Where The Pixilated Doctors Moan

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Walking.
My face is whipped by sharp icicles falling fast from the black sky. Tiny, perfect formations of frozen water particles, each and every one of them unique, supposedly. I can't tell, they all sting the same as they crash into my cold cheeks. I'm wondering why I'm doing this to myself.
“Sure you want to go for a walk in this?” ask Ingemar as I exit the car.
“Oh, but the warmth of our fireplace will be even better after I've been outside!” I answer with the cockiness of a person whose feet are still dry and cozy. Good thought in theory, and one I'm eating as I'm walking in the hostile snow that doesn't fall so much as attacks me sideways.
I'm half regretting my outdoor initiative, but then I see a horse standing by the fence of his little pasture. He looks strong and defiant, facing the wind, looking my way. I go up and pet him for a while, enjoying the simple beauty of an encounter that doesn't require verbal communication.
I'm intrigued by how we interact with animals, because I compare it to how we interact with other humans. I compare and analyze and wonder.
This horse is a stranger to me, by definition, yet my first instinct is to pet him and show him affection. I wonder where that comes from. Why do I so amiably accept this creature? For all I know, he could be a shit horse. He could be a real prick, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. By default, no less. Simply for being a non-human.
Actually, I go far beyond the benefit of the doubt. I show him tenderness in the one way I know he can perceive it; by touching him. Seeing how we act towards people we don't know, I'm surprised we consider this behavior normal. We'll walk by a derelict on the street one second, and stop to lavish love on a cute German Shepherd the next.

My face is cold, as are my hands and feet, but it's pretty out here in the dark stillness. I don't mind the cold as much when it's accompanied by beauty. My equestrian friend exhales, and the warm air pushes against my face. I give him a kiss and continue my trek. The frozen lake on my left side is covered in a thick layer of snow, and the fresh outlines of a body tells me someone recently laid down on it to make a snow angel.
Dicey idea, it's just below minus.

Carl's parents live only 10 minutes from my town, so we rode the train together up to our families. When we had to change trains we bought a bottle of Bailey's, and when I say 'we', I mean 'Carl'. I can't pay for anything around him these days, we won't let me.
It was a smallish bottle, and we easily finished it during the hour or so train ride, and I had the slightest alcohol buzz but quite the sugar high when I entered my childhood house.
It's always odd coming home now that we don't have a dog anymore. I know there was a period during my upbringing when we didn't have one, but I can't remember it. My brain knows there are no pets at Mom's these days, but I still expect to hear the happy barking from a dog as I walk towards the door, the gentle shoving of a furry animal against my legs as I enter. That simple happiness.
I can't wait to get a dog myself. Maybe I'll get another loan and buy a farm somewhere, get some horses and hens and a cow or two. Grow potatoes, radish, herbs, spinach, tomatoes. Live off the land, go back to basics. Find joy in the little things, the real things, like the smell of fresh rosemary.

I receive a text message on my phone, a Christmas greeting from a dear friend in Sydney. As I'm walking up an icy hill I think of the sweltering heat in the city of my dreams at this time of the year. I'm wishing I was there to burn my bare feet on the steaming pavements of Surry Hills, sipping on a take-away soy flat white in the generous sunshine. But it's not the same type of yearning as a month ago. It doesn't kill me to not be there, and the beauty surrounding me is no longer wasted on me. I can appreciate it now, I can appreciate being here. I get it. I'm meant to be here right now. There were people I was meant to meet, friendships to nurture, family relations to care about.
Restore, and be restored.
Replenish.
Lost time to make up for.

It's good to be out in my home village for a few days. It's still, quiet. Trying to find something to do there is like trying to find a vegan restaurant in Alabama, but that's probably good for me. All I have to do is make sure Mom doesn't do everything around the house. She likes cooking, and she's good at it, so I let her keep that household task, but I try to take care of lighting the fire in the cold mornings and doing the dishes and sewing whatever curtains need to get sewn. It's not much, but when doing these things at Mom's, it means she doesn't have to do them, which lends the task importance. At my place, every chore I do is one I'm expected to do, because it's my home, and I'm the only one living there. At my place, the chores have no value. It's just laundry, it's just dishes, it's just life.

A few weeks ago I went to the little grocery store on the corner right by my place. Outside was a bum begging for money. I had only brought change with me as I was just picking up some sourcream and an avocado, so when he asked me for money I said I'd give him something if I had anything left when I came out again. As I exited the store a few minutes later he asked again, clearly unaware that we had already spoken, and I gave him one crown. One crown is not a lot, but it's something, which generally is seen as better than nothing. The bum did not share that outlook, and in a low voice he complained about receiving an amount so small he wouldn't be able to buy anything for it. I thought I had just misheard him, and asked him to repeat.
- One crown, I can't get anything for just one crown, he muttered indignantly.
Sure, I said, but if some more people gave him one or a couple crowns each, he'd soon have enough to buy whatever it was he was after. He again mumbled something resentful regarding my offensively infinitesimal donation. I said he could always just give back the crown if he was so displeased with it, which he did. I walked back to my apartment with the rejected coin in my hand, torn between guilt and frustration. I think I eventually landed somewhere in between, feeling angrily rotten.
Tell you what, even the bums are annoying in this country.

It's gray in Malmö. Gray and terribly cold. I'm lying on my couch in my warm apartment reading an autobiographical book about living with manic depression. My pajamas pants are blue and comfy, and I'm thinking they're quite possibly not part of a pajamas at all, but actually the type of pants you give a patient at a hospital. At least they have that same blue color. The waist is a massive one-size with a draw string so that practically anyone between 45 - 300 lbs can wear them. I fit in somewhere there, so I'm wearing them. Plus, I'll be a patient soon, for a few hours anyway, so I see it as an appropriate attire.
They gray doesn't depress me. It doesn't bother me at all. I feel oddly untouchable. Not ridiculously happy maybe, just somewhere in a comfortable in-between. I'm still sick, or again rather, but even that isn't much of an inconvenience. I've been sick a lot this month, which means I haven't worked as much as I need to, which means my next salary will go from the usual meager to a new level of meager-er. That's bad news, especially with everyone I know turning 30 all at once. You're expected to buy nice presents when someone has a special birthday like that, as if your friends turning 30 magically means you have more money. I don't have any money, but I hate being a disappointment, so I find ways around it. So far I've been giving away little personal gift vouchers:
“I will take you to the Louisiana museum whenever you want to go, you choose a date.
Happy birthday!”
These vouchers buy me crucial time to save up money for the promised event, and they save me having to buy wrapping paper. It's genius, really.

One of my favorite songs with Elbow comes on, and I put down the book and lie still to soak in the tones. I'm getting better at this again, better at enjoying all those little beautiful moments that intersperse our lives. Can't afford to miss out on them in a place like winter-Sweden. Happiness isn't a constant state, it's second-to-second, as moody as a teenager. You don't acquire it once and then get to enjoy it for the rest of your life, and that's why all the little beautiful moments are so important. I have to recognize and absorb and savor them, because beauty is, in essence, a form of happiness. Beauty pleases me, and to be pleased is comparable to being happy.
Yeah. Something like that.

New Years Eve. I'm last-minute half-invited to a party with a 50's theme, which is lucky for me. The only dress I have in my pathetically empty closet is a knee-length thing with big black dots on a cream base and frilly lace in the bottom. It looks 50's to me, so I put it on and apply some mascara.
There, done.
My nice black winter coat is far too cold for this weather, but it's also the only thing that could possibly match the dress, so I put it on. I wear my new boots even though I can't put my gimp soles inside them. They're too slim for that. "Fashion over health and comfort" I think as I turn out the lights and leave my apartment.
The party is only a few minutes from my place. My boots make that cocky clickety-clackety half-stomp with every step I take. I sound confident, like I know what I'm doing, now and forever.
You don't wear shoes indoors in Sweden, so I remove my bitchy boots in the foyer. It's funny that a country that consists of such zealous fashionistas insists on you removing a vital part of your outfit upon entering a house party. The shoes make the look, don't they get that?
The party apartment (apartyment?) smells of baked bread, and I'm handed a rum smoothie made on soy milk to sip on while Martina introduces me to everyone, God bless her heart. When she's made sure I've met them all she starts talking to a tall man in a suit, and I catch the end of a sentence where she says that she's been “hiding in her apartment a fair bit”, and that she's happy with that.
Baking bread and reading.
It sounds sad, and lonely, but that's not accurate. It's nice, relaxing and cozy. It's great. I want to make sure that's how I really feel about it, because I can relate to her comment a bit more than I think I'm comfortable with. Martina and I have more in common than I would've thought, and nowadays we get along pretty well. We didn't at first, but now we do. Or at least I think so. I don't really know, things can turn fast.
At the party everyone's nice, but no one's interesting. Other than Martina who invited me, of course. She is also the only reason I stay as long as I do. We talk about manic depression and the difficulty of what to do with people who never never never get better. It's not even 11pm when I excuse myself by pointing to my throat, suggesting that my sickness and my work shift the next day is what compels me to go home, when in fact it's just my unwillingness to fake interest in things and people I don't care about. Socially I'm becoming more complex, less charitable. I no longer see the point in talking to people that I'm not the least bit curious about.

By 11.15 I've already washed my face, had a cup of tea and gone to bed. My throat is a mess from trying to talk louder than the 50's music, and I worry I won't be able to sing at my friends birthday party a few days later.
There are fire crackers going off everywhere outside my apartment. I'm really tired, but I can't fall asleep. It's been this way for a while now. I don't know why, but it doesn't bother me. Sleeplessness I can handle. I listen to the fireworks and wait for the succession of crackers that sound like a strike in a bowling hall. Most of them just sound like war, though. I drift off a little bit but wake up when all of a sudden there's a cacophony of hundreds of explosions going off at once. Must be midnight. It sounds like every single bit of pyrotechnics in the city is set off. I hear a girl scream from a balcony somewhere. I can't tell if her scream is happy or sad or hysterical. Maybe she doesn't even know herself, alcohol does that sometimes.

It doesn't feel lonely to be awake in my bed by myself at New Years Eve, listening to other people's celebration through my open window. It actually feels liberating. Finally I've come to the point where I'm comfortable saying no to things I don't want to do. Autonomy, glorious autonomy.

I'm lying awake until the firecrackers die away, and in the nocturnal clarity that sometimes visits me these waking nights, I'm wondering why I'm trying so hard to not develop feelings for a man that could actually be good for me. I haven't done feelings for a while. It just hasn't been my thing lately. And this thing, whatever it is, is still very new. I decide it's ok to be nervous and unsure, it's ok to be a bit frightened by it.
And it's ok to be scared about the upcoming surgery, probably even normal. Johanna asked me if they would have to cut me open, and I nearly fainted. I hadn't even thought of that. “No no, it said 'minor surgery'! If they cut me, I mean if they open me, they can't call it 'minor'”. I said this urgently, as if Johanna is the one I have to convince. But she's not. It's me. If I think a scalpel will hack into me I won't go. The information leaflet I got in the mail said nothing about scalpels. There better not be any knives.

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