THERE wasn’t a fight. There wasn’t any screaming, arguing or name-calling, just a slow disintegration — like roses in a vase becoming dry and discoloured; their petals dropping to the floor. It was a gradual thing. It was finished for years without either of us noticing.
That’s not true. We both noticed.
I wish it was different. I wish we said how we felt, what it meant and who had disappointed who. I wish for once I could have seen inside his skull to understand what changed.
I never knew what he wanted. Or even why he married me. I don’t know why I married him either. Was it a mistake or something that suited me at the time?
If only we could have stood in the kitchen screaming obscenities at each other it might make more sense. How did he feel? Did he hate me or just feel nothing?
I wanted a spark of life, a reaction, evidence that he cared about something. We were two walking corpses brushing up against each other and only pausing long enough to say “sorry for the inconvenience”. I wanted fire, an inferno, a collision between planets, not polite tolerance and careful disdain.
“It used to be good but now it’s not,” I wanted to say at the end to make the silent wasted years have meaning. A marriage that breaks is acceptable, understood and familiar. A marriage that has always been broken makes no sense. There must have been something wonderful once — why can’t I remember it? Have the bad memories erased all the good ones? Has the end obliterated the beginning?
I’m beginning to think I was never in love with him, just hoping for a pleasant life. Years of friendship pushed us apart rather than together, rendering us both incapable of feeling kindness or affection.
What we were giving up by ending it didn’t seem like very much at all.
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