Firefighting (1996)

As an adult, I've been around.

Professionally.

My professional experience has ranged from working as a Security Guard at a nursing home for the elderly (don't ask), to writing software and designing information systems for a global corporate audience.

It took some trial and error to find my niche, and some of my choices were perhaps not what I'd have preferred, but the fact of life is that when you're a young parent with a mortgage and mouthes to feed, then you take whatever work is available, even if it isn't your dream job.

I was not a good security guard, I might have been, had something actually ever been happening that required me to take any sort of affirmative action, but the truth of the security business is that 99.9% of the time, nothing happens. The rest of the time is spent staring into the abyss, or walking around the perimeter with some gadget which you used to scan labels in strategic locations, to prove that you did your rounds, every 2 hours.

Imagine that then, for 12-hour shifts, alternating between dayshifts of 08:00-20:00 and night shifts of 20:00-08:00, every 7 days, with a couple of days of free time between each cycle.

Which is hell on Earth for someone used to scanning the horizon for threats or danger.

Except this one time, when something did happen.

A fire alarm in one of the buildings close by! I leapt to my feet, instantly alert, and rushed into the building, ready to rescue anyone in distress or put out any fires.

The tenant lived on the 4th floor, I vaulted upstairs, there was smoke coming from under the doorway, not the black kind but still smoke.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

I rang the doorbell, anxiously, and waited for what felt like minutes.

Nobody answered.

Perhaps they're lying on the floor, unconscious, unable to respond.

I could picture them reaching out towards me, trying in vain to stand up as the smoke started choking them.

As a security guard, I had a master key that could unlock all doors in each apartment.

My logic was clear on this, if there was smoke and nobody was answering the door, then it had to mean danger. And danger required a response.

So I unlocked the door, pushed it open and rushed in.

I almost ended up killing the elderly woman that lived there, she'd been cooking some tasty bacon or similar, on their stove, and that had oozed to the point where the fire alarm triggered, which in turn triggered me.

She seemed close to a cardiac arrest from the shock of seeing me appear there suddenly, she didn't really seem to appreciate that I had been following protocol or that if this had been a real incident, then she would have needed actual help.

The protocol didn't include ignoring a fire alarm going off, or waiting patiently by the door until someone answered. Which logically, would have meant wating an infinite amount of time, if she had been unconscious.

Security isn't a thing for most people, when they say Security, it usually means they just want to think they are safe, without thinking about whether they actually are, or what a reasonable response to danger is.

I apologized to the matron, and backed out of the door, closing it behind me before I returned to my watchpost and the mundane. Nothing else happened.

The next day, I got summoned by my supervisor and his manager. The nice old lady had put in a complaint about the incident yesterday, saying I had barged into their apartment with no good reason.

Fortunately, they agreed with my assessment and response, once I explained what actually happened and why I'd gone in there.

It might have helped that the security logs showed that the fire alarm went off in that apartment at exactly that time, or maybe this wasn't the first time she'd set it off.

Either way, I realized this wasn't something I'd want to do for any extended period of time.

Not if I was alive, anyway.

Where There is Love

I am still married to Lilith.
We are still a family.

I live with Morgana in a different country.
She is also family.

This is not a contradiction.
It is a structure we built.

Lilith and Morgana are friends.

Lilith has learned to trust Morgana’s finely tuned asshole radar when navigating dating apps. No new boyfriend is accepted without passing inspection. No appeals process exists.

Morgana, in turn, relies on Lilith for everything involving structure, continuity, and practical reality. Morgana is chaos personified. Lilith is order incarnate.

Between them, balance emerges.

They bonded through shared experience:
dating narcissistic men, recovering from emotional wreckage, and—me.

Or perhaps I belong in that category as well, blissfully unaware.

Ignorance is bliss, they say.

But only for the ignorant.
For everyone else, it is exhausting.

Still.

When I see them in the same room—talking, laughing, trading stories and judgments and private jokes—something in my chest expands.

Not with relief.

With recognition.

Two strong women.
Both of whom I love.
Both of whom love me.
Existing in the same space.
Without competition.
Without resentment.
Without territorial fear.

Supporting each other.
Trusting each other.
Protecting each other.

Thriving.

For most of my life, love meant scarcity.
If someone gained, someone else lost.
If one bond strengthened, another weakened.

This is different.

This is abundance.

It is evidence that connection does not have to be transactional.
That care does not require hierarchy.
That intimacy does not demand exclusion.

It is proof that I did not have to repeat the old script.

That healing did not mean isolation.
That loyalty did not require erasure.
That family could be expanded rather than defended.

When I watch them together, I understand something simple and radical:

This is what breaking a pattern looks like.

Not perfection.

Presence.
Trust.
Mutual regard.

No fear-driven control.
No silent competition.
No emotional rationing.

Just respect.

Just care.

Just choice.

Every day.

If two women who have every social reason to resent each other instead choose solidarity—

If they can build something humane out of complexity—

Then maybe the world is not as broken as it sometimes appears.

Maybe repair is possible.

Maybe love can be sustainable.

Maybe safety can be shared.

Where there is love, there is hope.

And for the first time in my life,
that hope feels earned.

To Love More - Not Less

Sometime around 2014 or 2015, Lilith and I agreed to open our marriage.

It did not arrive as a crisis.
It did not come from betrayal.
It was not an escape.

It was an evolution.

By then, we had been together for over a decade. We were no longer two young explorers trying to reach the shores of some imagined future. We were two adults who had survived storms, raised children, buried people we loved, and rebuilt more than once.

We knew more.
We had lost more.
We were stronger.

Lilith was no longer the careful young woman learning how to exist in safety.
I was no longer the abandoned boy, mistaking attachment for love.

We had grown.

And growth changes shape.

Some marriages end at that point.

When you look across the table and realize the person opposite you is no longer the person you married.

Society expects that ending.

Serial monogamy.
Replacement instead of revision.
Exit instead of expansion.

It is a script with wide social approval.

We chose not to follow it.

---

Choosing Expansion

The suggestion came from her.

But it didn’t feel foreign to me.

It felt… named.

Like something we had both been circling without language.

I didn’t agree immediately.
I thought.
I read.
I listened to my fear.
I listened to my curiosity.

Then I said yes.

Not recklessly.
Consciously.

We didn’t open the marriage.

We reopened it.

We entered into a new relationship with each other under a different contract.

Not fewer commitments.

More explicit ones.

Our marriage became both less and more than it had been.

Less possession.
More honesty.

Less illusion.
More negotiation.

Less comfort in assumption.
More responsibility for clarity.

Different.

Yet the same.

---

The Harder Path

This was not the easy path.

The easy paths were familiar.

Divorce.
Affairs.
Secrets.
Parallel lives.

Society has templates for those.
There are scripts.
Support groups.
Sympathy cards.

There are none for what we chose.

Relatives tried to intervene.
Some thought it was a pathology.
Some thought it was exploitation.
Some thought it was denial.

They were wrong.

But they weren’t foolish.

They were speaking from fear.

We were not immune to pain.

We made mistakes.
We hurt each other.
We misunderstood.
We failed.

Sometimes badly.

But we never mistook failure for malice.

We learned forgiveness without erasure.
Accountability without annihilation.
Repair without humiliation.

We learned that love does not require perfection.

It requires courage.

---

Learning a New Language

This was an undiscovered country for me.

So I studied.

Obsessively.

Books.
Forums.
Essays.
Testimonies.

I discovered an entire world of people living thoughtful, ethical, complex lives outside the narrow corridor I had been shown.

We were not alone.

We were not broken.

We were not fleeing commitment.

We were redefining it.

I learned more about myself in those years than in all the decades before.

About jealousy.
About autonomy.
About fear.
About attachment.
About my reflex to disappear when things got complicated.
About my urge to over-function when things felt unstable.

I had to meet parts of myself I had avoided.

There was no hiding.

---

The Mirror

For the first time in my life, I stood in front of a mirror and asked my reflection a question:

“Would you do me the honor of going on a date with me?”

It sounds absurd.

It wasn’t.

It was radical.

The reflection looked back at me.

It hesitated.

Then it smiled.

Its eyes filled.

It was happy to be noticed.

To be chosen.

To be treated as someone worthy of care, curiosity, patience.

It told me:

You’re not crazy.
Neither is Lilith.
You’re allowed to want more than one story.
You’re allowed to grow without burning everything behind you.

It said:

The meaning is not to love less in order to feel safe.

It is to love more without disappearing.

It had been waiting for me.

All these years.

While I rescued others.
Stabilized systems.
Absorbed damage.
Managed crises.

It had waited.

For me to turn inward.

And choose myself, too.

---

Integration

Loving more did not mean loving carelessly.

It meant loving consciously.

With boundaries.
With communication.
With humility.
With responsibility.

It meant understanding that commitment is not measured by exclusivity.

It is measured by presence.

By truth.

By repair.

By staying when staying is difficult and leaving would be simpler.

This chapter was not about opening outward.

It was about opening inward.

For the first time, I stopped using relationships to prove my worth.

I began living them.

And I loved myself back.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is the condition of existing in two places at the same time, yet belonging fully to neither of them.

I was juxtaposed for such a long time that I learned not to commit to either reality.

Instead, I built my own reality in my inner space. A reality that wasn't real, but felt real.

That didn't exist, but that was my safe space.

A safe haven, somewhere else in time. Unreal.

A bastard or a half-breed belongs to both worlds, yet neither.

Unwelcome or feared by both, yet loved or wanted by neither.

My father wasn't there, and my stepfather wasn't worth the name.

I was a bastard by the classical definition, the son of an unwed couple.

Some bastards can exist in both worlds, but not me.

I didn't belong in either.

I existed in both.

Resistance

My sister did not announce her leaving, nor was there a precise point in time that occurred.

There was no suitcase standing by the door one day, no argument that finally tipped the balance.

It just gradually happened over a period of months; it was like she was fading away from my memory as she grew older and took charge of her own life.

Leaving was not a decision she explained — it was something she prepared for quietly, the way you prepare for winter by fixing what you can and accepting the rest.

She had always been older than me in ways that had nothing to do with age. She understood moods before they arrived. She knew when to speak and when to disappear. 

When Orren entered a room, she would straighten slightly, as if bracing against wind.

He noticed her.

Not in the way men notice women — not yet — but in the way insecure people notice resistance. 

He corrected her more than necessary. He questioned her tone and her attitude.

He repeated things she had just said, louder, slower, as if translation were required.

 Sometimes he spoke to me about her while she was in the next room.

“She’s filling your head,” he said once, casually, while fixing something at the table.

“You need to be careful,” another time. “She doesn’t always want what’s best for you.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I understood the intent. A wedge doesn’t need sharpness — only persistence.

My sister knew it too.

He had tried that approach with her when we had arrived at the farm. He'd given her a Coke bottle and some chocolate and told her not to share it, that too much sugar would be bad for me.

She would have none of that and shared it with me anyway. She was my big sister, I was her younger brother, and that was it. It wasn't fair to exclude me, end of discussion.

But lies repeated enough times eventually become indistinguishable from the truth, especially if you're a child and don't know any better than what you're being told by an adult.

I remember us doing the dishes together one evening after dinner, having been promised that if we did them quickly enough, then we could watch some soap opera on TV afterwards.

I relished the excitement I could sense in the air, that we were doing something meaningful together, with a clear purpose and a promised reward at the end, even if I today have no idea about what we ended up watching, or if I watched it.

I remember her in charge of washing the dishes, and me being her invaluable assistant on the sidelines, drying them quickly each time she handed me one.

What mattered to me was that this mattered to her, and that was enough for it to matter to me.

We'd grown up together and loved each other like brother and sister when we arrived at the farm.

When the poisonous wedge had done its job, we hated each other.

I hated how she called me names and compared me to vermin.

She hated how I was always being treated better than her; it didn't seem fair to her.

She told me many years later that she hated that I had been taken away to live with our grandparents, while she had remained behind at the farm.

That it had felt to her like a betrayal that nobody was seeing what was being done to her, just because it wasn't visible on the surface.

I didn't understand at the time that the dynamics between siblings change when puberty knocks on the door; that younger siblings become insufferable to teenagers, regardless of who or what they are.

I know now that she didn't really hate me, but it felt like she did at the time.

The man my sister left with was older, but not dangerous. 

He was quiet. Kind. Safe.

He had a car and a place that did not smell like damp wool and old anger. 

At the time, the age difference didn’t register as something to question. It was a different time. 

People were more concerned with whether you survived than whether you arrived there by the correct route.

She didn’t leave for him. She left through him.

She later told me that she had loved him, but wasn't IN love with him, that she had to leave at any cost.

She became pregnant at the age of 15 and had her daughter shortly after her 16th birthday.

At that point, he found a place for them in the region's capital, and they moved there.

Then she was officially gone, even if she'd been unofficially gone for a long time.

After my sister left, the house rearranged itself.

Her room became storage. Her books disappeared into boxes. The space she had occupied — physically and otherwise — was quietly reassigned, as if it had been waiting for permission.

 Mother leaned on me more. Not deliberately — not in words — but in presence. 

I learned the difference between her tiredness and her fear.

I took care of my youngest brother during the summers, who needed constant supervision due to his undiagnosed autism.

I was still a child, but the house had begun to treat me like something else.

Responsibility had arrived without ceremony or consent.

Safe Words

Before the farm, there was Siglufjörður, my childhood home. 

The place I was born, where I grew up.

Where the cold winters melted into a wet spring, followed by a brief and unreliable summer that then retreated into a long fall.

Omnipresent in every season was the smell that permeated everything.

The smell of money, the adults called it; it was the pungent smell of the factories melting herring or other small fish I didn't know the name of, and pouring dark smoke into the clean air from their unfiltered chimneys. Day and night sometimes.

The adults told us we were supposed to rejoice in the bad smell. This was good; this meant money for everyone. It was the smell of money, the smell of happiness.

It still smelled awful, like something rotten had died, then died again and been left to rot a long time, before being incinerated. 

If this was the smell of money, then I wanted no part of it.

I remember that place in fragments: the way the light bounced off the water, the smell of fish and cold metal, the sound of voices that didn’t belong to our house. I spent my first year of elementary school there, living with my grandparents while my mother settled into life on the farm.

At the time, my life there felt temporary. Adults spoke about it that way — just for now, until things are ready. I accepted this without question. Children are good at waiting.

With my grandparents, life had edges but not claws. Mornings had rhythm. Words came easily. No one watched my hands when I spoke. No one corrected my tone.

When I moved to the farm full-time at seven, I thought I was joining my real life at last.

I didn’t realize I was leaving the last place my nervous system had felt safe.

I spent one full year in the local school near the farm.

That’s how I measure it now — not by age, but by duration. One year was enough.

I don’t remember the lessons clearly. I remember the feeling of being out of sync. 

Of trying to call someone "Father", but being ignored or told to shut up.

Of arriving at school, already tired, in the middle of the night, or so it seemed. 

Of words tangling on their way out of my mouth.

The stammer came quietly.

At first, it was occasional — a hesitation, a repeated sound, choking at the top of my throat. 

Then it stayed. It lodged itself between thought and speech, as if something inside me no longer trusted language to be safe. 

Teachers noticed. Children noticed. I noticed most of all.

At home, no one commented on it directly. Silence had always been the preferred response to visible damage. Acknowledging it would have meant acknowledging the cause.

I adapted.

I spoke less frequently.

I used smaller words.

Easier words.

Safe words.

Exodus

My grandparents came to visit one summer day.

I don’t remember it.

That absence in my memory used to bother me, until I understood what it meant. Moments that change the course of a life don’t always announce themselves to the person living inside them.

I was told about it years later by my grandmother.

She said she had observed me while the adults talked during that visit. She noticed how I hovered. How I flinched at raised voices that weren’t even angry. 

How I struggled to get words out, how my eyes searched faces before I spoke.

She said I looked smaller than I should have.

Something inside her snapped.

She told my mother that I was coming back home to the fjord with them. 

Not for a visit. Not for a trial period. Home.

Mother did not argue.

That fact matters.

I don’t know what passed between them in that moment — whether it was guilt, relief, or exhaustion — but I know this: when someone finally named what was happening to me, mother did not defend the farm.

She agreed.

Leaving

I don’t remember packing.

I don’t remember saying goodbye to the house, or to Orren, or even to my brothers in any clear way. Memory blurs there, as if my mind understood that it was better to let someone else handle the details.

What I remember is the car.

The back seat.

The steady sound of my grandfather driving.

The way my grandmother kept turning slightly toward me, as if to reassure herself that I was still there.

The thick smell of diesel from an aging engine that was still able to carry people where they needed to go.

No one explained what was happening.

They didn’t need to.

My body understood before my mind could catch up.

Something inside me began, very slowly, to unclench.

My words returned to me, timidly at first, wary of danger and ready to bolt again at the first sign of trouble.

Safe, without knowing it. Alert, suspicious, sceptical.

But alive, and not looking over my shoulders anymore.

Alive.

Aftermath

Living with my grandparents did not fix everything.

The stammer didn’t disappear overnight. Fear doesn’t dissolve just because the threat is no longer present. It has momentum.

But words became possible again. 

Silence became rest instead of vigilance.

School became something I could participate in rather than endure, even if I never felt like a part of the tribe.

I stayed in touch with my mother. With my brothers. The distance rearranged our relationships, but it did not erase them. If anything, it made certain truths easier to see.

I was not taken because I was rebellious.

I was not removed because I was difficult.

I was taken because I was being destroyed slowly enough that only someone looking closely from a distance could see it.

Someone did. Someone spoke up. Someone acted.

If you throw a frog in boiling water, it will jump out to save itself. The danger becomes obvious.

If you place a frog in a pot of water and only increase the heat gradually, it will stay.

For a long time, I believed I had failed by leaving. 

That something was wrong with me.

It took years to understand the truth:

Leaving was not my choice.

It was a matter of survival.

And survival, sometimes, arrives in the form of a grandmother who refuses to look away.

That chooses to speak up and take action, rather than just looking away in silent acceptance.

Of someone who cares enough to intervene.

Life Before Death

My grandparents were royalty, or so I believed for the majority of my childhood.

Iceland has no kings; Iceland needs no kings.

But titles are only useful for first impressions; having the title doesn't mean you are what your title claims. Every country has kings and queens, whether they have that title, regardless of whether the country needs them.

In my eyes, my grandfather was a King, and my grandmother was a Queen. By definition, that should have made me a Prince, but that fact seems to have been lost on me at the time.

Our home in the fjord was their castle, being passed down through the centuries from the dawn of time, from generation to generation. Or so it seemed.

It was an imregnable fortress atop a hill, it was surrounded by a garden that grandmother tended. 

Each summer, she would pour her soul and time into it, and my grandfather would be pulled along with her. when he wasn't busy with work or tinkering with something in the barn next to the castle. 

One of my earliest childhood memories involves thinking about that castle, and fearing the weight implied in needing to continue passing it on to the next generation of the family, for infinity.

It implied our souls were bound to the concrete and the land, that we were merely different aspects of the castle rather than individuals.

That scared me as much as the thought of becoming an adult and having to choose vocations from what I could see in my immediate surroundings in the fjord. None of which sounded appealing.

My grandmother was tall and regal, by the standards of the day. She kept her hair dyed black, without being vain about it; that color simply suited her posture and wardrobe better. I remember her always dressing in some form of polka-dot dress, which had likely been fashionable in her youth, but the memory of a child is a fleeting thing that will happily fill in the blanks where you don´t remember the details as an adult.

My grandfather was slightly taller, but stocky and built like a bull without the horns, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was a man of few words, dependable and slow to anger, even when warranted.  He was a Taurus, in case you were wondering. 

His blonde hair had gradually receded as he grew into adulthood, and by the time I was old enough to recognize him and name him grandfather, he had a hairline that would have been well-suited to a monastery. He frequently wore classic six-pence caps to cover it, or maybe just because the frigid winters were not kind to the naked skin on his head when left uncovered.

After their children left the nest, as well as their first two grandchildren, my grandparents remained the focal points of family Christmas and Easter celebrations until their family tree had grown to the point where it simply wasn't possible to seat everyone at the same table, or even multiple tables.

They lost a child to leukemia at the age of 7; there was a faded picture of him in the upstairs study, inserted into the last crayon drawing he had made. The drawing depicted the house they had lived in when he died, with stick-man family members lined up in a row at the bottom, smiling at the sun that could be seen peeking through the clouds in the upper corner.

I was too young to understand why, but I instinctively grasped that the lost son was not to be talked about except by my grandmother, and only then in passing references of her looking forward to seeing him again when she died.

I think something broke inside her when he passed. Their son had been gone a long time before I was born, but his presence could still be felt through the absence of something that should have been, but was lost.

Sometime later, she started taking prescription drugs to help dull the emptiness of the soul, and heart medication to quiet her racing heart.

What we were always told was that she had a problem with her heart; it was weak and frail, and she needed the medication. It was also provided as a reason for us kids to keep our voices down, so we wouldn't cause her heart to stop.

That lasted for decades, and it wasn't until another doctor started asking questions that she was taken off them and told she needed to see a psychiatrist, not a doctor. By that time, she'd effectively become addicted and suffered withdrawals as a result.

At that point, what felt to her like a heart attack was in fact the pain of 30 years of drugs leaving the body, and she wasn't used to her heart responding to stress and stimuli; she was more used to it always beating at the same rate, no matter what was happening around her.

When that happened, sometime in 2001, she was rushed into an air ambulance, as any ground-based ambulance would have taken hours to arrive and as long to return, hours which she might not have if this were a heart attack.

They were flown south to the capital, and that's when I learned about this from my sister for the first time, as well as the whole story behind it, as she understood it. 

I went to see them in the hospital afterwards, when she was ready to be discharged and needed someone to drop them off at my sister's, where they would be staying for a few days. They looked exactly the same as I remembered them from my childhood, 20 years ago; nothing had changed, not even their clothes.

They were glad to see me. and both gave me a big hug, which I wasn't used to from them. I'd lost touch with them at around the same time I started seeing Rose, not because I was deliberately avoiding them, but because I was overwhelmed with everything else that was going on in my life at the time.

Due to how quickly they had left, they didn't have anything with them, and they didn't even know if they'd locked the doors behind them when they'd rushed out. At the time, nobody locked their doors in the fjord; there was no need. Burglaries aren´t much of a problem in small communities.

I volunteered to drive my grandfather's car up north to fetch their essentials. Grandfather would accompany me, as would Elyssa, as I'd started spending time with her at regular intervals again, after her mother and I agreed to try and put the past behind us.

It was an uneventful ride; we talked about everything and nothing. Nothing important, nothing dangerous, but just talking to him and hearing his voice was enough for me. The content didn't matter, not now, not ever again. I was just glad to spend time with him.

When we arrived in the fjord, after a 7-hour drive, and arrived at the castle, it wasn't the fortress I remembered from my childhood. The castle had grown smaller somehow, as had the hill and the garden.

It still felt like home, but it wasn't my home. It was just a fragment of my past, seeing it again felt like visiting an old friend that you didn't remember what you had in common with, but were happy to see again.

Grandfather hadn't been able to get a decent haircut in months; he'd been used to either having grandmother either buzz his electric trimmer around his head a few times, every couple of months, or visit the local barber. The trouble was, the barber had retired, and the replacement was a hardresser.

So he asked me if I would help with that. I'd never done something like it before, but it felt like a moment of vulnerability and trust, so I felt I couldn't say no.

It only took a few minutes, and in my own humble opinion, the outcome wasn't bad.

I might not have won any awards for the trim, but he was pleased with it, and that was the only thing that mattered.

It felt like giving him the last rites, even if he had a couple of more years left before he eventually passed. You never know the next time you'll see your loved ones; today might be the last. Remember that. Life is too short for anger or petty irritation over meaningless things.

It is a treasured memory from my grandfather, which is why I'm writing it down to remember it.

Good things and bad things happen in life; we're just wired to remember the bad ones more clearly, to avoid them happening again. The good things only leave an impression if we are conscious about them and spend time appreciating them.

We need to remember the good things as well as the bad, otherwise we'll only be focused on survival without purpose and meaning.

We need to be mindful and conscious about the good things, or they'll be lost.

Without mindfulness, we become simple, mindless automatons, whose only purpose is to avoid being eaten by the tiger or the lion.