Betrayed

photo by Ramya Reddy

I feel cheated. It’s not a good feeling. I could rant and rail till the cows come home. It’s going to be useless. The whole point of venting is that the one who injures you should feel the depth of your anguish.

But what do you do when it’s not another person who betrays you? When you know that nothing you can say or do is ever going to get you an apology?

All my simmering angst rose to the surface again today when I logged into facebook. My former colleague Aditi had posted this: “The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident.” ― Hugh Walpole

The reverberations of my silent howl made me dizzy.

We had a tumultuous relationship for close to 22 years. Both highly strung, rebellious and Type A personalities. We bickered and had rip-roaring fights. Nasty, petty, vicious, wounding.

And we laughed and smiled, shared lines from books that we were reading, had to see the first day first show of a film, travelled, made music and danced madly.

There were times when we wanted to split from the marriage. We both told each other that our son was the only reason we stayed together. The year he went away to boarding school, we wept and clung together as if we were orphans in a storm.

Without quite realizing, we seemed to have ridden over the choppy seas of careers and relationships. There was calmness and acceptance. A warm glow lit our lives. Dare I say, we were well on our way to be a content middle-aged couple.

Then he died. Never woke up one morning.

I don’t want pity – I detest this look in anyone’s eye. I am not a Sad Sack, I enjoy the little pleasures of life. I thank God everyday for this. My overwhelming sadness all this while has been at the injustice to my husband. Why did he not get to live longer?

But on days like this, I can’t help but brood over the injustice to me. Just when we had found harmony, why did Destiny snatch him away?

We had tapped into the “inner progressiveness of love”. How does one even begin to look for something like this again?

I get no answers. Like my liver or kidneys, the heart has become just an organ. I am dry-eyed and in a little while, will get back to work.