Linda paused for a second and then continued amidst our collective silence, “What about the drinking and the physical abuse when he’s stressed out? The same man who claimed to love you in one breath would find within him to hit you in the next? Remember the black eye on my daughter’s 1st birthday, when I told you all I’d missed a step and fallen? I lied!!
When is enough, enough? Is it till I am infected with HIV after he’s been with different women that I could then be released for this contract of marriage? Was the contract not broken the minute he had slept with another that was not his wife? Or would it be after he had fathered a child outside of our marriage (and that’s the one I got to find out about and not the ones I don’t know or would never know about).
I got no support for my dreams like I did for his; mine were nothing but “little hobbies” to keep me occupied and not a real career that required time and energy to concentrate and develop. I was a non person because he expected a housewife for ever and not for a season
I am sure we had many a good times, but now I cannot remember them, I had reached my enough ladies! To you I should pray and ask God for help… I did and still do, but first I needed to accept and identify what was wrong and break out of a mind of denial, shame and hopelessness. I am fighting now for my sanity, I can not let depression step in to my life yet again after battling for years to the point where death looked so attractive that I welcomed its bleak finality twice in our marriage. No more!!! My life is worth more than being just his wife or their mother, there is more to me than that. Though you choose to call me selfish, maybe I am, but I reckon it’s time to think about myself because Enough is Enough!!”
Linda carefully wiped her eyes, picked up her bag and calmly walked out of the restaurant with a stride I had never seen her in before, some would call it a swagger.
RefinedOne (my first geisha contributor)
…so when is enough, enough for you? Each person’s threshold is different so don’t judge another too harshly. Linda is my first geishawife…..can you be my next?