NOVEL

Days and Nights Gone By

The Love We Had, Chapter 25

A writing challenge

Write and publish a book review of the novel The Love We Had, based on freely chosen chapters published on medium.com.

The book review can be a comment of 100 to 200 words, or a longer article, and should be published on medium.com.

Everyone who publishes a book review will receive a link with free access to the e-book when the e-book is published on KDP. Please tag me Øivind H. Solheim at the end of the review to get free access to the e-book.

25

To live life should not be easy, and neither is it. But it doesn’t have to be so very difficult either.

It’s about landing, having solid ground underfoot, and to see others who also see you. Living is about being in life, it’s about knowing that you are alive, feeling that almost any day is a day you would not want to be without.

I have lived all those years in one huge stream of small and big events; falling in love, burning love, pregnancy, births, breastfeeding, child-rearing, moving to larger households, everyday life and holidays, nightly lovemaking, new pregnancies and births, birthdays, planning of house building, and new days, endless rows of days — you have no idea.

As days have passed it has become more and more so, my life has become an inventory of days and nights gone by, many lost days, lost nights.

I had a man with whom I was a lover, and together with him, I think I experienced something similar to what they call happiness.

But then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, he began to slip away from me. He and I were lovers, and we started to lose each other.

When did it start happening? Neither he nor I can answer unambiguously and precisely. It just happened like that. Life just became like that. And the question is thus clear: — What now? What should my life be like? Will I live with the days filled with lack, longing? Will he and I go ahead and exist side by side, two alienated lovers, two people who exist side by side, as the days and years slip away, and time imperceptibly ticks toward an ending that I can’t see for myself.

I am not the only one who has it that way in life. I am not the only one who sees the days and months flow away, experiencing the beauty becoming a more and more ambiguous, distant dream.

And I reconcile with that. I think that’s the way it should be then. I am no longer young, I am about to become middle-aged, I have laid me out a bit, I have pale skin, wrinkles on my face, I am not particularly attractive anymore, and I know it so deeply, all together.

I am not the only one and that is no consolation either. There is no happiness in seeing others have it just as bad. It does not make me less sad to have to admit that it seems to be a normal state in this society, where the material values largely are in the driver’s seat, and where none of those I see around me especially many times have had to go to bed hungry.

I have lived for many years in this middle state, I have lived alongside him in this no man’s land where I have had a man in the house, that’s correct, and I have been the woman, the housewife in his house.

But it has been a life where he and I have gradually slipped away from each other, where he and I have gone from being lovers to becoming two alien living side by side in silent, involuntary celibacy.

I may see it clearer in hindsight. He and I were never created for each other, as I may have imagined in the first years, and he may also have imagined, without reflecting more on it. That’s the sad truth. I think I can see this today: we are two strangers who believed they were close to each other, two humans who never were meant for each other. Two people who came together on a thin and somewhat misunderstood basis. And had children together, three children who depend on a mother and a father.

I feel a knot inside me. I feel that it is difficult to think of this. I should preferably exclude all these thoughts from my mind, cry a splash, and get finished with it.

But I know that it’s not like that, not so simple. I stand in the middle of it, I have to find out how I am going to live with it on the one or the other way.

— Is it too late?

No! I refuse to admit it. Everything in me is protesting. Everything in me revolt against the absurd. It is never too late. Not before that day when there is no life anymore.

The story that the novel tells takes place in a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.

The photos included in the chapters are taken on location in Odda and in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is part of the story.

The Love We Had

Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars. Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak. Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18 — XX, told by Eira.

For quick access to all chapters, go here.

Previous chapter: 24 Where He Wants to Be

Next: Chapter 26 Hindsight Can Be Salt in the Wound

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

Visit Øivind H. Solheim’s profile

Become a Medium member, read thousands of writers and support my writing.