The girl and the journey

Many people may not know of this but I have lived for 12 years in the Netherlands. And still I don’t speak the language. I am not going to enter into a diatribe on this subject. I can only profess to being completely oblivious to the Dutch language and shall probably remain so for at least the foreseeable future.

But this is neither here nor there. The fact remains I came to this country and decided to stay due to a love affair. I call it an affair because it was completely volatile and had all the ingredients of some cheap, long forgotten paper-back.
Recalling that moment which set the course of direction in my life, feels odd, distant, a parallel life if you like. And yet  it was not. It’s the life belonging to me. I still have those pages torn out of a diary describing that year of 1996, when I visited Amsterdam in early January. I recall it was quite cold and as I was staying with an ex-lover-turned-friend, residing on the Kinkerstraat, I could afford daily taxi rides to the centre of Amsterdam. Unknowing that one of those taxi journeys would become my destiny I didn’t hesitate stepping into taxi 307 from the TCA one cold winter evening.

The taxi drive was pleasant as I struck up a conversation with the driver. Or perhaps it was the other way around, My memory is a little clouded when it comes to the details. The fact remains that not before long it became obvious that the driver couldn’t find the direction. Or at least so he claimed. I never made it to my destination but I did find my destiny. Because as boy meets girl do, he asked for number (coming to think of it I didn’t have a cell phone so I must have given the landline of my friend) and asked if he could pick me up after his shift ended.

Being the girl always open for an adventure, I accepted his invitation, and he picked me up later that evening. We had some cheap Chinese take-away consumed over large quantities of wine. Banco de Gaia was playing in the background.

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At the age of 19 I still believed the world was good. I was also convinced I would have a great career. I had studied hard and achieved good grades and I felt the world was at my feet. At the same time I carried around a few broken illusions after my mother’s recent death and my father’s absence. Little did I know that more illusions were about to be shattered. But for a while I lived in world oblivious to reality. After all I had money from an inheritance that in my world would take me far enough in the life I had envisioned for myself.

That evening turned into night, and I left early in the morning to pick up my belongings and move in with a total stranger. It doesn’t grant much credit to my character, but it happened then and it has happened again. I think there are crucial moments in our lives when we take decisions and later, whether out of comfort or fear for the unknown, we will follow the same course again and again until it becomes our eternal life map. The relationship that followed definitely turned into a pattern. Not so much in terms of who I later met, dated and in some cases  married but how I responded to certain situations in the relationships I would encounter.

But to come back to this faithful meeting, that evening turned into a prolonged stay in an apartment in the Red Light district of Amsterdam. I dreaded my return to Sweden. How could I go back to a life full of security, a place at a private school, but so devoid of love after the loss of my mother. So I chose instability over security and love and passion over loneliness. Would I have done the same 12 years later? I believe I would. Although security is a major factor in my life now, especially since it has  vanished in moments I needed it most, I still value love and passion above all else.  It just makes life a little more interesting…