Can you be friends, even when it’s over?
Suddenly, it’s over. No more kisses, no more mooshy hugs. All the memories are all that’s left. But Erika and Björn have managed to stay friends even after they broke up. They say friends can also love each other. But they aren’t intimate anymore, even though sometimes they get the urge.
Erika has masses of wild red hair. Her clothes are loose and the words tumble out of her mouth.
“That was all I could think of when I saw Erika the first time: so much colour! She was so colourful,” Björn remembers.
“We didn’t hear a click when we met, it was a bang,” continues Erika, clapping her hands to illustrate an explosion. “It was like blood and guts were squirting and smoke was pouring out of our ears.”
She fiddles with a transparent bracelet in the shape of a spiral. She pulls it out into a long wire. And she smiles.
“I can understand why you thought that way about colour. We were both in our most hysterical phases. You had your Mohawk and I was wearing a Rasta vest with a spotted bra underneath and probably had on five skirts.”
Four years have passed since that winter evening at the café in Stockholm. Back then, Erika was still thirteen and Björn was several years older. They were friends for two years before they got together for real. Then they were a couple for six months, or, as Erika says, a “concept.” As soon as she was single, her friends started asking what happened to Björn.
They like remembering the good times together. Midnight swims, mashed potato kisses, music festivals and embarrassing moments with the parental units. He looks often at Erika and it shows how much he likes her as the words rush out.
But it didn’t work. Last autumn, Björn and Erika started to argue.
Argued constantly
The bracelet gets tangled up in another bracelet on Erika’s wrist. A bracelet that Björn gave her. She stretches out her wrist to untangle them and her hand meets his. But the tangle takes a while to come loose and they both get a little embarrassed. They can be close, but not too close. Not now, now that they are friends.
“We felt incredibly possessive,” Björn says.
They saw each other every day after school. Both stopped hanging out with their friends.
“He was the best thing I had,” Erika adds. I felt, “He’s mine! – I would have liked to have him on a lead.”
“Or a chain,” says Björn.
Finally, they were arguing all the time, about nothing. They screamed and cried. Erika lost weight and Björn says he became totally apathetic. He illustrates how he felt by slumping over and staring blindly at the floor.
“We were totally worn out, had no energy left at all,” he relates.
“It was like ‘No, Mum, I haven’t started using drugs, it’s just all the stuff with Björn,’” Erika says.
Broke up
They broke up, even though they really loved each other. Neither one had the strength to go on. They still saw each other once in a while, but it was tense. Things were pretty bad in the beginning.
“We tried to prove to each other that we could manage on our own,” Björn remembers.
“But when Björn met a new girl, I felt like I wanted to strangle her,” says Erika. ”When I saw them I thought, ‘Damn, and she’s pretty, too!’”
After a while, they began finding their way back to each other anyway. They talk about it as a relief, almost a liberation, to no longer need to own one another. To not have to feel jealous.
“Like before when we were at a party together and Erika wanted to mingle. Then I had two choices – go with her or tell her ‘no, you’re staying here.’ Now I can just say ‘okay’ and stay where I am if I feel like it. That feels a lot better,” says Björn.
Friends again
Sometimes they have a hard time finding the boundaries they didn’t need before. Once on the underground, Erika took Björn’s arm, mainly out of habit. But she let go as soon as she remembered that things are different now. They know each other’s bodies, but they aren’t allowed to get too close.
“It’s a little strange, because before we got together we could kiss and hug as friends whenever we felt like it. But now I don’t dare.”
“You’re afraid it will be misunderstood,” says Björn. “You watch yourself a little.”
A hug when they first see each other and when they say goodbye is okay, but holding hands would be too much.
They think they are starting to be almost like ordinary friends – just closer. Erika says that Björn knows her so well, he notices instantly “when something is bugging her.”
“And I’ve never felt ‘Oh baby, you get me so hot’ about my other friends,” she says, and smiles down at the table. “It’s a different thing.”
Björn looks a bit charmed and agrees that he too still feels pangs of jealousy sometimes. But it is getting easier and easier to ignore the feeling.
“We were friends who loved each other, and we still are. Just minus the kisses now,” says Erika.