fragments

(truth)
they sat in an empty parking lot of... a church? community center. just off wyndhurst drive, new jersey.
she was crying onto his white shirt, mascara running down her face, telling him to be real to her.
in a way in which he wasn't absorbed by his surroundings, eating him alive, puffed out in grey spirit smoke.
she would miss him.

the song played in the back, we learnt to love in uncertain times.
uncertain times indeed.
.......................

(fiction)
she lives in a one bedroom apartment in manhattan, with her scholarship, her cup of coffee, and her loneliness. another taste at freedom, this is what she was born to do, not a domesticated humble entity.
alternate reality. they had foretold her, in her childhood,
you will either choose to pursue your talent and thus pursue greatness. or you will be a nobody like everyone else. 
she wonders if, what if, she was that nobody. the domestic, married. in a house somewhere close.

Brooklyn..Queens...no, a little more suburban.
Long Island? yes. Long Island.



if.
..............................


do you ever feel like you've become the worst version of yourself?

no. but close.
i need to dream again.

..............................


-eeda

When

did you stop fighting for me, and just started fighting With me instead?












can i have my old S back? please
please


Please.

dont get me

wrong, i dont mind having a rock (several) on my hand which tell the world im married.

but its not just a label or a change of last names...it IS a lot of..responsiblity?
and i havent even moved in yet.

my husband. (wow that sounds weird) is a great guy. but he isn't the guy i saw across the room the day before we got married, in his sherwani doing a bhangra at our dholki. he is, but he also isn't. i don't know how else to explain it.
we grow old in seconds, not years, as people and life will have you believe. we grow old when we look into the eyes of our newlyborn for the first time, we grow old when we cross the podium at convocation, we grow old when we are done writing our last undergrad exam, we grow old when we get our driving license for the first time....and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to find ways to grow young.

but life WILL tell you that that doesnt happen.
not so easily anyway.

my husband is a great guy. he is, in ALL meanings of the phrase, my better half, my opposite. he is responsible, when i am not, organized to the T, when i am not, steady and stable, when i am spontaneous and floating... at times endearing...at times, it is most irritating. most overwhelming. we really are yin and yang in ways people will not believe, but we do come together and join seamlessly when we have to.

i love the metaphor used in the Zahir by paulo coelho about marriages and railroad tracks..but let's say with our marriage, we are two stokes of a wheel driving the wheel in two opposite directions.at least, with me i am.
it leaves me weary, the push and the pull. you must do this, you must do that, you must do this. i would let him be, but then the world wont let Me be. and at the end of the day, he is a better man for it, he knows it, his family knows it, and adores me for it.

but, it leaves me weary. the pulling, and the pushing.
i guess. but i have to clarify, for myself, for the audience, for the future me and for my child-to-be, he never pushes me to change, nor does anyone ask him to make me change, aside from my family (the in-laws think im perfect) and i dont want to think believe embrace that at all, because it leaves me cockysatisfied with no room to grow. i am, however, ever so grateful for it. mA

still. it takes patience being a wife. waiting for your husband to come home, being cheerful when he is down, being upbeat when he is depressed, being seductive when he, caught in the stresses of everyday life, barely responds. its only been a month, and it worries me that we are already old. but then, in hindsight, its been 3 years, not a month. not much should change or could change, given the distance.

he always says its the distance, he doesn't feel married. i do. something changes when you sign your name down for life, tenderness...love...protectiveness.
it was there, but now its more. and trapped in me.

there is a red indent in the finger where the ring is. it reminds me the fairytale happened, but not MY fairytale. not the roses, the proposal, the fireworks or the balloons, the surprise visits and the romance. things happen as you want, but not exactly what you want, and maybe that's popculture/holly-bollywood/magazine trash for you. my rational mind refuses to believe i would wish for these things, but the hearts mutters a tentative, embarrassed nervous yes, i do. i want the small, the simple and the sweet.

i guess it is the distance, it will be better when we are together. for now as the responsibilities and the workload, the upcoming event and the huge bill stands on his stressed shoulders, as our movie-nights and song-nights and romance-nights on weekends and the weekday 2 hour conversations dwindle to 10 minute daily conversations with weekend fights and makeups,  i just need patience and patience, and patience.

the little girl in me needs to be silenced so i can be the woman for the man he is and has to be for his family.

strength, ya Allah.
thats all.
-eeda