The first day of your life
You listen to your favorite song and get high like it is the first time.
All winter you look forward to spring and the cold beer under the evening sun and then you feel buzzed like it is the first spring and first beer of your life.
You hug and kiss your dad like it is the first time, only you are a grown-up now and you are totally aware of how unconditional and safe your love for him is.
The little girl inside you appreciates the little innocent things.
You get all teary every time you think of your best friend who cares so much she cries, because you do not see each other as often as you both wish.
You fall in love like you’ve never been hurt before and he makes you believe in the power of coincidence again.
You are just happy about wearing a summer dress with flowers on.
The wine of life tastes like heaven and once again you embrace life like every day is the first.
When you see the reflection of your smile in some stranger, all the chaos in your life seem so far away.
You start writing a story, a story that will never end, even when you stop writing.
All the what ifs seem distant. You just don’t give a shit anymore.
Everything is going to be just fine, you say to yourself, like so many times before. The only difference is; you believe in it now. After all, it is the first day of your life.
Questioning
“How can you say that? It is important to maintain our traditions!” a Turkish friend said to me today. She grew up among Turks in Norway and in a family where traditions have been maintained through generations as she is of Turkish-Macedonian descendant, which also makes her a special case in my eyes. Turks in Macedonia were forced to change their last names in order to become more Macedonian. The result of forced assimilation and the power of a suppressed cultural identity are underestimated. In spite of the way her last name is spelled, she is more Turkish than I will ever be.
I have promised myself not to write much about politics in my blog and I will do my best to keep it that way, but the questions are itching and I truly need to reflect on them. I find myself in quite a difficult position when being dragged between political views and I am very often surprised by how media reflect the conflicts around the world. Sadly, many people are blindfolded and do not question what they are being served.
In my opinion we should question everything.
A man like a jazz tune
“Look at these! I bought 88 Flaxlodd for the winner of a competition we had. I went to Narvesen and asked for 88 Flaxlodd and he said ‘What? 8 Flaxlodd?!’”
Flaxlodd is some kind of a lottery ticket and even 8 pieces is concidered a lot.
I looked at him, he is more man than any other man I have met lately and yet like a child. I laughed, probably a typical girly laugh sprung out of the amusement caused by his glow.
“‘No, no! 88 pcs!’ I said again. You know what, at the end he didn’t win more than 700 kroner or something. Too bad!”
He was talking so fast and I was totally infatuated, carried away in the embrace of his charm. I remember I had a comment on everything he said, but the only thing I can recall in this moment, is how he made me feel and that feeling, well, how do I put it?
That feeling is priceless! He is like this really groovy jazz tune I can’t get out of my head!
So, what to do next? Sit around and wait for him to break the boundaries and give me a call? That’s not going to happen. He is too professional.
This leaves me with a line I need to draw.
Yes, again…
It’s all about chemistry
I have been thinking about what to write. Obviously I need to write something. Anything. But not the whole story. No, definitely not the whole story. So, here it goes:
I drink to you, B!
It’s all about chemistry. You know what I mean.
“He’s just not that into you.”
Who doesn’t remember these words from Sex and the City?
After my heart got broken into thousands of pieces and spread out in a misery that seemed eternal at the time, I became a cynical; not letting any man get too close. When a guy didn’t call, I simply didn’t care and was perfectly able to move on with my cynical life as if nothing had happened. All the “Oh, why doesn’t he call?”, “What did I do wrong?” and “What’s wrong with me?” had disappeared with my Mr. Big. He took it all away and I had eventually become a he’s-just-not-that-into-me-girl. Lucky me. Yes, seriously.
I missed out on a lot with my cynicism, but I was happy in many ways. My heart started healing and I started understanding why we weren’t right for each other. My friends kept talking about the frustration and not to mention the speculation about whether their last date’s cell phone was working or not and so on… You know how it goes.
It took me a few years, but like everything else my cynical approach to guys came to an end. Last summer a friend and I were sitting outside a coffee shop, it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and we were wearing beautiful summer dresses. Right about then dark clouds started passing into my mind and I started complaining about this guy who seemed into me to begin with; he took an initiative to have a drink, we really hit it off and he invited himself to this other thing with my friends a couple of days later. He also joked about himself promising not to embarrass me in front of them. I would never be embarrassed by him as he is one of the best people I’ve ever met. Well, I panicked a bit and said a few things I definitely didn’t mean to say (you don’t wanna know), but he seemed happy…and interested. He went out of town the day after, didn’t come home in time like he said he would and then he never called me.
My friend convinced me to send him a text message a few weeks later, while we were sipping coffee under the sun, you know. I let her convince me, because it seemed so innocent and besides, it was just what I needed; a friend to convince me to do what I didn’t have the guts to do on my own. I would have done the exact same thing if she had been in my shoes. “Write something, then you’ll know. You have nothing to loose!” I would say with my most enthusiastic tone. And the surprising part is that it would be straight from my heart, just like when she convinced me.
I wrote the message we composed together, looked my friend in her eyes and pushed the send button. A few seconds of silence embraced us; I might have felt that I couldn’t breathe, I don’t really remember. All I can recall is a totally random conversation as our words were put together in stumbling sentences, my cell phone on the table right in the middle of us and our eyes desperately looking at it every five seconds. Once again I had fallen back on the role of a stupid girl.
Then the theories started coming; my friend made excuses for him, making me seem like a girl no one intentionally will turn down. I said “He just doesn’t want me” and stuck with it. My friend, who is also one of the best people I’ve ever met, has her theories about why he never called and after all this time she is still making excuses for him. She, too, must have seen something good in him. I believe he is one of the good guys and that I mixed up his good manners with an interest in me as a girl. I do not have any hard feelings regarding him and I hope that he is not into me, because it would be shame if he was and I didn’t know. After all, he did deflower my cynicism last summer.
Every girl has a story, no, correction; every girl has many stories like this. And this is just one of mine. My cynicism might be gone, but I have once again embraced my he’s-just-not-interested-attitude. It keeps me safe, my eyes dry and my heart in one piece.
Age – just a number?
It feels like I have been betrayed. It feels like I have been rejected by a man I am deeply and madly in love with. So sure I would succeed, I held on to the belief, not to the hope that many people would be engaged to in such a situation. No, I knew it was right; not only was my gut feeling right where it should be, but the rationality in me was also surprisingly supportive. I knew it was right, nothing would get in my way in achieving my dream.
They tore out my heart and left it in the palm of my hand. Being too young in the eyes of someone who do not know me; my age got in my way. People tend to forget that age is just a number.
Every reader…
… finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Marcel Proust
Do we ever forgive?
This is me today; untitled. Yes, that is my name, today it is. I do not deserve my real name when writing about my inability to forgive, to forget and to move on. However, the rationality in me has now been set free, forcing me to answer the questions I did not want to ask myself.
I have more questions to ask, I have answers to find and I have lines to draw between the past and the future. Once a line is drawn, does that mean that I have forgiven? More importantly, what does the line symbolize? Frankly, I do not know.
