It's Hard For Sober Minds to Pretend

My new year’s resolution is to let things be as they are. I wouldn’t have thought so twelve months ago. Back then, my marriage was on the brink - full of misery for me, and full of apathy for my husband. It still is. But now, I’ve learned to live with it, just like him. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that I keep becoming like Wilson as the days go by?

He cannot hear me now, because I have ceased to speak in front of him - all he can hear is my keyboard as I write this down. The sounds they make accompany the ticking clock from the living room. Whenever I try to stop and hear the seconds go by, though, the sound of its hands fade away too. They’re like Wilson when he talks on the phone. Every time he picks up the phone, he looks at me in a way I can still understand. He doesn't like me eavesdropping. He’s got nothing to hide, but he acts like a man who does.

The clock is kept in front of the television, which continues to drone on and on from the living room. Both of us have stopped paying attention to it. We don’t even watch what’s happening on the telly most of the time. Wilson says the news makes us dumb. I tell him he’s already been dumbed down by the phone he keeps looking into all day. He just shoots me one of his looks, then tells me to get off his back. I retreat into our bedroom and read a book or write this journal of mine. It’s become my bedroom. Wilson eats and sleeps on the sofa. He says the grunge rock on MTV and the rhetoric of the Fox anchors helps him find some peace of mind. If that’s what he needs to find peace in this house, one realises where our marriage must be.

And so, I don’t speak unless I need to, because there’s nobody to hear what I have to say anyways. You could say there’s nobody here to read what’s on my mind either - but then, you’re reading this now, aren’t you?

Wilson’s picked up the book I was reading. It’s a romance novel - trashy but fun. It’s escapism if I put my mind to it, but just depressing when I look up from one of its raunchy scenes to find him walking in front of me, out-of-shape and unattractive. I’ve never been one who’s into relationships for the looks or the action, but when your partner isn’t into you anymore, it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that he's just a dumb guy you fell for.

I’m sure he took the book to read because of its raunchy cover. He’s too lazy to cheat on me in real life, or even watch porn for that matter. On some level, I feel he picked up the book because he doesn’t want me to do the one thing I like to do - read. He annoys me in ways he knows will bug me, but won’t make me point a finger at him.

But then, he's sweet in some of the things he does. Here’s a thing I haven’t written down here before. I’m an addict. I drink at night, when Wilson falls off to sleep on his stained sofa. Sometimes, I pass out on the floor from the drinking - yeah, it’s become bad - and wake up next morning in the bed. I know Wilson must get up in the middle of the night. Maybe a loud noise on the telly breaks his sleep. He puts me back on the bed. He won’t let me know when he tries to be sweet, though. But he is.

Right now, I peeked through the door to see his head. He’s drinking a bottle of beer and watching the television. For once, he seems to be listening too.

“The radical left is overrunning this country. The man who claims to be our new President wants to destroy America. The white men of this country must stand up to him.”

And while I was taking down those lines, he changed the channel to a more conventional one. He isn’t a political person. He hears the news every night, but I don’t think he truly listens. He can’t bother paying attention to things which aren’t about him or his beer. Or his garage. I’ll give him that. Wilson doesn’t earn much - but when he’s doing his car repairs in the garage, he’s happy. Doing honest work in a dishonest world.

I remember our anniversary. It was a week ago. I went out and bought patties for the two of us to have when he returned from work in the evening. We’re not the kind of couple who are into celebrations - or being in love. But that day, he brought back a half-alive rose bouquet for me. It was clumsily done up, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to tell apart a withering and a lively rose without cue cards. But what impressed me was that he remembered. Anniversaries don’t mean much to me - but that bouquet did. It’s the only reason I haven’t thrown it into the trash yet. I kept it in a vase with water in the kitchen but I’ll have to throw it out tomorrow morning. They’re rotting and the smell is coming into this room too.

I wonder if he can smell it too. I mean I know he can, but I wonder whether it bothers him. Sometimes I wonder if anything bothers him - being in this loveless marriage, running a business which doesn’t pay enough, or listening to the racist stuff on some of the news channels he keeps flicking through.

He’s become an embodiment of everything I am supposed to love, but have ended up despising. I don’t think he’s to blame for that. He does the best he can. The bouquet proves that. Maybe I expect too much from this world, too much from him. It’s the world which taught me to expect, though. The expectation of having a house which doesn’t have a leaking roof, which has more than two rooms. The expectation of love which makes sense, which doesn’t fade away, and of a husband who at least puts up a fight to save a marriage rather than letting it fade into oblivion. Doesn’t he want to save us? I was a fool for expecting, I realise now.

I don’t think I’ve taken up so much time to write an entry before. I’ve written longer ones. But today, the monotone of the atmosphere’s helped me think things through.

I wish I’d taken my time with my marriage too. Waited for longer, met more men and lived more of my life before demoting myself to confinement within these four walls.

It was my choice. I was the one who wanted to settle down. I still have a choice - to join community college, get a job at a local restaurant, maybe even file for a divorce. Wilson won’t mind any of it. He never does. And yet, I don’t think I’ll take the easy way out of this. That shall be my excuse for not changing my life.

Hell, I think I’ll need to drink a bit more than usual tonight. To convince myself why I’m sticking with my resolution. It’s hard for sober minds to pretend there isn’t a choice, after all.