elin Grelsson

Today’s guest blogger is Elin Grelsson, a freelance writer and sidekick in P3's Brunchrapporten. She’s also writing a novel and blogs on http://sakerunderhuden.blogspot.com.

There are people who claim that one's identity is static and that we are who we are. Fuck them, frankly.

There are people who claim that you have become someone. As if life is striving for this peak, then you will have become "yourself". Fuck them as well.

I think that you, every day and throughout life, are someone and you are never the same as the day before. There is no single core that You are. There are thousands of small pits inside you that you can pick up whenever you want.

An alter ego is a perfect aid to get the guts to poke around all those pits you have inside you.

Your alter ego is much like the imaginary friend you had as a child. The difference is that now you are your own imaginary friend.

My alter egos, I have had several in different periods of my life, have been born out of frustration. A feeling of being stuck inside myself.

My latest alter ego, Woman Artist, materialized some years ago. It was then that I seriously began to pursue my writing. First off, it was scary. I didn’t dare to beat myself on the chest and show how good I actually was.

Secondly, I was bitter and frustrated with all the creative guys who never excused themselves in the way that I, and other girls in the same industry, often did. They took up space instead, elbowed their way forward and constantly talked about their creative work and their creativity.

I thought of Bergman, Strindberg, Lundell and all the other male artists. Those who had relationships that mostly seemed to be about having muses, and being seen as Great Artists.

They became the inspiration for the Woman Artist, the world's most annoying creative woman who just went on about creating, art, and how important and indispensable she was to culture. Who took herself too seriously and who treated men as muses and women as sisters, just as culture men have always had each other’s backs in their red rooms.

Through Woman Artist, I was all that Elin Grelsson didn’t dare to be. I took the qualities that I hadn’t dared to highlight, the fact that I actually think I'm good and important for real, and magnified them up to gigantic proportions. The Woman Artist was born out of my own fear, fueled by a society where girls still often excuse themselves in a completely different way than guys do.

When an alter ego is at its best it fills that precise function. It works against your fears, highlighting the characteristics of yourself that you don’t know you have or you don’t dare to develop. The alter ego is your own personal superhero.