This is probably something that many of us in similar situations will probably never admit, but I will for the sake of disclosure, so that my readers will better understand me. My parents really didn't love each other, both of them used to love someone else. I believe that to be the reason that I was left with a sense of emptiness all my life. They stayed together some 12 years until they decided to get a divorce and go their separate ways. My sisters and brothers, we all became "collateral damage" as a result of the divorce. Left with this aunt and that uncle, this grandmother and that grandmother, until everyone tried of having us around.
I use to tell myself, I would never get married because I didn't want to feel the depth of a greater emptiness still, if my wife ever left me. There is something very cynical and evil about rejection. I can't explain it, but there is no medicine that can cure it when you have it, so you learn to live with it. I followed my heart one day, grew to love someone and got married to what I thought was a beautiful woman and person. Mind you, she was beautiful, but as a person, her selfishness was simply astounding, beyond anything I could have ever imagined or predicted. She didn't reciprocate her love or things. She didn't share herself with me, and I was her husband. It's like I got married, but a wife didn't come with the marriage! The beauty was physical, but the attitude was real and superficial. Nothing genuine about her, not even pretending to like me, just what I could give her. Just take, take, take, no give me some of your time, your love, your humanity. I could only attribute in hindsight, that her childhood must have been one of many challenges and hardships, because she was a shell of a woman and a wife without emotions. Could I have been that drunk with love, to not notice the single mindedness of our relationship? Gosh only knows, but soon enough I found out after I got married that my wife was in love with someone else and I had financed his university education and his living expenses over our four year courtship. Can you imagine what's it like being married to someone and yet there is no empathy, compassion, affection or consideration for you from your wife? It's like being with a roommate who doesn't even acknowledge that you are in the same room with them. What a shallow feeling and existence.
As expected, the depths of emptiness, drowned me in darkness. A darkness in which my eyes were wide open, but I still couldn't see. I should have seen all the red flags and warnings before we got married, but I was so in love with her, that I hadn't even notice that I, as a person had changed. I had become the pawn that she was looking for and gave her most of the things she asked for and what I didn't give to her, I put on "layaway," that is, I promised that we would get those things, whatever they were later, because for now, I felt we needed to spend more time bonding with each other and less time working so hard to pay for the things we already had. Little did I realize that she was building her life with someone else on the side and me, boy oh boy, how blind you are when you are in love with someone-you're lucky if you can see the world around you sometimes, because all your energy and attention is on the one you love. So, a lot of things got by me and I missed out on most of the signals your family and friends tell you about, thinking, oh no, that doesn't apply to "my wife," because "she's special, she's my wife!"
Then, one day the pain that you harbour, mimics a heart attack and you finally admit to yourself that you have no desire to leave the relationship because of the shame associated with failure and rejection and besides, where else are you going to find someone who makes you feel the way she does, or the way, you imagined she would before you married. So, I persisted for years until the blatant disrespect for marriage took its toil and she filed for divorce. When the divorce papers arrived, it was like tearing the skin from a fresh wound. Up until then I suffered alone and keep my pain personal and to myself, but the divorce papers, woke me up to the depth of my pain. The depth was deeper than any ocean or any sky. The pain of rejection, failure and outright disrespect for the sacredness of marriage, left a void within me that numbed my heart and I could no longer feel its beats. Like most of us, I continued to follow my heart and it lead me to the "slaughterhouse of deceit." My heart fooled me, and my emotions ran empty, leaving me a shell of a man. So, here I stand alone in a world of strangers once again. A skeleton of the man I use to be and absent of the person, I am to become.
I guess everything happens for a reason, or at least that is what we are supposed to tell ourselves, huh? So, what have I learned from this experience? What was the reason of it all? Hmmm, let's see...Well, I've learned that people oftentimes make excuses for being together. We're together because of this or that, the income, the kids, the things they own, etc., and one day when one or the other tires of the excuses, one of them, the other, or both of them, make up their minds and say to the other, no more excuses and part ways. Through it all, I've come to realize that it's not in the departure that paralyzes you, but the thoughts of the relationship ending and having to start over with or without someone else in your life.
"What is love, but the acceptance of what we feel to be emotional, even in the absence of reciprocity. Love is nothing more than trust unveiled" Curthom
No comments:
Post a Comment