Are you still there?

Yesterday was a busy day at work. We only had a few visitors but the tons of paperwork the bosses required me to finish were just tiring. By the end of the day I was physically strained and when I learned from my colleague that I will take the Saturday shift this week, I got even more weary. It was supposed to be my turn to have the Fri-Sat off and I was very much looking forward to it. Now I’ll have to take the Thurs-Fri off. We hate that because when we have the Thursday off it doesn’t feel like a day off at all. Everyone else is at work, there’s no one to talk to and there’s nothing nice to do. It just kind of feels like I’m on a sick leave and I become too sluggish to do chores.

On my way home I had to pass by the post office to drop off some mail. While walking from the bus stop I remembered the way my husband used to call me when he knows I’m already on my way home. He would call to tell me to be careful commuting, he would call to check if I got in the bus safely and another call to find out if I made it home fine. Now I hardly hear my mobile ring. I got teary-eyed again.

I opted to walk home from the post office, it was just a 10-minute walk anyway, and I wanted to take time to do some thinking. When I arrived home, my husband was already there, getting ready to cook rice. Oh, so you’re already home, I said. He did not even ask why I arrived late.

After dinner, I was a bit quiet. He asked me why I wasn’t my talkative self. I said miss the way he used to call to check on me all the time. He said he did not have credits on his prepaid so he wasn’t able to call. After that I just did not feel like talking anymore. We just lay quietly on the bed. He did not seem interested to talk himself, and we just stayed there waiting until it was time for him to go down to see her.  When he got up to get ready he felt that my feet were cold. He took a pair of socks from the closet and put them on me – and I wept. He used to do that before we went to sleep at night and as he did, he would tell me that he will put socks on my feet until we grew old.

These are traces of his old self that used to make me love him more. Now it’s these things that make me cry. His new relationship has changed him into an uncaring, cruel and insensitive person but on some instances, his good self surfaces. This makes me think if that part of him is still somewhere underneath the dark person I see now. If it is, I want to shake him out.

Before lunch today, he called and asked if I already ate. I said I just woke up and I thanked him for asking. He told me to get up and eat, and asked me to do the laundry. He always does the laundry. He told me before that it’s the one thing he’ll never ask me to do because he knows I have never washed my own clothes my whole life and I doing that will make me very, very depressed. But now he’s asking me to do it. Thank you very much for the thoughtful call, dear.