B r a i n C l e a r

Sorting through life one thought at a time

Tag: friendship

  • My friend Sussi is a DJ.

    Not in the she likes music and occasionally DJs at a friend’s party kind of way.

    She’s Acid Sussi.

    She’s been playing clubs and events around Stockholm for years. She’s played Boiler Room. She and her longtime partner have a DJ duo called Solid Sliders, and they just put out a track called “Get Ill.” And more than a decade after she started doing it, she’s still out playing on weekends.

    I find this ridiculously cool.

    But here’s the thing.

    I knew her when she just had the records.

    So. Many. Records.

    We met in school, although I don’t remember exactly when we went from knowing each other to really becoming friends. What I do remember is that music was always a huge part of who she was. She loved vinyl and, for as long as I can remember, wanted to DJ.

    And then she actually did it.

    There’s something really wonderful about watching someone you love actually do the thing they talked about doing when they were young.

    Sussi and I have a lot of history long walks that turned into long talks, all-nighters spent talking and dancing in equal measure, raves we found our way to together. There are entire pieces of my younger life that have Sussi in them.

    And after all these years, she’s still one of the people I can talk to about absolutely anything.

    And when I say talk, I mean talk.

    We can take one subject and disappear into it for hours. We don’t just exchange opinions and move on we dig, we question, we turn a thing over until we’ve looked at it from every angle. One thought leads to another and suddenly we’ve spent hours on something most people would have wrapped up in twenty minutes.

    She also knows me well enough not to simply tell me what I want to hear. If I come to her with something difficult, I’ll get the love. I’ll get the understanding. And then, somewhere in there, she’ll ask a question that makes me stop and reconsider the whole thing.

    And now the friend who has always been willing to dig a little deeper has officially become a therapist.

    This year, Sussi graduated from Karolinska Institutet and is beginning an entirely new chapter in her life.

    She’s had quite a few chapters already. She’s been a hairstylist. She studied psychology. She became a UX designer. She became Acid Sussi.

    And now she’s a therapist.

    Who’s still a DJ.

    Of course she is.

    What I love about her story is that she never seems to have discarded an old version of herself to make room for the next one. The psychology student didn’t replace the girl with the records. The UX designer didn’t replace the DJ. And becoming a therapist isn’t going to make Acid Sussi disappear.

    She just kept adding chapters.

    And the more I think about it, the more I suspect neither the DJ nor the therapist is really a new version of her. They were both there all along the girl surrounded by records who wanted to make people dance, and the friend who could spend hours talking about life, people, and why we do the things we do.

    I remember the records.

    I remember the long conversations.

    I remember the dancing.

    And now I get to watch one of my closest friends begin yet another chapter of her life.

    I’m incredibly proud of the therapist she’s becoming.

    I love the friend she’s always been. ❤️

    And I still think it’s pretty damn cool that she became the DJ.

  • The Art of Connection

    In the past couple of days, the idea of connection has been on my mind.

    A close friend told me that after taking a DNA test, he discovered that his ancestry traced back to Nigeria, specifically to the Igbo people. Since then, he has embraced that part of his heritage and sometimes uses it as a way to connect with new colleagues at work. For him, it’s a way to let someone know they’re not alone, that there’s another person who might understand what it’s like to sometimes be the only one in the room who looks different, and that they, too, have every opportunity to grow and become everything they dream of.

    My first reaction was:

    Yes, but you’ve never been to Nigeria. Your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all born in the United States. You can say your heritage is Nigerian, but are you Nigerian?

    I think that way because I’ve experienced the opposite.

    When I go to Swedish events, I often meet people who introduce themselves as Swedish because a great-grandparent emigrated to America. They’ve never been to Sweden. They don’t speak Swedish. In my mind, I’ve always thought of them as Americans with Swedish heritage rather than Swedes.

    But the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe I was looking at it from the wrong angle.

    After all, it’s kind of sweet.

    We’re all looking for something that makes the world feel a little smaller. We look for common ground, an opening to start a conversation, the possibility of a new friendship, and the reassurance that we’re not alone.

    Yesterday I wandered through H&M, and for a moment it felt like the comfort of home. I go to Swedish events because I enjoy speaking my language and sharing traditions. And when I meet another European, especially another Scandinavian, there’s an immediate familiarity. We may come from different countries, but there’s an unspoken understanding that we grew up on the same side of the world.

    Might that be what connection is all about?

    It doesn’t have to be nationality.

    Sometimes it’s as simple as being the only two women in a room or us both having dogs. I do this all the time. If I meet another dog owner, especially someone with the same breed as mine, we instantly have something to talk about. We compare food brands, swap funny stories, show each other pictures, and somehow complete strangers become people we’ve connected with, even if it’s only for a brief moment.

    I’ve even noticed that dogs seem to do something similar. They get excited to meet other dogs in general, but they also seem to recognize their own breed.

    I think we’re all just looking for that sense of belonging.