wooing Meera Rai

XIV | parent trap

XIV | parent trap

"You are not getting divorced."

Meera always wanted to give birth to a kid. She always wanted to be a mother. She always wanted to raise a kid.

Why?

Because she wanted to love and raise the kid with a family she never got. 

It was silly, Meera knew that. She knew it was really silly to want to raise a kid simply because she wasn't raised with love and care. She wanted her kid to never feel alone, not when she was with him.

Because Meera always felt alone whenever she was with her family.

Meera desperately wanted to get a little love from her family, the one that would never leave your side despite everything being so hard and so tough. She really wanted to have someone on her side, a family, her husband, a kid, someone.

So when Meera got married the first time, she did her best to please her husband. She agreed to everything he did. She followed him around like a puppy. She put up with every single demand and every single tantrum he threw. She loved him, she really tried her best to love him.

All of that only to have another human who failed to be her family.

Families are people you grow up with, you grow old with, you love and hate and cherish all at the same time.

But Meera's family didn't live to the mark. In fact, they didn't care about her at all. 

They kept cursing her through her childhood for being a girl, they kept pointing at her dark skin and calling her ugly before the world could, they kept laughing and mocking her achievements because all women had to do were sleep with their husband and stick to the kitchen. 

When Meera came home from her abusive marriage, her parents disowned her. They said they didn't want a divorced daughter back in their house - ignoring the reddish blue marks on her visible face and neck, ignoring how crestfallen and lifeless she was when she stepped in, ignoring how her hazel eyes were pleading for some light.

They told her that she had to go back and apologise to the man who was grateful enough to marry someone like her and do whatever he wanted to if it meant that the marriage would be saved.

She told them everything he did to her. The wounds of the yesteryears fresh on her body and her broken heart. She narrated her sob story with tears, hoping that someone in her family, someone would sympathise with her and understand her. 

Surely her father would be raging when he'd hear what her husband did to his little girl. Surely, her mother would wrap her arms around her girl and whisper sweet comforting words. Surely her sisters would sit by her and tell her that they were with her. Surely, her brothers would be ready to call a war on the man who hurt their sister.

Surely.

Nothing happened.

They ridiculed her. They told her that she needed to suck it up. They mocked her decision to divorce a man when nothing he did was wrong.

All the years of toxicity, manipulation, obsession and man-handling, all of that meant nothing to her family.

She didn't tell them what he did to her last night, or the night before, or all the nights since the stranded night. She didn't dare tell them how much she cried each night, silently because she was scared to wake the monster sleeping next to her. She didn't tell them how terrified she was when he'd approach her, afraid he'd steal her sanity each time he touched her.

She didn't tell them anything after that.

Mostly because she was scared how they'd dismiss it and say it was a husband's right, or that she was married to him and it was permitted, or that they'd laugh on her face saying that she needed to be a better wife.