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On a gray Sunday morning, I walk north on Nybrogatan, and on the sidewalk in front of one of the heavily intoxicated outdoor cafes I meet a young couple, in their early thirties, she with a baby in her arms, him maneuvering a vomiting umbrella stroller, and for the second we meet, dad burns. face and stay.
Get me out of here, he seems to be thinking. Anywhere, but not here.
They’re on their way somewhere, a fresh air activity, a butterfly house or a game in the park, or a rested grandpa, and he really doesn’t want to. And it torments him. You should be ashamed of yourself. I do not understand.
I’m here because I wanted it myself, he thinks. I come here with my girl who I love and we have gone through many difficulties, as you do and should do. There have been a thousand times when I could have backed down, but I haven’t. And my little girl got pregnant and we were happy about it and I went to daddy’s classes and comforted her when she wasn’t feeling well, and I got all the food she was hungry and I lay next to her on the bed and looked up at the ceiling and we babble names, and we reject. the suggestions of others with that slight pressure of hilarity and spoke of the associations that evoked the names.
Then the kid came and it was a joy, and an endless row of weekdays and puzzles and screaming nights and groups of parents and dinners with polar bears who have children of the same age and it was relaxed and welcoming and everyone got tired early and they ducked in overalls and gloves into the hall. before they finally got home.
And he doesn’t understand why he just wants to get away from all the shit.
He hopes that his girl shouldn’t notice anything and therefore he overcompensates and tries to carry on a quick conversation, and if she sees through him and sees his discouragement, he feels guilty and gets naughty and then gives him a bad conscience for that, and if she doesn’t see through him and must be at peace with his discouragement, he feels lonelier than ever and wanders further and further away on his ice floe.
It feels existentially incomprehensible. Yes, incompetent. This is not a situation in life where there is room for deep ambivalence. Or ambivalence … If only it were so. Ambivalence is synonymous with division, right? Which would mean that with some of himself he looks forward to this Sunday off with the family, and with others he doesn’t.
But he just wants to get out of here, more and more for each step, for each curb that that damn umbrella car has to climb. And the stronger the intuition grows in him, the more he must try to hide it.
So he tries get away from her. Where would you rather be then? He wonders rhetorically. If you were allowed to choose freely. Would you like to go on a “trip”? Or sitting in a bar with a misty bear and not having to think about anyone but yourself? You know you can have it. At any time, you could express this wish to your girl and she would understand you. You could say that now is too much. Is it okay if I go out tonight for a few hours? And she would say of course it’s okay. So you can go and sit in that bar, and you know it’s time soon its Treat yourself to the same thing, a lonely evening without having to think about the children or the counter, but that is only correct, because you live in an equal relationship and you don’t want it any other way.
But you know as well as I do that when you sit in that bar and pick up your pocket book or watch a Premier League halabaloo on the big screen, that sense of nonsense arises. And it forces your Guinness to deafen the realization that this is not what you need. You will go home on the empty sidewalk on Sunday and know that nothing has changed.
The question remains: are you where you want to be. You’ve had a thousand chances to get out of this, but you haven’t. So why do you want to be away from here?
Or was he thinking of something completely different.
Read more texts by Bengt Ohlsson
