As I listen to my friend tell me the lows in her relationship that she is even afraid to admit to herself, my brain runs in a million different directions on what I should say, how to comfort her, to empathise. I tell her I understand what she is telling me, but in reality I can only imagine. I have no idea what is going on or the circumstances that led her to this position in her life.
How does one feel when you are eight months pregnant, and 2 year old toddler driving her crazy with a husband that decides that he no longer loves you and wants you to leave, after you gave up everything for him and the faith in your love? Me, like you had no idea what to say to possibly make this any easier for her or help her make sense of it. So all I do is tell her I love her so much and I am here for her, for whatever she needs.
Typically of me I start imagining this situation and what I would do if it were me. I found it easy to tell her that if the man wanted you to leave, just go. Go back home to your loved ones who always have no choice but to take you back. But how is that possible? If you fought the whole family who didn't think he was good for you but you decided you knew him better, decided your parents, cousins and everyone were just jealous and didn't want to see you happy. How do you then face them again to tell them they were right and you were sorry? Not easy but its the only way. It reminds me of the Indian movie Yaadein, when the father tells his orphaned daughters that they can marry whomever they please, but they will afford the part in choosing the family they marry into. Why? They ask? He replies that when you get married, wife is not the only title you get, you become the daughter in law, aunt, sister in law et al. All these relationships will at one point or another affect your life.
My question becomes, how do you get to this place? It cannot be just one thing. It has to be a million little things. The little digs. The unsaid things. The thoughts you secretly keep. The others outside showing that you can do better. It is the marriage. It is the kids. It is money. Responsibility. It's all the things you say and don't say to each other. Is it fair to say that he has changed, that the money he is making is going to his head yet you held him down when he had nothing? What is her play in this? She assures me that she is not to blame and that she has remained the same person she has always been, the woman he fell in love with. Yet I try to make her see her part in this mess something she cannot see at all. We are always blinded by what we do and unaware how our actions affect others. How do you let someone go at the time in your life when you need them the most, someone that you would give your soul to keep?
Dear friend of Sabs)
ReplyDeleteLife is full of confusions ... life is a roller coaster ride. Ultimately, i've come to figure that, sometimes, we do the things we do not because we are sure, but because if we do not do them, life will pass by anyhow, with time, you will notice that the skin on your face starts to sag, one cannot stay awake too long, the things that thrilled you at one point do not have the same effect... and many more to signify that the time you have spent on this earth has been long enough...
It is during that time, when you are at the end of the line, that you will look back and admire your courage to have just taken the leap...when the opportunity had presented itself, and accept that the end just happened right how it should have. So for now, just fight as hard as you can, and take life as it comes..