Dear Mistress,
I do not know why I still think of you. You’ve been gone a long time and I am glad for that. Yet, I think of you more than is healthy for me or my family! I guess I have some unfinished business with you – some things I have long wanted to tell you but never could. And this letter is perhaps, my chosen way – my means to escape your memories and move on.
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I have written this letter to you several times in my head and yet, never mustered the courage to drop it in the mailbox. Not that today is any different, it has been four years of anxious nights since you left, four years of forced conversations, four years of fake laughter, and four years of pulling off the farce of a happy family – and yet, something about the sameness of it all makes me want to make a change.
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I have tried, oftentimes, to journey forward from the place where you left our pillows tear-stained from pleading with my husband to not leave you. I have tried, in my mad tussle with anger, to move my lifeless body away from the crib in which my baby lay, and I have tried, despite my hurt, to not judge him or you. But I have failed.
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And it isn’t because I am still caught in the flames of anger toward you or him, but because I fail to understand why he was unhappy with me, how could he have been unhappy with me… and why, if at all he had been unhappy, could he have been any less unhappier with you? And yet, it sure seemed like he was – less unhappy with you – than with me. I wouldn’t say he was happy with you – coz I could, in text messages that had ripped me into complacency, voice mails that had given away your amour, and photos that flitted about his phone, make out that he was grappling with a tough moral choice – one that he was too weak to make.
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And I don’t think I lay the entire blame on you either, for you were most probably acting out of your own selfish reasons than out of a pure propensity for love and be loved in return, coz you knew well who you were taking to your bed. And yet, I do not claim to know your essence from the snippets that text messages, voice mails or photographs offered me. You may have been just lonely, or perhaps, too afraid to know what would happen if someone did love you truly. And so, you put yourself in the in-between space, wedged yourself in the maybe-s and what-if-s, building a make-do life of the flimsy ‘I don’t know-s’ and ‘I am not sure-s.’
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But maybe it was your fault. Maybe it was my husband’s too, because in both your attempts to live out half-love (if that), you killed the love that I had lived. You killed the love that I was living. And today, no matter what I do, I cannot go back to that love ever again.
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I do see the heart-wrenching guilt in his eyes every time he takes our toddler from me, I can feel the pain he feels for having hurt the heart that has acted out in love (now lost) in choosing him still (and not coz I have to), and I notice every single time he tries to bridge the gap between us by reaching out, and yet, I can’t raise my arm to reach his, cannot bring myself to wrap my fingers around his, cannot let my tears wash away the pain that lingers from some deep, dark, abandoned hovel from which your memories keep crawling back!
And yet, I find myself reaching out to you – my husband’s mistress. Maybe because in another time, in another place, I could have been you or you could have been me. Or maybe because I have a daughter who could be you or me – and I do not want her to be either!
I do not know your reasons for having done what you did, and honestly, I do not think I could bear to know either. Any reason would not take away from the sting of betrayal that has poured venom in my veins!
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But I do want to tell you that love isn’t built on a funeral pyre of someone else’s heart. We are all worthy of love and shouldn’t settle for scraps of attention, bits of affection, being second choices, back-ups, side-gigs, part-time jobs, passing fads, or simply, a vessel for bodily fluids. We should never feel the need to coerce, pressure or force someone’s commitment, because we deserve a love that is given as freely as it allows us to be – as we are and for who we are! That’s the ultimate truth of love – and love shall match you at your truth.
Yours was a distorted lie – and so, it fell out.
My husband’s was a complex web – and so, didn’t stand strong.
But with this letter, I owe myself mine.
I cannot force myself to feel the love I no longer feel. In acting out of love that once used to be, I am forcing myself to contain the commitment that died when he went to you. And I can no longer do that.
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I do hope, though, that you realize what you need, act to get it and be happy. I wish the same for my husband who’d soon be my ex-husband!
Maybe this letter was a letter of gratitude after all. Thank you – speaking to you got me to accept things I’d only have fidgeted with within me to rage a storm amidst many more! Thank you for dispelling the doubts and bringing out the sun.
Someday, my daughter will understand too.
With respect,
The wife.
Featured image source: Pixabay under Creative Commons License
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