I wake up in my bed with a pang of sadness. I just feel so incredibly sad and I don’t even know why. Oh, wait, I do know why. It’s just that it sounds, well, rather silly.

I’m mourning a book series I just finished reading, and it’s always been like this whenever I finish a book series I’ve grown attached to. I can’t bring myself to start reading something new, I haven’t said goodbye to the characters I’ve come to love and hate yet, I’m not ready to let go. So I’m mourning because it’s the end of three, maybe six or seven books, because I’m forced to let them go and I know there is nothing left for me. Their story ended and I have to move on, but I don’t really want to.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a bookworm. And a major one at that. I was the kind of kid who read the school text books from page to page within the first week of getting them every single year. When I was in elementary school and my class took the first trip to the local library to have a library card issued to each of us, I was ecstatic. I remember clutching the white plastic card to my chest and asking one of the pretty librarians how many books I was allowed to bring home with me. Needless to say I was the kid who didn’t want to leave the library and wanted to borrow more books than I could carry. I used to bring plastic bags full of books home every few weeks, and since I grew up in an asian family which meant I had to walk home, it wasn’t an easy feat.

I was reading so much as a child that at one point my mother actually banned me from reading books. I know what you’re thinking, ‘What sane parent bans her child from reading?’. I know it sounds insane, but I preferred reading over playing with other children, which ultimately lead my mother to believe I would grow up to be socially dysfunctional (it’s OK mom, I turned out just fine), so banning of all books it was. But how on earth could I not read? I mean, I was (am) the kind of person who got so bored when I didn’t have a book to read that I would read the labels on tin cans and milk cartons because I didn’t have anything better to read. So you see I stayed up late in the evenings to read and stuffed the keyhole to my bedroom with paper so that my mother couldn’t see the light from my room shining through, and you know when your mother comes in sometimes to check if you’re sleeping? Yeah, that’s me quickly hiding the book under my duvet and pretending I’m asleep.

By the time I went to high school my friends used to say I had probably read half the local library, which by the way is an exaggeration. I did read most of the children’s and young adult sections, but I barely touched the adult books. I don’t really know why I never did, even to this day at my newly celebrated ‘adult age’ of 21 I actually prefer young adult fiction over ‘proper’ adult fiction. I enjoy my classics, Shakespeare is indeed one of my heroes, and thought provoking books are absolute treasures, but I have to admit young adult fiction is my favourite kind of book to get carried away in.

Which brings me to just how carried away and emotional I get when I have a novel in front of me. I get so carried away that I finish a novel at the size of 400-500 pages a day if I don’t have to go to work or lectures, and I get so caught up in what’s happening on the pages that I tune absolutely everything out. You’ll probably have to shake me or do something physical to get my attention, simply calling my name won’t work. One of my best friends was quite disappointed in me the other day when I missed out on the most hilarious sight of her brother trying to stuff a big bag of skittles in his mouth. Because I was reading. So you see, I can’t live without my books and I find it quite hard to part with book series that made me laugh or cry or whimper in anguish.

I don’t know, waking up after finishing a book series feeling devastated, perhaps it isn’t such an abnormality at all?

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Everyone must know by now, the twin attacks yesterday in my home country Norway. The blasting of the governmental headqurters, rubble and glass everywhere, bloodied people on the streets, and then what really prompted my tears to fall: the massacre on Otoeya. In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard yet, you might want to make a quick detour to BBC NEWS before you read on. Having said that, I’m incredibly touched by the support from the international community we’ve had in this sorrowful time. We’re such a small nation, every fallen is a brother and a friend as our famous writer Nordahl Grieg put it. I’m very proud of our prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, our other politicians and the Norwegian media for handling this exceptionally well. In these two days Jens Stolteberg has proven that he truly is a befitting leader for our country with his humane and democratic disposition. Democracy is our present and our future, it must and shall prevail. The day we lose that to fear and despair is the day we have lost as a nation.

You must understand, that for something like this to happen to tranquil, beautiful Norway — it’s surreal beyond imagination. It’s a national tragedy we wish was only a nightmare. I’m currently across the pond still in England, and as far as I know all my friends and family are safe. All close friends know I don’t shed tears easily, hell I even used to be known as the ‘ice princess’. But here I sit tonight plastered to my screen, crying as I take in all the updated information and the death toll rising, stalking the websites of BBC and the major Norwegian newspapers. I’m a jumble of emotions, I’m not even directly affected, but it’s something so surreal and unimaginable that I can’t help myself. I’ve walked down those streets so many times in my life, what I see in the photos now are alien to me; the streets I had come to known covered in rubble and smoke billowing from buildings. I wanted to see other Norwegians, talk to them, clarify my thoughts and emotions, but I can’t. So I’m glued to my screen, not noticing the shadows getting longer and slowly taking over completely — and I write instead.

All my thoughts go out to my fellow countrymen tonight and the days to come. And we must all remember; democracy and humanity is our strength.

Related posts:

1. 17th May coming up
2. Britt, Martin & their pretty place

“Oh,” I blink in surprise. “I got burnt twelve years ago. I completely forgot about the scar, it’s been so long.” He’s eyeing my old scar with curiosity and something I can’t quite make out. Is it fear I see? Awe? Disgust? It really has been too long. He touches my scar, running his fingers very lightly across the uneven skin. Is he not disgusted? The now healed skin is so uneven, can he not feel how weird it is?
“Does it hurt?” he’s stopped the movement and I realise I have a horrid expression on my face.
“Um, it’s been 12 years since the accident, Einstein, what do you think? It healed a long time ago, can’t feel anything now,” I mock him. “It’s just, I forgot I even had a scar, you know?”

Most girls I know would be so conscious about having a scar as obvious as mine they’d cover it up for the rest of their lives. Either by wearing long sleeves or by means of makeup, but not me. Most of the time I don’t even remember my scars are there, much less remember to cover them up. When I was younger my mom used to suggest we visit a plastic surgeon in the states to have my skin fixed up all pretty and neat so that my arm would look normal again. Asian parents have this eternal fright that if their daughter is ever scarred, she won’t be able to attract a good husband. Not that my definition of good would be the same. At the time I told my mom I would never go under the knife because, as a eight year old child, I was scared of the pain. But now – 12 years later – it’s out of principles.

I’ve lived with the scar for more than half of my life, and it just doesn’t bother me. It definitely bothered me for a week when I was hospitalised and had to go through with the treatments to minimise the damage and scarring, it certainly was annoying the hell out of me the weeks afterwards when I had to return to the hospital daily to continue my treatment, and it might have bothered me for about a year or two in the aftermath when I was getting accustomed to the distortions of my skin. But I was a child and the knowledge that the scarring was permanent didn’t bother me as much as it would an adult, so little me shook it off and continued to boss other kids around. And gradually I started forgetting the scars were even there.

So you see whenever someone asks me about the funny looking patch of skin covering my wrist, I am as surprised as them to see the scar. Until, of course, I remember. But instead of yanking my sleeve down to hide it and mutter embarrassingly something about getting hot oil all over me, I look at it as if I’ve never seen it before in my entire life and start telling them the story about how I learned not to agonise too much over what is commonly perceived as flaws, and how that contributed to my seemingly bottomless enthusiasm. It’s the story of how I learned not to give a damn.

Because my lovelies, once you learn not to look at it as a flaw, but rather a strength, your life will be so much easier. Your head will be less confused, your mind less troubled and your emotional life less suffering. And you will be so much happier, you’ll forget the “flaw” is even there and life will be pretty wonderful indeed. Until, of course, you remember it’s there. But it’s ok, because by then you don’t really care that much anymore you just shake it off with a shrug. And honestly? All other minor “flaws” in your body image will seem puny and unimportant in comparison. And since you don’t care about the “big” one, you definitely won’t be caring about the others.

Just shake it off, baby.

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There’s a quirky little interior shop in Norwich that I always visit for inspiration and general eye candy. I was showing a friend of mine the shop the other day and found this little gem lying there next to a sparkly one and calling longingly out for me. It was love at first sight. I just had to pick it up.

How can you possibly resist such a thing?

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My mate biked over to the library to give me some homemade cheesecake (and chocolate cupcake). Isn’t that incredibly nice of him?

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Personally I’ve always been very aware of how bittersweet is so heart-wrenchingly painful. I’m not saying bittersweet is the worst one out there as anyone could argue for a dozen other feelings that could be worse, but bittersweet has always been special to me, always stuck with me like a quirky little idea refusing to let go. I think it’s one of those that are sometimes easily taken lightly. Bittersweet might not sound that bad because there’s a sweet part to it — but I think it is exactly because of that sweet part that makes it so much more unbearable than had it been just bitter alone.

I often picture bittersweet as an epilogue. The ending to a war, the ending to a story. The aftermath after a great battle. Imagine standing in the middle of a battlefield newly victorious after a great battle and taking in the sight of the hushed field strewn with the dead bodies of your comrades. When that bone deep relief and weariness soaks into your body when you realize you just survived and won what was believed to be impossible, but at the same time you also feel like crying out in anguish and laughing a crazy humorless laugh because of the… painful victory. Victory, yes, but at what cost. It’s an overwhelming feeling of relief of having achieved the impossible, but hurting badly inside knowing so well what was sacrificed along the way.

Bittersweet is that mush of contradicting feelings where you’re happy, because of the good things that came out of something, yet you are in great pain due to possible sacrifices along the way. The whole situation is just kind of ironic to deal with such contradicting feelings, and it only adds to the pain. It’s gratitude laced with incredible pain.

You just don’t know whether you should laugh or cry.

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It was brought to my attention that the comment page was going bonkers, it’s fixed now so you can leave a reply :) Sorry about that guys!

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