Anyone who truly knows me has heard me at least once say “All I need is a pen and paper and I am the happiest person on this earth”. I don’t remember when or how I fell in love with writing. I don’t recall a specific moment in my life when I discovered my predilection for writing or my flair for languages – I’ve always felt it was intrinsic. Sometimes I ask my mom about it, and she will tell me stories about my childhood. She tells me how difficult it was to put me to sleep; she would read stories to my older brother, and he would fall asleep immediately, but when she read to me it had the opposite effect. After she finished the book, I’d have countless questions, and I’d be unsatisfied with the answers. She would tell me that when I got older, I would chase her around the house imploring her to teach me how to write my name. As soon as I had learnt all the letters of the alphabet, I started reading and writing. In fourth grade, we were given a notebook and were tasked with writing an unspecified number of pages each week, depending on our own individual ability. That was pretty much the only instruction. At the end of the school week, the teacher would collect all the notebooks and peruse them. After the first week, when the teacher returned my notebook, he stood in front of my desk, gazing at me. Then he threw the notebook onto the desk and said, “I am impressed.”. I don’t think I was particularly good at writing. I still don’t think I am. I am just so in love with what I do, and I think this ardor is reflected in the art I create. My unbridled enthusiasm, my zest for life, my curiosity and insatiable hunger for learning. But I also possess some qualities that are rather conducive to creating art, such as being pensive, perceptive, and attentive. And of course, the most important one of them all: a wild imagination.
From a young age, I wrote song lyrics, quotes, poetry, and stories. However, I was too shy to share them with anyone outside of my family. I was too afraid to let such an intimate part of my mind be scrutinized by complete strangers. When I was eleven years old, my cat Tiger was born under our staircase and immediately he became my best friend. He would always sleep in my bed and follow me wherever I went. I grew up in a household with lots of fighting and arguing. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night and sit at the top of the stairs and listen to my parents arguing, mostly about money. Tiger would always come and cuddle up in my lap, and we would sit there and comfort each other. It was around this age that I started to write song lyrics. It was a big childhood dream to become a professional singer. Mostly because singing was one of my biggest passions in life, but also because singers earned a lot of money. In my mind, this became the solution to my parents constant arguments about money. I was going to become a singer and make a lot of money. Then my parents wouldn’t have to argue about money, and we would go back to being one big happy family. I never became a professional singer. My parents never stopped fighting, and after my ACL injury at the age of 14, I stopped writing song lyrics. I ended up twisting my knee five times over the course of a year, each time I got a new injury. I had big dreams and goals to pursue an athletic career in my sport, Handball, and the injury threatened to end my career before it had even begun. It was both mentally and physically challenging. The pain was at times insufferable. The third time I twisted the knee, my injured knee became twice the size of the other one. It was difficult to sleep, if I kept it stretched for too long, the pain would wake me up. To handle the emotional pain of not being able to do the thing I loved the most, of not knowing if it would ever heal properly, I started writing about my sorrow, frustration, disappointment, bitterness, regret, and anxiety. But also about hope, longing, gratitude, determination and resilience. I no longer wrote for pleasure, such as song lyrics, poetry, quotes and stories. Writing became medicine for my soul and a necessity for my mental health.
At the age of 17, while I was in high school, I studied International Relations. It was at that moment that I realized that it would suit me well to work as a diplomat. Not because that’s what I truly wanted, but because it was my belief that working with diplomacy was where I could make the biggest difference in the world. I have always gotten along with everyone. I’ve always cared about everyone’s well-being and made sure that everyone felt safe and comfortable. Whenever there was a dispute at school, I was always the one to solve it. I had this unique ability – something I later recognized in life – to see things from a much wider perspective. I suppose I have my mom to thank for that. From a young age she would make me read books about mentalization, understanding different points of view, how we perceive life differently by virtue of our disparate backgrounds and life experiences. I have a funny memory from when I was eleven years old. I had a dispute with a friend, and I told my mom about it in the car on the way to school. She would then start challenging my perception of the situation. She would offer me other ways of seeing it. I ended up getting really mad at her, telling her that she didn’t understand me and I’d storm out of the car, slamming the door behind me. But then I spent the rest of the day pondering what she had said and at the end of the day I concluded that maybe I just hadn’t fully comprehended what she was trying to convey, and that she had just offered me another point of view. I went home and apologized to her for my behavior, and I’d tell her that maybe I was the one who hadn’t understood her and not the other way around. My mom taught me to see myself from the outside and others from the inside, which has proven incredibly valuable in creating complex fictional characters.
Anyway, I started looking into what was required of me to become a diplomat and learnt that I needed a third language in addition to my native language Swedish, and English. At that point I was already studying Spanish in school, but my plan was to learn all the official languages of the United Nations. It was my belief that if I learned them all, it would be impossible to turn me down. I then decided to start taking French and Italian classes in school as well. After high school, I wanted to study international relations in London but I didn’t know how to finance it. Around the same time, I also started getting quite serious health problems which made me want to be close to my family until I found out what was causing my symptoms. I ended up studying Russian at university instead.
At the age of 19, I entered my first relationship. It was an awful experience. It lasted just over a year and taught me everything that love is not. When I finally managed to end it, my confidence and self-esteem were at rock bottom. I had lost myself completely during the relationship. I wasn’t allowed to do anything I loved. I wasn’t allowed to work out, play handball, or sing, or write, or study. For a year and a half, I had just ceased to exist as a human being. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle such a situation. All that I knew was that I needed to heal, and what is the best medicine for the soul?
To write, of course.
First, I wrote a poem called “Lying Lips”. It was the first poem I had written in many years. After that, I attempted to write a song called “Emancipation” but only succeeded in writing fragments of a song. I then tossed it away and left it to collect dust somewhere in a drawer together with the other unfinished pieces. Simultaneously, my health problems only got worse. My parents had gone through a very conflicted divorce which ended with me and my mom moving far away from what felt like civilization. My first relationship had left its mark on me. I was certain I would never give my heart to anyone ever again. I needed something to occupy my thoughts. I had told myself that life had taught me everything that love is not, so when the day comes when I meet the right person, someone who will love me the right way – I will know it. I wanted to create a story based on my idea of what love is. One thing led to another and suddenly, I had created a whole new fantasy world with its own language, complex characters embarking on an adventure. It became a story that occupied every waking hour of my day. A storyline which ended up requiring eight novels to be told. A gigantic project to say the least. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to prioritize it since my writing doesn’t provide me with an income. I’ve had to prioritize finishing law school and studying languages. On top of that, my athletic ambitions have taken up most of my time. But whenever I do have some free time, I dive right into my fantasy world and let the pen work its magic.
At the age of 25, I lost my cat Tiger. He was more than just a pet to me; he was my little baby. His sickness was like lightning from a clear blue sky. Everything happened so fast. Suddenly, he stopped eating and lost a lot of weight. We understood that something was terribly wrong with him and the day before New Year’s Eve, we took him to the vet to have him examined. It turned out that he had an infected tooth that needed to be removed as soon as possible. However, the vet didn’t have the equipment to do it, so he referred us to a different clinic. Tiger was sent home with antibiotics and later got an appointment for surgery one month later. That New Year’s Eve, I stayed at home with Tiger to make sure he ate and that he wasn’t too frightened by the fireworks. The antibiotics didn’t work and his condition got worse. We realized that he wouldn’t survive the month, so we had to call the vet and explain that he needed surgery promptly. He then got an appointment the following week. The problem was that by then the infection had spread to the bone and it was much worse compared to when we first visited the vet before New Year’s Eve. It was awful seeing him so sick. It broke my heart. I felt so powerless. After the surgery, we tried for a month with the strongest antibiotics, but nothing worked. I will never forget the moment when the vet told us there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t save him. How my legs stopped working. Up until that moment it hadn’t even crossed my mind that he wasn’t going to make it. I had lived in complete denial. I believed in a miracle all the way until the end, that one of the antibiotics would somehow miraculously save him.
After Tiger’s passing, I wanted to give him something. Something that felt like it belonged to him. I decided to write him a poem. But a poem felt inadequate, so I decided to turn the poem into a song. Up until that moment, I had avoided writing song lyrics for almost a decade, and I had started to think of it as being too intricate and arduous for me. But I was so determined to write him a song, so I did. Afterwards, I was so satisfied with the result – above all with the fact that I had decided to go through with it. It felt like I had climbed the mountain that always stood in my way. It was as if Tiger had shown me that I could do anything If I believed in myself. I felt so inspired after writing my first song in a decade that I decided to dust off all the fragments of songs that I had written over the years and see if I could do something creative with them. Suddenly, I had material for around twenty songs. An idea popped into my head that I should start a blog where I could share my poetry, quotes, philosophical texts, song lyrics, stories and just random thoughts and ideas. However, the idea fizzled out, and all my writings went back to collecting dust in the drawer. Probably because I once again thought the process was too arduous and intricate that I shouldn’t even bother to give it a try on my own. But then I met someone…
For the past six months, I’ve been working as a legal associate at a law firm. A few months ago, we got an intern at the office and from the very first day – from the first conversation we had – she blew me away. Her character, intelligence, kindness and charisma – but also how knowledgeable and capable she is at everything she does, makes her truly extraordinary. We became close friends almost immediately. A few weeks ago, I found out that when my probationary period is over, I’m not going to be offered permanent employment. It came as the biggest shock to me since they had only given me signs and indications that they wanted me to stay. I had planned my future around the belief that my path was to become a defense lawyer. It’s always difficult to leave a workplace where you’ve felt so at home and to leave colleagues that you have developed affection for. The Lawyers at my office have spoiled me with care. They’ve also been incredible role models, not just in their profession but also as human beings. I think this is going to be the most difficult part with ending the employment, not being in their presence five days a week. They didn’t think this was the right path for me. Although it is always tough when somebody pulls away the safety net out from under your feet, however, on some level I think they might be doing me a favor. As a farewell gift, they gave me a stunning necklace and bracelet in the form of a shield from a collection called “my story”. It had been meticulously chosen for me with a note saying
“The collection My Story is about being the one who holds the pen in the story of your own life. Many times, we go through life without reflecting on what controls our lives. Maybe something feels wrong, maybe I’m carrying other dreams. The shield necklace becomes a reminder to be the one who directs your own life”.
I’m trying to be optimistic about ending one chapter. What do you do when your safety line breaks? You fly. Maybe this didn’t work out because something better lies ahead. I’m probably going to be unemployed for the summer and I really dislike being idle. I’m going to construe the note they gave me as a sign that this might be the perfect time to finally start the blog that I’ve always wanted to create and pick up the pen and finish my fantasy novel once and for all. I asked the ”intern” if she was willing to help me with this project since I’m not very tech-savvy and she said yes.
So here I am. Sharing my biggest passion. I’m thinking this will be my space where I can practice my writing skills. Where I can share my poems, quotes, stories, thoughts and ideas. Basically, anything that comes to mind. I’ve always been writing to better understand the world within me, but also to better understand the world outside of me. That’s why I’ve chosen the name “The art of living” because it’s my idea that we create art by just simply existing. That each human is so unique in their own way. We sometimes forget just how extraordinary it is to be alive. The idea emanated from the thought that “I don’t just create art – I also am art”, and the greatest story I’ll ever write is the one about myself. This mindset has helped me to be more attentive and present in my daily life and to not be so quick to judge life. You never know, a plot twist could be hiding just around the corner.
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