The Answer

 A few years ago, my adult son asked me why I married his father. It was not a question arising from curiosity, but anger and disgust. His actual words were "What made you marry that loser?"

I could not answer him. I don't think he wanted me to answer it either. It was rhetoric queston meant to express his disappointment in both his parents. It hurt me deeply as it was intended to, but it also made me relive my 18th year on this planet. 

My memories of my childhood are fuzzy, mushy and vague. I recall feelings of loneliness and inwardness. Even the events that shaped my personality didn't leave a clear impression, just vague dark imprints. 

I spoke to no one about my feelings or thoughts. There was no one who was privvy to them. My thoughts and poetry were hidden in a diary. Even the so called "best friends" knew me on the surface. The same is true for my parents and siblings. So, it won't be incorrect to say that I grew up with only myself, alone. Even when I was outside in public, I lived inside my head. All I had in terms of understanding the outer world were books. Some good, some trash. I can't say what I learned from them, except thinking I knew everything about the world at 18. 

By the time I met my future husband in college, I had been through two short-lasting, tentative yet painful teenage romances, followed by equally hurtful gossip. I was wary of large groups of friends, boys or girls, because I had seen how they gossipped and put down simple people like me. Lo and behold, here was a young man who was always alone and who looked and behaved different from the loud uncouth boys in the college calling out to me and making me uncomfortable. So obviously I was drawn to him. 

He and I were a couple within a couple of days of having been introduced (by ourselves). I felt safe with him, perhaps because I was certain that he had no other friends. He never made me feel that I was not enough, not in the way I looked or behaved. So I never had to, not once, pretend to be someone I wasn't.  I don't remember ever worrying about what clothes and shoes to wear to college because none of that mattered. I was the centre of his world regardless. I had never been the centre of anyone's world before that, and it felt magical. 

After that day, no one else mattered to me. No friends, no family, no one. He showed me a world I had never seen- new music, new food, science fiction books, fashion! We walked for hours together in the winter of 1983- two young beautiful people, arms criss-crossed behind our backs, holding hands, oblivious to the world and its conservative gaze. I believe I was truly happy for that period in my life when we were still discovering each other without having yet figured out the dark parts.

I had a gimpse of the darkness in him after a fight when I refused to meet him. In response, he tore his palm against a barbed wire. I was shocked and then went numb- my usual way of dealing with the undealable. Even if I had processed that action as abusive and manipulative at that time, I doubt I would have been able to back out of the relationship. I was in too deep and really very young and inexperienced. I was also without any mentor or philosophy. I just went deeper with him and lost any compass that I might have had (though I am quite sure I didn't have any). 

Then my twisted sister, four years my senior, decided that my relationship with my boyfriend was so wrong and repugnant that she had to kill herself over it, or at least pretend to do it. One night, she walked into the house and seeing him with me, popped in some pills. I was going through my worst asthmatic attack of my life at that time and barely able to get out of my bed. My parents had decided to go on a holiday, leaving me alone because, in my mother's words, I didn't listen to them anyway so why bother with me even I was sick. So, in that empty house, where my boyfriend was helping me get up to go to the toilet and feeding me, she was found crashed in the kitchen with pills all around her. The one person who was caring for me was now rushing an unconscious woman to hospitals. I was left all alone in my fear and guilt and status asthmaticus. 

42 years later, it is still so difficult to think about that night and the following days. My heart is beating faster than usual and I feel pins and needles on my face as I write this. 

My sister survived the attempt but I now believe she came out of it more manipulative than before. Why not? It had worked, hadn't it? A few weeks later, my father gave me a choice- marry Arun or stop seeing him. I tried to reason but I had no status in this family after what my sister had done. Her attempted suicide had taken away the last bit of agency I had. Instead of getting help for her mental health, I was forced to marry a man I barely knew. Leaving him was not a choice for me or for him, something even his parents knew. 

That's why I married your father. And honestly, marrying him was a better option than staying in this strange unloving unloved messed-up family, and I include myself in it. 

It took me decades to untangle myself from the family and build one for myself based on love, attention, fairness and harmony. If I hadn't married that loser, none of it would have been possible.