A box of Chocolates

The Tale of a Fallen Marriage

""But you always knew she is a traveler, didn't you?"

" How I wish she were one, because I wanted to travel the world with her...but that's not who she is, not someone who wants to discover new places." He looked away, pensively. "She is a wanderer who escapes and runs, till she is lost in the wilderness, where no one knows her, where no one can find her, not even her own self.

For many moons I tried to play along, like it was an adventurous game, first to get lost with her and then to guide her back home. But then one day, I realized, she didn't want to escape with me. In fact, like all the other things and people in her life, she wanted to escape from me. I guess that's when I stopped, but I still made pretexts so she could think it was me, when all along she knew it was her."

"And She didn't ask you to come along?"

"I told you I made excuses, and they were just good enough for her. To be honest even a child could see through them, but she didn't because she had been secretly wishing for it all along - my absence, her space, a ticket to nowhere, an empty passenger's seat where she could pick any stranger & pretend to be whoever she wanted to be, at that moment."

"Then why does she crib that she is trapped in this marriage, like you have clipped her wings?"

"Perceptions, delusions..or distorted reality. I don't know what she goes around telling people. I don't think I care much anymore. Sometimes though, when I am alone, which in fact is most of the time, I feel she is not the river she claims she is. She is a whirlpool created from conflicting currents and I feel like I am drawn into this whirlpool. Its dragging me down...like I am about to drown. Who knows who is really trapped here."

"Why doesn't she leave?"

He laughs aloud, with tears clouding his eyes. "Because she loves me..." He draws in a deep breath and sighs, "no she doesn't stay back out of love. She isn't capable of love. She needs an anchor while riding the rough waves, an address to return to after her misadventures fail, after nasty strangers leave her bruised all over she needs someone to dress her wounds, she needs a rebound, a ticket to make more mistakes."

"And why do you let her do this to you?"

"Do you think I could be addicted?" he uttered after a long silence.