somedays it descends upon me, a question so heavy and unforgiving that i stop everything and just sit around feeling aimless.

have i made the right choice with writing in english?

i feel like i am abandoning a culture by not living in swedish. i feel like i have lost a grasp of the language – or both. the difference in writing in either of them are great! swedish allows for a different kind of approach, one that is more commonly accepted and recognized as valid, than english which is bound in rigidity and structure. my greatest dream is to merge my swedish flow into english words. or english simplicity into swedish looseness.

but then, but then. swedish vs english.

and it's... a strange struggle. the simple answer is, of course, that yes, i enjoy writing in english, it feels righter for me. but that is after years of writing, communicating, even living primarily in that language. what if i had chosen differently five years ago? what if i had chosen swedish?

and i didn't, i made the decision to go to new york, i made the decision to study at an english high school once back in sweden. i mostly love and date in english, and as much as i love sweden for the practical reasons and values present here, the language is still a thing. i have always felt freer in english, more able to express myself; speaking and writing and reading english is a thing that matters a lot to me — i'd almost say it's an act which balances me.

and then it strikes me that i am indeed very blessed to have met you, because you feel okay with the idea of moving to england or scotland, and i think we should live in berlin too one day. i know things are looking dreary in those countries right now, and the bubble i live in here is safe still, but i don't want that to confine me to living here. sure, if things go to utter hell, one could always move back to sweden i guess. (i keep my renting queues regularly updated. i keep the options open. there's no real rental market in sweden, just these damn queues and impossibilities.)

as long as i can talk english with someone and write in it, i think i'll be okay. 

    What is desire?
     Desire is a restaurant. Desire is watching you eat. Desire is pouring wine for you. Desire is looking at the menu and wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Desire is the surprise of your skin.
    Look - in between us now are the props of ordinary life - glasses, knives, cloths, Time has been here before. History has had you - and me too. My hand has brushed against yours for centuries. The props change, but not this. Not this single naked wanting you.

— Jeanette Winterson, The White Room

(x.)

Let's start by saying that we communicate in a language that I didn't speak for the first ten years of my life. True, there was the trip to Malta where my mother took me on the bus and we sat in the front. The driver asked if I understood him: my mother said no in her broken English, but I started chatting away to him in English. I still remember his face, the wide eyes, the grin, the laughter bubbling up. True, I watched the animated Addams Family on Cartoon Network before it became dubbed to Swedish, writing down long lists of English words that filled pages. Grandmother always kept a stack of white paper in the living room so I could write or draw whenever I wanted to, I just had to go over to the bookshelf and pull a new sheet out.

Still, this is a language I sometimes fumble with, like I fumble with my native one. The words are sometimes inadequate. Sometimes I wish to explain Swedish to you, sit you down and teach you each word that has no meaningful equivalent in English, this language where the words are written together, where the grammar rules can be ignored for good prose without anyone raising a fuss, where the good literature is impossible to translate because it's just that good. This language where every word has a second meaning, like how the word for 'married', 'gift', is the same one for 'poison'. I love it but it's not a language I want to write in because it is not one you can understand. Even if you did, I see myself leaving it within the next five years. Hopefully sooner. (If it is forever is another matter indeed – the national anthem, the only bit I have memorized, is the emphatic line of 'Yes, I want to live and want to die in the Nordic!')

As we grow, I think we will find other languages to communicate our love in but English is the foundation upon which we are building ourselves together. It is a beautiful language, if a little stiff (at least to a Nordic such as myself). Sometimes, we will not find the words. Sometimes, we will sit here frustrated by what we cannot convey, by these feelings beating in our veins, thrumming in our heart, yet refusing to be defined by our fingertips. I write love poems on your skin when you sleep with my fingers, tracing out your contours with cursive lettering. It never feels like it is enough, but it will be.

Our barriers are time and distance, but we find ways to operate in their cracks. Language will not be a barrier. I knew this the instant the tip of my tongue touched yours. I knew it the moment I saw you through the window of the terminal, the glass separating the two sides. I saw you arrive and I felt nothing but happiness. I will feel this again.

It's still hours until you wake. I always think that the mornings of these days are beautiful, because I can prepare something for you to lay your eyes on. I never feel like I lack you, but I do miss you.