Connection

Chapter 15

/LEA/

I still have an hour and a half before I meet my sister for our dinner. It’s going to be a five-course meal and I’m sure there’s going to be some expensive wine. But I don’t think I’ll be needing more because I’m already having one and I’m almost finished. What’s funnier though, this is the wine that Aga left when I harshly kicked him out.

Fuck that idiot, he deserves it. Fuck him and his feelings.

And fuck me, I’m the other idiot.

I shouldn’t have let him get too familiar, too close to me again. I basically handed him a knife that would later stab me in the back— well, my heart, really. He should have stayed as the estranged husband, the asshole father of my children, the one person whose funeral who I would go to wearing a red gown. Having him that way saved me from these messed up feelings for a very long time. Then I let him become a friend-but-legally-husband who was still in love with his previously estranged wife. Look where it got me, back to what I was seventeen years ago.

Fuck him for causing me that kind of torment and agony I once had as his wife.

Our marriage was a premature marriage, but normal nonetheless. Blissful with occasional hiccups. I became a mother first before I became his wife because we were young and dumb enough to have sex without protection. I bore my son at eighteen (I love my son but I don’t advocate teenage pregnancy. Don’t have kids when you yourself is still one!). Aga and I managed to pull everything through— we finished our degrees, and had a decent job all the while raising Matthew. He became the center of our relationship; the mighty glue to our little family. We were a beautiful and happy family. Until he died.

Losing Matthew wasn’t a mere hiccup. It was the virus that slowly infected our relationship, left untreated until we were only hanging by a thread. Maybe it was on me for thinking it was only a bump on our road— that we would eventually get through it— but clearly it was not. They say that you are supposed to lean on your spouse in times of difficulty and for the most part of our relationship, that was true. We handled financial struggles and marital challenges together and got out of them stronger than ever. But Matthew’s death drifted us apart, put a huge wall between us so we couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of the fence.

It changed Aga so much. He learned to get comfortable not communicating with me in the same way he used to. At first I thought it was just the grief, that we only needed time to process this life-altering event. But every time I’d initiate a casual conversation with him or just simply ask how his day was, he’d be hot under his collar. It’s as if the sound of my voice irritated the hell out of him. He became short-tempered, when between the two of us that was my infamous trait.

I hated it when we fought, but during those days, I would have wanted us to scream at each other rather than occupy the house with stillness and coldness. He stopped eating the meals I prepared, stopped saying goodbye to me whenever he left for work, stopped kissing me hello whenever he went home. He slept while facing away from me. Then he started keeping secrets from me. He started going home later than usual; sometimes drunk, sometimes he didn’t even go home at all. When I asked him where he went on nights he wasn’t on the other side of our bed, he’d say he’s burying himself in work to help him cope with his loss.

You bet it’s not the only reason.

I take another huge gulp of wine, hoping to relieve the tightness in my chest. My knees begin to feel wobbly as my breaths become erratic. I have no choice but to sit on the kitchen floor while suppressing my sobs. This house feels so haunted to me because I died twice here. And, right now, I feel like succumbing to my third death. Here lies the memories of the pain I had to endure, the chances I had to give, the love I had held on just to save my marriage. All for the ruins of me.