Friday, January 21st 1994

Today is a sad day.

While packing up my mothers belongings, I came across a journal, and on the first pages was a kind of poem she must have written while in hospital. I remember buying her that journal, thinking she might want to keep a record of her treatments. Here is the poem:

Dear Diary.

I have Cancer.
I can feel it when I’m completely still in bed. I can feel something eating me from the inside. Sometimes it feels like something is moving, living inside me.
It’s not alive.
I have Cancer.
I hear the doctors say the word, over and over, every day. Even when I’m not at the hospital. The doctors live in my head, and they whisper it all the time. I have cancer. Sometimes they shout it, so very loud, making my head hurt and I need to lay down. That’s when I can feel it living and growing inside me. Cancer. I HAVE CANCER!!

Dear Diary.

I have started a new treatment today. The doctors say they are going to help me. “We have to fight this Cancer” they say. They give me chemo therapy. They put a tap in my arm through which they fill my body with chemicals. Poison to kill the Cancer. What if the poison kills me and not the Cancer, I think to myself. I guess it doesn’t matter. The doctors said I didn’t have long anyway. “We’ll have some lovely months together here” they said. I guess that means I’ll live a few months more.
I guess that means I’m going to die.

Dear Diary.

My hair has started falling out. The poison is eating my hair cells.
The Cancer is eating me.
”Have you had a hair cut?” they ask me at work.
”What is happening to your hair?” My children ask me.
I AM DIEING! I think, and laugh inside my head. Not because I am happy but because I am scared, but I cannot let the Cancer know I care!
”Had a trim,” I reply swiftly. Can’t say the word Chemo.
”nothing, just styled it differently,” I say briskly. Can’t say, just won’t say, the word Cancer!

Dear Diary.

Today my eyes are an odd lacklustre shade of grey-ish yellow. My skin looks pale and almost dusty. My body itches, inside and out. My hair is thin and fair. The last tufts are about to fall off.
I wonder if I can use the fallen off hair for something useful? I know they stuffed pillows with hair during the war... or maybe I can knit from it? A jumper maybe?
It's a bit on the short side... maybe a small jumper?
I wonder what it is like to die. Is it painful, or maybe relieving? I wonder if it is boring, being dead. Being alive is painful, but it is far from boring...

(The doctors only say "Cancer" now, and they say it often.)

Dear Diary.

I've written many letters, but I've thrown them all away.
I've written invitations too, most for my own amusement. I've thrown these away too. One just doesn't send out personalised invites to these occasions!
I almost don't exist anymore..
What does one wear to a funeral... your own funeral? Not sure I get to choose?

The doctors have moved out of my head. Guess they don't want to come with me where I'm going. The nurses say "we" and "us" and "good night". Family and friends are here most of the time. They don't say much. They cry, or want to cry, and smile at me through their tears. They hurt, more than I do.
Someone holds my hand.

I become scared. Scared that they will let go!

But they have to... everyone must at some point let go...

After that there was nothing else. Just empty pages, a whole book full of empty pages. Like the book that should have been the rest of her life.

It's maybe down to me to fill these pages for her?

Monday, April 3rd 2000

Finally I’ve made the big move! I’m here! I’m in London!

Arrived in London 5.15pm after a long turbulent flight from Stockholm. My 65 kilos of luggage didn’t make the journey from Heathrow to Central London any easier, and it cost me a shocking £95 to have packed a couple of t-shirts too many!

I had pre-booked a room in a hostel in Errol Street, but I must have gotten the only cab driver without local knowledge as he had no clue where this was. It turned into a very long drive.

Finally in my room, I was not about to start unpacking my overpriced luggage, so I had a quick shower to cleanse off the journey dirt, a change of clothes and a 10 minute rest before heading to Soho for a celebratory drink. Yeah, I felt that I should definitely celebrate my move to London! Even if I was doing so on my own!

A short while later I found myself in the Village pub with a beer in my hand, and as I turn from the bar towards the door, my mate Thom from Stockholm walks through the door Incredible! Now, I should explain the circumstances, Thom and I aren’t close friends but rather social friends, chatting whenever we meet out and about. When I spoke to Thom late last year and mentioned I was planning to move to London, he was thrilled as he was about to move there himself with a friend called Chris. We decided to stay in touch and meet up when I had moved over, but then I lost his contact details and never thought I’d find him!

That was why it was just unbelievable that he should walk through the door of that exact bar, just seconds after I had arrived! Also very lucky as it turned out he knew all the staff there too, and I was on a fast lane to making new friends. Later that evening we ended at Heaven, even though I had convinced both my mate Franck back in Stockholm and myself that I wouldn’t go there on the first night! Unbelievably I bump into another social friend from Stockholm whose name escapes me, but there goes my theory that London is too big to meet anyone you know. Two Swedes in one evening!

At some point I chatted up an 18 year old cutie called Dan. Camp as a row of tents, but very sweet, funny and charming. We chatted, drank and danced for what seemed like hours, and he asks me to come home with him. I am sure we took a cab as I cannot remember getting a night bus, and the next morning I realise he lives quite far out from the centre, near Finsbury Park. Mission: figure out how the hell to get back to my hostel!

It is 10am by the time I crawl into my own bed, and fall asleep for two hours before meeting Thom at Old Comptons Cafe for lunch at 1pm. And then it is time for some shopping! While Thom is investing in a new wardrobe, I get a new sim for my mobile. After that we stop off for drinks.. and more drinks! We found a small basement bar called Frevd where they serve the longest Long Island Ice Teas we have ever seen! So we stuck around for a few before making our way to the Escape bar.

By this time we were getting relatively drunk… and there he was! The most handsome man I had ever seen walks in, and I have trouble breathing. Not that there is a lack of totty to rest our eyes on in this place, they are a plenty, but this guy is stunning! Don’t ask me what happened but somehow we got chatting, and Thom convinces me to ask him out for lunch the next day. So I did, but it turned out he was travelling to Paris the next day. He gave me his number and suggested we meet for lunch next week – and then we snogged for a bit!

March 22nd, 1993

A poem I wrote about my summer in Italy 1992:

Memory

Warm water

Black sky

White moon

Warm sand

Warm skin

Naked skin

Naked body

Warm body

Your body

My body

Us two

White moon

Memory

May 8th, 2000

You tell me I never loved you, and that I am full of bullshit. In my eyes, you are the one who seem to not be able to make your mind up, boyfriend or no boyfriend?

This is what I think, these are the facts as I see them. I think that you don't really want a boyfriend, or at least not me as your boyfriend. But the fact that I want you and love you intrigues you. Add to that the fact that all your friends and work colleagues like me, they think I'm nice, they think I'm good looking, and that makes you look good! Having a likeable, nice and good looking man wanting you, loving you, regardless of what you do, almost like a "trophy wife"!

Well, I don't want that!

I want a boyfriend who desires me and loves me like I do him, who is proud of me, proud of being with me!

A boyfriend who would like to spend as much time with me as possible, who thinks about me almost all the time, who longs to get home from work to me, wants to cook for me, or eat my cooking, who looks after me when we are out, is attentive, supportive and honest.

A boyfriend who secretly looking over at me when I don't see it, wants to put his arms around me and hug me and hold me and cuddle me, watches me fall asleep at night and wakes me up in the morning with a kiss.

A boyfriend who shows me respect, support and understanding when I am upset, angry or hurt, and puts me in my place when it is called for.

A boyfriend who is there for me, allowing me to be there for him.

A boyfriend who will do for me what I will do for him.

You are not that boyfriend.