Marriage, as said, is a firm bond of two souls finding the life ahead of what they've led till now. Two people, two families, bunch of preparations and a whole lot of expectations just to let your blood, your daughter go to new place and carry a household of her own. Be a wife, be a mother, and in these modern times, be an independent woman working 8-10 hours at the workplace.
That's what I thought life will be when I turn into a decent age and my parents will start to look for a suitable mate for me, when I was 14. But what is life if not unexpected.
Walking out of the school I saw a new teacher, dark colour, tall, not so handsome but one could still look at that face and feel the need to fall in love with him. I walked past him, made an eye contact, no spark, how dead those eyes were, I bet I could fix them.
Months past and I couldn't resist, I told my best friend about this and she teased me and asked me to make a move but I was too young and vulnerable to risk it. A minor, wanting to date her teacher, as weird as it sounds, I feared the rejection, and the consequences of my family knowing what was going inside my head.
But I did manage to speak out, when he rejected, I was so devastated and ashamed that I wanted to die. I stopped eating and felt like an alive corpse attending classes to make my family proud. He saw me falling down the stairs and came running, picked me up in his arms and took me to a classroom, I shouldn't be romanticizing this but God knows how a young, growing mind fanticizes.
We dated. Yes. I cooked for him, he bought flowers for me. Very unacceptable to the society but yes that's how it was until I moved out for my college and turned 18. I never saw any other man like I saw him, my family still unaware of the relationship, we got married when I was 18 and he was 32. I wrote a letter to my family and ran away to my man's place to live a life with his family and offer them my devotion and love only to find out that I will be trapped for my entire life.
We started living together but there was very less or no attention that I got from my husband, I would always be busy with the household chores and he would calmly enjoy outside the house with other unemployed men of the locality. The school threw my husband out when they found this out and not even my husband was bothered enough to find a job. He would be enjoying with his brother's money and I would be the one compensating that with looking after a family of 6, me, my husband, the elder brother and his wife and their two daughters, one was of my age and the other was 6 years younger. This went on for three years and each day I realised that the 'HAPPILY EVER AFTER' that I had imagined was nothing but a facade created to diminish the accountibilty of a female about her own life and accept whatever her family decides on the behalf of her, even the price they'd pay of their daughter.
After these years of absolute horror from my husband and a little love of the family.... I mean how casually I beared with the domestic violence of my husband when I told him to get a job, but the love of the daughters who managed to make me smile after their uncle's very classic treatment, I desired for a child because that might make my husband respect me a little bit more, that's what I thought.
The next year when I was 22, we had a child, a boy. Believing my husband's conservative thinking I wished this could make him love me a little more.... It did. But out of his very predictable behaviour, he still used to hit me when I say something contradictory to what he commanded. I soon started hating him, the man that I left my family for, the man that I forgot my own future for, the man that I loved is now a monster that I don't want to be with. Years of disrespect and not a moment of compassion. All this time I kept quiet so I could keep him, or maybe I could the company of the daughters to keep myself sane. Maybe if not me, this man would love my son, which he indeed did.
Until my son turned 3.
That day when this man came to me annoyed because he was not satisfied enough with the lunch, he yelled at me. Seeing this my son went and punched that man on the knee with his delicate hands which were of the size of a soap. That man looked my son in the eyes and grabbed his neck, of a THREE YEARS OLD BABY. Tried to kill him in front of my eyes.
Thanks to whatever came to his mind, my child didn't die but that was something that left me wounded for the rest of my life. That day I hated myself for not standing up for myself, or my child, ever, for not even letting this loving family know what that man was actually like, for telling the daughters to keep quiet when they asked me to hit my husband back for the sake of my self respect, for letting my guard so down that I am not even able to protect my baby, for not knowing how to go against that behaviour when clearly that's not how it should be.
I don't know if I'll even be alive to leave this man, what am I going to do for my child, I was helpless but now I know that what was once love, is now a war. What was once a garden is now a graveyard, the affection has turned into ashes that left me like nothing but grey. I know I need to kill to make my happily ever after, a happily ever after.
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