I don’t believe people really ask for it happen: the fire in the candle reaches the end of its wick. The butterflies that once crowded my stomach, in the proximity of her behalf, slowly become this normal, comfortable feeling. The ecstasy of our relationship was gradually fading to this uninteresting reality.
Life’s commonality hit me harder than my ninth drink at the bar. Had I married the wrong woman?
I questioned myself for the first time in our relationship. I know that if you’re ever in question with love, than it mustn’t be true love. So it has become difficult for me to find answers when I know that I can’t even ask the question without damning our marriage.
It’s not that I don’t want to be in love, it’s just that I fear my love for her may have run its course.
I was delaying my ride home from work. We had a talk last night that quite frankly scared the shit out of me. She asked me how I felt about having children. I am not scared about joining her in becoming a parent, because I know she’d be a great mother. It’s just that I am afraid that my love for her, which used to give me this blood-rushing feeling to my face, has turned into this lack-lust feeling of comfort.
She still had that cute face even when she was frowning. And she hadn’t let her weight go since we got married and there’s no doubt in my mind that I still see her as attractive as the first day I met her, that’s not the problem. Her external features have nothing to do with the departure of my attraction. It’s the little things that she does for me, they’re almost obsessive. Not in a crazy way or anything, she just does too much for me. Could someone ever be too good for someone else? Overqualified?
When I wake up in the morning there are these reminder notes everywhere around the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom. Here is the thing about her though, she makes all of these notes to remind me to do something, or not to forget something, but she still insists on waking up just to give me verbal reminders of the reminders. And we both know she could sleep in for another two hours and still make it to work on time.
I mean, I went to work today with a lunch that she made me. When I go home, if I’d go home, there would almost always be a clean house. She was always excited to see me come home and she'd never questioned when I would check in late. We haven’t even had an argument in the four years we’ve known each other.
All of these things she does for me have become the reasons I don’t want to go home anymore. Everything about our relationship has this comfortable reassurance that I’m scared of. I want something more complicated than what I have, in my life with her.
After the last call was made by the bartender and I realized I was the only one in the place, I decided to take the subway home.
Thoughts in my head circa the reasons I delayed my arrival back home.
When I first got onto the subway there was a fair amount of people already boarded. With most of the cart’s populations draining at the major station stops, I was left with a family.
A single father, I presumed, was sitting down while his kids introduced themselves to each other with foreign accents. I thought about how much he had already aged from having kids. He was probably in his thirties, but he looked close to fifty. How would I look with kids?
Then, the children started to run up and down the aisles. My initial reaction to the kids playing on the train could only be described of as joy. I could see how innocent those kids were. They must have been four and five years old. They were playing a game of tag on the train.
I slowly watched as people near this family furthered themselves away from the laughing, running, chaotic children. They were climbing on top of people’s luggage, sliding down poles, and flipping over their dad like he was a gymnastics mat.
My mood quickly changed, as three stops later I was left with the father who has yet to say something to his lunatic kids. My appetite for their cute games and loud laughter starved my stomach of patience.
Then one of the kids started to run back towards me and the father. She was looking back to make sure the boy was still right behind her. She ran straight into my legs, pounding my inner knees together.
“Ouch.”
The girl said sorry with this quick smile and my face directed toward her nonexistent father. “Control your wild monkeys would ya,” was what I wanted to say.
I stared at him and I knew he could feel me burning a hole through his face. I hated a man I barely knew.
It’s people like this man that worsen the gene pool of America. I found myself deepening my judgment as he looked down, shameful of the lack of control he had over his kids. He was an idiot for not nipping it in the bud with discipline at an early age for these animals he called children.
God must have a substantial amount of love for the stupid people in this world, he made so many just like this guy.
The kids moved down to the end of train and swung around the poles in a race to weave in-and-out of the aisles. I continued my blank, devilish stare into the single parent’s distressed face. The man seemed to be getting more upset, which was a good sign, at least he wasn’t proud of his parenting skills. A little remorse of faults goes a long way with people, but I can’t overlook him enabling his kid’s poor behavior with silence.
The boy and the girl were farther away and the man finally lifted his head up to see if I was watching his kids again. I wasn’t. I was watching the failure he had become as a parent. I stared hard into his eyes.
He connected my eye contact for a brief second and turned away in shame. In my head I said, “Yeah I thought so; I knew you were a push-over.”
I couldn’t believe myself, I wanted to fight this guy and he hadn’t even said a word to me.
Then the kids came back from their relay race of weaving in-and-out and the boy jumped up and grabbed the pole in an attempt to swing with his feet going above my head. Are you freaking kidding me?
Then the kids came back from their relay race of weaving in-and-out and the boy jumped up and grabbed the pole in an attempt to swing with his feet going above my head. Are you freaking kidding me?
I’d had enough and I was getting ready to say something when I noticed the father was staring at me and I kept my mouth closed ready for him to speak. The children kept going on down the train.
The man looked up at me and said, “I know they’re acting crazy. I know you probably want to say something to them or at least say something to me. Well, their mother just passed away and I don’t know how to tell them.”
Sinking on the impact of his words, my mouth opened up enough to swallow the waves of regret into my paper lungs. Every single facial expression and any other external clue to my thoughts about his family flashed in my head before me.
I apologized for any looks, and I even apologize for my internal thoughts. I felt like everything I had been doing for the past three hours was a mistake and I needed to get home.
We talked about his wife for a while. He told me how each day was such a gift when he was with her. How we take for granted the little things about our life. He said, “It is not until you see your wife lying on a hospital bed, for a small stomach pain, lifeless because that small stomach pain was an ulcer that turned out to be pancreatic cancer.”
When I got off the train to my stop, I ran all of the way to my house. In my house, was the most wonderful woman in the entire world and I love every moment I get to spend with her. My heart was new again, like the moment we first laid eyes on each other. My skin sermonized for the smallest touch of her skin. My lips craved the succulent, voluptuous lips of my wife.
When I crawled into bed, my body wrapped around her with a grip that I never wanted to release. She turned around, smiled, and never asked a single question about where I was, but I knew I’d never leave her side again. We kissed and her taste had my attention as it satisfied every desire I’ve ever had.
Love is the ability of comfort, the taste of commonality, and the optimism of prospect. Love is its own faith: difficult to see, graceful to feel, and builds foundational significance with every test and question you may ever have in the future.
Embrace love with a copious amount of admiration and appreciation for only He knows when it will be taken away from you.
