I’m soon to be married.

The year I turned 23 was a really crazy year for me. I broke up with my partner of almost 6 years. We had to divide everything between us, not just our hearts, but also our life’s. To break up with someone that you spent that much of you adult life with is a very hard thing to do, especially when you still love that person and still know that you need to break their heart in order to keep yours true to yourself.

I started a new life for myself where I needed to figure out who I was without anyone else. Even though I was the one who had decided that I wanted to be just me, I was so scared that I made the wrong choice. Luckily today, both me and my ex are very happy that we broke up. She is a amazing person and I love her for what she taught me about life and about myself and I’m so happy for her, her wife and their beautiful daughter.

My year of chaos passed and I had hit rock bottom. No job, no school, no apartment, no money and not a clue on where I wanted to be. I felt lost in more than one way. The one thing that saved me from going mad at that moment was my dog. Bamse made me be something, at least I needed to take care of him and that helped me to take care of myself.

When I saw him on Tinder I didn’t think more of it than that. He was really cute and his summary just stated that he was really nice and that he loved the TV show “På spåret”. When we matched I wrote to him “ you look like the nicest person in the world” and where off.

We meet the following Sunday, he came to Skellefteå and we had a coffee at Espresso house, after that we walked a short walk in the cold weather in early December. We came inside and he just flung himself on to the sofa, feeling right at home. I thought to myself “wow, he feels comfortable, I wonder if he just wants to be friends”. I sat down next to him. I can’t remember what we talked about, I just remember when he sat up, leaned in, kissed me, leaned back and said “I think I solved this nicely” and laughed.

After that I was hooked.

Here I am, just 2 years later. Still madly in love with that guy who loves silly TV-shows and he has asked me to marry him. I’m happier than I ever thought that I would be allowed to be. I try to use my happiness to bring happiness to others, and I hope that it works from time to time.

In 7 months, I will be Linnéa Filipsson, even writhing that feels weird and awesome at the same time. I’m so excited to have and to hold him for the rest of my life.

As long as I have him I have everything.

 

 

Deprived of not knowing more

Sometimes I can feel like I have been deprived the opportunity and the pleasure to know my grandparents better.

The only grandparent I have left is my grandad on my mother’s side. He has also been the one who has had the least impact on my life. My younger cousin ones described him as a bit of a “troll” haha, which is pretty funny when you think about it, because it’s kind of an accurate description of him.

My grandma died very young, hence I was also very young. I was too young to get to know my grandma more than just as grandma, she was never Else-Marie to me, she was just grandma, and I feel so deprived of not knowing more about her. I think I was 12 when she passed away.

I had a really close connection to my grandmother on my dad’s side. She had to children, my dad and my uncle, but she always wanted a girl. So when I was her first grandchild, and a girl, and I stayed the only grandchild who was a girl, she just put more effort in to me, and I of course in to her. I loved being around her. I spent a lot of my younger years at my grandparents’ house in Malå. My granddad used to sleep in another room (also called my room) and I would sleep with my grandma. It was a great time. I loved being there. My grandma died when I was 18, on the same day as Kristina graduated from Umeå. When I found out that she was sick, I was 15, I thought that she would live to see my children grow up, but she never got the chance, and I think she died long before she took her last breath, the Alzheimer took her piece by piece until northing was left.

When my grandma died, I think my granddad died to. After that he was never the same. A few years after my grandma died he still did things, like going fishing and just biking to some soccer game or just down town to have a coffee. I didn’t really understand how lonely he was in the beginning. Even though he is the grandparent that I have known the most in my adult life, I don’t think that I ever got to know the person who was my happy granddad, at least not in my grownup life. Still, he is the one grandparent that I have had de most contact with, and the one that I have had a grown up relationship to. He was a kind person who thought that he didn’t matter to him. I tried to tell him at least a million times that he was a big part of my life and that I loved him, but I still think I said that last part to little, that I loved him. I should have told him more often, every time that I saw him, talked to him on the phone. I hope he knew, and I hope he still knows, that I loved to talk to him when I lived in Umeå. I loved to visit him when I was in Skellefteå, and how said I was when I he didn’t let me come in through his door.

Because all of this, I always try to tell Tobias how utterly lucky he is to have 3 of his grandparents left. That he should cherries that and visit them often. I like visiting his grandparents too, I try to make them as my own sometimes, because they are lovely people, all of them. I’m sad that I never meet Tobias granddad sense they had such a strong connection, and I think that Tobias granddad and grandma was one of the happies couples in this world and when she talks about how happy they where I have a hard time holding back the tears, because they were as happy as we are, and I can’t imagined how sad she must feel sometimes going through life without him by her side. I hope that we get to be as happy as they were in their life.