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. 

Moth to the Flame

The moth seeks out the flame; it has no choice, it doesn´t care about anything except the light.

It is the same way that a man encountering his flame is drawn to it, knowing full well that the journey is going to end badly and someone is going to get burned.

I have a type, it seems. 

Everyone has a type. 

It is a pattern.

My types are strong-willed women with invisible scars and high intelligence.

Something in me wants to heal their wounds, absorb their pain, protect them. Make them whole again.

Something else in me wants to hurt them, but lovingly and tenderly, with consent and respect.

I respect women; I believe in my heart that the world would be a much better place if it were run by them rather than us men.

There's a good reason the number of female serial killers and rapists is low when compared to men, and it isn't because of our bigger muscles or their lack of penetrative genitalia.

It is because our need to control women, coupled with the inability to temper it with kindness and respect, inevitably ends in disaster as the two clash.

Women serial killers aren't looking for control; they're looking for revenge and payback.

Usually, against a man, there are no female serial killers who only prey on women.

My flames have been varied, but they've all shared the same invisible scars in some form or another.

I realize now that I'm repeating a pattern that started when I was born. 

I am the healer who can only exist through the act of healing; if there is nothing to heal, then my existence has no purpose or meaning.

So I'm drawn to the flame, again and again, oblivious of the danger and drunk with the feeling each time.

I am the Mothman; I have accepted that.

What I also need to accept is that there are other ways of healing, not everything is about me or what I can affect.

Everyone has a story, not everyone has a voice.

Everyone needs to be heard, not everyone has that choice.

I may not be able to heal the world, but I can be the voice of those who cannot.

I will tell their stories.

And mine.

In the Name of the Father

I've spotted a pattern in my life and the lives of my ancestors and offspring. 

I'm trying to name it so I can break it, so I can help them break it also.

It seems to be a generational pattern; it manifests as the inability to express that you care deeply about someone, out of the fear of losing them.

It is the fear of loving someone so much that losing them would destroy you completely.

It is the fear of abandonment, the fear of loving, and the fear of being loved in return, all at the same time.

So you pretend you're not hurt, that you don't care, and can't be hurt as you don't care.

That nothing matters.

I wish I had a name for it, but I don't. Until I do, I can't break it.

All I have is emptiness and the feeling that I've failed somewhere, that I took the wrong turn and ended up on the wrong road that isn't leading to the place I want to go to.

Perhaps that is the answer, that I'm still on the journey and my choices are not done yet.

I need to think; whenever I don't think and just react, that's when I make bad choices. Or non-choices.

Think...

I might not be exactly where I want to be today, but I think I am where I need to be to be able to make the right choices about tomorrow.

To choose to be strong enough to allow myself to feel things, even if it means it hurts sometimes.

To allow myself to listen without judging or taking on the burdens of my loved ones.

To realize, not all problems confided in me are mine to resolve.

To accept that I cannot heal the pain of my loved ones all by myself, but that I can still affect their lives in a good way as long as I don't lose myself in the process.

That I can´t fix everything, even things that need fixing badly.

This is the pattern; I just need the name now.

I need to think more; everything is better when I think.

Until it isn't.

Think...

My father was absent from my life; perhaps he didn't choose to be, but not choosing to be present is a choice to be absent in itself.

He was more present for my two younger sisters. I know he isn't a bad parent, and I know he is capable of emotion, consideration, and love. He was just unable to be present for me.

The first time I talked to him was when I was 16. I told him I'd like to have some sort of parental relationship with him. He told me he wasn't sure if that was possible.

At one point, my resentment and hurt had grown to the point where I decided to take up my maternal grandfather´s name, instead of his.

I've tried very hard not to be absent from my children's lives.

I was absent from portions of my daughter's life. Not because I chose to, but not actively choosing to be present is a choice to be absent in itself.

I tried very hard to be more present, but trying isn't the same as succeeding. 

When she was 16, she told me she wanted more of a parental relationship with me, that she felt out of place and shut out. I wholeheartedly agreed, but then I failed to act on it.

Failure to act is worse than an act of failure; at least you know the parent who fails is trying.
The parent who fails to act isn´t even trying.

At one point, her resentment and hurt from being ignored and shut out had grown to the point where she decided to have her stepfather adopt her and took up his name.

I was more present for my two younger children. I know I'm not a bad parent, and I know I am capable of emotion, consideration, and love. I was just unable to be present for her.

Do you see the pattern? 

Does it have a name yet?

Generational pattern, I name you Indifference.

Indifference, you're not mine. I didn't choose you, and I will not carry you around anymore.

Because I choose to care, even if it sometimes hurts.

Generational Patterns

Life is a pattern; we all have ours, some of them are good, while some of them are bad.

We keep repeating these patterns, over and over and over again.

Over and over and over.

Why?

Because patterns are comfortable, patterns are familiar and safe, even if they're not good for you or anyone else. 

Even if they hurt the ones you love.

Our brain is obsessed with patterns; we evolved a mind that excels in recognizing them and gets confused and unhappy without them.

It will happily make up patterns, even when there are none. If you've ever looked at the clouds and seen patterns, then you're experiencing something called Apophenia.

A life without patterns is devoid of colors; patterns are the spices of life that keep us going.

Some patterns are our own creation, some we inherited from our parents or guardians, who in turn inherited them from theirs.

The ones we inherit are generational patterns, silently traveling through generations of parents and children, and being passed on as long as they remain undetected.

Generational patterns are almost always a trauma response, sometimes from a trauma so ancient that nobody alive today remembers it anymore.

The only way to break a generational pattern is to recognize and name it, to choose not to follow the path of least resistance and instead create something better of your own making.

To not pass on to others what was passed on to you, without consideration or kindness.

To ask why you do what you do, or why you don't.

To be present and mindful in your patterns, instead of absent and inconsiderate.

To build something new, rather than just consume and repeat what is already there.

To weave your own patterns and lay to rest the ones you inherited, even if they brought you the comfort of familiarity and felt safe, while the alternative of the unknown feels scary.

Break the generational pattern; that pattern is not you.

Weave your own patterns, make your own choices.

Hypervigilance

 I always wondered why I was able to react instantly to danger or unexpected scenarios, while others froze.

It felt odd to me that everyone wasn't like that, that people didn't react immediately when needed.

It was only later that I learned that this was a trauma response; that my mind was protecting me from something bad happening again because of something bad that had already happened in the past.

I just couldn't remember what it was; it wasn't until much later that those parts of my memory unlocked the hidden chambers they'd been hiding in. 

They didn't unlock the doors until I was ready to open them and see what was being kept from me.

Hypervigilance is to always expect the worst possible thing to happen and to always look for signs of trouble before they occur.

It means you never relax fully, your mind is always scanning the horizon, looking for the assassin, the hurricane, or the fire.

It means the time you would spend on loving relationships or enjoying the moment is instead spent on thinking about what could possibly go wrong rather than what could possibly go right.

It means you don't trust anyone or anything until you have confirmed it, and even then, when you do, you always trust with a reservation and the expectation that the trust will be broken eventually.

It means faith is not an option. How can you trust something that you cannot confirm?

I know this is my mind trying to protect me, but it doesn´t make it easier to exist.

I know without it, I would likely have either broken or died at the time, or both.

It is a lonely life to always be on the edge; it makes for a poor partner and an absent father.

All human beings need someone they can trust.

If you don't trust anyone, then you might as well not be human.

I struggled with this for a long time, and even today, I still sometimes do.

The years have, however, taught me that trust is like love.

When you love someone, and they don't love you back, it doesn't mean your love was wasted or that you were wrong in loving them.

Your love can exist even without it ever being returned; you don't need them to love you back for your love to be real.

You can love someone without them ever knowing it, that doesn't mean you never loved them.

When you trust someone, and they break that trust, it doesn't mean that trust was wasted or that you were wrong in trusting them.

It means you chose to be human, while they chose to be untrustworthy.

Elyssa

The years went by, and Elyssa grew up. 1997, 1998, each time I saw her again, she'd grown a tiny bit more. I spent weekends with her regularly, once I'd settled in somewhere child-proof and had a room for her crib. It wasn't much, but it was something. It was mine.

I was utterly out of my depth; I didn't have the tools required to be a good single parent or the maturity to learn how to become one.

The post-separation relationship with Ariel wasn't easy either; she was angry and hurt and made sure I knew it. I can't really blame her, but it didn't improve things between us, and it wasn't fair to our daughter either. The anger of one parent towards the other will always shine through, even if you think it doesn't, even if you feel you're always being careful when the child can overhear.

After I met Rose, it got worse. Weekend stays were cancelled or shifted to the next one with little warning or even a request. It was like controlling me this way was the only method she knew to express her anger and frustration with me. We tried to make it work, but it ultimately came to an end when Ariel moved with Elyssa to the countryside to live with her new boyfriend.

That, and also that Rose had reported her to the child care authorities for negligence. 

She had for some time been suggesting she felt that Elyssa was showing signs of exactly that, and that someone needed to do something about it. Perhaps she was projecting something from her past, or maybe it was just a convenient excuse to take petty revenge on what she felt was a jealous mother trying to sabotage us as a couple.

After some convincing, I relented. She insisted that she needed to make the call to the authorities alone and that I shouldn't listen in. So I didn´t. It felt like this was a better choice than doing nothing, as the result of doing nothing, if something was seriously wrong, would have been unforgivable.

Perhaps I was projecting something from my childhood, or perhaps it was simply a naive, misguided attempt at doing the right thing without knowing better or considering the potential fallout.

The authorities care only if you're an extremely bad parent; their role isn't to help bad parents become good parents. Their role is simply to minimise the damage a bad parent can do, nothing more.

In either case, despite any potential good intentions, it became the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, leaving behind only scorched earth and bitter tastes in the mouths of parents already at war with each other.

I did nothing when I should have done something. Loyalty and devotion are commendable traits in a partner, but destructive and harmful when applied without reason or consideration.

The phone call ended, and at first, it seemed like nothing had happened. But then nothing kept happening, over and over, and it was years before I saw Elyssa again. I missed her bitterly during that time, but swallowed my feelings and buried them deep inside the remotest corners of my heart; they were too much for me to bear without something breaking inside me.

My fiery relationship with Rose came to an end, I met someone else, and they didn't allow me to pretend nothing mattered and act as if I couldn't be hurt by the loss of a child, just by burying the grief deep inside. She poked me, prodded me, tried to understand why I wasn´t in contact with my daughter.

She said it wasn´t normal for a parent to abandon their child like this, even if the father and mother weren't together, the child would still need them, and whatever issues the adults had between them shouldn't cause the child to lose either of them.

That she could sense I was in pain from it, and that she could only imagine what my absence was doing to Elyssa. All children ask questions about their origins, and they need honest answers from someone who cares.

Every word she said hit an unhealed wound that screamed in response; all of them were true. I was just repeating a childhood pattern that was familiar and safe, I know that now.

One day in 2001, after Lilith's words started to sink in, I sat down and wrote a letter to Ariel. I can't remember the exact words, but I tried my best to express how sorry I was that she and I had come to this place, with our child caught in between two adults who both loved her. That I missed my daughter terribly and that seeing her again would mean the world to me, if she could only find it in her heart to put our history behind us and rebuild something from it.

I didn't demand, I asked. That I would understand if she wasn't ready for it, but that even if she still had anger in her heart, then our daughter was more important than either of us. That we were parents, and even if we weren't a couple, our child still needed us both. I then wrote my mobile number at the bottom of the page.

I sent the letter, not knowing if it would result in anything, but hoping it would. Wishing.

At least I was choosing to do something, not sitting around, waiting for nothing to happen.

At first, nothing happened. Days passed.

Then something wonderful happened: my phone rang, it was Ariel, and she told me she agreed with what I had said in the letter. I didn't ask what that meant, but gratefully accepted her proposal of a meetup in a coffee shop the next day. Elyssa would be there, and I was overcome with feelings I wasn't used to.

Happiness, hope, optimism.

The next day, I waited in the coffee shop anxiously, sitting alone at a table, sipping cheap coffee that Morgana would have frowned upon had she been in my life by then. 

I'd asked Lilith to join me, but she felt it wasn't her place to be there; she didn't want our reunion to revolve around questions about her, nor did she want to inherit the label of the wicked stepmother from a past she hadn't been a part of.

She was also by then acutely aware of my tendency to happily let others do the talking while I observed, and she knew herself well enough that this would trigger her to fill in the uncomfortable silences with small talk. 

I wasn't good at small talk then; I'm not much better at it now, but I can pretend.

Ariel and Elyssa arrived, along with her boyfriend and their daughter. Elyssa's younger sister.

Elyssa had grown so much that I couldn't believe it. She was my firstborn, and even if you know this happens, it still comes as a shock when it does.

She later told me she hadn't recognised me right away when she came in; she'd been wondering who this giant of a man approaching her mother was. She was expecting to meet her father, but she didn't remember him being a giant.

I brought with me a relic from the last time she'd stayed with me. It was a warm, padded parka, screaming yellow and cute beyond words. It had been too large for her when I bought it a few years back during the flower shop crisis; by now, it might be too small for her, I realised. 

I gave it to her anyway. I'd kept it with me for the years since our last meeting as an unspoken promise to myself that everything would eventually be alright and that time would never change how important she was to me, no matter if she outgrew it.

That day became the beginning of a new chapter in my life. For the first time, I had learned that admitting mistakes is a requirement to be able to learn from them. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Everyone makes mistakes; we don't all learn from them. 

If we don't learn, what are we?

Ariel

It was 1994; the World Cup took place in the US that summer. I was still a child trapped in a grown man's body, legally adult without having any of the emotional skills required to behave as one.

Ariel was my first long-term relationship; she was obstinate and brash and didn't really fit what I thought was my type at the time, short and fairly overweight, cute and cuddly. I think what attracted me originally was her attitude; she wouldn't hesitate to tell people to go fuck themselves if she felt they weren't treating her like she deserved to be treated. It was only later that I realized that was just about everyone.

It still ended up being more than the casual fling I was originally expecting it to be. We lived together for a while at her parents' house, and after she got pregnant, her mother bought a basement apartment for us close by, and we moved into it.

Our relationship was doomed from the start. I was too immature to be a good partner to her or even to myself at the time. She was too young to be a parent, but that didn't stop her. If she decided something, then there would be no stopping her. Today, Morgana would tell me that it is because she is a Taurus, and even if you don't believe in Astrology, that label fits her perfectly.

One day, I came home after a night out partying with a friend, having spent the last part of it in someone else's bed. It wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last. At one point, I even made a drunken pass at her best friend while she was in the hospital a few weeks after Elyssa's birth. 

Maturity comes with age and experience; at that point in my life, I had neither.

That day, Ariel had finally had enough; when I came back from work, she told me she was going over to her mother's with Elyssa and that she wanted me gone by the time she came back.

I was devastated; it wasn't that I felt I didn't deserve this, it was the sheer weight of getting the fruits of my constant self-sabotaging suddenly thrown back into my face.

I sank down, miserable and deflated, without a purpose and future, it seemed. I don´t remember how, but I was suddenly holding a small blade in my right hand, sitting on the floor, and thinking in circles. I started scratching my left wrist with it, close to the pulse arteries, but without having the strength of will to cut through deeply. The gashes I made were still real, and each one deeper than the last.

Was I trying to end it? I don´t know, but I know I was punishing myself in some way.

It never went beyond that stage. Ariel came back home at that point, having forgotten something, and when she found me on the floor with blood flowing from fresh cuts, it shocked her to see me like this.

We got back together after that, somehow working through the pain, but it didn't last. A few months later, we separated for the last time, and I moved out.

We both learned valuable lessons from our short journey together as a couple, but separately and without acknowledging it to each other. We can learn from failures if we only listen; success teaches us nothing we don't already know.

The fruit of our labor that persists today is our daughter, Elyssa. Seeing her arrive in the world was beyond words, but I wasn't ready for the responsibility, even if I loved her from before she was born. Loved her unconditionally, without limits or capacity to compromise.

The last time I left, I left behind a part of me, and my heart sank with the failure.

Tyson

It was 1999, which sounded like a significant year at the time. Everyone was worried that when Y2K rolled in, most of the world's computer systems would crash in unexpected ways and that the end of civilization as we knew it was near.

For me, it was the year Tyson the Boxer saved my life.

He showed up one day out of nowhere, Rose said he needed a place to stay and had nowhere else to go, so she took him home with her and told him he could stay with us.

He was loving and loyal, even in his early adulthood, which in dog years would be considered late teens. His previous owners had snipped off his tail, leaving behind a short stump the length of an index finger, which was apparently the accepted custom for the boxer breed.

He would wiggle the stump when happy or excited, as dogs do, and unsuccessfully try to fold it between his legs when anxious or afraid.

I had grown up with dogs on the farm, in one form or another. Sometimes we owned them, sometimes they were just visitors that we took care of, while their owners from the other farms were away.

I didn't object, but passively accepted; Rose wanted this, and if having a dog around could somehow make her happy again, then we would have a dog. I was working freelance, or trying to start on that path, so perhaps I thought I would be able to spend some time on dog walking every day. Most likely, I didn't fully think through what we were committing to.

The flower shop avalanche had recently fallen, and we were still clearing away the mental, emotional, and financial debris from it. Having a dog around that needs you and loves you unconditionally may sound like a dream for those with a hole in their soul, but a dog is a living, breathing creature that needs consistency and responsibility from their owners. 

A dog needs an owner capable of giving it love and taking care of it, even if it loves you regardless.

You can't turn that off during the dark hours when your mind just wants to curl up into a ball, stay all day indoors, and binge-watch your favorite series.

For a while, it worked out; we took him on long walks and played fetch with balls or sticks that he would fetch enthusiastically without tiring. Dogs aren't complicated, but they suffer when the world around them is in chaos. At that time, ours was.

One night, I had been working late in the office downstairs, while Rose had been watching TV upstairs. The gloom of late winter was still in the air, and she liked lighting candles in odd places around the room to create a warm atmosphere.

Most of the time, the sprawl of candles wasn't a problem; someone would put them out before they became one.

Not this night, Rose had retired some time before I did, and it was so late that I was dead tired and went straight to bed without passing by the TV corner where the candles were still burning and driving away the gloom.

I awoke in the middle of the night, with Tyson barking in a low and strange tone I hadn't heard him use before. I tried to shush him and go back to sleep, but he was relentless. Then I started to smell something in the air. Smoke. I jumped out of bed, ran outside where the smoke was coming from, and came to a halt.

We didn't have any smoke detectors, as those would have gone off by then, as the smoke was thick and black. It was the smoke of burning plastic, the candles on top of the TV hadn't been placed in any candle holder, and the top of the TV had melted under their heat when they had burned down far enough. Then, at some point, the plastic itself started to burn without needing candles to sustain it. Not a single blazing bonfire, but a couple of small isolated flames where candles had been placed.

I reacted instantly without thinking, put out the fires using my hands, which were burned a bit by that, but not seriously.

Tyson had most likely saved our lives; I hugged him gratefully and told him he was a good boy. He licked my face in appreciation.

Weeks later, he was gone from our lives.

I had started to work again, so most of the burden of the daily dog chores had fallen on Rose .

She came home agitated one afternoon, storm in her eyes; she'd been visiting her aunt, who had a frisky kid around 3-4 years old, and Tyson had accompanied her. Perhaps they thought that having a dog babysit a kid of that age was fine; most likely, they didn't consider that a child at that age will just think the dog is a stuffed toy it can play with as it pleases.

At some point, Tyson snapped at him, doubtlessly after multiple warning growls that went unheeded, as there weren't any grown-ups who watched them or listened.

A dog that bites a man needs to be put down, Rose said. It can't be trusted again after that. I didn't argue.

That afternoon, we took him to the vet; he was scared and didn't know what was happening. How could he? He was given a lethal injection, and I stayed with him for the duration to calm him, stroking his fur and scratching his ears as life slowly faded away from his eyes. It was painful, but the alternative would have been more painful.

Depression kills as slowly as cancer, but cancer at least only kills those who have it.

Morgana

The first time we met was in the fall of 2018 at a bookstore in Reykjavik masquerading as a coffee shop; her hair was black, tinted with blue and green, her smile was warm, and her eyes sparkled with mischief, but something more behind the scenes. She dressed like a vagrant artist without looking lost, like someone whose fashion sense was superior, but deliberate, and who wore fashionable clothes without chasing brands or trends. Like someone you'd only notice if she chose to be noticed, but that could otherwise be an invisible part of the background when she wanted to.

She exuded the aura of a thinker who was smart enough to realize how little we know about everything, the type of person driven to exploration by it rather than intimidated.

Yet, underneath the confident exterior, I could sense something vulnerable through her armor, peeking through and wondering what kind of person she was meeting here. Who was this guy?

I felt an instant connection and attraction, something I hadn't really felt since Rose. Something raw and primal, something that called out to me and urged me to abandon reason and let go completely.

Lilith and I had opened up our marriage a few years back, and were each discovering things about ourselves we had always known existed but hadn't been able to express without something breaking between us. Our relationship had never been based on the kind of raw intensity I could sense here, but a more rational form that was able to move mountains and build bridges. Ours was the love of a Sun rather than a Supernova, something that could sustain life without consuming it in a series of violent outbursts. Opening up expanded our universe, and we were exploring distant star systems. 

Exploration means exposing yourself to the unknown and recognizing that not all destinations are healthy places to be. Not all planets are habitable, not every star is capable of sustaining life.

On Earth, in Reykjavik, on a Thursday afternoon, Morgana and I drank coffee together and exchanged small talk that day, not the kind that uses small words, but that has substance and meaning behind it.

We talked about ourselves, where our journeys had led us, and what we were each looking for in life. She told me about having recently gone through rehab, and I told her what polyamoury meant to me and how it changed relationship dynamics.

I don't remember the specific details; only the essence of the emotions I sensed.

That is, apart from when I told her I could sense she was broken somewhere and carried deep wounds, perhaps not in those exact words, but the context of the words conveyed exactly that.

Most women would have ended a first date at around that point, either violently or politely. She did neither, but cocked her head as if considering from where what I was saying was coming from. The words themselves could have been interpreted as a calculated demeaning insult of a narcissist looking for his next meal or an honest observation without social restraints from someone not playing the traditional dating game.

Offense is taken, not given. Context matters; the same words can mean vastly different things based on the speaker and the audience. Your interpretation will be colored based on your background, how you feel, what you want to hear, or what you expect to hear.

I got the feeling she was the type that didn't like pretense and fake personalities, so I never pretended to be something I wasn't with her.

Shortly afterwards, she contacted me again on the dating app we had met on and told me her AA sponsor had advised her not to see me again.

Well, I thought, that was the end of that; it wasn't an unusual result of being honest about who I was and what I was looking for in a relationship, but by then, I had come to the conclusion that it was better than wasting time on a pretentious mating ritual that placed more priority on quantity and success, rather than quality and substance.

Little did I know how wrong I was; that was seven years ago, and we have been together in one form of relationship or another for all of them. We have moved between homes and even countries, experienced life and death.

At first, I was reserved, aware of the dangers of the Supernova relationship from past experience. I know this frustrated her; she could also feel our connection, but she wasn't accustomed to this kind of restraint, and it felt to her like I wasn't committing, even if I was, but in a more controlled manner than I ever had before.

I had to learn balance, to let love flow with deliberation, but to not let that control stifle the flow.

To love more, not less, but to not lose yourself in the process.

Severance

 

 After I left the farm, I did not leave it behind.

 There was no clean break. No new life that replaced the old one. There were only seasons, and the seasons made the decision for me.

 Winters belonged to my grandparents, and summers belonged to the farm.

 There was no discussion about it. No alternatives presented. This was simply how things were done. Children did not choose where they lived; they adapted to where they were sent.

 In winter, I missed my mother.

 Not abstractly — not as an idea — but physically. I missed the sound of her moving through rooms. The way she folded laundry. The particular weight of her attention when she sat beside me without speaking. At my grandparents’ house, care was steady and visible, but it was not hers.

 I carried her absence like a low fever.

 In summer, the ache reversed.

 The farm returned me to a life that still felt unfinished. Orren was there. The house had not softened. My brothers had grown in my absence, reshaped by routines I had not shared. I belonged and did not belong at the same time.

 At night, I lay awake, missing my grandparents with the same intensity I had missed my mother only weeks before. Their quiet kitchen. My grandmother’s certainty. The sense that nothing bad would happen while they were awake.

 I learned then that longing is not exclusive. You can miss two places at once, yet belong to neither fully.

The Rhythm of Return

Each return to the farm required recalibration.

I arrived taller, quieter, carrying habits that did not translate well. I had learned to speak without interruption, to finish sentences without fear. The stammer softened in winter and threatened to return in summer, as if my body remembered where it had learned to fracture.

Mother watched me closely when I came back.

She touched my hair more than necessary. Asked small questions. Studied my face when she thought I wasn’t looking. There was love there - real, immediate - and also something else, harder to name.

Regret, perhaps.

Relief that someone else had stepped in.

Fear that I might not stay.

She never said any of it out loud.

The boys treated me like a visitor at first. They circled me, tested me, and measured how much authority I still carried. The youngest was the quickest to close the distance. 

The burned brother took longer, watching from the edges, cautious with his trust.

Orren behaved as if nothing had changed.

That, too, was information.

Learning to Split

By necessity, I became two versions of myself.

One version knew how to exist quietly, how to anticipate moods, how to move through the farm without attracting attention. That version learned to adapt each summer and quickly shed the habits again in autumn.

The other version lived with my grandparents. He spoke more freely. He slept deeply. He forgot to listen for footsteps.

Neither version was false; both were incomplete.

Switching between them took energy I did not know how to measure at the time. I only knew that returning anywhere came with a cost. Leaving always hurt someone — often me.

I stopped expecting wholeness, adaptation felt safer.

What Choice Looks Like When There Is None

 People like to talk about childhood choices.

 They ask why you stayed, why you went back, why you didn’t refuse.

 But refusal requires an option to refuse into.

There was no alternative summer. No other place was prepared to take me. No conversation about permanence or preference. There was only logistics, habit, and the quiet assumption that children absorb whatever they are given.

So I went, each time.

And each time, I learned something new about loss - not the dramatic kind, but the ordinary, repetitive kind that teaches you to expect absence as a feature of love.

Love That Pulls in Opposite Directions

I loved my mother fiercely.

I loved my grandparents deeply.

Those loves did not compete — but they did not align either. They pulled me in opposite directions, stretched me thin, taught me early that affection can divide as easily as it binds.

In winter, I dreamed of the farm — of open space, of my brothers’ voices, of my mother’s presence like a gravity I could not escape even at a distance.

In summer, I counted days until autumn — until the quiet certainty of my grandparents’ house returned, until I could unclench again.

I never told any of them this.

Each side believed it held all of me.

I let them.

What That Did to Time

 Time stopped feeling linear.

 Life became cyclical instead — arrivals and departures, packing and unpacking, re-learning rules I already knew. I grew older without feeling older. Experience accumulated, but resolution did not.

 Adulthood, when it eventually arrived, felt less like a beginning than a release from motion.

 For years, I thought something was wrong with me for never feeling settled.

 Now I understand:

 I was trained to move.