Greta Thunberg - Our House Is on Fire - Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

No one can demand that each one of us get involved in a crisis that no one is treating as a crisis. Such responsibility can never be placed on us as individuals.

Air travel brings everything to a head, but the growth society does not accept that the way forward might require taking a few steps back.

Forward is the only direction that counts.

‘What’s the capital of France?’

I don’t remember.

‘What’s the highest mountain in Sweden?’

I don’t know.

‘Who’s the president of the United States?’

The year is 2016 and I’m undergoing a neuropsychiatric investigation with the psychologist. After hundreds of hours of reading, I’m fairly sure; after thousands of pages I’ve formed a pretty clear picture. Not only of my children but also of myself. But I want it in black and white.

Not because I think it’s going to change anything, but I want to know.

If nothing else, maybe it can help the people around me. Although to be honest I don’t care about that right now. I’m just so tired and sad, and I’m hoping that somewhere out there someone will have thought of something that will help me get out of bed in the morning. Some kind of pill, or whatever.

Something that will make my legs hold up. Something that will get me to see beyond this total hopeless darkness everywhere. So I fill out all the papers. I answer all the questions. For the thousandth time.

The psychologist talks away but I can barely hear what she’s saying. Or actually, I hear her, but I can’t formulate the answers. It’s as if my thoughts get stuck. I want to ask for a glass of water but I can’t remember the word for what you drink water out of. Glass.

It shouldn’t be hard at all but it’s like it’s no longer there. The word has drowned in sound.

For me, everything is music and that’s how it’s always been; but I’ve always been able to turn it on or off as I wish, and I can’t do that any more. The diagnosis takes over. I try to push my thoughts aside but the roaring of sound seeps in and soaks through, everywhere and all the time.

My gift and my curse.

My superpower, which has almost always been an asset to me, but as it is I can no longer control it, because nowadays all my energy is poured into trying to get everything and everyone to function.

‘Who is the president of the United States?’ the psychologist repeats, but the only thing I hear is that she is speaking in a monotonous minor G.

A window is cracked open and outside some birds are chirping in F9 with the third in the bass and the ninth in the four-line octave. It’s out of tune. It’s all a little sharp and it’s bothering me so much that I don’t hear what the psychologist is saying. It hurts. Physically hurts.

A motorcycle drives past on the street below in G, F, D, E, E flat, and it is much too low in relation to the birds’ F9 chord. A creaking door, a notepad and a scraping chair form a cluster and my whole body screams in pain.

I really do want to ask for a glass of water. I swallow and blink in slow motion.

My fingers go numb and the psychologist takes a break and leaves the room. I say that I’ll stay and check my phone but I just sit in the chair and shut my eyes.

Don’t have the energy to stand up.

She comes back. Says it’s probably ADHD and I’m showing clear signs of depression and chronic fatigue. But the assessment is going to take a while. I drag myself to the pharmacy on the way home but they’re out of most of the medications.

‘The prescription isn’t here,’ the clerk says in a nasal voice between middle G, G sharp, A and B flat.

A zipper, a box being shut, a crying child and a truck on the street outside form a sprawling major 7th chord with the fifth in the bass. It disturbs me that the truck isn’t rumbling in the tonic.

Beata’s Theralen isn’t available either and I can barely take this in. Without that we might just as well shut down our existence. Without that everything collapses.

‘It’s available in liquid form now. Have you tried the new flavour?’ the clerk asks.

No, we haven’t tried the new flavour and we haven’t tried it in liquid form because it’s more likely that Beata and Greta are going to learn to breathe underwater than manage to take medicine in liquid form.

‘There should be a packet left at Kronan’s pharmacy in Skärholmen.’ But I don’t have time to go all the way out to Skärholmen because Greta has just texted that the school staff threw out her rice because it didn’t have a sticker with the date on it, which they have to do, but because of Greta’s OCD she can’t eat when she sees newspapers, papers and stickers – it’s hard to mark her home-made school lunch with stickers, as we’ve explained a zillion times – and now Svante is on his way to Bergshamra to pick her up and I have to go home and make fresh jasmine rice.

But first I have to get the medicines.

I call an old friend, a now-retired doctor who has rescued me so many times in the past, but he doesn’t have a computer and can’t help me. I root around in my handbag for one of his old handwritten prescriptions and produce a pile of coins, the children’s passports, receipts, hair ties and two pink dog-poop bags, but my fingers won’t grip and the sound of everything falling back down into the handbag is like a gunshot in my ears.

The phone starts ringing at the same time as a text message jingles. Two emails. The sound cuts like a knife. I try to get the phone out to turn off the sound but my fingers still can’t grip, it’s like in my frequently recurring nightmare where I’m in the middle of a war zone and have to warn Svante and the children, but am incapable of typing a text message or bringing up their number.

My fingers cramp up.

Can’t get the fucking phone out.

Try to open the screen lock with my chin.

Can’t.

I walk out of the pharmacy over towards Willys to buy a snack for Beata and it’s all about the air.

Breathing.

But there isn’t enough air.

When stress levels increase, the oxygen intake is reduced, and even though I can hold a note for a full minute without needing to breathe, right now my lung capacity isn’t enough to oxygenate my brain and muscles, and then I get even more stressed and then I take in even less oxygen and then it’s even harder to think clearly and I don’t want to be a part of this shit any more.

I’m standing on the pavement outside Västermalm’s shopping centre and I am so dreadfully tired of all my hidden handicaps; all my invisible bloody problems. If only I could break a couple of bones. A fracture, a serious case of pneumonia or something else that forces you into a pleasant hospital for a few weeks so that you can get some sleep.

And breathe.

Rest.

There was a time when we caught the day with net and fishing rod – now we trawl the bottom of the ocean in our constant pursuit of self-realization, personal development and exciting new experiences. There are no limits. Everything is possible.

Venice, the Maldives and the Seychelles are sinking into the sea, glaciers are melting, rainforests are being cleared and dry California is burning. Take the opportunity to visit these enchanting but climate-threatened places before they disappear for good.

These lines are too good to be true.

It’s like something out of a Max Gustafson comic cartoon but reality, as we know, always exceeds fiction and in fact the quote comes from the front page of a 2018 issue of Svenska Dagbladet’ s ‘Perfect Guide’.

Climate tourism is a real phenomenon and it constitutes a significant source of income for people in many vulnerable places. But naturally for a limited time only. The coral reefs off Belize and Australia, for example, Mount Kilimanjaro draped in snow, and obviously the whole Arctic region.