Reflections!

Reflections!

I look in the mirror and the reflection I see is that of a woman who has endured. My once young face has gone the way of all things. I have battled and sometimes I have even won but more often than not I’ve lost. I started out a free spirit and ended up a prisoner in my own mind. I wonder how my journey has brought me to this place.

It started with him…the man who was supposed to cherish me! The man I married with such hope for our future. Where did it all go wrong? I can’t believe it is possible to love a man more than I loved him and I foolishly thought he loved me. No, more than that, I thought he adored me. He showered me with every gift that seemed so carefully chosen. Not for him the last minute present that required no thought. No hastily bought bunches of flowers. No ostentatious boxes of chocolates. No, every item, every gift, had some special significance to me or to us. We were each other’s world. Nothing existed beyond our love.

Although we had many friends we didn’t need anyone only each other. Yes, sure we liked to be in the company of others, of friends, but we didn’t actually need anybody. We were totally fulfilled in each other’s company. Sometimes we lived almost like hermits, going for days without seeing or wanting to see anyone. We would stay in our apartment talking, laughing, cooking meals, making love and just simply sharing our lives. It was idyllic. It was short lived!

We were happy for five years before things started to change, to erode. Five years before the cracks started to appear, slowly at first but then they started to gain momentum…careering in a headlong rush towards destruction. Yes, we were moving towards an almighty catastrophe and I was powerless to stop it. I tried, yes I really, really tried but it takes two and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, coming from him.

The first time I thought something was wrong was when he forgot my birthday. That was so unlike him. Not even a card. Nothing! He never even wished me happy birthday. He came home from work late that night and he seemed very distracted so I thought that was the problem…why he had forgotten my birthday. He was having problems at work. Yes, that must be it so I tried to talk to him to get him to share his burden but no…he wouldn’t be drawn. Then it became more frequent… this working late and he always seemed pre-occupied as if there was something else going on in his life. I soon found out there was.

One day he said he wasn’t going to work and when I asked why he just shrugged and said he didn’t feel like it. Then when he did go back to work he came home one evening and told me he was leaving me. I begged, I pleaded, I said I would do anything if only he would stay. I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

He said he would stay but he had met someone else and if I wanted him then he wanted her to move in. I was struck dumb but I loved him so I agreed. She moved in the following weekend and by that time he had moved out of our bedroom. She took the only remaining bedroom but I could hear her moving about in his room at night. They would talk in whispers and sometimes I could hear him give a little laugh at something she had said. I had long since lost the power to make him laugh and I was eaten up with jealousy.

I was jealous of their intimacy…the intimacy that I felt belonged to me but that she had usurped. I felt bitter. I felt betrayed. I felt angry. But I endured. He was still living in the apartment and I made myself accept the situation because I knew that was the only way I would keep him living in the place that had once been our love nest. I hated myself for putting up with the situation. I felt weak, inadequate, that I had no self respect, no pride. But I still had him even if it was only a half share. Actually, it was less than that because he spent all his time with her. She even took his meals in to his room. Not that he seemed to eat very much living on this new love of his as I would see his plate in the kitchen and it often looked as if it had barely been touched.

There was something about this woman I couldn’t quite put my finger on and she definitely resented me. She guarded the door to his room as if her life depended on it. I was slowly but inexorably being pushed out of his life while she was propelling herself into it. Then one day I came home from work and she was out.

I walked into his bedroom and I saw why she was there. He was dying. He had tried to protect me from seeing him like this but he shouldn’t have because now my love had morphed in to ice cold fury because he had wasted his last few months spending more time with her than with me. He begged me to leave before she came back, so I did, but two nights later he died, with her at his bedside. It should have been me…sitting there. I was his wife. I hated her for being in what was rightfully my place. She had fallen asleep in the chair by his bed so it was easy. I plunged the loaded syringe into her and I knew she would not be waking up.

Now, looking back at me from the cracked and dirty mirror so thoughtfully provided by the previous occupant of this cell was the face of a woman who had suffered, who had endured but who, ultimately, had lost.

End