Ikväll, Idag

© 2016 dear-llama. All rights reserved.

"You know," she says, "this morning, I woke up to see that my phone screen had gone all fuzzy – look," she shows you, "I can't even read half of what's going on anymore. Then I had to get ready, and I was rushing to get dressed before I remembered I had to bring an extra shirt for this career fair thing, so I rushed to iron it, and then I realised the shirt I was wearing wasn't ironed either, so I had to iron that too…"

You think of your own morning – the shrill beep of the alarm screaming by your ear as you open your eyes; the pale grey of the ceiling that probably used to be white; the instinctive grope before you realise you're touching air: there is nothing sitting on you. The heaviness on your chest is all your own.

"And as I was rushing around feeling really frazzled, I was thinking to myself: wow, I really feel like the female lead of some movie – you know, when everything is going wrong and she's all flustered and just like a complete mess."

You laugh. "But that means something good is going to happen soon," you say. The condensation of the disposable cup you're holding chills your fingertips, so you put it down for a moment. You glance down at your phone, lying on the table. The screen stays dark. "You know what happens in those movies. Everything is shit at the beginning of the movie, but by the end the protagonist gets everything she's ever wanted – her dream job, her dream guy, her dream life. So, don't worry – you're going to get it all soon."

She laughs too. "Yeah, right. Then why hasn't anything happened yet?"

"You have to have patience. It just started this morning – the movie hasn't progressed far enough yet." You pick up your cup again, rotating your wrist so that the ice cubes inside rattle against each other.

Your phone lights up. You pause to glance at it briefly – five new messages in a row. You look away.

"Oh, yeah." She's still laughing. Her own drink lies to the edge of the table, almost empty and pretty much forgotten. "Maybe all the good things are going to start happening now, huh?"

You're laughing too. "Yeah, definitely. Tomorrow, you're going to step out of your house, and you're going to meet someone new who is going to change everything and set you on the path to getting the life you want."

"Just like in a Hollywood movie."

"Yeah." You take another sip of your drink and turn to look at the grey sky outside. The rain has only gotten heavier. You turn back to your friend, "Hey, you know, if you're the protagonist of a Hollywood movie, I'd be–" She opens her mouth, but you beat her to it, "–the supporting role in your movie."

"I was going to say you are also the lead of your own movie."

You chuckle, "Some Swedish film where nothing happens, probably."

She laughs at that. "No!"

"Oh yeah." You gesture to the pouring rain outside, "Where I just sit around staring at the sky pensively and everything is eerily silent for a very long time." And where you always seem to be waiting for something that never happens.

"You know, there is something really cool about that sort of films," your friend says, before you both recoil from a particularly heavy splatter of rainfall. "Okay, you wanna go somewhere else? The rain is starting to get in."

"Sure." You gather your things – cup in one hand, phone in the other. There is another message now, from someone else – dinner tonight? You shove the phone into your pocket. It's only five. "When do you have to leave?"

Your friend is checking her own phone, fingers moving quickly as she replies to the messages she's received. "Oh, I don't have plans tonight – I can stay for a bit. Where do you want to go?"

"Kinda want nachos," you say, smiling sheepishly.

"Okay, no problem. Where?"

You point. "But we have to go the long way around, or we're going to get drenched."

"Drinking before dinner," you lament a while later, leaning an arm against the edge of the windowsill to your left as you reach for a chip with your free hand.

"Sorry," your friend apologises, taking a sip from her bottle of wheat beer. "Just felt like I needed some alcohol, especially after that career fair today."

"Yeah, I know." You pick up your own bottle and absently muse that you've both only just switched venues and traded in your previous – healthier – drinks for alcoholic ones. Even your phone is lying in almost the same position on the table. The screen lights up again – where are you? You swipe a finger across the screen to get rid of the notifications, and you see your friend's eyes flicker to the numbers in the red bubbles as your home screen comes up. 27, 43, 18, 4 – all unread, unopened, since the morning. "I feel the same way."

"It was so tiring, having to run all around talking to all these representatives of all these firms – by the end I was really zoning out."

"Yeah." You're twisting the neck of the bottle between your fingers. "Actually... This morning, I woke up and almost decided not to come, because I didn't feel in the mood to socialise at all."

"It's good that you came. I mean, at least it feels like we've tried to do something about this jobless situation today. At least we managed to give out some résumés…"

"Ugh." You make a face. "But all these jobs sound... so boring. I understand even less what I want to do now."

"I know." She drags the second word out, scrunching her features up into a grimace. "It was so draining to have to feign interest, when all I wanted to do was to get out of there and get out of these terrible clothes."

You laugh at that. "Yeah, my heels were killing me!"

"Today, I was looking at everyone else there, and it made me feel like a fraud."

"I know exactly what you mean." You smile a little, self-mockingly, "I felt like a kid playing at dress up in my clothes. It's like... what am I doing here? I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Exactly. I don't know how some people can be so sure of their career paths, of what steps to take to achieve their goals…"

"The idea of making that choice," you admit, "scares the shit out of me. The commitment scares the shit out of me."

"I know!" She shakes her head. "Are we abnormal or something? It's like everyone else is so grown up, but we're still…" She casts around for a suitable word.

"Floundering," you offer.

She snaps her fingers. "Yes. Floundering. We really are floundering."

"Sometimes I just want to buy a plane ticket and hope if I run far away enough, I won't have to deal with any of these things for a while longer."

She laughs. You both know what it feels like to want to escape. To actually go through with it.

"But I've discovered that doesn't work," she says. "Where you are doesn't matter, because wherever you go, even if it's to the end of the world – your problems go with you. I think it really is a matter of perspective. If you choose to look at things a certain way, everything changes…"

You scrunch up your nose. "Eh... I think it depends. I think the people around you, and the environment you're in – they all affect the way you think, too, so... I think it does matter, kind of, where you are and what kind of people you're surrounded by."

"Well, that's true…" She taps a fingernail against the rim of her bottle. "That's quite true."

"I think I have this bad habit," you say, and you glance at your phone out of habit. "I tend to message people who are not in the same country more than the people who actually are. So it's always like I am mentally existing in this space that is never fully where I physically am."

"Oh…" She furrows her eyebrows, "But I think that's good, you know, that you're still in such close contact even when you're so far away. To be honest, it gets very tedious with the time difference – speaking of time differences, give me a moment, sorry, I have to–" She is texting someone again, looking up in between words to shoot you an apologetic frown, "I have to send this – it's a good time now, it's ten in the morning in London. Sorry – I just need to ask someone something."

You laugh, waving a lazy hand, "Oh, it's okay. I totally understand. It's hard to catch someone at a good time with this time difference."

You glance at your phone again. The screen is dark, but ten in London means it is six in the evening here. And twelve somewhere. And eleven elsewhere. You don't know when it has become more of a habit to subtract six before seven.

"Sorry." She puts down her phone and returns to her drink. You take a swig from yours too – the bottle is almost empty. "But – yeah. It's good to have such strong connections, that last even you don't get to physically see each other for a long time."

"But the problem is... The grass is always greener on the other side." You take a longer time than usual when dipping the chip in the cheese. "I get such a strong sense of the fear of missing out when I talk so much to people who live half a world away – you know? I always feel like I should be there, because life is more interesting in the place I am not."

"Yes, I know that feeling. Definitely, the fear of missing out. I feel that way when I text my friends back in London, too."

"Like, for example... One of my friends has just moved to another city and has an exciting new job... And another one is spending a week in the Alps, so she hasn't had much time to text this week – but she's actually sent me a couple short messages apologising about that and saying she'll send me a long update once she gets back home…"

"That's really sweet."

"Yeah, it is. And actually it hasn't been that long, it just feels long because we usually text every day." You reach for another chip. "We're running out of cheese. Maybe we should ask for more."

"Do you think they'd charge for it?"

"I don't know. We can try."

"Maybe after we finish it all first."

"Yeah." You laugh. "It would be a little weird otherwise." You take another bite, and then say, casually, "And you know – someone recently sent me this photo from Finland–"

"The Finnish guy?"

You feel your lips start to quirk, so you deliberately frown. "Yeah... He sent me this photo the other day…" You pick up your phone. You have more new notifications – aren't you hungry? are you still around today? – but you ignore them and start to scroll through the camera roll instead. "Uh... Wait, where is it...? Did I lose it? Shit, I think I lost it… Oh, wait. It's here. This." You hold up your phone to show your friend, and she bursts out laughing.

You grin at her reaction. "Yeah. It's quite funny. He walked out of his apartment the other day and saw this, and he was like – because he's also writing his Master's thesis and we were kind of commiserating – he was like: looks like someone has bigger problems than us."

She's still laughing. "That's nice of him to stop to take a photo of it, though. It must be a common sight for him, living there."

"Yeah. The other day, I was reading an article about Norway, and the photo that accompanied that article was showing something similar... It probably happens a lot in those countries." You look in through the mouth of your bottle. There is just a bit left. "But... I just feel like... Yeah, I like it when people send me photos. But sometimes I also feel so... disconnected when I look at those photos. Like – I really feel it. That we're really living in completely different parts of the world now, because when I look around here…"

"It's so different here."

"Yeah."

"And things are always moving, changing. Sometimes it feels like everything will have changed again, the next time you go back."

I grimace at the empty bottle. "Yeah."

"Yeah. I know. It sucks."

You are quiet for a brief moment. Then you say, "You know – that guy from our office... The Swedish guy…" You grimace, because you still can't quite say his name.

She nods. "Yeah?"

"He's said the same thing. He's told me about some of the things he can't get used to because they're so different here... It's jarring, I guess."

"I think we all have this problem. It takes a while to get used to a place, sometimes. And just as you get used to it, you leave for a while and then all the progress is lost."

I have to chuckle at that. "That is so true."

"It's kind of a vicious cycle."

"It feels so unreal sometimes. Like you have two lives. One over here, one over there... And they're both so separate."

"Yeah, exactly. When you're here, these things are going on over there... and vice versa. You can never be a part of everything."

"And sometimes... I mean, I know they're busy. But sometimes some of my friends take ages to reply – weeks, or a month – and I feel... even further away. Like maybe we'll lose contact and become like strangers by the time I am back again. And I don't want that to happen."

"Honestly, though," she shakes her head, "I think sometimes even if you don't talk to someone often or even if you meet once every few years – when you see each other again, the friendship is still going to be there."

"I don't know." You have begun scraping at the edges of the label on the bottle. "Sometimes it works like this, but most of the time... I think it doesn't. Not for me, anyway. If I don't see someone, or talk to them in anyway, they start to become unreal to me." Like characters in a story. "I don't feel close to them anymore."

"Oh." She nods. "I guess that's a problem."

"I mean, it's not like I sit around waiting for them to reply," you defend yourself. "I have my own life too."

"Yeah," she agrees. "Of course – I know."

"But sometimes I remember, and I'm like... okay, it's been two weeks, and they haven't replied. And it kinda sucks. They do reply in the end, but by that time I've usually forgotten what we were talking about. And sometimes I feel like... it's so choppy like this, you know? The conversation. It's not interesting."

"At least it's ongoing," she says. "It may take a while for the conversation to progress, but at least it's not completely dead, you know?"

"Yeah. Although sometimes when they take really long to reply, I feel it's probably just that I am too free." You laugh lightly. "Then again – everything feels like a long time to me these days. Even one or two days feels like forever to me. We just saw each other on Wednesday, but I feel like I haven't seen you in years. Time is suddenly passing very slowly."

"Okay, it's not that drastic for me. But I think I understand – time passes slowly for me too. I think that's what happens when you're stuck in a routine, doing the same thing every day... The days feel like they are never over."

"Yeah…" You look at the table. At your phone, again. More new messages. You stare until the screen goes dark once more. "I want to have a life where times flies because I am enjoying myself. Where I get so caught up in my life that I don't have time to even sit and reflect on where the time has gone."

"Don't we all." She sighs. "But I don't really have much hope or expectations for anything anymore. At this point, it feels like... This is it. This is all life is going to be." The words she's saying seems to have been dredged up from your very own soul, but you laugh.

"Don't worry," you say, "your movie is just starting. You'll meet someone soon and your entire life will start turning around."

She laughs, too. It has become a running joke between the two of you.

"If it really happened," she shakes her head in imagined disbelief, "I'd be so bewildered! I'd be like: wait, does life imitate art, or something?"

You laugh. "But, you know what? I think sometimes it's true that life feels like a story."

"Really? You feel that?"

"I mean, not for myself. But I always hear stories about other people – you know, how they quite serendipitously run into their first love after years and having things work out this time…"

"Oh, okay," she says, "I actually have a story like that too. A friend of mine... When he was thirteen, he had something going on with this girl, but he ended up dating her friend–"

"Wait," you interrupt, already laughing. "That sounds so ridiculous. How did that happen?"

"I have no idea. But anyway – he started dating her friend. Then, years later, they met at a friend's wedding in a completely different country, got back in touch, and are engaged now."

"Wow." You spread your hands. "See? You hear these kinds of stories all the time. And it makes you feel like... Life really sounds more unreal than fiction, sometimes. It's like a fairytale, the way some things happen."

"It really is." She is silent for a moment, reflecting on that. "But the truth is, if you told me now that something like that was going to happen to me, I wouldn't believe it either. It sounds so ridiculous – like a badly-written cliché. How is that possible?"

You just smile lightly. A badly-written cliché, she says. You have written such a cliché. And what does it say about you, then, that you, still, sometimes, wish...

You look down at your phone again. Then you cast your eyes away and raise your bottle – only to realise it is empty. It has been for a while now.

Your friend notices. She has also been peeling the label of her own empty bottle. "Shall we make a move?" she asks. "I need to get home soon."

"Yep, okay."

As the both of you leave, you scoop up your phone and swipe to open the second message.

Hey, you type, sorry, I went for a drink with someone and forgot to bring my phone. So when's dinner?

There are days, you think to yourself, when you are unbearably free and nothing happens. Everyone's busy and the replies come sparingly and slow. Having to search for a dinner buddy because nobody is free to meet. And then there are days when quite suddenly everything happens at once. You receive three different dinner invites for the night; eighty messages within an hour. And you spend the day juggling your time, running around to meet people. Reaching places late; worrying that someone gets angry because they know why you're late.

Later that night, you are in another cold dark room, your shoes strewn under the table, the carpet rough beneath the thin fabric of your socks. The music is loud, the bass in rhythm with your heart. The pillar is cold against your back.

Out of the corner of your eye, on the tabletop nearby, you see your phone screen light up again with four new messages. And you pause; strain your eyes a little to read the names on the screen. Then you look away and close your eyes.

And you wonder who you are really thinking about when you hear the whisper fill your ear, "I am yours now."

A/N: Title means 'tonight, today' in Swedish.

I guess this has no plot and doesn't quite make sense unless you know something about my life. It was actually meant to be sort of a dear-diary thing for Friday, except it ended up too long, so... My friend and I were talking and I said that thing about my life being like a Swedish film and then at 2 AM I was thinking over the events of Friday night and felt like... yeah, my life really feels like the type of film I had in mind when I said that. So I decided to write it out in a way that kind of reflects that. I don't know. Whatever. I just wanted to get it out, I guess.