TRUSTING THE EYES OF OTHERS
PHOTOS, VIDEOs & TEXT BY EMILIE TOLDAM FUTTRUP POEMS & DRAWINGS BY FREDERIKKE BERTIN
Elves do exist.
Maybe not in your world. Or mine. But they accompany 25-year-old Frederikke Bertin in her life.
For better or worse. For so many years that even though they only talk to her, they have also become part of her family's life.
“What do the elves want for Christmas?”
The question is meant as a joke. But there is seriousness behind it.
Even if something can't be felt by everyone, it can still be real. It's just a special reality. An extra dimension that someone walks in, and even if you don't walk it yourself, sometimes you can cross
the bridge. That's what Frederikke’s big sister, Josefine, does with her question.
The older sister lives in Greenland at the moment. Way too far from Frederikke. It's Thursday, and
they're FaceTiming.
Frederikke and her parents are lounging on the couch, and she holds her phone up so they can all see her sister's face on the small screen.
What do the elves want?
Frederikke laughs at the question.
“Well, they're not religious,” she says.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t wish for something - we're not religious either,” Josefine replies and continues:
“I just thought, they’re there for Christmas every year, and it's not exactly polite to invite someone to Christmas Eve and then not have a gift for them.”
Frederikke pulls her legs up under her, squints her eyes a little, and smiles.
“Yeah, just five extra guests to set the table for - plus the animals,” she says, petting Balto, the Chihuahua mix lying on its back next to her.
Their mother, Mette, breaks into the conversation.
“So, how many of you were there on Christmas Eve? Yes, we were twelve or thirteen,” she jokes.
This makes everyone laugh.
“So no new wishes from the elves?” Josefine asks again.
“No, Lora wants a purple pillow, and Rotello still wants a wooden pointer stick,” Frederikke says.
Shadow, Lora, Rotello, Pingo and Elfendahl.
They each have their own name, their own personality, but they live in the same place: In Frederike's mind.
Shadow is the one who is always scared, and who makes sure to remind Frederikke of that.
Rotello is the coach, the one who never thinks Frederikke is good enough and who keeps a strict point system so that Frederikke can be punished or rewarded depending on what she does and
says.
Pingo and Elfendahl are twins. They argue more or less constantly and gossip about both Frederikke and those around her.
Lora is a little gentler and has many unfulfilled childhood dreams hidden inside her. Such as becoming an ice skating princess or a pop star.
Sedated
“There's someone in there now, but then it's your turn,” says a friendly woman in a blue lab coat.
The woman is about to guide Frederikke to the scanner where her hip will be examined again, as it has started to act up again.
“Okay,” Frederikke nods with half-closed eyes.
She leans her head on her friend's shoulder.
The friend reaches out and gives Frederikke's hand a squeeze. Along with her friend, a staff member from her residential home is also there for support.
The room is sterile. White and angular, interrupted only by the large, round MRI scanner in the middle of the room. Frederikke lies down on the couch, puts on headphones and soon her body
disappears into the machine. She lies completely still and closes her eyes. Shifting tones echo insistently in the room.
“Maybe I took a bit too much,” Frederikke says with a little laugh in the car after leaving the hospital. She had taken sedatives before
leaving home to keep the anxiety at bay.
It's done. The scan she had feared so much, which could easily have triggered the many hospital traumas she has collected over the years.
The elves are affected by the pills too.
They remained fairly calm, but of course Shadow couldn't help but comment on the rays in the scanner. And the contrast fluid in the syringe – not least.
What if it was actually an execution taking
place? Carefully planned. As part of the grand scheme.
It's been about six and a half years since the elves first entered Frederikke’s mind. It happened around the time of the surgeries she needed due to a congenital hip defect.
During the first surgery, Frederikke woke up and could hear everything that was going on but couldn’t react. The doctors who had made a mistake.
When she woke up after the next surgery three years later, she suddenly heard someone laughing.
It was a mocking laugh. She looked at the doctors.
Were they the ones laughing?
Their faces weren’t.
Slowly, she realized the laughing was coming from inside her head.
This would turn out to be Fredericke's first encounter with the elves.
The experiences left their mark and left Frederikke at the foot of countless encounters with the hospital system that she would have rather avoided.
Red painted nails
“Shall we get started with the nail polish?” Mette asks.
She has caught sight of her daughter rubbing her eyes with her fingers. Frederikke nods.
They are sitting around the small round table in Granny’s living room – Frederikke, her parents and her old great-grandmother – and have just finished lunch.
It's their Sunday tradition. Dropping by to visit Frederikke's great-grandmother for a couple of hours.
They often bring some food, but the most important item on the agenda is for Frederikke to paint Granny’s nails. Even though Granny is nearly blind and can't really see her nails anymore.
At least that's what happens on the good days, when Frederikke has the energy to come along for the Sunday visit.
“It's first class today,” says Granny as she holds out her freshly painted red nails. “Not discount,” she declares.
When Frederikke can't make it to Granny's place, her mother has to take over the nail salon, but Granny is not happy with this arrangement.
Mette only does one coat and it's not as nice as when
Frederikke does it, says Granny.
“First class,” Frederikke repeats and laughs to her mother.
Goldfish and discussions
Loud splashes of water and the snap of the diving board blend with the constant sound of waves and children playing at the other end of the swimming pool.
One by one, Frederikke and her teammates step onto the diving board, walk to the end and jump into the water with their arms, legs, fingers and toes as straight as possible.
“A little more forward,” says the coach when Frederikke's ears break the surface again. Frederikke nods.
Frederikke stops a little before the edge of the board.
She closes her eyes and the discussion begins. When should she jump, what kind of jump should she do, how long is she even supposed to stay today? They don't agree, the elves.
Frederikke gathers herself, takes a few quick steps forward, lifts one leg and jumps up high, bends over and hits the surface of the water with her fingertips first.
“Beautiful!” the coach shouts.
Frederikke smiles at her coach.
Across the room, a young woman in a black swimsuit catches Frederikke's eyes.
It's Cecilie.
She knows Cecilie from when they did cheerleading together.
Frederikke still keeps in touch with several girls from her old team.
When she has the energy, she loves meeting up for creative projects or cozy hangouts.
Cecilie comes over, throws her arms around her in a hug and then lifts her off the ground. They laugh out loud as the tips of Frederikke's toes touch the tiled floor again.
Frederikke had been cheerleading for 12 years when she had to admit it no longer worked. She was on the national team for several years, but as her mental health worsened and she was hospitalized several times, she could no longer stay on the team.
Instead, she took up board diving. It's easier for her to go at her own pace.
However, diving practice isn't always easy for Frederikke.
Today, there are a lot of goldfish swimming around in the pool beneath the board, which she has to jump from.
This isn't a problem in itself, but Shadow isn't sure they won't bite.
Shadow also suspects that it might actually be cement she's jumping into.
Which will then become rock hard when she hits the surface.
There's a lot competing for her attention today.
It's not just the goldfish and elves interfering. Feathers are also falling everywhere from the high ceiling in the swimming pool. They don't bother Frederikke.
Even though she's not that close to the people in practice, she has told a few of them about the elves. They don't ask many questions about her visions and experiences.
In fact, not many people do.
Frederikke has the feeling it’s because they don't quite dare.
Maybe they're afraid of what they'll hear?
It's a bit lonely.
She can feel like she's being turned into a monster in a way.
When she politely asks people about their lives, and they don't ask her back.
As if she's from another planet.
The other world
“F you're not answering your phone!”
Mette storms into the living room and places her hands on her hips when she sees Frederikke – or F, as she often calls her daughter.
Her voice trembles slightly.
“I've been calling and texting and you haven't answered the phone for an hour, so I had to drive home to see if you were here!”
Frederikke hadn’t noticed her mother's calls.
Mette wraps her arms around her daughter.
To say that everything is always harmonious and easy in the Bertin family wouldn’t be true. They have a close relationship. Really close.
Every day, Frederikke walks the short kilometer between her residence home and her parents' house in Tilst, Aarhus.
Almost every day she FaceTimes with her sister, who currently lives and works as a psychologist in Greenland. They are close in the family, can laugh about most things and understand each other.
But it's not easy.
The fear of one day finding Frederikke lifeless lingers like a quiet ember beneath warm hugs, loud laughter and deep conversations.
“I'm tired of days,” Frederikke might say.
At least on the harder ones.
To spare her family, she doesn't talk too explicitly about death with them, and to spare herself, she doesn't talk too explicitly about it with doctors and psychiatrists.
Frederikke has many thoughts about where she really comes from and who she truly is. Thoughts that don't align with the perception of reality held by doctors and society around her, but which are
very real to her.
Thoughts that she doesn't really belong in this human world because she's not human, but rather genetically engineered - most likely as a test subject in a larger plot.
Over time, these thoughts have made many doctors and psychiatrists worried.
And at times, her family too.
Especially because at one point, the elves believed that by jumping off something high, she would
enter another world.
The world where she truly belongs.
They don't understand it, the doctors, Frederikke thinks. They don't understand her.
November night
The cool November air greets Frederikke as she opens the door to the residence's courtyard. The streetlights cast long shadows as she moves through the evening streets in search of leaves and branches for the small basket outside her door.
They protect her.
Further down an empty street, she spots a good bush.
She starts walking down the road but suddenly stops. There’s someone standing there. In the middle of the road. It's a man. He's wearing a spacesuit, and a rifle is hanging down his side.
She turns on her heels and casts a quick glance over her shoulder as she hurries away.
Frederikke likes to go for walks late in the evening and at night.
Or maybe 'likes' isn't the right word.
She feels drawn to the darkness. To moving under the night sky when there are no other people in the streets and she can be all alone.
At the same time, it is often among the dark shadows where the visions hide. Visions of figures or people that only Frederikke can see. But that she truly sees. And that scare her.
One night, Frederikke saw human hands quietly rising out of a lake. She became scared. And doubtful. Doubtful whether the hands were actually there, or if it was just one of her visions?
Should she scream for help?
Call the police? Frederikke quickly fished her mobile phone out of her pocket, took a picture, and sent it to her mother.
“Does this look weird, mom?” she wrote and pressed send.
“I don’t see anything,” the reply came.
Frederikke breathed a sigh of relief but hurried home anyway.
It is often some violent visions she sees there in the darkness of the night, but “It’s not reality.”
They say it again and again at the psychiatric ward when Frederikke afterward can’t help but return to the experiences that haunt her thoughts.
“Don’t dwell on it. It’s not reality.”
For the past and the future
“Wow,” says Frederikke as she reaches the front door of her parents' house.
Small fabric strips flutter both in a pot outside and among the Christmas decorations and fairy lights in the house.
Frederikke’s father places roast pork and caramelized potatoes on the table.
“Sweetheart, cheers and congratulations on the pension – and even better, that your future doesn’t end here,” says Mette, looking lovingly at her daughter.
“Yes, welcome to the club,” says her father Ole, who retired a year and a half ago at the age of 71.
They laugh and clink their glasses together.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart.” The joking has left Ole’s voice, and he gives his daughter a squeeze.
Earlier that day, Frederikke had a meeting at the municipality. 25 years old and on early retirement.
It needs a moment to sink in.
“I don’t really know what we’re celebrating,” says Frederikke. She looks at her mother, who tucks a stray strand of hair behind Frederikke’s ear.
“But I’m happy because I’ve found out that you're allowed to study while on early retirement. And that one day you can get off it.
”This summer, Frederikke finally got her high school graduation cap after eight years of fighting alongside elves and hospitalizations. She doesn’t know whether a higher education will ever become reality, but she dreams a little about it.
Frederikke also dreams that one day the elves will move out.
They don’t have to completely disappear from her life – that might become a bit too quiet.
No, they’re welcome to stop by and say hello once in a while.
But she hopes that one day, they’ll also be able to say goodbye.