I mourn her tiny ears

[00:00:00] Hi Sleepy, just a very quick note before we start today's episode. Do you want to listen to this podcast without the ads? Then you absolutely can. Just subscribe to Fall asleep with Henrik plus and to do so you can just click the link in the podcast description and it'll be fixed. See you there.

[00:00:22] Hi and welcome to Fall asleep with Henrik. I'm Henrik and you're sleepy and it is what it is. What happens happens and right now there is nothing we can do. So here we go. Hi Sleepy. Hi.

[00:00:56] Okay, so it's yet again time for me to use this language that is not mine, that's dormant, deep within me. It's a curious thing because I go all week.

[00:01:17] Well, I use English from time to time throughout my week but not in a real life-threatening sense which is the case right now.

[00:01:31] Welcome to Fall asleep with Henrik and this is a sleep podcast so you don't have to listen to what I say.

[00:01:37] My name is Henrik and I will just talk. I'm not going to use any methods or any pre-written scripts. I just talk.

[00:01:47] The things that come up in my mind will be today's shifting topics and all you need to do is just be you.

[00:01:58] You can listen to what I say. I can promise you that I haven't put much thought into what I say.

[00:02:07] Or you can just turn me on in the background and just pretend I'm not there or that I'm your parents in the next room or something.

[00:02:17] Do you remember when you were a kid and it was time for you to fall asleep and you could hear the grown-ups in the other room?

[00:02:27] I remember that very vividly and it was a very soothing thing to be experiencing, especially when I visited my grandparents, my mom's mom and dad.

[00:02:43] They had this...

[00:02:48] The audio was different at grandma's and grandpa's place.

[00:02:55] And the smells were different.

[00:02:58] They had carpets that totally covered the floors.

[00:03:05] So you couldn't see the floors.

[00:03:07] You could just see these very thick 70s style carpets.

[00:03:14] And they smoked a lot.

[00:03:17] But mom made them sit under the kitchen fan and smoke.

[00:03:21] Because otherwise, she said she wouldn't bring her children to that house.

[00:03:26] So they sat like fools under the kitchen fan above the stove.

[00:03:32] And they smoked like two packets of cigs each day.

[00:03:40] But the smell was there anyway.

[00:03:44] Although they smoked under the fan, the smell was throughout the house.

[00:03:47] A very distinct but not very strong presence of cigarette smoke.

[00:03:56] But I thought of that smell as something exciting.

[00:04:02] Because it was exciting to be at grandma's and grandpa's place.

[00:04:07] The sounds were different.

[00:04:10] The smells and the food.

[00:04:12] And they had this soda down in the basement.

[00:04:18] It was for my grandpa's liquor.

[00:04:21] He mixed drinks with it.

[00:04:23] It was like fruit punch, sort of.

[00:04:26] And he mixed it with vodka, I think.

[00:04:31] But I didn't know that at the time.

[00:04:33] I just, anytime I was there, I was just very, very interested in the sodas downstairs.

[00:04:41] Because we didn't get any sugared drinks or anything sugared really when I was growing up.

[00:04:47] My mom was very much against sugar.

[00:04:53] She was against a lot of things.

[00:04:55] My mom was against.

[00:04:57] And now I'm going to count the ways.

[00:04:59] And before I do that, I want to let you know that I love my mom.

[00:05:02] And every parent has its downsides.

[00:05:07] My mother's downsides were the fact that she had a lot of rules which she imposed on us children very strictly, I think.

[00:05:20] And some of those rules I keep with me today, for instance, I am almost always on time.

[00:05:29] That was a thing for my mother.

[00:05:31] And also, I have this anxiety of having people dislike me.

[00:05:39] And I think that comes from my mom as well.

[00:05:41] Because my dad don't seem to have that gene.

[00:05:43] He doesn't seem to really care if someone likes him or not.

[00:05:48] But mom had this thing that whenever there were strangers or people that we didn't know too much,

[00:06:00] we had to be like perfect versions of ourselves.

[00:06:06] And I think she got that from her parents, my grandparents.

[00:06:09] Okay, so here are the rules which I abided by when I was a kid.

[00:06:16] So no sugar, no candy, no nothing.

[00:06:21] Nothing with sugar unless it was like a birthday or some months we had like an occasional night when we rented a movie.

[00:06:38] Do you remember this?

[00:06:39] This was way before streaming when VHS was a thing.

[00:06:44] And we didn't have a VHS player.

[00:06:48] So we had to rent that.

[00:06:50] And it was called the movie box.

[00:06:52] So we rented the actual recorder, the VCR.

[00:07:01] And then we rented movies on VHS cassettes.

[00:07:06] And we made a night of it.

[00:07:08] And then I remember we could have like popcorn and such.

[00:07:14] But so no sugar.

[00:07:18] And no TV if we didn't finish dinner.

[00:07:23] I remember this very clearly because it was horrible to watch some sibling that didn't want to finish his broccoli or whatever.

[00:07:33] And sitting there, you know, forcing yourself to eat while the other siblings are watching kids shows on TV.

[00:07:46] TV was, you know, one hour every day except for weekends when there was no TV at all.

[00:07:55] I mean, compare this to today's children.

[00:07:59] It's almost impossible to think of them as non-consumers of moving entertainment.

[00:08:11] I had my comics and I read them again and again and again.

[00:08:19] Other rules, we had to behave perfectly when we had guests.

[00:08:23] There was this rule, very outspoken rule that if we misbehaved, that wasn't good.

[00:08:33] And misbehaving, I think it was this really, it was a very narrow corridor, this behaving thing.

[00:08:46] You know, just be a little angel.

[00:08:50] That's the thing that I really, I don't know why would you want your child to be an angel.

[00:08:57] I don't, I don't really get the tradition which my mother was a part of at least early on.

[00:09:07] I mean, she has six children, so I think we have nagged her a bit.

[00:09:12] We made her less, less rigid in that sense.

[00:09:18] But I don't, I have never understood the club of grown-ups that need their children to be like these little paintings of children.

[00:09:29] Why would you want a child that is just an image of a child?

[00:09:35] I mean, children are messy, wild, explorative, curious, hard beings, you know.

[00:09:47] It's hard to get them and it's hard to guide them.

[00:09:51] And that's what makes it beautiful, I think, because you can just imagine or extrapolate into the future

[00:09:58] the very exciting being that this child are going to be.

[00:10:02] So I believe that my mom made a mistake there.

[00:10:07] That doesn't mean I don't love her.

[00:10:09] That doesn't mean I don't think that she's done a terrific job.

[00:10:16] One of the things that her job really, that her way of being really helped me was

[00:10:23] throughout middle and high school I was seriously bullied.

[00:10:29] And she and her strictness sort of carried me through all that.

[00:10:35] I never lost faith in me because of her very strong beliefs.

[00:10:44] She was a Catholic and she was also, together with my father, they were storytellers.

[00:10:51] Like, their whole life together has been this woven narrative about how things turned out.

[00:11:03] And I have my own views now about this way of living.

[00:11:08] I mean, it can also constrict you, in a way, telling the story of your life in a certain way

[00:11:14] and keep doing that, like a mantra.

[00:11:17] I were the one who first made this and then made this and then this happened.

[00:11:22] You know, you can tell these stories about whole families hundreds of years back in history, if you want.

[00:11:29] And although it can be very attractive to carry that story, be a part of that story,

[00:11:37] I think it's, well, not hurtful, but it's, you get very limited, I think,

[00:11:48] using that type of narrative on your own life and your own family construction.

[00:11:57] But at that time, when I was bullied and helpless and a victim in so many senses of the word,

[00:12:05] these narratives really helped me.

[00:12:08] Because I was a part of something bigger, a part of something stronger.

[00:12:11] And there was this feeling of great support behind me.

[00:12:15] And I think that without that, I wouldn't be alive today.

[00:12:19] That's my narrative.

[00:12:24] And of course, that can be wrong.

[00:12:26] But as far as I'm concerned, I think my parents saved my life when I was a teenager.

[00:12:34] So everything I say about their shortcomings as parents, I say with the deepest respect and love,

[00:12:41] because I know that being a parent is not an easy thing.

[00:12:46] And God knows, being the parent of six children is, I mean, I couldn't imagine I have one, you know.

[00:12:56] So, yeah.

[00:12:58] But I really think that this very dogmatic way of upbringing is something that I don't really understand.

[00:13:06] I don't really get it.

[00:13:09] I don't really understand why you would want your child to be this perfect little being,

[00:13:19] like on a commercial poster in the 50s.

[00:13:23] I don't, like an ad, you know, an ad in a 50s ladies magazine.

[00:13:31] I don't get why you would want the child to be silent and angel-like.

[00:13:40] Of course, you don't want your children to, you know, kick the guests in the groin when they arrive.

[00:13:46] That, of course, would be frowned upon by, well, at least the guests.

[00:13:51] I don't mean that I want rabid children that just tears the apartment apart whenever there's something that differs from the ordinary.

[00:14:04] I mean, if I, well, I think that because I often got very good recommendations from my mom

[00:14:15] because I was very well behaved as a young boy, as a child, because I knew what she wanted to see in me.

[00:14:24] I knew what she wanted me to be.

[00:14:28] So I gave her that.

[00:14:31] But that creates sort of gaps behind the facade and that those gaps have been like this really troublesome thing for me growing up.

[00:14:48] The fact that I'm not really true, you know, I think of myself as not being completely true.

[00:14:56] Even though, well, what is truthfulness in a person?

[00:15:03] I mean, it depends, right?

[00:15:05] You can't just go around being truthful to everyone.

[00:15:09] And that has this polarization between truth and lie have been this very dramatic thing in me,

[00:15:22] which I never really come to terms with.

[00:15:24] I have this compulsive need to share the truth with everyone.

[00:15:33] I mean, look at me or listen to me.

[00:15:35] I'm right here talking about my upbringing, you know.

[00:15:40] So I have this need to not leave anything out.

[00:15:46] On the other hand, I am a public figure.

[00:15:51] I need to keep stuff out.

[00:15:54] I can't just, I mean, even if I weren't a public figure, I would need to keep stuff out of the attention of other people.

[00:16:03] Of course, we all need to, well, lie, you know, because it's necessary.

[00:16:11] I mean, I can't just go around telling everyone about everything.

[00:16:18] So this is a conflict for me.

[00:16:21] And I constantly feel dishonest in a way.

[00:16:27] Even though I think right now, for example, I feel like I am lying.

[00:16:33] And I don't know why.

[00:16:35] Maybe because I'm structuring the stuff I'm saying.

[00:16:41] Or maybe because I'm choosing my words so that I won't say things that will hurt someone or something.

[00:16:49] Or something hurt the everlasting beings up in the air.

[00:16:55] Or, no, but I'm, well, I, yeah, it feels like I'm somewhat manipulating, you know.

[00:17:08] Although I can honestly say with my intellect that I am not.

[00:17:13] I don't know what I'm doing.

[00:17:15] I just talk, you know.

[00:17:17] So there's this underlying constant feeling of me being, not being what I put myself up.

[00:17:28] What I tell you that I am, you know.

[00:17:33] And this is just a construct in my own brain.

[00:17:36] And it comes from the fact when my mother, she really demanded total honesty.

[00:17:44] Honesty in a sense that I think she asked too much of me.

[00:17:52] I think you should leave children alone.

[00:17:55] Not alone as in emotionally alone.

[00:17:58] But I think that you should leave children alone in their own worlds, you know.

[00:18:05] To find their own attributes.

[00:18:07] And if you're going to guide them and give them stuff that can help them through life, don't force it upon them.

[00:18:17] Unless, you know, the circumstances are such that, well, if you don't force it upon them, they will hurt, you know.

[00:18:29] But I would have benefited from free reign, you know, when I was a kid.

[00:18:35] But I'm not talking about free reign, like walking around everywhere.

[00:18:39] Because we really, I was brought up in the woods and we went everywhere.

[00:18:45] Ma was afraid of cars.

[00:18:47] But there was almost no car.

[00:18:50] Cars in the village where I was brought up.

[00:18:53] But there was a lot of forests.

[00:18:56] So we went like everywhere in the woods.

[00:18:58] And there was no restrictions around that.

[00:19:02] But I would have benefited from more emotional free reign, I think.

[00:19:07] Because, and I see this in many of my siblings as well, that we have this very, we feel like constantly that we are or other people are going outside this narrow corridor of good behavior, you know.

[00:19:24] And I haven't behaved good in my life.

[00:19:29] That's not my, you know, call sign.

[00:19:34] The good behaved one.

[00:19:37] I have been a normal person.

[00:19:41] Making normal mistakes and hurting people.

[00:19:45] I've hurt people and I've hurt myself.

[00:19:51] And I have done like everyone, you know, through life.

[00:19:56] But for some reason I have the demands on me from within that I can't do those mistakes.

[00:20:06] I can't hurt people.

[00:20:08] I can't misbehave.

[00:20:10] I can't be too drunk at a party and say something weird to someone.

[00:20:18] I can't do that because I'm me.

[00:20:20] And there are a lot of stuff on my shoulders, you know, that feeling.

[00:20:28] And I could have lived without that.

[00:20:30] I could have grown up without that.

[00:20:32] And that makes me, well, sad in a way because I look at my own daughter and I see that.

[00:20:40] Or rather, I can't see why I would want to put something on her from above or from the outside.

[00:20:47] I just, I can't see why.

[00:20:51] What are the benefits of teaching a child to stand straight in line?

[00:21:02] When she doesn't fit in that line, I can't.

[00:21:07] I'm not talking about this bewildered child that just does whatever she wants.

[00:21:13] Of course, there's a world around her that she needs to respect and such.

[00:21:18] And I don't know if I, well, things would have been different if I had a child that was very keen on breaking rules and such.

[00:21:27] But she's not.

[00:21:27] So, but I wasn't either, you know.

[00:21:33] I was like her, you know, careful and listening and adaptive.

[00:21:40] I just can't understand why you would want to impose.

[00:21:46] Why you would want to put something on top of that child?

[00:21:52] Because it's a perfect being, you know, in a way.

[00:21:55] Limitless.

[00:21:56] But the fact that I can think about this now, I think is a good measure of that my parents weren't all bad.

[00:22:08] No, they weren't bad.

[00:22:11] I mean, I know now that being a parent is like this constant struggle between what you believe is right and compromises and what you think you should do.

[00:22:28] And what other people tell you to do.

[00:22:34] There are so many things tearing from different parts of you.

[00:22:40] And I have also a few siblings that were born with kind of different diseases and handicaps that made it difficult to just live a normal life.

[00:22:57] And that's, yeah.

[00:23:03] So, I didn't want this episode to be about how I think about my upbringing.

[00:23:13] I tend to return to these matters more often these days.

[00:23:19] I don't know why.

[00:23:20] Maybe it's because I feel safe when I do this in English.

[00:23:24] I'm not sure.

[00:23:27] But I want to emphasize again that I have the utmost respect for my parents and I don't blame them.

[00:23:35] Well, maybe I do.

[00:23:36] Maybe I did back in the day.

[00:23:39] But I also feel that you reach a point in your life when it becomes just useless to just go around blaming people.

[00:23:48] I mean, why?

[00:23:50] What good is there in blaming?

[00:23:54] I mean, I can ask questions like these.

[00:23:58] And I have asked my mother about this as well.

[00:24:02] And she says that it's what she believed in back then, you know.

[00:24:07] She's not like this anymore.

[00:24:11] And she was young.

[00:24:12] She was 24 when she got me.

[00:24:15] And I mean, what 24-year-old has it all figured out?

[00:24:20] I know I didn't.

[00:24:22] On my 24th birthday, I fell asleep at the stairs outside of a Burger King.

[00:24:28] And I got woken up by this security guard who said that if you don't get out of here, I'm going to call the cops.

[00:24:35] And you don't want to end up in the police station.

[00:24:43] Believe me.

[00:24:44] He said it like a warning.

[00:24:46] And I skedaddled out of there.

[00:24:48] We had been at this great green area called Djurgården in Swedish.

[00:25:04] In English, it's like the king's old hunting grounds, which is in modern times open to the public.

[00:25:15] It's not for the king anymore.

[00:25:17] And you can't bring your rifle in there to hunt deer or whatever.

[00:25:20] It's just this big green park in Stockholm.

[00:25:24] And we were there playing.

[00:25:28] I don't know what you call it.

[00:25:30] It's in Swedish, it's called Brännboll.

[00:25:35] It's almost like baseball, but it's not baseball.

[00:25:40] There are almost no rules.

[00:25:42] You just swing your bat.

[00:25:45] And with bat, I mean like a literal bat, like not a baseball bat, but it's the animal, a bat.

[00:25:54] So the bat comes down from the sky and you swing it round and round and round until you fall in love with a bat.

[00:26:02] And then you kiss the bat like very passionately.

[00:26:05] And then you fall into a dream, a bat dream.

[00:26:12] No, but we were there.

[00:26:14] We were drinking heavily, I remember, wine and beer.

[00:26:19] And we were celebrating my 24th birthday.

[00:26:22] And I thought that I was the king of the world because I had a job at the Swedish kids show on Swedish state television.

[00:26:34] And I thought that I was this big shot, you know.

[00:26:40] So I tend to trash talk young Henrik and I'm not really fond of that, that I do that.

[00:26:51] Because he was fine.

[00:26:55] He was a bit lost, I think.

[00:26:57] And he had just discovered alcohol and he was very fond of it.

[00:27:02] He just loved how alcohol just changed his perspective on things.

[00:27:09] He could enjoy his own success, for instance.

[00:27:12] The thing that young sober Henrik couldn't, he just thought that he wasn't worth it really.

[00:27:19] Because as I said before, he was, according to himself, at some level not worthy of this.

[00:27:27] Because he was lying about something that he couldn't identify.

[00:27:32] But when drunk, young Henrik was ecstatic, you know.

[00:27:41] I remember crying of happiness when drunk.

[00:27:48] Yeah, it's true.

[00:27:49] I remember really feeling like I was at home in me and in the world.

[00:27:57] That I stood there among friends, remembering the hard years, previous years in high school with bullying.

[00:28:08] And I remember just crying out of happiness.

[00:28:17] Watching my friends doing something stupid over by the waterline.

[00:28:22] And just crying, like, vividly.

[00:28:35] Yeah.

[00:28:37] So he was lost.

[00:28:39] But he was fine.

[00:28:40] As you can see now, when I tell you about him.

[00:28:44] He was also, like, he looked like he was, like, 13 years old when he was 19, 20.

[00:28:51] He was, he was very, he looked like a kid for very long.

[00:28:58] And I still get, people ask me how old I am.

[00:29:06] I don't, I don't get to show ID whenever I go out on clubs nowadays.

[00:29:15] People just assume I am older than the limitation.

[00:29:21] But people still ask me, are you really 49 years old?

[00:29:30] And then always I get happy.

[00:29:34] But then I feel like I have let them down in a way.

[00:29:40] I haven't told them the whole truth.

[00:29:42] I haven't told them that, I don't know, that I'm not really looking young.

[00:29:48] I am really, I really look old.

[00:29:52] Except I've been misleading them for some reason.

[00:29:57] And in what way, I don't know.

[00:30:00] I just have this feeling that I'm never really honest.

[00:30:05] And as long as I tell you everything, then I can keep that feeling of me keeping the truth from you at bay.

[00:30:24] But you can't really tell someone everything, can you?

[00:30:27] Because everything is everything.

[00:30:30] So if I were to tell you everything right now, I would need to go into very specific details about how I'm sitting in the chair that I'm sitting in.

[00:30:38] And how my hands are placed and what my clothes look like and what color is the lighting.

[00:30:50] Actually, there's no lighting in here now.

[00:30:53] I've just turned off the lights.

[00:30:55] The only light I can see is the light falling in through the window with the blinds and the little light on the television.

[00:31:09] It's a bright white light from a small lamp at the television.

[00:31:17] And right now I can hear that Nina is getting in the car and driving away.

[00:31:28] I don't know where she's going or where she's going to go.

[00:31:33] I guess she's got a reason, but I just don't want to know.

[00:31:37] Because for 24 years, I've been living next door to Alice.

[00:31:44] Whenever I hear that song, I think of, I was at this after ski party many years ago at this ski resort in northern Sweden.

[00:31:57] And do you know that if you do a cover on that, if you do a cover on, now it's there, I get a phone call as well.

[00:32:10] So, well, I guess I'm going to have to return that call.

[00:32:17] Yeah.

[00:32:18] You know, when you have cover bands, they play and they play this Alice song.

[00:32:25] And then they make a break for the audience to say, who the fuck is Alice?

[00:32:31] Do you know?

[00:32:32] So for 24 years, I've been living next door to Alice.

[00:32:37] Instrument stops, singing stops.

[00:32:39] Who the fuck is Alice?

[00:32:40] Alice.

[00:32:42] And that's a funny thing, you know, because who the fuck is Alice?

[00:32:46] You don't know in the song.

[00:32:48] But these are things that, like typical, like jokingly cover bands use.

[00:32:59] And it's when more serious artists perform, then they just do the regular song, you know, they don't pause for the audience to ask who the fuck is Alice.

[00:33:13] And in this case, there was this band and it was a very serious band and they played this Alice song.

[00:33:20] And the audience were like skiers drunk after a day up the hill, you know.

[00:33:27] And whenever they sung the word Alice, everyone tried to get in the audience, tried to get this who the fuck is Alice chant going.

[00:33:37] But it didn't work because the band didn't let them in.

[00:33:40] So it was a very, very awkward moment when the band got more and more annoyed because, you know, drunk people, they don't tend to be like this very instrumentally talented people with incompromisable sense of pace and volume.

[00:34:07] So it resulted in just a huge way of just people saying Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice, Alice, you know.

[00:34:24] So do you know what my phone call was?

[00:34:32] My phone call was that I have just got a car and it's being delivered to me this week.

[00:34:41] I just got a note of it.

[00:34:44] Oh God, that's very funny.

[00:34:52] So the day after tomorrow.

[00:34:57] Oh, so I have leased a car on my firm and I'm going to start using it like instantly.

[00:35:13] Okay, so that was a small detail out of my day.

[00:35:17] I'm sorry for bothering you with it, sleepy.

[00:35:21] How are you, by the way?

[00:35:22] Are you sleeping still?

[00:35:25] Or yet, maybe I should say.

[00:35:29] I want to thank all of you who keeps writing to me emails and DMs.

[00:35:38] It's still something I need to pinch myself in order to understand that it's real.

[00:35:44] The fact that you people from all over the world, Ireland, England, the US, India, Germany, Poland,

[00:35:57] Hungary, I mean it's a great, it's a wonderful thing to get messages from you.

[00:36:09] And people telling me that my podcast works and it really puts them to sleep or keeps them company or whatever you need.

[00:36:20] That makes me really happy.

[00:36:22] Thank you.

[00:36:23] And now I've totally run out of inspiration.

[00:36:30] Maybe that's what happens when you trash talk your parents for the first half hour of the episode.

[00:36:37] No, I don't want you to think that I'm trash talking because I'm not really.

[00:36:43] But I think I've reached an age where I can, you know, I need to speak about what it was like to grow up.

[00:36:52] And I don't want to wait, you know, until my parents are gone and, you know, because I say this.

[00:36:58] The things I say about them is with utmost respect, yeah, as I've said before.

[00:37:06] Because it's not easy to be a parent.

[00:37:10] Maybe being a parent is the hardest thing there is, at least for a human,

[00:37:16] with so much cookies on the cookie table.

[00:37:21] Cookies of ideology and rules and dogma.

[00:37:24] And maybe it's just, yeah, the thing that really, the great question in my mind about being a parent is,

[00:37:52] where does your responsibility end?

[00:37:56] Where is the line?

[00:38:00] How do you recognize the line over which you cannot step to rule or decide or protect or, you know,

[00:38:13] where does your reign end?

[00:38:17] And it's not just about the kid's age, because of course it's a different reign for different ages.

[00:38:26] Maybe your kingdom shrinks, you know, as the kid grows older.

[00:38:32] And when the kid is 18 and above, you know, your kingdom is like this little province far beyond them.

[00:38:43] And that really makes me sad, you know, that I'm going to be this little province in her great, great life.

[00:38:57] Oh God, that hit me really hard right now.

[00:39:06] The thing is, with being a parent, I don't think we will ever really learn what it's like,

[00:39:15] or what it's supposed to be like in all its shapes and forms, because it's, you can't really be a functioning parent.

[00:39:28] You can tell yourself you're that.

[00:39:34] You can tell other people how to be a perfect parent.

[00:39:38] But since we're being honest here, I mean, there are no good parents in that objective sense.

[00:39:49] There are just parents.

[00:39:50] I am just a parent.

[00:39:56] And I don't, I haven't got a clue about how to do things right.

[00:40:07] I can only measure my own childhood, or at least my own memory of my childhood,

[00:40:16] and then trying to apply that on my daughter's childhood.

[00:40:21] The thing that I don't really understand is, when are you supposed to be this firm statue of a being?

[00:40:35] The one that just points in the right direction without intervening?

[00:40:41] And when are you supposed to be this liquid, warm, ever-present parent running through every pore of your child?

[00:40:57] Like the surrounding force that controls and steers and tells and comforts and whispers.

[00:41:06] And I know that the truth probably is somewhere in between.

[00:41:14] But I would really love to have some sort of schematic, you know, some sort of rule book or a template or something that I could just apply.

[00:41:33] And the thing that I really find hard, the hardest maybe, is that she doesn't always tell me how she feels about stuff.

[00:41:44] And then I, since her feelings and her well-being are my number one concern in almost everyday life, whatever happens, you know.

[00:41:59] Then I, since she doesn't tell me, nor should she, I mean, it's wonderful when she does, but she doesn't owe me an explanation.

[00:42:09] I wouldn't, and that's the thing that I don't understand from my own upbringing.

[00:42:13] Why would you demand your child to tell you like everything?

[00:42:21] You have put your child into the world.

[00:42:23] They don't owe you anything.

[00:42:27] I mean that.

[00:42:28] You have put them into the world.

[00:42:31] I mean, these old narratives when I have fed you and kept you safe throughout your childhood years, you owe me.

[00:42:40] That's not, I mean, you were the one who put that child into the world.

[00:42:44] The child didn't ask for you to keep it or to bring it up or the child is an innocent.

[00:42:56] And that innocent child doesn't owe you anything.

[00:43:00] It's nice when they treat you good, you know.

[00:43:04] And of course there's a function of you telling your child that they are supposed to be nice people, including a nice to you.

[00:43:17] But I would never demand my daughter to give or show me anything because she didn't choose life.

[00:43:26] I choose it for her.

[00:43:29] And that can be considered a gift, but that is not the point.

[00:43:35] So I gave her this gift.

[00:43:37] She didn't ask for it because she couldn't, because she didn't exist.

[00:43:41] And now she's here and she has to deal with all this life, you know.

[00:43:46] And I'm not saying that she shouldn't, you know.

[00:43:51] And I'm not saying that she's a mess or that she's unhappy or anything.

[00:43:57] It's just she doesn't owe me anything because I put her into this world.

[00:44:05] And if I say that you owe me because I put you into this world, then I say that this world is, you know, the meaning of it all.

[00:44:13] And I don't really buy that.

[00:44:15] I don't really buy into that sense of that something is a meaning and some other things are not.

[00:44:23] But the thing that really bothers me is that I tend to feel her emotion.

[00:44:44] Because I have to fantasize about what they are because she's her own person.

[00:44:49] And sometimes she doesn't have the words to describe what she's going through at any given moment.

[00:44:56] And other times she doesn't want to tell me because it's private, you know.

[00:45:00] And I ask and when I don't get an answer but I can see that she's going through something, then I start to experience her feelings for her.

[00:45:12] And that's, I think that's the hardest part of being a parent.

[00:45:17] Because I have my own memories and my own trauma from childhood and they have nothing to do with her.

[00:45:26] But still, in my mind, I connect her dots to mine and that doesn't make it easier for me.

[00:45:36] But I don't tell her that, of course.

[00:45:39] I try not to share that with her.

[00:45:41] And that's another painful thing about being a parent.

[00:45:44] All the things that you cannot share.

[00:45:47] Because she's, I mean, as any parent know that she's like,

[00:45:54] I have never loved someone in that way, you know.

[00:45:59] The love you have for your child is, there is nothing like it.

[00:46:06] And I mean that in a real sense because any other kind of love is, yeah, it can be deep and amazing and lift you to new skies.

[00:46:21] But nothing goes so deep as the love that you carry for your own child.

[00:46:26] At least that's the case for me.

[00:46:28] And I'm not saying that just to paint a picture of me as this wonderful person.

[00:46:35] And I'm saying it because it's a wonderful thing to have that.

[00:46:42] But at the same time, it's hard to, it's also unbearably hard not being able to tell.

[00:46:53] Because when she was a little baby, you know, you knew everything.

[00:46:58] I knew everything that was going on with her.

[00:47:01] And if I didn't, I could just find out, you know.

[00:47:05] There were no barriers.

[00:47:09] The only limitation was the language barrier when she didn't know how to speak so well.

[00:47:20] But I miss, I miss being the whole world.

[00:47:25] I do.

[00:47:27] This sounds so cliche.

[00:47:29] But I miss being like the alpha and the omega.

[00:47:33] I wish I wouldn't be just this little dry, uninteresting province back in ancient days.

[00:47:50] Still, I don't want to be the world, you know.

[00:47:53] A nightmare for her to have her own world as me.

[00:47:59] A teenager, you know.

[00:48:00] Growing up in this world, you know, with all the possibilities and all the drama and stuff going on in the world.

[00:48:10] I mean, who would want to live in my little universe?

[00:48:15] It's so tiny.

[00:48:17] I guess I'm just scared that when I really, truly become this little ancient province with dusty roads and old milk bins out by the road

[00:48:35] and cows gently chewing their grass as the crickets go on about their daily noises.

[00:48:46] And I have worn out jeans and a flannel, squared flannel shirts and a cap.

[00:48:56] And I just push the cap back, glaring against the sun, talking about coffee time.

[00:49:08] And she's just home for the day.

[00:49:12] And she finds everything so small.

[00:49:15] All the stuff that were overwhelmingly huge for her when she was a baby.

[00:49:22] Now it's just toys on a forgotten playground.

[00:49:30] And she feels pity.

[00:49:33] She pities you because you don't know more than you do.

[00:49:37] You're just stuck in this little land, this little province.

[00:49:42] While she's out and about, it's almost like she's on another planet.

[00:49:47] It's almost like she's stepping onto a rocket, going to the stars.

[00:49:53] And you're so proud of her.

[00:49:55] And you're so impressed by her and her journey.

[00:49:59] But still, you miss her, you know?

[00:50:02] You miss her like you would miss your arm if it fell off and went to the stars.

[00:50:11] And I guess I worry.

[00:50:17] Because sometimes when I visit my parents, I have that feeling.

[00:50:22] That old province.

[00:50:25] Small and dusty roads.

[00:50:28] And old values and rules and dogmas and fragments of something that used to be me, but it's not anymore.

[00:50:41] And sometimes it's painful.

[00:50:44] It's painful to just be near those fragments because they bring thoughts.

[00:50:51] Where did everything go, really?

[00:50:54] What did I do with it all?

[00:50:56] Did I just lost it along the way?

[00:51:00] Or am I still here?

[00:51:04] All the me's that went through all these years in that old province.

[00:51:10] So I feel sad that I'm about to be a province.

[00:51:13] And I feel scared that maybe she will see me as this province.

[00:51:20] And she doesn't want to be here so much.

[00:51:26] And maybe the province can't just come with her either.

[00:51:30] And that's the line between, you know, being the statue parent and the warm, liquid, ever-present parent.

[00:51:40] You know, when do I step off?

[00:51:43] When do I wave goodbye?

[00:51:46] And that's, I mean, it hurts so much, Sleepy.

[00:51:50] Sometimes when I think about it, it feels like I want to cry, but I can't muster the tears.

[00:51:59] They can't.

[00:52:00] I don't, I, sometimes I really want to cry, but I can't.

[00:52:05] Because I want it too much, you know.

[00:52:07] It would be such a relief to cry about stuff.

[00:52:10] But then my brain says, no, you can't cry about this.

[00:52:13] You need to solve this.

[00:52:20] And I had this side of me where I, you know, I want to be totally free.

[00:52:27] I want to be like it used to be before I ended up with the family.

[00:52:34] I want to be like this unasked, untouched freedom ghost, you know.

[00:52:44] I want to sit in the cinema when the subtitles roll by and everyone rises and hits the exit.

[00:52:55] And, but not me, because I know that whenever I get out of here, life comes back.

[00:53:03] And I just want to be here because it's been so long since I just got to take care of just me,

[00:53:10] not thinking about someone else's feelings or situation.

[00:53:14] And I can just sit there and just rest.

[00:53:20] Because the minute I walk out the door, then the world and people that are dependent,

[00:53:27] depending on me will manifest.

[00:53:30] And so I miss that as well.

[00:53:37] But the missing out thing is smaller than the fact that I mourn her tiny ears.

[00:53:54] I mourn her tiny feet, her tiny hands, her tiny voice,

[00:54:00] her tiny hair and her tiny look at me.

[00:54:05] That told me that I was the beginning and the end.

[00:54:12] That I had everything.

[00:54:16] And I want to carry her through life, you know.

[00:54:19] But I know that I can't.

[00:54:21] And I'm worried about her.

[00:54:30] She's a teenager, you know.

[00:54:31] All the stuff that happens in the teens.

[00:54:37] These very formative and vulnerable years ahead of her.

[00:54:41] And I have only a limited way of influencing her and protecting her.

[00:54:47] I shouldn't have absolute power in that sense.

[00:54:55] I mean, it hurts me to say.

[00:54:59] And of course, I want to do everything I can.

[00:55:03] But I really, my powers are limited.

[00:55:09] I am limited.

[00:55:13] I am limited.

[00:55:14] And then the question pops up in my head.

[00:55:18] Who am I really?

[00:55:20] When I'm not her protector and caregiver.

[00:55:25] The one who feeds her.

[00:55:28] Takes her to dance class.

[00:55:33] Protects her from monsters under the bed.

[00:55:38] Reads nighttime stories to her.

[00:55:41] Who am I?

[00:55:45] She has started to say that.

[00:55:49] That I'm old.

[00:55:51] She's talking about that like.

[00:55:55] Almost every day.

[00:55:57] Sometimes she says it jokingly.

[00:55:59] And sometimes she just says it.

[00:56:01] Like, but you're old.

[00:56:02] So you don't know.

[00:56:04] And.

[00:56:07] Of course.

[00:56:08] I don't want to be.

[00:56:10] I have no problem being old per se.

[00:56:14] It's just that I know that stuff are.

[00:56:18] They have a time limit.

[00:56:20] And that's painful.

[00:56:23] That everything changes.

[00:56:25] Not just the bad things.

[00:56:27] The good things too.

[00:56:28] And everything.

[00:56:29] Will morph into something different.

[00:56:38] So the fact that she.

[00:56:41] Reminds me that I'm old.

[00:56:43] It's almost like she's using it as a mantra to herself.

[00:56:46] Like she's reminding herself that.

[00:56:48] I'm old.

[00:56:49] And that hurts so much.

[00:56:51] Because I feel like I.

[00:56:56] It feels like she's preparing.

[00:56:59] For me not being here.

[00:57:02] And although.

[00:57:04] That day.

[00:57:05] Hopefully is far far away.

[00:57:10] That.

[00:57:11] That's almost impossible to bear.

[00:57:16] Because I love her.

[00:57:18] You know.

[00:57:19] From the bottom of my heart.

[00:57:27] Okay so I don't know what this episode.

[00:57:29] Turned out to be.

[00:57:31] Trash talking my parents.

[00:57:33] Whining about.

[00:57:35] Having a teenage daughter.

[00:57:37] And.

[00:57:38] Now and again.

[00:57:40] Mentioning him.

[00:57:42] My age.

[00:57:44] By the way.

[00:57:45] It's 49.

[00:57:46] If you haven't catched it.

[00:57:48] Being 49.

[00:57:50] Is.

[00:57:51] This weird thing.

[00:57:52] Because you.

[00:57:52] Think of yourself as 50.

[00:57:54] But.

[00:57:55] Everyone you talk to.

[00:57:57] Is.

[00:57:58] Putting the emphasis on.

[00:57:59] You're not 50.

[00:58:01] Yet.

[00:58:01] Like being 50.

[00:58:03] Is some sort of a curse.

[00:58:05] And I for one.

[00:58:06] Actually.

[00:58:07] I'm looking forward to turning 50.

[00:58:09] Because.

[00:58:10] I think.

[00:58:12] It's.

[00:58:12] It looks like.

[00:58:13] A good age.

[00:58:15] You know.

[00:58:15] The kids are.

[00:58:16] Grown up.

[00:58:17] For most.

[00:58:19] And.

[00:58:22] You get to find.

[00:58:23] New habits.

[00:58:24] And.

[00:58:26] New interests.

[00:58:27] And.

[00:58:30] New ways in life.

[00:58:34] And I want that for me.

[00:58:36] And.

[00:58:37] I don't feel.

[00:58:38] I don't feel old.

[00:58:39] I feel young.

[00:58:41] Actually.

[00:58:42] I feel like.

[00:58:43] I'm.

[00:58:45] This.

[00:58:45] Totally safe.

[00:58:46] And.

[00:58:47] Very experienced.

[00:58:48] And humble.

[00:58:49] Nineteen year old.

[00:58:51] Someone.

[00:58:51] I weren't.

[00:58:53] When I was actually.

[00:58:54] Nineteen.

[00:58:55] I wasn't.

[00:58:55] Humble.

[00:58:56] I wasn't.

[00:58:57] I wasn't.

[00:58:59] Sure of myself.

[00:59:00] I was a mess.

[00:59:02] I have just.

[00:59:03] Got into acting school.

[00:59:05] And.

[00:59:06] I was the youngest.

[00:59:07] In my class.

[00:59:08] And that.

[00:59:09] Turned out to be difficult.

[00:59:10] To me.

[00:59:11] Because I haven't.

[00:59:12] I haven't.

[00:59:13] Lived.

[00:59:14] Outside of my parents house.

[00:59:16] So I couldn't do anything.

[00:59:18] I couldn't cook.

[00:59:19] I couldn't.

[00:59:19] Make the bed.

[00:59:20] I couldn't do anything.

[00:59:25] I haven't.

[00:59:26] I hadn't kissed.

[00:59:27] A girl.

[00:59:29] Or a guy.

[00:59:30] Or anyone.

[00:59:32] That was a premiere.

[00:59:34] On actor school for me.

[00:59:36] And.

[00:59:38] Well actually.

[00:59:39] I had kissed.

[00:59:40] A girl.

[00:59:41] Before.

[00:59:43] In the.

[00:59:44] When I was 17.

[00:59:46] But.

[00:59:46] That was such a disappointment.

[00:59:49] So my first.

[00:59:51] Quote unquote.

[00:59:52] Good kiss.

[00:59:53] Was in actor school.

[00:59:54] Her name was Anna.

[00:59:56] And it was at that party.

[00:59:59] And.

[01:00:01] That was.

[01:00:02] My first.

[01:00:03] My first good one.

[01:00:09] Yeah.

[01:00:13] Okay.

[01:00:14] So.

[01:00:15] Sleepy.

[01:00:16] It's time for me to say goodnight.

[01:00:18] And.

[01:00:20] I'll talk to you again next week.

[01:00:23] And until then.

[01:00:25] Stay safe.

[01:00:27] And sleep tight.

[01:00:28] And sleep tight.

[01:00:28] And sleep tight.