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- It is true that the greatest loves of my life have been shorter than me, with one exception.

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Maybe it’s because I suffer from prosopagnosia, face blindness. Sometimes people come straight up to my face and hug me and I have no idea of who they are. That is scary but not uncommon. Then some faces I’ll recognize instantly, but then maybe not the next time. I have tried to make some sense to how my brain selects and remembers but I have given up since there is no pattern. One of my best friends, who I walked past in the corridor of our art school almost every day, took me years to recognize. Before she learned and saw my dysfunctional behavior with her own eyes, she thought I was a complete relational fuck-up. I may also call out the wrong name to friends I’ve known for more than ten years.

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It’s as I live a secret life from myself; my character is out there performing a role, taking part in life as much as I am shut in.

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Usually I stand there, utterly confused with no idea what they are talking about. But obviously I had been there.

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Often I forget that I have a social disorder and don’t remember it until I’m there, with a stranger in my arms.

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- Yes, but does one exist? For example, I often have imaginary conversations, often with characters intended for novels that I will never write. The conversations are truly inspirational.

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- Someone told me that you are supposed to clean from corner to corner.

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- To do that I decided to put up some images across from my bed. The idea was to instantly look at them in the morning to lead my thoughts in a more uplifting/constructive direction. I haven’t found any good images yet.

In London I had two images pinned to my wall. One was of a woman or a man in heavy makeup wearing a bathrobe and one was of Pina Bausch performing in one of her choreographies in her signature nightgown. Both images were in black and white. I don’t know how to analyze why I needed to stare at them. They never made me feel good in that sense.

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- A friend gave it to me after days of conversation and walks all over town: ambivalence and alienation. According to her that would be perfect themes for me.

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We will see how it goes and so far I’m still intact, almost. And maybe I also found something interesting. He is eleven years younger but so far he isn’t boring.
But I probably just ruined our relation this morning anyway … Well, as you see, I’m working my way out. There is always a mess. Or one could say, I’m not living in the moment but desperately trying to keep up.

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-alienation-hiding-scenography-staging-catwalk-view-gaze-subjectivity-self-persona-play-lines-words-imagination-truth-untrue-story-reality-escapism-wanting more-ambivalence. Or what do you think?

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- Sometimes it is for understanding a certain time or how the inside of someone else’s brain looks.

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I think it’s good for your nervous system – in a savage way, to be showered by adrenaline, the thrill and fear of getting caught. Stretching the boundaries and crossing the lines of what is mine and what’s theirs, who is owned and who is the owner? It has to do with having our lives controlled by the capitalist system and how we’re supposed to feel for stuff. My mother encourages it so then it can’t be wrong?

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- I think it could be a way to make thoughts, objects, and actions unfold, reveal themselves, letting us know where we are (who we are, what to do, where to go). We want to belong to a group, so they say. I respect this activity even though I’m not a believer in the methodology to get there.

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- I see it so that every attempt to succeed is a failure, success is an impossible goal and really I don’t know why it’s so important? When you get to where you thought you were going everything has changed on the way. Failure is much more interesting. Nothing will ever be finished and in that I find comfort and serenity. It is when you think – this is going really well ­– that you are in real trouble.

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- I’ve never used notebooks, making notes on single sheets of paper makes it easier to erase.

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- We are also supposed to defend our behavior in a linear way even if our feelings are not linear. Actions transform with time and so our behavior must be considered naturally erratic? And so also our work?

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We fluctuate with personal highs and lows, we sometimes have parallel moods and then we spend time together. Then slowly we drift back to the depths of our separate worlds without noticing it. And that is why I will be easy on our attachment because that itself is an exchange of energy so exclusive I’m afraid to jinx it. In our friendship we don’t have set roles. I can’t expect something of her or she from me. That’s the dynamic. Sometimes I call or text her and get no answer. Sometimes she gets irritated with me for doing the same.
-Stop ignoring me, she texts me.
I don’t reply.
This is when I am as paralyzed as she might be the next time, when I want connection. We have found comfort in the ambivalent state we both are in, she won’t be there for me and I’m not counting on it. In that there is certain stability. We have each other for other reasons. What I’m trying to avoid is also to get personal. I don’t know if she would like that, or I do, she would hate it. I know a lot of her secrets but that’s just it, her secrets are different from yours and mine; hers have a density and weight that ours do not. So really, when she asked me to write about her, I had no idea of what she wanted; she can get angry too.

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When asking her I expected, as always, another answer and also a discussion on a suitable subject. But she said:
- You should write about me.
She said this in the same breath as she told me she had no skin on her chest or on her arms. I suggested she put on a bandage to at least have something to hold her together. Roaming my memory there is no other friend that stay so elusive and volatile as her. This is her attraction and something of a lesson. She is the one that does absolutely no acting yet she is cast so perfectly in her part.

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- In my process of withdrawal, cleansing and forgetting I have at the same time been honestly defeated by the absence of emotional obsession. But there is also bliss and productivity to be found in this state. It is too bad that darkness has such a bad reputation.

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- It could be a flexible work.

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- I am amazed that people can agree or even like the same things.

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- But isn’t it impossible to hold the artist/author of the work equal to the work? Aren’t we roleplaying most of the time? Especially in our work, inventing personas and stories? I’m just one dimension, you are another, but we can’t calculate what that adds up to? Before I could argue the opposite of my own belief, just for the thrill of argumentation. I don’t do that anymore. Actually I don’t have that many discussions at all. They don’t seem to have time for that here.

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- I haven’t googled her yet. Or her husband. To not know how she looks or how her voice sounds gives me freedom to fantasize about her as a character.

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- It’s to get closer to each other by distancing others. I know this is a thing you do socially, in order to connect, build a group and to develop confidence to one another, but I’ve had to learn how it works. I remember the first time I learned that someone who I had never met disliked me. It chocked me and made me very very confused. It had never occurred to me that it was a possibility. I was about 14 years old.

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The next time I saw him he was even worse and when I asked him my question he didn’t have an answer. But I know how it is; a life full of drama makes you feel alive, that life is actually happening, it feels, it hurts, it keeps you on your toes psychologically and you get addicted to the adrenaline rush. When going deep into your own suffering and despair the glimpses of happiness seem so powerful that the suffering seems worth it. But it’s not. There must be a way to be happy without drowning.

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I asked: When you are not obsessed who are you then?

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I was trying hard. One took notes during our conversation, wanting me to repeat things I said so she could write them down and asked if she could quote me for her own essay. The other one didn’t catch on to the hooks in conversation that I deliberately laid out as a test. Her brilliance comes in unexpected doses, but is hard to use and there are too many things going on in her life. I love them both; they are invaluable in my life, but useless for my purpose. So I had exhausted the resources I had and I felt that the time had run out.

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Before I thought of rules as something useful in order to be productive, but now I just see them as limitations.