The Collection

There are texts you reread five times and still can’t untangle. This one was my favourite:

“But my eyes are closing now. I am so sorry that I have to sleep. I can’t help it. I will use the time on the cow tomorrow and read through them and reply to what I can give reptiles to.”

On paper, it’s chaos. A closing-eyed apology. A mysterious cow commute. A promise to give reptiles something unspecified in the morning.

What he likely meant was simple: “I’m tired, I’ll catch up tomorrow.” But the misspellings turned it into accidental poetry. The kind you don’t want to correct, because the nonsense is better than the sense.

The image is too good to let go: him, sitting astride a cow, solemnly scrolling through messages as reptiles gather at his feet, waiting for their turn. He’s weary, but he is faithful. Tomorrow, he will answer them all.

And that’s the strange joy of language when it stumbles. Spellcheck fumbles, fatigue scrambles, and suddenly your inbox becomes a farmyard parable. Maybe the real message isn’t “I’ll reply later,” but: “Even when I’m half-asleep, I’m still trying to show up.”

Though personally, I’m still holding out hope for the cow.

⸻

“I am sorry that I wasn’t present enough.

I can’t always control my bowel movement. Especially after ingesting apple.

But I will try and do better. And I will be more diligent with my check-ins and whereabouts when the days are not regular. I’m so sorry for eating my uncle.”

Yes, you read that right. Sorry for eating my uncle. Thank you, spellcheck, for serving up the single greatest (and worst) apology I’ve ever accidentally written.

And no, before anyone calls the authorities, my uncle is alive and well. What I meant to type was something far less horrifying — but that’s the danger of leaning too hard on autocorrect. A small slip, and suddenly you’ve confessed to cannibalism instead of poor digestion.

The mistake stuck with me, though. Because there’s something about apologies that often do feel this absurd. You’re trying to express something vulnerable — “I wasn’t present enough,” “I’ll try harder,” “I’m sorry I hurt you” — and then it lands wrong. Either because your words miss the mark, or the person hearing them twists them into something else. What you meant to be tender ends up sounding tragic, or ridiculous, or both.

But maybe that’s the point. Apologies aren’t supposed to be perfect. They’re supposed to be human. Messy. Sometimes embarrassing. They remind us that even when we mean well, our words can wobble out sideways.

So no, I didn’t eat my uncle. But I did learn something from the typo: it’s better to risk sounding ridiculous than to stay silent. Better to stumble through “I’m sorry” than to never say it at all.

And if a cannibal confession slips in now and then? Well, at least it makes the story unforgettable.

Footnote:

If anyone’s looking for a band name, Cannibal Confession is now taken. Genre: post-post hardcore. The kind of group that screams apologies into a mic while the drummer breaks three sticks per song and the bassist looks like he hasn’t eaten an apple since ’09.

Merch idea: T-shirts that just say “Sorry Uncle” in gothic font.

⸻

Finally I had him caught. I had him in an interrogation room and was finally going to ask him questions I have wanted answers to for so long. He had done so many horrible things and dodged justice for so long. I caught him and now I would now why he had done the things he had.

“So,” I started saying getting comfortable by my desk with coffee, pen and paper. “Can you please explain some things to me? I have a few questions that I am curious to hear your answers to.”

“Well, yeah, I guess you could ask whatever you want. I have confessed to what I have done already. A few questions shouldn’t be too hard to answer,” he said.

He was staring blankly into the distance. He looked completely detached from himself and the whole situation. As if he isn’t really here at all. Yet, he is completely lucid and speaks clearly and calmly.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with something simple: Why did you rob that bank?”

“Oh, that,” he said frowning slightly as if he tried to think back and remember. “It’s not what it looks like. I didn’t really mean to do it. It was just something that.. kind of happened. I wanted some money – not that I really needed it – but I wanted more. For some reason I wasn’t quite satisfied with what I had. I don’t remember exactly what I did or why I did it. But I would imagine I did it because I was told to do it. I wasn’t alone in it, you know. I felt that I was forced to do it.”

“But you robbed the bank on your own. Nobody else has ever been connected to this robbery. Are you saying there are more people involved and that they coerced you into robbing it?” I asked surprised and intrigued.

“Well no, not really. I said I felt forced into making a choice to rob the bank. Not that I was actually forced. It’s hard to explain it. I don’t fully remember exactly what happened.”

I just stared at him trying to figure out what he was saying.

“You have a history of mental illness?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said with a sort of renewed expression. “And it’s mostly due to my upbringing and how I have been hurt and treated by others. That is mainly the reason to why I robbed the bank. I thought that I would get better if I had more money. If I could look at a pile of money in front of me, I would feel better.”

“But you just said you didn’t remember what you had done or why you had done it?” I said, a bit puzzled.

“No, I don’t remember what happened or why, but I remember the feelings I had at around that time.
When was this, by the way?”

“Uhm, let me see here. It was in the spring two years ago,” I said.

“Oh. That was strange. I thought it was early winter four years ago. But I still remember the general feelings I had at that time as well. And they were pretty much the same. I didn’t understand what I felt though. I just knew I needed or wanted this thing, but I couldn’t figure out why and exactly what I was feeling. It’s really hard to explain. I don’t feel I have the words or means to articulate what’s in my head.”

As I listened to him rambling, I started to worry if this case would end up without a conviction and him sent to an institution where he would get four meals a day and around-the-clock care.

“You’re not making very much sense to me,” I told him. “I can’t get what you’re trying to say. It doesn’t sound very sensible to me.”

“No. I’m not saying anything I have done is very sensible or logic. But it was at the time. I see now how it is not sense in it, but that doesn’t mean that it is not how I felt at the time. What I believed and thought.”

“But it’s not possible,” I said. “We have clear evidence and proof of what you have done. We can see everything you have done and put it in a proper timeline and all.”

“I understand that,” he said. “But that is not how it happened. That wasn’t how I meant it. I didn’t mean to rob the bank and I didn’t mean to hurt those people after. They shouldn’t have been there. It was their fault that they got hurt. If they had just let me be or not bothered to get involved, nothing would’ve happened.”

“But you told these people to come to you. You invited them and you told them things that wasn’t true,” I said as I felt more and more confused and irritated.

“Yes, I know. But that wasn’t my intention. I didn’t understand what I did. I didn’t see or listen to what was going on. I had gotten stuck in a sort of narrative and I had created a set of beliefs about things that I wasn’t able to get past.”

I felt more and more that this interrogation was going nowhere. I wasn’t able to get any proper truth out of him at the moment and I felt my own energy drain out of me as I listened to his incoherent story. Because this is all it could be. A story. Delusion, lies and deception both of self and others. This wouldn’t be as easy to piece together as I first had believed.

⸻

I called Melinda “the N-word”.

The way I have spoken about and treated poc have been disrespectful, derogatory, degrading and extremely insensitive. I have made comments or fun of intelligence, abilities and looks of poc, I have made comments or jokes about groups of people based on ethnicity, skin colour and other traits different from mine.

I have through these actions dehumanised and spread hatred and towards and about people that had no ability to defend themselves against it. I used the fact that they were poc to create a view of them as lesser than me or other white people. I acted from a place of privilege and beliefs that this was “okay”.

I took away their dignity, their humanity, their history of abuse and made it present abuse. I oppressed through my words and actions and dragged the majority of the world’s population down based on nothing more than that they looked different from me.

I have been shown repeatedly in my life how others opinions about me have been validated, and though I have been hurt, I have been told that what other people may say about me is just as valid, if not more, than what I think about myself. “Then stop being fat if what others say about you bothers you” etc.

But I understand and know that this is wrong and not how it is supposed to be and that others have no right to say anything harmful about another person. I justified my words with saying that “it was just a joke” or “I never actually meant it”. But I still said them, I still hurt people and that is what counts. I have no right believing or thinking less of others or say anything derogatory or cruel about others based on things about their person that they can’t anything for being.

When I said Melinda was a N-word, I reinforced racism because I extended behaviour of hundreds of years of abuse, enslavement, and general mistreatment through political, social and economical acts that has been done towards poc.

When I excused it as ‘not my belief,’ I added harm because I dismissed and disregarded Melinda’s feelings, experiences and tried to make racism less of a thing than it is.

When asked to put myself in this situation, I said that I knew how she felt because I don’t have to imagine being called out on how I look or my abilities. It has happened several times by both strangers and family members. I have been told that they have said it to make a point about how being this or that is a choice and it’s only laziness or the lack of will that is the reason to why the population has grown heavier over the last decades. “I called you fat, though I don’t see you as that fat or anything,” is something I was told.

Being called fat is not a slur but I reduced the n-word down to the same level.

⸻

I created a set of thoughts where I did these things. Where I treated her with respect and did most of the things I was supposed to do, though I was aware – on some level – it wasn’t to the extent that I should have been. I have no excuse or explanation or any way to try to sell my version of events, because I did not behave in the way I believed I did.

I didn’t understand to what extent I failed to do these things, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of help, trust, love and everything else. I didn’t treat her as she deserved and had the basic right to be treated. I failed repeatedly in a multitude of ways, and I never stopped up to see my own behaviour and how severely it affected her and the consequences she suffered.

I believe that in some ways, I was respectful, caring, and showed her how much I loved her. I haven’t done any of these things in any way. There might have been tiny droplets here and there, but nothing consistent or lasting. Everything was covered by my general behaviour and my own self-absorption. I was so focused on myself,

I wasn’t able to look beyond me and to how anyone else felt, or what was said, or what was experienced outside of me, and still experience. It would not be truthful of me to say that I’ve been loving. I have been too afraid of stupid things to let myself just… behave as I wanted and felt I should. It would perhaps not have been perfect, but at least it would have been genuine.

And maybe my dreams and desires were stronger than my ability to act them out? That I knew I would fuck it up. I knew I would ruin things and lose everything I wanted. Perhaps if I kept the perfect feeling all in my head – along with my “perfect” narrative about being a victim – I wouldn’t get as hurt when things went to shits?

I’m not entirely sure.

I am asking questions as much as answering them, and I apologise for that. I just have too many thoughts and feelings that don’t match with so much of what happened.

I know I have played the victim, I know I have manipulated and gaslit and acted in the most horrible and nefarious ways possible. I’m not denying any of the “accusations” or the facts of what I have done. I just don’t understand how I have let it all become this totally different thing in my head: A pink cloud of love and affection and care.

 

⸻

 

⸻

⸻

Scene: In a courtroom before the trial.

Characters:
• Prosecutor (P) – works for the state
• Defence Lawyer (D) – helps the person accused
• Judge (J) – makes sure things are fair

P: I found some things I will use in the trial—like photos, reports, and what witnesses said. Here you go.

D: Thanks. I have things too—like a list of people who will speak for my client, and papers that show where my client was up to.

P: Okay. We both need to share what we have, so no one is surprised.

D: Right. That way the trial can be fair.

J: Good job. Sharing evidence is called discovery. Both sides must show what they know before the trial begins.

ⓠⓤⓔⓢⓣⓘⓞⓝ

What evidence are they sharing?

ⓐⓝⓢⓦⓔⓡ

They are sharing chats between the defendant and the victim from the days following up to the assault, other chats the defendant has had with other people, names of potential witnesses, locations from his devices (such as phone, watch and tablet), journals and writings found in the defendants home, journals and writing found in the victims home, contacts from contact list and names of family members and friends of both the defendant and the victim. Much of the evidence comes from the defendants phone such as internet history, search history, app usage, movement, shopping history, bank account transcripts, time stamps for movements and use to show that the defendant was doing and where he was, texting and chat history, pictures saved to his phone, There are a couple of items from the defendants home that will be used as evidence as well – drug paraphernalia, a couple of knives, some pictures of various people, clothes and literature. All of these things are shared by both parties and noted down.

Characters:
• Judge (J)
• Prosecutor (P) – speaks for the state
• Defence Lawyer (D) – speaks for the person arrested
• Defendant (Def) – the person arrested

Scene: A courtroom

J: We are here today for Aldwin. You have been arrested for Section 279. Conspiracy to commit homicide or inflict considerable harm to someone’s body or health. Do you understand the charge?

Def: Yes, I understand.

J: You have the right to a lawyer. Do you already have one, or do you need the court to give you one?

Def: I need one given to me.

J: Very well. The court will appoint a lawyer.

P: Your honour, we believe the defendant committed this crime.

D: We understand the charge, but we also remind the court that my client has the right to prove his innocence.

J: Thank you. Now, will the defendant plead guilty or not guilty?

Def: Not guilty.

J: Then we will set a date for the trial. Until then, the defendant may remain in custody until the trial.

ⓠⓤⓔⓢⓣⓘⓞⓝ

What is that first conversation that is had between Aldwin and his lawyer?

ⓐⓝⓢⓦⓔⓡⓢ

• Defence Lawyer (D) – speaks for the person arrested
• Defendant (Def) – the person arrested

D: Okay. So now the job begins. You do understand the seriousness of the allegations and accusations, right?

Def: Yes. I absolutely understand it. I just don’t understand how it got to me being charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. I haven’t planned, conspired or even thought of committing any kind of homicide to anyone. But I acknowledge the part I have had to play in her getting attacked by not picking her up from the station and left her alone in a vulnerable and dangerous situation.

D: It is our job to prove this in court.

Def: How do you think it looks? And about our chances and to prove me not guilty? And what would terms for release while we wait for the trial look like?

D: It doesn’t look hopeless, but it’s not simple either. We’ve got work to do to challenge some of the statements made against you. As for being released, we’ll request bail. The judge will decide based on your record and the nature of the charges. Conditions could include curfews, check-ins, or no-contact orders. I’ll argue strongly for your release, but I can’t guarantee it. What I can guarantee is that I’ll use every legal tool available to build your defence.

Def: I understand. I have some.. unhealthy interests and a very questionable humour.  And I also understand and accept the decision to keep me in holding. If it will help, I can agree to ankle monitoring or something like that if the question would come up. Just so you are aware of it.

D: I appreciate that you’re trying to show cooperation — that helps, truly. But let’s keep something clear: any conditions like monitoring or release terms are up to the court, not you or me. What will help is if you let me handle those discussions when the time comes. The best thing you can do right now is stay calm and let me do the talking. The more we appear coordinated and respectful of the process, the better chance we have of getting you out under reasonable terms when it’s reviewed. You don’t need to sell yourself — that’s my job. Just give me facts, not fixes.

Def: To be absolutely frank with you, I don’t remember that much from the period. I don’t have any memory of us planning to meet at the night in question, and that is a part that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would I agree to meet up that night if I already had plans for seeing someone else?

D: Memory gaps don’t erase what’s on record. The messages show there were plans — times, meeting points, your name on them. The court will see that. What matters now isn’t arguing about whether it made sense — it’s whether you can acknowledge that your choices had consequences of what you meant. You thought you were just changing plans. Someone else lost her safety that night. If you want the court to believe you’re more than a man hiding behind a lapse of memory, you’ll need to show you understand that difference.

Def: I know that all too well. It makes me look guilty as hell, and it makes me feel horribly guilty as well. Not because I have orchestrated or done anything, but that a potential misunderstanding has had such dire consequences. And I didn’t do anything. I don’t know. There’s so many things I don’t understand here. But I understand the responsibility I had and have for her safety. I should have done so many things differently.

D: Feeling bad doesn’t prove innocence. It proves you’ve realised too late what it looked like. The court won’t care how confused you were; they’ll care that someone trusted you, and you didn’t show up. If you want any chance of being heard, stop explaining why it didn’t make sense and start showing that you get the impact.

 

⸻

Within The Lens

From the moment he woke up he thought of her. He had in fact dreamed of her and almost wished he could go back to the dream again. It had been so vivid and wholesome. Just the two of them out in the woods. Sitting by a fire, eating charred hot dogs and drinking wine. It had been perfect.

She was a wonder in his mind and a bigger wonder to his heart. He grabbed his phone to see if she had sent him a message while he had slept late. She hadn’t. He wanted to text her right away and ask how she was doing, how she was feeling, how her day was going and her plans for the day. He halted for a moment and decided to wait. He was afraid of looking too eager. Too intense and too much. He already was dreaming of the future they could have together and he was terrified to scare her away being himself. He had been told in the past how he could do this. Jump ahead and get too involved too fast, and he would usually get hurt by it. He would feel like the hot dog from his dream. All charred and black and bitter, and strangely cold on the inside. After a while he sent her a silly meme making fun of something silly. He wished her a good morning and told her he was off to work, but that he would like to talk to her later in the evening, should she be available.

He went to work, and he thought of her and so many things he wanted to say and to do together with her. It filled him with a fear and a sorrow. How could he speak these things aloud to her without seeming the fool and show the uncontrollable feelings he felt for her? He couldn’t. He didn’t dare. It would ruing everything and he would scare her away. He would hide it and cherish it deep down in his heart for now. But he still felt he needed the outlet of his dreams and thoughts. He needed to do something about the things he felt and desired. He had talked to other women that he didn’t feel much for, and this made it feel safer to him. He could play the role with them, have the outlet and thus be able to keep his calm and to control how he would behave towards her.

He made plans to go out and drink and be merry with friends that weekend. Maybe he would find someone to help him with his issues and disconnect from the worries and anxiety in his heart.

He cursed the love he felt. Love was such a fickle thing. So much to feel. So much worry and fear and doubts. Why would anyone want this. Yes, it was one of the most wonderful things he could feel, but it almost embarrassed him as he feared it. He would need to contain it unless he would make a fool of himself again.

The weekend arrived and he got good and drunk. He flirted with women and they giggled and played with their hair. He went home alone, but he felt relieved that he had been able to get his outlet. It would keep him safe, and it would benefit his relationship with her in the end.

The next day they chatted with each other. She was good to talk to when he was hung over. Or any other time too, really. She would make fun of him and how he drank and he would laugh and they would send memes and captions about ruined livers, kidneys and “this is your brain on water. This is your brain in vodka” with a picture of some fermented kale in a jar with Russian words on it.

This was perfect he thought. He could talk and be as he wished towards her. He still felt the ache of his emotions, but they were a bit subdued now. He could act more casually, calmly and with – as he saw it – more confidence.

Yet. It hurt. It hurt so much that he couldn’t act and say and do all the things he wanted to. How he couldn’t show her all he wanted to. To show how he dreamer, thought, wished, desired, loved and wanted to be with her. It was too dangerous. Too many things that could go wrong and scare her away or hurt him. The only way he believed it would work – at least short term – would be to keep up with his plan. To act and play with other women so that he could stay in control of his emotions, though it hurt him and made him feel awful. But he didn’t know any other way. He couldn’t speak these things to her. He couldn’t explain it in plain words. He didn’t really understand it himself. It was too much. Too complicated and complex. He didn’t have much knowledge of emotions and feelings. And what to do or say to make his thoughts make sense was even harder. He wasn’t able to explain it.

Not to himself, and certainly not to her.

⸻

Flip the Lens

She woke up, looking expectantly on her phone. It was still early, so she was not surprised he hadn’t sent her a message yet. She still wished for him to do so. She would send him a text in a while if he didn’t say anything first. She didn’t want to wake him up. He seems to need his sleep. It almost worried her the way he slept. It was something unhealthy about it all. She worried a lot about him. He had given the impression that he was interested in her and that he liked her, and she really liked him. But she wasn’t able to get a proper hold of him.

He seemed distracted and aloof and sometimes even cold towards her. He would appear very closed off at times, not sharing much about his whereabouts and not ask many questions about her. It was almost as if he tried to avoid speaking to her at times. And she believed he drank too much. And the weird thing was that he wouldn’t text or call her when he was drunk. Quite the opposite. He would disappear completely until the next day. And then he would complain about being hung over, how much fun the night before had been, how much he had been drinking and act very strange.

There were never details about where he had been or with whom. It was usually “just some friends” or “a couple of my coworkers” he would have been out with. No names, no places or no details. The only details would be what he had been drinking and how much of it. She felt excluded. Kept out of something that seemed important to him, though unhealthy. She wanted to be with him on these evening. She wanted to experience the fun and the life and the joy he seemed to surround himself in during these nights. But he had never invited her and when she had asked if she could come, she had been refused and denied to come. He would have some lame excuses about it being just a couple of his friends and that it was “boys nights out” and things like that. But at the same time he wouldn’t text go out on the town and hang with people there. She had heard friends of her tell her that he’d been seen out, and apparently not around anyone that he had mentioned to her before.
She felt kept away. Hidden. Not allowed to fully be a part of his life.

He claimed to like her a lot, and she liked that he did. She liked him too and she believed he could be a good and fun partner for her. But there was something not quite right. A secrecy and something almost dark about him. Finally a message appeared. It was a silly meme and him wishing her a good morning, though it was closer to noon. He said he had to go to work soon, but that he would like to chat some with her later would she have the time. She always made time for him. She made him a priority even if he didn’t always seem to prioritise her. Did he really like her? Truly? Or was it just that he liked her when he wanted to kill some time and didn’t have anything else to do? Was she just a fidget toy for him? She needed to ask about these things and talk to him, but it was hard because he always seemed to avoid these types of questions. Like he suddenly remembered he had somewhere to go, didn’t see the texts or something. It was confusing. No, it was more. It was hurtful.

⸻

We all compare people. Sometimes it’s casual (“she’s funnier than him”), other times it’s brutal (“she’s intimidating; she’s easier”). But comparisons don’t actually describe the other person — they are describing you.

When I thought about how I’ve compared people in my past, I realised something: 
The traits I called scary in someone else were usually the things I was insecure about. The traits I called safe in someone else were often the things that made it easier for me to hide from myself. For example:

Column A: Scary / Intimidating (Melinda)

• “Smart” really meant I was afraid of not being able to keep up.

• “Accomplished” really meant I was insecure about how little I had done.

• “Strong opinions” really meant I was terrified of conflict.

• “Well-travelled” really meant I felt provincial and small.

• “Intimidating” really meant I was afraid of looking weak.

• “A bit frightening” really meant I needed to face things head-on.

• “A bit too much” really meant not following the script given for me to feel comfortable.

Column B: Safe / Comfortable (Maria)

• “Cute/sexy/Passionate” really meant I wanted a prop to validate me.

• “Easy/Not demanding” really meant I didn’t want to put in effort or face accountability.

• “Submissive” really meant I craved control.

• “No friends” really meant isolation, so that couldn’t challenge me.

• “Playful” really meant I didn’t have to face seriousness or responsibility.

• “Easily impressed/few goals” really meant I didn’t need to grow or evolve to date someone younger than me.

• “Trustworthy” really meant I could lie and cheat and not be questioned.

When I step back, I see it wasn’t about them. It was about me. I projected my fears and insecurities onto one person, and my desire for control onto another. Neither list was about who they actually were. It was my own shame map.

How I see myself: someone who harms, takes, is selfish or in other ways self-absorbed and uncaring of others. I project my fears and insecurities onto others and blame them for my problems.

What I imagine he’s like: He’s tall, handsome, but perhaps not in a striking or “conventional/traditional(?)” way, he has an air of self-confidence around him, and he’s relaxed and secure in himself. He radiates. His confidence is off the charts, but he’s still humble and jovial. Well liked by his friends and always a desired attendee at any gathering, though he never steals the spotlight or makes too much of himself. He is a bit shy-ish, but he knows how to ignore that feeling and find peace in every situation. He’s well-educated and has a good job with a steady income. He likes all kinds of music, and knows about all kinds of bands and artists and records. He plays various instruments, but is perhaps best at the piano. He has deep eyes, a warm voice and a deep laughter. He’s very funny, intelligent, well-travelled, kind, attentive and curious. He’s practical and knows his way around a power tool and a hammer. He’s also sensitive and into the arts. He’s not very good at making art himself, but he likes to see and experience it and talk about it. His job gives him a comfortable income and he can live however he wants.

The imaginary sofa scene: He inhales her scent, her essence, her life. She does the same and they both almost, but just almost blush. As he leans in, she relaxes and with a sigh allows them to snuggle up against each other and be comfortable in one another’s presence, space and embrace. He lays a hand around her shoulder, and she puts her legs across his lap and there they exist and are two, but one.

Why I imagine she is drawn to him: He sees her better, understands her better, listens better. Of all the things he can give to her and experience together with her. How he can travel and go places and experience the world, and he can take her out and spoil her a bit a few times a year. He can be a resource to her emotions and feelings, how he can be there and know how to behave when he’s emotionally needed. His confidence and intellect gives her a good kind of resistance so they can discuss and debate and challenge each other in all kinds of subjects. He can help her find a peace and love the same way she can help him. He has his wounds, but he’s not “damaged” or “broken”.

Someone else feels this way about her, and it’s not me: Cold sweats, panic, stomach churning and heart pounding like it wants to escape this solar system. My jaw clenches and my teeth grind. My hands are shaking, and I can’t seem to find a proper voice to speak with.

What he sees in her: Everything. She is a light and comfort to him. She makes him believe in himself and she makes him want to be better. She sees her beauty, her quirks, her hair, hands, lips, eyes, and just wants to lose himself in her. But he also sees her weaknesses, wounds, problems, issues. But he sees how she turns them into strengths. He also see someone independent, intelligent and curious. Someone that wants to experience life and the world and parallel universes – someone to explore and sense with. He sees so many things in her that he both finds in himself, but that he also lacks. He wants for her to know him – every aspect and part of him – as he wants to know her. He feels he can be himself around her and finds it so easy to be frank, open, honest and vulnerable.

⸻

The sweet, yet melancholic tune filled the room. It wasn’t loud; it just had an intense and emotional presence. The sun was barely starting to make its beams radiate over the horizon, and the world was still bleak and silent. Wonderfully so. Zero croaked calmly from his aquarium. He was sitting on his branch, looking at Jay with his almost shining yellow eyes. Jay walked over to him, greeting him and handing him breakfast. Zero croaked as if in response, and Jay felt a warmth spread through him.

He went into the kitchen and made his own breakfast, and brought it to bed. Small, triangular sandwiches with cream cheese and cucumber. Eaten deliberately in the same pattern as for years, the same bread, the same cream cheese. Familiarity, safety, Happiness? Yes. Yes, happiness.

He sits in bed listening to Chopin, chewing slowly and contentedly as he occasionally looks over to Zero to talk to him. Zero had his eyes closed, but croaked occasionally back at Jay. It turned out to be a sunny and pleasant morning. Perfect weather to bike to work in.

He made his way through the mostly quiet town – it was still too early for most people to be out, but a few souls were shuffling quietly and slowly towards their goals. They all had a hollow, lonely stare, Jay thought to himself. They mostly ignored him as he rode down the streets, but at the stop lights, it felt as if they all started to turn towards him and stare at him. Were they judging him? Thinking funny things about him? Looking at his yellow helmet?

The light turned green, and he hurried on, away from the peeping crowd. At work, he felt better. He had his own little cubicle, his own little space. Here he would go mostly undisturbed and would be left alone with his sheets, numbers, statistics and graphs. He was thrilled at the thought of it all.

Lisa from three cubicles down came over. She didn’t understand this one graph and needed some explanation. He gladly helped her and explained every piece slowly and knowingly. He felt almost a passion as he spoke about the numbers and statistics. Only when Lisa said that she understood it now and thanked him for the help, did he stop. He realised he smiled broadly and said he was happy to help. This couldn’t be truer.

After safely home again, he replies to a text from Kai. He’s known Kai since they were kids, and he’s his best friend. They don’t talk every day or meet every week, but there’s a familiarity and comfort in Kai. They make a plan to get together for the weekend and are going to watch old movies, eat frozen pizza and pretend like they’re 9 years old again. A time when life was simpler.

Zero croaks comforting along with the delicate and sorrowful Chopin tune that’s playing softly in the living room. Is it more sorrowful because of memories, or is it what he actually feels from the music? He could have been a very good pianist. He had the talent, but he didn’t dare to perform. Not even for himself. The smell of clean bedsheets and a dawn to look forward to are the final thoughts as Jay drifts off to sleep.

⸻

(The B-side nobody asked for)

We’ve all heard it: “You’re what I wanted… but maybe not as a life partner.”

🎸Title: Glittered Goodbye

Ohhh yeahhh Shine it up, shine it up, shine it up tonight

You’re what I wanted Diamond lips, velvet fire
But when the lights fade out
You’re not my forever desire

Lipstick dreams on the mirror glass
Heels on the floor, burnin’ too fast

You’re what I wanted…
But maybe not as a life partner
Glitter fades, baby, and the night gets darker

You’re my stage light spark
But not my morning sun
I need forever
You’re just a hit-and-run

Kisses taste electric
Hairspray hearts collide
But every fairytale
Needs more than a wicked ride

Roses wilt on the backstage floor
We both know what we came here for

You’re what I wanted…
But maybe not as a life partner
Glitter fades, baby, and the night gets darker

You’re my stage light spark
But not my morning sun
I need forever
You’re just a hit-and-run

Ooooh, the spotlight lies!
Can’t live on neon skies!
We’re burnin’ hot tonight— But we’ll never survive!

You’re what I wanted…
But maybe not as a life partner
Glitter fades, baby, and the night gets darker

You’re my stage light spark
But not my morning sun
I need forever
You’re just a hit-and-run

You’re just a hit-and-run…
Ohhh ohhh… hit-and-run…
Goodbye… goodbye…

———

I have been turned down several times in my life by people I trusted and thought felt more than they did.
I have accepted the parts of me that need work to make me a better partner.

I haven’t possessed many of the desired traits or qualities people look for in a life partner. This is not meant as a cry for sympathy or whining or anything like that. I’m just stating what I have believed about myself and how I have seen or believed others have seen me. I am not sure if I know how to answer how it could warp my sense of what real love should look like.

I am not entirely sure why it feels safer to keep someone as a fantasy in my head (instead of treating them as “real”). I think it has to do with several things. To keep my emotions “safe” from being hurt, to keep my ego from being hurt or even upset, to keep my own picture of how I believe I am intact, that I can’t be accountable or held responsible for things (not that I am still a 100% sure of how to be properly responsible or accountable for things), not having to put myself in a situation where I have to do something I am uncomfortable with or can create a confrontation. There are several aspects, and not everyone is as big a part in it. But I have realised that I am losing a lot from doing this. I lose credibility, trustworthiness, intimacy, closeness, genuineness, a chance to be proven wrong about my beliefs, companionship and friendships. In the end, the only thing that actually gets protected is my own negative self-image and confidence. Nothing gets built up or strengthened. It either stagnates or erodes away and leaves hollowness.

“Perhaps. Yet, you were what I wanted… but maybe not as a life partner.”

The hero: “As the rain poured down over him, he stood as frozen in stone. He was glad that nobody could see his tears with the rain trickling down his face to hide his pain and sorrow. She was standing in her doorway, safe from the rain. She was in pain – emotional pain – and couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I love you so much, but I don’t think I want to… no, can be with you. It’s really not you. It is me. I’m no good for you. I am a nobody. I am nothing. You are so much, and I don’t think I could live with holding you down or back because of my own limitations. I’m too small, and you’re too grand, baby.”

The reality: “He chose avoidance, manipulation, lies, gaslighting, cheating, neglect, unkindness, abandonment, emotional abuse and a complete failure of communication, a lack of honesty, reliability and accountability.”

The honesty: “He feared being hurt because he didn’t feel good enough. He felt shame in his perceived inabilities as a person. He wanted to be more than he was.”

⸻

Vulnerability – the sensation:

I’m in a brawl. Many people are fighting at once. I feel punches and kicks hit me, but I don’t know exactly who hits me or where they come from. They aren’t very hard or solid, but enough to leave me feeling bruised and battered afterwards.

It smells like sweat, blood, urine and grime. I can feel the tension as things wind down a bit, but when the fight flares up ,I stop really thinking.

I don’t feel.
I don’t smell.
I don’t act – I react. I have to protect myself.

The noise is so loud. A cacophony of swears, shouts, grunts and whines.

I’m exhausted, and I don’t have anything left to resist with.
I let the punches continue to hit me as I withdraw.

Vulnerability – the character:

He smells like decayed organic matter. It reminds me of spring at first, but there’s something putrid in the scent of it. He is skeletal in appearance. Cheeks and black, emotionless eyes sunken.

He smiles widely, showing yellow and broken teeth. The smile doesn’t extend to the rest of his face.

He is cold, and he looks like Death himself. When he finally speaks in a hoarse, raspy voice, it’s like he knows how to scare me.

To hurt me.

His words struck all the right notes.

He tells me how I am going to be left alone.

And how I will never love anyone –  no one will ever want me.

Don’t get close to anyone. Nobody really cares. Why should I care about myself?

Always smiling.
I run.

Vulnerability – no resistance:

I stop running. My legs feel heavy, and for once, I let them. The skeletal figure follows, his black eyes unblinking, his smile stretching too wide. He waits for me to flinch, to recoil, to sprint again into the noise and the chaos. But I don’t.

I sit.

The air still stinks of rot and spring and something foul beneath it, but I breathe it. His words echo, sharp and cutting — You will be left alone. No one will want you. Nobody cares. I let them land. They sting less than I imagined.

He tilts his head, confused. Without my resistance, his teeth look less like fangs and more like fragments. His voice, though raspy, loses some of its weight when I don’t fight it.

The longer I sit, the more I realise: it isn’t his smile that unsettles me, but my own fear of it. His promises of loneliness are not prophecies — they are shadows. And shadows lose their shape when faced directly.

For the first time, I wonder if he is not Death, but a mirror. A broken one, showing me the parts of myself I’ve tried hardest to bury. By staying, I see that his words don’t define me. They only reveal where I feel unworthy.

And in that realisation, his power thins.

He leans closer, lowering himself to the ground so we are face-to-face. His grin fades into something else — not softer, not kinder, but… waiting.

What will I do with him now that he has no fangs left?

 

 

⸻

Star Trek’s Tin Man, Tam Elbrun & Me

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, Episode 20 (“Tin Man”), the crew meets Tam Elbrun — a telepath who is brilliant, unstable, and often shunned. He is called in because of his unique gifts, but he is also deeply mistrusted. For me, this episode has always lingered. Tam’s struggle with belonging, the way others use him but never truly welcome him, feels uncomfortably familiar.

Why does Tam Elbrun feel so much like me?

⸻

Who is Tam Elbrun?

Tam is a genius and a powerful empath, yet his abilities overwhelm him. He cannot filter the constant flood of thoughts around him, which leaves him isolated, misunderstood, and even feared. Others talk about him, judge him, and recall his past failures — but rarely do they speak to him as a person.

I’ve felt this echo in my own life. There have been times when I was left out of social circles, only to be contacted when someone needed my knowledge or help. For a moment, the attention feels flattering, even affirming. But when the calls stop, the silence feels heavier than before. It’s a strange and lonely cycle — wanting solitude on one side, but still aching for true connection.

When have I been treated like Tam — unwanted, but suddenly useful?

⸻

Who is Data in this story?

What makes Tam’s connection with Data so poignant is that Data is different too. As an android, he is respected by the crew, yet never fully accepted as an equal. He belongs, but not completely. Tam cannot read his mind, which gives him — for once — a conversation that isn’t flooded with noise. In Data, Tam finds a kind of relief.

I think I resonate more with Data than with Tam. I’ve felt the quiet solitude of being on the edges, looking in. I’ve been surrounded by people I liked and even called friends, while still not knowing if they felt the same about me. Like Data, I’ve been the observer, part of things but never fully embraced.

Do I feel more like Tam (the cursed gift) or Data (the outsider accepted but never fully embraced)?

⸻

Exploitation & Belonging

Tam is brought on the mission for one reason: his powers. The crew doesn’t particularly want his presence, but they need his skills. That’s a painful truth — being valued only for what you can do, not for who you are.

I remember a job where I was constantly scolded. I had to learn tasks on the spot, often without guidance, and though I quickly adapted, the recognition came in back-handed ways. I was once told: “You’re not the best, but at least you make yourself irreplaceable.” It was both a compliment and an insult. I was kept because I was useful — but never truly wanted. That’s a bitter kind of belonging.

What has it cost me to let myself be used in this way? What did I hope to gain?

⸻

The Ending: Tin Man Itself

Tam’s story turns when he meets “Tin Man,” or Gomtuu — a living alien ship, the last of its kind, grieving and alone. Like Tam, Gomtuu is exhausted by isolation. When they merge minds, they find belonging in each other. Two misfits, finally seen and accepted. It’s a hauntingly beautiful ending.

For me, it raises the question: have I ever felt that kind of belonging? I think I touched it once. Someone saw me for who I was, and she accepted me without trying to change me. But I wasn’t ready. I rejected the love she offered, pushed her away, and in doing so, pushed myself further from the acceptance I craved. Like Tam before finding Tin Man, I circled the edges of belonging but never let myself step inside.

Who or what has ever made me feel like Tin Man made Tam feel — accepted, not used?

⸻

Conclusion

“Tin Man” reminds me that being different isn’t a curse. The real pain comes when difference is reduced to usefulness, rather than embraced as humanity. Belonging doesn’t happen when others exploit us; it happens when we dare to show up as we are and allow ourselves to be seen.

The final question the episode leaves me with is the one I leave myself:

Am I willing to let go of the people who only use me, so I can find where I truly belong?

⸻

“I have changed” (Focus on character behaviour)

Keep the tone dark. Stay in third person or limited first. Show us a character who is desperate to sound evolved—but avoids the mirror.

Revision goals:

Keep the self-congratulatory tone.
Keep the woman’s responses exactly as they are—they make it work.
End it with her leaving, or him alone—but still believing he has grown.
Cut the “happier than ever” moment—it contradicts the theme (The closing lines betray the tension. That “happier than they had been in so long” does not align with what either of them just said).

---

He had been a fool and an idiot. But he was trying his best to make things better. To make sure he was there for her when she needed him and when he said he would. And he was doing a much better job of it lately. He had a pleasant conversation with his spouse in the evening and they talked and laughed together.

“I realise how I have been towards you now. I understand it all. It’s not about me, it’s about you. I haven’t taken the time to show you how I appreciate you and what you do for me. Come on, let me show you that I understand what I have done and that I have changed,” he said to her as they were finishing up for the evening. She looked at him with delight and smiled when she told him everything he wanted to hear.

“I hear you speak the words, I see you want them to be true and in some regards they are, but not in the way that’s important. Not where they matter. You may see yourself better, but you still do not see me. You still don’t listen to what I am saying. What I am telling you that you are doing to me or when I am telling you to stop.”

Yes. This time he had finally figured it out. And she finally believed him when he heard him speak. It was true after all, and they would be able to put all the struggles behind them now and continue on with their life together.

“But I am getting it,” he told her happily. “I am understanding and I am saying that I have learned to listen and to see you. I didn’t understand myself or so many other things before, but now I do. Not only do I understand it, I am growing in my understanding of things. I am changing and learning all the time.”

And you could positively see him grow as he said it. She looked at him in wonder as if she saw him for the first time.

“I only see the same person trying to look taller by standing on his toes. It may work for a few second until you lose your balance and you fall on your ass. But I will not be there to catch you when you do this time,” she said in wonderment. Eyes sparkling with renewed enthusiasm and hope for the future.

“I hope you will learn and understand someday. But you haven’t yet, no matter the words you use. You are still the same. And I will not let you hurt me again.”

As they went to bed that night they were happier than they had been in so long. They felt their relationship rejuvenated and stronger. He felt better about himself and he felt stronger for her. She felt as if she was finally going to be happy again. That she found her safety in the end and that the struggles and hardship was now in the past, soon to be both forgiven and forgotten.

⸻

Instead of giving advice or warnings, just tell them the truths you wish they would have known.

Say what you could not say back then.
Let them know how their choices shaped your life.

But also—admit that they probably will not listen.
Because that version of you is not ready. And maybe never will be.

Then… end the letter by saying goodbye to the parts of yourself that cannot come with you any more. The habits. The beliefs. The lies you told yourself to survive. Make it real. Make it final. Like a farewell to someone you loved but cannot keep around.

---

Hi.

This may seem a bit strange, but I’m you. Or rather, you in a few years.
I just wanted to give a report on life in the future. No, I won’t tell you what stocks to buy or anything like that. I just wanted to let you know how things are going and where you’d end up going.

I will explain a bit of things I have experienced over the years that has passed since I was you. I have learned some and done some. Usually without learning from it until it was too late, or even learned at all. Take patience as an example.
I never understood how important part of life waiting and patience is. To wait a bit is good. It’s healthy. Don’t rush or go off excitedly every time you want anything, and things will feel better. I think a lot of things could’ve been different for me had I understood that long ago. We both now my parents tried to tell me, but it never stuck. I was too impatient or perhaps didn’t even care about what they said. I think that’s been another issue. Not listening enough. To sit down with a person to truly hear and understand what they’re saying. It can be friends telling you you’re doing the wrong things, lovers that say they have been hurt, family trying to give advice or a coworker that tries to give instructions. I know I was never good at listening and a lot of people have been hurt because of it.

Blaming other people for my own shortcomings or mistakes hasn’t helped either. It’s better to admit fault and to learn from them than to keep lying, blaming, avoiding. I am aware that you feel wounded or hurt and feel like you don’t have a place with anyone or in the world itself. But you do. You just have to get there first. I have lost pretty much everything I could ever want. Friends, job, passions, love, money and safety because of these things. The lying and hiding about things didn’t help in the long run. Not in the short run neither, to be honest. I know you don’t really care about the “long term” at the moment, but the future is always coming. Just try to see it and listen to it. Accept it and love it for what it is no matter what it brings. Because even though hurt can come from it, more good will come. And even just a little good is worth experiencing some bad. Just trust what you feel and what you want.

I listened to too many bad advice and I let myself get into trouble. Words are important. Both the ones said to you and the ones said by you. I should’ve taken more care of my words and how I said them and when. I have learned that words holds a lot of power. It doesn’t matter why they’re said or if they are meant or not. They can cause more harm than believed. I have spoken the wrong words, spoken them to the wrong people and listened to the wrong words from the wrong people. I have tried to learn. Tried to speak the words to myself first and see how they sound and feel if said to me. It isn’t always easy because context and personal experience and thoughts can change meanings of words. Same with actions. If you say one thing, but do another, the actions will overshadow the words and you become a liar.

After a lot of errors and mistakes I have now come to a place in my life where I think I am finally starting to learn. To see and understand. I wish that you start doing so as well, and sooner than me.
I have had to cut away parts of my life, I have lost parts of my life and I have to start all over again with a lot of things because I didn’t take care of myself, what I did and the people around me.

I understand that you probably won’t take many of my words into consideration. You are not ready for that quite yet. You are still going to be a drunken mess of a person and you will create situations you don’t know how to handle or clean up.
You have parts that I no longer can have with me. Big parts. The horrible and offensive humour, the massive abuse of alcohol and other things, other habits and beliefs. The lying and deceit and the avoidance that you are doing so well and that I have kept and made into my brand – it can’t keep any of it. I don’t want to take with me. I don’t want it, I don’t like it and it hurts people. And it hurts myself.
Listen to your heart and you know that it is true what I have said. But you will probably just keep lying to yourself and blame it on others.

I did like you a lot. You were fun and simple. But it couldn’t stay that way. I have to grow up. I have to do things, if not correct all of the time, then at least better.
I know I can’t do that with you in my life. I am setting myself free from you so that we both can do what we feel we have to and want to do. You want to party and mess around. I want to grow up, change and to be better than I have been – than what I am.

Take care and stay safe.
(You are going to need it even if you don’t believe me or want to listen to me.)

Audun

⸻

Write from the perspective of someone you hurt.
Not their voice—their thoughts. The things they would never say to you.
What do they think about when your name comes up?
What wound are they still carrying that you cannot bandage?

---

We could have had the world together. You could have had everything you wanted, and so much more with me. I gave you every single opportunity to have absolutely everything and in abundance too.
But in your emotionally and juvenile mindset you couldn’t fathom and figure out to even speak the simplest truths to me. Instead of asking you chose silence, instead of talking you lied. Instead of hearing you shouted and when I gave you what you wanted, you took more and more until I had nothing more to give. Had you at least kept it for yourself to hold, that would have been one thing, but you gave it away. You dropped it for your little playthings as food in a fishbowl just so they would see you as someone good and mighty. Someone that could be there for them and protect them.
And you never even thanked me for any of it. Even after confronted you didn’t thank me for the things I gave you.

And as I think back, I realise that I am happy that I gave you things. Because no one else would have given you anything even close to what I had to offer. And you needed it. But you never considered what I needed and wanted. It was just enough for me to be led along and just enough to keep me giving you more. But it wasn’t sustainable. You can’t expect something to create gold out of rubbish. The gold I already had, but I was happy to share of it and the rubbish I received, I first thought of as precious because it was from you. Not until later did I realise how it was exactly that. Rubbish. Garbage. Something you already had used and were done with so it wasn’t difficult to give it to me.

I was left alone and not able to trust or believe in so many wonderful things because of what you did. Things I may never believe in again. The wounds got too deep and they weren’t tended and taken care of. Scar tissue is not flexible. It is not changing and growing. It isn’t dead tissue, but it won’t grow and turn into a new part of me or become what it once was.
When someone speaks kindly to me, I am waiting for the insult. When I am given a compliment, I am waiting to see what it is they want from me.
I don’t expect nice things from people anymore because I don’t believe in nice things in people anymore.
And every time someone tells me they like me, I can only hear how you laugh in the back of my head and tells me that I am fat, old, unfuckable and not worth spending time or energy on.
If or when your name is to come up somewhere somehow, I cringe. I make myself smaller. I want to hide and find somewhere I am safe. But I am not sure where that place is anymore. I don’t feel much safety, and I am afraid of losing the few safe places and moments I do have.

⸻

Writing assignment 1. (2.0) *

The War.

You know.. What they don’t tell you about war is that most of the time you are waiting. You wait for

everything: the morning, the night, meals, an attack, aid, supplies. You are waiting for things to happen, and

you’re waiting for things to stop.

It’s all the waiting that makes you afraid or descend into madness.

Sure, there are some that can’t handle seeing the enemy crawl over the battlefield towards you or the noise

and the brutality. But it’s the waiting that really gets you.

I found the attacks and the fighting a welcomed break – a relief almost – from the waiting and the

mundanity of the days. It was messy and brutal, but I didn’t have to wait any longer when I saw the enemy

approach through the wreckage of the land.

Ah! The land..

At first the land wasn’t wrecked, of course. It looked like Gods own paradise from the Good Book. Green,

thick grass, big trees laden with unripe fruits and leaves around the entire perimeter, and flowers. The

flowers… Seemingly endless lines of them. There were so many and of such colours that even I – a boy that

grew up on a farm – hadn’t seen them before. It was a true wonder and beauty I first saw when I arrived.

It didn’t take long before the Enemy had turned Eden into Hell. Grass, flowers and even the trees became

victims of the fighting. Sure, our side did some damage as well – it was war, after all – but the Enemy is the

one to blame.

I was just a kid, barely 17 when I got there. I had volunteered and was eager to fight! We were the good guys

and they were the Enemy: evil and cruel.

The summer was high when I finally got there. It was a warm and wet summer, and it seemed to be of the

liking for the Enemy. It was if they spawned out of the wet ground in never ending numbers. Rows upon rows

they came. Charging, wreaking havoc and doing all the mischief they could manage before they got

destroyed. It was messy business. I became somewhat of an expert on traps. I improved some old ones and

created some new ones. I had something that looked and worked almost like a mousetrap, pits and holes

filled with chemicals or poisons, strings, spikes and wires for them to get caught and stuck on. I don’t know

how many of the enemy I destroyed that summer. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. It was never ending. At

first I felt pity and sorrow for them. But as time went on it grew into contempt and disgust and in the end I

didn’t feel anything. It became a job like any other. Like herding sheep’s or delivering the newspaper in the

morning as I did as a kid.

But as I said: it was the waiting that was the hard part. It became difficult to sleep at night because I knew

that the big ones would cross silently towards their goal. All black, huge and invisible in the night. Creeping

slowly and steadily they passed the traps as if they didn’t even care about the poison or the chemicals.

These were mean bastards. They could destroy more in one night than a whole legion of their smaller

companions would in a week.

But in the end they succumbed as well. Almost all of them did. It was ruthless.

At the end of the summer I went home. The battle was over. We had won, to the extent that anyone could be

called victorious in this battle. So much destruction. The grass was all but gone. The fruit and leaves of the

trees brown and wittered, and the roses and other flowers were no more.

You couldn’t fathom the destruction these garden snail caused. The infestation that year was horrible and

gardens all over the country had them. They destroyed lawns and flower beds. I fought back for as long as I

had to. It was a hard and brutal war, and the memories are still with me. I am done fighting now.

I got myself a nice place to live now. But I don’t have a garden.

⸻

You have just written a guide to care for a version of yourself that did not get what they needed.
Now, think of someone else in your life—someone who was also missing support, understanding, or protection.

Write them a version of that guide.
    •    What would you have done for them if you had been the one to care for them properly?
    •    What would you never let them believe about themselves?
    •    What truths would you have made sure they knew?

Then ask yourself this:
In your connection with them—past or present—where did you fall short of that?
Where did you not show up in the way you now know you could have?

This is not a space for apologies.
This is a space for honesty.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

I have hurt people. I have lied and neglected. Deceived and hid myself and them from others. I have taken for granted and I have ignored. I have done all the things that were done to me, but somehow I turned into an amplifier and what I did got revved up so much compared to what I had experienced.

I will write about you here. You are, without a doubt, the person I have hurt the most in my life.

I didn’t just not give you things, but I took things away from you. Some things you gave willingly out of love and kindness, but in my greed, I didn’t stop with the finger given. I took the entire arm, shoulder, chest and the rest of you.

If I were to write a manual about how to treat you, I would start in the same vicinity as in the other manual.
“Communication”. Sit down and talk to you. Ask questions about what you are feeling and experiencing. Ask how you are feeling and why. Take the time and make a proper effort in listening to your words, see how you act when you speak them and ask questions about things you say. There are so many amazing things about you, and I never bothered to ask about anything.

In “communication” lies also a part of not talking. It’s about being present and letting you know that I am here for you. That I am safe for you to talk about your feelings with. Talk about what you’re feeling, because you feel safe, not because you have been hurt, and you want me to stop.

And safety is perhaps the second point in the manual. Help create a safe space for you. Help you to keep your boundaries intact and respected. Defend yourself if needed, or even if you don’t know that it is needed. Don’t make excuses for others’ behaviour, but tell them they are hurting you or doing wrong against you. I am not necessarily talking about being the big and strong knight in shining armour. I am talking about showing compassion and holding your hand when you are hurt or weary.

And when you are weary, offer help. Make dinner, clean dishes, take you out to see the beach and the birds or whatever you would like. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture with a long weekend in a big city with Michelin food and 5-star hotels. Small things are just as important. It’s the thought and the consistency in it that is the point. To show that you’re seen and heard.
That you have my attention.

Attention is another important aspect. It shows that I am interested in you. That you matter to me and that I care about you. I want to give you my attention because I want to. Not because you ask for it or because you have to. It is a genuine interest.

Transparency and honesty are something you put very high, and so that is my next point on the list. Be honest about everything. Be open, share, and embarrass yourself with the truth. Show that you are trusted and that I dare to be vulnerable around you.
And allow you to be vulnerable towards me as well. (I suppose that is a part of the safety mentioned earlier, but I think many of these things interlock with each other.)

You feel much. Much more than any others I have known, and this must be taken into consideration and protected. To allow you to feel and to experience the surrounding things is, as I see it, crucial. You absorb so much through your senses, and being extra sensitive, and considering your euthanasia as well, making sure you are free and able to feel and experience as you want should be prioritised and respected.

As an addition to the safety and protection, there is an aspect of protecting people from themselves as well. Express worries if things are looking less than ideal. It can be a small thing like “slow down and think before a decision”, who you listen to or what words are said to you that you choose to listen to. All of us are susceptible to taking criticism to heart and making it a part of us. Make us change into something we are not, or should not have to be. Confirm good and kind words, and put an effort in showing that the harmful words are not true. “You are not this or that, no matter what John/Jane says”. Show proofs against the statements if necessary. Or make the statements seem ridiculous or worthless.

Show you in every way that you are capable, good, beautiful, funny, smart or whatever is being said against you.

Another part is to show you that you are good enough the way you are. It is okay to have faults or not to know how to do certain things. It is okay not to be perfect or to have knowledge about everything. We all have to lean on others at times. I want you to know that you can lean on me, and I want you to know that I want to lean on you at times because of the things you know and the abilities you have. You are a marvel of a toolbox, and everyone who is allowed to be given help from you should feel honoured and thankful.

To have inabilities or less of an attribute is always okay. You have many strong qualities, and you should never be told that what you are and what you possess isn’t good enough.

There are so many more things I would like to have written in this manual.
Intimacy, joy and fun, respect, differences, and so many other things should be included in it.

I failed in doing all of these things, and more. I didn’t listen, I didn’t give her the safe space she needed or the respect she deserved. I didn’t protect her from harm, but caused it and made sure it was perpetuated. I, in fact, put her in harm’s way.
I abandoned her, kept her away from what she needed, and refused to give her the basic attention she asked for. I lied and deceived and hid so much from her. Nothing I did was transparent or honest. I did the opposite of every single thing stated above. I wasn’t good or decent. I was selfish and cruel. I took from her, and the things I did give her were poisonous words and behaviour.

And I am still doing many of these things.

 

(PS. Just because a manual may look extensive or long doesn’t mean that it is. It’s not that you are complicated or hard to do for or that you are hard to care for. We all have long manuals – some longer than others, but to follow a manual like this and give you these things isn’t hard. It is basic, decent and good human behaviour.)

⸻

There is a version of you that is still waiting to be cared for.
Describe them.
How old are they? Where are they hiding? What are they afraid of?
Now: take responsibility for them.
Write a daily care manual for your younger self.
Not how someone else should treat him — but how you will from now on.
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V.2

I find myself in the woods. I’m sitting on a stone wearing my green “Forrest pants”, a ragged woollen sweater and rubber boots. My “Forrest uniform” as I called it. I would say I’m about 9-10 years old.

I would put on my “uniform”, grab a small bag with my knife, a bottle of water and my first-aid kit in it and say something like “I’ll head out for a while. I’ll be back around dinner time,” could be a sentence I would say before heading out. No one batted an eye at this. The rest of my family was busy with their own doings. It was usually how it was. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with and I don’t blame them for that. It was that nobody seemed to care much about my goings and comings and what I did and where I did it. I could be outside until close to midnight in the summers, and when I got back in they were just surprised that I had been gone.

I didn’t really feel seen. Not for who I was at least. I felt ignored and at times as a nuisance. I didn’t feel cared for in the way a child should. I didn’t lack anything. In fact I would perhaps say I had too much of things. I was living a life of plenty what items and such is regarded. It was the emotional care and closeness that I lacked.

I felt lonely, I felt at times abandoned. I would be taught how to play and to perform on a stage. I never liked it and I had a full nervous breakdown at a couple of occasions when I was to play in front of people. I cried and was terrified, but all that was shown towards me was disappointment that I wasn’t going to perform.
Sometimes kids have to be pushed a little. But there is a difference between “pushed” and forced, and I felt “force” more often than a “push” or “nudge”. It wasn’t nurturing or encouraging. It was something that had been decided that I had to do.

In school it was much the same. I wasn’t good in most subjects. The more theoretical they were, the harder it was to I hated math, and instead of finding way and help me to learn I was more or less given up on. Ignored. “There are other people that haven’t been good at math, and they have done great in life,” was something said to me almost as a mantra. That could’ve been okay to be told, had I been given the help I probably needed. I ended up instead dropping out of middle school.

If I were to write down a daily manual for me at this age, let’s call it 7-11 years old, I would start with the morning. Perhaps a bit obvious, but still.

I hated mornings and they were always a struggle. To get out of bed was perhaps one of my mom’s biggest issues with me.

I would wake me up around 15 minutes before I have to get out of bed. But don’t just open the door and pull away the curtains. Engage me somehow. Start a conversation or perhaps ask about something. Anything, but let the brain start working. It is slow going in the morning, but being engaged with something, preferably something that is interesting, is the best way to go about it.
Breakfast shouldn’t be too heavy. But something light to eat – perhaps just sandwich toppings – and a glass of juice would do it, unless anything particular was asked for. If there was freshly baked bread, I would make a sandwich with that.

During breakfast the day should be mapped out by me. What is to happen later, when it is to happen and what tasks or assignments is to be done. When are people going to be home, are you to be home alone for a while after school etc. To be able to predict things and to know what’s coming is important. It creates stability and safety.

Help with homework is important! It is tedious work, but time and help is needed to make sure that the information is understood and applied correctly.

During holidays and weekends and such, make sure to engage him in some way. Find something that interests him and let him explore more around it. Some days it is okay to send him out to play or to just drift around, but to engage and make him feel seen in his interests is important to him.

The same goes for what he is thinking about when he is silent or brooding or showing signs of contemplation and thought. What is he thinking about, why and how does he want to talk about it.

Take his hurts seriously. Don’t just brush off everything and tell him it’s no big deal. Clean the wounds, put on the bandaid and take him to the doctor if he has hurt himself badly. Don’t yell at him if he falls down the stairs, even if you are scared. Be calm and comfort him.

Listen to him if he really doesn’t want to do certain things or activities. He doesn’t need to attend every single concert in church or choir arrangements and such. It’s not necessarily a place for a kid.

Show him new and exciting things. Not all day every day, but now and again. Make him see and learn and touch things. Not every thing will be to his liking, and that’s okay. He might find a few things that interests him and that he likes and it will help expand his knowledge of much.

Don’t condemn him for everything he does wrong. Explain and show why it was wrong, and perhaps teach him instead how to do things properly. He needs to fail and do wrong to learn.

Learn him better the value of things and possessions. Show him that everything gained requires work, dedication and commitment. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and often patience is needed to get or achieve goals or things wanted.

There are probably many more things that he needs and should have that I can’t think of right now. Times changes, and needs do to. What is needed or necessary one day may not be what’s needed the next day. But the important things – such as care, comfort, to be seen and heard, help with school stuff and similar – is very important. The same goes for knowing the value of his things and emotional understanding. Feelings are not to be suppressed or hid. Talk about them, let him know it’s okay to feel and be open about it. And teach him to acknowledge and respect the feelings in himself and others as well.
Treat him like you want him to treat others when he grows up. Don’t be superficial, but be caring, genuine and real.

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V.1

I find myself in the woods. In my green “Forrest pants”, a ragged woollen sweater and rubber boots. My “Forrest uniform” as I called it. “I’ll put on my uniform and head out for a while. When’s dinner? I’ll be back around then.
I have water and my knife,” could be a sentence I would utter before heading out. No one batted an eye on this. The rest of my family was busy with their own doings.

My favourite time and place was either early spring or early autumn in the woods. It was always the woods I sought out. Trees, moss, squirrels, birds, spiders and a million different other creatures and plants. I could sit among them all and just exist among them. They wasn’t going to harm me. They didn’t scare me or make fun of me. They didn’t ignore me. They just went about their life as usual. They were aware of me, and I was a part of it all.
I loved it.

As I am sitting in the Forrest I am around 9 years old. I am lonely and don’t feel seen much, unless I do something wrong, or something on a stage. I am not really a big fan of being on stage at this point, but that is what I am supposed to do.
In school I don’t have many friends. I played football with the rest of the kids, but they weren’t my friends. I would often spend recess walking together with the adults in the schoolyard. We could talk about the Forrest and plants. Weather and crops or animals or the seasons. I wasn’t a prodigy in any aspect of school. I struggled with most subjects and hated math beyond hate. At home the struggle was met with exasperation and frustration. I think I stopped doing most of my homework at around this age.
It turned into a sort of fear of going to school. Every morning my mother had to force me out of bed and out of the door. Often I would come late to class because I would go slowly on the road.

I didn’t feel seen, heard, tended to beyond what was perhaps necessary. I was given everything I could want and had, what I would call, a “good childhood”. Big family and I was taken on trips and was a part of things when my family toured around the country during the summers.
But I wasn’t cared for as I should’ve been, I think. I wasn’t held and told I was loved. If I hurt myself I was given a bandaid and told to put it on and told not to get blood everywhere. I broke my ankle, but it wasn’t anything to go to the doctor for. I was just being dramatic. A “twisted ankle” wasn’t anything to bother anyone with. One May 17th I stayed at home. I had horrible stomach pain and wasn’t able to stand up. My mother thought it could be the appendix and told me to rest and stay home as the rest went out to the parade. When she came back a while later I was still on the sofa in pain. She took my temperature and I had a fever. But it wasn’t high, so she went out again and didn’t come back until later.

I knew early that I wasn’t supposed to be cared for. I wasn’t important. I was a nuisance and a strange kid. I would be taken out to entertain guests, and then I would be sent out again.

I developed a horrible fear of the dark and of wolves. I was afraid of being alone, being hurt and not cared for, to be a burden to my parents, of not being good at things. I was repeatedly told how good my siblings or classmates had done in this or that subject or sport. I was asked why I couldn’t be more like them. I didn’t want to be more like them.

If I am to write a manual for this kid, I would start by a very simple thing.
“Talk with him”. Sit down, talk to him about what he likes and why he likes them. It would be easy to learn that much of what I liked to do I did alone. Why did I like the solitude?

Ask so if you could accompany me into the woods or go to the library or play with Lego’s. Show that you would like to spend time with me in my safe places. And when I would get hurt, apply a bandaid or make sure I had ice on a bruise (I had never used an ice pack until I was a teenager).

And tell me that it is okay not to be good at subjects. Try to find other ways for me to learn. Find a way for me to find interest in subjects and don’t just roll your eyes when I can’t understand how to write up multiplication. You can hear I don’t have an issue with multiplying in my head. I just can’t seem to get it on paper.

Ask me if I actually want to attend all the concerts and events I am being taken to. I really don’t want to sit for three hours and listen to local choirs sing accapella versions of horrible songs out of tune.

Don’t make me the odd one out – because there’s no room in the car – every time people are going to attend something that does look like fun.

Attend a football game now and again. Just try to spend some time with me doing things that I like. Not make me always do the things you or everybody else want to do. I know I am much younger than everyone else in my family, but please, don’t take away my voice. It only makes me feel I have to shout and cry to be heard. And that is truly annoying.

Most importantly in all of this is the learning and the solitude. If I don’t know how to do things, talk to my teacher or the school. Figure out an alternative way for me to learn.

See where I am going and when I am going to “my places”. I go there when I am ignored or have been hurt.
Ask me why I like that one particular tree so much when I go to the Forrest. Why I prefer to sit in that particular space.
When I hurt myself (which I do a lot) ask me gently what happened. Not shout at me for getting hurt again, even if you got scared when I fell down the stairs. And help me dress the wound or lessen the hurt.

These are perhaps the three most important things for that kid. To be seen and heard, to be helped with difficulties either with subjects in school or of a more personal matter, and to be taken care of when hurt.
Don’t make me out to be someone I am not and make me do all the things I didn’t want to do or enjoyed.
I didn’t talk much about what bothered me. I suppressed it all, and being from a family that didn’t talk much about feelings, nobody asked when I got a bit strange and quiet.
If anything was commented about, it was more about how others would perceive me, not that if I was perceived to be a bit depressed, I should stand up straighter and show that I wasn’t. It was never questioned if I was depressed.

Allow me to be me, but see me first. Then you can see what I need help with if I am not able to express it myself. Make me feel safe and cared for. Help me understand the emotions I am feeling and can’t make much sense of. Teach me how to be a human, not just how to be someone’s tool. I am more than that and I deserve more than that.

⸻

You are on trial—not for your actions, but for your impact.
Imagine the person you have hurt most is standing before a jury of strangers and explaining what your behaviour cost them.
Write their closing statement.
Not what you think they should say, but what they would say.
Be honest. Make it as raw and specific as possible. Let it sting.

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Honourable ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

In this trial, we have been told in detail about the misdeeds and the hurt inflicted by the accused. We have been told from witnesses and me, the injured part, about what he has done. But now you will be told about what those things caused in my life, because it is one thing to hear what about actions, but there’s a whole different thing to see the and understand the damage and ramifications of the things done.

One act of neglect is perhaps not very severe, but in the context of it all, it is like the first pebble that in turns loses a whole mountainside to crash down.

One of these neglects led to me almost dying. That is perhaps bad enough in itself, but it did in fact cause a death. The life of our unborn child was taken from me by him simply ignoring me and my phone calls. By not picking me up at the train station – after agreed upon seeing me – and leaving me alone in the ice cold January night he let me get attacked by unknown men. The beating led to the death of the life I was carrying. It also led to such damages to me that I will never be able to carry a child to term again. He took, in his neglect, away my safety, an unborn life and my womanhood in addition to the physical harm I suffered from the beating. The trauma also gave ptsd and walking alone in darkness is now torment. In a place like Norway, with half the year dark, this is robbing me of so much of my freedom as well.

And freedom is something his actions have taken from me time and time again. He did not interfere when I was being stalked by the woman he had a relationship in. She relentlessly harassed me and led to me isolating myself. I lost work, friends, money and time. Not time for myself alone, but also time with my family and my children. The removal of freedom and safety led to me not being there for my own children. I missed years of their life. Crucial years in their development where they were deprived of their mother, and their mother deprived of being there for them and to be there for them. He stole memories to be made from me and took away things that no money can buy back.

And during this time he defended her. Her laid himself down on barbed wire for her, kept me away from confronting her, and told her lies about me. The words he used about me shocked you all. The blunt racism, misogyny, mockery of my body and mind. He told these things repeatedly to her, but to others as well. He made sure to alienate me and make me out as this horrible villain. The words he used gained traction in his partner, and the words grew in power. They became a weapon against me making me ashamed of myself, my heritage, my body, mind and soul. Things about me that I was born as was made into this hideous slime creature that only deserved hate and pain. And he made sure as many as possible knew this.

When confronted he lied, made excuses, denied and made everything out to be my own fault and even put the blame on the person he had decided to be with. Everything to avoid taking responsibility and face consequences of what he had done. Arguments beyond arguments was the result. Again he deprived me my own experiences and feelings. This way the entire fabric of my reality continued to crumble. He took so much of my time in his desperate attempt at get away with the things he had done.

As I mention time, let me also explain the hours of sleep he took from me. Not only by endless argument well into the night, but also in leaving me alone, afraid and uncertain of my own reality. Leaving me to spend countless hours to figure out of unanswered questions, hidden riddles, to figure out of his lies. To figure out what in my world was real or not.
In summary, he took away my entire life. I had nothing left, and I wanted to be taken out of my own existence. To be no more. To doubt no more and to be afraid no more. But even then he refused to listen. Even then, with mockery and cruel words, he refused me my own will and guilted me into keep staying close to him. He took away everything that made me into a human being. And still the scars – nay – the wounds are being held open and reinfected time and time again. Refusing me to heal or to get better and to move on with my life. For many years now my life has been standing still. I have either waited terrified for the next person to attack me, or I have been waiting for him to fulfil his promises to me. Countless times he has promised me things. And about just as many times those promises have turned out to be hollow words. Robbing me of my own time, my life, hope, my beliefs and faith in myself and others. He took away my faith in love. The most wonderful thing on this planet.

His deeds and misdoings are in themselves horrible. But a small wound created doesn’t always look like much. But he made so many wounds, big and small, and he rubbed dirt all over them and let them get infected and fester until it all was gangrenous and rotten. He made me feel like every part of my existence was a black, oozing wound. And he did nothing to help me with the pain, to clean them or allow them to heal. Instead he gave me more weight to carry for him. He gave me his own pain and misery. He even gave me the pain and misery he had created for others and left it all to me to clean up, as to add insult to injury.

As time went by the toil took more and more out of me. Illness and pain grew worse and I had strokes, my body started to shut down and give additional issues. Everything as a result of the avalanche he started almost immediately after we met. An avalanche that will continue beyond the life of me. Its consequences stretches now over several generations. How much damage his avalanche truly has caused will probably never be fully known. It is so vast. It touches so many people and in so many ways. How will this affect my kids? The relationship they make themselves? They have been terrified. They have watched their mother crumble, witter, decay. They have heard her cry, seen her lying in bed deathly ill or bruised and hurt.
And he is still claiming this hurt and the sorrow he has caused as his. In his head he is the victim. Misunderstood and made out to be something he is not. He is the tormented, not the tormenter. And he is showing minimal – if any – sign of regret, comprehension of his actions, willingness to change or to make any amends. When he promises, time and time again, that he is trying to do these things, he turns around and somehow manages to ramp up his behaviour and cause more pain. New pain is inflicted in addition to keeping my old wounds open, infected and bleeding.

He may be a small, cruel human trapped it a giants hide. Yet, he has been hurt in his upbringing. He didn’t receive the care and attention he needed growing up. He has scars and still open wounds himself. But this does not give him the excuse to demolish other people.

He is dangerous beyond measure.

He is vicious. He is a master manipulator with his gaslight as one of his most dangerous tools, his lying is unprecedented and if you don’t know him you wouldn’t catch his lies and deception. And I believe that he still is this person and will continue his behaviour if let loose upon the world.

I have taken it upon me to safely “keep” him. He is living in my house, and there I am able to at least contain his ability to inflict more pain upon others. I deem this the best possible way for me to shield any more people from harm. Maybe will I get through to him, and he will come out on the other side as a better person. Maybe.

I can’t with a good conscience let him go away. I know this person – this monster – and to let him stay in my life is a choice I deem as a prudent necessity. He will continue to make things difficult and dangerous for me, but he would have still done so had he been gone from my view. It would torment me endlessly to know I had let him out on the world and so I am keeping my enemy as close as I deem safe. To keep me, my family and all the other people – women in particular – as safe as possible.

Thank you.

⸻

Sometimes the worst thing you inherit is not abuse—it is neglect.
Make a list of everything that was not passed down to you.
Then list the ways that lack became part of your personality.
Finally, choose one you are ready to stop handing down to others.

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Upbringings.

Disclaimer: I have never raised a child, and am only speaking from the point of view in the manner I was raised and how I have seen/see others raise their children.

In raising a child, there are certain aspects that would be seen as important to tech the child. Some more than others, and some that take a longer time. Some of the things are simple, everyday things like tying shoelaces, how to brush teeth, how to cross the street etc., simple and small things, but still important! Don’t get me wrong. There are so many small things that we do that may seem unimportant or at times silly, but that are almost crucial to have a safe life. Bad oral hygiene can, in the worst-case scenario, cause heart failure. (And it’s also horribly expensive to visit the dentist as an adult.)

But there are other very important things that a child needs to learn. Things that might seem more abstract, but they are important for your child to learn as they are preparing to become a functioning part of society. Emotional understanding, empathy, mental self-care, learning of consequences and that actions impact other people, and that other people matter just as much as you. It doesn’t matter if you know the person or not. Everyone is to be respected, taken into consideration and treated well. Even if you never even meet or interact directly with a person or have anything to do with them, they should be treated with respect.

My point is that social interactions and self-awareness, and things that is about the emotional and mental aspect of a person, is so very important to learn a child. Some kids may get it right away, some don’t. And I believe that I was one of those kids that didn’t. Or maybe I had parents that didn’t have the time or energy to teach me this properly? Maybe they assumed me to be more like my siblings, or that my siblings and other family members would help in these matters? I don’t know, and I am trying to learn more about these things as I mature emotionally myself. Because I haven’t been a very emotionally mature adult. (I am not blaming my parents in saying these things, by the way. I am just trying to observe and understand where I come from. How I ended up as the person I am now and what do to to become a better person.)

In this post I will try to get a better understanding of what lacked in my own upbringing. To see what wasn’t handed down to me and how this has affected me as an adult.

I would say that I had a very good childhood growing up. I didn’t lack anything. I had a big family, I had all the toys I could dream of, I lived with my family – both of my parents and three older siblings – in a well maintained and big house with a big garden and close to nature, we went on trips in the summer, shorter trips throughout the year etc. I had absolutely everything that a kid would list if asked what he wanted.

The things I didn’t have or were given, were things I didn’t understand I needed and should have had. Even though my family is big and rather close, it is still an emotionally remote and somewhat closed family. Things aren’t talked about very much. I have been told on numerous occasions how a conversation between us can almost sound like a business conference. Things are very direct, planned out and everyone is given their tasks and responsibilities. But there is no emotions. We don’t talk about things that are hard. We don’t speak up if we are feeling “blue” or if something is bothering us. We don’t speak about thoughts of love and affection. I have never heard “I love you” uttered between any of my family members. I don’t doubt that there is love, but it is something that is to go unspoken. Kind of as a hidden secret. Almost embarrassing. That is, at least, my experience of it. That is how I felt it has been growing up. And these are things that I think I missed in my childhood and combined with the way I am wired, caused something to not develop properly.

I have been asked to list the things I feel that wasn’t passed down to me growing up. As I said above, I do not blame my parents for not giving me these things. Maybe they did hand down the essentials of it, but I wasn’t able to catch the lessons? It wasn’t a childhood completely without emotions and care, of course. But I don’t think it was done in a way that was what I needed to learn and understand it. Maybe I was more sensitive or had different needs than my other siblings? Needs that wasn’t picked up on or that I didn’t express properly.

That is perhaps the first part of it: Communication. My family is very fond of talking. Discussions are frequent and diverse. But to talk is only a part of communication. Just as important is to listen, see, choose the right words at the right times, body language – both you own and others, how to have a good discussion without it turning into hostility or an argument, when to realise that you are wrong or right, and then to accept or give definite proof of what you are saying is correct. It is about respecting other’s opinions, emotions, time and boundaries. It’s about coexisting together. This I haven’t learned as I should have. Maybe it was tried, but I didn’t get the deeper context and meaning of it. I just got the superficial idea of it. And this I am struggling with today. I don’t see or listen well. I react instead of responding to what is said. I flare up and attack, or I clam up, avoid or disappear from the conversation. That can be both physically or mentally. I block out people and words. In these actions I end up hurting others. I say things without thinking through what I am saying. What the words mean. And I do so the other way as well. I quickly interpret things as harmful, aggressive or otherwise negative towards me.

I have no problems holding a simple conversation going. I’m good at small talk and I can easily talk to pretty much anybody. But it is when things get deeper, more personal or turn into things I don’t want to talk about, my screen goes down and I become a bad conversationalist. I become defensive, argumentative and completely stops to listen.

This leads me to the next point. Respect. Respect and seeing other people’s value and be appreciative of what I am given from others. This goes for objects and other possessions too. People’s emotions, feelings and boundaries are all valid and important and should be respected. All things have value. All people are valuable. Everyone has the right to be respected, listened to and seen as individuals and as people with their own views and beliefs.

Maybe it was that I didn’t feel seen or heard that led me down this route? I wasn’t good at asserting my own boundaries or expressing myself and how I felt. I let people have their way or walk over me. I would withdraw either into myself or I would go somewhere I could be alone and disappear into my own imagination.

As I look back, I also realise that many of my emotional expressions were like the ones of a toddler: I cried. I made a whole scene of anger and tears, but I never spoke clearly what was going on in my head and my heart. Often it was met with laughter and ridicule, irritation or ignorance. Or I was given a toy or something. Through this, my ability to not express myself was perpetuated and worse, I didn’t learn to see the value of what I had or was given. Things didn’t matter to me. There were of course exceptions to this, but mostly I didn’t care about what I had. Or what others had for that matter. Things were broken and I didn’t care. Maybe I sulked for a minute, but I quickly got over it.
I turned out as a spoiled prat.

This mentality I have brought over into adulthood. I haven’t taken care of my things. Clothes, objects, lovers or friends. Not even myself have I appreciated and taken very good care of. I have had a horrible diet, drank way too much alcohol, not exercised properly, and certainly didn’t care of my mental health.

I didn’t know how to or rather understand why. When I was told what to do or not to do, it wasn’t explained in a way so I understood it. I never saw the point in anything or the value of things. I never learned to work for anything or to be patient either. And even today my work ethics are at best very questionable.

Consequences wasn’t a thing for me. I never learned lessons because I didn’t have to. It wasn’t spoken about what things meant and the hard work it demanded to be able to gain or afford or achieve. I wasn’t explained the why.

So, when I struggled, I gave up instead. As I have done up until this day. I often don’t even try. I look at a task, think to myself “this looks too hard”, and then I end up doing something else. I have used food, people, tv, video games, social media, alcohol, sleep. Anything to avoid doing what should have been done. And then I come up with excuses and whine and complain and want sympathy for not being able to do things.

If I did something wrong as a kid, I wasn’t told why it was wrong. I wasn’t made to understand that why what I had done was something bad or wrong. I often learned to do the “right” things, but not necessarily because I understood why. I just didn’t want to get yelled at. In this way I learned to lie. And I became good at it. I learned to manipulate and wriggle my way out of things. Had I been taught why the things I did was wrong instead of just being yelled at, I believe things would have been differently. But that was not the way it was. I haven’t had a life filled with compassion and care. I have just been told to put on my own bandaid and “don’t do that again”, or when I have hurt myself it hasn’t been anything serious. I have broken bones without it being taken serious. I was probably then not worth the time it took to bother anyone with my hurt.

All these things have led to me being who I am today. I don’t feel as a complete adult. I am still a child.

As a summery I would say that communication, emotional intelligence, work ethics, consequence thinking, value of my possessions and others, and patience is some of the biggest things I wasn’t taught properly.
I have been asked to pick one to stop giving to others. I am not sure how I can, believing that none of this I should give or so to others.

But if I have to choose, I will take where I don’t value my possessions and others. This one I believe contains some of every aspect. In this single part I see manipulation, neglect, thoughtlessness and disrespect. There is communication involved, expression of emotions and consideration of my own and others feelings. There are consequences for myself and others if I don’t value anything. If I don’t see a value in the things and people around me I will create situations with consequences beyond what’s imaginable.

In choosing to see value in all things and beings, I believe that a lot of my other issues will be easier to deal with and to get rid of. To be able to learn what I should have learned decades ago, change and grow as a human being.

⸻

Write about three people you have hurt.
You do not appear in their stories.
These are slices of life—quiet, mundane, real.

But at the very end of each narrative, include one fleeting moment where your name comes up.

Not as a centrepiece. Not with emotion. Just… an afterthought.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️
1.
The day started out as any other regular day. Alarm went off at 7.15, breakfast, coffee – which was drank in the bathroom as I got ready to head out the door. A regular day, regular weather, regular everything. Work was a bit hectic, but nothing outside of the ordinary. I would call it an all-in-all a good day. The day would end better since I had been invited to a birthday party, and I looked really looked forward to a night of dancing and hanging out with my friends.

I got on the train, sipped my wine cooler and relaxed while I listened to music and just looked out the window. It wasn’t a long train ride, but it was nice to sit back for a few minutes and just looked at the world. I passed along roads, Forrest’s, rivers, the beach and the sea. It was nothing out of the ordinary with anything. It was all out there unchanged and – what appeared to me – unchanging. I felt a little raise in my pulse as the train rushed past a part of the sea and something got perked way back in my memories. I remembered that place. Audun had taken me there a couple of times. It was a nice spot, but I hadn’t been back for years. “Huh, I had forgotten all about that place,” I thought to myself as I looked back for a moment.

Well, it wasn’t anything to linger or use any more energy on. Went back to just staring out of the window, looking at the world rushing by the window and sipping to my wine getting more and more excited about the party.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

2.
The weather was lovely and the city was buzzing with life. It was locals, kids running about smearing ice cream all over their clothes, tourists, pigeons, crows and people selling stuff from small pop-up shops all around. A classic summer day. We walked around and liked in the windows, looked at the pop-up shops, laughed at each other’s stories and enjoyed the day.

I had wanted to go out and eat someplace and you happily joined me. It was good to see each other again. We tried to figure out if it was more or less than a month since last time we had both been able to get time off from our life’s and hang out.

As the day passed we started to look for a place to eat. We discussed in length and we both came up with various options and restaurants, but neither of us could really figure out where we actually wanted to eat. We passed a few places, looked at the menus they kept out front, looked to see if they had many customers and such. No place seemed really right. We passed this little Greek place and you suggested we go in. You had heard they had good food and great service and I was about to say I could try it out as I wasn’t sure if I had tried that place before. “No! I have been here. Years ago. A…. guy I knew once took me. They have great bread and decent portions for the price! Sure, let’s go in here,” I said.

I remembered correctly. The bread was great, and the food and service were excellent. The prices had gone up a bit, but that’s the day and age we live in, I suppose. We had some wine and we continued our conversation and laughed and enjoyed ourselves well into the evening.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

3. The thing people don’t talk about very much when moving from a house and into an apartment, is how much stuff they find that they have to give away/sell/throw away/force upon friends, families and neighbours. Fair enough, I hadn’t lived here for very long, so I didn’t have that much extra stuff to get rid of. But there were much more than I anticipated. I had already brought over most of the furniture and the most important things, but it seemed like I had more than half a house left to stuff into the new apartment. I was in the attic going through boxes of old things; photos, things bought and barely used after opening, empty jars just waiting for the day I would start making the jam I had dreamt of making, bottles too cool to be thrown away and other memorabilia from a life lived. I found a box of old high school stuff. Writings, diploma, report cards (my grades wasn’t as bad as I had remembered them!) and some old journals.

I skimmed through them and laughed and thought back with the kind of embarrassment that only a teenager’s life, thoughts and hopes can bring out.

“Oh god! I wrote that?” was an outburst that came more than once during my reading. Audun’s name came up a few times. “He called me last night drunk and attention seeking wanting to be my boyfriend,” I had written. Yeah… I should have hung up and not bothered with him. “Well, well. No need to keep all of this stuff I suppose,” I said out loud to get me out of my trip down memory lane. I kept my exam papers, diploma and the report cards. The rest got sent to be turned into new paper. Paper that perhaps future teenagers will write down their embarrassing thoughts and feelings on and look back at in 20 years and cringe about.

⸻

Describe a room full of objects that each symbolise someone you hurt.
Each item represents a person.

• What are the objects?
• Which ones are broken?
• Which ones are locked away?
• Which ones do you still think about touching, and why?

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

In my house I have a room. It’s a strange room. It doesn’t have any furniture besides shelves and cabinets. It is well lit, though no lamp or windows are there to give light. The room changes colours, size smell, hue and the objects inside are sometimes bigger or smaller, more visible or more hidden.

There are items and object all over the room. On the shelves, in the cabinets, on the floor. Some of the items are broken, some pristine and in their boxes still, some look like old and forgotten heirlooms dusty and dim. I walk into this room from time to time. To see and to remember. Remember people, times, myself. At times, it is the objects themselves that draws me in. They call to me and it seems that I can’t do anything but to go to them. Often these objects are more lit and clearer to me as I enter the room.

There is a shell from a beach long ago surrounded by the blue-green hue of the ocean and the clear summer sky that often calls to me. It is big, layered in various colours and a thick layer of mother’s pearl on the inside. It is beautiful , but it has a crack in it and it is missing a chip. I am afraid of touching it in case I would end up breaking it more. I want to pick it up, glue it together and put it on a safe spot. Make it stronger so that I could perhaps take it out of that room. But I dare not.

There is a doll there too. It is not broken or anything. A bit dusty, but otherwise in seemingly good condition. I never touch it. I don’t like it. I have it locked up in a cabinet, but I can still see it through the glass door. Big curly hair, pink dress and those eyes. They stare at me and sometimes I feel as if the eyes follows me around the room. They are resentful, suspicious and flickers with malice.

On one of the walls is a picture. It hangs crooked in a notched frame where the paint is missing. I tried at times to straighten it up, but the next time I came back it was crooked again. A couple of times, more of the paint had disappeared from the frame and the colours in the painting seemed almost to have faded some. It was less vibrant. Less clear. I have stopped trying to fix it now. Sometimes I have fixed an item without knowing it. Sometimes I have destroyed an object in my attempt to mend it. But I have stopped touching them. Not because I want to, no. I want to touch and feel and hold many of the items to my chest. Let my heartbeat tell how sorry I am. Let my heat warm them up. Be close to them again.

But I have realised that it’s not mine to touch anymore. They’re not mine to fix unless a clear sign is presented to me to do so, but even then I find it hard and I am afraid of ruining them more.

I realised once, a porcelain vase I had broken was suddenly mended and filled with flowers. The cracks in the porcelain had been mended with gold and the flowers shone like the sun. It made me happy to see, yet filled with a strange sorrow. The next day the vase was gone.

Some of the items I rarely look at or even remember are there. These I occasionally stumble upon when I’m not looking carefully enough where I step or turn. I pick them up again, dust them off and hope none of them have been broken or damaged by me. Or at least not more damaged by me.

There are rocks in the room as well. Grey, white, black, pink and pretty much every other colour imaginable.
I broke one once when I tried to get some dust and dirt of it. It cracked open and turned out to be a beautiful geode. Sparkling, glistening and full of colours. I felt so silly and stupid for not realising what I had before I broke and attained it. The geode disappeared from the room shortly after. The beauty of it was not mine to keep and it is now being kept by someone else. Someone who loves it dearly and shows it to everyone.

Often I just stands in the room. Just standing there. Looking at everything in it.
I want to repair the broken ones, fix up the faded paint, clean away the smudge. Make everything look fine and wholesome again as it once was before I crossed the path of the persons behind those objects.
There is much hurt and grief in that room and I want to make it all go away because I made it and created it, and I could have fixed so much of it had I done anything sooner.
I am working on not obtaining any more objects now. Maybe if I am able to go a while without any new ones appearing, some of the old ones will mend and disappear?

⸻

Describe your relationships as ecosystems.
Pick three people you have loved or hurt.
Are they forests, deserts, oceans, storms?
What did your presence do to the balance? What species thrived or went extinct?

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

I fell in love with the mountain as a young man. I call myself “a man”, but I was in truth noting more than a wild child. I lived my life from one day to the next, from one party to the other, from one paycheck to the next and took what affection I could get along the way.

Though I lived like I lived in “ the now”, I was never present. I didn’t have any focus or plans. Never looking behind, never seeing what was upfront, never looking down to the ground I was standing on.

Maybe that was why the mountain seemed so good to me? It grounded me. Gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of the now. I grew on the mountain and I found myself at home there.

We thrived together and the seasons came and went. New animals got introduced, and while some of them disappeared again and were replaced by others it was a place of general growth and happiness. At least for a good while. The mountain can be a hard and difficult place to live. The weather can change in a heartbeat and entire areas can become – not exactly unfriendly or inhospitable, but definitely a more difficult place to stay. As if a permanent autumn settled, the days grew shorter and colder, and I found myself eventually starting to withdraw into myself. I started to lose my grounding. My connection to the mountain grew less, and I became, myself, a lesser person as a result. I started to mistrust the mountain, to hide myself from it and both the mountain and I stopped thriving as we had. The animals went away, the land grew more and more barren and I started to trust in the mountain less and less.

I would like to say that I saw better what happened and that I took action in preventing what would happen in the end, but alas. In my mistrust to the mountain, I lied to myself and it, and I brought both hurt and decay to it.
The relationship I had with the mountain ended and with it went my last ways of grounding and feeling of safety away.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

As a lonely and strange kid, I didn’t have very many friends. I was friendly with plenty of people, but had only a very few people I was close to. So, when I discovered the woods as a teenager I realised I had found a good friend. I was never alone in the woods. The Forrest was a big place and both other people and animals lived there or ventured in it frequently and I was allowed to be a part of the community. The Forrest and the woods can give you so much. It can give food, shelter, warmth, experiences, comfort and adventure. It can be a place of plenty, and if tended and nurtured, it can grow larger and taller and provide security and safety both to its inhabitants and those who visits.

I took to it and I loved it. But I got too greedy. I took too many trees to build my house bigger and stronger, I uprooted too much land to drain marshes and swamps, I hunted too many animals for their resources. And I didn’t make sure to plant enough trees or tent to the area I took for myself.

First the birds went away. The Forrest became a silent place in the spring. The mosquitos and midges thrived and drove people out of it. The population of some of the other animals got too big because others had been removed from the food chain, and thus overpopulation turned the woods at last into a place with sick and starving animals. They didn’t have enough food or enough water. The smell of decay lay over the Forrest and rodents and other scavengers came and took over. They brought with them more deceases and drove the rest of the people and the other animals away.

I was alone. I had a splendid house, plenty of food and warmth and comfort, but I was alone in the Forrest full of biting insects, rodents, broken and rotting trees and barren land.

Like a copper nail to a tree, I had infected the whole Forrest. It had not died, but it was dying. I had to leave it and hope it would manage to draw attention to people that were able to rescue it. Clean it up, remove debris, plant new trees and clean up the rivers.

I should have been among those that did so, but at that point I was more afraid of doing more harm than good.

〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

The ocean is a wonder! It is vast, deep, a home to a seemingly endless number of species of animals and plants. It can give you almost everything you need.

I was struck by it. It drew me in more than anything I had encountered before. The depth, the changing of the weather. Just the sheer magnitude of it all!

Though, the ocean looks strong, unchanging and impossible to harm, it is quite fragile. Pollution, overfishing, climate change and lack of care can, and will, destroy it in an eye blink. I couldn’t see how that could be. Endless cubics of water, billions of organisms, powerful streams, endless waves big and small. It all looks indestructible.

So in my stupidity and carelessness, I took from the ocean without thinking. I dumped my trash and my filth in it. I fished and harvested endlessly from it, and I never gave anything back to it. I didn’t respect it or treat it with care. The howling of its pleas in the wind I took shelter from. Closed myself deep in my basement. I could hear it, but I didn’t listen to it. I didn’t heed what those winds said. “Help”, “please”, “why”, “stop”, “don’t”…

I sat in my house and enjoyed the food and other treasures the sea had given me. Living my life as the winds were blowing stronger and stronger.

It was delicious and I wanted more and more.

Soon fishes started to disappear. Species that had been swimming around and existing for eons got snuffed out. I just found other animals to eat and I kept on dumping more trash and toxins into it. East areas became desolate. Empty of everything. It was empty and hollow. In my anger and frustration I yelled at the sea. I didn’t see how I was to blame for its destruction and its loss of the ability to keep giving.

Keep taking from something and give only trash in return will do that to anything. No matter how vast, fierce, strong or unchanging it appears.

⸻

List every persona you have worn to survive—“the funny guy,” “the tragic artist,” “the wild one,” “the misunderstood soul.”
Now cross off the ones you have used to excuse harm.
Who are you without the masks?

————————————————————
My masks or “personas” have been many and frequently used through the years. I am not 100% sure as of why I started to wear and use them and when, but I know they have been me for nearly as long as I can remember.
The reasons to develop and use them is probably as many as the masks/personas themselves.
Regretfully, some of these personas has caused great harm towards others. Many people that has been my friends, lovers or in my life through various reasons. I have used these personas as excuses for my actions and thus not taken the responsibility for my actions or inactions.
I will list here the personas that I think of, and I will cross off the ones used to create harm, and take a look at the person that I am behind these personas and masks that I have used to camouflage myself in.

* The jester/clown❌
* The Rockstar❌
* The tragic artist❌
* The musician❌
* The drunk❌
* The party person ❌
* The handyman/caretaker ❌
* The player❌
* The misunderstood soul❌
* The outdoors person
* The mentally ill person❌
* The physically ill person ❌
* The carefree one❌
* The smart one❌
* The gamer❌
* The addict❌
* The emotionless one❌
* The caregiver❌
* The historian❌
* The fighter❌
* The lover❌
* The coward❌
* The silent/avoidant one❌
* The victim❌
* The juvenile ❌
* The deceiver❌
* The kind one❌

Of course, as with so many things in life, several of these masks and personas overlap and have at times shown more or less of their features in various situations. Also even though many of these have caused harm, I don’t think any of them were actually created with the intent to cause harm. Even the ones that were purely for kindness has caused harm to someone – including to myself – at times. It could be thoughtlessness or ignorance or carelessness. But they caused harm nevertheless and I can’t take that away. There is no excuse for causing harm, and I have used these masks and personas to create excuses for myself in the attempt to come off as a better person than I have been or to avoid facing the consequences of my actions.

As I look at this list, I realise that every single one of my masks and personas have hurt someone. By being kind, I might have prioritised one person over another and thus caused more harm than good.
And by being deceitful towards one person, I have given something good in return to another. I am not sure how to really separate the good from the bad here, or how to see how one mask is good or one is bad when they can go in both directions.

But the honest answer to who I am without these masks is: I am not sure.
I have lived my life so much behind some sort of cover and trying to find excuses or to blame others for my actions, that I am now at a place where I perhaps would call myself partly lost or in an identity crisis.
I know what and who I want to be, and I guess I just have to be honest and open to myself and to other about what I’m thinking, feeling, wishing for, what I want in life and where I want to end up for it all to work out properly.
I don’t want to hurt people and I am so sorry for having caused the pain I have.

I suppose all of these masks contains parts of me that is a part of my personality, but the traits have been amplified, or in other ways manipulated, to fit some circumstance or another.
What I am trying to figure out and to do now is to pick through those things. See what is an actual part of me, remove the things that I don’t desire to keep and keep the good things and use it to mend myself and become one person that is decent, good, genuine and honest. Maybe through that process I will be able to make some amends to some of the people I have hurt, and maybe figure out how to make amends to the rest of them.
I want to live in a happier and better world and I believe I have to start with myself. I have to be happier and better myself first.

⸻

Truthfully?

I ran into her at the grocery store. It was a proper meet of chance since neither of use usually uses this store. I had passed by it and remembered I needed a couple of things for dinner and she had walked past it and found herself peckish and headed in. The last time we had met was not a very nice day. We had broken up after a long fight and I had said things that was hurtful and I had stormed out of her apartment. We never spoke to each other again and we both eventually went on with our lives. She had found an accountant and was about to get married and I was about to tell her how things were fine and I was living my life, as one says when things aren’t really great or you don’t have really much going for you.
But what came out of my mouth was something different all together.

“Oh, I’m horribly depressed and have realised I have wasted most of my adult life on partying and using alcohol, drugs and people to avoid my own feeling of self loathing and don’t see any shiny bright future for myself. Not that I believe that the future will be very long seeing how I have lived my life and destroyed my body and mind.”
She stood there almost as shocked as me. I felt a weird combination of blood draining from my face and flushing red hot at the same time. I stuttered and tried to laugh it away as a joke but continued with “And on top of that I have continued the same blame game as I did with you. Refusing to take responsibility for my own actions and blaming others and resented others for their abilities, what they have and their happiness. I was fully in the wrong when the things we argued about happened, and I actually never really liked being in a relationship with you and was always looking for a reason to leave. But seeing as I was a coward I needed for you to be the reason that I could leave and I was relieved and almost glad to have found something to blame you for – though I was the one in the wrong – when I left that day.”

Now the colour had properly drained from my face. Her face, however, was quite colourful and showed signs of uncontrollable rage.

I dropped my basket and said I had to go. I planned to give an excuse about forgetting to pay for the street parking or something along those lines but instead blurted out “I’m gonna go now. I don’t want to hear what you have to say – or most likely will do to me – in response and it terrifies me how your rage is building up and you are standing like you’re ready to take my head clean off with a gently placed round house kick.”

I stared at her for a split second and then I ran. And I was dodging kiwis and bananas as I ran through the store.

A few weeks later I was back in my old home town. There was a birthday to a member of my family, and I looked more or less forward to it as one does when the whole family is meeting up. A lot of food, loud conversations and so many people.
I stopped by the mall to pick up a present and I ran into one of my exes.

We had been together for years and had a life together before I had, yet again, ruined things.

It was a bit awkward as neither of us really wanted to talk to each other, but we smiled politely and greeted each other as one does. I asked her about things and was about to stop talking and wait for her reply when I blurted out “you really don’t have to reply. I don’t really care. I didn’t trust you back then and I don’t trust you now and I really don’t have any need to hear what you hear to say and I would rather just pretend we didn’t run into each other just now and carry on with our errands and our day.”
What was going on? Why would I say these things? It was, of course, something I felt and meant. It was true and perfectly honest, but these things you keep hid behind the mask of civility and social norms. I wasn’t able to move before she slapped me and walked away. And I didn’t blame her. Some truths are better unsaid. Even if she had known it.

I started to panic. This was the second time I had blurted out the absolute and horrible truth to someone I had dated. What was going on?

I stayed in my home town for a couple of days as it was summer and I could help sort through some stuff from my childhood and decide what was to be kept or thrown out.

I ran a couple of errands and met some people I haven’t seen for a while. Among them was this old shop owner. I had repeatedly shop lifted from his store when I was at middle school. Alcohol, tobacco, candy, magazines and stuff I didn’t need. I guess I had done it for the thrill and out of boredom.

As I paid for my groceries I blurted it all out to him. All the times and the things I could remember I had stolen from him.
I didn’t know what to do. Again I stood there perplexed. So did he. He also looked sad.

“So… Uhm… would you like to pay me for it now then perhaps?” he asked me.

I said that I would be happy to! I asked him to just think of a number and I would pay it without argument.

He tapped his screen and a sum appeared under the line of “various item”. It was probably a lot less than I had stolen for, and I asked him to add some more. “For rent and such and since it’s probably way lower than the value of the things I stole,” I said. He looked surprised, but thanked me for my honesty and added another thousand to the sum. “As if I had any other choice than to be honest,” I muttered low enough for him not to hear properly.

He thanked me for my honesty again and I said “you’re welcome. I’m just happy you didn’t call the police as this sum was high enough to be regarded as a serious offence. Though it was probably too long ago and that it would’ve been too old to be made into a proper case.”

I closed my eyes hard and just left the store as I said “shut up shut up shut up” to myself under my breath.

The same thing happened the next day. I ran into an old teacher of mine and went over to him and told him I was one of the boys that had written things about him and one of the assistants in the bathroom stalls, made anonymous calls and set fire to his mail box and let the air out of his tyres and such. I also let him know who other had been apart of the plot and that we did it because we didn’t like him much because he was strict with us and made up repeat lines and we thought it to be stupid and boring.

I ran away in horror and as I was trying to think what was going on I received a text from a hidden number. “Hope you enjoy your days. You have been cursed to always tell the truth to everyone you have hurt. It can be to admit things you have done, what you are thinking at the moment or what you are thinking about doing. But it will always be the truth. Raw, unpleasant and very honest. The curse will only be lifted when you change your life, have made amends and never hurt anyone again. Should you manage to lift the curse, the curse will reactivate as soon as you hurt anyone again. And if it comes back, it does so with a vengeance and it will never go away again. You will end up alone, bitter and scared of talking or interacting with anyone ever again. This is a good prepared curse and I have spent much time and resources getting it working. You can’t get out of it unless the things above has been completed.

Have a nice day😊”.

No sender or any hint of who this could be or anything. All I knew was the information given and I read and reread it several times. I closed my eyes and realised what I had to do.

I made a list of the people I had hurt. Even people I wasn’t sure I have hurt had been written up and I tried to think of the things I had done to hurt them, even if it had been unintentional.

I spent the rest of the summer making this list, calling people, talk to them, explain what I had done, why I had done things and I asked how I could make it up for them. Some of the people just told me they forgave me and appreciated the honesty and they were glad I had reached out and been so brutally honest about what I had done and why.

Some needed help with a few things or wanted me to meet them and sign a piece of paper where I wholeheartedly apologised and promised not to do it ever again.

After I had completed my list I didn’t feel any different. It had taken a lot out of me to do all of it. It had been tears, some spat at me, some cursed the day I was born. But in the end I had gotten through to them all and made things better, if not all well again. Some things just can’t be fixed.

I still don’t know if I have completed my mission and if the curse has been lifted or not. All I know is that I never intend to provoke it and figure out what will happen if it should return. I am living life as an honest person, not doing anything bad towards anyone and I have yet to spill out my deepest and darkest truths to anyone again.

⸻

Stupid Things Said Quietly

It wasn’t planned. Just something said in the moment—offhand, unfiltered, half-meant at best. The kind of sentence that leaves your mouth faster than your brain can catch it. And at the time, it didn’t even feel like much. Just words. Sloppy ones, maybe. But not harmless.

No one was supposed to hear it outside the two of us. That’s the part that made it seem safe. The room felt casual. The moment felt forgettable. And so a horrible word was uttered in a stupid situation, for an even stupider reason, by someone who didn’t think their voice carried much weight.

But it did.

That’s the thing about words. They don’t stay where you leave them. They wander. They take root in places you can’t see, in people you weren’t even talking to. And once they’ve been heard, you can’t unsay them—not really. Apologise, sure. Learn from it, hopefully. But the sound lives on, replaying itself in the ears of the person who received it.

Most people don’t mean to hurt anyone. Careless words still cause careful wounds. And the damage doesn’t care whether it was intentional or not. It still wounds. Sometimes permanently.

Later, when things quiet down, you might try to justify it to yourself. “It was just said to shut her up.” “I didn’t think anyone besides her would hear.” “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

But what you think doesn’t change how those words made others feel.

Words matter, even the stupid and hateful ones. Especially the hateful ones. Because they’re the ones that sneak past your filters and show people the parts of you that maybe you haven’t looked at too closely.

So say less when you’re angry, horny, drunk or in love. Think more. And if something tasteless escapes your mouth—own it. Don’t bury it in silence and hope it rots away. Pull it up by the root. Learn the shape of it.

Because even in a stupid moment, you’re still responsible for what grows from your words.

⸻

The cafe wasn’t too full even though the weather was, in my humble opinion, perfect. 21 degrees, lightly clouded and a very slight breeze.

I ordered my coffee and a bite to eat and sat down at a table outside, brought out my book and waited. I had received a strange invitation for lunch that would be in my best interest to accept. The letter had been sent a few years ago, by the stamped date on the envelope – I figured that it had been a simple error at the post office since the invitation was for today – and didn’t have a name or address of the sender.

I had found the place, checked my watch and realised I was a bit early. This is a newer habit I’m trying to maintain, and I was rather pleased with myself. It meant I could enjoy my coffee and my book for another few minutes before this mysterious person would show up.

I checked my watch again and figured the person would be here any second now. It was five minutes past the set time after all. Another few minutes went by and I started to think that this all had been a prank from someone. As the time kept on passing I got more and more sure of this point.

As I got up – food and coffee consumed – I saw a kinda, weirdly familiar figure coming down the street towards the cafe. He had very long hair, side burns, black clothes, sunglasses and the same bag as myself. I knew this person, I thought to myself, but I wasn’t quite able to place him. He waved as he approached and I sat down again. He came over and apologised for being late blaming the traffic and difficulty finding parking and a few other kinda believable things. He looked nervous and a bit awkward and wasn’t quite sure how to proceed the conversation. He said he would go inside and get us some more coffee and himself a bite to eat. “You still like the same coffee? Latte with an extra espresso shot and no sugar?” he asked me. Puzzled by this I nodded my head and really tried to wrap my brains to figure out how he knew how I liked my coffee? Why was he so familiar? Where and when had I met him before??

I was starting to get a bit freaked out and really wanted to leave the place, but some curiosity took me and I stayed.

He came back out, sat down with the tray with coffee and a bagel. He looked at me with a strange smirk as if he knew what was going through my mind.

“The thing about meeting yourself from another time is that the brain won’t let you realise it is yourself,” he said to me. “It’s kind of a safety mechanism to make sure you don’t go mad. It can be very dangerous meeting yourself and not everyone is able to handle it,” he continued.

I looked at him and I realised it then. He was right! It was me sitting there across the table. The panic took me at once, heart rate shooting through the roof, sweat started to drip down my forehead and all my blood had drained from my face. It felt like I was going insane or that I was dying or that the world was ending.
He.. Or rather I started to chuckle and said “ just breathe! Relax. It’s gonna be okay.”

“What… how… what the fuck,” I managed to stutter at last.
“Oh, it’s rather simple when you know how to do it. I figured out how to travel through the dimensions, appear in my corporal form and walk about. Just like going on a holiday, kinda. It’s to difficult to explain with the limited time I have before I have to get back, but you’ll figure it out if you’re meant to,” he told me.
I couldn’t fully comprehend what I was told, but I preferred believing it over thinking that I had a future in a padded room dosed up on heavy narcotics in front of me, and so I managed to relax.

“I just like to drop by the different places and times. You know, just to check up on how I am doing. I see I had my hair cut…”
“Uhm, yes. Hair… cut…” I mumbled, still trying to convince myself that I wasn’t to be picked up by people with a straight jacket any time soon.
“Huh. Doesn’t look too bad! Bet it’s much easier to maintain too!” He.. I responded.
“Uh-huh,” I said and nodded.
“So! How are things going? Working, playing in bands and living life to the fullest and having a blast I suppose?”
“No… Not exactly. Not at the moment, no. I mean. I am living life and aren’t miserable. But I don’t have any work or bands at the moment. I am focusing on my mental health and getting my life in proper order before I feel okay doing any of that again,” I said. I felt as the “taking care of my mental health” part was really taking a dive for the worst right now as I was talking to myself. It’s often not a good thing in the field of psychology to be seeing yourself, having coffee and talk out loud to myself. I was really hoping other people could see the two of us sitting there and not just me talking to myself. Or maybe they just thought I was talking on the phone with an earpiece in.

Anyways. He looked back at me and frowned and raised an eyebrow. He studied me and seemed to have as much problem with comprehension of what was said as I had.

“But… why? Drink, play music, games, smoke some, eat good food, drink some more, go to bed late and wake up even later… that’s all you need to be happy, right? Take care of your own needs and the things you like to do,” he countered after a few moments. “It has always worked out fine. Sure there are not much in your life that’s too steady or solid and the economy hasn’t been all that great. But you have been carefree and doing things for yourself! Isn’t that what life’s about?”
I stared at myself with bewilderment. What an immature idiot, I thought to myself.

“No,” I replied simply. “Life is in fact so much more than that. The way I lived my life, the way you apparently live it now, is not carefree or fulfilling or good or decent. It is draining and destructive. It gives you nothing but short term bursts of joy and leave people around you feeling abandoned and used. Hurt!”

He looked back at me surprised and almost offended. “People have to take care of themselves and their own happiness. Not rely on others to do for them,” he snapped back.

I simply looked back at myself in shock. “ You have never been independent. You have relied more than you fathom on the people around you. You are a coward, a leach and a horrible person. Having beliefs like that will lead to a life of misery, regrets, shame, loneliness and an empty feeling inside so wast that no matter how much you drink, drug up, fuck around, buying things you don’t need can ever fill it up. It will give you physical injuries that will keep you from doing the things you love, remove you from the people you love, cause pain and suffering for yourself and others around you beyond your wildest nightmares. It will be your doom. I know…”

I took my bag, looked back at myself with anger and frustration and figured that I would like myself to listen to me. But I knew myself too well. I wouldn’t listen. I’d know better. If anybody had lectured me like that back in the days I would just scoff at them and continue on. Perhaps do the things a bit more to annoy and prove a point? I realised I wasn’t really sure why I had acted like that. Why I had refused to listen to advice. Good advice.

I knew the version of me I just met – and disliked majorly- would go back home and get proper wasted tonight. Just because. He would stew and brew that anger. Anger he knew was towards himself and for not listening to others when they gave sound advice and how to be better. It would only fuel the self destructive behaviours and make things worse for a time. I stopped in my track and walked back to the cafe. I needed to tell myself the things I had learned about myself over the years. Things I had been told, shown and taught.

The table was empty. A halfway smoked cigarette lay in the coffee cup. It had been smoked hard and then crushed before put in the cup. I had been right. I had gotten angry and I had bolted. Avoid any further confrontation and a discussion I knew would turn ugly.

I sighed and turned away. I hadn’t done myself any favours by meeting myself. I was angry that I hadn’t used the opportunity better to make things clearer how the way I have lived my life is not something worth doing. It would never lead to any (end transmission)

⸻

[Somewhere in the world – June 22th 2030]

Hi!

First let me tell you that the future is nice! We still don’t have flying cars or skateboards, but there has at least not been a nuclear war or any other new major conflicts. I can’t give you much information about stuff in case I would actually take me up on the information and do something stupid and thus disrupt everything. I can’t give imagine me being capable of messing everything up, like I have been prone to.

And that is why I write you now…
I am pleased with some of the changes that I managed to make, but I realise that I spent too long getting there and need to speed things up some. You may think that 5 years are plenty of time and that things will move along in the speed intended and “it’ll be fine”. No, it won’t. It will be better, but not fine.
So I just want to let you know that you have get to get off your ass, grease up your elbows and DO THE WORK, you lazy imbecile! You take too long to get started with EVERYTHING. You don’t do enough when you get started and you still rely too much upon others. You will never get to the place you want to be – mentally, emotionally, physically or geographically – with the pace you’re keeping now. I understand that it’s hard and that it’s a lot of work and that it scares you. Don’t let it. The only reason to be afraid of work is if you don’t do it. The consequences will be terrible. There’s no “if” or “perhaps” or “it’ll probably be fine”. It won’t.
I am sorry I didn’t get going all those years ago when the decline started. It would’ve saved me from a lot of what has happened over the last 25 years. Avoiding things – the truth in particular- has never, and will NEVER, work to the benefit of the future me’s. It never has!

So! When today’s things have been dealt with – I know what today is about, and though it sucks it will be okay – pull your grownup pants on, get going on your work and hope that I am in time to send you this letter. I hope you won’t have to be me. As I said, things are better, but they’re far from fine!
Idiot.

Best regards,

A.G. Larsen

⸻

As I am making the last preparations on the food in the kitchen I am feeling a bit nervous. I have invited myself to dinner.
You may think that’s perhaps not such a crazy thing and certainly not something to be nervous about? Well, yes and no. It’s a dinner for me, myself and I. The different “versions” I have been through my life. Who I have been, etc.

There’s not like it will be dozens of me, of course, but I am still surprised about how many that I had to invite. Or rather how many of me I could remember or recall as “different” enough to be considered.. well, different.

The youngest have already arrived. Not to strange perhaps as they have my parents to make sure of that. The older and (more) adult me’s are a different matter. I have had a tendency to be a bit “time optimistic”, you could say. It resulted than more often than not that I was a few minutes late. But it wasn’t always so. The 20 year old me was actually the first one to arrive. Stressed out of being too late, I came 20 minutes too early. 10 year old me sat down at the table a couple of minutes early together with 6 year old me. I looked at myself, thinking at how a weird little kid I used to be. I collected stamps, pressed flowers, made Lego houses for my cats, preferred to read the old Viking sagas instead of books and comics other kids my age read, was had skinned off my hair and had a religious obsession about Robin Hood.

I would wish I didn’t get stranger as I grew older. It was a different kind of strange, but I don’t think it was an improvement. My interests removed me even further from my peers, and I found myself being a quite lonely kid at 14-15. No real friends to speak of, and the friends I did have was not of a very good sort. The biggest difference between my 10-year self and my 15-year self was the look in my eyes. There was something almost hollow to them. They were big, looking and searching constantly around for anything besides other eyes. I also had a wariness about me. An uneasiness that made me almost seem skittish. The older I got, the more “normal” I found myself looking, as if most of these things had been worn off. But I realised I was just high…
I had also gotten better at hiding it all at 20. Wouldn’t appear depressed or mentally ill in any way. No, self-medicating it away was better than confronting these things. I was looking at my 10-year-old self. I looked at me with some puzzlement. I could hear myself thinking “what happened to me?”.

This was kinda the whole point of the get-together. To put a finger in the earth and see how things are going. It was clear to my younger self that things hadn’t been all great all the time. When everyone was in place the lasagna was served. It was a dish I know I have liked my entire life. I used to have it as my birthday dinner for several years. I talked about big and small I had experienced in my life. Talking a walk down memory lane, so to speak. I could see the younger me grew more and more quiet and often very uncomfortable. It was almost as I wasn’t aware of what I had done growing up. And I guess in a way I wasn’t. I was 10. I didn’t understand everything, but I understood enough to realise that this was not how I had envisioned my life to move forward or be.

I could hear myself mutter “idiot” at a couple of things being mentioned, and how I stared at myself as I downed glasses of wine and lit up cigarettes after the dinner.

I was a bit curious about the different views of myself now and myself at 10. I looked at the cigarettes and thought” post-meal cigarettes… I kinda miss that”. I had probably more pleasant memories to look back on than how it looked from a 10-year-old’s perspective. I knew smoking was dangerous and bad for you. It didn’t smell nice and made your teeth yellow. “Idiot”, I heard myself mutter again. And I had to agree with myself.

As the evening carried on I could sense more and more feelings of familiarity being in the room. Regret, feeling stupid, ashamed, and avoiding. Things I have done and felt so much in my adult life. There was anger at myself as well. Another feeling I’m well known to, but it came from a rather unsuspected source. It was me at 10. I stood up, looked at myself and asked with tears in my eyes ,“what happened? What did I get like this for?”
I could see the disappointment and sadness dampening the anger somewhat as I looked each and every one of me in the eyes. I had been so bright and curious and joyful. I had ended up ruining my life, the life of others, not growing up or taking care of myself or my own life. I avoided and hid and lied. All because I wasn’t feeling good enough or talented enough or that I didn’t know how to handle what was given to me. Not believing in myself and the talents I possessed. I threw it all away and became lazy and mediocre. I even had become a bad person.

As I looked in my eyes and saw all of this, I knew how disappointed I was in myself. How I have wasted my life and my opportunities and not done anything I had dreamed about as that weird little kid. I was gonna be a boxer and an archaeologist or a biologist studying wildlife in the forest I loved spending my time in. I had failed myself, and I knew it. I figured it was time to make things up for that kid. As he left, I told him I was sorry about not being what he had hoped I would be. A tear ran down my chin and I muttered “you better… Idiot” and put on my bright red coat and walked out the door.

⸻

There are Gods, and there are gods. Deities have been around since before time, creation and anything. For as long as there’s been a semi-complex arrangements of cells that’s created the first semi-conscious organisms, there has been gods and tales of worship, creation, beginnings and ends of time. We have all heard of the great ones in various mythologies. Zeus, Gaia, Odin, Ra, Hera, Manitou are all well known examples of great Devine beings with incredible powers of both creation and destruction. But there are of course all the “smaller” gods. There are a myriad of them. Too many to count through history. But there are also another tier of even smaller gods. They are rarely remembered through history, and after the civilisation that first came to worship them passed from this world. One of these minor gods is Selph.

He has been left out of – or most likely forgotten – from pretty much any religious writings since the concept of letter appeared thousands of years ago. He’s been remembered in a few areas and been named occasionally by someone’s grandmothers grandmother as a very obscure and minor curse when certain things has not happened as intended.

Selph was one of these minor gods. He was the god of misplaced intentions. He loved doing good and right for others, but always managed to mess things up worse had he just sit down, kept to himself and whittled a flute or something in the woods. (He did actually do so once. And proud and pleased he was by this, gave it as a gift to a little kid who looked at it with big eyes. The kid took it home and played it until the rest of the family almost went insane from the constant, single tone whistling and sought Selph out and took away his knife, threatened to “shiv you with a rusty shank should you ever make another flute again!” and cursed him for his horrible deed. He never whittled a flute again.

Another time he tried to help out, it was a farmer who despaired because there was a drought and his crops were dying.
“I will dam up this river, make a canal for the water and help the poor farmer irrigate his crops!”
He got to work and the next day – being a god, he could do these things in no time at all – he looked with pride as the water started to flow towards the field. The farmer rejoicing in the sudden arrival of water thanked the gods and the crops were saved. Until the drought was over, and the river again reached its natural state. That state was a lot bigger than it had been when Selph had dammed it up. This resulted firstly in the flooding of the farmer’s fields and house, ruining it all. The dam he had built wasn’t strong enough to keep back the now much bigger river, and it burst asunder, sending a massive tidal wave down to the village lying below. The village and all its crops were ruined, and to top it off, the new swamp-ish landscape made it a perfect area for mosquitoes to flourish in the tame after. Yet again, Selph was blamed and again was he cursed and asked to stop helping.

There are a thousand stories about Selph and his actions who led to smaller and bigger disasters. Luckily, only a handful of them -still an impressive number considering it all – contains disasters like the village. But all deeds that were meant as good but turned into worse had nothing been done or turned into anything but intended, is a relic of the Devine power that once roamed the mortal realm as Selph. Though he is not walking among us in his corporal form any more, he is still there trying to help out, wanting and wishing everything to get better than it is and how it ends up.

A little tale about the long forgotten god for misplaced intentions: Selph.

⸻

I_{’m so sorry. I am aware of the ugliness. I have realised more and more what I did and how I did things wrong. And that I just couldn’t ease up the stupid fucking track I was so stuck in..
I know. I just wasn’t able to shake out of the haze I had dived into..I am so incredibly sorry about all of this. I don’t have words to tell you just how sorry I am about it all…
I didn’t see anyone and none of what said in those texts are true or said by me!
I’m sorry I made that whole fucking mess. 
I wasn’t doing anything of the sort at least. I am sorry you got those messages sent to you. I have no idea how they got sent or by who. All I know is that nothing of it was true and that I didn’t send them…
I don’t do that anymore. I have no desire to hide anything. My point is that I didn’t send those texts. And I wasn’t seeing anybody else. I don’t have any desire to see or to be with anyone but you…
I am aware I was rude.
But those texts in question are of a very different character. I wouldn’t say those things. They were not true. And why would I deny it right afterwards?
But that didn’t have anything to do with what I actually felt for you. I was panicked about what I felt and terrified of getting hurt or rejected and I ended up being an absolute asshole. 
I was an idiot and I said things I didn’t mean and should never have said. 
Because that was what I knew and was used to. It didn’t make you less attractive. It just made me more insecure in myself. And I was stupid and took it out on you instead of using my words and saying how I felt properly. 
And yes. I had never gone back on feeling before.. sometimes things changes. And I do have so many feelings for you. And they are so strong and so big and so good…
Sorry. That wasn’t the meaning. I am aware of that I went after different people. I never thought about the fact that they were all white though. 
That was not what I wanted. I didn’t know how to express myself. I had created such a mess and I didn’t know how to deal with anything. And the stress with the house on top of that just made everything so much worse…
So much of the things said didn’t come out right. It should never have been said in text. Text is a horrible medium to converse in. Especially with my ability to butcher what I mean and want to say.
But I am sorry about the things I told you in text and what I have said to others. It was not how I honestly felt and I acted like a child without any social antennas or common sense. 
And sometimes I try to hard to use bigger words because I have felt embarrassed about not having better words to use and it all collapses. 
I’m not saying this is the case about everything. I am saying it has been the case at times. Like “absolutist”. It was not at all the word or meaning of what I was looking for. I think I tried to put it a “ “, but I could have forgotten to do so. 
I was lazy and thought I knew better than I did. I was wrong in pretty much everything I wrote on that list. And even the things meant as positive or good turned out bad. 
I am sorry for not putting more work into so much. I thought it was enough, and when it wasn’t I got defensive and the entire point got missed and I just ended up making a whole new and bigger mess out of everything. 
Because every time I was confronted by someone I panicked. I didn’t know how to react and I ended up trying to brush things off or something similar. It was so stupid. 
I was so insecure. I can’t explain how messed up my head was about everything. 
But I never thought of you like that. I am sorry horribly sorry that it came out like that. I never wanted it to be so. I lost “control” so quickly and I had no clue on how to get a hold of it again. I had created a mess I didn’t have a clue about and… I fucked up more than I believed. And it just got worse and worse because I never found the way to just cut through all the bullshit. Even when told how to I just couldn’t get it done. 
No, I see that I did and how I did it. I understand all that now. But it was never because I felt that way about you. The problem was what I felt about myself. And instead of doing the work on myself I dragged you down instead. 
But I know what I felt. I know how and why I did the things I did! And I see the chaos and horrors it caused. I’m not indifferent to any of it or trying to brush it away as something that “wasn’t like that” or anything. I understand and I am genuinely sorry about everything I did, how I handled everything, how I lied and betrayed and hid and….
But you can! I am doing the opposite of the things I used to do. I am not that person anymore…
I’m just trying to tell you and to show you that I am not the same person. I will never do the things I did to you ever again. 
I just know that my head works differently and I think differently and I feel differently. Everything is different.
I don’t do the same things anymore. And I have a very different understanding of the things I did and the ways I acted and how I hurt you..
None of those things would ever occur again. I would not abuse you, I would not hurt you, I would not lie, I would communicate openly and honestly and both see and listen to you…
And I am now able to control myself. I am not driven by the same things I once was. I don’t want the things I once believed I wanted or was “supposed” to have.
I know myself better and I am growing more and more for each day..
Even though I don’t believe differently, I know differently and I think about everything differently. I understand differently and more.
I also think differently now and act differently. I have really changed a lot within me. I’m not saying I am all done changing and working on myself etc! But there are many things that’s different….}

⸻

They kept calling. Texting. Sending inside jokes in group chats and reminders that the weekend was coming up fast. As usual, they wanted him to join them—drinks, noise, dancing, more noise. The same thing they did every Friday night. And often, he went along with it. It wasn’t like he hated it. Being with them was fun in its own way. They were wild, loud, never boring. He always had stories to tell afterward.

But not this week.

Something in him felt worn down—frayed, like a wire stripped too thin. The kind of tiredness that isn’t solved with sleep. Just the idea of laughter echoing off club walls or trying to shout over music made his skin itch. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about them. It wasn’t even that he didn’t want to be invited. He just didn’t have anything left to give.

He turned his phone to silent. No dramatic messages, no drawn-out explanations. Just a quiet decision. He made himself a drink, something simple, and let the evening settle around him. No voices. No obligations. No pretending.

The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of small comforts: the clink of ice in the glass, the soft hum of a playlist that didn’t demand anything from him, the steady beat of his own thoughts returning to themselves.

It wasn’t antisocial. It wasn’t rejection. It was recalibration.

Some people gather energy in crowds. Others lose it there. And for him, nights like this—alone, still, without pressure—were what brought him back to centre. It was how he remembered who he was when no one else was watching.

By the time the group texts rolled in the next morning, filled with blurry photos and hangover complaints, he was already feeling better. Grounded. Clear-headed. No guilt. No FOMO. Just the quiet confidence of someone who knows their own rhythm—and doesn’t need to explain it.

⸻

People grieve in various ways.

Some people drink, some cry, some get angry, some clam up and pretends like nothing happened.

I started wearing black clothes. My grief was deep-rooted, and I felt the only way I could express myself was through the way I dressed. I have never been great with expressing emotions through words, and I have at times acted out instead. My grief was a great loss. I got allergic to apples at the age of 10. Apples that I loved so much. It grew around my childhood home and everywhere else in my neighbourhood as well. But suddenly it became my most severe and lethal enemy. It was hid in so many drinks and foods, and I had to always be cautious and read what things contained. Same if I ate something homemade. I had to ask if this or that contained any kind of apple.

I grew sadder and gloomier, and I didn’t know how to express my grief. I had been a rather cheerful kid, wearing colours and t-shirts with colourful motives. Those days became more and more distant as my grief grew deeper and deeper. By the age of 14 pretty much my entire wardrobe was a black wall of cotton. Even if some of my clothes weren’t all black, they were a very dark grey or other deep, deep dark version of a colour. To this day my wardrobe is this way, though I have some clothes now – mostly given to me by others – that has some colour to it. I am working on starting to wear colour again, but it’s difficult after over 20 years dressed in black.

Maybe this summer will be the summer where I finally break free of my habit and start wearing colours again?

⸻

As a child I lived a carefree life full of colours, fruits, all various kinds of drinks or foods I could want for. I had, of course, some foods I wasn’t particularly fond of, but all in all I could in theory eat what I wanted. That changed dramatically one freezing winter’s night deep in the Finnish forests. I was 10, my family touring and I tagged along being my usual weird, but happy-go-lucky self. We stayed with a very nice family and I went to school there as the rest of my family played concerts and rehearsed etc. It was a jolly good time filled with ice-hockey, snowball fights and trying to learn Finnish.

Little did I know that the winter adventure would take a sudden and horrible turn for the worse. It was a particularly cold and dark night. It pushed close to minus 30 degrees and the wind was getting stronger. Inside we had a warm fire going, we were making dinner and the talk went easy and freely. I was in charge of the fruit salad and was eagerly chopping away grapes, bananas, kiwis, oranges and last, but not least, apples.

I remember it started with some mild itching on my skin. What a weird thing. There were no bugs, I didn’t have any issues with eczema or similar, and got more and more curious as the itching got worse. It wasn’t until I scratched my eyes that the real problem started. Suddenly my eyelids started swelling, my eyes felt as if they were on fire and a horrible itch spread around my eyes. I was having an allergic reaction to something! I was thrown outside in the snow to cool down the swelling and relieve the itching. It worked somewhat, and my sight came back, though it still itched a lot.

After some time, most of my symptoms had resided, and I was able to join the rest for dinner again. Everything went smooth until the fruit salad came along. I started eating, and my throat started to itch something fiercely, and it started to close up. I panicked, and again I had to go out in the snow and try to cool down. It was far to the nearest hospital and I would have a serious problem should my throat close all the way. The swelling eased up eventually and the danger had passed. But something inside of me had changed. Something I had been able to eat once was now trying to off me.

A few weeks later, we discovered the culprit: apples. The sweet, sour, crunchy and tasty fruit – that grew plentiful around my childhood home – had decided to appoint me its enemy and to kill me.

Something inside of me died that year. I had to always stay vigilant to what I ate and drank in case it would contain apples of some kind. Every drink, foods, soaps could possibly try to snuff me out of my existence.

I grew solemn, dark, and my life seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, and so did my wardrobe. As if a way to show my grief and gloom, my wardrobe started to change. Gone were the days of colourful shirts, pants and socks. Black and dark grey was suddenly the chosen hue I dressed in. Still, to this day, I can’t tell my clothes from one another. I open my closet and a wall of blackness meets me…

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They couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without each other. I was surprised they could go to the bathroom without holding hands the entire time. It was almost cute—almost. Endearing in the way a pair of matching sweaters might be, if you didn’t think too hard about the fact that they both wore them everywhere.

At first, it felt like maybe this was just how some people are. Clingy, affectionate, wrapped up in one another in that giddy way new couples sometimes are. But this wasn’t new. This was stale, tight, and uncomfortable, like old bread that’s been left in the bag too long. There was something off about it. Something I couldn’t quite name.

Eventually, I started to notice what was missing—space. Any time one of them expressed an individual opinion, it was instantly checked against the other’s reaction. They didn’t disagree. Ever. Not out loud. But the silence said plenty. There was a current of panic underneath every conversation, a quiet tension that hummed like white noise. They weren’t talking to each other. They were scanning each other. For signs of withdrawal, rejection, or distance.

And what looked like love? It was more like surveillance. Monitoring. Needing to be needed. Filling the silence before it could turn into solitude.

It got me thinking about how easy it is to confuse intensity with intimacy. When people say they “can’t live without” someone, it sounds romantic. But sometimes, it’s just code for, “I have no idea who I am if this person leaves.” There’s no breathing room in that kind of connection—just a slow collapse into the same shape, where no one really knows who’s feeling what anymore.

Eventually, it became clear. They didn’t actually love each other—not anymore, at least. What they loved was the structure. The function. The way their closeness shielded them from the fear of being alone. Of being not good enough. Of being unneeded. The relationship had become a life raft, not a shared experience.

Dependency can look like devotion from the outside. But the longer you watch, the more you see the fraying rope, the quiet panic. And you start to realise: love that can’t survive without constant confirmation isn’t love at all. It’s fear, dressed up like commitment.

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I never tried to gain a mass of followers and need got very deep into that aspect of social media. Most of the people I had on Facebook – besides my actual friends – I had met either through friends, through the music scene or through various settings either through work or such. But I never focused on “collecting” a big follower mass.

No, I never deleted many of the people I had on my various Socials, but that’s just how I have always been. I never deleted anything from anywhere, no matter how useless or redundant it may be.

I feel a bit inspired by other people’s internet popularity when it’s earned. But I think everything genuine scares me. Everything that requires consistency and determination is foreign and kind of scary to me. I feel I don’t belong with it.
What I have done hasn’t been a “long-term” thing. I have never, or at least rarely, thought very far ahead in time. None of what I have done has been thought through. I don’t act as much as I “react”, I think. Building trust or integrity isn’t something I’ve thought about – I thought it was a right?  I haven’t had a noticeable “career” in some years, but the little sliver of what I could have kept would probably go away if people knew the things I’ve done (chasing validation, curating facades, manipulating women, and declaring myself a misunderstood rockstar). Seeing people living the life in reality that I’ve been living in my head has been proof that substance beats performance every time.

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As a kid, I once had made a comment how I was envious of the neighbour kid. She got to travel to Spain on summer vacation and swim in the ocean and do all sorts of fun stuff. My summer that year was quite uneventful and I spent it riding my bike and roaming around the forest. I did enjoy myself, but I was envious of the neighbour kid still. Why should she be taken to cool and exciting foreign countries and experience things I only had seen on tv and in magazines while I was stuck at home with the same scenery, the same things I did everyday, the same people and nothing particularly exciting? The funny thing about this is that next year it was a really busy summer for me and my family. We drove to Denmark, various festivals around in Sweden and Norway and we weren’t home very much for a few weeks. The neighbour kid had stayed home all summer and only had a weekend with her family camping in Sweden. When I came back home again shortly before school started I complained to my mother and said that next year I wanted to do as our neighbours and stay at home all summer. I was envious again, and thinking back on that makes me cringe a bit. I have realised it wasn’t as much as the travelling or experiencing new things etc. It was more about feeling left out, not having the same things “everyone else” had. It is very humbling to realise envy within myself. I feel small, I feel silly and I feel ungrateful for the things I already have in my life. It’s an ugly feeling and one I am trying to weed out as soon as I can notice it creeping into my thoughts. Life feels better without it and feeling gratitude for what I have and appreciate it makes things more meaningful to me. I have also found joy in being happy for other people and the things that they have. I am genuinely happy when I see someone having something good in their life.

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Coping mechanisms
1989-2025

My coping mechanisms are now being put aside and laid to rest. The future does seem a bit scarier and more uncertain without them: They were many, they were frequently applied and well-used, and for or a moment they will be missed. I am sure, however, that they will rest peacefully and not be missed, but only remembered as the time wears on.

I can look back and see the time they started to first come into my life in a proper and consistent manner. I was a kid, and my first coping mechanism was the silence and the withdrawing from people, I think. I would just lower my eyes, close my mouth and either turn to a solitary activity like Lego’s, reading cartoons, tv, or go outside and hang out in the woods near my house. It wasn’t only silence, but the solitude and being away from people I used as well. Safety in numbers, perhaps, but also safety alone.

As I grew older other coping mechanisms came along. They weren’t all bad, of course. There was the “conversationalist” – he who could get along and talk with anybody, old or young. I would tell jokes, or stories, talk about something I had learned or ask questions that seemed relevant to what they talked about. I got particularly good at talking about local history and farming. How the crops were doing and compared them with good or bad crops from other years I had been told about.
The older I got, however, the darker my mechanisms turned. Lying, omitting, hiding things, giving half truths became something I did. It became an easy way to avoid consequences or to avoid yelling or trouble.

Then, as a teenager I discovered the beauty of intoxication. I really liked it! I liked how I could forget or to avoid thinking and feeling. I was not a popular kid, and the alcohol helped me ease up, make me happier, funnier (or at least so I thought), more confident and less worried about everything that was going on in my head. I just stopped caring as much. The more I drank the less I cared. It helped me to focus on things I liked to do and during that time I started to learn to play bass and guitar.
As a musician I also found a way to cope. I could use it as a good excuse to avoid doing certain things, I could party, I could be around people that gave me attention and I took it all.

Though I have had many coping mechanisms through my life, the most consistent one has been other people and avoidance, I’d say. I could turn to different people to get attention, give myself confidence or just avoid other issues that I should have dealt with.

I could find people easily and everywhere I went. I was good at small talk, had many small fun facts that could humour others and I knew enough about enough things to be able to follow most subjects that was brought up.

Now, finally, I lay my coping mechanisms to rest. I lay them down as to be able to move on, to grow as a human and to become a better person. I don’t like how much and often they were used. I used them to avoid feeling bad, to avoid tough situations, feelings and emotions I didn’t know how to express or understand, avoid feeling lonely. I used them to be someone I was not. Now I am ready to be the person I should always have been. I am ready to be me without all the masks, coping mechanisms and the avoidance.

RIP