Dear Jasmine #7: Answer to the Ringing of Your Own Heart
"You deserve to reach out for a better life and follow your gut into the wild, overgrown-with-flowers forest that is of your own making."
Question #7:
Dear Jasmine,
I’m a mother of a teenager, married for more than 20 years. My husband and I have been growing more and more distant over the last several years. He’s always been emotionally unavailable, we share no common interests, and life is literally hell now, to share the same space with him. He is emotionally abusive, does not care for my feelings, and still feels entitled to a physical relationship with me. I’m financially independent with a job I love. I just want to get up and leave. I don’t know what’s holding me back: maybe I want to keep up this illusion of a functional family. Maybe I’m afraid to be alone. But I do know that I can’t live like this for long. Help me.
-Unhappy in Bangalore
Answer #7: Answer to the Ringing of Your Own Heart
Dear Unhappy in Bangalore,
Ever since I was a little girl, I have had an unflinching voice inside my head which says that I was born to write. This voice is not arrogant or conceited about my ability but more of a quiet whisper that simply utters the truth of my whole being. Years have come and years have gone by, and though this voice has changed in volume, frequency, and intensity, it has never changed the message. No matter how well or how badly I do it, I know I must write. I’ve been close to writing and I’ve been far from it, but I haven’t been able to abandon it even though I have tried when it gets particularly frustrating and I feel like a fraud. This voice is muffled and tired now, but it remains in the centre of my heart. It is a truth that I haven’t tried to shake. I have accepted it as one accepts the rising of the sun every morning. It is just there.
What do I know about being married for 20 years, raising a teenager, and building a family, Unhappy in Bangalore? I don’t know a damned thing. What can I say to you that would not be completely out of the ballpark of how you’re feeling? Almost everything! However the last two words of your letter shook something inside me and here I am writing to you. Help me. Those two words have so much vulnerability and power in them at the same time. In some ways, it is your own creed Unhappy in Bangalore, your own truth of the moment. Can any of us really help you, though? Yes, we can. Of whatever I have seen in my own life, I will never be able to deny the helping hand of another human in my life. The small bowl of kheer that a neighbour brings to our doorstep or when a friend picks us up when we are running late or when a colleague steps in for a meeting we can’t attend or when the house help peels cucumbers for salad are all small acts of support that keep the raft of our life afloat. It is not nothing because it takes a small load off and gives us space attend to something else. The help goes on. The raft floats on.
I am confident that you also have your own people who help you in one way or another. Look for these people on the seams of your life, and if they already exist, take some time to acknowledge them in your own mind. People helping other people in infinitesimal ways is how we keep our lives stitched together. When we look at our lives closely, we realise that we are never truly alone. I ask you to do this because I suspect that your fear of being alone is actually the fear of being lonely. It is maddening how un-alone we are in our dense, urban cities with what the acquaintances, neighbours, house help, every day familiar faces, and our own friends and families taking up one or other spaces in our life. We might not truly recognise that we are always surrounded by people because we look through them. Isn’t that what happens to someone who is always there? You’re not alone. But aren’t you lonely, right now, Unhappy in Bangalore?
One of my closest friends tells me that people in marriages don’t just give up, they soldier on unlike anyone else. They hang in there. They don’t have the cavalier luxury of leaving. I believe my closest friend without question because whatever I know about marriage is from observation of my own parents and from theoretical knowledge of my friends’ marriages. I always wonder how people stop talking to their friends about their romantic relationship once they get married. This is not the case when people are dating. While dating, friends discuss their romantic relationships with each other, their expectations, hopes, and fears of these relationships. However, a seal of silent sacredness forms around our friends after they marry and they shut us out from even the basic details of their romantic lives. I understand why people do this — marriage becomes a sacred space of two people. No one else is welcome in, unless it is the rules of the society. People drift from each other and stop sharing anything about their romantic life after the deal is sealed. It is a very common occurrence, don’t you think?
In long-standing relationships, people start to adjust around their partners and keep lowering the bar on what they accept and reject romantically and emotionally. Is any of this sounding remotely true or am I just saying things I have just seen from a distance and I’ve not seen them well? Forgive me for my overreach, but this is an observation. I think we must continue to review our own expectations from all our relationships throughout our lives and not just until we get married. I don’t know if you have shut out any (girl)friends in the past after you got married, Unhappy in Bangalore, but if you have, please let them back in. Not to discuss your romantic life or lack of thereof, but to remind you what it means to have a support system that puts you first. Our old friends and even new ones hold us accountable for putting ourselves first. Every close friend of mine wants the best for me and I am sure yours will be no different. I urge you to find your cheerleaders and bring them back in your life to where they belong — in holding you up. Have people around you who see you for who you are and cheer you on to reach out into your own life with courage and magnanimity. I always find these people to be my friends. I am certain you will find them to be your friends, too. If you’ve lost some along the way, make new friends. You’ll be amazed by how many people want a friend but aren’t vulnerable to say so. Be vulnerable, make a friend. See how good it feels.
Whether to leave your marriage or not, I cannot tell you that. I always maintain that leaving is a matter of privilege in the deeply webbed societies desis live in. Leaving a marriage will involve tough conversations with your husband, a good lawyer, buy-in from your teenager, and emotional support from family and friends. I am not saying it cannot be done. I am saying that this decision is yours to make alone. There is no shame in leaving an unhappy marriage. You won’t be lonely for the rest of your life, I can guarantee you. Not because I believe we live in a wish-fulfilling universe, but because our lives are never the same through the years as long as we are courageous.
You asked for help. I can help you by asking you to see that you’re not alone, requesting you to surround yourself with people who want the best for you, and telling you that you deserve a partner who is emotionally available and attentive towards you always and not just when carnal desires arise. All these are truths, Unhappy in Bangalore. These are the truths that we all know but in all the messy noise of living, we tend to forget them.
Lastly, listen to that voice in your head which is asking you to leave this marriage. That voice is your own and if it is unshakeable and persistent, you will have to pay heed to it now or later. These days, I find the voice in my own head to be faint and burdened, but I know it is there. I have to reckon with it and sit down and write because I feel guilty of not listening to it. Whatever that voice in your head tells you, follow it, Unhappy in Bangalore. More and more people would live wildly different lives if only we had the courage to listen to these persistent voices in our heads. I imagine that we force everyone in the desi society to follow the same template of living because we are deeply afraid of what would happen when we start listening to our hearts. I don’t mean this in a callous way — I don’t mean leaving behind whole people and bonds to go gallivanting off the southern coast of Italy with your entire family’s savings. I mean being deliberate with what we want and communicating this sincerely to the people closest to us.
We have to live with people, but we also have to live with ourselves. So live with yourself, Unhappy in Bangalore. Show respect and tenderness to your own wants, communicate these to your husband and teenager, and be sincere about the kind of life you imagine to lead. All this takes immense courage, but I am sure that you have it. I know this because all of us have courage, we just want someone to believe in us, so we can believe in ourselves.
I am here for you Unhappy in Bangalore. I am cheering you on to shed your fears and to be conscious of the life you want to lead. You deserve to be loved, held, and feel safe. You deserve to reach out for a better life and follow your gut into the wild, overgrown-with-flowers forest that is of your own making. You deserve to be surrounded by streaming sunlight, the calls of birds unknown which sing to you new songs you can now hear faintly but will become clearer if you go closer. Walk towards your own personal forest of the future, Unhappy in Bangalore. Take with you whatever kindness, tea cakes, and hopes you can. We are all rooting for you.
Love,
Jasmine
Dear Jasmine is a fortnightly column by an anonymous writer. If any of you want to send in questions, please send them to Jasmine here.