Our Grotesque Marriage

A Story by myst-ry

Inspired by the life story of one of my patients, I happened to have a close interaction with.

The relation of a marriage has a lot more to it than just the fire of a love affair or a casual bonding of two friends. This story is about such other dimensions of a marriage which keep a totally unrelated couple bound even if there is no obvious ceremony and even consumation. This is in form of a letter that the protagonist writes to her 'ex-husband' from whom she separated after such a relationship which can't be described in any way other than a marriage.

Endeared Marcus,

When we started, neither of us knew which way it would go. I was always sure it won't happen like this and I took care too that it shouldn't. You would agree with this. You knew I never wanted but still you made it happen. Somehow, I rolled unknowingly along the rails of your strategies.

I knew your history. I remember you asked me one day that I might hate you, but I didn't. Rather I hated the first siren who forced you into the black sea. I hated the first one who taught you the rules of playing this disgraceful game. You must have thought I was stupid because this hadn't mattered to me.

I had read beyond your history. I had read your insight, seen your desire to get out of the dark sea. In you, I had felt an insecure lover who'd had a bad experience. I had felt a rebellious child craving for love. I had felt a genious scholar who had derived knowledge from the books buried in the troughs of the harsh climatic divide. I didn't come for anything. I didn't stay for anything either. I didn't want anything infact, never ever. And you could never realize why I stayed, for whatever time I was there.

Anyways, I still kept it clear at every step that our paths won't be same forever. But then after some strokes of the seasonal pendulum, something touched my heart. The shreiks of a dying bird, the sight of a fidgetting child. It wasnt tough for me to recognise them, even if you tried to camouflage in front of others since I always knew beyond your words, between your lines.You could never know how much this drenched me with tears. How restless I was as you got tossed around in the cradle away from the sight of everyone barring me. Startled by the nightmares of your bad times, I burnt myself in the unsuccessful attempts to comfort you. And then wondered at my own behaviour, at this invisible thread that had begun to link us.

I had seen you following me obsessively. At times, I had seen you ignoring me like an insect as well.

What is it that I did'nt see?

I had seen every thought, every action, every reverie, every nightmare, and just almost everything that you saw in your secret dreams. I had seen you rashly singing the Keatings and dancing to tunes of night sirens too. Your tainted documents always revealed enough to me. But I was always neutral, indicating that our paths were different. I saw you trying strategic arrows on me, but kept silent, thinking someday you will end such efforts. You were the only man who had the capability of befooling me and this is what I liked in you, and strangely you turned out to be the only one who continued trying to befool me till the end and even beyond. Each time you breached my trust.

And then one day I came to know from you that we both were married. There was nothing illegal about this marriage, nothing legal either.

"When? How?" I thought to myself.

Though astound on hearing, I believed it for a while. I always believed you even when you told contradictory to the facts coz I always knew I would come know them, so it actually didnt matter even if you were befooling me.You were never in love, I know. It was an arranged marriage from your side. Self arranged would be a better word, I suppose.

Never did we roam around on bikes like the young birds nor danced to the songs of our youth. I was as boring as I could be. But I was always with you like a wife. You may or maynot have noticed it but I was there, approaching you in your bad times and celebrating your good days at my end, alone. At times I pampered you like a kid, at others I respected you like a father. Sometimes tolerating your slashes as a battered wife. I wondered why I was there. There was no obvious exchange of rings, no hymns, no blessings. There wasn't a kiss as well that you craved for. But still we were married. For one and only one reason, that is I had put my trust in you in name of God right from the beginning. And so I loved you like a wife even if this wasn't my decision.

Afterall you made me feel like a responsible wife who would snub you for the smoke or when you were exceeding the recommended rounds of that stinking drink that I always hated. You made me feel like a wife again when you asked repeatedly for proving my fidelity, innumerable times. And finally I committed suicide from your world. I was a wife then too. I went away from your sight delibrately and watched over so you that you may attain the balance back soon. But it has never been easy for me. I was probably too different from your preformed notions to be understood by you.

You made me feel like a mother too, a virgin mother to a dying infant, the one year aged idea of our arranged togetherness. And after its all over, now you make me feel like a divorcee. The trauma is no less except that the visits to a court are missing. After a divorce which has nothing legal about it, nothing illegal either, still as usual I pray for your settled future. Even when I have no claims, I feel terribly crippled when you are dragged alone onto the road to struggle there. Though your fits of coprolalia increase my misery further, yet I plunge in to help you out even now; unseen; unheard, then flying away silently.

But I was never a beloved for you. You were too selfish to make me feel like one, trying to colour everything in shades of blue and purple. All the time when you watched or rather enjoyed my drooped eyelids, you never knew these eyes were watching you too, from underneath the lashes but too innocent at that time to know of your intentions. I was never a cared beloved when you blurted out your baseless anger even in the days when I was fighting for survival in my world. You and your habit of getting into quarrels with each and everyone.

How can I forget that? Infact you both go hand in hand.

But you were always right in saying that we were married. That is why even now as a part of responsibility, I miss you. At times thinking about those bouts of vodka and those deadly puffs of smoke that you would never leave. Sometimes of the scar that would stay on my soul just like the one you retain on your left arm with four suture marks to be precise.

Right?

Even this one is your favourite word.

Ah! I would always miss you even when I become a granny, thinking about our grand children that God himself committed foeticide of.

The only thing I wonder about is this institution of marriage. Even if you don't marry willingly, you tend to fall in love with a person who doesn't love you and whom you always knew you were a perfect mismatch for. But there was definitely a beauty about this uncelebrated marriage. And finally I'm divorced now after a marriage that had unknowingly turned into a love marriage from my side.

Your dream colleague,

Julie

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grand Prize using your own picture plus the picture I have added

FOR THE ROMANTIC AT HEART ONLY- THE LOVE LETTER

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2011 myst-ry

Author's Note

in an attempt to mix the first and second person narrative modes, the write might be having many lacunae which need to be improved upon... contructive criticism would be welcomed.