Chapter Fourteen: Honeymoon Period

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A honeymoon period, a time to be happy and carefree, getting to know your new husband or wife... And it was, getting to know Ben on a deeper level was a comforting distraction. I threw myself into these first months of marriage with an incredibly intense desire to please him, to make him feel loved and wanted, and to start this marriage off on the best footing.

Ben was never happier. We got a one bedroomed apartment near his college. We rented from an old couple who lived in the house above it, they loved renting to newlyweds, and were from our church. Going into church on Sunday, hand in hand, it felt right. To go as a united force, to start our life with so much support and love, it felt warm, inviting, and wonderful, as it should be. I was living the dream... apparently.

The truth was, if I stopped for a second, if I let the intensity of my wish to make this work, and make it work perfectly, slip even slightly, it all came crashing down around me.

When night came, Ben would want to make love, a thought I had never had, marriage and sex, a foreign feeling, a foreign action. I went along with it, my body beneath him, moving in all the right ways, knowing it was a sacred thing between man and wife, and yet not feeling that bliss, that wondrous feeling of love and passion as he gazed in my eyes or tried to make it deeply meaningful for me, and for us.

When Ben would make love to me, most often I wouldn't be there, not in the moment or the throws of it, and I didn't know if that was normal. The truth was, I didn't enjoy it, sex was painful at first, uncomfortable, it was clumsy and almost a chore. I knew that couldn't be right?! Wasn't this meant to mean something? Wasn't I meant to feel something, as he did. Ben gets all the pleasure from it in minutes, and I am left naked and almost lost... was this just for making babies? Or was it meant to be more? because my goodness I wanted more, but got nothing. Mentally I wasn't with Ben and that was the truth of the matter. I couldn't feel desire for him, or connect with him physically, because my hand still searched for Willa. My mind was still holding her at bay, forcing her away from me, pushing her back continuously so that she couldn't consume me. I knew that if I gave Willa an inch, I would surely drown in her, and yet I reached for her all the same... holding my breath for impact.

***

A Robin came a knocking
Upon my window pane
He asked me if I knew
Of the girl at number nine
because she has been absent
from her window sill for a time
Not a seed or kernel left for him
and it wasn't right
she cares for him in winter,
Spring and summer just the same
And through autumns darkening days
She is his light, his ray, his sunshine
and the only one he had come to depend
And I thought then
Say it isn't so
I know her name
For she is you
and you did that for me
taking a darkened day
and lighting my way
I only wish you had of stayed
and let yourself depend on me
For a change

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