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Rolf was still unwell so I took over the postal directive. Every time the head of Postkom had a meeting, he would call and update me. He was visiting several of Labour’s county branches prior to their annual conferences to fan the flames of opposition. If they subsequently voted against the directive, he would visit them again or call to find out which arguments had won the day. He would then pass that information on to me. Thus he spent his days travelling and on the phone, and from his iPhone he commented on my ideas for the petition and one cold January day it was ready. I posted the petition on www.postdirektivet.no and less than an hour later the signatures started pouring in. I checked several times a day and every time there were new names, on some days several hundred, the bush telegraph, I thought, it’s spreading like wildfire, there’s a good reason for these clichés, from now on I wouldn’t ridicule them unless they were being used as empty phrases, not if they were meant sincerely. To say what you mean, that’s what it’s all about! The first thing I did when I got up in the morning was to visit www.postdirektivet.no and check and every day there would be more, and the January darkness was no longer quite so dark and the cold loosened its grip and the queue of traffic on Mosseveien wasn’t as slow as usual, and who knew perhaps opponents of the postal directive were inside those cars.
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I took the copy of the letter, thanked him, bowed and promised to stand my ground. The taxi arrived with Kai behind the wheel, in my hotel room I read the letter again. Self-acceptance, was that what I was struggling with, was that what I was longing for? To accept myself as I truly was, my childhood, my story, my mum, my sister, my job history, my shortcomings and my apathy, the whole package. And that was just for starters. And then take responsibility for myself and my actions and my growth. Not blame them on external circumstances, though these obviously played a part. Not blame society, though it obviously provided the framework for my activities and my being, I had choices, the choices were queuing up from when I got up in the morning till I went to bed at night, I had a choice right now whether or not to call Stein and tell him about Helga Brun.
I stood by the window in my hotel room and convinced myself that behind the storm, which was brewing outside, I could make out Mount Bæskades, while I reassessed my own story which I hadn’t understood was unbearable until Dag died. At that point I had already discovered my old diary from 2000 and was teetering on the edge, then Dag died and nudged me, I fell and I hurt myself, but I got up again and now I was here. A mere mortal, but perhaps that was enough? Might life be a serious business that required something of you, a daunting enterprise? The thought, however, wasn’t oppressive but liberating because it’s good to have a purpose, to be given a purpose, it’s a declaration of trust because you don’t entrust a task to someone you don’t respect. It was almost as if I, too, was standing on the bottom step of a dark basement staircase and could see dawn creep under the door at the top, and I was filled with great faith that I would make it all the way up and step out into the bright ground floor.
‘I feel as if my life is too banal for my despair. That our relationship is too trivial and not passionate enough for our despair. What do we do with our despair if our lives are too small to contain it? Deny our despair and ignore our beating hearts, remain at odds with ourselves and fight ourselves, or accept that there’s so much we’ll never understand intellectually and try to live with things which don’t add up, that what’s most important might be something we can only just sense, and teach our brains to illuminate our hearts and help us live with contradictions that can’t be cancelled out and become open to the idea that being a mere mortal is enough, more than enough in most respects, and once we’re alive, try to live with gratitude and passion rather than shame and paralysis.’
I stopped, I felt the kind of relief you experience after you have thrown up.
I continued making calls into the evening and had an epiphany like Rudolf Karena Hansen had when he started looking for Helga Brun. I gained an understanding of situations I previously hadn’t known about, I heard stories about people I wouldn’t otherwise have heard, I saw connections where I had never seen connections before, and I almost felt I belonged.
[...] Rolf then texted that the time was now, but that a young woman from Akershus was speaking to second a motion from Rogaland to reject the postal directive. The postal directive had been a central issue at the annual party conference, she said, so the conference ought to have its say. Besides, she was angry at how the party leadership had shamelessly tried to influence the party’s highest body in an undignified, reprehensible and underhand way and had spoiled the ball for everyone!
The hall erupted in applause, Rolf wrote, I heard it, and people hadn’t stopped clapping when a middle-aged woman from Rogaland took the floor and said that the last speaker had her full support and that she was even angrier with the party leadership for putting pressure on people and behaving in an embarrassing way, and especially for ruining the ball. It hadn’t been as much fun as it usually was! More applause followed, then it was time to vote, and the motion from Rogaland to reject the postal directive was passed by 181 out of 300 votes, it was incredible.
That was my first big construction job ever. I didn’t even know that when huge excavators swing, they got a counterweight that’s wider than the tracks. So these guys would grab me and be like, “Yo, motherfucker,” when this thing would swing around. I came off a fucking ranch into that. I didn’t think about this much at the time, but it’s with me now still after working in all these different places: we all made the same money on the check, every one of us. Our straw boss made an hour a day or two hours a day more, maybe, but not much. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. They pushed me, probed me, gave me shit, busted my balls, taught me shit. But none of those guys ever bitched about making the same money that I made. One way the work crew would bring everybody on board was by getting a 12-pack for the drive back to the yard (remembering it’s a hundred-mile job). We’d be drinking in this company rig, and they’d make everyone split the empties and put them in their lunchboxes. Nobody’s snitching and getting out. Everybody’s disposing of the evidence together.
What I learned from all this was, despite shitty contracts, it really comes down to how organized you are on the job. I didn’t even read a contract till 2022, honestly. You looked around, sized people up, and if those fools were down, and we were savvy about it, we could push things further. That is how you get conditions and maintain them. I first learned this principle on pipeline spreads. I didn’t like the United Association (UA) – still don’t. But one thing they were really solid on was respect. They would drop their tools and respect a righteous beef. When we had a problem, those guys would hear what it was and roll as a unit. Suddenly, you’re having a way bigger ripple effect and shutting down way more of the job. Now, it’s not only the laborers not doing shit, it’s the welders too – ain’t nothing happening. The willingness of those guys, even if they were pricks in a lot of personal ways, to back shit up if there was actual beef gave us way more strength on those jobs than what our contract said.
Marshall and I found a bench on the sidewalk, old and abandoned. We brought it home, where I sprayed it with Simple Green until it was almost white, then tied two blue-patterned cushions to it.Seven years of marriage and our home is coming together in bits and pieces like the bench, or the curtains I sewed even though I can’t really sew. At the same time, it is all falling apart, in monstrous, heavy clumps. An avalanche. A tidal wave. I don’t know how much is left to rebuild.
Before Marshall fled the house tonight, before I began pacing, before I drank the wine, we sat on the porch. He stared at me, waiting for signs of life. I sat hunched on the new bench, staring at the floorboards. It had been days since we’d spoken to one another, except for me saying, “I’m having trouble being in this house with you,” and “I can’t talk. You won’t like what I have to say.” So we stayed silent instead.
But tonight he sat on the rocking chair next to the bench. The breeze that blew between us was warm. And I thought about how it couldn’t have been a more perfect summer night if it weren’t for this rot between us. He stared at me until I had to look at him.
There is no right or easy or good way to say that maybe you don’t want to be married. So I spit out tiny fragments of sentences followed by quiet sobs and shallow breaths that rattled in my chest. I talked about being a better parent when I’m alone, about disappointment, about resentments that have been coming and going then jolting me so hard that I know, at least in that moment, I’ve given up.
relatable
When the kids are sleeping, we sit and stare at each other again, this time from different chairs in the living room. I say that deep down, I think it makes sense to separate, but I don’t want to because it’s too horrible. I say I won’t let myself be unhappy for years upon years either. If something, or everything doesn’t change, I have to end it and we have to find a way to go on living. I make him promise that he won’t fall apart completely, that he will be there for the kids. He puts his head in his hands and nods. “I know, I know,” he says.
“Maybe we can go back to therapy?” I suggest, and he likes this idea. I say that I’m not sure it will help because I’ve already told him everything I know. I’ve already cried and begged for a marriage that works and for fleeting moments, when I’ve unloaded all I can, it does. But then he forgets to call again. And I’m slamming the oven door, putting his cold dinner back in, and taking the kids up to bed alone. I’m screaming into the phone when his voicemail picks up, but never leaving a message. He looks at his phone instead of looking at my face, a tiny act that is not meant to cut me. But it does. And then, without my even noticing, everything falls back into its misplaced place. It always reverts, and part of me knows it will keep reverting until it’s so ingrained that all I can remember about my life is how to be someone’s angry wife.