the male ego..

somewhere in the next few days my mother's taking some time off being couped up with daily chores in the house all day, leaving on a small vacation for a couple of days. she's been looking forward to this for months now and made preparations well ahead of time around the house.so every thing's in place. unbeknownst to me, the situation has stirred some drama in the house. as fragile as he is, my father still wants to run things around the house & doesn't want her to go. the exact reasons are kind of grainy, because he gives a different one every day, he's insinuating about crossing some unseen boundaries. now this cracks me up. ah ..the pathetic male ego! so i had to cut in to diffuse the situation, as usual. the fact that i live thousand miles apart is immaterial, i almost feel like they are in my house fighting in the other room. sometimes i have to play both roles of good & bad cop. not to overwhelm him, i downplayed the whole thing and made him see she needs the break more than anything. reluctantly he muttered something under his breath and i took it as a grunted approval. not that i needed his approval to begin with but i didn't want to hurt his feelings either.

not being the problem solver anymore is probably hitting him hard now that he's no longer able to get around as he used to. not being able to validate the his value as the caretaker in the relationship is probably eating him up inside too. if only he could see the insecurities in him. looking in from outside, i get all that . but is it fair to the other person? sometimes men get so caught up with their egoism they discount the value & strength of the other person in the relationship/marriage and miss the mark completely.
man..what is it with the male ego? what an interesting breed :)

the other part..

according to most of our friends & family, how my husband & i met, is something predestined and a great love story in itself. maybe they are just a little prejudiced. we were very young, it was a little before my fifteenth b'day when a mutual friend introduced us at another friends'b'day party (sounds so cliche,but true) . he was only a year and a half older than me. so you do the math. well..at fifteen years old (or 14 if you want to be politically correct), you don't even know who you are much less about real love.but you love feeling butterflies in your stomach and get all giddy and mistake the sensation for love. been there,done that. the charming personality he possessed capable of winning anyone over was an added bonus. somehow he never really impressed me all that much.besides the initial attraction, there wasn't a whole lot to hold on to. as naive as i was then, i figured that much early. does it really matter at 15? you know the answer.
funny how early i started making up excuses for things that doesn't resonate with. looking back i can dissect it into million ways today.but i was only 15 & it wasn't like i was going to get married to him. well, little did i know! we hung out a little bit whenever i could lie and get away from my parents strict supervision radar. benefit movie screenings for school fundraisers, fairs, b'day parties and going shopping with friends were my usual sugarcoated lies. most of them worked,it gave such a rush every time. it was all fun but short lived. about 6 or 7 months into our puppy love, the overseas scholarship he'd been waiting for came through and he left the country within a matter of weeks. as heartbroken as i was, my walls were way up and pretended i was fine. so we were resorted to go out our separate ways & we both moved on. that was the end of our part one.

the part two didn't start until i was about 20 or so when i heard from him again. he'd just come back & found out where i worked and called me at work one day.sure, it took me by surprise but we had lots of mutual friends by then and one of them could have easily passed on my work number. he then showed up at work the week after. i was working at a large public venue just outside colombo. i was used to running into people i know on a daily basis , so running into him at work was not really a big deal.at least it wasn't to me. he said he came with a friend and we stuck up a brief conversation ,an awkward one to say the least. i was trying to be polite and looking for getaway excuse. what do you say to an ex boyfriend you haven't seen over 5 years? it struck me as odd, too much to be a coincidence, but i brushed it off. i had completely gotten over him and had no idea what was in store for me.

over the next weeks he picked up the pace and started calling me often. my home number hadn't changed since the last time, and sometimes he'd call me at home as well. he seemed like a completely different person from last time around. for the better, of course. we caught up on the gaps we missed out on,laughed over stuff from our past and made fun of each other. reminiscing sounded fun.we both shared the same sick sense of humor and i eased out on my self developed defenses and let him in. so i decided to give it another go when he'd finally brought up the subject. when people ask me what made it happen the second time around, i say i felt secured & safe with him. and that was the truth. may be it was the comfort of already knowing part of him. like when you know you are safe with someone, you just feel it instinctively. that gut feeling. i think as women we tend to seek security in a relationship and sometimes the actual state of being loved can easily get overlooked. it doesn't seem as important. that's the only way i know how to interpret what led me. coming from a somewhat dysfunctional family (to put it mildly), feeling secured was way more fulfilling than anything.i wanted that sense of security.it all made sense. so what if we don't agree on a few things and he can come off a little controlling or even condescending? or like when he tells me its black when i know its white. so what if we fight over stuff so much when its all done and over with, we don't even remember what we were arguing about in the first place. so what if he makes me feel a little inferior at times? my family history validates it, right? you can look & search until your eyes hurt but we all know there's no perfect relationship out there. every relationship is flawed, it's how you make it work that counts, everything's going to be okay, i kept telling myself.

to fast forward the story, he met my parents a while later & we got married when i was 23. here we are now, years later. still riding out the storms. seemingly endless at that. when someone tells me how rare to have found your life partner when you were fifteen, i give them an acknowledging smile and thank them politely. when you're married, it is expected. you've got to keep your dirt behind closed doors,under lock and all.

but what i don't tell them is that i met the only love of my life,who i rarely talk about, gave him up during the 5 year lapse between these parts of one & two. my biggest regret to date, which covers my real story - the other part. only if they knew......

relationships in a diagram

i remember studying them in school. while the venn diagram is used here as a simple device to reveal essential aspects of most intimate relationships, i try to think where i'd place mine in it. i keep going from one to the other. what if the two bubbles are completely overlapped? would it define a perfect relationship, metaphorically?

owning up...

i have never been good at opening up. still not either. one of the very reasons i started to blog was to unleash & may be let go a little. its a work in progress & still struggling to gather everything to share it out here. if you're someone like me who blogs about personal drama , you'd probably can relate to me on some level about how hard it is allow other people see you in distress. and make them see how vulnerable you are.

maybe this is going to be a difficult post than i thought it would. its always hard to accept failure.especially when you know there's some innocent kids depending on you to pull through. while i'll always be there for them, i dont think i can pretend anymore. despite my best efforts, its over & its just not going to work. funnily enough, i think i may have keyed in those words for the first time that i have been so scared to own up & say out loud.

grown up baby steps..

things have improved dramatically. we have been looking past the big elephant looming in front of our eyes for way too long. neither of us wanted to go there. but now i think we both have realized just like any other relationship, ours needs investing. be it time or just little random things, but a genuine effort at that.
we are working things out, just one step at a time. grown up baby steps as my bff jokes :) some days we can see things clearly forever and then some days i just want to kick him you know where. all in all, it boils down to .. i can just sit around all day moping and pitying me or i can get right back up and move on and do the best i can. well i don’t know how things will play out in future but all i can do now is to be absorbed in the present. not to dwell in the past. the willingness to try is, love itself, right? well i think so.

how late is it to call it quits..?

..on a random browse, this poem written by some (wise) guy, caught my eye.. the first few lines were pieced together like this....

why should a foolish marriage vow,
which long ago was made,
oblige us to each other now..when passion is decayed?

we loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
till our love was loved out in us both,
but our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled.

so ..this got me thinking. well, actually it sort of affirmed what was on my mind for a while. you can probably make a marriage last long, after all the years are just numbers, but how do you make it really work?

the way i see it, a marriage is based on trust & committment between two people. (not necessarily between a man and a woman these days, but rather two people)
but what happens when one person goes astray? well, hypothetically, if you have kids, you will probably give another go at it and see how things are going to play out. so you decide to stick around for the sake of your kids, then you'd probably evaulate the situation & stick around some more for the sake of your grand kids & other family commitments. before you know it, you're in too deep. let's just say you're pushing 60's and still trapped in a lifeless marriage. suddenly you realize you are at your wit's end and enough is enough. but how do you get out especially when a divorce is not an option & more importantly, you have no other means of support ??

can you just walk away when the other person's now sick & almost helpless and needs your care now more than ever but still not appreciative & treats you like a piece of trash?? should you compromise happiness or should you honor the marriage vows, which made you to stay in the first place??

so really..how late is it to call it quits now..?

yet another phase..

.."i just cant take this anymore..i dont know what else to do.." she sobs into the phone, i go speechless, my mind wandering for an answer. i dont have any. my mother has reached her limit. she cant take my father's insane remarks & insults anymore. he may be sick & blind now, but his temperament never ceases to surface.

i have always wondered how on earth she did it all this time. living with a man who never appreciates you, can be devastating. believe me, i know.

my mother's in her sixties now. she's never really been happy with her marriage to my father. i've always felt it, even as a little kid. but she endured every pain that came her way and protected us. today she's trapped in a place she desperately want to get out of, but in theory, its simply not viable. doesnt she deserve to be happy too?