THE TRIO
To most of you who’ll ever find your way into this little corner of cyber space I’m a girl whose story begins and ends with her Swedish butt glued to a bike saddle. Forcing deserts for breakfast and crossing mountain ranges like most do zebra crossings. At home nowhere, and everywhere. Happy on her own or even happier in the company of strangers who’ve just become her friends or even family.
While those mountains – actual and metaphorical – generally involve a world of effort more than you get to see here, I guess that’s all true today. It’s been a long time now since this truly became my life. However. What all of this isn’t – is my story.
On the hour one week ago I was making it into Bern, Switzerland and I couldn’t keep my hands from trembling. Rolling down the perfectly paved bike path my heart was pounding like if someone’d told it I’d made a wrong turn and suddenly ended up at the peak of Mt. Blanc.
I hadn’t.
This drumroll inside my chest was bigger than lack of oxygen. Because I’d finally made it back to what I left behind all those moons and million pedal strokes ago. I was about to reunite with – that’s right – my story.
It’s funny how life, and perhaps even more so time, works. How many lifetimes three years can be. How those few seconds following the knock of a door can be even longer. And how when it finally opens, literally 60 seconds are enough to cry, hug, laugh and love everything back to right where it was once left off.
When we were 15 years old Olivia, Marie and I were 3 random teenagers in a random school in a random town in the woods of Sweden. Bored, insecure and just as clueless as only 15-year-olds stuck in a too small of a town with too much snow can be. Like everyone we each had our shit. But also – most importantly – we had each other. And we wrote our story together.
Parents. Boys. (JHV). Teachers. Coaches. School hall assholes. They would all fall short. Not because they couldn’t get to us. But because taking on the world together our side was stronger than theirs. Our heartbreaks would be mended. Our failures forgotten. Our secrets would be kept. And our teenage lie alibies 100% bullet proof. Perhaps best of all our jokes would be laughed at – hysterically, endlessly and with absolutely zero relation to how (not at all) funny they actually were.
Isn’t it curious how time can stand still when you’re 15? How you’ve already checked the clock 4 times in the last minute and still can’t believe that the late afternoon biology class hasn’t already ended. How you let gravity win the battle against your eyelids and silently drowse off for the last little bit of it.
And then suddenly wake up 26.
In Bern. After having ridden a freaking bicycle around the world and back? Sitting in what is now supposed to be Olivia’s Swiss living room? With her 8-month-old son in the lap?? You look around and all you ever knew is gone. Except the feeling of living hand in hand with those two good old best friends. Continuously laughing at the jokes that if anything have become even worse during the decade the calendar tells us has passed.
Life sure is a peculiar thing.
To most of you I’ll still be that Swedish butt glued to a bike saddle. Forcing deserts for breakfast and crossing mountain ranges like most do zebra crossings. At home nowhere, and everywhere. Happy on her own or even happier in the company of strangers who’ve just become her friends or even family. And I’m happy to be that for you – because it’s who I am.
Happiest though, am I to be something else entirely for YOU. And I love you endlessly for blessing me with a life big enough for both.
We praise people who go chasing their dreams these days. For those who reach them we see their rewards in endless social media feeds and self-bloated blog posts. What we don’t see though, is what and who is no longer there. We don’t see the permanent heartbreak, doubt and guilt of endless one-sided sacrifice. Mostly I think because I’m not the only one who as a pure defence mechanism, so rarely even see it for myself.
I love you. I know that you know it already. And I know that you don’t feel the need to always understand. Still – I LOVE YOU. And I truly wish I had the words I would like to give you.
Thank you for the best week in a million years. If you guys only knew.
Now..
Where in the world does one continue from here..?
Until next time,
Fredrika
