outside, and the three of us are driving towards some hotel. I immediately get a bit paranoid and ask the chauffeur C whether anyone is following us. C replies that he "knows what he's doing". His answer calms my mind a bit.
Then we have already gotten out of the car, and we are walking towards some small convenience store. We all happen to be wearing blue trousers and a black jacket. I, of course, interpret it as a good tactic to confuse those who are following us: It is now more difficult for "them" to know who is who. For some sort of extra deception, I take my winter hat out of my jacket pocket and drop it on the ground.
Then we are already in a hotel's lobby. I have been bought a baguette and a big bottle of water, and I am supposed to stay at the hotel for the night. I have no idea what is going on, but I don't mind, as I am already extremely interested in the paper W is holding in his hand. (That A4 had the location of the hotel printed on it, and some hand-written notes.) W tells me my room number and gives me a key card. I ask for and get the paper he is holding. W is a bit surprised about my request, but for me it is all clear: This paper is a valuable treasure map.
Just before leaving, W says that: "So, you have lost that collared shirt, too." It had been his shirt. W promises to bring me a new one in the morning. I have no idea what he is talking about, so I do not say anything.
After the chauffeur C and my co-worker W leave, I start to climb the stairs up to my room. I think at first – because of the treasure map I am holding – that I am now very close to my final destination, and that there will be some sort of prize waiting for me. However, for some reason my rather happy state of mind quickly changes to a really paranoid one. As a diversion, I take my shoes off and leave them in the stairwell, at a different floor than the one I am going. That, however, does not help much. I start to think that I have been tricked after all, and that there is an ambush waiting for me in my room – instead of a prize.
I stand in the corridor in front of my room door and try to think it through. Is the treasure map a real one or have I been lied to? Is there an ambush or a prize waiting for me behind this door? I also do not understand where I am – or why I have been brought there. In the end, I get tired of thinking about the whole thing, and I start to feel very tired. I do not want to walk any more. I decide to open the room door, for better or for worse. Once I enter the room, nothing happens. I am in a rather small but tidy room now, and I have the key to its door. My delusions go crumbling down, and I start to feel very happy.
I decide to first take a shower and wash myself.
After being in the shower for a while, I suddenly realise that I am currently very vulnerable and an easy target, should someone rush into the room. I get totally scared and almost run out of the shower – and then who knows where. (I guess something like this happened on my last two shower sessions.) However, this time this almost crippling state of fear passes, fortunately. I start to think that "they" are smarter than that: Some dangerous substance has been put in the shower cubicle's small soap and/or shampoo bottles. I look at the bottles for a long time and I do not even dare to touch them. In the end, I reason it out, so to speak: If someone wants to do something bad to me, I can not really do much about it, there are so many different options. My mind calms down, and then I really enjoy being in a shower.
After the shower, I feel very good, downright happy. I put on my clothes and have a look at my room: A beautiful painting catches most of my attention. Next, I leave my room and have a look at the corridor. I see that there is one beautiful painting on its wall, too. I get it into my head that I have to make some sort of choice between those two paintings. So, I pull the painting off the corridor wall – it was fastened to the wall with screws – and take it to my room. I also pull the painting in my room off the wall, and put both of them side by side on my bed. Then I look at the paintings for a long time – one portrays a big city in the evening and the other is nature themed. Finally, I end up choosing the nature themed painting.
Then I head downstairs with that painting in my arms.
I do not know what the man at the reception had been told about me – if anything – but he takes the situation very calmly. When I arrive downstairs and tell him that: "I would like to buy this painting," he simply says that he can not sell that painting. Then he asks me to leave the painting by the reception desk. I put the painting up against the reception desk. Immediately after this, the man hands me my shoes and says in a calm voice: "You had left these in the stairwell." I take my shoes, but I do not put them on. Next I ask him if he could lend me some money. The man unambiguously states that he can not give me any money. I then ask him for a cigarette, and he is willing to give me one. After handing me a cigarette, he then goes back to a small room – next to the reception desk – and continues to watch something on TV. I head out for a cigarette. Outside, I soon realise that I have nothing to light the cigarette with. I go back inside for a quick visit. After a while, the reception man comes outside, kindly offers me light, and leaves.
I sit next to the hotel's front door. The hotel's own outdoor light creates, in a way, a small circle of light near the front door and the pavement. I think to myself that everything is fine, as long as I stay inside the light circle and do not go past it on to the street. The thought of going back to the dark street frightens me a lot.
After smoking the cigarette I go back to my room. I decide to visit the balcony, just for fun. I feel a bit sad that I cannot see the scenery's details properly. I do not understand that I would see the scenery perfectly well, if I just had my eyeglasses. I also do not remember nor understand that I, myself, have thrown them in a rubbish bin some time ago.
After my visit to the balcony, I go and sit on the bed. I nibble at the baguette a bit, and drink the whole bottle of water. It is only now – after stopping and sitting down for a while – that I begin to feel how sore and in how poor a condition my toes, soles and heels are. My leg muscles are hurting a bit also. I cry for a while, I do not understand why this has been done to me. I also do not understand why I am in this room, but I do not know where else to go. I begin to get scared. I turn on the TV and lie down on the bed.
Only a moment later it is already morning – approximately 7 o'clock – and I am sitting in the hotel lobby, browsing through some tourist brochures. I am sure that I can choose anything I want: I can, for example, go on a sightseeing tour. It will be my reward – for something.
Soon my co-worker W arrives in the lobby. He is very happy that I have not left the hotel during the night. I have no idea what he is talking about, so I do not say anything to that. T gives me a new collared shirt. As soon as I put it on, my award delusion disappears. Now I believe that everyone in the hotel thinks that I am a famous magician: I have come to a small hotel like this to attract less attention.
W and I go to have a breakfast in the hotel's dining room, where a few other people are already having breakfast. Although there is plenty of food available, I only take a cup of coffee and a croissant. Then we go and sit at a table. W starts to talk and he mentions at least twice that: "It's really nice to see you Miro back in shape." I do not understand what he means, so I do not say anything. I keep smiling though, because I know that I am a famous magician: Maybe what W said has something to do with that? (I also know that all the people in the dining room are wondering what a famous magician is doing in such a modest hotel, and they would love to know what our conversation is about.) W also urges me at least twice to take some more food, but I do not want to eat anything else.
After the breakfast, we start to walk towards the nearest metro station. I do not know where we are going or why, but I feel good and I trust W. We arrive to a metro station and go down to the platform. While waiting for a metro, I start to think that there must also be some secret tracks which lead to some secret places. (A few weeks earlier, while on a metro, I had happened to see some maintenance and/or construction work taking place between two metro stations.) This delusion lasts for a while until it changes to the fact that, actually, me and W are bodyguards.
We are standing aboard a metro now, and we are holding on to the same bar. I am facing W, and therefore I can watch his back so that no one can attack him from behind. I know that W is using the same tactic to protect me. After reaching our target station we walk out to a street. I start to observe my surroundings intensively – especially the rooftops of all the buildings, that's where the snipers usually hide.
Just a fraction of a second later – that is how it feels – W and I are already inside the Finnish Embassy in Brussels. We are waiting for something for some reason (I, of course, do not understand that I am in any embassy). Shortly after the embassy's chauffeur C arrives. He looks familiar, I remember seeing him somewhere before. Then W goes somewhere, and the next thing I know, I am already sitting in the front seat of some fancy car. C and I are driving somewhere. I feel that I can trust C, so I enjoy the ride. The sun is also shining, and for most of the time I feel downright great: I am pretty much in my own private world.
After driving for some time, we stop in front of a house. I have no idea what is going on, but a Finnish-speaking doctor is supposed to examine me and write some sort of a statement/medical certificate. Without it, the airline I am supposed to use to get back to Finland, will not take me aboard for a second time – or well, for the first time.
(I do not know whether the airline's employees had been told something about my abnormal state of mind or not, but I had already caused the airline some trouble. The airline in question – let's say its name was "Funair" – might have experienced some turbulence because of my actions a few days earlier. Leaving the airport may have been easy, or no trouble at all, BUT the flight reserved for me had left towards Finland even a bit ahead of schedule – with my backpack, and without me. As far as I know, that should never happen: The aeroplane will not go anywhere until the missing passenger's luggage is removed from the cargo hold. My father, who had been waiting for me at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, had been absolutely shocked when only my backpack arrived to Finland, and no one knew where I was.)
Anyway, I am with some female doctor at her house now. She speaks Finnish with a strong accent. That immediately casts doubts in my mind. Then she starts asking me some questions. That, of course, only makes matters worse. I sit in my chair, feeling very confused, and the whole situation feels very uncomfortable. That is all I remember, I guess I have answered something to her questions. As for my behaviour, I have no idea how it has looked like (but I guess I have acted in similar way as at the "police interrogation").
What I do remember clearly, is that before I left the doctor's house, I needed to use the bathroom. For some reason, after peeing, I take off my boxer shorts and put them in the rubbish bin. I tell the doctor about it as soon as I get out of the bathroom.
Later – and once again, as if it had happened in just a blink of an eye – I am already back at the embassy. I have no idea why I have been brought back here (wherever this "here" is). All I can understand is that I am in a big room with some people on the other side of it, behind a big glass wall (= safety or bulletproof glass). Every now and then, some people come to my side of the room, from somewhere, and go to talk with the people behind the glass wall – for some strange reason (= people renewing their passports and what not).
In reality, there is a lot of work to be done to get me on an aeroplane, and back to Finland. I will have to wait a few hours in the embassy's lobby for 1) all the paper and such things to clear out, and 2) for the departure time of my flight. Only then will we = me and the embassy's chauffeur C, leave and drive to the airport.
At first, I sit on a couch at the lobby and look at some pictures in magazines and brochures. People come and go from time to time. I also lie on the couch for a while, using my jacket as a pillow, I am so tired. Sometimes people, who visit the glass wall, take a glance at me – for some reason. (I am wearing shabby jeans and a clean collared shirt. I have fancy looking leather shoes but no socks. I still have that needle mark and a bruise in my left arm, and I have not shaved my beard for over a week now – so I must look like the hybrid of a homeless man + a junkie + a pimp?)
Some time later, one embassy employee brings me a salad. It has shrimp in it. That makes the whole salad very suspicious, so I do not eat it at all (I have never liked shrimp and I had been a vegetarian for about eleven years).
At one point, the fear of snipers pops up again. Even though the lobby's exterior windows are blurred, I still need to get up and go to – in my mind – the safest place in the lobby. Then I just stand there until the delusion of snipers slips away.
The more time passes, the worse my mindset gets. All kinds of delusional thoughts are becoming more and more frequent, and my mind is very restless. I still have my only possessions, in addition to my clothes: My driving licence and my passport. I get a sinister delusion that "they" are currently making me a new identity (new passport and such). I have no idea why or for what purpose "they" would do that. After a while, I ask one employee to give me a pen and some paper. I write down only one word (in Finnish): "Why". I am sure that the people on the other side of the glass wall are behind all of this. I slap the paper against the safety glass above one of the counters and try to explain something. Then I tear up the "Why" part from the paper, and eat it. [I watched The Prisoner TV series when I was very young. I did think that it was a bit weird, but I was very impressed by this particular scene.]
After I have eaten that piece of paper, one embassy man comes from behind the safety glasses to the lobby, and asks me if I would like to talk to W. I answer yes. He then calls W and hands me the phone. However, the phone call does not help me at all, as my thoughts are so mixed up, and I understand absolutely nothing. I do not say much to W. At some point, he tells me that if I would like to be alone, I should go to the lobby's toilet. I do not say anything to this, as I do not want to go to a small, confined space. In the end, W says that he has to go now (he was almost certainly at work – and busy).
Finally, after ✖ hours of waiting, I leave the embassy with the chauffeur C. First, we take a lift to a car park, which is below the ground floor. We start walking towards the car. Just before reaching the car, with C on my right side passing me, I think that I see a big black torch in his right hand. Why would he... and now I am sure that I saw one. Seeing that torch turns me very paranoid. [I am still 90% sure that he actually did have a big and heavy torch with him. Had I been in his shoes, I sure would have had one for self-defense...] I begin to suspect that C is hiding something from me after all. Despite my misgivings, I go and sit in the front seat of the embassy car.
We drive out from the car park. As soon as we get to a street, I lean towards C, start staring at him without blinking my eyes, and ask: "Are you nervous?" C says he is not. I keep staring at him and I am physically very tense. (I was not thinking of hurting C: I just wanted to make some sort of a test, because I did not know whether I could trust him anymore or not.) After a few seconds, I stop staring at C, relax my muscles, and sit back down. My state of mind resets and I forget the whole thing.
Our journey towards the airport continues pleasantly – at least for me, that is. I look out the car window and enjoy the ride.
We arrive at the airport and drive to the second floor of a parking building. We exit the car and I follow C inside the airport building. We go to some area, stop, and then we start to wait for something. After a few minutes, I notice my father walking towards us. [My sister couldn't fly because she was pregnant.] I am overwhelmed, I simply can not understand how my father appeared here like that. The three of us start to head towards a check-in counter. Both seeing my father so surprisingly and the clothes he is wearing – "better" clothes than usually – convince me that my father has actually always been a mafia guy. Me and the chauffeur C are now his bodyguards! This delusion lasts for a while.
Once we have gone through the check-in, I feel even more confused. All I can understand is that I have to go somewhere – and that I am in some sort of danger. But what I do not understand at all, is what could be the reason for all this? Finally I realise, that it must have something to do with drugs. However, I cannot figure out what my father has to do with it, and I feel very worried about his safety. As soon as I am able, I ask my father to follow me. We walk somewhere where it is more quiet, and I try to tell him what I have been thinking. Unfortunately, all I manage to say (in Finnish) is: "This is all because of drugs," by which I meant: "Our situation is very serious, we are both in some sort of danger because of me, for some reason, and also because of some drug smuggling thing they think I did, or try to make me do, or something." Soon after this, C finds us and we move on.
We arrive at our departure gate and I stop walking: I really do not want to board or go anywhere with that aeroplane. C does his best on trying to talk me to get on the aeroplane. My father doesn't know what to do, he just stands there. The situation drags on. Finally, I say to my father: "We have come here together, so we shall leave here together." (This was most likely sort of a reference to one certain Finnish war novel. Anyway, what I meant was: "Something bad will happen and we will most likely die, but we'll suffer the same fate because we are close.") Then me and my father start to walk towards the aeroplane. We are the last passengers to board the aeroplane. [Much later, I am told that the captain decided to allow me to board the aeroplane because: "We need to get that guy back home to Finland."]
I am now sitting in a departing aeroplane – and in a very confused state of mind. I start to firmly believe that the aeroplane will explode as soon as it has taken off (due to memories from the final scene of the movie Die Hard 2?). I come very close on having some sort of a horror/panic attack. Fortunately, I stay on my seat, and I also keep my mouth shut. (Perhaps my father's presence calmed me down a bit? On the other hand, there was nothing I could do in that situation, "no options".) When the aeroplane, to my surprise, does not explode after take-off, I forget the whole thing in a flash.
The flight from Brussels to Helsinki takes about two hours, and I thank my father at some point for coming to get me. I take his hand in mine, too. My father may well think that I am in pretty good shape at that moment. In my reality, I am actually thanking my father for sacrificing himself for me – and unfortunately for nothing. I am absolutely sure that something bad will happen as soon as the aeroplane lands. I tell my father that: "There's nothing to worry about as long as we are here" (on the aeroplane).
We land at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport late in the evening. As we taxi towards a terminal, I try to take my father's ticket and passport for myself – in order to protect him. I think that if I have them, my father will somehow get away with it all. I am sure that there are some agents, or the like, waiting for us.
My father and I are seated close to a door, so we are among the first ones to exit the aeroplane. [I later heard from my sister, who had had to make many phone calls and arrange a lot of things for me, that some lucky passenger had been promoted to business class so that my father and I could have adjacent seats.]
I do not have any luggage. My father does not have any luggage either (and after arriving to Brussels he left right back to Finland with me). Strangely enough, we are not stopped at customs – and no agents or the like are waiting for me. [I still find it rather odd that neither one of us got stopped at customs. After all, my father's quick visit to Brussels fits the definition of a drug run quite well – and who knows what his crazy son might have had on his person? Anyway, should I ever again arrive to the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport while being out of my mind, please feel free to shoot me with a tranquilliser dart and take me to a hospital, I will thank you later.]
Even though I do not see any agents anywhere, my paranoid delusions are not going anywhere. When my father calls my sister and tells her that we have just arrived in Helsinki, I want to talk to her too. My sister asks me straight away: "Do you, Miro, understand at all what has happened?" I reply cheerfully: "Yes, everything is okay, I'll call you later." I give the mobile phone back to my father. It feels good to know that at least my sister is safe. I am still sure that I – and possibly my father too – are in some sort of danger and that things might go really bad for us.
My father buys me a baguette from an airport café. Then we exit the airport and take the next bus to the city of Lahti.
During the bus ride, my mind becomes suspicion of pretty much everything. For example, although the driver handles passenger's luggage in a normal way – i.e. puts them in or takes them out from the cargo hold when we are at a bus stop – in my crazy eyes his behaviour is extremely suspicious. I also become suspicious of my baguette. I try to figure out whether someone has hidden some drugs inside it or not – and if I am now unknowingly smuggling the drugs somewhere.
One word, written with a marker pen on the back of the seat in front of me, also gets some dubious meanings in my mind. I try to tell my father about the real meaning of that word – and only manage to utter something incoherent. Sometime later, I start to admire the (emergency exit) lights on the bus floor.
After about two hours we arrive to the city of Lahti. We exit the bus at the bus station. My father's car is at a parking lot, and we start to walk towards it. I walk at a very slow pace, because I am dead sure that the car will explode as soon as my father starts its engine. Still, I get in and on the front seat of the car without saying a word – and submit to my fate, because I can not think of a way out of the situation. The car does not explode when my father starts it, and for that I am totally blown away for a while. Then my delusion shatters and I forget the whole matter.
We start to drive towards the town of Heinola. My mind is very paranoid throughout the half-hour long journey. Next I get very suspicious of my father's mobile phone. I am sure that it is being used to track us. I open my father's (old flip) mobile phone. I notice a red and white circle on the right side of the wallpaper: It is almost identical to the insignia of the RAF, or Royal Air Force of Great Britain (I have been interested in the history of the Second World War ever since I was young). I stare at the circles for a while. Then I close the lid, turn the mobile phone in my hand, and have a look at its back cover. A slightly jagged sticker is glued to the back cover (thanks to which the mobile phone will stay more firmly in the user's hand). The sticker is black with a picture of a white lizard. In my eyes, the lizard seems to just hang there, and I wonder for a moment why my father has put it there. (On my first evening at Rarotonga, I noticed a gecko lizard climbing around the walls of my room). Both of these observations have their own explanations in my mind in no time. With the mobile phone's wallpaper, my father is trying to tell me that I am a target, and "they" are on to me. The sticker means that I am in a great danger – and that this is my last chance.
On top of this, when my father turns on the radio, I start to believe that all the songs contain secret messages, just for me. I get in my head from the chorus of Dingo's song "Sinä ja minä" (You and I) that I have to jump out of the car at the next traffic lights – and run. However, this delusion disappears before the next traffic lights, and the traffic lights are not even on, it is already so late. [I do not think that I would have jumped out of a moving car, but had the car stopped at some traffic lights, why not, the delusions were so powerful.]
Just before we arrive at my father's house, I get convinced that we are driving right into an ambush. I am quite surprised when no one shoots at us when my father stops the car. I do not see anyone anywhere, so I calm down and forget the whole thing. We go inside the house, and soon after my father goes downstairs to take a shower (the house was built in a slope). I am left alone upstairs, and I am absolutely perplexed about where I am now. In a way, I do realise that I am in my old, childhood home, but in a way I do not. What causes the most confusion is thinking that I was somewhere else, quite far away, only a short time ago.
My old room is located upstairs, but for some reason I do not want to sleep there. Instead, I decide to go to the downstairs living room (which has a fireplace). I first take out and put on a lot of clothes from one of the wardrobes. (The downstairs living room was cool even during a summer, and in wintertime it was usually heated only a bit with radiators.) When my father comes back upstairs, he is quite surprised that I want to sleep downstairs, but he does not try to stop me.
After getting downstairs, I immediately go and lie down on a sofa (but I do not sleep at all during the rest of the night, I think). After a while, I go and get my father's mobile phone from the upstairs kitchen. I am sure that a missile strike is inbound, and it is targeted at my father's mobile phone's location. I believe that by bringing the mobile phone downstairs at least my father will be spared. (It does not occur to me that even if the missile would somehow manage hit the lowest floor only, the whole house – in fact, the whole neighbourhood – would still need a lot of new paint...) However, the missile strike never comes. My delusion soon becomes a dud, and I take my father's mobile phone back upstairs – after checking its address book, for some reason.
Later in the night, or early in the morning, I am so tired and confused, that I hear one or more people talking about something in the shower room. I get up, go to the shower room door, and say something to the guy/guys in the shower room. He/they remain silent after that.
At some later point, I am sitting on the sofa again, shivering because of the cold. For some reason, I have taken all my clothes off – and babble something by myself.
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| Photograph 9. My father's mobile phone's wallpaper. |
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| Photograph 10. The sticker on the back cover of my father's mobile phone. |
My father knocks on the door early in the morning, the plan is to go to a hospital in Lahti for a "treatment" (why we did not go there straight away, is beyond me). I am awake and say: "I'll come out soon," but I am definitely not going to go anywhere with my father. I am absolutely certain that my father has always secretly been a member of some motorcycle gang or the mafia. Now he is in an impossible situation and he has to take me somewhere for a "treatment" – to be killed – for some reason. I put on some of my father's clothes I find in the living room: Red boxer shorts, long underpants and a flannel shirt. I also put a thin blanket – a bed cover – on my shoulders. Then I go upstairs to say goodbye to my father. I try to explain something to him, but it's no good. Finally, I say that now I have to go. I take my brown leather shoes with me and go back downstairs. My father stays upstairs, bewildered and worried.
The downstairs front door has always been locked in a way that one needs a key to get in or out. I know that one key has always been kept close to the door – one metre or so to the left – and that the key is behind a very old roller blind. The roller blind has been pulled all the way down. I move it away from a window, and take the key. Then I let go of the roller blind, leaving it swaying a bit. I move back to the door and put the key into the keyhole – and the moment I get the front door unlocked, the roller blind's locking mechanism gives in. The roller blind rolls up very quickly, and a wooden bar at the bottom of it hits something. All I really notice at that moment is that there is a loud bang. For me, it sounds like a gunshot – someone just tried to shoot me!
I get out the door and start running for my life.
(My father told me much later that within minutes "Quite a show began." Soon after he had told the emergency services about my escape, three police cars, a few police officers and a K-9 unit arrived on the scene. [It had been a quiet Thursday morning, I wonder what the neighbours were thinking...] The police officers + the police dog, as well as a few volunteers, began to search for me. In addition, a local newspaper published a bulletin on its website about my disappearance, more about that later.)
When I hear the shot, I first speed across the backyard and jump over our hawthorn fence. When I get to a street, I continue to run towards a shortcut, which is about a hundred metres away. I stop there and look back for the first time. I notice that no one is chasing me, so I calm down – and forget the whole shooting incident in no time.
I start to walk and take the shortcut through a forest to the front yard of a big apartment building. I see beautiful outdoor lights on the balcony of one of the flats. I admire them for a while. The colours of the lights mean that some good people live in that apartment and it would be safe for me to be there, but I decide to keep moving. A young woman, dressed in working clothes, walks past me and looks at me in wonder.
I am in a large residential area, and there are a lot of old apartment buildings. I walk a few hundred metres to the other side of the residential area. Then I go to the back side of one of the apartment buildings. I first take off my long underpants and my red boxer shorts, and then put the red boxer shorts on top of my long underpants: Colours once again have their own special meanings. I start to walk again and go down a nearby path to the top of a cliff. I wonder which way I should go now. I see some lights in the sky: That's the direction I need to go, of course.
The ground is wet. With my leather shoes, I slip and slide down a path from the top of the cliff. I come to a pedestrian and cycle route, next to a road. I turn right, walk about a hundred metres and turn left. This road has an asphalt on it for a few hundred metres, then it turns into a dirt road. I keep walking this road for some time until I turn left again. After walking on this smaller dirt road for a while, an uphill slope begins, followed by a bridge over a motorway. I cross the bridge – and I am awestruck when I see a dirt road beginning after the bridge. The road seems to have appeared there out of nowhere. I am 100% sure that I need to keep walking along it.
(In retrospect, my route is actually quite "logical", I stayed on familiar routes/areas. After being shot at, I ran about 100 metres to that shortcut and walked along it to one of the apartment buildings. I had taken that shortcut dozens of times, as once upon a time a friend of mine and his girlfriend lived in that apartment building. I was also familiar with the whole neighbourhood I was in. I probably ended up on that cliff and its path because I had walked there many times with our family's first dog. The light I saw from the top of the cliff – unless I was hallucinating – was most likely coming from a big petrol station called Tähtihovi, which is located right next to the Tähtiniemi Bridge.
After going down from the cliff I turned right, and this pedestrian and cycle route was also familiar to me. After walking about 100 metres I turned left to a smaller road: I had driven along this road with a car dozens of times. The road in question was a dirt road, except for that asphalt part in the beginning, and the road went around a pond (for about 2 kilometres in total). From this bigger dirt road I turned left onto a smaller dirt road, which was also a bit familiar to me. I had previously visited the motorway bridge about five times, the first time being about fifteen years earlier. On the first couple of times, there was no road after the bridge – yet – only forest. [Which is not that uncommon, sometimes small bridges are built for some future purposes and/or for animals to get across the motorway.])
So, after crossing the motorway bridge, I start to walk along a new dirt road which has just appeared there out of nowhere. I feel very good, I have once again blissfully forgotten all my previous fears and such. After walking for a while, I see a ditch – with some water in it – on the left side of the road. I go to the planks which have been put over the ditch, squat, and look at my own reflection from the calm water. The feeling is absolutely grand, I feel like if I am looking at myself from somewhere high up. I think: "Now I am free to do whatever I want."
I keep moving on the magic road. My great mood begins to vanish as soon as I see a car, parked on the right side of the road. When I move in closer, I see that all the car's rear glasses are tinted. That is not good at all. In addition, while standing next to and looking at the car, I start to hear some banging noise, coming from the other side of the road. I interpret those (construction or forestry work) sounds to mean that the guys, who are after me, are having a shooting practise there. I think in desperation that: "Fine, go ahead and shoot me then, I am so tired of all this." It comes really close for me to walk defiantly to that shooting range. Yet, in the end, I decide to continue my journey down the road.
After walking for a while, a magic villa suddenly appears before me.
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| Photograph 11. I had these boxer shorts on, literally. |
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| Photograph 12. From the top of this cliff, I walked/slid down with my leather shoes. |
I feel simply ecstatic when I see my magic villa, I am really tired and fed up with walking. (The appearance of a magic villa isn't that peculiar an event: After all, I was walking along a magic road – and I also have my boxer shorts on top of my long underpants.) I walk towards the magic villa. Right at the beginning of the driveway, I see a sign from a well-known security company. It says that there is a recording camera surveillance in the area. I think to myself: "It is really good I have that, now other people will stay off my land." I feel excited like a small child.
I do not go to the magic villa's front door, I head towards the lake shore to see my sauna building first. I think: "Great, I have a sauna by the lake shore also." I only take a look at the sauna from the outside, then I go to the pier. I feel really happy. I know that I have finally arrived at my destination. I take off my leather shoes. Then I throw them as far into the lake as I can. I also shout something at them.
After spending some time on the pier, I head back towards my magic villa. The front door would be on the right, but I go left, through a nice terrace to the back door of the villa. I raise my right hand and I am just about to knock on the door, but then I burst to a laughter. I think to myself: "Am I a fool or what, I don't have to knock on the door of my own villa!" So I put my hand on the door handle, open the door and step inside my magic villa.
(I will spend about 24 hours at the magic villa. The fact that the villa's back door had accidentally been left unlocked reinforced my delusion. Of course, the word delusion – or fallacy or fantasy or illusion or any other – isn't quite enough to describe how I felt. Try to imagine knowing, that you now own a really nice-looking magic villa – which has materialised there a few minutes ago, just for you.)
After a general look-see, I go to the bedroom and open a big wardrobe. All the clothes are neatly in order and they are there just for me. I select and put on a pair of jeans and a hoodie. The jeans are a bit too small for me, but that's okay. Next, I leave the bedroom and have a look around the living room. I see that there is a golden statue on one of the walls, and all the books in a bookshelf seem really interesting based on their titles and authors. There is also a painting, packed in bubble wrap, on the living room floor. I go and hide it – and one other painting – in the bedroom, under the bed cover. I also go and have a look at the nice indoor sauna (I do not try to heat it up at any point). I see a blue bathrobe in the bathroom and wonder about the meaning of the words imprinted in it.
Upon returning to the living room again, I now notice two suspicious looking wires in the kitchen, close to a cupboard. It is instantly clear to me that they somehow have something to do with some bombs somewhere. I quickly search the kitchen drawers for scissors. Then I cut one of the wires. Nothing happens. When I cut the other wire, there is a loud bang. However, I am not frightened by it, instead I am now sure that the bombs have been made harmless. (The dismantling of the bombs has the real-world effect that, among other things, the villa's lights and mechanical curtains will no longer work.)
After a while, I go outside again. I find a pair of trainer shoes by the outdoor grill. I wear them for a while, but as they are a bit too small for me, I prefer to be barefooted (although it is late November). I go to the pier again and admire the scenery for a long time. I feel really happy. After some time, I leave the pier and head towards the villa. I feel both really joyful and playful. I run to the terrace and without stopping, I put a hand on the armrest of one chair and do a vault, with a spin, over the whole chair. (It is not my custom to jump over terrace furniture and, in my right mind, I would not have even considered making such a jump: Most likely I would have failed or even injured myself.)
After getting back to my villa I take a look inside a chest drawer in my living room. I find a lot of calling cards from one of the drawers. In a way they mean nothing to me, but I put them in the right back pocket of my jeans anyway, because somehow they seem important. Next I notice a pair of speakers in the kitchen and an iPod in the living room. The iPod is on, so I dock it with the speakers and put on some music. Then I go and get about a dozen miscellaneous items from the kitchen drawers. I carry them on to the living room dining table and put every item carefully at some spot on the table – in its own place, so to speak. (I have no idea why I did that.)
After a while, The Script's Hall of Fame song starts to play. One part of its chorus is: "The world's gonna know your name." This immediately gives me the idea that some important people are coming to my villa to talk about something important, probably about the world peace. So I start to clear the space around the living room dining table for the World Peace Meeting. At first, I move things and furniture here and there. Then I carry some chairs from the living room to a hallway (which is next to the front door). I stay there for quite some time, looking in awe at the mirrors of two opposing cabinets. The number of chairs in the mirrors is uncountable, and the image seems to keep going on and on forever.
For a long time, I continue to move things around without having any sort of a plan. Finally, I get tired and bored, so I decide to put all the furniture and other things into a big, messy pile on one side of the living room, near the TV. I think to myself: "I should have started this earlier, then I would have finished it today." In the end, setting up the World Peace Meeting dissipates from my mind.
Sometime later in the day, I start to believe that my villa is surrounded. This delusion too remains with me for a long time, but I am not afraid during it, I take the whole siege situation as sort of an exciting game.
First, I make an ingenious bubble wrap alarm: I take the bubble wrap – left from the painting which was on the floor – and put some of it in front of the back and front doors, inside the villa. Now no one can sneak in without me hearing it. Next I put a towel in front of the bathroom window so that no one can look in from there. I also try – for a long time – to close the bedroom's (mechanical) curtains, but I cannot do it properly. I do not understand why they move hardly at all: The main effect of me pulling the curtains is that they get torn a bit. Finally, I give up.
I deliberately leave the curtains in the living room open, I have no scary sniper delusions this time. However, as a precaution, I take the telescope in the living room out of sight so that it will not be accidentally mistaken for a rocket launcher. My logic is that if "they" think that I have a rocket launcher, then the besiegers might try to assault my villa immediate. Otherwise, they will have to start to negotiate with me. (As a young boy, I was very impressed by the movie Die Hard, and it is still one of my favourites. I like to think that this delusion "used" some elements from that movie's plot – or more precisely, my memories from that movie. Not in a logical way though.)
When all is done, I start to feel very playful. For a moment, I (think that I) hear the sound of police car sirens, so there must be a lot of people around the villa. I am sure that some of the besiegers are on the opposite side of the lake, and that they can see me through the living room's big windows. Plus, I know that they are trying to make a psychological profile of me. I decide to joke around at their expense.
The three doors of the living room + the bedroom + the bathroom, are close to each other and they are very nice: They form sort of a merry-go-round (or a "three piece pie" with the different room doors being close to the centre of the pie). First I go from the living room to the bedroom – which is at the "top left" of the "three piece pie" – and close that door behind me. Then I take a few T-shirts – of different colours – from a wardrobe. Next I go through the other bedroom door to the bathroom (which is on the "top right"). It has a separate small room for a toilet and a washing machine. I go there and change the T-shirt I am wearing. I leave the rest of the T-shirts to wait for their turn. Then I go back to the living room through the bathroom's other door, and I close that door behind me. I will now "show myself" – that is, I will walk around the living room for some time.
After a while I walk back to the bedroom door, open and close that door behind me, and go through the bedroom's other door to the bathroom. There I go to the smaller room and change (the colour of) my T-shirt. Then I go back to the bathroom, continue through the other door to the living room, close that door behind me, and "show myself" again. I continue to repeat this roundabout pattern, while thinking in an impish manner that: "Go ahead, try to make some sort of a psychological profile of me," as I always have a different colour T-shirt on when I appear in the living room.
A few laps later, while changing the colour of my T-shirt again, I get a great idea! After a while, I go back to the living room to show myself – only this time wearing as many different colour T-shirts on top of each other as possible. I think cheerfully to myself: "This will mess 'them' up for good!"
Sometime later – it is already dark outside – my siege delusion comes back, this time with snipers. To not get shot, I decide to go out right away and turn myself in. I immediately go out the front door and walk a few metres down the driveway. Then I stop and start yelling that I want to surrender, don't shoot me! I am absolutely sure that a SWAT team, or the like, will come out from the dark – with guns pointing at me. But no one shows up, no matter how many times I yell that I want to surrender.
Ultimately, after getting terribly cold, I realise that I need to put some more clothes on. I yell at the troops surrounding me not to shoot me in the back, I'll just pop inside and get some more clothes. Then I'll come back and surrender again. I walk slowly – with my hands raised up – in to the villa and put on more clothes. I go back out to continue my surrendering, but still nobody comes to arrest me, no matter how much I yell. (I shouted, among other things: "Come on already, there are more of you," by which I meant that I am alone and there is a large group of "them".) In the end, this delusion begins to fade away. I start to walk back inside, feeling puzzled. As I enter my magic villa and close the front door behind me, I have already forgotten the whole incident.
From the end of the evening onwards I remember only some random events, like the river rock path in the bathroom's showering area, it was really beautiful. I touched its small pebbles and admired them for a really long time, while being on my knees.
I go out one more time during the night. I have lit a big colourful candle, which had still been in a gift wrap. I stumble with the candle in my hand from the front door to the villa's back door – for some strange reason. The candle goes out in the wind outside, so I spend the rest of the night in almost pitch black, I can not find the matchbox anymore. I believe that the villa's lights can only be turned on by pressing the light switches in some particular order. (I am unable to link the inaction of the villa's lights to the bomb disposal operation I had carried out earlier.)
At some later stage, I take all kinds of frozen food from the freezer and put them in the toilet's washbasin. Then I stand still in the dark toilet for a long time, I guess I am back in some serious siege delusions.
I also believe for some time that I am the villa's caretaker and/or a security guard. I walk around the living room, observing the backyard through the living room windows (the stars and/or the Moon gave some light).
I also lie on the living room dining table for at least a while, I feel so very tired.
I cannot tell whether I sleep at all during that very, very confusing night.
Finally, dawn arrives. I am so tired, that I doze off at least twice while standing still. Delusions intensify. At one point in the morning, I start to believe that I am actually on a spaceship – and on my way to Mars. For some time, I believe that the whole villa is just a simulation, and that I am actually in a deep-sleep on a spaceship with the rest of the crew. (In a way, some of my previous delusions are starting to intertwine. Also, the movie Aliens – which has a really cool hypersleep scene – is one of my favourite movies).
At some point in the morning, I take some food and couple bottles of beer from my fridge. I sit down and eat on the living room couch, in the middle of a big pile – or chaos – of other furniture and things and items. I even turn on the TV and choose some channel to watch while I eat (as if this was just another ordinary morning at my magic villa). After a while, the person on the TV starts to stare at me. Even when I move to different places on the couch, his eyes are always staring right at me. I am very confused about it, and begin to get scared, once again. I also start to feel desperate, and think that I can not take this anymore. I am so tired, and I have no idea what is going on. For a while, I consider going on to the boat at the shore and just letting it go adrift, I do not care anymore. [I did not intend to commit a suicide, I sort of just wanted to get out of my current situation – and on to a situation in which I could not do much?]
Some time after the TV began to stare at me, I become even more afraid, as the hot water heater, the wind, or something else begins to make some noise. I fear that there are some people on the roof and that they are about to rush into the villa. (Around the same time, my mind makes a quick visit: I am able to doubt for a moment whether this really is my villa or not.) I am now sure that some people will come to the villa at any moment (which in reality could have happened at any time).
I am very scared and afraid to stay in the villa any longer. I take off the hoodie and jeans, and put on my own clothes: Boxer shorts, long underpants, flannel shirt and a bed cover. Then I stuff the hoodie, jeans and all the T-shirts I used in the washing machine. I also take the kitchen's rubbish bag out, i.e. to the terrace. Just before I leave, I write a few words on the first page of one of the bookshelf's books. (Ironically, that book happened to be about anarchy.) However, I immediately rip off the part I wrote and flush it down the toilet. Then, feeling and being terrified, I run – or more accurately flee – out of the villa. (I cannot say whether I even closed the front door or not, I left in such a terrible hurry. I do remember that it was already light outside, so I would guess that it was about noon when I left.)
After running to the junction of the villa's driveway and the dirt road, I stop and calm down a bit. (I have luckily understood to take rubber boots with me so that I do not freeze my feet/soles.) I begin to walk along the dirt road, but only after a few dozen metres, I get really scared again. I see two stacks of logs on the left side of the road and hide between them.
Next thing I know, I am on some slope, close to some dirt road. It is already quite dark outside (= about four o'clock in the afternoon). I am in a squatting position, and I have the bed cover over my head and shoulders. I am so confused. I am desperately trying to figure out whether a truck driver should have a red or a blue shirt, so that I can get a ride from him to Sardinia. I do not understand anything, no matter how hard I try. A car with its headlights on drives along the dirt road and stops shortly before me. Even though the person, or persons, in the car will most definitely see me, I still imagine that I cannot be seen if I just don't move.
Then I am already walking down some asphalted street. A woman and her children walk towards me. Just as they are passing me, one of the children asks his mother something about an uncle and his blanket.
Like in a blink of an eye, I am already in the woods, on the edge of a small sports field. I am a few hundred metres away from my father's house. I am avoiding people. I am going to walk to my father's house and borrow 50 euros from him so that I can go to Sardinia.
Now I am walking on a pavement. A police car drives behind me from the left and stops in front of me. One police officer jumps out of the car and asks: "Hi fellow, what are you doing here with so few clothes?" I answer: "I do have this magic cape," referring to my bed cover. I feel calm and let them put me in the back of the police car. But when the door closes, I get really scared. I think that they have tricked me, and now they are going to gas me to death. This fear lasts for a few moments, then it fades away and I calm down. While waiting for an ambulance, the police officers check at least twice how I am doing. I look and admire the various – and different colour – lights on the police car's dashboard.
Then I am already lying on a stretcher inside an ambulance. I have no idea what is going on, but there is a nice woman who talks to me softly. She is both gentle and calm, so I trust her. She notices that I have minor frostbites in my fingers, and asks me with a soft voice: "Now where have you gotten your fingers so cold?" I do not say anything to that. I feel very confused and very tired, but I feel safe. I am being examined, and at least by blood sugar level is measured. We start to drive towards the city of Lahti. A blanket is put on me. I feel warm and good.
They take me out of the ambulance by the big doors of some building. I have fallen asleep, and I have also gotten an unintentional erection (it was both the first one during my whole madness and the last one in the next six weeks or so). I try to cover up the bump in my blanket a bit, it feels quite embarrassing in a way. [Interestingly enough, this and the striptease bar thing felt a bit embarrassing to me, but during my two naked episodes I felt no shame at all.] I hear someone say: "I think this is a clear case."
Inside the building, they move me from the stretcher to a bed. I have no idea where I am or why. There is a wall on the right side of my bed, and a curtain on the left side. I see some people go past my bed every now and then, but judging by different voices, there are quite a few people nearby. (It is about 5 o'clock on a Friday afternoon.)
After a while, I get up from the bed. I start to follow the lines on the floor, they have different colours and they are very interesting. One nurse catches me quite quickly and escorts me back to my bed. Soon after this, a young nurse comes to visit me. She seems to be in an awful hurry and her face is quite red. She does something and leaves. I notice a little piece of plastic on top of my bed blanket. [I was given a shot of... something?] I take that little piece of plastic in my hand and wonder about it for a long time. When the same nurse returns at some point, I ask her what it is. She says that it's nothing and takes it.
Some time later, I get a harmless delusion. According to it, all the people here think that I am a lumberjack. After all, I am wearing rubber boots and a flannel shirt. After a while, however, I get a bit paranoid again. My rubber boots have now been taken off my feet and put on a hospital trolley which is next to my bed, on the left. As a diversion, I switch my hospital trolley to the one beside it on the left – they have different numbers on them.
I am getting very impatient. I notice a nurse call button close to my bed. I wonder what it is – and press it a few times. When a nurse comes over, I simply cannot give her a reason why I pushed the button.
In the end, I get total bored with everything and just start staring at the ceiling. The patterns on the ceiling are really interesting – and they move around.
Finally, one doctor arrives. However, I am no longer interested in anything – and I am not reacting to anything either, I just keep staring at the ceiling. The doctor even shines a light in my eyes and asks me something, but I don't care. I am totally sick and tired of everything.
Then I am already on a bed in a small room with some people. I feel so very tired, I just want to sleep. People ask me some questions. I cannot say what I was being asked – or what my answers were, if there were any. In that state, I would have confessed and signed a statement stating that I am actually a cheese sandwich who has just moved here from the Moon, if only I had been allowed to get some sleep after that.
Now I am already in a corridor, sitting in a wheelchair. Some big man walks towards me and the other man, who is pushing my wheelchair. There is now three of us. The two men talk about something. Then we arrive at some big door. I understand in some way that I am being taken somewhere again, and I get one last little glimpse of reason in my head. Just before going through the door, I tell the person pushing the wheelchair to stop, and he stops. Then I ask if I can leave that place any time I want.
I do not remember whether he answers anything or not, and I do not remember going inside the ward either.
Just over ten days after going crazy, I finally ended up in the city of Lahti, in a big hospital, psychiatric ward number ✖. I was a patient there from the end of November 2012 until the beginning of January 2013, forty-two days in total.
The floor plan of the ward was as follows: First of all, the whole place could be imagined as a rectangle – that is, as a square which has been stretched a bit vertically. The entrance to the ward was at the bottom left corner. There was a buzzer outside the front door for visitors and the like, as only people working at the ward were able to open the front door (with an electronic key card). Patients could only exit the ward with a nurse or after getting a permission from a nurse. At the bottom left corner, there were also the doctor's room and one other room where they gave us our psychotropic medication – and possibly one or some other medication also, as the case may be.
Our ward's small dining area was located at the upper left corner: We ate both breakfast and supper there. Twice a day, at a certain time, we gathered close to the front door. Then, like a flock of birds, we followed a nurse to a big canteen, and ate a big meal – with patients from some other wards, too.
We had a living room at the upper right corner with chairs, a big TV, books, a chessboard, puzzles, some instruction notes, and so on.
At the bottom right corner was our ward's coffee room. There we were able to make coffee or tea, and eat delicacies – such as biscuits and pastries – brought in by patients' relatives/friends.
One could walk around the whole ward, as the four corners were connected with corridors. In the middle of the ward there was a rather large yard, which could be accessed from the left or the right side. You could only smoke cigarettes in the yard at certain times during the day, and a nurse would always come out to give light to all those who wanted to smoke. (Later, however, this practice was changed a bit: One could smoke more frequently and there was a lighter outside, attached to the wall – with a small chain.) The nurses' "control room" was at the bottom of this yard. The room had the same width as the yard – and the wall on the yard's side was made of glass. Thus, the nurses could see the yard – and also the corridors upwards from the "control room", as the walls next to the yard were also made of glass.
There were four rooms between the two bottom corners of the ward: One served as a storage room for certain items, such as mobile phones and razor blades. The room on the bottom right was for patients to meet people and to take care of things (with a social worker or such). On the other side of the corridor, i.e. opposite to these two rooms, were the laundry room and another storage room (with different kinds of cloths).
Between the four corners – except for the bottom corners – were the patient rooms (of different sizes). Each patient had a bed, 1/2 of a wardrobe and a chest drawer for storing items. Toilets/shower rooms were located in the middle of the left, right and top corridors.
At the bottom left corner, near the doctor's room, was a landline telephone, and people from the outside world could call it. Typically, the most sane patients would answer the phone with "Ward ✖" – and then go and look for the patient the caller wished to speak with. (Every now and then, there were some harmless incidents, though.) The patients' own mobile (or smart) phones were distributed to them in the morning and taken back to the storage room in the evening. If a patient did not have a mobile phone – for one reason or another – one could be borrowed from a nurse (to make a call to a family member, friend, and such).
Of my first days at the ward, I only remember a few random events. I was alone in a double room at first, and I guess I slept a lot. I remember a young male nurse coming to see me while I was in bed. I thought that he came to see if there was enough room for some other people. I told the nurse that if anyone wants to, they can come to my room. I also remember very well that it was quite cold in the room. I had pulled off all the metal discs which covered the holes in the window frames (certain type of handles were inserted into these holes to get the windows open). Cold air was flowing into the room through these holes. I had needed those pieces of metal to do something with my chest drawer's broken hinge. [By the way, after forcefully pulling them off, the metal discs now had one part which was quite jagged/sharp. That is to say, sharp enough to do (at least some) damage to a person – not that I was thinking about it. If it were up to me, I would replace them with soft plastic or rubber, just in case.]
I vaguely remember how I was eating, at some point, in our ward's dining area. Several people (= nurses) were all around me – and watching me. However, I remember my first meal at the canteen very clearly. I first stood in a queue with other people, took some food on my plate, and then I went to a table – and sat there alone. I was absolutely sure that my food had been poisoned, but I could not think of a way out of the situation. So I thought, defiantly, that: "Fine, I'll eat, even though I know perfectly well what will happen to me when I do". I started to eat the food as sort of my last meal. Some moments later, the delusion ended and I totally forgot that my food was supposed to be poisonous.
I had ended up at the ward early on a Friday evening, so it wasn't until the following Monday that I got to see my ward's doctor for the first time. I do not remember anything about it. I have no idea what kind of questions she asked me, what I have answered – if I have answered – or how I have looked/behaved. All I know is that after entering the ward, I was very suspicious – and sometimes even paranoid – towards all people for days, and I spoke hardly anything to anyone.
I was taken for a brain MRI pretty soon after I had arrived at the ward. The ward's biggest nurse escorted me. We walked along the hospital's underground tunnels for a long time. I had no idea what was going on, but the MRI scan was over quite quickly and we walked back to the ward. I felt a certain type of relief going back there, at that time.
At some point during the first few days, I also took care of some paperwork with some nice, but busy looking social worker. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I would have signed any kind of paper/document/statement put in front of me.
I did not recognise my father until on his third visit – I remember nothing about his first two visits. On this third visit of his, I was just walking down a corridor – and I walked right past him. My father turned around and said my first name, so I turned in the direction of his voice, and it wasn't until then that I recognised him. I immediately almost panicked about my father being there also – although I didn't even understand where I was. To mislead someone, or some people for some reason, I changed the position of the safety reflector on my father's jacket. That is all I remember about his third visit.
I remember one – I assume the first – time a smoked a cigarette at the yard very well, it was a very frightening experience. I had gotten a cigarette from someone, and I had already been smoking it for a while. Then, all of a sudden, I got it in my head that someone can now spy on me from the sky, using a satellite. I immediately went to stand by a wall and started to look suspiciously at the sky. But then I realised that doing so will only make it easier for "them" to find me. So I lowered by head and started to look at the ground – until I realised, that the satellite can still see my face from the reflections on the glass walls. I threw my cigarette away and went quickly back inside.
During the first few days I walked around the ward, a lot. For some time, I also carried with me a thick book – a collection of aphorisms and proverbs – which I had found in the living room. I do not know why, perhaps as some kind of comfort, because I have always liked proverbs and aphorisms? I also used a pen to underline two words from one certain proverb. [By the way, I wonder if the nurses thought that I thought that that book was the Bible?]
I stayed in my first room for about five days. Then one day a nurse informed me – as I was walking around the ward – that I would be moving to a larger, three-person room. I stayed in that room for the rest of my time at the ward, and I always had one or two flatmates with me. I had three – or maybe four, for half a day – flatmates in total.
It did not take long for me to move to this new room: I had only a few items throughout my time at the ward. In addition to the clothes my father brought me a bit later, as well as a few hospital clothes, all I had was a toothbrush, toothpaste, and one book my father had bought me. Sometimes I had a small amount of cigarettes and/or candy and/or money, and sometimes I didn't. I did not have a mobile phone either, but that did not really matter – actually it was better that way (for me).
Shortly after moving to the bigger room, possibly on the same day, two police officers came to see me. First they took me to some room, and then they wanted to take my fingerprints. For some reason, I did not want to give them my fingerprints, so the other police officer had to hold my wrist and push it down. The first time I was resisting a bit, and relaxed my hand just before a finger touched the paper. The ink from my fingers spread to a wide area on the paper, so my fingerprints could not be seen properly. After the second, successful fingerprinting, I marvelled at the colour of my fingers. The police officers also took a photograph of me. [I must have looked awful – and I like to think that it would have been great as a passport photograph!] Then the other police officer asked me how I had managed to enter the villa. I replied truthfully that the villa's back door had not been locked. After this, we went to a storage room to pick up the rubber boots I had stolen. The police officers also took my (father's) bed cover from the storage room, but I did not dare to say anything to that.
I continued to walk around the ward for ✖ hours every day. Some nice lady walked with me sometimes. One time she told me that she could hardly keep up with me because I walked with such a brisk pace. I remember thinking at some point that she looks just like an American Indian (based on her shoes and clothing, among other things. Also, Dances with Wolves happens to be my favourite movie). At some later point, the same lady told me that I look just like the protagonist in the movie Avatar.
There was a nice decorative ryijy rug on the top corridor's wall. It was picturing a small island with a ship anchored on its shore. One time when I walked past the ryijy rug, I started to think that it had been put there as a message to me. The message was: "You are on your own now." Sometime later, as I walked past the ryijy rug once again, I was very surprised to see that now three fringes at the bottom of the ryijy rug had been braided together. That was a message for me too, but I could not figure out what it meant. (I did not realise until a few days later that the ryijy rug wasn't a message to me – and that some other patient had just happened to braid those fringes together.)
Maybe two or three days after moving to the bigger room, my father came to see me again. This time we went to visit a café in the main building. I have always read a lot, so my father bought me a suspense book from the café. The book was titled "Vaaran vesillä" – pretty much the same as the original title "Those in Peril" – and it had a picture of a ship on its cover. I immediately began to think that my father was trying to warn me about something, especially because that ryijy rug was ship-themed too! However, this delusion did not float for long, and a few days later I read that book to pass the time.
One day a fellow patient told me that: "This is the most confusing place I have ever been in." (She had come to the ward around the same time as I did, but unfortunately she did not seem to get over some issues: She was transferred to another ward a few days later.) In addition to the ryijy rug and the book thing, I myself also had plenty of things to wonder at, during my first few days. The mystery of the small orange hand towels was the trickiest. Most of the time I visited the same toilet/shower room (closest one to my room). To my great surprise, small orange hand towels had often changed their place and/or the amount of them had changed. Once there was even an orange, normal size towel hanging from one of the hooks on the wall. I simply could not figure out how it was happening – or what was the meaning of it all. (One day I realised, that other people use the same toilet/shower room and forget/leave their own orange hand towels there.)
As I mentioned earlier, at no point did I realise that I had gone mad. I had been at the ward for about a week now, and it had been about three weeks since I went crazy. My mind was still in a very confused state, and I felt uneasy. I was standing by the window in my room, one of my flatmates was in the room too. I do not remember whether we had already talked about something or not, but I told him that I would like to get out of here. He asked me a very simple question: "Where would you go?" That is when my mind showed some signs of life. I looked out the window and saw – and especially understood – that there were already a lot of snow, what would I do there? If I would just leave, it would end up very badly for me.
Even though I still did not understand my situation well, this was some sort of a turning point. I cannot say whether I made any sort of conscious decision or not, but after this I did not think about leaving the ward anymore. I also stopped walking – pretty much compulsively – around the ward.
Shortly after this, my father came to visit me once again, and brought me the four garments I had been wearing when I travelled from Brussels to Helsinki. I immediately went to the clothing storage room with a nurse, and changed my T-shirt to a grey fleece shirt, and my jacket to a winter jacket. I wore the collared shirt – which had been bought for me – under my new fleece shirt. I also had my own blue jeans, and I wore hospital underpants, socks and shoes.
One could borrow both hospital and "civilian clothes" from the ward's clothing storage room – if one was sane enough to ask for them. There was nothing wrong with the hospital clothes, but getting and putting on one's own clothes had a considerable psychological effect. I later took note that a person, who had gone mad big time, could easily be recognised by the fact that he/she was wearing only hospital clothes (for a long time). Some days later, my father also brought me some winter clothing, such as a scarf, gloves and winter shoes.
I had been in the ward exactly ten days when I asked, and got a permission, to go out for a walk. I had not been outside since I came to the ward, except for smoking cigarettes in our yard. So I went for a walk alone, and even though it felt pretty scary to go outside, I still wanted to do it. There was already a lot of snow on the ground. The temperature was a few degrees below zero, so the snow made that nice squeaking sound under my shoes. I only walked for a while – and stayed close to the hospital building's lights all the time – but from now on I went out for a walk once or twice every day.
I remember the Independence Day (6th of December) 2012 well. I went to visit the coffee room, and the oldest "Tuntematon sotilas" movie had just started (= Unknown Soldier, 1955. There are two remakes of it now, made in 1985 and 2017). A few people were watching the movie. I stayed to watch the movie too, but I left right at the beginning of the first battle scene (I cannot say why, normally I like good war movies). After walking out of the coffee room, I remember starting to think that now all the people in the coffee room will think that I am a traumatised old soldier. So I wasn't quite sane yet. It had been exactly two weeks since I had arrived at the ward.
I received accidental random therapy for a second time also. I happened to see a situation – with a patient friend of mine – where a new patient was being brought to the ward. The person was in a really bad shape, and two nurses had to almost drag her forward. Despite the nurses' orders, the person refused – or could not even – open her eyes. When I saw this, it occurred to me to ask my patient friend: "Was I as messed up as her when I got here?" He answered: "Yes." Next, I asked him how I had behaved during my first few days, to which he replied: "You were quite timid." It was only after this brief exchange of words that I began to understand that I had, indeed, been in quite a shape – and mad.
Some days later, I happened to see another person, who had just been brought to the ward, in a really bad shape. In the beginning, he only ate at our ward's dining area – with several nurses standing around him.
One day, a fellow patient gave me a 50 euro banknote and a bundle of postcards. Then he asked me to buy stamps for the postcards and to put them in a mailbox. I could keep the rest of the money (= most of it, 4/5 or so). This person had not yet been allowed to visit the outside world. However, he had probably seen that I was allowed to go out alone (I was one of the very few who went walking outside). I had a look at the postcards he had given me, and I immediately thought to myself that I can not put these in a mailbox. Most of the postcards were for a well-known, non-Finnish person. In addition to that person's name and some very interesting address information, the postcards contained all kinds of confusing/weird text (but nothing offensive).
I calmly left the scene with the postcards and the 50 euro banknote. I was sane enough to want a witness for myself when I return the banknote and the postcards to that patient. So I went to see this one nice nurse and said a few words to him. After he had taken a quick look at the postcards, we walked over to the patient, and the matter was settled with that – at least for my part.
Later that day, the same nurse said to me: "That was very well done."
I can not say for sure at what point I finally realised that I was being a patient in a mental hospital, in the city of Lahti. Anyway, one day I went to look for one of my patient friends. After a brief search, I found him sitting in his room: He was just playing battleship on a piece of paper with another patient friend of mine! I stopped dead in my tracks. The situation felt, to put it mildly, both stunning and comical at the same time. My patient friends seemed to be OK, I felt OK myself, and all I could think was: "Un-f-believable, we are all at the funny farm and they are playing battleship like it was nothing!" After a few seconds, I finally managed to ask them: "Why are you playing battleship?" The other one answered, in a deadpan manner: "Why wouldn't one play battleship?". But yes, of course, silly me: Why not play battleship at the funny farm? [The memory of that moment still brings a smile to my face.]
There were always about fifteen patients in our ward. The amount of men and women was – and stayed at – pretty much half and half. The youngest patients were slightly under 20 and the oldest ones were about 60 years of age. When the "old cases" got out – or got transferred to some other ward – new ones came in. I never asked anyone how or why he/she had ended up at the ward. I knew of two patients that drinking booze – or more accurately binge drinking – had been the cause, as they spoke openly about it (and it had not been the first time). One patient told me that his friends had become so worried about his behaviour, that he himself had finally realised that it is better to go to a mental hospital.
During my stay at the ward, there was only one fellow patient who acted in a bit scary manner, sometimes. Once, he – or one of his personalities – was muttering all sorts of weird things behind my back, as we were standing in a queue at the big canteen. It did not feel nice at all to know, that soon he would have a knife and a fork in his hand. The more sane I became, the more I avoided him, just in case. Another person – the postcard man – who had been brought to the ward soon after me, was and stayed pretty messed up all the time. But I could tell that at his core he was a harmless fellow.
Generally speaking, my ward's atmosphere felt quite peaceful. Not once did I hear any people arguing about anything, or anyone even raising their voice. Of course, sometimes people could behave – to put it mildly – in quite a peculiar manner. On the other hand, those patients who were still in too bad a shape, might stay in their rooms for much of the day, sleeping or making a puzzle or something. In short: Much crazier activities can be seen at any Finnish city centre on any weekend night.
Right from the start, I kept to myself a lot, and I had only one woman and two men as my patient friends during the whole time. For many patients, the support and company of other patients seemed to be really important. As for me, I usually just listened to the other, more sane patients talking – I if happened to be close enough. I remember one young patient particularly well: She was compulsively worried that she might have beaten or even killed someone before ending up at the ward. The more sane patients tried to reason with her by saying, that the person would have already told the police – or been found – and police officers would have come here and arrested her. I also thought that those were just her own obsessive ideas.
Getting used to the ward's routines wasn't hard, at least not for me. I was always in good time to go to the big canteen and to get my evening medication. After taking the evening medication, I usually went immediately to bed (as did most of the other patients too, I think). I slept soundly about 10 to 11 hours every night. Sometimes I also took an afternoon nap. We got to use a sauna and a swimming pool once per week: It felt really great to have the opportunity to swim (with some other male patients, while one male nurse kept an eye on us).
Even though I never had the feeling of being "watched", the nurses were kind of watching us all the time. For example: I always wanted to wash my own clothes – that is, those brought to me by my father. The laundry room was always locked, so the first time I asked a nurse to open the door and to tell me how to use the washing machine and the dryer. I was able to wash and dry my laundry, and there was nothing to it really. For someone else, it might have been bigger of a thing? For example for someone, who had never even done laundry before and/or was too shy/lazy/medicated to do the laundry him/herself? In any case, doing one's own laundry could be interpreted as a good sign on recovery?
A fellow patient once said that this is a rest home compared to a prison's mental hospital: There one had to be on guard all the time. The same person also said to me, in private, that some of the patients in our ward are "lifestyle nutcases". According to him, just as soon as those people were feeling "a bit worse than usual", they would voluntarily come to the ward – once again. Here they could rest, eat well, and do nothing. Admittedly, some of the patients at our ward – especially some who had been there longer than me – did not seem to have anything wrong with them. On the other hand, how can anyone ever know what is going on in someone else's head? (Or what does not go on in other person's head.)
A lot of people seemed to, in a way, submit to their fate. As I already mentioned, I was one of the very few who even went outside for a walk – or did anything "extra" anyway. Some patients spent hours staring at a television and/or flicking their phones, every day. (One patient even had a laptop with her.) I did not know anything about other patient's amount and quality of problems, medication, life history, et cetera – but still, most patients seemed to get "institutionalised" right away.
The saner I became, the more attention I started to pay to all sorts of things. For example, there were interesting stories and pictures in the patient rooms (drawn by previous patients, on chest drawers and other furniture). I also often admired the whole hospital building as well, its architecture looked really nice.
In addition to my typical, general wondering, I started doing all sorts of things to pass the time. For example, I made coffee for other patients after both of the bigger meals, and I also kept the coffee room tidy. I used to play chess with a patient friend of mine, and I read books in my room. Sometimes I watched TV in the coffee or living room for a while, even though I did not see the picture clearly (I still did not have any eyeglasses). Every now and then, I would walk around the ward and see what the patients and nurses were up to (but I did not walk obsessively around the ward anymore). I also deliberately did a lot of things a bit slower than usual, that was a good way to waste time.
My daily walks were also good for me because during them I got to be all alone. I went for a walk with one of my patient friends two or three times, but since he could get a bit paranoid while being outside, I stopped doing it. I also occasionally went through the hospital's underground tunnels to the main building's café, although I usually did not have any money to buy anything.
One day, my other roommate counted that he had to take seventeen pills every day. However, not all of those were psychotropics/sedatives: There were also, for example, blood pressure medicine in the mix. Anyway, he was in a pretty zombie-like shape (and he was somewhat aware of it).
One time I was called to the doctor's room, and my doctor informed me that my cholesterol levels had risen a bit. She ordered me to take some other drug to (try to) reverse this one side effect of the psychotropic medication I was given. Since I was already a bit sane, I asked: "Well, how about the possible side effects of this other medication?" The doctor's answer was: "You have to take the medication." Then I was stupid enough to ask about my psychotropic medication and its effects on me. To that the doctor replied – as if repeating a mantra – "It will compose your condition, it will compose your condition." I was left with a feeling that my doctor got mad at me, for some strange reason. From then on, I kept my mouth shut and did not ask any more questions.
Almost all the nurses at our ward were really nice and professional. I could have talked to any of them at any time, should I have felt like doing so. One of the nurses always sat in the same spot when she was in the living room, and patients often talked with her about all sorts of things. After getting saner, I began to wonder how she dares to do so, as there were both chairs and empty space behind her – and sometimes patients sat right behind her back. On the other hand, I never once saw or heard anything violent happening in our ward, and I never felt threatened by any other patient. I happened to see twice how our ward's biggest nurse got an alert on his pager sort of device, and he rushed to some other ward in a terrible hurry.
Once the ward's personnel read a situation wrong – and acted accordingly.
I played two chess games with a patient friend of mine. Both games lasted for a long time and my friend won them both. It did not make me angry, I was just a bit annoyed (with myself) that I had played the second game's end-game too fast. I went to a toilet for a quick leak, then I would go to the yard and have a cigarette with my friend. First, I wanted to wash my sweaty hands. While doing so, I accidentally touched the toilet ring and lid with my left thigh. They both swung down, and of course there was quite a loud bang. After I had taken care of my toilet business, I opened the door – and there was a nurse waiting for me. He told me that I would be getting my medication now. That seemed very strange, because it was a daytime and I was given medication only late in the evening. I followed the nurse to the medication room. Both me and my patient friend were given some sort of pill.
After we had smoked a cigarette at the yard, we started to play a third chess game. Soon after, nothing came of it anymore: It took about an eternity to think of a move. My mind felt like molten wax and after a while I started to laugh: I had just noticed that we have a total of three bishops on the chessboard – and all of them on white squares. When I was finally able to do so, I pointed it out to my friend: He also burst into laughter. We stopped playing, and I went to my own room. I do not remember what happened after that, I guess I went to bed.
Although that was sort of a funny incident – and no harm was done – I do not laugh anymore when I think about it. In a psychiatric hospital, a patient has exactly two options when it comes to medication: Either you take your medication, or it will be given to you – one way or the other.
Before I got out of the ward, I had a holiday three times, so to speak. My first holiday was around mid-December, and I had been at the ward for three and a half weeks at the time. It was a "day holiday", meaning that the holiday lasted from the morning until the early evening. My father both picked me up from the ward and took me back there. My second holiday, an "overnight holiday", was half a week later. I took a bus to Heinola on my own – I was a bit nervous/scared – and my father came to pick me up from the bus station. That evening I went to bed at 6 o'clock and slept for 12 hours. The next day, my father took me back to the hospital. I spent the Christmas of 2012 at the ward, but it was no big deal, there have been worse Christmases than that – and it was an interesting experience, kind of. Shortly before the New Year, I went to Heinola for a third time, and this "home holiday" lasted a total of three days. On the New Year's Eve, I went to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening and slept for 12 hours.
Nothing much happened during these three holidays. I watched some TV, read books, went for walks and slept a lot, that was pretty much it. In retrospect, I have been quite a zombie, I do not even remember my holidays clearly – even though they lasted a total of six days. Anyway, the return trips to Lahti = mental hospital ward did not feel nice at all, especially on the last time, but I had to go back there.
After my third holiday, I kept to myself even more than before. I only talked to two of my patient friends and one of my roommates: I felt like I would go crazy again if I would hang around with the other patients. I kept a low profile and hoped to get out of the whole facility as soon as possible. I did not want to talk to my doctor about being discharged from the ward, due to the previously mentioned drug episode – as well as one other case.
It had been the departure day for my third holiday, I was supposed to take a bus to Heinola after lunch. As usual, us, the patients, had gathered at the front door to go to the canteen. All of a sudden, a nurse told me to go to the doctor's room. As soon as I entered the room, the doctor said to me with an angry tone: "Do not use any substances during this holiday." I replied: "Of course I won't." Then the doctor repeated her order: I am not allowed to take anything during the New Year's Eve, not even one beer. That was it. Then the doctor gave me a permission to leave and get something to eat. I left the doctor's room with mixed feelings and rejoined the flock of patients. One of my patient friends said: "Well, that was the shortest visit to a doctor ever." Even couple of other (quite sane) patients wondered – out loud – what had been so important, that I had to see the doctor, just before we were about to leave for the canteen. Moments later we did leave the ward and go to the canteen. Maybe the doctor meant that for my own good. I, however, felt quite the opposite.
So I did not want to talk to my doctor about anything, unless I absolutely had to. Plus, I thought that I had "qualified" for an involuntary hospitalisation. (I only found out much later that I had been officially: "Delivered to voluntary hospital ward care.") So I thought that I was in kind of a Catch-22 situation: If I told the staff that I would like to leave the ward, it would not matter because of my "involuntarily treatment" status. Then again, if I did not tell anyone that I want to go home, it would mean that I am not well enough to be discharged.
Fortunately, I had told my father – at the end of my third holiday while we were driving back to the hospital – that: "I would like to get out of there already, I feel a bit unsafe with all them lunatics." I exaggerated – or well, lied – deliberately. I do not know whether my father mentioned this to the doctor and/or the nurses or not (relatives were always asked how the patient's holiday had been). In addition, of course, the nurses had observed me and all my holidays had gone smoothly.
Anyway, three days after my last holiday, I got out of the mental hospital.
A few days before I got out, one nurse wanted to talk to me about drugs ("Cannabis + and benzos + "). I told him honestly that I had smoked cannabis when I was living in Brussels. I also told him that a few months earlier – (in January 2012 to be precise) – I had tried LSD twice and a small amount of mushrooms once. The nurse took some notes on a paper. He did not ask me anything about benzos – benzodiasepines – which I have never taken. At the time, I did not even know that I had been given benzos at some point(s).
I got out of the Päijät-Häme Central Hospital's psychiatry department's psychiatric ward number ✖ at the beginning of January 2013. I had been at the ward as a patient for a total of six weeks. Generally speaking, I had received good care – that is, a safe and a peaceful place to recover – and I also got good food and a lot of rest. Had I felt like it, I could have talked to my fellow patients and/or to the nice nurses, so all in all, it wasn't a bad place to be.
My own activity – as well as the two accidental random therapy sessions I received – played an important role in my recovery. When it comes to the psychotropic medication and its possible effects on my recovery, all I can say is that in the early stages of my visit, some medication may have been helpful to me.
In addition to the experience itself – and a better winter jacket which was given to me on the day of my departure – I got some other souvenirs too. During his first couple of weeks, one patient had drawn a lot of pictures with a religious theme (there were also Latin-like words among or under the pictures). He gave me about a dozen of his drawings, and I got couple of drawings from one other patient also.
My father came to pick me up after lunch and we started to drive towards Heinola. It felt great to be free. In a way, the world looked different now that I could do what I wanted, so to speak (for example, I did not have to ask anyone for a permission to go out for a walk).
After couple of days, I went to buy a new mobile phone – and to get a brand-new phone number. It did not take long before some police officer called me. He needed to get a statement from me, so we set a meeting time. After a few days, I went to a police station and briefly told what I had been doing at the villa. The police officer typed everything down. Then I read and signed my story. I had brought the December 2012 B 1 medical certificate with me, I had not yet received the final medical report by mail. The police officer – who was both polite and professional – thought that bringing the B 1 medical certificate with me had been a good idea, and took a copy of it. It was only now that I found out, with certainty, whose villa I had been in.
I also went to the employment office and Kela (Kansaneläkelaitos = The Social Insurance Institution of Finland) to get my paperwork rolling. I would be on a sick leave for at least until the end of February. While visiting Kela, I saw a fellow patient from my ward at the lobby. He recognised me and immediately said with a loud voice: "Oh, they have let you out of there also?!" That did feel quite embarrassing.
My father and I also went to Helsinki to pick up my backpack, my sister had collected it from the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport at some point. Most of my belongings had survived the trip. The biggest loss was the disappearance of my old and very good hiking tent. (I clearly remember it being on my backpack at the Brussels Airport – and attached to a different place than where I always put it.) Luckily, my old spare eyeglasses were not lost. For the next couple of days – even though the lenses were a few years old – I felt almost as if I had regained my vision.
I used the Internet at my sister's home for the first time in almost two months. I had not really missed hanging around the net, I had had other things to think about. There were some messages on my Facebook wall about my disappearance in Heinola, and about me being found the next day. I published a short update in which I told that I had gone mad in Brussels, had just got out of a mental hospital, was feeling fine, and that I would be staying at my father's house for a while.
To crown it all – ("Like putting a dot on the i") – after leaving my sister's apartment and walking in the stairwell for about two metres, a plastic buckle on the right shoulder strap of my backpack – which had served me for more than a decade – gave in. The buckle literally jumped off and bounced down a spiral staircase, all the way down to the ground floor. (The problem could of course be solved – for the time being – with a proper knot.) Well, I wasn't planning on travelling anywhere for a while. After all, that had been one mad journey.
So I was living in my father's house and still slept for about 11 hours every night. In addition to reading, watching TV [which I had not done at home for almost five years] and using my laptop, I went on long walks every day – while listening to music. Before going crazy, I had not listened to a radio while walking, but now it felt kind of necessary and comforting: I got to be in my own private space – or a bubble. (Listening to music while being outside went on for several months before I finally gave it up.)
I had to pay three bills for my two mental hospital visits in Brussels. However, the total amount was only about 100 euros, possibly thanks to one employee of the Finnish Seamen's Mission in Rotterdam. The person in question had warned my father in advance that the total amount might very well be several hundred euros. I paid all three bills and did not look into it any further. I felt really relieved that I did not have to pay more than that.
Even though I was not at the ward anymore, I still had to take one psychotropic medication – and that other one because of my risen cholesterol levels. On the doctor's orders, I also had to go and see a substance abuse therapist for about five times. According to the (final) medical report – which I had also received just before our first meeting – the following had happened:
"A 34-years old male, with no previous psychiatrical treatment history. Patient worked in Brussels at the Finnish Seamen's Mission all autumn. Patient himself has partly fuzzy memories of what has happened during autumn. At some point has taken hallucinogenic mushrooms and LSD. In November patient had a birthday party and took some intoxicants. Behaviour turned disorderly. The patient's father, who lives in Heinola, brought the patient back home. But the patient fled from his father's house and was later found in Heinola dressed only in a torn-up piece of a blanket. Does not remember this event or the causes which led up to it. Delivered to voluntary hospital ward care. In the early stages of treatment has described states of fear, that some people might want to hurt him. When asked about visual hallucinations, had told that there were some kind of distortions. In the text written on the day he arrived, there is a mention of sonic hallucinations, but has not heard them while being here at the ward. Upon entering the ward, drug screening showed cannabis + and benzos +."
The substance abuse therapist in question was a nice and a well-meaning person, but at no point did she ask me anything about the time I spent in Brussels (some 3,5 months). We also did not go through the medical report together. We mainly just talked about this and that, and she said on several occasions that I should never smoke cannabis again, otherwise I could get a psychosis from it again. Well, that might be. (I do not mean to downplay the potential dangers of any substance or drug – and depending on a person, it might be better to leave them all alone.) However, for me it felt quite thoughtless to think that the cause for my madness was one single thing (and, in fact, I had smoked cannabis some 24 hours before I went mad). Nothing was said about my life history, my situation in life at the time, or the events leading up to my head doing a cartwheel. In short, nothing was said about me, but the cause for me losing my marbles was crystal clear: Cannabis.
I also found it very strange that a substance abuse therapist did not ask, or say, anything about mushrooms or LSD, even though in the medical report my diagnosis was "Psychotic disorder caused by the use of hallucinogens".
Anyway, after about five sessions of therapy – and after a negative drug test – I did not need to visit anyone else. I suppose I could have asked for an appointment with some other therapist or something, but I did not feel any need to do so. I also did even consider going to any support group or anything like that – if there were any? – it did not feel like my thing at all.
I had already halved the amount of the psychotropic medication I took every day. A few days after seeing the substance abuse therapist for the last time, I could – and did – stop taking the drug altogether. I was finally completely free.
Admittedly, for the next two days I did feel quite weird/off-balanced, but then it passed. Since then, I have not taken or felt any need to take any psychotropic medication.
In mid-March 2013, I moved with all my possessions – that is, the belongings in my backpack – back to Jyväskylä. Incidentally, I had been able to sublet a small flat from the same person from whom I had gotten the idea to move to Brussels. For the first few days I pretty much just stayed at home: The sense of failure and shame was quite enormous. I also felt a lot of guilt about the magic villa incident. I did not like going to the city centre at all, and I only took care of the necessary unemployment office and other matters. I just wanted to be alone at home.
In a way, my friends did not mind me having been crazy and in a mental hospital (of course, quite a few people had been very worried during my odyssey). I was glad that – of the people closest to me – only my father had seen me in the condition I had been in.
I had called the Finnish Seamen's Mission shortly after I got out of the hospital. However, they had just been on their weekly meeting (which was precisely why I called at that time), and they did not have time to talk to me. I felt timid about contacting them again. One ex-co-worker of mine sent me a nice message on Facebook a few weeks later, but other than that, I did not hear anything from them.
After a few days of down in the dumps, I started going on long walks again – while listening to music. I also started giving therapy to myself. However, I could not find any sensible ex-mad person's narrative on the Internet – in English or in Finnish – on how she/he had experienced his/her madness. Almost all the stories I managed to find were short, very disorderly, shallow, and they often contained violence – and the taking of about half a dozen different drugs just before going crazy...
Anyway, in addition to my self-therapy, i.e. thinking about things, I sometimes talked to couple of my friends. It did help to tell someone what had happened, but it was also a bit frustrating at the same time, because my friends had not had a similar experience. On the other hand, when I once tried to share something with one acquaintance of mine, the situation very soon began to feel like if I was trying to explain the purpose of a spiral staircase to a fish.
In mid-June 2013, I received a letter from the Salpausselkä Prosecutor's Office. Even though all the charges were dropped – which I had thought would be the most likely outcome – the magic villa incident still weighed heavily on my mind. I showed the letter to a friend of mine a few days later. He comforted me by saying, that one of the reasons why the charges were dropped was that the owner of the villa "Had not provided, despite requests, a specific explanation of the damage suffered and the amounts of damage suffered". (Also, after telling briefly about what had happened at the villa, I had asked the police officer how the owner of the villa had felt about the whole thing. The police officer had told me that he had already met the villa's owner, and that: "He was quite calm about it all, and said that the main thing was that the fellow didn't freeze to death.") These things made me feel a bit better.
I sent a text message to one of my mental hospital friends in June or July, he had given me his phone number on the day I left. I asked him how he was doing and told him that I'm doing fine, and that I haven't taken any medication in a long time. He replied that he was not doing well: he had, among other things, gained a lot of weight and was still taking many different pills every day. [We lost touch after that.]
In early August, a friend called me in the morning and told me that I had made the news. One tabloid had told about me breaking into the villa and about the prosecutor's decision. The story went viral, and during the day many different newspapers reported it on their websites. The villa incident was told a bit differently in every newspaper. Online comments were also quite interesting. People seemed to know a lot about the incident, and all kinds of other stuff too – even thought they had only read a few sentences, written by journalists. [Or "journalists".] Being put on the news, even though my name was not mentioned, made me feel quite miserable for a while.
A few weeks later, I had a really good laugh while browsing the Internet: The bulletin about my disappearance could still be found on a local newspaper's website. It was as follows: "A man, approximately 30 years old, has disappeared from address xxxxxxxxxx at yyyyy o'clock. He is of average build, bald and wearing a bed cover." Also, the public was asked to contact the police if they happened to see the person in question.
People had commented this bulletin with: "I hope they find the guy" and "Sounds like the guy has had a nervous breakdown" and so on. But someone had also written: "A picture would be good so that he could be found faster." Well, there had been many different reactions and comments to that one, and the atmosphere had been heating up...
However, no more comments had been written after someone had said: "I don't know how life is like in Heinola in general, but if the description 'Bald and wearing a bed cover' isn't enough, wow!"
In autumn 2013, my friend decided that he would stay in Tampere = not come back to his flat in Jyväskylä, so my subtenancy ended and I became the principal tenant. It made me feel a lot better, I had been a bit worried whether I could stay in the flat or not. In a way, I had already recovered from my madness – but on the other hand, I thought about the time and events of my madness every single day.
One evening, while being quite drunk, I started to write about some of the events which had taken place during my madness. The next day, I read everything I had written. Then I made a timeline on a big piece of paper, and wrote keywords on it about the things that had happened during each day. [Towards the end of my trip around the world, I had acted in a similar way: I only wrote down keywords in my diary.] I understood that I would have to go through the whole thing carefully, and that writing about it would be the best way to do it – for me.
Writing about my madness did not feel distressing or negative in any way. Of course, it was easy to write about some events and not so easy to write about some other events. Sometimes I had to go through = think about some other things in my life also, not just my madness. My life continued to flow, too. I had to go to a back surgery three times, I took part in various classes and practical trainings provided by the employment office, I lived in many different places (in Finland), and so on. After the first few weeks, writing became quite seasonal – in the end, the whole writing process took several years. [Autumn 2013 to spring 2018.]
Before I went crazy, I had not given madness much thought. I presumed that I was so level-headed – and had already experienced so much in life – that it simply could not happen to me. Well, it did. Of course, over the years, I have thought a lot about why I went bananas. Nowadays, I no longer bother my head with it. However, I would think that sleeping poorly – and less and less every night – for about three months, was a big factor. My situation in life must has also made a difference, especially when it comes to different kinds of stress factors and the general hurry at work – as well as not having enough "peace and quiet".
In addition, along comes that movie night event, and that birthday surprise by my co-workers – which totally surprised me, twice. The thought "What have I done wrong now?" in that one moment is very meaningful to me (relating to my childhood and my life history). But at the end of the day, I do not know why I went crazy – and no one else does either.
As for cannabis, I smoked it at my old apartment almost every day, for several weeks. After moving to the Finnish Seamen's Mission – i.e. the two and a half weeks I got to live there – I smoked cannabis on three different days, the last time being about 24 hours before my plunge into madness. Naturally, if one wants to, one can blame everything on drugs – at least then the matter is simple and clear. As for drugs in general, at a younger age I felt very strongly against using any drugs (of course, all sorts of things might be involved in the making and selling of drugs, depending on the country and the substances). My attitude changed over the years and before I went insane, I almost adored cannabis. Not anymore.
In the B 1 statement written by my doctor on 18 December 2012, my illness is still "F29 Unspecified Psychotic Disorder." At the time, I had been in the hospital for twenty-six days. In the (final) medical report written at the beginning of January 2013 – i.e. after the drug interview – my insanity is diagnosed as "F16.56 Psychotic disorder caused by the use of hallucinogens, hybrid form." It sure would be interesting to hear the reasons for that diagnosis. What if I had not told about my mushroom and LSD experiments – which had taken place some ten months earlier? F12.5, F12.7 or some other box? (ICD = International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems)
It is also quite interesting – from a patient's point of view – to read both the medical certificate B 1 and the (final) medical report of January 2013, and to compare them to my actual journey. For example, when it comes to my birthday's events in Brussels, the medical staff only knew what my father had told them – and my father only knew what he had been told.
I have no clear recollections of what I have answered to all of the nurses, doctors or police officers questions. Based on my experience, answering questions has depended on many different factors. In short: Who has asked what and in what kind of manner, in what kind of a place and in what sort of a situation, has produced – depending on my current form of madness and the amount of delusions – some sort of an answer, or not. It must be quite a job to try to find out what is going on in other person's head...
"Naturally", there were also some rumours about my madness. The best one – which I heard from someone one time – was that: "You should feel happy that you did not get stabbed in the throat with a dagger, while running naked in the streets of Brussels, because for 'them' nudity is such a taboo subject." A dagger? Running naked in the streets? Who's "them"? The details were quite interesting – but for me, this sounded... loony to say the least.
All in all, going crazy is easily one of the hardest and worst experiences of my life, and the recovery from it was no picnic either. When taking into account everything that happened during and after my madness, the worst part was that I lost my mind. Had I not come back to my senses from that, well, would any other things even matter?
As crazy as it may sound, going mad is also one of the best things that have ever happened to me: I would not trade it for anything. As I mentioned earlier, I have always been curious and wondered a lot about life, so in that sense, going insane suited me well. I would not recommend it to anyone, though.
Sometimes, as I watch the world go by, I play with two thoughts in my mind. First: Was I sane before I went insane, or not? Second: Did I actually ever get out of a mental hospital, or was I just sent to an outpatient ward which covers the whole planet? Oh well, it doesn't matter, I like to be here :)
Well, that's it.
Yours sincerely, Miro Sulkumäki
PS. You can keep the bed cover stolen from me by the police officers.
PPS. I wrote this poem about six months after I got out of the mental hospital.
(Translated poorly from Finnish, original one here)
Glass
In a world made of glass
beware of your every step,
so that the fragile points
won't get new cracks.
Respect the words of the glass masters:
they always know best
how to build the safest house
and an unbreakable floor for your room.
But for an unknown reason
you just can't stay there;
You wonder, what lies
behind that horizon?
Yet one day you fall
from the mast of your glass boat
hitting its deck, shattering completely
and realising only then
that the world, alien and of glass
was just a reflection
of your own thoughts.
They were just glass, too,
but so dear, for you.
 |
| Photograph 13. A photograph of the author. [Not the same as in the original letter. The photograph was taken by Mirva.] |
Appendix 1. In Finnish: Medical certificate B 1, 18 December 2012. Rough translation from Finnish to English here
Appendix 2. In Finnish: Medical report, 7 January 2013. Rough translation from Finnish to English here
Appendix 3. In Finnish: Prosecutor's decision to drop charges, 15 June 2013. Rough translation from Finnish to English here
This website is the English version of my https://eihullumpireissu.net – which is also free and in my native (Finnish) language.
Social media = I gave up Soma... I mean SoMe in 2016, but feel free to tell your friends about this website – if you want to.
You can send me feedback and/or questions by e-mail: ni.mi at tutanota.com [Updated in January 2024]
The yesmadjourney.net website was registered and created by Miro Sulkumäki in August 2021. Latest mini-edit* on the text: April 2022.
* Corrected a spelling mistake, and/or fine-tuned a sentence (hopefully for the better), and/or found a better word to describe something.
The whole story as a PDF file, size about 1 megabyte, is over here: YMJ_20221011.pdf
This website is free for all Internet users. If you would like to use my story for something – like quoting some part(s) of it to your own book/study – it would be polite to inform me about it, thank you :)
Back to the main page of yesmadjourney.net
1) How can you remember your madness and its different events so well?
Compared to what? Compared to not remembering them? As I mentioned in my text, I know nothing about other people's madnesses, and I have only gone mad once. Perhaps (some) other time would be different – on remembering it?
Due to various reasons, ever since I was a little, I have observed my surroundings – and my own behaviour – a lot. My memory has always been good. When I was quite young, I used to write letters and keep a diary – who knows how that might have affected the features of my memory? Before I went nuts, I had written two travel stories – based on my travel diaries. On my first journey, my summer 2004 trip to the British Isles, the final text on my webpage was pretty much the same as what I had written down during the trip. While on my second, around the world trip of 2007–2008, I wrote about it to my webpage during the trip. However, I wrote about my travel days 222 to 317 only after returning to Finland: I remembered it all well due to some of the photos I had taken – and especially because of the keywords I had written down in my travel diary.
If the question was meant to mean whether my story is true or not, then all I can say is 1) "I will tell you honestly almost everything that happened after I went crazy, it's the least I can do." and 2) either you trust me, or you don't. I do understand that memories might start to alter over time, but my madness was such an intense experience, that I guess I'll remember it for rest of my life. Also, I left out only a couple of things from my story (because of my memory): I wasn't entirely sure about some details and/or the exact time they took place.
2) Had you had any mental health problems before?
No. This is mentioned in the Medical certificate B 1: "A 34-years old male, with no previous psychiatrical treatment history. Also no previous psychiatrical problems." and in the doctor's (final) Medical report: "A 34-years old male, no previous psychiatrical treatment history."
3) How has your life been after recuperating from your madness?
Oh well, nothing to complain about. I have had some physical trouble/inconveniences (for example, I have had those three surgeries I mentioned in my text).
Nowadays I live a few kilometres from the centre of Kuhmo (= middle of nowhere) and work from home ‐ permanently, not just during this corona pandemic. I do not have any special plans or dreams for my life, I'll just hang around and see what happens... (By the way, during my internship period I told my boss about my madness history, and she is also aware of this website.)
If the question was meant to be: Are you somehow permanently and/or continue to be "a bit off", then no, I feel fine. (By the way, how can anyone know whether they are in one's right mind? ;) ) At least my friends think that I am still the same old Miro. Then again, maybe they have all gone mad? Who knows, but I have not taken any medication, or visited any (online)groups, psychiatrists or had any professional therapy sessions: Writing this true story was my therapy.
Please note: I do not know how other people recuperate and/or what would be the best way for someone to recuperate from their madness. Seek professional help if necessary!
4) How does life feel after everything that has happened?
In short, I feel more serene than before.
5) Are you afraid/worried that you might go insane again?
No. Should I go crazy again, then I go crazy again. I like to think that I have had enough madness to last me a lifetime. Also, should I go crazy again, would I notice it (this time either) or not? I have no way of knowing, so why worry? Based on my experience, the worst that could happen to me would be to die of something, for example, hypothermia. Like I mentioned in my text, I am usually quite calm, and that personality trait stayed on me – for most of the time.
6) Why do you use only one letter for the persons in your story?
Just in case. I thought that not all people might want to be mentioned by their real (first) name in a story like this, especially if her/his name is not that common.
7) Who was/is the real owner of the (magic) villa?
It doesn't matter, I would have written the letter anyway. More detailed reasons for writing the letter/making this website can be found at the Why share a story about my madness? page.
