The 2010’s have gone by, and I have been blogging (more or less regularly) throughout the entire time. In the same space of time, I’ve lived out my twenties. Ten years is a staggering amount of time, yet it has flown by faster than pigs with wings. I’ve grown and changed and aged and learned so much it hardly feels as if the same person is looking out through these eyes. A new version of Me has emerged, and keeps evolving. You can choose between going through my entire blog or just reading this summary. Or you can go and do something else, nothing’s really keeping you here! Anyway, here we go…
Where was I at the beginning of 2010? I had just moved into my very first apartment in Lund. A tiny one-room student flat, but all the same a palace to me and my half-a-year-old kitten. I had just gone through a nasty row of health-problems, and with stress and lack of good habits in general I mostly kept going from cold to cold. I was a year and a half into my astrophysics studies, and was failing most of my courses. I was in a pretty steady relationship since about a year back, but feelings for others were gnawing on me to the point of desperation. In my spare time I played cello in a symphonic orchestra, played boardgames from time to time, read books when I managed to find the time, engaged in the occasional bout of swordfighting, and was just about to take up LARPing.
I had friends in Lund, but not very close ones, and in retrospect I have realised that I felt pretty lonely. At least I wasn’t abused on a daily basis, like I was back in school. However, since I hadn’t taken the time and effort to actually heal from that trauma, scars of fear kept me from trusting and letting people close. Instead I filled that void of yearning for love and a sense of belonging with striving for accomplishments, but in too many things at once, resulting in no accomplishments at all and an increasing spiral of self-hatred, stress and anxiety.
I failed my studies to the point of losing my student’s allowance, lived on social security money for a while, then managed to find a couple of part-time jobs with which I just barely managed to cover my living costs. All the while I kept stubbornly studying to catch up with my failed courses, but didn’t make much headway.
I discovered polyamory, and me and my partner decided to open up our relationship. I acted very obliviously and selfish about it, however, and unfairly hurt several people along the way. The friendships were mostly salvaged in the end (more thanks to them than me), which I am very grateful for.
Time went by. Things happened. A lot of things.
I travelled a lot. To USA, China and Belgium on tour with the orchestra. To New Zealand, Germany and Prague for my studies. To Malaysia, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Norway and Denmark just for fun and visiting friends. To La Palma and Sápmi for work. I had marvellous adventures and travel anxiety every single time. Things always worked out in the end, and the trips were always worth it. I discovered CouchSurfing, and both slept on strangers’ couches and welcomed strangers into my home. Beautiful concept.
I decided to try going vegan for a year, then stuck with it. In the process I actually learned to cook properly. I made around 5000 pancakes. I learned to like almost all foods (still working on salty liqourice, and garlic I’ve given up on). I developed a passionate love of ginger and hot spices.
I learned to love running and dancing, both being activities I’d previously despised. I climbed trees and learned to ski and petted dogs and spiders and snakes, and told people I loved them, and discovered the wonderful euphoria of doing things despite being scared shitless. I went hiking through mountains and forests and plains, together with friends and alone, through rain and snow and wind and sun and pain and joy and exhaustion and the profound feeling of being alive. I fell ever deeper in love with mountains.
I read hundreds of books, some of which were truly mind-opening. Some favourites discoveries include The Overstory by Richard Powers, Imajica by Clive Barker, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin and Anathem by Neal Stephenson (on the fiction side). My project of trying to read mythology and folklore from all over the world has also been very rewarding. As for non-fiction, Samlag eller salighet by Dick Wase, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson, Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson have contributed profoundly to my way of thinking. And poetry and plays! William Blake…! I’d better cut myself off here before I ramble on endlessly about books that have shaped who I am.
I listened to music on a daily basis, and spent a significant portion of my spare cash on concerts. Memorable ones include Jethro Tull, Opeth, Dream Theater, Patti Smith, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Katatonia, Dark Tranquillity, Architects, Amon Amarth, Animals as Leaders, Tesseract, Lisa Gerrard, Rufus Wainwright, a David Bowie tribute concert, Sólstafir, Eluveitie and Amanda Palmer. I have relished everything from headbanging and being shoved around in a moshpit to crying my eyes out in a fancy-ass theatre.
I played a lot of music, too. I gave up on the orchestra after a few years, and after a hiatus sort of stumbled into folk music. I learned to play by ear, and even to improvise a little. I’ve played with my folk group at concerts and to dance and even to a staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which happens to be my favourite Shakespeare play). I’ve recently swapped my cello for a drum. I’m still just a beginner, but the way I love drumming makes me wonder why I haven’t been a drummer all my life. Better late than never, I suppose.
I wrote a lot. I kept a frequent diary and blogged not nearly as frequently. I wrote a fantasy book in three parts (or a trilogy, if you’re generous). I wrote a bunch of short stories in genres ranging from horror to social commentary to erotica to absurdism. I wrote a bunch of poems, some of which I entered with into poetry slam (with moderate success). I created, with some help, a couple of roleplaying games, and some lyrics which went on to become songs. I wrote a couple of academic papers and some popular science. I was published a couple of times in anthologies. I studied creative writing, then taught it myself.
I finished my studies, after far too many years of stress and toil and depleted self-confidence. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in astronomy, and a master’s degree in astrophysics to show for it. After graduation I continued working with popularising science for a while, then promptly fled the university, possibly never to return. I’ve dabbled in things like delivering newspapers, telescope assistance, planetarium operation, translation, janitoring, teaching and massage, but have yet to have a steady job. I’ve lived most of the time below Sweden’s poverty line, but have never had to go without food, never failed to pay my rent, and have often had money to spare for luxuries such as travel and books.
I moved around a few times. From one student apartment to another, to a telescope building on La Palma, to New Zealand, to homelessness, to another student apartment, to an apartment with a flatmate, to a mountain lodge, and finally to my very own collective of queerdos.
I found words to help me relate to myself and my issues with the gender binary. My sense of gender identity hasn’t changed much, but my ability to articulate it has improved. I am a genderqueer/non-binary/agender trans person, and my pronouns are they/them. Whether I act assertive or timid, whether I dress in black or have glitter gushing from my ears, whether you are attracted to me or not, my body or identity is not for you to question or comment upon.
I went from secretive, alone and sporadic to blatant, collective and regular in my pagan practicion. I draw some inspiration from nordic heathendom (the Aesir pantheon, sacrificial ceremonies and all that), wicca (magic as a means of connection to the world in a larger perspective) and shamanism (drum-induced trance states and power animals), but most of all from my personal experience of and connection to nature (acknowledging the changing seasons and important life events, asking for advice and just bloody LISTENING).
I went through several rounds of therapy, and began to heal a number of scars that have held me back from connecting with others, and from time to time even from functioning through my everyday life. I survived through panic attacks, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Out of everything I’ve experienced during these past ten years, what I beyond a doubt am most grateful for is the people who’ve been with me along the way. I’ve met so many interesting, beautiful, broken, kind, inspiring creatures that I could hardly do them justice if I were to write a novel and a half about them. Suffice it to say that whatever combination of friends, acquaintances, lovers, colleagues or even enemies we were or are to one another: you have touched me in a way that changed me.
I have fallen in and out of love, made friends and drifted apart countless times, had my heart broken repeatedly and undoubtedly broken a few myself. I’ve been abandoned and hurt in various ways, from neglecting to inform me that they’d moved on to someone else to suicide. I’ve been through enough to give up on love and go live alone in a shack in the woods. But then again, the amount of wonderful times of passion and connection has been greater still.
So I have chosen to remain open, and not only in my relationship anarchy way of living. I have finally learned to trust. To let people in. To love and be loved. To consider what commitment actually means and give it a go, on my terms, rather than just frantically shying away from it. This is all because of you who’ve let me come close, who’ve cried on me, who’ve let me cry on you, who’ve stayed with me through turbulent times, who’ve been willing to take up contact again after having fallen out of touch for a time, who’ve helped me with all sorts of things, who’ve put up with living with me, who’ve gone on adventures with me, who’ve listened to me, who’ve read my writings, who’ve been willing to give me space, who’ve danced with me, who’ve created with me, who’ve invited me to parties or come to mine or written postcards or called or sent a text once in a while. Who’ve struggled to keep in touch across oceans of space or time or kids or work or studies or mental illness. To all of you:
Thank you for letting my life become entangled with yours, for a short time or indefinitely. I love you.
Now it’s 2020, and I find myself on a bus through the Alps, heading home from yet another splendid adventure. HOME, to where my kitty waits to sit on my shoulder or purringly snuggle into my arms. Although she’s grown a little over the years, she’s still an adorable fuzzy little ball of mischief. Sometimes we go climbing trees together. HOME, to my lovely, weird and wondrous collective-mates. HOME, to where I can let my guard down. To laughter at the dinner table, to serious conversations over tea, to friends dropping by, to movie-nights and board games, to Pancake Sundays and midnight baking, to bubble-baths and long breakfasts on the balcony, to three cats chasing one another across the living room, to snuggling by candle-light, to a shelf full of books to read, to walks in the park, to a quiet place to sleep.
Where do I go from here? What are the 2020’s to bring? Unemployed again, I don’t have much in the way of money. But I’m going to try not to stress about it, or about anything else for that matter. I’m rich in so many other ways, and right now when I picture the future, it has Me in it. There is still so much for me to learn, and there is a whole world out there worth saving. I am currently at a level where even reading the news is too much to handle, so I have no delusions of grandeur there. But I am making a difference to my closest surroundings, and if ripples is all I can muster, then cause ripples I will.
I have plans and dreams and hopes, but more importantly: I have a vision. I will work to spread unity, joy of life and respect for nature around me. What that will mean in practice will likely change and evolve, perhaps along with the vision itself. Step one is making peace of mind replace stress as my default state. But at least I have chosen a focus, at long last, and I am prepared to roll with the changes. For of all the things I’ve learned this decade, I think the most important of all is this:
To trust in life.
The more that I breathe
And start to go slow
Of all the many things
I can only recall
All of the good things
Happy new decade,
Winterdragon
