NOVEL
The Love We Had
Chapter 10 At some point they gradually stopped listening to one another
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.
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Chapter 10 At some point they gradually stopped listening to one another
When two people have been a couple for a very long time a lot has happened, both sweet and sour, both exciting and trivial things. Often it happens at some point on the long road that the two gradually stop listening to one another. Other times both no longer see the other as in the first period in the relationship. They both annoy at things that formerly did not cause irritation or conflict. Tolerance and patience diminish and is eventually completely gone. Indifference and irritation, irony, spitefulness, sarcasm, and that kind of bad behaviour take over.
I know that I stand at such a point and yes, I’ve probably been there a long, very long time. I know that I stand at a limit in myself and I know I’m going to take that step across that boundary because there is no longer anything inside me that holds me back. Nothing that talks strictly to me and says:
«No, listen, this is not okay, this is not you! You are not that kind of person who treads over that border.»
On the contrary, there is a calm voice inside me who says: you, get up, lower your shoulders, take that step whether the opportunity presents itself, whether you find the right one.
I feel numb. It’s like my feelings are wrapped in ice. I am not hot or nor cold, I am somehow stunned, I feel almost nothing and inside me there’s an empty room where I knew that my feelings should bloom when my loved one enters the room.
I feel cold inside and my thoughts are frozen when she talks to me, wants something from me, and I just say: «yes, yes … yes, yes, yes».
That Sunday when we walked together up the hill something new started in my life. A secret meeting, a secret trip in the woods. We were two well grown adults, both in relationships that have lasted for many years, and we are both looking for something new. We were two who longed and wanted something else, we wanted something more than what we had. What we had in our lives had become too little, too cramped. We were two who tried to create an opening in the routine, we wanted to make a change in the frozen life we both lived. We were two people who wanted to get out of the gray where we lived our days.
I have no doubt that she wants me, and she’s certain that I want her. I told her I will break out, I will end the relationship I have with my partner, and it shouldn’t cost me that much, really.
In her mind, Gunvor has already departed from me. She prioritizes work, she is very much traveling, and I can’t help that I think and feel that for her it is indifferent if I am home. — Whether I am there — it doesn’t matter to her.
And I want to discuss this with Eira now. Should we leave it like it is now without taking the next step? — May there come something good out of our secret meetings and secret hikes if we keep it the way it is now? Is it good enough for us? Can something viable and good grow out of a relationship that does not support daylight? Can we let it stay this way: two grown-up people who meet in secret?
She and I, we are two people who have not lived freely, we are two people who seek what life has not given us. We seek what we did not get, what was denied us, this which we now want to cross a boundary to retrieve.
The story that the novel tells takes place in a town that exists in reality, 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 the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is mentioned in 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 17 — XX, told by Eira
Links to earlier and later chapters:
Part 1
Chapter 1 I Love It When Things Are Normal
Chapter 2 I Came Home as Usual
Chapter 3 I Believe in What I See
Part 2
Chapter 5 All we have is — ourselves!
Chapter 6 Coming together — escaping loneliness
Chapter 7 When I first met her
Chapter 8 An unskilled factory worker
Chapter 9 That Sunday morning we met at the parking lot
Chapter 11 Going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the smelter furnace
