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No matter how overpowering the emotion, words that come out of your mouth should be carefully chosen. Words, the same words, can mean nothing to one person and everything to someone else.
‘Have you cooked anything? Or I need to do that too?’ he taunted again.
She pursed her lips in reply and nodded towards the kitchen.
‘Not daal again,’ he groaned from the kitchen and she told herself that he wasn’t talking to her. She did that often now and pretended he was saying all the hurtful things to someone else. And each time she did that, she mused at the power words had – some could save a soul and others could destroy one.
Like most bad marriages, this one too had killed dreams – hers in this case.
‘Does it taste okay?’ she asked hesitatingly, hating the slight tremor in her own voice.
‘By your standards? Yes,’ he replied and she flinched.
They ate in silence and then she cleaned up the table as slowly as she could. It had been a stressful day at work and he was always more demanding in the sex that followed dinner after a day like that.
‘Come here!’ he hollered from the bedroom.
She stared at a stubborn little piece of dirt stuck on the dining table and rubbed at it as vigorously as she could.
Alone and lonely, two words often used interchangeably, but very different.
She was rarely alone, no – her husband was always around – but she was the loneliest she’d ever been.
She craved a warm hug.
She craved a sweet conversation.
She craved a compliment that was genuine.
She craved companionship.
She craved an evening spent playing a board game.
She craved a meal out which did not end in an argument.
She craved all of this, but mostly she craved someone to love.
‘Are you done yet?’ he hollered again, and she wondered how lovely it would be if he were to fall asleep before she reached their bedroom.
‘Do you want to do that BA course?’ he asked, staring as she walked into the room. She was wearing a mauve nightie, her, curvy figure well hidden. Her shoulder-length hair was loose, framing her sweet face. A little mole on the side of the lips that rarely smiled. Large but always sad eyes.
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘You have no career to speak of.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. It wasn’t okay, but she didn’t care.
‘Is your mother okay?’ He asked mechanically after his ailing mother-in-law.
‘She had another dialysis yesterday,’ she replied without any emotion in her words.
‘I hope she gets better soon,’ he said.
She looked up, surprised at the softness in his voice. But there was no gentleness on his face as he lunged forward to switch off the lights.
‘Come here now,’ he said, pulling her into an embrace. She gritted her teeth and prepared herself to suffer through the next twenty minutes.
Later that night, she found herself in the kitchen. Alone in the darkness, her hands moved as if she no longer controlled them. Something else, a powerful thought in her head perhaps, was now in command. That powerful thought, the one that had now overtaken her soul, fed off the desperation in her life.
