Lopsided, squeezed in-between, wonky, uneven incomprehensible pieces is what make up the patchwork that is me, the creature cramming itself into the cracks of this life, fertilizing the soil with confusion and silence. A question mark coiling inwards from both ends, eating my own tail, drooling love and purring like a cat.

…

It is hard for me not to stay awake on the night-side of the day, I don’t know why I always fall over. I wish I was a morning person sometimes, but the dark room and the late nights I wander around outside make it hard not to wake at eleven, twelve, one even. When I eventually stray back into my room I like being awake by myself, a time when no one is judging me (I don’t know at all if the other women in the house judge me or how I appear to them. Just that Blessed asks me some days if I have even left the house, but from her face or tone of voice I can not see what she thinks of my answers.) Everything I do is on the floor: sleep, eat, read, write, listen to podcasts and make jewellery. It is simple and I am comfortable.

I have felt a bit sad the last few times that I’ve wandered home after meeting my friends, maybe wondering if this meeting has been the last, or maybe it has been about the linguistic insecurity and being in the middle of inclusion and exclusion (Swedish has a brilliant word for this: mellanförskap.) I remember other times in my life, returning bubbly and happy from social events, re-filled and energized. Now I can’t quite remember the last time when I laughed, really laughed. I do laugh with my friends, sure, but mostly about the absurdity of things, culture shocks, bizarre stories and strange beliefs (“Try holding you phone to your arm where you took the Covid vaccine and then letting it go – it will stay,” one of my friends tells me.) I laugh about things that are fun but not really funny. That’s right, I remember; humor is cultural, too. What do I even find funny?

Anyway. I was thinking that here I am, slowly separating from the social context, counting down the days to my departure and I feel a bit sad and can it be because I am grieving that I will leave soon or can it be because I don’t feel fully close to anyone anyway without a hundred un-filled gaps of longing and discrepancy? When was even the last time that I felt totally, seamlessly included? I am growing into this creature that doesn’t fit into any pot, root-less yet with roots swarming over the edges and misbehaving, breaking the clay apart. Of course I am not surprised that fewer and fewer contexts can hold me and yes, it is endlessly interesting and yes, I feel pain. I try to imagine the times in my life when I’ve felt whole and I imagine other lives; I can not relate to the person I was. I remember things happening but I am someone else now and my perspective on my memories is different. Someone looking back on my life and seeing a person like any other that I meet on my travels; friendly and fundamentally strange. It is not only to others that I feel distant and strange, but also to myself. So different in beliefs, values and experience, current me not knowing how to relate to the memories.

I am loosing myself in the becoming. Looking for and sometimes demanding answers from a self that hasn’t fully finished taking shape like fetal fingers grasping, growing to spell something incomprehensible and diffuse.

…

I think about the gap between what I live and what I post on instagram; there was a two-week time difference when I arrived here in Tangier. Now the gap is at around a month and I don’t know how it happened. At the same time as I have mostly rested and reclined I have slid right back into a similar state as in Moz where it was difficult for me to experience and to write at the same time. I was feeling unbalanced between impressions and expressions. Incomprehensible to myself. I try to observe this volatile state, eyes blinking and darting before falling asleep.

…

I think about a dark and cold Sweden here, on the lively streets with the sun on my face. I think about the mood that I usually have during winter, about that time last year when it snowed so much that the metro was canceled and I had to walk an hour to get home and the snow was really thick and muffled the sounds and lit up the city from below. It was cold. The slow heavy steps felt profound.

I don’t know how I want to live my life. Now or later. Always this unknowing; I don’t know who I will be, it feels as absurd to think about life in a year than it feels to think about life in a month, or in the days few when I am to go to Casablanca. I simply can not imagine.

There has always been (an idea of) after; after this or that education, exchange, diploma, project. Every step was supposed to bring me somewhere. When I graduated in 2020 and suddenly found myself without a time frame or a plan, the life crisis, in retrospect, is no surprise. Time just lay itself out before me, without schedule or syllabus, and I did not know what I would make of it all or my own size in relation to it. I remember my apartment and for a short while nurturing the illusion that it was there I was to live until my death. That my work place and routine would remain the same. Despite hating Stockholm. Now, this fantasy too is incomprehensible and it tugs upwards the corners of my mouth.

…

I am in the middle of doing what I believe in. I feel pleasure in the process of moulting, stretching and pulling apart. Pleasure not in the sense of positive feelings but more like a neutral calm underneath it all, a feeling of meaning, the fact that no matter when I ask myself if I really want to be here and continue, the answer so far has always been yes. Sometimes slow, quiet or hesitant, but. Yes. This is what I want right now.

In some way I even believe that I am doing my duty: if a person has all of my conditions (a Swedish passport, some money, few responsibilities) it would be almost upsetting if they did not engage in exactly what I am doing now; travel, creative expression, thinking, growing. Sinking my teeth into life, curling up in life’s lap, chasing and fighting and napping.

I imagine growing into an obscure puzzle piece. I fear becoming too lonely, unrelatable and weird but then I remember than in this world there are plenty of even more obscure cracks that I can fill in with my incomprehensible shape.

…

(This story told in pictures.)