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I Was a Stranger in My Life

Excerpts from The Love We Had, a Novel

By Øivind H. SolheimPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 12 min read
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I Was a Stranger in My Life
Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash

I left. When I left his apartment, I hardly knew where I was going. I was in a place I had never been before. I was alienated. I had lost myself.

He was so intense, so compelling. And then he was so determined. I liked it, but at the same time I did not know if I liked it anyway.

"You are mine," he said, "mine and only mine!"

There was something a little scary, almost something abnormal about the way he spoke to me. Of course, some bells should have started ringing in me, but they did not.

I think of him. I think about the meeting with him. I think about what happened today, and what I should do now. I think about what lies before me, and I think about who I was.

I was going home. I walked in the same streets as I did before. But the streets were not familiar any longer. I was a stranger in my life. I longed for home, but where is the home? I knew inside me that where I go from here is no longer home. I knew that home will be a different place now than before.

Home is where my thoughts are longing, home is where I crave. Home is not a place, home is a state of mind, home is the room where my heart lives. Home is where I find peace and am in balance within myself.

Last time I was with him, three days ago, before I left, we got a little into the big question. I'm sure we both think about it all the time, but we had not yet been able to talk about it properly. It had become a little difficult when I started talking about it.

"Have you talked to her?" I asked.

"No, there has been no occasion for that," he replied, "I do not want to talk to her too soon."

"And you," he asked, "have you already talked to him?"

"No, I did not."

"No? Then you did not say anything? Is it true that you haven’t said anything?"

He looked at me, gravely.

"No? So nothing has been said? It’s still all open?"

He sighed.

"Well, what do you think, shall we just go on like this, without knowing where we are, what we will do next?"

"No, dear," I said. "I didn’t mean it like that."

"That was not what I said. You know what I want. I have said that, and I think we should get clarity in this now. We can’t go on without clarity."

"Yes of course."

I nodded.

He smiled back at me, but there was no warmth in that smile.

"But if you said something to him, what did you tell him?"

"No," I said, "I did not. I have not been able to think so far yet, because it is a little difficult, it is simply a little difficult to talk to him. Honestly I do not know how to start a conversation with him on this subject."

He looked at me, serious now, but understanding.

"And you, what do you think you will tell her?" I asked.

"Well, I don’t know."

"Do you know how she will react?"

"No, I do not know, but I can imagine that she will sit on her high horse and will say something like this: "Ha! No surprise! That’s what I said, was it not that what I said? You do not need to mention it anymore, for this, I am fully aware of it, you have been doing it for a long time, right? I'm going to take my precautions. Yes, I have done it all, you must not believe that I will make it easy for you!"

He stopped. Looked at me.

"That’s how she is, a lot of talks, she speaks and says a lot. But I do not think she has the faintest idea. No, that’s impossible. I have been very careful."

"Okay." I smiled.

"Yes," he said, I'll talk to her. I promise I'll talk to her, and then you have to talk to him."

We kept on like this for quite some time with this conversation. It was a little special. It was almost a bit boring. This was clearly not one of our good conversations. It was a bit like it was the cat playing with the mouse. But who was a cat and who was a mouse, I'm not sure.

After a while he was variable in the mood, a little up and down, seemed annoyed. But also vulnerable, almost like a child when he said he could not live without me, and that he loved me so much.

In some situations it is best to keep quiet, I have found out. So I said nothing, waiting for more. I saw that it worked. He became a notch more like a child, whimpering, almost pitiful.

"I do not know if I can trust you either," he said.

It was a bait he put out. I did not take it, did not answer it. At first he was silent, then annoyed and talked a lot, and then angry. He hit the table with his fist: "You have to clarify this here. We can not have it like this!"

Eventually I got a slightly strange feeling in relation to the whole thing. I do not know if the impression I have is right. I thought he was as determined as I was, just as sure that this is a common goal for both of us. And then it turns out that he is very vague. But I cannot criticize him, because I myself have been very restrained and very vague. So therefore I cannot say anything against him for the same. Or can I? I can say of both of us that we have not gone wholeheartedly into this, and that we have been caught in a powerful intoxication of love, an intoxication of happiness; so in that sense it is understandable.

But all this makes me think again. Is it really so that it will be better for us together, he and I, that we get as good as we think? Who knows? - How old is the universe actually? What can we learn from the universe and everything that has happened before? And what about Lars - will he be so very easy to handle in a conflict? Not easy to say.

--

I meet him at home; she is traveling. He seems relaxed and confident that it is safe to be secretly together this day. I have my arms around him, I close my eyes, stand and enjoy this blink of an eye when time and the world out there have stopped.

I sit down on the couch near him. I lie down next to him. I close my eyes. I lie in the corner of his arm, let him hold me, I let this moment control my thoughts, I let his forehead rest lightly against his shoulder.

Without words between us, on the couch, he and I lie still. In the soft light I breathe calmly, I lie down and feel being closer.

He starts talking. His voice is tense. It’s like it’s a string that is stretched tight. He’s different than he usually is. It’s a little weird, but I do not think so much about it. Maybe there are things that he has struggled with?

He talks about his life, the life he has lived in recent years. Almost twenty years in this relationship with her, he says. Countless days and long years while he hoped that it would work out.

He tells about his life, like he has not told before. He speaks in a low voice, a string that is stretched tight. A few words, then pause and new coherent words, new, fast glimpses from a life lived.

He misses her respect, misses that she wants to be there, that she listens and is interested. He misses being able to safely rest together without having to beg for being close with her. He misses her gaze, her smile, he misses her coming to him, that she says she likes him, that she needed him, that she wanted to be his.

He says he has been living in the great need, the need sometimes called loneliness, the suffocating loneliness in the relationship of a couple when the silence has settled instead of bridges of words.

He becomes quiet, does not speak anymore. I see he's serious. He's thinking of something. I want to ask but I keep quiet.

He looks at me and unexpectedly he smiles and leans towards me. He puts his hand on my shoulder and wants to pull me towards him.

He has a different, strange smile on his face. It's something I have not seen before. I do not like it. I'm worried.

He says he wants me. There and now, he wants me.

He tells me he loves me above everything in the world. He bends over me. He’s holding me tight.

“No.”

I say no. I do not want him this way, but he insists.

"No, don’t!" I say. "No, don’t do this!"

"Oh, come on, now," he says, "don’t be shy, don’t deceive me."

I repeat: “No!” 

He says: "Oh, come on, now!" Again, several times I say no.

I'm trying to push him back, but he's strong. He holds his arms around me. He's stronger than me, he's bigger than me. I try to get up and stand on my feet. He lifts me up and carries me into the bedroom. He puts me to bed and holds me tight. He starts to pull my clothes off me. I resist. I try to hold on to my clothes. He's stronger than me. He pulls my clothes off me.

--

An hour later, or maybe more, I'm out on the street outside the block. I'm numb, completely outside of myself. I do not know anything, but it is as if a dam inside me is holding back a lot of pressure.

I have no exact memory of how I got here, but I'm standing in the street outside his block. I start walking down the street. I'm outside myself. I see myself from above. A human walking in the street, in a kind of foggy and blurry darkness.

Suddenly I get an insight, a clear vision. I see something I have not seen before. His slender, elegant body, his strong arms, the muscle play in his upper arm when he moves, when he leans forward and lifts the teacup up to his mouth.

He is a predator, a large feline that lies in the tall grass and watches over me. He is a predator that has discovered me, that has sprung up and taken me. He is a dangerous creature who holds me tight and throws me up in the air and lets me fall to the ground a little beyond him, before he jumps on me again and takes me by the jaws of the predator and holds me in a steel grip.

I have understood it. He sits in the bushes and watches over me, he plays with me, he plays with my feelings. He manipulates me, he tricks me.

I suddenly see his gaze before me. He has a gaze, he has many glances that are not normal, he has glances that reveal a disturbed mind behind the gaze. I suddenly feel empty, powerless, insecure. I feel the panic in me - I do not know where I have him. I realize that; he is someone, a completely different one than I have thought, a person I have not seen before.

I'm starting to realize it now, I was an easy prey, and he had seen it from the beginning. I should have run away right away! If he had not had such control over me, I should have traveled far, far away from him a long time ago. I should have realized earlier that I was a homeless refugee.

How long has it been now? Many months, maybe over a year? That's how I feel about myself. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I have let him force my mind voluntarily with all those lies and manipulation. And there is one thing I have learned: When I am in the clutches of him, I do not have my own will. Then I am completely and utterly captive.

--

I see it now in retrospect, a little at a distance, in a new light. He's been playing a game with me. But maybe I played with him too. I can be just as 'guilty' of this as he is.

I do not like the word 'guilty'. We have both done this. What has happened has happened, and we have both done our part. We both have a responsibility.

But by the way - no. I will not be too kind. I'll stop thinking 'kindly' about him! I get a flashback, an episode, a situation where we talked about something completely trivial, and I said what I thought. It was in connection with eating that he had said something very strange, that he knew that he could harm people who connected with him. I said, "No, I do not believe in that at all. No - should you be able to harm someone you love - no I will not believe it!"

I remember his reaction well, because it was so unexpected.

"Puh!" he said. It was almost as if he was saying, 'Just wait and see!'

He almost laughed at me, because he thought what I had said was so foolish. And he had a very special look, a look that said: "I know what you're thinking now. I know you're hiding something, and I know what it is.

He hit me in the middle of my stomach with that look. His reaction, the mentally ill mind that lay outside him, planted a need in me to crawl back, into myself, and hide there. It was a chaos inside me, because I basically had nothing to hide. When we had this conversation, I did not think at all that there could be anything true in those words. But now I felt myself freezing down my back.

--

When I think of it this way, it gets easier. Suddenly it gets easier, because I see myself. I see myself standing upright, I see that I can stand alone, in front of me I see a person who is independent of everyone else. I'm not dependent on anyone to keep me up. I keep myself up.

It's something that happens fast. I suddenly get a feeling, suddenly a thought. An unexpected insight. I see it is clear, I see clearly that I have failed - in this period, the last few months, I have forgotten to hold on to the image I have always had of who I am. I know it, and I say it to myself: I will manage, I will be here for myself, for I am - and I will always - be faithful to myself.

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About the Creator

Øivind H. Solheim

Novel author, lifelong learner and nature photographer: Poetry, short stories, personal essays, articles and stories on nature, hiking, physical and mental health, living in relationships, love, and future. “Make Your Dream Be Your Future​”

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