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A Strong Woman

by Sona R Krishnan
(Trissur, India)

I remember telling my husband once that I feel like everyday I am giving an examination that I am going to fail.


Even if there is a broken table in the house, you should try to repair it. A wife is expected to do so. I’ve never been more lonely anytime in my life than I was in my married life.

We got married in 2003 and we both were working. I was working as a Receptionist and he was an assistant Stenographer in a legal firm and later on I completed my B.Ed and he completed his LLB. I took up a teaching job and he was an advocate in the same legal company. We both resided near central Mumbai.

Ours was an arranged marriage. There were many things which were incompatible in our marriage. But we were okay, we were living like any other couples. But there wasn’t much conversation or sharing from his parts, there wasn't much interaction apart from the mundane. You have to buy this, you have to do that, meet so and so, but there was very little personal conversation between us.

There was nothing exciting happening in the marriage. Are all marriages the same way? I wondered. Second thing was that everyone said having a child can bring change in the marriage. Is it ? If the child is born, are there any changes in the marriage life or in a person's behaviour? I had not felt anything like that. Instead, I felt my responsibilities were increased.

For the 15 long yrs I used to tell myself that there is no way out. If I walk out of the marriage I have to to restart my career and facing my parents will be difficult. So I stuck around with the marriage.

During our married life, I twice approached the counselor to see if we could make it work. Counselling can play a very important role in our life. When we are going through the breakdown of our marriage, we can look at the things and rectify our mistakes where possible and can make a better life. It is of course, a very tiring process or what else we can do to make life better. But that too didn't work out as expected.

Breaking Point
Somewhere down the line, just past our 15th anniversary, I came to know that he is planning to shift to his native place and wants to sell my dream house where we stayed and other properties. I was damn sure that I won't make it up in such a remote place and will be a big failure in my career and his
career too. More than anything else, our son will also suffer for his education.
But the fact that I was suffering alone and he was not really caring about that, so two years later I decided to move to our native place only for my son not to be separated from me.

After that, it was a drastic change in my life. I had never thought that life would take such a turn where everything had to be sacrificed. The challenge is that every individual has a certain image in their mind of what they would like to be in their life. And when any kind of a situation occurs including having a troubled marriage where you feel that idea may not get fulfilled then it can really create a lot of turbulence within the individual.

Blame: Feeling of not being good enough, feeling of not being loved enough, feeling of being cheated and all the resentment you held against the world. I remember thinking and crying over such feelings for many nights.

Finally, the break down happened, life was fully blank. Slowly I was coming out of this trauma, by then I had lost everything because of my wrong decision. I thought I should never lose hope. Wherever I am I should stand and show them that I can do it all alone.

Loneliness : It's very tough, feeling alone is too bad. We will feel all the talk of friends as if they will help you, is all plain crap. I didn't want my friends on whose minds I had a good image, feel sorry for me. I wanted them to continue the same image of me.

I felt that even your own family members, including your own siblings, will avoid you, because of a broken marriage. I was totally left alone in a place where I was not at all familiar with the languages and places around. It is fixed up now that I wont get any support and I should accept that I'm all alone. All the people will make you feel that it was your own mistake but I understood that my son is my strong pillar of support and I will do anything for him.

Another major challenge in such a situation will be facing criticism, which you should be prepared enough to face.

Acceptance: Accept it that, if you change your mind and thinking, you can change anything in this world. The last two years have been freeing and empowering myself because I have learned a lot from new things. I am alone but I am a successful woman.

Power of a woman will never fail.


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