Tough

Ramadan has been tough without you.
Eid will be tough without you.
Being pregnant is tough without you.
Life is tough without you.

And I'm not feeling so tough without you.

This is me feeling weak. More so than ever before.

Only you can do that. Only you can make me feel so weak, so helpless, so forgotten, so insignificant that I want to crawl into a corner and hide.

This voice on the phone. Is that really you?

It's not what you promised me.

It's not what I signed up for when I married you. This disembodied voice coming out of my handset.

Sometimes it hurts so much to have to listen to it.

Sometimes I can't take it because the voice on the phone is you actively engaged in the act of not being here, the act of being distant, out of reach, out of touch, out of sight, out of every sense except one.

Talk about sensory deprivation. That's how it feels sometimes.

It's not fair.

This is so unfair.

And because it is so unfair sometimes I don't want to be tough.

Being tough means accepting that this is happening.

Being tough means accepting that this is allowed.

Being tough is what I do every second of the day now.

Except every now and then, I stop and think wait, why am I doing this?

Why am I working so hard to make it ok for you not be with me?

Why am I working so hard for something I don't want, for something I hate so much?

Last night I hated you.

For making me do this.

I hated you so much that hearing you laugh on the line made me see red.

I didn't want you to laugh. I didn't want you to be happy.

You know, I've never felt that before. I've never been this angry just because someone sounded happy. I've never wanted with so much passion for another human being to be unhappy. I've never been this selfish, this hateful, this vindictive, this EVIL. I never knew I had all this buried somewhere in me.

And so I hung up.

I'd had enough of your voice, distracted, amused, responsive to those around you, impatient with me.

I had nothing to say to you.

I missed you. Then I hated you. Then I called you. And I hated you even more. And I missed you even more.

Does that make sense? To hate someone more than you've ever hated another human being - knowing all the time that you want them more than you've ever wanted another human being, knowing all the time that they matter more than everyone else in the world put together?

Sometimes you make me want to not feel, not think, not be.

Sometimes you make me want to fade into nothing.