When someone starts talking to me about their marriage or boyfriend, or even when I see as much as a mention of a relationship whether on social medial or even movies, it has begun to deeply disturb me. It leaves me wondering why, if relationships are so commonplace, have I not been able to be in one. Invariably leading me to wonder whether I am unworthy of love and respect.
This is a very dangerous line of thought for me. Maybe a few years down the line it will be easier for me to look back at this and affectionately dismiss my worries as being silly, but right now it appears to be have the potential to crush my spirit. Which it does every night and sometimes suddenly out of nowhere. I try to control these breakdowns, often I'm successful and many other times I am not.
When my previous relationship ended, I remember these same things had happened. I now keep reminding myself that this pain will last for a few days and then things will get better. This deep sense of injustice may not fade entirely, but will get easier to deal with. You will emerge an enriched person. Hurt and enriched. So that's about me. But I see so many such cases of women around me in relationships that hurt so deeply. And in many of these the man has just walked away scott-free, no remorse or even acknowledgement of the trouble he has put her through and I wonder if there will at all be any justice. If they will at all be acknowledged as abuse, taken seriously and worked towards eliminating it. At this point all I want is my mental peace, and by the time I get that I don't want anything to deal with relating to this person. And then that gets closed there. He continues to be a great person to the world. I don't think that even in his own mind he acknowledges the pain that he has caused me. For closure begins with acknowledgement. Many women go through this, and it seemed to have been normalized as part of a relationship. I don't know anymore what love means or what a relationship is.
I have to remember and never forget how painful this is. And perhaps stay away from relationships. Its not possible for me to saunter from one relationship into another, every relationship has taken a part of me away. Its not so much that I think every relationship should last to eternity. Its just that one can behave decently and end it on as amicable a note possible. But what do you do when a person simply abandons and absconds? What do you do when you have been understanding about previous episodes of abandonment with the belief that every person comes with their own baggage and that it takes time to understand how to navigate through the relationship with each of your baggage and that its only a matter of time before things such as these are resolved? Only to realize that you have been subjected to the same treatment by this person who now appears to have taken you for granted and prioritizing everything else over you. What do you do when the understanding that you are disposable slowly washes over you? That you can literally feel some regions of your brain becoming heavy from all this pain and stress. I guess you do what you can do at the moment. You switch off your phone to trick your mind into believing that perhaps he will try calling you and then realize how hurt you are because you have never before switched off your phone. You do this not so much to cause pain to someone else as much to protect your own brain by cushioning it with delusions, knowing that he has never before tried to reach out on his own in the event of such fights. Its marvelous how your mind is privy to both these facts and still cooperates in the delusion.
Maybe there never will be a closure to all this pain. Maybe some day I'll write a perspicacious story that resonates with millions of women reeling under the dichotomy of wanting love and rejecting conditioned patriarchy. Maybe.
