i recently woke up to discover my hair had turned curly
now, if you would have said that to my twelve-year-old self (straight-fine-thin-scandinavian-haired-self), she would have fallen over of happiness. fainted, done cartwheels for hours out of pure joy.
now i had trouble recognizing myself in the mirror
but i’d started re-watching sex and the city, getting drawn into the allure that is carrie bradshaw: head full of wild curls, a closet to die for, free and dating, dating and writing – the extravagance and decadence and hustle and bustle of her new york life.
so the curls were not unwelcome
in fact, they were celebrated
i’d gone out and bought a pair of big gold hoops, you see. because blonde girls with big gold hoops always had more fun, i’d decided, in my heartbreak. i purchased them in this celebratory spirit on my last day home, before i’d make my grand exit from the house over the summer (the house i’d lived in the past year with 19 other students, the one where i’d fallen in love – fallen out of love – with my best friend). the house where i still had to live beside the person who broke my heart. while they started seeing other people. in my own home.
hence it was a broken and emotionally exhausted woman who stepped onto the train bound north the next day, the day that marked the beginning of my big summer escape-plan:
couch-surfing at friends’ houses all over the country, perhaps the continent
in my carrie-bradshaw-gold-hoops era
i’d plan to spend two weeks up north in my dads cabin by the sea. to write, to rest. to land and get away. i’d invited a friend, lets call her elle, to come up and join me too; and i knew her visit would be soul-nourishing.
im gonna be working on a writing-project while we’re up here, i texted her the day before her arrival
so make sure you bring a good book or smthn !
she texted me back
omg yes
we can have a writing-reading retreat
and that’s exactly what we had
spending our days slowing down by the sea, drinking elaborate coffees, writing in the sun; always ending the evenings with her reading birgitta stenbergs all the wild ones aloud to me in bed. a biographical novel relaying stenbergs travels around war-torn south of europe in her untamed 20s; drinking, writing – chatting and sleeping with other bohemians, artists, and famous thinkers of that particular period which was 1950s europe.
(it was inspiring, her crazy risktaking, her lust for life, her commitment to her craft)
but one night, after another serene day, just as i was to fall asleep, i woke up to several consecutive buzzing notifications from my phone
(and i knew it could only be one person who’d text me seven times in a row in the middle of the night)
the sum of their contents?
He wanted to come
(i had trouble falling back asleep after that)
because –
i knew we’d have fun if He came (we always had fun together). but i also knew that, up here (around my family), his company would unsettle me. since i didnt kow where we stood – how we could exist platonically together – and all the uncertainty that entails.
and i guess i couldn’t sleep because i didnt want to admit that i needed to say no
which was hard, because a part of me really wanted him here. this sanctuary by the sea i’d talked about so many times, a sanctuary i thought i would get to show him under very different circumstances
i texted him back the next morning asking if we could talk later that night
he called me around 12, the midnight sun this far north painting the sky and the sea a harmonious pink
i layed on the daybed outside by the water, heard his familiar voice over the phone:
hey
are we gonna fight now, he joked
(i wanted to punch him)
but chose to ignore
can you hear the waves, i ask instead
holding out the phone towards the sea
no,
yes wait
yeah
and we begin talking
and we dont stop until two hours later
i say things i’ve had on my chest for quite a while, holding a monologue of hurt
he responds, he understands. we both hate this situation, that fact is underlined several times
i hear him brush his teeth through the phone, i leave him on speaker as i do my skincare routine
i crawl into bed, phone on the pillow
familiar patterns
should we say goodnight now, he asks
mm, i echo
i think we should
no one hangs up
(familiar patterns)
goodnight, i whisper, as im about to fall asleep
and i press the red button
the silence emerging from the corners of the room
i lay there, already drifting
we had agreed on nothing yet i was sure of our unspoken agreement:
he would not come
and the silence,
deafening.
the next morning i woke up with an emotional hangover. red-eyed, groggy, headache. i tried to get back into the usual joy of our slow retreat-routine, but it did not work.
instead i noticed myself slipping back into old patterns.
thinking about, worrying about, obsessing over
Him
one phone call and im all torn up, i tell elle over another cup of coffee
one phone call and look what it’s done to me
if He would have come, all that progress i’d made getting over him, would have become totally undone
she hums in agreement
if He’d come, i know we would have a great time, but then i’d feel all that abstinence as soon as he left
did you tell him that? she asks
more or less, i say
i admire his naive optimism, she says, laughing
and the thing that’ll stick with me:
you’re like drugs for each other
before i’d left home, i’d interviewed another friend for my heartbreak-project.
my friend calle
when i told him about this new project of mine he asked if he could be interviewed
i hesitated, because i knew about his love life, and i’d gotten the impression that there hadn’t been any hearts broken in the fast turns of his wild and long dating life
he noticed my hesitation and said:
heartbreak is subjective right?
and i think i have one experience that i would call a heartbreak.
i regretted my hasted presumption and told him of course
i’d love to interview you
so one soft and exceptionally warm june evening we sat down in the garden
a pair of scissors in my hands and him on a chair before me
pressing record for this combined interview/haircut
he begins describing his first love and relationship
(and calle is that kind of person, i quickly realize, that from years of mingling in different political and religious youth-societies; is kind of good at interviewing himself)
so i cut his hair, trimming the edges
interposing with a little question here, a turn of the head there
and we find our way quite naturally through the story of his heartbreak
his name was henry, calle begins, quite dramatically
and i think about him often
in fact, there’s nobody else who has stuck with me like that, he says
nobody else i think about that long afterward.
he inhales
because he steered my life onto such a strong course
and he’s a big part of who i am today
thats kind of dark, in a way, he exhales.
or beautiful? i interject
or beautiful.
the split ends accumulates on the ground as calle continues:
so i was 17, 18
henry was openly gay
and i didnt know i was homosexual.
he was from the big city and our school was in an uproar, whispering
theres some gay guy coming, thinking he’s cool
now, i had never interacted with any gay men
and his coming was like the arrival of the lochness monster
a strange thing!
i laugh
but all of us realized quite soon that this was no monster, nor a unicorn
just a regular person, he laughs
and we began to hang out, quite quickly
moving in the same circles.
but i didnt know i was gay then
hadn’t even entertained the thought.
and here he comes, himself out from the closet, opening all that up to me.
he shakes his head out of habit so i have to adjust him again, hold straight, i order
he laughs
it takes me a few seconds
then i laugh too
continue, i order
we had a turbulent beginning, he starts again
having to navigate so many dynamics
me being young, naive. not knowing how i felt about being gay, about falling in love with someone who was first a friend.
i remember having the worst hangover of my life that night after our first kiss
the eruption of a volcano in its own right, he underlines
calle explains to me the intricacies of their relationship, their turbulent on and off timeline. when he finishes he sighs, as to conclude and get back to the heart of the question:
but i think about it as my heartbreak because there are fewer things that i have felt such disappointment about
that i never had the guts
if i just…
he trails away
tries again:
if i’d just been more brave maybe we could have been a couple back then
he grows quiet
after a while he begins with new force:
i guess when some people talk about their heartbreak its about someone they thought could have been the love of their life
now, i dont think henry and i were soulmates
im just sad about us not happening because i didn’t dare.
dont you think that a lot of heartbreaks are about just that? i counter, not daring enough?
well, yeah
i guess
but theres also this other dynamic to it
the gay part
he turns quiet again
i was so young, and so naive
and all these years after the fact he’s kind of still there
a bird calls from above and calle gazes up into the tree, i lower the scissors
he was the first man i fell in love with, he lets out
and opened that world to me
he turns his head back to me
thats a big part of my identity today
and is that all thanks to him?
he asks, more to himself, eyes hazy with disappointment
or not that it was all him, he corrects
but it was he who opened all that up for me
and i feel like i just continued on the path he mapped out for me, such a long time ago
but don’t you have people like that who just bump into your life and change the course of it forever? i corner
then he is like a railway switch, calle laughs
he pulled the lever and then everything changed
we talk about the turns of the relationship. it was protracted, almost two years, with a lot of back and forth. first calle didn’t want to, then henry didn’t, and then calle didn’t when henry wanted.
it was a lot of hearbreaks in the same relationship, calle concludes
but i think if we ever stood a chance it was back then, the first time
is that the heartbreak that hurts the most?
yes,
it hurts to think about.
or is it that wich hurts me the most? he ponders
after some reflection he says, smiling:
i have this fear that he never thinks of me
and that hurts even more, should it be true
i spend a lot of time thinking about that.
because i would ultimately like to think that i was an important person to him as well
he grows quiet again
i do the last touches on his hair and put the scissors down
but even if it is a heartbreak, calle exclaims, as in realization
its a fantastic heartbreak
that he really got to be this railway switch
who steered me on the course that im happy im on today
his tone changes
are you done?
im done, i say
and he grabs the mirror, studies his new hair from different angles, shakes out the lengths
do you count this as a heartbreak? he asks after a while, putting the mirror down
yeah, i sigh
definitely
i dont even know if i have a definition for heartbreak to measure by, i say, more to myself than him
can you try
what?
can you try to give a definition
i think about it
i guess the one me and ellen came up with was it, that painful physical and emotional pain of losing the person you thought you needed in order to live
like that fateful railway switch we talked about
when somebody just comes along and changes everything
it hurts to realize you’ve lost that.
and afterward, calle exclaims
you’re like oh my god what has this person done to me
yeah exactly, i say
but now, after that inital acute feeling has kind of ebbed out,
– and i dont know how it felt for you, i add
but for me, and this was something i realized just last week,
it was that life felt quite meaningless without love
like you’re living in this black and white version
and i have no choice but to live in this meaninglessness anyway and try to make sense of it
calle gazed at me, his eyebrows furrowed
you’re not like a little bit of a love-addict then?
his sentence hung butween us in the air, heavy
i’d stopped breathing
because i dont think life is grey and boring without it, he continues
you dont?
(and it surprises me how small and fragile the words come out)
no, he says
because ive tried to re-learn how i think about this
i think that all my friendships–
yeah, i exhale
–that’s love too.
and its boring how you keep downgrading that kind of love, putting it on a lower pedestal than the romantical kind
because thats not true,
when you think about it
here he takes a deep breath and i can see his eyes sparkling with life as he exclaims:
god im so in love with so many of my friends
and they add colour to life
and i chose to return to my friend
elle
to focus on the colour she adds to my life
after a magical day full of fast driving down empty country lanes to loud music, me and elle arrive to a local art exhibition we’d decided to check out. getting out of the car, the music dying with a bang as we slam the doors. we walk inside and are hit by the colours: yellow, orange, and ocra. we walk around the room and inspect the small watercolours, depictions of abandoned parking lots, empty stairways and nature scapes.
the artist is there, and i overhear him explaining why he chose to work with only those three colours for this project. we start chatting to him, and at one point he says something that sticks with me:
to be an artist is to work with incomplete information
you start with something and dont really know what it is or where its going
and thats just part of the process, he adds
my friend carry on with the rest of the conversation, and i walk around alone, pondering the statement more than the art.
after we’ve said goodbye and left, we see a sign that says ceramics and textiles to our left, and decide to check that out too
walking into another interesting conversation
the man who works there – the ceramist – has been at it for 25 years
and ive learnt that so much about being an artist just involves time, order, and discipline, he says
that mistakes are just surprise experiments
and thats the fun part
when you just try your way forward in the dark.
we walk out, our eyes twinkling with gratitude from the conversations we’d gotten lucky to have
we decide to treat ourselves and eat our lunch sandwiches in the community rose garden, driving away again
we arrive to the quiet, the only ones there, making ourselves comfortable amongst the bushes
both tired and content and not speaking much
we part ways, an unspoken agreement, and begin wandering around on our own. i walk around and decide to smell all the different kinds of roses, finding that the small white ones are the best. i realize how exhausted i am and lay down on the soft grass, closing my eyes, inhaling their sweet scent. i’ve always had a hard time napping so i just lay, thinking, reflecting. at one point i feel something soft brush my toe and to my surprise its a big white cat, brown spots on its back
hello friend, i say, as it brushes up against me
i pick it up to go and find elle
i discover her lying on a bench, eyes closed
look who ive found, i say
she gets up and we begin cooing over the cat
he purrs and lays down on his back immediately, not at all shy
after a while she asks
did you fall asleep?
no, i just laid there thinking
what did you think about?
and i answered her honestly
Him
of course
hmm
we grow quiet
what did you think about? i ask in return
she looked up at me
i thought about the flowers, the sun. my vacation and my boyfriend
but i also thought about you
me?
yeah
have you ever seen twilight? she asks
i laugh, taken aback
but i answer her
of course, why
you know the werewolves? how they sometimes imprint on other people and become like bound to another person?
yeah
i think you get a couple of people like that in your lifetime, she finishes
and she asks me the question i’d sensed coming:
do you think you’ve imprinted on Him?
(and i dont really know what to say
yet the answer feels obvious)
i think back to calle and our talk of people as railway switches
i guess, i manage to get out
but it depends on how you define imprinting
i think its when you have that gravitational bond to someone, she says, after a while
and that person presence really changes you to your core
like when someone just walks into your life kicks down the door pulls a level and changes your path forever, i finish
yeah, she says, laughing
something like that
when elle and i say goodbye,
our four serene days already having passed,
she hugs me tightly on the train platform
promise me you wont let him visit, she says
locking her eyes with mine and gripping my shoulders
and there is a pause that shouldn’t be there
between what she says and what i should say
i begin to brush her off, smirking, like a confronted addict
but she locks her eyes with mine again
i take a few seconds to really think about the meaning of what i am about to say:
i promise
and she knows that i mean it
maybe its a mistake to write about all of this, Him, our private moments
but like james baldwin said, in a quote that quite literally blew made head off (i think i actually let out a scream when i first read it):
You survive this and in some terrible way, which i suppoe no one can ever describe, you are compelled, you are corralled, you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what’s important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. That is all you have to do with it. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as i can tell you what it is to suffer perhaps i can help you to suffer less.
by telling you about my pain, i connect to yours. by telling you about my pain, i can release it. by telling you what it is to suffer i can help you suffer less, too.
as writers, i think we work with the transformation of pain
and like the kind artists i met said:
as a creative you also work with incomplete information
and you learn that mistakes and side-tracks are part of the process
that takes you from the unknowable into the known
and that always entails a risk
to trust in the unknown
because it is a risk talking about your pain. there’s always a risk inherent to being vulnerable and opening up. but the outcome, the worth, the payoff is exactly what baldwin is getting at – connection. by taking a risk and talking about my pain, im opening up the possibility of connecting with you; a connection that allows both of us the opportunity of release.
and like rick rubin beautifully writes in his book about artistic creation, that i’ve begun reading each morning before sitting down to write:
“When you're working on a project, you may notice apparent coincidences appearing more often than randomness allows, almost as if there is another hand guiding yours in a certain direction. As if there is an inner knowing gently informing your movements. Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it.”
it is only by that calm blind faith that we continue onward, without knowing where we’ll end up.
and i dont know where im going
with this letter
with this project
with this summer
with my healing
with Him
(with my life)
but i know, that i have to continue
and that’s a risk im willing to take
i dont know how to fix this, but i know that i will
like i realized on the beach in sicily
and like last week’s realization:
yes, life feels meaningless without love
but i have to live it anyway
which means that it is up to me to find things that make it meaningful again
and like calle said, like i believe now,
part of that is falling in love with your friends
like i did this week with elle
like i’ll do next week with my other friends
because they are the colour
when everything feels so black and white
so what now?
next week im travelling south, to live in a friend’s big-city apartment while she’s out of town
so –
here’s to levelling up in my gold-hoops-carrie-bradshaw-column writing-untamed-birgitta-stenberg era
and to the people we imprint on and who come into our lives like railway switches
no matter the outcome, no matter the risk
its a fantastic heartbreak, calle echos in my head
and i think we should be grateful to each and every one of them
for kicking open the door and changing the way we think, feel, and act forever
so here’s to Him
whom i no longer need in order to live
i do that for myself now
and my friends.
hugs and all,
e.
Loved Calle's perspective, such an interesting exchange between the two of you! I do agree that friends are the greatest loves of our lives, I know mine are. And there is something so bittersweet about knowing that we are a product of everything we have ever loved, touched and shaped by all these different people even when they are no longer in our lives. Really loving this column, thank you for sharing <3
Gods, I have so much to say.
1. Welcome to the curly hair gang! Only brush your hair when it's wet and find a good bonnet or silk scarf for sleeping. You'll feel silly but it's worth it.
2. I love Calle. That heartbreak is my least favorite. It's the deep ache of a eternal "what if" that my heart refuses to accept. That heartache is the kind that permanently changed me as a person because I refuse to experience it again. I'll be rejected a thousand times before I let it happen again.
3. You have so much love and I'm glad to see it. While you're having your heartbreak project you're also having a summer of love. Bouncing from friend to friend, spending your precious time with them. Filling each other's hearts with platonic love. It's so sweet.
Thanks for sharing. 💕