If you just clicked into this site on random and don’t know me, this is probably of no interest to you. It will probably be more entertaining viewing my pictures here, or reading my other stories here.
This is as personal as it gets. The last ten years I have experienced a lot, more than many will in a lifetime. I have told the funny, interesting, cute, and light stories. This is the parallel story. It will not be funny. It will not be pretty. It might be interesting. It might be long. This is not an attempt for a literary or journalistic masterpiece. This is not a blog, it’s a one-time deal. Parts of it I have told to a limited number of selected people, but no one has ever heard the complete story. Ten years of bottling up have lead up to this moment, the time to tell the alternative story. The other side of life. Gloves off. No metaphors. No hidden messages. This is what happened from A to Z, from then until now.
I grew up in the small town of Kristianstad in the southern part of Sweden. A rather normal childhood. Went to school, hung out with friends, played sports, went on holidays, watched TV. A rather normal family; parents, two brothers, a sister, cats and dogs and various other pets. A secure and solid life, but not very exciting. I never really liked my hometown, and I didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the rest of my life there. So, at the age of 23 I decided to make a change. I moved to Malaga, Spain. That is where my part of the story that would alter my life begins.
Malaga, Spain. My home for eight months in 1996-1997. Met a lot of great people, made a lot of new friends, partied, traveled, enjoyed the sun, and studied some Spanish every now and then. Looking back I had the time of my life there. No worries. A fun and laidback lifestyle. But I was blinded by the excitement of my new and improved life. I should have raised one concern.
My family came for a visit shortly after New Years. On this my first time away from home for this long, I was excited to see them. They stayed at a hotel in Torremolinos, a tourist resort near Malaga. On the first night, I suggested that my brother Johan joined me to Malaga for a few drinks. We hadn’t spent much time together in the past few years, so a bit of catching up time. He moved to a different city for school, we had different friends and interests, and different lives. Little did I know how different.
Johan was my kid brother, one year younger than me. We grew up together, played, fought, laughed, did normal things brothers do. He was the more social one, made friends easily. When I stayed home watching TV, he went out to parties. He had his friends, I had mine. The older we grew, the more separated our lives became. In high school he moved to Malmö, an hour away from home. Also in the south of Sweden, the third biggest in the country. A city to either love or hate. A great city if you ask me, but not very pretty, a worker’s city, a rough city. He moved there to pursue studies for a career as a sailor. His studies were rounded off with an internship on a ship in South America. An adventure.
This evening in Spain he was reluctant at first, but agreed to come along to Malaga for a few drinks. We went to the bar I used to frequent, and started chatting. What he told me next was a shocker. On his trip on the ship in South America, they went ashore in a few of the countries, among others Colombia. There he was introduced to drugs. He acquired a taste for it. When he returned to Malmö he started hanging out with the wrong people, and the use of narcotics escalated. I played cool, but was trembling inside. The use of drugs was to me a big no no. Huge loser factor. Very uncool. I never had any interest in it, and have as of this day still never tried any. But now my brother was stuck in it. He opened up to me. He was trying to get out of it. The main reason being that he at any cost would not allow my other brother to get introduced to it. He had been clean for a few months, and was planning on cutting his friends off and moving back to our hometown. I now realized that having drinks was a gigantic mistake. I didn’t know, and here we had been drinking not only beer, but also absinthe. The strong kind. The kind that causes hallucinations.
We decided to call it a night and go back to my apartment. I had developed a rather high tolerance for alcohol, but my brother not having had any for months was quite intoxicated. I went to bed in the bedroom, Johan slept on the couch in the living room. In the middle of the night I woke up with a strange feeling that something was wrong. I got up and went to the living room. My brother was gone. So was the bottle of vodka I kept in the kitchen. Panic. Knowing that this was his first time in the city with many small and winding streets, in combination with his poor sense of direction, I had to find him. But where? I went out on the streets and to the places we had been. No sign of him. I randomly walked around the streets around my apartment. Eventually I found him, confused and lost, but close to my apartment. He explained that he had a vision that he had to go out and find something or someone. What exactly never became clear, he was rambling incomprehensively. When it became clear to him that I went out to look for him he was genuinely touched. “You’re the best brother ever”. I made sure he stayed on the couch, and went to bed. I didn’t sleep much. I cried.
The rest of my family came to Malaga the next day. I never told them what happened. I felt guilty for having gotten my brother back on the destructive track again. This is the first time ever this part of the story gets out.
After a week my family went back to Sweden. Having lived a carefree life for months, I got a big reality check, now looking at things in a different perspective. But I didn’t change much. I went on with my life of partying and traveling around. In one of the not so frequent calls to my mom, I found out that Johan was now back doing drugs. He had reached a low point when he was mixing drugs and burned down his apartment. Luckily he now realized that something had to be done. He cut off his life in Malmö and moved back to our hometown. Lived at home at first, but moved into a small apartment soon. I felt helpless from Spain, but what could I do? Maybe the answer should have been to cut my session in Spain shorter and move back to Sweden for support. Maybe the thought occurred to me, but I didn’t entertain this idea, and I was due home in a few months anyway. What was the worst that could happen?
The months passed, and I moved back to my hometown. It was summertime, and Johan seemed to have adjusted just fine to his new life in the small town. One day that summer I received a phone call from my mother. Something was wrong. She told me that one of my brother’s best friends had just committed suicide. He had jumped in front of a train. She hadn’t heard from my brother in a few days, and was worried sick. Part of my brother’s strategy to cut his bad life out was to not have a phone. My mom picked me up, and we drove to the apartment where my brother lived. We had no idea what to expect. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. I can’t recall having ever felt a greater relief than when my brother opened the door. He hadn’t heard the bad news. His friend had been very depressed for a while, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but naturally it shook him. Johan was never a man to share emotions. He bottled things up. I don’t know how he dealt with this. We never talked about it. I promised myself I would tell him I was very glad it wasn’t him who had done it. There would be plenty of time to do that I thought
Time passed, and life went on. Running out of money and having no luck on the job market, I was forced to find job elsewhere. In September of 1997 I moved to Malmö and started a job as a taxi driver. Although I had a fun time, and a steady income, I had bigger plans. No disrespect to the transport business, but I wanted to make a difference. Maybe not save the world, but at least change the world of advertising and marketing. I had to make a decision. In Spain I had acquired a taste for life abroad and in the sun, so when I got accepted to Hawaii Pacific University, the choice was easy. After only a few months in Malmö I decided to move overseas. Paradise, here I come.
In January of 1998 I was ready for the big trip. The night before my flight I stayed up long and played card with my brothers. My plan was to complete the whole degree in the US, but coming back to Sweden between semesters. My family took me to the airport. My mom asked me “so you’re really going?” Johan also asked me jokingly the same question, seeing the obvious in the statement considering the fact that we were at the airport already.
I arrived in Hawaii, found a place to live, and started my studies. The adjustment went fine. I enjoyed college life and life in a warm climate and a beautiful place. Starting college at the age of 24 was with a “now or never feeling”, but I had finally started my path to an education and a future career. Back then Internet and emails were rare occurrences, at least in my circle of friends. I was still writing letters and postcards. Manual labor, but it had its charm. And receiving a letter or postcard back really made my day. One day I received a postcard from Johan. He was planning on coming to visit. He told me to have the coffee ready. It wasn’t a very elaborate communication. But it would be the ultimate.
In my opinion, a college degree is not so much about the actual information you learn, but about life in general, networking, and arguing and questioning theories. With the ladder in mind, I started philosophizing about the existence of a higher being. A god if you will. In my childhood I had had a belief in a god, but it had diminished as I grew older, to almost disappearing completely. I started experimenting with light prayers, and after a series of events where my luck seemed to turn to the better, I started to find faith. Then, in a split second I lost it, and it’s now gone and buried forever. REM sang about losing their religion. I have no clue what they were actually singing about, but this is how I lost my religion.
One morning in June of 1998 the phone rang. I got up and answered. It was my mom. The words that I heard then are forever burned into my memory. Roughly it translates to “It’s Johan. He’s no more alive”. It is quite amazing how life can change in a heartbeat. After the conversation was over I just dropped on the floor and started shouting. Never having had to endure hardship before, I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Also being literally halfway across the world away from home and obviously having to travel back immediately, I had to regain control of myself. Luckily I found a flight the same day, managed to notify school, and packed my belongings. I had fantastic support from a friend and my roommates. My Finnish friend told me to allow myself to break down and cry. My Mexican roommate told me that I had to be strong for my family. Obviously contradictory statements, but they were both right. I took those words with me as I began the longest trip of my life. The trip home.
So what does this have to do with religion? My idea of a god is that of a higher being who is there to protect you. To guide you through tough times. To punish the bad people. To fight evil. If that was true, why did it punish us in this way? To test your faith, some would say. Bullshit, I say. There are other ways of doing that.
A flight from Hawaii to Sweden is quite a project. From Honolulu to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Malmö. Without delays, and with some luck with short layovers, it’s about a 20 hour trip. I was able to sleep quite a bit, although it wasn’t exactly beauty sleep. I was also lucky not to have any chatty people sitting next to me. Sometimes it makes a long trip more enjoyable, but the last thing I needed in this situation was to chitchat about trivial things, pretending everything was alright. I built up the theory in my head that it was all a prank. My family wanted me to come home, and had to take extreme measures to get me back. When I walked off the plane he would stand there, and we would all laugh. A cruel and tasteless practical joke, but it would make this bad dream go away. I finally landed in Malmö. My family was there. Johan was not. First then I fully realized what had happened.
The cause of death was classified as suicide. He had jumped in front of a train, just like his buddy a year before. There were no signs of any crime having been committed, and no motive for anything else than suicide, so no extensive police investigation. Here is the thing that the police didn’t know and would never care about; there was no motive for suicide either. Johan had been clean for about a year, which the autopsy also showed. He didn’t have an extensive social life, but at least he had cut his old acquaintances with bad influence. He had a job. He had an apartment. He had his family nearby. He also had bought a bicycle, which he was proud of. We were all looking forward to watching the 1998 World Cup Football that summer. And he had the trip to Hawaii planned. So why?
My family had not been in his apartment. They wanted to wait until I got home. We were not sure what we would find. A note? A stash of narcotics? Any explanation to why he had left us? We went in. There was a half-full cup of coffee on the table. There was also newspaper folded up at the centerfold, as if someone was reading it. There were no signs or no leads to anything. He had bought a cell phone. This was also on the coffee table. In 1998 a cell phone was a big, brick-sized apparatus. But easy to use, and no codes to punch in before it could be used. We checked the outgoing and incoming numbers. Nothing out of the ordinary. So again, why? Today, exactly ten years after, we’re still not an inch closer to an answer than we were then.
The way I choose to look at it is that narcotics came into my brother’s life, and eventually destroyed it. Living in the US and in Amsterdam has exposed me to the drug scene, but have never gotten the upper hand. I have never tried, and I’m sure that anyone out there understands that I never will. I don’t discuss the pros and cons of drugs. I don’t joke about it. I just say no. Period.
The days leading up to the funeral were the toughest. I called my two best friends in my hometown before the obituary was published in the local newspaper. After the news was out, they spread fast. Funerals are never fun, and it was my first. The organist played Rod Stewart's "Sailing". A beautiful song, and so appropriate. Every time I hear it I think of him. His birthday was October 8. He never got to see his 24th birthday. This is something you read about in the newspapers. Young people die. Their families grieve. It happens to other people. It doesn’t happen to you. Think again. They do. When they actually do, there is no manual on how to act or react. There are no instructions on how to deal with it. So I made up my own rules.
I had to move on with my life. It would have been easy to break down and go under. It would have been convenient to find comfort with alcohol. Maybe it would have been advisable to seek professional help. I did none of the above. I convinced myself I had to be strong. Show no fear. Show no weakness. I sincerely believe in the saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Being the oldest child, I was convinced that if I had broken down, so would my family. So I blocked out all emotions and negative thoughts. Naturally, some slipped though, and still do, but I’ve become very proficient in suppressing them. I’ve been at the bottom, and it’s not a great place to be. I don’t want to go back. Over the years it became a very efficient way of dealing with emotionally distressing situations. Too efficient. To the extent that happiness and excitement are very remote concepts to me. If I would allow myself to rise to a state of happiness, I would also have to open the door for a fall all the way through to the bottom. Relaxing is another unknown concept for me. I can handle a large amount of stress, but I can’t handle idleness. I’m constantly worried for the safety and wellbeing of my near and dear. Now, a decade later, I still don’t like to answer the telephone, with the fear of having bad news delivered. I’m constantly tense. But I’m never on the verge of a breakdown. I developed the ability to, maybe with a couple of very rare exceptions, keep my mood swings to an extremely low level. I’m always at various degrees of “ok”.
Life moved on, slowly but surely. Although it felt like it, time was not going to stop. In the fall, I decided to go back to Hawaii and continue my studies. It was an extremely difficult decision. I knew that my family needed my support and knowing that I was ok. I knew that if I had stayed in my hometown, having to live at home, and without a job or an income, it would have affected my mental health much worse than if I would continue studying. One option could have been to transfer to a school closer to home. This would have required a lot of effort during a short period of time though. I didn’t have the amount of energy that would have been needed at the time. So with the, although reluctant, support from my family, I went back to Honolulu. It was ok. After a rather wild first semester, I now focused on school, and got straight A’s. The first semester I tried to make friends with everybody, just like in Spain. It didn’t work the same way in Hawaii. The second semester I had a few selected friends. I needed a few calm and slow months, and I had. And I had discovered the chat function on the Internet. It kept me up many a night. I found a special friend, a remote friend, who could understand me. To this day I have never met her, and have now lost contact. But it kept my mind off bad things.
I had made the decision that I could not stay in “paradise”. Associated with bad memories, and too far away from everything, I applied to and got accepted to the University of New Orleans. A new start in life, start with a clean sheet. This great city accepted me, took me in, and provided me with a home for the next three years. I had a fantastic time and a great experience. And I earned a degree with good grades. An accomplishment I’m rather proud of, considering the – to put it lightly – rocky start of my academic career. After having graduated, and not being able to land a permanent job in the declining economy, I arrived at the decision to move back to Europe. My grandfather was also sick, also occupying my mind, so it was the logical decision.
In December of 2001 I was back in Sweden. I had major problems adjusting in the beginning to the cold and dark winter after five years in warm climates. The tough job market didn’t make things easier. Alongside with my job hunt, I also applied for Master programs in Sweden. To be truthful, I never really liked studying. Student life is great, but the actual reading part is not. But I was approaching 30, and I wasn’t going to start a Master degree after that age. I got accepted to the Master of European Affairs program at the rather prestigious Lund University in Sweden, which suited me perfectly. Since my return from the US, I had hated every second and minute of being in my hometown Kristianstad. I was counting the days until I could leave. Now the student loan would provide an income, I would be able to live in Malmö, and the tough schedule would keep me busy. The circle was closed. I thought.
Exactly five years ago, I was at a picnic with my course mates in Lund. The evening came, and we went to someone’s apartment. The television came on, and there was a program, some drama series, where the setting for that episode was a funeral. I started thinking. I realized what day it was. I didn’t want to appear melodramatic, so I turned silent. I’m not very talkative, but usually not a party pooper. My friends noticed. I had not told anyone of my course mates about my brother. Now I had to.
Very rarely I tell people about my brother. If anyone thinks it’s because I’m ashamed of what happened, they need to dismiss that thought quickly. I just don’t share much personal information with people. I don’t mind people knowing things about me, but having lost a brother is quite heavy. The relatively few people I have told part of the story for have been very supporting and understanding. Why wouldn’t they be? I try to surround myself with fairly intelligent people. People understand. But once you tell, there’s no going back. Sort of like telling someone that you have feelings for them in a romantic situation. Once it’s out, the power balance is altered. So I listen rather than talk.
I had the idea of settling down in Malmö after having finished my Master degree. With a feeling of running away for the past five years, I was pleased with the idea of finding a job and an apartment near home. It didn’t happen. There were no jobs, and no apartments. I was running out of money. Malmö rejected me. I landed a job in the Netherlands. So once again I decided to go abroad. This time I wasn’t running away though. I wasn’t trying to escape from problems and the past. I was moving towards something. And it was still at an acceptable distance from my family. This is where my story merges with the present. It has now been four years since my move to Holland. I live in a great city, I have a good job, my own apartment, great friends, a quite extensive social life, money in the bank, a green car, and a bicycle. My life is pretty good by many standards, but not complete.
I can’t escape my past, and I don’t want to. To this day I have still not been at Johan’s grave. I can never stop thinking of my brother who is no longer with us. I can never stop thinking why he left us. I can never stop thinking what would have happened if I would have said those words, “I’m glad it wasn’t you”. Do I blame myself? No. I promised my family I wouldn’t, so I don’t. It would have been unbearable. I don’t blame anyone, and I don’t hate anyone. What would I do if new information all of a sudden surfaced and exposed that a crime had been committed, and they caught the offender alive? Many questions, few answers.
I know what you might be thinking. Am I suicidal too? Let me answer that with a loud and clear no. It would be an easy way out. But wrong. It’s not an option. I know now how tragedy affects the people who care for you. If it wasn’t clear by now, I’ll spell it out; my family means the world to me, and my brother and my sister are the most important people in my life. I don’t wish this happening to any family. I won’t let anything happening to me. Unfortunately this involves having to take less risk in life, physical as well as emotional.
I don’t believe in seeking professional help. I’m absolutely confident it’s extremely useful for many people. I’m not a very trusting person though. Why would I let someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know me try to pick my brain? And on top of that, having to pay for it? I know this is a very narrow-minded viewpoint, and I’m probably wrong. A therapy session for me though would be a battle of the brains to release as little information as possible, and to outsmart the opponent. I’m not a talker, I’m a listener. And a writer. By writing this maybe I can gain something. Not only bring up bad memories, but rather tell the story in my own way and through my own medium.
We are now approaching the end of the story. For a long time I have been dreading to do this. Needless to say, it's been a painful flashback, a reminder of the past, and also for the years to come. But not as difficult as I had expected. Maybe I'm not as fucked up as I thought. Maybe this alters your opinion of me. Maybe it explains a lot. Maybe it confuses a lot. Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I’m disrespectful. Dark. Melodramatic. Strange. But now with a clear mind. I don’t cry for attention. I don’t seek fame. I don’t seek pity or sympathy. I’m well aware that most people go through tough times just like me at some point in their lives. If they do, I hope they are not afraid to tell me. I’m just glad if anyone reads this to the end. I have more stories, but this is the most important one. Obviously there are other peoples’ stories that will intertwine with mine, but I’ll leave that to the other people. This was my version.
Ok, I will slip one metaphor in. Do you know the legend of the Phoenix Rising? Every several hundred years the Phoenix bird burned itself to the ground in its nest. After three days it rose again from the ashes, re-born. Maybe I will do just that. I will go on regardless of what. Maybe this way I can find a way to get a glimpse of the happiness other people are experiencing. I don’t expect miracles to happen, but maybe it’s a start.
If you have read all the way to the end, I thank you. Comments or questions are welcome. You know where to find me.
