I Will Drown

If you do not perform to perfection you are a loser! So thinks the eighteen-year-old Josephine, who tries to be just as perfect and clever as all her friends. She has made a plan for her life. She has chosen a sensible education, the right boyfriend and the right diet. It is good, and it is perfect. But something is awry; she has a trembling inside her, keeping her awake in the night, a rattling in her brain, which makes her forget things. Forget to breathe. What is wrong with her? Why can she not just stick to the plan? She pushes herself to extremes. The pressure is so intense that Josephine feels as if she is drowning. Barely able to breathe, she is afraid to ask for help. For, if she cannot do everything, she is nothing, or so she believes.

About the author 

Ditte Wiese (b. 1978) grew up in the Danish provinces and knows everything there is to know about the blues and restlessness. The imperfect, the ugly, the raw holds a special place in Wiese’s writing. At once a hopeless romantic and eternal optimist, Wiese’s writing is a precarious balancing act. But no one said that life was going to be easy.

Text translated by Lin Falk van Rooyen