He was distant and cold for so long, that I couldn’t even look at him without feeling annoyed. I guess, I missed the old us, the couple who did things which were weird for others. He was always the positive one whereas I brought a bit of pessimism.
He used to do things spontaneously, I miss my crazy husband. We used to keep a list of stuffs, we will be doing. We had this ritual of celebration (after achieving a target in the list), in which we used to cook and drink a lot of liquor, and dance till we fall asleep. There was this silly idea that we had last year. We had just finished renovating our home and he just popped on idea of having a huge chandelier in the living room. We started planning and working to get this huge ugly chandelier. It is so ridiculous; you just end up shutting your eyes after turning it on. We had to get a few more lights fixed, so that we would not have to sit in the dark. He was and is perfect in every way. My sunshine, he is. We have been fighting a lot. A senseless fight always breaks you inside out. Understanding has taken a way to the lost world. Wandering emotionally, we started keeping things to ourselves.
Now I am sitting on a chair with the lights off, waiting for him to wish our 5year anniversary. These five years, we have grown together. For the last few months, we have been growing apart. I am here wishing to fix everything. I planned a surprise for him, I even brought his favorite scotch. I cleared out the living room, decorated it with candles all around, and cooked his favorite food which he hasn’t been demanding for lately. It took me a month to realize, this is the moment, we need to change things. We needed to be “us”. Those warm cuddles which used to snooze me fast. Fighting for the remote, yes! We all have been there “the famous remote fight”. I feel so left out when he comes and doesn’t pay attention to anything.
And now someone rang the doorbell, I checked, it was him. I said “wait, coming!”. My heart is racing faster than usual. I opened the door, he was flushed and drunk. All I could smell was the scent of the liquor coming out of him. I let him in. As he was going to the room, I called out to him, and stopped him, grabbing his hand, I took him to the living room. The lack of care was absolutely shattering to me. As if he lost himself, but I didn’t want to crib this time. As soon as I turned on the lights, there his voice picked a tone saying “let me go to my room, I am tired. Please”. I just wanted to see him smile and all I got was a staggering walk and squinting eyes. It was breaking me apart, “he” was breaking me apart. I said “Happy anniversary”. He asked quickly “what’s happy about that? And you know what the answer is you, I want you to be happy. But I can’t keep you and that’s a feeling I hate. I know I haven’t been doing the things according to you. I am just that all these promises I made, I couldn’t keep up to it. The worst part is I cry over things, the things which made me “me”. Now it’s all money and growing up. If that’s what grown up people do, I don’t want to do it. Imagining my life doing this stuff is monotonous and its killing my energy, its killing “me”. I wanted to be happy instead I am going the opposite way. I remembered our anniversary and I couldn’t even gather that much energy to wish you. All this decoration is only making me realize how terrible I am at being a husband and how wonderful you are, even after the things between us, you made the efforts. I am stumped with the fact that I have to go tomorrow and work and then do this infinitely.” He hugged me and said “I forgot how good you smell”.
I grabbed his hand and said “Sorry for not being there for you. Sorry I couldn’t be happy. Sorry for not sharing. But I am not sorry for being your wife. I also want you to be happy. If you don’t want to do this job, we will try for some other. We will have the life we wanted together. Suffering alone was never in our list remember”.
He smiled. He finally did smile. It was the best anniversary ever. We ended up sorting out all the problems we were facing at that time. And our list keeps on adding but there is no frustration. We like to keep it as a memory of our silly ideas.