Chapter Text
My head is full of poison. The weight on my chest refused to be resolved, no matter how hard I tried to talk myself out of it.
I looked up from my desk at the back of my husband...He's right there, I told myself.
He's right there at his own desk in our little study, which we put together ourselves in our 'dream' apartment. The days of assembling furniture and play-fighting over what goes where feel as if they were from another dimension or a dream too good to be true. Now all we ever do is fight.
He's right there, yet he's never felt further away. He was right there talking to his colleague while I sat at my own desk, not really paying attention to the screen and filling my heart with doubt. He was smiling at his phone and laughing with him in a way I desperately wished he would with me.
You'd think that when you've been married for 10 years, you'd basically be able to read each other's minds, right? That must have been true for the real couples, I guess, but for me, it felt like I hardly knew P'Bear anymore
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The fan on the ceiling was rotating too fast, making its blades blur. The fast air stung my eyes but I couldn't look away. My bed seemed to swallow me whole but sleep seemed fickle. He hadn't come home yet. The clock beside my bed showed 3 am. He was just working...with him.
There it was again. The poison was seeping its way into the crevices of my mind and unravelling everything I had tried so hard to convince myself every day ever since he started working for P'Bear. We've fought about this before. We've solved this problem before. He told me I had nothing to worry about, and I didn't. Then why was my heart heavier than it has ever been before? It was him, wasn't it?
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I had placed several reminders. I marked his calendar. I told him today when he left for work. The cake sat in front of me untouched. Flies started feasting on the food set before me. I closed my eyes and imagined what it used to be like.
I imagined our third anniversary, when he took me out to the fanciest restaurant in Bangkok, even though he had just started his company and was tight on money. We'd joked about how we'd had to eat ramen for days to afford the best steak we ever had.
Or our seventh anniversary when we had baked a cake together even though both of us knew nothing about the art. It ended in us both having a food fight, completely covered in flour and forgetting all about the unbaked goopy mess of a cake batter. We ended up ordering a simple cake from the nearby bakery and feeding it to each other, going to bed eating each other instead of dinner.
A smile formed on my face as I wiped the tear that flowed out of my eye. He wouldn't miss this day. P'Bear was just late, I convinced myself. I walked to the kitchen and washed my face with cold water to stop the stream of tears. He wouldn't miss this day for the world, he's said this before.
Two hours and three wine glasses down, whatever hope I'd convinced myself to have had died down. I had exhausted all my tears. The couple photo of us on the living room shelf only made me sadder, so I sat on the kitchen floor with the white heart-shaped cake in my hand in a foetal position. I hugged my legs harder, thinking that it could replace the warmth of his hands in vain. I had called him forty-two times in the past two hours...pathetic, wasn't it?
I stuffed the cake into my mouth. Ofcourse he had stopped loving me. I had been delusional to believe that someone could love me forever. In fact, I should be grateful someone like P'Bear decided to love me for as long as he did. Even I know it was much more than I deserved. The frosting on the cake turned salty mixed with my tears. I kept on eating, shoving spoonfuls into my mouth before finishing the previous one. Eating made me happy, eating would take away the pain. The cake was falling out of my mouth by the time I was done with it. He's the love of my life. I wasn't even strong enough to hold on to him. It's all my fault for letting him slip away.
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He gave me a half-hearted apology and a bouquet of roses to make up for missing the anniversary. I liked tulips and he knew that. I didn't bother fighting, accepted the flowers and shoved him off after he hugged me. He tried for a few seconds to talk to me but then he just gave up and walked away. I wanted him to try, I wanted him to force me to look at him and hear him out. I wanted him to actually be sorry. I wanted him to want me....
I couldn't believe it was the same person who drove all the way to my house from the other part of the city and bought my favourite chocolates for me at midnight just because I got mad over something he said on the phone. I wanted the man who loved me back.
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The doctor said I was completely fine. She said I was just exhausted from the lack of sleep and asked why my husband wasn't with me this time. The smile I gave her felt heavy on my lips. "He's just busy today." She let me off with a few multivitamins and melatonin. "You seem pretty sad for someone so in love."She said while handing me my prescription. That line hit me like a truck. A fresh wave of tears threatened to wash over me but I held it in place while leaving the clinic. I saw my texts again.
Hey going to the doc tdy...come with me?
~seen one hour ago.
What was I even expecting? I stood on the sidewalk letting the fresh breeze of Bangkok monsoons wash over me. My relationship with the love of my life had fallen apart. It had been like that for quite some time. The closer we got to our tenth anniversary and he showed no recollection of our promise, the more the inevitable doom of our relationship became clearer. I had to let go, I was only making both of us miserable. Was love always supposed to feel this sad? . . . .