This morning, when i completed my first shift and then finished cooking breakfast and lunch, for a moment i thought I was resting after a 5 hour whirlwind. But no, it was a low point. For a second it seemed as if all the gloominess in the world decended on me at once. The house was dusty and I’m lying on that bed scared of thinking about the next moment. I wished it was the end.
And then somehow, i pulled myself together, got ready and reached office. My laptop took forever to load and I was counting every single minute. I was desperate and have been banging my head. Then in those 20 minutes of nothing, my brain again found a way out. It went on wandering again like it always does and these thoughts followed.
I started thinking about how we started living together and how every single thing had been an issue between us and how we fought about everything. How I hated the way you spoke, the way you acted, the way you thought cooking and household duties were all my job while you lazed around and the way you tried to manipulate your way around things with your words. In the beginning, while i gave in to the thing called lust, as time passed by, i realised that there is no more depth in our equation. Even if we didn’t speak, even if we didn’t kiss or hug each other, even if we couldn’t be affectionate towards each other, even if i was raging with anger, and even if i expressed utter discomfort towards your body odours and sweat, even if we are emotionally miles apart, it was all okay with you as long as we performed sexual activities. You seemed to be okay with that arrangement while it felt so wrong to me. The fact that we don’t relate with each other about anything in life isn’t a big issue to you but it is to me.
Eventually, my mental and emotional happiness became high priority things to me when compared to the hunger my body has and I’m no longer interested in doing anything with you. From a human being with feelings, you became nothing to me. Gradually, your feelings or opinions didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered to me was me and my happiness. I became this terrible person that I never thought i would ever be. I used to get angry and emotional about everything. And once the anger bouts subsided, i was engulfed in guilt and blamed myself for everything. You anyways blamed me for everything that happened between us and slowly, i too started blaming myself and lived a toxic life where i hated my own existence. It felt as if i ruined your life when the fact is that we both are responsible for what happened to us. We too are so incompatible that no matter what, our differences in thoughts, attitudes and expectations from life, are never going to end. We will have these conflicts forever and the realisation of this fact pushed me towards an emotional trauma that I never even imagined.
And adding fuel to the fire, my hormones started playing with me. PCOS hit me hard. For a while, i didn’t even know it was PCOS. I was suffering from this unbearable pain and was bleeding continuously day in and day out for months. While continous bleeding was making my body weak, there were moments when I considered death a better option than bearing that pain. All those sleepless nights bearing physical pain and utter discomfort were just one side of the coin where the pain of having to live with an individual with whom you cannot share your mind and heart with, is the other side to the problem.
Adding to these are the pressures of running a household entirely on my own. Never before did i have to bear the entire living expenses on my own. Prior to this stint, i never even had the compulsion to do the job. I never worried about the what-if i lost the job today scenario. I was always confident that if i ever lost my job, then I would take a break and find a new job. But this is no longer an option to me. I will have to move back with the in-laws if I don’t have the job. The pressure was huge and it took quite a while to get used to it. More than the pressure, the fact that you didn’t even bother to check about how I’m dealing with it all on my own, surprised me. I know that you had your financial commitments towards your family, but still, there wasn’t even any kind of emotional support from you while I was doing it all on my own untill I asked you to do the minimal. To this day, it is 90:10 is what you share. While I was spending away everything i earn, you get to save all of it! How fair!
Sure, it did push me towards better financial planning and better money management techniques but in the process it ruined my confidence and destroyed me to my core. The fact that I don’t have any emergency funds and that I’m just one paycheck away from ruins, didn’t do me any good. I developed mental health issues like depression and anxiety all the while battling with physical health issues for which I had to rely on my Dad for my medical bills. For a girl who never took a rupee from Dad ever since I started working, it was devastating.
One more development in this period is that i lost whatever little interest i had about having kids of my own. It is true that i was always scared of having kids. But i never set a definite rule to myself that I will never have kids. I always thought, I’m afraid about the entire situation right now, but maybe with the right man, i will be willing to go for it. With you, i couldn’t trust you enough to even share my words and thoughts. How would I be able to trust you with a huge responsibility like kids? Moreover, I didn’t want to raise any kid who might inherit your qualities or characteristics. I’m better off childless than doing that. Thanks to the PCOS related pain and my conflicts with you, I’m now done even with the thought of having kids. I’m scared to death of the pain that i faced in those days. If there is anything that I would call as facing consequences, i would call this mine.
At that time, i never really understood the intensity of what’s happening with me and i doubt if you even had a clue of my mental state. I bet you know that I’m suffering physically, but still had no idea about the intensity of the pain I’m in. I tried explaining things to you but like every other time, it was all wasted effort as you would never understand whatever i tried explaining you. You somehow thought I was always giving excuses. There are numerous times when i tried to explain and reach out but all in vain. And then there are times when i struggled to give any logical reasons and only answered with an “I don’t know”. Whatever little i understood, I always tried to explain you. Infact you were always the first person explained and whenever I did that, you always took it in the wrong meaning. You either panicked or went on zombie mute mode and both of these led to more fights. I now wish there was atleast one normal and pleasant conversation between us. But sadly, there were none. There is not a single memory with you, that i want to treasure.
And then emotional blackmail and public humiliations started. Living this life is itself hell but it is nothing compared to the pain it caused while explaining it to others. Every single time i explained someone, it killed me a little bit. Sadness gradually took over every other aspect of my life. Every word i speak is followed by tears. There is no single moment when i didn’t wish for death. Hell, i even researched death. You know, though painful, it is just too easy for me to die. I practically shut myself out of everybody’s life that no one would even realise that I’m missing untill a couple of days atleast.
The kind of pain your body goes through when you have physical pain is nothing compared to the mental one. You look alright on the outer and no one would even understand what you are going through. When you smile for the world, you die every moment on the inside.
The fact that people, the so called elders forced me into live with you again, is killing me. Even the thought of you coming home tonight, is making me panic. I really want to lock myself in and not open the door. But that would be too cruel, wouldn’t it be! The fact that i will have to live this lie again, is killing me again and again. Now, every moment, i wish I’m dead. That is why i wanted to take an insurance policy. I’m not going to take my life but i wish i die somehow in an accident or something. Like they say, when you really want something, the whole universe conspires into getting it done. I just wish for my death to come find me soon.
And when i think like this, there is this little part of me that dies every moment because I became so selfish that all i can think about is death. Don’t i care about what happens to my parents and to my sister when i die? Will they be able to survive the storm i put them in? And more than anything, is this all to my life? I did nothing. I achieved nothing. Didn’t do a thing to make my parents proud. Didn’t make this life worth remembering. Am i really ready to conclude this life leaving it worthy of nothing? When i think about all of these and my little sister, tears just don’t end. How useless my birth would be after taking my own life!
I’m just struggling to decide. To live or not to. And this moment, i wish I was dead. But the next moment when Mum or Dad or Chinnu talk, i want to rewrite my life. I wish there is an easy road.
