Posted in Yada Yada | Tags: Västerås, | Archive | 11 Comments »

I don’t think about it often but sometimes it’s coming back to me. That typical summer day which ended up not being typical at all.

In my old home town me and my family lived in a nice neighbourhood. Your typical middle class neighbourhood where the neighbours talked over fences and the kids played in the street. A safe neighbourhood. Bad things just didn’t happen there. Or so we thought.

I had a friend from out of town visiting and we had woken up not too long ago. We were talking and the window was open since it was a hot day. All of a sudden we hear a loud bang. We look at eachother going “What was that?”. I thought that it sounded a lot like a gunshot but then I thought, nahh, that can’t be it. I still got this uneasy feeling and got up to find out whatever that sound was. One part of my mind was shouting “gunshot, gunshot, gunshot, I need to check on my family!” but I remained calm and went to the kitchen where my dad was standing, looking out the window.

I asked him about the sound and he replied “Our neighbour just shot a guy. He’s lying there in the street”. I looked out the window and like 20 meters away a man laid on his back in a white bloody t-shirt, not moving.

My dad (and several other neighbours) called the cops. Our neighbour stood on his lawn, calmly waiting for them when they arrived and arrested him. Several cops stood at the lawn after the arrest but didn’t do anything in particular. Then all of a sudden they run to to the backyard. We later found out that the man had not only killed the man in the street but also his wife a couple of hours earlier. She was lying in a shed in the backyard. The media said it was all about jelousy. A jelous abusing husband.

There was a neighbourhood meeting where the police informed us about what had happened and they talked to my parents and the rest of the neighbours who had witnessed the murder. A part of the street was shut down and they put up a tent around the body. The whole thing was surreal.

The weirdest part was that the man seemed like such a nice guy and their family appeared to be so normal. They always greeted me and god knows not many of the neighbours did that. The wife even paid my bus ticket once when I didn’t have enough money on me and dad sold them his old car.

The worst thing was that our neighbours had three kids. Three kids who in one day lost both their parents. Later that night me and my friend went to rent some movies. There we met the kids and a man who must have been a social worker. I didn’t know what to say and how to act. I said hello to the oldest girl and she greeted me aswell, like we always did. I wanted to hug her and tell her I was so sorry but I didn’t. Maybe I should have. I don’t know.

On the International Women’s day the following year the political youth party I was involved with held a manifestation where we lit a candle for every woman murdered by a boyfriend or husband in the past year. I thought about my neighbour when I lit those candles. I don’t even remember her name or the name of her children but I think about them from time to time.

Plugs: Kristine, tiff k, Angie, kitty, maria, Holly, Shiri, Aly, Gabriella, Julie, Bella

Posted in Yada Yada | Tags: Västerås, | Archive | 4 Comments »

Sometimes I’m hit by this extreme nostalgia and all I want to do is travel back in time and be eighteen again. In so many ways that was the best time of my life. Things are much more complicated now and god knows I’m not the easygoing person I used to be.

I was just looking at old photos from when I was in high school and I realized how much I miss the people I used to hang with back then. Since I moved away from Västerås five years ago I’ve lost contact with almost everyone I knew back then. I have some contact with a couple of my high school friends but it’s very sporadic and the friendship we once had is almost gone. Some people who meant the world to me I have no contact with whatsoever.

It’s sad and it hurts. Why did I let them go? Why did they let me go? I’m not a person who easily forget about people. If someone have been a beloved friend that person will always be a beloved friend, even if it’s just in my memories.

Plugs: Ivy, Rachel-Rebecka, tiff k, maria

Posted in Yada Yada | Tags: Fucking shit, Hultsfred, Västerås, | Archive | 7 Comments »

Today I really miss my old hometown Västerås where I lived between 1999 and 2004. I only lived there for five years but those years were the best of my life for so many reasons. Today I miss Västerås mainly because of all the fun I had there but also because it was a so much better city to live in than this shithole I’m currently residing in. You see Västerås with it’s approximately 107 000 inhabitants is Sweden’s fifth most populous city. Compare that to Hultsfred with it’s 5000 inhabitants. Jeez, there lived more people and there were more stores in a god damn suburb in Västerås than the entire Hultsfred!

The only thing of worth we have here is the rock festival that takes place in june every year. But one week of fun does not in any way make up for the remaining fifty-one weeks of the year. This is a terrible town to live in. I’m not kidding you when I tell you the best shop in town is Coop Konsum. That’s a grocery store! But they do have some make-up and they do have some movies. And oh boy, even some decoration ornaments! This is the reason to why I buy most of my clothes, movies, books, technical gadgets, well pretty much everything online. Or go to a close-by town like Linköping, Växjö, Västervik or Jönköping. Ok I just realized there’s one more good thing about this town but that’s nothing special for this town but common in all small shitholes like this. It’s easy to find a apartment. And they’re cheap. It took me one month to find my apartment and it was actually the first and only apartment I looked at. Nobody but me was interested in it either so the same day I had a look at it I also signed the lease contract. That would never ever have happened in Västerås, or any other big city for that matter unless you’re rich or have connections. Nevertheless that doesn’t make up for living here either.

In the weekends there’s nothing to do here but get drunk and go to the pub. At least when you’re drunk you might fool yourself into believing that the pub is fun. Which it really isn’t. Like I’ve said before the only thing that keeps me from getting the hell away from here asap is a few good people, including my family. It’s a pain to move to another city and start all over. It took me years to actually get friends here and of the people I know I only see a few of them as real friends and not just acquintances. I can count my friends on one hand and I’ve lived here for almost four years. How sad is that?

I don’t know what to do because I hate the life I’m currently living. It’s not just the town I live in. It’s my personal problems, it’s the endless routine of boredom, it’s every day thinking that this life isn’t what I imagined for myself as an adult. It was supposed to be better. Different.

Plugs: Louise, Kylee, Becca, Jaleesa, samiha, Ashley, Cryslynn