He flips through the channels aimlessly as I watch from the kitchen.

“Thank you for dinner, honey,” he says, flashing me an exhausted smile, sweat still clinging to his shirt from a long day’s work piled on a long week’s work. Bastard.

He kisses me on the cheek on his way to bed, straightening the cushions.

“Do you want anything?” he asks, hand stroking my hair affectionately, my own arms tightly folded across my chest.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I lie.

He enters the bedroom, pulls back the covers. Less than his share. Falls asleep noiselessly. The bastard never snores.

I walk to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet. Stare blankly. There’s nothing for me here. Slam the mirrored door to the cabinet shut. The hinge breaks. He’ll fix it; I don’t even have to ask.

Eleven years grind hard on nerves. Stuck in a marriage with someone who refuses to cave in. He never asks questions, never says a cruel word.

My girlfriends sob out stories of cheating husbands, drug-addict boyfriends and one-night stands. I sip my coffee with a tight-lipped sympathetic smile. Who are they to complain?

Is it my fault? Who was I to get the “perfect” husband anyways? I didn’t ask!

Who is he, this other “he”, to tempt with a winning smile? There should be no other “he” in a marriage, there should only be the one on my mind, but I can’t think of him, when he is all I think about.

Sure, he has a history of all the horrors girlfriends gossip about. But that’s something, isn’t it? Excitement, adventure. Escape from this monotonous tedium of life. This can’t be what I live for!

Who is he to give me a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day? Who is he to bind me by this ring? Who am I to stay here for him when there’s him and so many others out there, waiting? Leave perfection for the girlfriends. Where is my adventure? Where is my heartbreak? Why have I let this bastard cheat me out of catastrophe?

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.