My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.

But Louisa knows the truth: Fish was murdered by reality. She was suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet, she died of being sad all the time.

Grown men don’t have enough things they’re afraid of on this planet to become good at running.

If you’ve had people who can make you laugh like that, you never forget it.

Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.

The artist had no words either, because he didn’t know how to explain to Joar that his anxiety made him feel like he was drowning.

We’re a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety. The only thing we can take for granted is that everyone we have ever met and everyone we have ever known and everyone we have ever loved will die.

And when we aren’t thinking? Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we’re wasting our lives. It’s an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and to try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans, these were our farts. These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they couldn’t contain all our love.

All you wish for is peace, calm, a long night’s sleep. You dream of nothing but being able to forgive time for making us old. For not letting us stay on a pier with our best friends. For letting summers end.

Until then he hadn’t known that grief is physical, an abuse of the living.

Angry at himself, angry at the artist, and most of all angry at death for having such good taste. Always taking the best first.

“All children are born with wings,” she had whispered. “It’s just that the world is full of people who try to tear them off. Unfortunately they succeed with almost everyone, sooner or later. Only a few children escape. But those children? They rise up to the skies!”

“You feel strange because you still have your wings, rubbing beneath your skin. You think you’re alone, but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’ And then you won’t feel lost anymore. You’ll realize that you’ve always been able to speak a secret language, one that has no boundaries, because you have no nationality. Art is your homeland.”

Nature gains nothing from unhappy children, yet they are still walking around everywhere, without the words to describe their anxiety. Because how could you even begin to explain such a feeling to someone who has been happy and secure all their life? Should you say it’s like a monster sleeping heavily on your lungs, so that every breath feels like you’re drowning? That it’s a voice in your head screaming that everything about you is a mistake?

Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.”

“There’s nothing more dangerous than being noticed by men,”

The most dangerous creature on the planet is, and has always been, a young man. And the worst thing about a young man? That until very recently he was just a boy. No one gets any warning when he stops being one.

Ted’s brain is very helpful when it comes to providing suggestions. Once he read a book that said that people with neuropsychiatric disorders need to “make friends with their brain,” but Ted and Ted’s brain are not friends, they’re classmates, forced to do a group assignment called “life” together. And it’s not going great.

“Maybe it’s hurt inside?” Ted said sadly. “It’s probably just frightened!” Joar said. “That’s the same thing,” Ted pointed out softly.

“In a library. You don’t have to put up with reality there. It’s as if thousands of strangers have given away their imaginary friends, they’re sitting on the shelves and calling to you as you walk past. There’s an author called Donna Tartt who describes why a person falls in love with art: ‘It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you.’ That’s what libraries feel like for me.”

The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.

“The biggest threat to men’s health, statistically, is heart disease,” Ted says thoughtfully at the kitchen table. “Do you know what the biggest threat to women’s health is?” “Men,” Louisa says, because all women know that.

Men always have excuses, but deep down they knew the truth now. They had minded their own business, never asking questions they didn’t want the answers to, making do with only one side of a man. As if that was all a man has. That guilt was theirs to carry forever.

“No, thank goodness, you haven’t had any training! No one who’s had any training paints like that! Art doesn’t require training, dear child, art just needs friends.”

“Is it horrible being an adult?” the girl asked. “Unbearable,” the mother replied. “You fail with almost everything, all the time.”

“It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’ ”

Then Christian’s mother explains about the large room in her house that she turned into a library after Christian died. Ted came there every day. There was a comfortable chair, a safe place, and shelves filled with imaginary friends. That was why he became a teacher. Because he wanted to give that security to other children, teach them how to have adventures without moving.

She sees the world, then the world sees her. Her art becomes famous. She becomes someone else’s postcard.

“I know what you ought to do, Ted, with the rest of your life! You ought to write a book!” Ted is sitting on the edge of his bed. The sun is on its way up outside the window. He presses his feet gently against the floor, making one of the floorboards creak. Then he laughs quietly. “What would someone like me write a book about?”