INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

EMPTY THOUGHTS ON MY DIARY

After Lydia's lawsuit, I can't say I was the same person as before. I was feeling cruelty towards the world, a cynicism. I had a stable faith deep inside that the whole world is wicked and everybody will swallow me down. So, for two whole weeks, I would get out of the house only to visit some nearby kiosk. I was refusing to have any single contact with the outside world, while in the meantime I was keeping to myself, trying to think exactly what had happened in depth. Truly, for the first time ever, I felt I wanted to voice out loud anything that I was feeling, without any hidden allusions or without making up stories, where I was talking about my pains through a random heroine. I wanted to talk about me, about the real Ingrid person, to talk about the long-lost self. That's why the present chapter will only contain my own thoughts. My empty thoughts. It might feel like something like my own personal diary. I'd like it to be a bit more different than any other diary you've read. Whatsoever, all diaries I've kept, have this specific style: To start with, I have a completely ironic tone, when referring to myself and secondly, I wasn't referring to myself as I, but as you. This you person has a special meaning in Literature. I had read many books, in which the narrator was using a monologue, referring to their own self in the second person. During my Literature course at the university, we'd analysed many of these texts and this is what our professor told us: When a narrator uses you, referring back to themselves, this means that the narrator doesn't have a clear image of their own self, doesn't feel well about themself, or feels they have no self at all. In my own case, all of the three were true about me. Whatsoever, as I've already mentioned in previous chapters, I didn't have a name anymore. Even my closest friends wouldn't call me Ingrid anymore, but virtuosa, Meisterin, our composer etc. My mum herself would even call me sea-weary or a cinema soul. I wasn't bothered by those nicknames. Quite the contrary. I felt like I was getting more importance through these. But...was I of such importance? The importance of being admired by the world, as if you are Messiah, but you...you are not able to walk in the street, because you feel that you have become with no substance anymore?

Unfortunately, I can't use such a you narration in this chapter, because it's going to be completely irrelevant to the whole book.

This is what I've always written about in my diaries. I used to hide them in a drawer, so that nobody ever finds them, except the time when I would be dead. Only then would I be able to show the world anything I was feeling and who I really was. Only then would the whole world get to know who I was in fact, that I indeed was a human with a heart and that I wasn't an impersonal and cold-blooded machine who produces and is always hidden behind fifteen keys and cables. Furthermore, keeping a diary functioned also like a psychotherapy tool to me, because what I achieved through that was self-realisation. People who open up to their own therapists, quite often realise many things about themselves, whilst they start talking. This is what also happened to me. While starting writing, I would realise more and more about myself. Then I realised that my problems with getting dizzy and having a low hematocrit were completely interconnected with my mental state. I don't know if one thing resulted in the other, but surely this kind of chaotic life, or my chaotic routine, also had an impact on my physical state. I was very slim because I wasn't eating almost anything and I would walk from Kirkenes to Neiden (Näätämö) within two days, walking a 25-kilometre long distance. What I mean is that my body was burning calories quite easily, let alone the fact that I was 1.90 m tall. I wasn't anorexic at all, although my eating habits were completely imbalanced. Whatsoever, at nights in Kirkenes, my friends and I would get wasted, drinking two whole vodka bottles and some cocktails each person and most of the time Sofia, Jesikka and Eva would carry me home, because I'd passed out.

And of course, I refused to visit a doctor and get some medication. I realised there was a reason for that. I was punishing my own 'self' because I considered myself guilty for everything I was going through. That's why I needed a good lesson so I was harming my own body. I couldn't find any point in taking care of myself. I truly hated myself for existing, I was sure that nobody considered me to be a worthy person, but they keep me company because...who wouldn't like a musician as their best friend? But I knew. And that's why I hated myself and I believed I deserved to be passing out so suddenly because my sugar levels are low. I deserved to go through all this torture and suffering. Because it was ME the one who had chosen this chaotic life, so as long as each of us is responsible for ourselves, I should pay the price facing the consequences of my actions. And if I died alone, I wouldn't deserve it, if others ever found my carcass, just like in the case of some old people who die all alone in the snowy scarcely-populated villages of beautiful Lapland.

Furthermore, I also realised things about my heroines' nature. The style I used was, in fact, against every literary theory I was taught about. First theory, first course, first semester. In a literary work, the author should NEVER be identified with the narrator. In other words, this means that the person who writes is not their own hero, no matter if they have things in common. Regarding this a little bit deeper, though, I had noticed that this wasn't true in my own case. To start with, all of my books had a common pattern: a heroine (always a girl) in an older age reminisces her beautiful past and while she nowadays lives in a terrible reality, she ends up killing herself. You can clearly see that this girl was always me. I would reminisce about my past, that is the beautiful life I was leading until I left Kirkenes. And then, what I did was totally hate myself, that's why I was cursing at my heroines. Thus I felt I was disparaging and cursing at something I had created, or even my own self. And because I couldn't kill myself, I made my heroines do this, instead of me.

I used to write all these on my diaries, hoping they would help me get it all out. And this happened, but...with a consequence. Every time I was writing I would realise more and more things about me, which hurt a lot. I couldn't stand all that and I would break into tears. I realised that at the end of the day I was all alone because there was nobody around, so I could tell them how I felt. I only had a paper, in which I was writing some random thoughts. But the paper had no voice to reply to you. The paper was no real human to tell you I can feel with you, nor would it hug you to comfort you. It felt like talking to a wall. And even if I wanted to talk to someone...I just couldn't. I don't know if this was the case, because I was of such nature, or because I was Norwegian or anything else, but what I knew for sure was that I would only open my mouth if the shit had hit the fan or if Sofia and I were extremely wasted. And for me, this felt as if someone was constantly stabbing me with a knife.