A Love Note

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A Love Note

By Elin Renck

A Love Note

 

A LOVE NOTE A LOVE NOTE A LOVE NOTE A LOVE NOTE A LOVE NOTE A LOVE NOTE

 

In my youth I used to believe that love should sting, burn and hurt to be real. As if the amount of tears I had shed symbolized the truthfulness of love. I remember all the bright summer nights when I and the boy of the moment got into a taxi together in front of some Swedish hamburger bar, as seagulls shrieked above the street.There, in the car with no seat belts on, with red swollen eyes we’d become close again and whisper softly, my place or yours? All of that because one had too great expectations of the other earlier in the night. The kind of love where you said never again more times than I love you. But then you’re there with your dirty fingers picking in the wound, even though you know it only leads to ugly scars. But those scars have been the map that lead me to the love I have today, to he who is half of the best thing I have ever made. So I can’t feel anything but gratitude for all those times I thought I was gonna die from an unanswered text message.

So how did I know it was different this time? What was it exactly with this man I found one late night in a loud bar, that actually made me leave everything and move to the other side of the Atlantic? To a city that wasn’t mine? Any skeptic would coldly answer my question, with something about how quickly I got pregnant.

Which I did, but that’s not the truth of it. In simple terms, I got pregnant because he was The one. Not only because what I felt about him, but also for how he made me feel about myself. And afterwards I understood I needed this long chain of hurtful relationships to understand what the real, abyss deep love feels like. Wisdom comes from experience, and I can only describe it as luck that made us find each other after all the bad runs.

But now, five years and three kids later, we are right in the middle of the exhausting toddler years, and maybe it’s time for a parents counseling meeting. Are we holding up under pressure and are we hitting all our targets? I would be lying if I said we are checking all the boxes, but we are checking the right ones. And he is still the person who’s scent I want to inhale so hard that my lungs tear at the seams. He’s the father of my children and always buys the kinds of candy I like. He´s the guy that can send me emoji rebuses from halfway around the world to make me blush. I have, together with him, learned new things about the world and about myself, and being with him has made me grow so much that I can actually laugh out loud at my own jokes.

And even through the terrible twos and the sleepless nights with involuntary celibacy, we have a level of comfort and intimacy that I didn’t think could exist with another human being. So, the answer to my own question, with reagards of how I knew it was different this time, was always very clear: for the first time I have a love with the highest stakes, but without the pain and uncertainty. The feeling that nothing else matters except us, remains when it’s him and me riding in that taxi together on a summer night. My heart beats, burns, and bursts with love, but it never ever hurts.

 

A Love Note
A Love Note
A Love Note
A Love Note
A Love Note

 

Photo: Linda Alfvegren/Agent Bauer

Hair & Makeup: Alexandra Aronsson/Agent Bauer

Styling: Louise Rizell

 

Published November 7, 2018

Carola · 5 years ago
❤️

Diana · 5 years ago
Var är de fina skorna med kork ifrån?

Lina · 5 years ago
Fan va fint. Poesi! På riktigt!