The Wearer Knows Best Where The Shoe Pinches

 

What do you think of a woman who seeks divorce from her husband because he would make her stupid and she won’t tolerate it?

I was in an eatery with my employer when a conversation broke between him and a woman. She was telling him how she separated from her husband. She stopped him when he wanted to make her stupid as an educated woman.

Because women are always expected to be submissive, someone can say where this woman would find peace outside of her husband’s room? One can say she is arrogant.

Then I ponder alone in my mind that women are also humans like everyone. They can be sad, happy and can have taste, like and dislike. There is nothing wrong when a woman goes in pursuit of her happiness.

There are men who divorce their wives on account of being sad in their relationship. Then, do we think women are robots and have no feelings?  

I asked my friend one day if he could live with a woman whom he realized snored the first night of their marriage. He firmly answered in negative, he could not, even if she would be the only woman on earth.

For a woman, getting out of marriage on account of a snoring husband would attract harsh criticisms. But if she would be accorded basic human status, she would go for a choice that would make her happy and fulfilled. If only she could find her peace outside the marriage, she should be assisted in achieving her aspiration.

But a lot of people choose to subject women to untold agony.

It is injustice to view a person negatively for trudging a path that will bring them peace. We should not see this woman from the negative angle when she chose to get out of marriage she felt the husband was making her stupid. The woman was honest and sincere. If she clung to the marriage, she could have ended up depressed.

Depressed people are those who have a tad of miserable life that can result into debilitating mood disorder. Dismissing the concerns of this woman and many others like her is injustice.  The fact that living in sad condition or mental illness doesn’t receive the same sympathy as physical illness, makes her the only person as sufferer who can feel the real pain. It cannot be shown to another person or where surgery will be applied. It is a disease even the doctor could not understand.

Imagine living with a boring partner? Imagine living with such person as your wife. How would you feel at all? So if depression doesn’t spare men why should it spare women? 

One of the problems of the mental instability is that it prevents one from thinking and behaving normally. The sufferer’s thinking is quite different from the non-sufferer’s. They feel their self-worthy is low, miserable and bleak that they feel getting out of such situation is the only solution. And because the non-sufferer is watching from a safe distance, it is easy to accuse such women when they seek divorce. Sometimes if they continue in such marriage it results into odious; suicide or mariticide.

From commonsensical prism, insisting such woman should stay in the marriage, from the sufferer’s point of view, gripped by sadness, is like insisting a man with broken leg to walk normally. I heard the woman later in the discussion say the most regrettable thing she had ever made in her life was marrying the man.

Sincerely, it is a good idea she walked out of the relationship.

Confession

Confession

I have a confession. But please, don’t tell anybody. If you feel troubled, ease your conscience. I beg you to tell the person you are revealing this secret to that they should not tell it to another person all over again. If they should do, warn them to tell the person not further blabber it out. 

Here is my story.

My name is Feisal and my wife’s name is Zinaria. Our names are given to us with the hopes that we would bear their glory.

Before I got married, I walked around the streets of my area in shorts and singlet. Thirty years after, with age and children, there are many things I could not do now. I’ve gone bald and the remaining patches of hair in my head have already turned grey. Whisker, beard, goatee and moustache have grown all over my face. My grandchildren called me buzuzu!

Thank God. In spite of age, there are many who nothing has changed.

Long time ago I met Zinaria. She bore the glory of her name, cute, immaculate and spotless. Her cornrows were neatly plaited and tucked, sprawling down her nape. Her nails impeccably manicured and her toes pedicured, eyelashes carefully decorated. Throughout the years of our courtship, I had never seen a stain in her.

Zinaria was an angel. Her cuteness beat me. Whatever she touched felt wonderful on my tongue. She once gave me water and it was like honey.

I was always sweet and immaculate as well. She had never seen me repeat clothings. I wore new ones on every Friday I was to visit her. Because she was living at Kofar Nassarwa, I never risked going around Gwale in an outfit I visited her the previous day. I carried myself with extra-care and behaved very meticulously. Always on my guard, never did anything embarrassing.

We never let ourselves find faults in ourselves. Cleanliness and spotlessness were our watchwords and natural endowments and the promises we’d keep when we got married. Anytime we met, I told her that she smelt better than me.

First weeks of our marriage, she cooked delicious food and brought it in a small china dish the size I used to eat from when I was visiting her. I went hungry for some days. Later, I told her to increase my fill.

She was baffled.

One month into our marriage, I abandoned the habit of wearing new clothes already. I could wear anything now.  It was a rude shock for her to see me in untidy apparel.

From her part, things were equally opening up gradually. The only thing that stayed a bit longer was waking up early from bed. I had never seen her in a crumpled shape. Until one day, she was too late in bed. Since then, she no longer felt shy or embarrassed.

As time went by, the notion of her perfection was rapidly dispelled. She was just ordinary person like everyone. When I began to shout order at her, it was unbelievable. Me? I had never imagined shouting at my little angel that I was doing everything to please.

This was the girl I was hiding almost everything from and she was concealing her true self from me.

Both of us no longer bothered to appear meticulously neat and to impress each other. Familiarity brought out the reality in us and made us see our nakedness.

The promise of daily cuteness was never kept.

We were not inherently filthy.

It was too cumbersome.

The everydayness of life.