This thing about trying.

If you ask me now what my greatest fear is, it is MARITAL MISERY.

I have friends who talk about their marriage life unhappily. I am there not willing to hear because it is too painful to be hearing it from someone who used to do the listening when I was at that stage of bitterness and rage. I seldom feel a need to talk about those days anymore. I have finally gotten on with my life, as they say — preferring to concern myself with the present and my beautiful future.

Like some place I’ve been to, I’m always asked to those who find themselves in a similar situation on how I dealt with it, how did I turn things to my advantage, how did I move on, what made me move one, or did I love him still?

I hated being asked because it brings me back to that fateful day when I was broken to a million pieces. But if telling the story again can give hope, then I am willing to go back in time.

I start with the feeling of anger, followed by resentment and self pity. Of those three words, the last one is the hardest and it lingered the longest. And the last word is what I always stress - “Never pity yourself because when you do that you will crumble.”

The anger part has nothing to do with just the partner. It is directed to self too. I passed that point when I blamed everything to him. When the wounds started healing that was when I realized that I had my share of stupidity. I had too much pride and independence, I refused to bend. I was arrogant and unforgiving. I succumb to my silence refusing to acknowledge the unhappiness.

I listened to what my friend was telling me – the familiar sighs and short gaps in between recounting stories. I looked around at all the troubles people I loved were struggling with, health and money problems, depression, sickness, disappointments, and the idea that I was sitting sipping lemonade somewhere, recounting the story of sadness inflicted years back, seemed wasteful.

I always say you TRY. Try to fix it, try harder, try to save it, and try to love him again. It’s hard to say try to forgive when every ounce of me was angry for her. Not because I am legally annulled; not because I was given a second shot at making my relationship right do I advise getting an annulment. It is a dirty way of shaming oneself and burning bridges.  I was never proud of it.

“How can you say try when you never did try hard enough?”

That’s the thing! The part that I had played in the whole mess, the betrayal that was mine.