I Miss My Troubled, Unwell Norwegian Friend

Stuart K. Hayashi

 

I still worry about my troubled, unwell Norwegian friend, the one I wrote about previously. I mean my troubled friend who was obsessed with child molesters: the one who kept bringing up, out of nowhere, her fascination with child molesters, only for it to turn out later that her paternal grandfather and two of his brothers were all credibly accused of sexually abusing girls over whom they were tasked with watching over.

I dearly wish for reconciliation, but that is not to happen absent of her returning to regular psychiatric care and ending contact with those who were, and likely still are, reinforcing her morbid gestures. I know that that is a prerequisite, and I know it because of what already happened years ago.

Soon before returning to Norway for the summer, she promised me unsolicitedly that when she returned to Norway, she would resume seeing a mental health professional. I did not initiate asking her about it. She took the initiative to make that promise, unprompted by anyone else. When she was back in Norway, I asked her about it, and she claimed not to remember. Then she said she doesn’t need a mental health professional anyway. Soon after, she became mostly uncommunicative. But in one of the few times in that duration when she did communicate again, she said she was having panic attacks daily. Then when she returned to O‘ahu, she was uploading onto social media the photoshops that an internet-famous Norwegian artist did of her where she was photoshopped to have a chalky-white face like a corpse’s.

After two years of that, and after returning to Norway for the long term, she stopped uploading the dead-body photos. But then Corpse Artist started uploading pretentiously photoshopped images of himself up in the mountains with his mountain bike. Then my friend followed with photos of herself — no longer with the dead-body face — always hiking on mountain tops. Corpse Artist doesn’t do the corpse art anymore, but his influence is still very much in the picture (sometimes literally). 

And my friend made a big show of legally changing her last name to match her father’s, a last name that was also the maiden name of her paternal grandmother who feigned ignorance about the child sexual abuse inflicted by her husband (my friend’s paternal grandfather). (Previously, my friend’s legal last name was her mother’s.) With my now knowing the history of what happened on her father’s side of the family, I think that though it is much more subtle than the chalky-white-face dead-body photos, the legal name change looks like another morbid gesture. It seems a very try-hard attempt to convey that her relationship with her father is fine; even great.

If I resume contact with my friend, and she’s not angry but instead welcomes reconciliation but doesn’t return to mental-health treatment and stay with it, I know what is going to happen. It will be a repeat of what happened before. She might return to treatment for a little while. But eventually she will stop with it and, when I ask about it, she will feign memory loss about it as she did before. And then all of our interactions will become a repeat of what happened that summer. At first it will again seem be a happy situation. But then my friend will resume making morbid gestures with the expectation that I play along and act as if they are safe and fine. And playing along and acting as if that is safe and fine is tacit reinforcement of the morbid gestures.

My friend first establishing regular psychiatric treatment is necessarily a prerequisite to any attempt at reconciliation.

If my friend sees this: legally remove the name of those who facilitated abuse: the last name of a father who facilitated abuse and the maiden name of a paternal grandmother who “looked the other way” to maintain plausible deniability about abuse that she knew had happened. Cut out of your life and social media those, such as Corpse Artist and his sister-in-law and brother, who reinforce your morbid tendencies. Rather than thanking them for their morbid images, they always should have been blocked, just as they should be now. Return to regular psychiatric care and have the borderline/ emosjonelt ustabil personlighetsforstyrrelse diagnosed properly. Make this known publicly. With the danger you have consistently imposed on self and others, even people outside of the inner circle have a right to know about your psychiatric condition and the risks of it. Such important steps would not be for me, but for your own happiness, well-being, and peace. But just as it was in our last phone conversation, you already know that.