I always remember that today is the birthday of a Swedish guy I dated 24 years ago. I was absolutely bananas about this guy. We got together in early 2000 during his study abroad college year. I’d just broken up with my previous boyfriend, this really grumpy, passive aggressive dude who’d get upset with me over weird stuff while insisting he wasn’t, all while hunching his shoulders, crossing his arms, and shooting death glares at my face. The Swede was so chill by comparison. We lived together in a student co-op and hung out in the same group of beer-drinkers and stoners who’d gather in the common room most evenings. I had a big crush on him for weeks before I’d even thought about dumping Grumpy. But something about the rise of the new millennia got me in an “out with the old” mood. I broke up with Grumpy, dropped out of college (which I hated), and started dating the Swede all within the same month.

Knowing the Swede would be returning to his Nordic homeland in June, we made the most of our brief time together. I couldn’t help falling in love. He was so handsome and funny, just had this incredibly deadpan way of speaking. When he walked in the room, everything else went into soft focus. Like I finally understood that effect they use in TV and movies. I was smitten hard, and I didn’t hide how I felt. He was far more reserved. I remember him telling me one time, “The thing about Americans is that they’re always saying things are ‘awesome!’ or ‘great!’ They use a lot of exclamation marks. But things aren’t really great or awesome all the time. It feels exaggerated.” That was his personality, very cool and subdued. And here I was, a shameless walking exclamation mark, especially where he was concerned.

When he started getting sad about leaving me, I told him it was all gonna be fine because I was going to visit him that summer. My father worked for an airline, and so long as I pretended to still be in school, I could get dirt cheap tickets abroad. When the Swede departed in early June, going to visit him became my everything. Frankly, I didn’t have much else going on at the time. I’d been working at a campus deli for a few months, where I got paid cash under the table to “manage” the place (which basically meant being in charge of me and one other employee during the slow summer closing shifts). I remember preparing corned beef, reaching into buckets of bloodied brine to pull out raw meat and thinking, “Well this is gross, but I’m doing it for the Swede!” When we reunited in Stockholm that August, I was just so happy to see him that I didn’t give much thought to what would follow my eventual return to the states. The fact that we barely talked about it should have been a strong indicator of what was to come.

We spent some time in Stockholm where he had a dorm room. And we spent some time in Uppsala, at his family home. We rode out to the countryside and stayed in their cabin, then took a little motor boat trip island-hopping in the Baltic sea. I’d been to Europe a couple times previously but being there with natives felt like such a novel and eye-opening experience. I learned a lot about what I now consider “the good life” — dining on fresh, organic fruits and veggies, wonderful seafood, delicious cheeses. I ate melon with prosciutto for the first time. Stockholm felt like this magical, ancient city scattered across many islands. I also saw things like Ikea furniture and large, open beer halls that are so commonplace in America now but were still pretty exotic to me back then. I was already in awe of the Nordic social programs the Swede had boasted about when he was forced to deal with shoddy US systems — things like universal healthcare, paid parental leave, mandatory paid vacations, and free college tuition. But there was also this aesthetic experience I found so new and exciting. I was as enamored with Sweden as I was with the Swede.

When I got back to the states and reacclimated to my post-vacation life, I really didn’t have anything going on. While my friends got ready to go back to school, I looked for a different dead end job and wondered what I should do with myself. So naturally, I figured I should save up some money and move to Sweden. Unfortunately the Swede did not agree with this plan. That was a very rough and very expensive phone call. “I’m already forgetting how to speak English,” he pleaded. And that was beside the fact that such an arrangement would just put way too much pressure on him. I knew everything he said was rational and fair. But all I could hear was the voice in my head saying, “He doesn’t love you as much as you love him.” I did not take his refusal well.

I haven’t spoken to the Swede since then, though we did keep up via email over the next few years. I eventually apologized for freaking out on him during that awful breakup call. He was gracious, but I stayed embarrassed about it for years. And it wasn’t just my bawling on an international call that made me blush for my younger self. It was everything about our relationship — how insecure I must have been to want to move abroad for some guy I’d dated for a few months, like the world’s most desperate walking exclamation mark. Or the fact that it took me so long to get over him. For a couple years, I’d have this recurring nightmare that he moved back to the student co-op and I’d be so excited to see him again. And then he would just completely ignore me. Every time I woke up from that dream, it felt like my heart had been smashed all over again.

A couple weeks ago, I dreamt that I saw the Swede at a co-op reunion. I was just so tickled to see him and catch up, because I never thought we’d have the opportunity. We started talking about our spouses and our kids, but then he paused just to say, “Oh and by the way, I just have to let you know that I’m not interested in getting back together.”

In the dream, I rolled my eyes, laughed and said, “That’s okay. I’m not 23 anymore!” But I woke up mad. My first thought was, “Why would he say that to me?” And then once consciousness settled in, the question became, “Why is my mind saying this to me?”

Well friends, I’ve done a lot of journaling and meditating about it and finally came to this conclusion — I need to love and honor that year 2000 version of me who bravely quit what she didn’t want (school, a grumpy boyfriend, etc.) and chased her passions all the way to Stockholm. Who would I be without her? It’s okay that I didn’t have much going on at the time, because I was only starting to give some thought to what I did want in life. It turns out I’m fine with “dead end jobs” because I love not caring much about the thing that makes me money. Many, many years later, I would learn that the only jobs I do care about are writing and raising a child. Had I stayed in school and with the grumpy guy, would I be better off than I am now? I doubt it. I’m also so grateful for the chaotic young woman I was then for taking me to a place where I could see the sort of great life one can have in a more socialist society. It’s no wonder I wanted to expatriate.

When I consider all that happened 24 years ago and in the years that followed, I’m so struck by the fact that I got together with my husband (my best friend, my fellow exclamation mark) just six years later. Six years isn’t such a very long time, but it felt like three lifetimes in my twenties. In any case, I regret nothing of the choices I made along that path. Perhaps I was a fool at times, but I prefer to compare myself to the one represented in the tarot – eyes on the sky, feet nearing the cliff’s edge, vulnerable yet oddly confident.