NOVEL
What Am I Doing with My Life?
The Love We Had, Chapter 41
41
I know that this is not good. I want to talk to him, start a dialogue about me and him, about giving and receiving.
I want to talk to him, get a conversation started where I and he take each other seriously. I want to talk about how I feel, and how to get on in life.
I talk to him eagerly — probably a little too loud when I want to make him understand that he too must go into himself, he too has to learn to see his own faults.
He grins, he laughs without hiding it. I get angry, I start crying. He looks at me with that smile I have learned to hate.
He smiles again, this smile.
He’s coming towards me. He says:
“You’re pretty sweet when you are angry.”
I knew it.
I knew it inside myself already after a short time, only a few months after I and he had come together
I had come home with him that night. I stayed in his bed until daylight began to seep under the curtain.
I liked the way he looked at me. I liked the friendly, a little rough tone, the short laugh after he had said something striking.
He seemed strong, he charmed me with his smile and he made me feel safe.
And if I should regret it, then it should turn out a little later that it was all too late then. He looked at my stomach, a smile in his face.
“The bread in the oven,” he said jokingly
I looked at him. He laughed a happy laugh, smiled broadly to me and put his arm around me, squeezed easily.
I knew it early within myself. Him and me, this was not right. It was not what I wanted.
I am standing in front of the mirror. I am hit by my own gaze. I see something on my face. Can’t believe it! I stand in front of the mirror and I get hit! Hit by my own gaze.
I see something on my face that bothers me, something which was not there before.
I see two eyes that look strict on me. A glance that forces me to stop and think
“Who are you, Eira? What are you doing with your life?”
I walk out of the bathroom, want to get away from my own, critical gaze.
I make bread, toast, dishes, cups, glasses, and cutlery. He’s home today, going to work this afternoon. I and my husband will share this morning at home, starting in the kitchen.
And I know how it is going to be. After pouring himself a cup of coffee he goes downstairs to the basement workshop. He retreats to the woodworks and all that. And I am going to walk uneasy from room to room with my troubled thoughts.
Or maybe it happens which has happened so many times before. He goes out, usually without a single word or he’ll let me know that he’s going down to the town for an errand and then he goes right on the shift afterward.
I pour coffee into the cup, I sit down, hoping secretly that he does not show up while I sit there, and that I may have this moment in peace.
“What do you want, Eira, with your life now?”
- Is it possible to live on as I have done for so many years without loving him, and without being loved? Is it possible to live, just survive without the normal amount of warmth and love, trapped in a relationship that is dead?
I will hereafter live like that, on a low flare.
Or — there is an alternative: I can throw myself out on deep water. Live the love to someone other than the man I have shared my life with. Is it possible to love another one and still remain where I am in my life?
I think about it. I have his eyes, feel the heat inside my body. Our last meeting, it was this experience of closeness, this immediate contact.
This is something I miss so much when I’m with Lars and I’m in my ordinary life. It wasn’t what I saw for me.
I realize this more and more now, after I was lucky enough to meet the other, the one with whom I have had a full flap. He who I can talk to, without words. He who is my only other because what the eye sees and what the heart feels is enough language that I feel safe. It rarely happens in life that someone is so lucky and gets to experience it.
He’s coming towards me. I notice that he smiles. I look at him, I wonder what it is that he wants.
He looks at me with a twinkle in his eye. I feel that I am a little insecure.
I feel the resistance inside me, I feel that the hard knot begins to soften.
He’s coming towards me, puts his hand on my shoulder, smiles, and gets very close.
I breathe. The ice inside me begins to melt.
He comes close, I am insecure whether I like it or not.
I no longer know him that way and I ask myself why he came now.
He is who he is, I am who I am.
He tries to approach, to touch me, to pull away.
He strokes me lightly across the cheek. I stiffen, I close my eyes, breathing deeply, taking what comes.
My husband comes near me and I feel a little puzzled, a little dull, a little light. I meet him, I ask quietly, without words:
“What is it you want with me, dear? What is it you want?”
“I’ll keep what I can keep.”
I stand alone, numb and weak between the one I have had and he whom I found.
I stand between the old and the new one, and I have no doubt about who I want. I hesitate to take the big leap over the abyss away from the one, and over to the other. I know that it will be difficult, I know my husband is against it and that he will do all he can to prevent me from walking away.
I am sure he will deny me any fair settlement. He wants to take everything he can take from me. I have no doubt because he has said so in pure words.
“If you leave me, I shall do everything I can to stop you.”
“If you leave, then you get nothing free from me.”
“You shall know this: I’ll keep what I can keep: Kids, house, and cabin!”
I want us to talk together.
He is no longer mine. Never been mine, maybe. He suffices with himself and what is his. Because he has had me like a clasp around his foot, I feel. In fact, he has never been interested.
Every evening when I go to bed I say to him, up in the TV attic: “I go to bed now.”
Each night he hardly answers, murmurs that he will soon be ready, he is just going to finish what he’s doing.
Whatever he does, whether he is watching TV or gaming — I don’t know.
He doesn’t need me, he does not see that I am lonely, that I need him.
I want us to talk together, he doesn’t have that need. When I want to talk, he goes away. I think that when I have been overlooked, neglected, when my needs are trivialized, repeatedly, year after year, one day we come to a point where no return trip is possible. One day will come when the only road is the way out, and forward.
The body has its own language, the body talks about longing, about lack. The body holds me tight. I exist, but in a state of total loneliness.
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 18–48, told by Eira.
For free access to 43 of 49 chapters, click here.
A note from the author:
Due to copyright and other considerations, the chapter 39 and 40 will not be published in this series on Medium. This is chapter 41, which is one of the four remaining chapters to be published in this channel in the coming weeks.
The entire novel will be made available for readers when published in June 2021 on amazon.com, Kindle Direct Publishing, in digital format.
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.
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