I am beginning to miss my husband. We communicate by text messages. He always replies to my maunderings. He always greets me in the morning and helps me sleep at night. His life of thirty years in Holland was all of physical, intellectual and creative struggle. And he brought these with him when I met him. I couldn’t understand why I had to bear the last of the intensity of his struggles. All of which I had no part. I became angry and destructive. Disparaging and hurt. I became what he was. Tedious. Exhausted.
But nowadays he has changed. Perhaps because there is no cause for struggle anymore. Perhaps because I became an ugly mirror of himself. Now he is more affectionate. More loving. More willing to enjoy life as it is. Here, a radiating warmth, so different from western Europe. Now he has the glow of life inside him. Now he has the strength to keep me from destroying myself.
They say people can’t change, especially when they are older. But they do.
Fatima Lasay, Quezon City
Saturday, July 12, 2014
