White

Will it be a white Christmas this year in Gothenburg? [This picture was taken walking through Mölndal this morning, though…]

Either going out to bars to drink and clubs to dance is not my thing, or I’m not ready yet. Simply not ready yet to be exposed to large crowds of desperate men under the influence so soon after being dumped. On Friday I went out with Annie. We wore matching tight tops with deeply plunging décolleté and put on excessive eye shadow in glittery, pearly hues. We looked good. We smelled good. We wore black leather high-heeled boots. Even though I had fun being out together with her – it was the most fun before we went out on Friday evening and after on Saturday afternoon when we just hung out at her place for hours – I didn’t like it at all. Maybe I’m simply not ‘in that place’ yet. Maybe I am the kind of person that will never ‘be in that place’. In my opinion, bars are dreary places filled with unsightly and drunk people that are too stupid to keep up an informed conversation, but this you don’t find out until the morning after since the music is too loud for you to have an informed conversation anyway [let alone hear what the other person is saying at all]. At Diamond Dogs Annie and I tried to hook up with some nice-looking young men and thus started talking to them. But I should’ve known it wasn’t going anywhere when the guy grabbing a hold of my ass told me he’s 25 years old and works for Elgiganten. Okay, so often I try to be an open-minded person and even friendly to folks from all walks of life, but come on! Come on! One of these days I’m going to be a professor of Russian literature; I can’t be wasting my time like this. Interesting enough – and just because life is intolerably ironic – he told me he had recently broken up with his Hungarian girlfriend. “Well, she’s actually from Transylvania,” he said. And that’s when I almost choked on my Black Russian: “What do you know, I just got dumped by a Hungarian from Transylvania!” “It is a small world,” he smiled. I did not: “Yeah, I’m getting claustrophobic alright… Did he pull the ‘say I love you and then take it back’ thing Hungarians always do?” Then the guy gave me a strange look, shook his head and let me know it was time to move on to the next by saying: “What?… I don’t think that’s actually a thing.”

The evening out in Gothenburg taught the following about life: a) because I’ve lost my dialect due to living abroad for so long people in this town don’t believe that I was born here and keep asking me: “But where are you from?” and I’m all like: “What do you mean? I was born here!” Then there’s this awkward silence after which I have to confess to living in Russia and being an MA student and a university teacher of Swedish and intellectually challenging enough to make it almost impossible for any man without a PhD to get an erection; b) a surprisingly big part of the male population of the Earth consists of bad kissers; c) I prefer spending my Friday nights with a good book [writing or reading] on my own or in good company of a few close friends and a bottle of red wine – of which I am going to stop being ashamed right now.

Yesterday was Sunday and in the evening of that day my Mother, my sister Lillbubb and I went to see Eddie Izzard in Scandinavium. The show was amazing! What was not so amazing about the evening – having nothing to do with Eddie at all, who was splendid – was the fact that A. was also present. And that we ended up getting better seats only three rows behind him and his friends. So I was forced to watch his curly head of hair from behind for almost two hours – actually, the whole time I wasn’t looking at him. Thankfully! Before the show we said hello to each other – he hugged me. After the show we said goodbye – he hugged me again. Then about an hour or so later he texted me with something like ‘I’m sorry for being so slow and all, but I just don’t know what to say’. To this I answered: “What is there left to say anyway? I think every time we talk it will be exactly like this: J: I want you. A: I don’t want you! Get away from me, you horrible woman! J: Okay then. It was worth one last try. A: Aight! See you around! *J wants to shake hands but A insists on hugging just to rub in what she can’t have*” To this he answered: “Okay, I’m not going to hug you anymore when we see each other. Even though that’s not what I meant.” I wanted to text him right back with the following message of “I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again”, but I didn’t because I don’t want to sink to his low level and he’s in my head nonstop anyway right now and he’s all I think about but I don’t want HIM to know this because he’s just not a very nice person and I don’t like him at all, or at least I try to tell myself that I don’t like him anymore, even though I must admit to myself that I still love him and that I would still jump in a cab in the middle of the night if he was to text me: “Baby, I want you back. Come to my bed now!”

God, I never thought having your heart broken would feel just like being sick to your stomach. I don’t have an appetite at all. It constantly feels like I’m about to throw up. I feel like the world’s most unattractive person. Whenever I look at myself in the mirror I’m surprised to find that I still look exactly like I looked before when I was with him and he kept telling me ‘You are so beautiful!’, because that’s not at all what I feel like right now. I feel repulsive and rejected and nauseous all of the time right now. I feel bloated and my face is so angry because I almost never smile nowadays but how could I smile when I keep listening to “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart” from Alicia Keys’ new album because I put it on repeat and it is all I want to hear right now because so many other of the songs on my iPod are love songs that I used to listen to and think about him at the same time and – obviously! – I can’t be doing that anymore because I do not want to be one of those distressingly sad people who remain in the past clinging to an eternity they never actually got even so much as a lousy preview of.

Right now I expect the closest monastery to call me up sometime in the spring and say: “Hey there! How’s it going? Well, we’ve noticed that, you know, even though you’ve had relationships with men and stuff, you’ve never seemed to make them actually work and you’ve never truly pulled one of them off for real, and also we know you to be a devout Christian and so perhaps it is time for you to stop kidding yourself around and join our ranks? We’ve got an opening. You can come already on Monday to start devoting your life to Jesus Christ instead. Now that’s a man that’ll never say He loves you just to take it back a couple of days later. Just tell us you’ll think about, okay?”

Comrades, I know; I’m pathetic! It is almost Christmas already and all I can do is go over these ridiculous things in my head that I’ll never put in a poem – mostly because what I’m feeling right now would make for nothing but an abysmally annoyed poem far too long for anyone to ever finish reading it, most of all the person it is directed at and then what’s the point, really? – or even write in a letter and send to A. and finally get on with my life. Although I know someday I’ll have to put down in writing things like ‘I was even okay with your man boobs!’ or ‘to me you weren’t just some guy; I saw you as the father of my five adorable and academically accomplished sons and the one I’d spend all of this life with despite the fact that you sometimes make those weird sounds, that I think you have poor hygiene and drink too much’. Also he studied four years in the gymnasium [who DOES that?!] and also a year at an Folkhögskola [clearly, something’s not right with the boy’s mind] and is a little too into ‘believing’ for someone who claims to be an atheist. The first time he told me he was in love with me he said: “I believe I’m in love with you”. Then he said: “I believe I love you”. And when he dumped me he ended things with claiming: “I believe this is the best for the both of us”. To this Katharina said: “Believe is something you do in church!”

Okay, so that joke may not work in any other language than Swedish… But my point is – that I don’t really have a point at all. I’m just not in a good place at the moment. Next year I’m going to be 25 and single and most likely a PhD student somewhere in the world while secretly dreaming of getting married to some nice guy and have his babies and be a stay-at-home mom instead. Don’t tell anyone, comrades. This longing for babies is embarrassing. But even more embarrassing is the longing for marriage. I must have gone mad in this process of heart-breakage. That or it was always in me – only to be brought out in times of crisis.

Whatever. Now I’m going to do some Christmas shopping, meet with my friends, exchange gifts, drink coffee and eat a muffin. Pepparkaksmuffins may be the only reason as to why I’m proud to be Swedish.