A Letter to My Husband

To My Dear and Beloved Husband,

I cry as I start writing these first few words, as if I open my mouth to speak and I cry instead. I miss you, dear husband. I miss the old version of you – the one that I knew for a very short period of time. The one that left me all too soon. The one that returns to me every while but leaves almost as soon as he comes. The one that raises my hope yet higher every time he returns to me, but leaves me with the most bitter taste of disappointment.

I miss my fantasy husband, the husband that lives in my imagination. The husband who will be sincere to me. The husband who will look at me while I speak. The husband who will be interested in me. I miss my husband that was supposed to be you. But that husband is not you. You managed to let me taste what that husband would be like, but you wouldn't stay for long. I felt like a child reaching for a balloon that drifts away.

Remember? Do you remember those very few times when things were good? When life was worth living? When I was eager to wake up in the morning ready to embrace yet another happy day? Remember those happy nights, when happiness came through the power of giving… Remember those times we used to feel so close to each other?

I can feel the feeling even now as I write, and i get the chills. You took such good care of me during those precious times. You handled me with love and care. The kind of love and care I so crave today…

Ta, the Tatty of our home, where have you gone? I am longing for you. I am waiting for you to come back and embrace me. I need to be together with you. I need you to provide for me, to protect me, and to care for me. I need you to listen to me. I need you to love me, the way a sincere husband loves his wife. You know me so well today. You know me inside out, all my needs and desires, my hopes and aspirations. Won’t you come back to me?

Turn back into your former self and come. Come back as the husband of my dream, as the husband you sometimes were. Don’t come back to hurt me. Don’t come back to make me miserable.

Did you know that it hurts when you disregard me? It pains when you criticize me. It aches when you forget to compliment me, and instead you compliment other women in secrecy. And when you replace me with your phone, that is like a bleeding wound that would just not heal. That makes me feel worthless. It humiliates me.

Do you have the slightest understanding of what it feels like to talk to a person, and at the same time, that person speaks to a different person? That is how I felt when we would sit at the dinner table during family time, and you would make me talk to you while you stared into your phone. And when I stopped talking, hinting you that my respect as a human being has been violated, you would get annoyed with me rather than realizing your wrongdoings.

You have hurt me immensely. You will never understand. You invite me to sit out with you, so I drop everything I’m doing and seize the opportunity to be with you, only to realize that I will be watching how you watch your phone, or how you doze off. I get sick when I think about it.

I know you are not interested in the least to hear all my stories of pain, therefore I won’t go on. I can just continue letting you know that despite all the pain I have gone through, I still miss you, and I still have a bubble of hope hovering above me, that perhaps you will return and this time to stay for many more years to come.

I really don’t want to leave you. I’m so scared what tomorrow will bring. Please, get over with this plague that haunts you. Please, I beg of you.

I’m writing to you with mixed feelings.

Your aching, once beloved,

Wifey