“I want out”, I said to Ronald.
Finally.
Ronald was the reason I had developed a thick skin. He had taught me how to stop caring about opinion’s of others. Ronald was the love of my life, the apple of my eye, and my soon to be ex-husband. He made me believe in the good things, like rainbows and butterflies, and also in mistrust and deceit. If it weren’t for the slow replacement of my presence with that of others, I would not have changed. Ronald was charismatic and it was a convenience he often abused. It was hard to say no to him, and for whatever reasons, circumstances seem to favor him. An emotional game of music and chair: when I left, he filled it with others, when others left, I was available to fill in, cater to his needs. Did I truly believe that he would love me the way I wanted to be? Yes. Did I know it was just wishful thinking? Also, Yes.
“What?!” he asked, looking up from his phone. He was scrolling through his gallery looking at his own pictures.
“I said, I want out”, I replied once again. This time firmly.
“Out of what”, he asked, feigning ignorance.
He knew what I was talking about. He knew exactly what I was talking about. But he had the tendency to question my perfectly-reasonable statements, and watch me lose my shit. Over a period of time, I understood how he derived pleasure in it, of sadistic proportions.
I was not going to let him do this to me again. He was not going to manipulate me again. Not this time.
“I want a divorce”, I said firmly and looked directly at him.
“Oh God, why are you blowing it out of proportion? “, he said, finally looking up from his phone. “Is it about the time at the Great Mall? You said you saw me, but I swear I wasn’t there. I have other things to do, other than be answerable to your wild theories”, he dismissed me, visibly irritated, ready with his defensive answers.
Its amazing how often people think they can get away with their defensiveness. How they would be willing to go to any extent to protect their fragile images, to protect their egos, and to protect themselves from getting hurt.
I no longer knew who this person was, and I wanted to be as far away from this person as possible.
“I am moving out tonight.”, I replied.
The conversation was over.
I met Ronald for the first time at a friend’s birthday party.
“….And I wasn’t prepared for it to rain for 2 days straight. I was camping in the cold the whole time. My phone wasn’t working, I couldn’t call for help and I had not eaten in that entire period”, He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the difficulty. He was standing in the balcony, his voice inviting me to listen more. There was a small group around him, listening intently.
“But when the sun came on the third day, after all that, it seemed like I got my life back,” he gestured with his hands. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I had seen in my life”, he concluded and took a sip from his beer can.
Our eyes met.
“Nice story.”, I found myself saying before I knew it. It was the beginning of wanting to seek his validation, a desire that only got more intense as time went on and he became an important part of my life. Others followed with compliments. My compliments were not as detailed as Nirupama’s, who sounded more confident than I had, who had a similar experience to share, and who possessed a beauty that came with regular visits to hair salons and having the means to purchase new clothes every season. I knew who was more likely to leave a good impression on him by the end of the night, and it wasn’t me.
The night had belonged to Ronald. I saw Ronald drifting through the crowd, cracking jokes with them, with an ease that seemed like they had known each other for years. How can someone be so good with people? I want to be a friend of this guy, I found myself thinking. Maybe Nirupama felt the same. I saw her making her way to the same place where he was, comfortably placing herself in the middle of conversations without waiting for an invitation.
I wanted that too. I wanted to speak with him, laugh with him and spend time with him. But I couldn’t compete with Nirupama’s beauty or charm. Attending this party was already out of my comfort zone, and seeing Nirupama and Ronald standing next to each other, mirroring each other’s words, it made more sense to continue to maintain the orders of the universe.
A charming, Rich guy meets Charming Rich Girl. They charm each other and the rest of us with their charming stories and live happily ever after.
*****
Ronald Roy
‘Compassionate. World Traveler. Learner. Human Being’
When I searched for Ronald on Instagram, I saw that he had 600k followers, a metric that was not hard for me to believe. A brief scroll on his profile showed location tags in Mt. Fiji, Australia, Mexico, and most recently Kathmandu. Nearly all of his photos were well-shot, with good lighting and exposure, and looked very professional. When I saw a couple of sunrise photos among the Kathmandu ones, I smiled. I knew the story behind that photo. I was probably among a small size of people who had heard it.
I sent him a request to follow.
Komal, my friend who hosted the Party was already a follower. And so was Nirupama. Who had sent the first request? I thought to myself. My mind immediately conjured images of Nirupama and Ron, standing next to each other, wearing a woolen sweater, with the backdrop of one of Ronald’s photos. I felt a slump in my stomach.
He accepted it right away.
I felt elated. I didn’t come across people like him every day, and I was happy just to be seen by him. We began meeting often, at some pretext or another. Given his busy travel schedule, I was happy to make time for him whenever he was in town. In preparation for meeting him, I would look up places he was at so that I didn’t appear dumb when he shared his experiences with me. For a long time, I had placed him on a pedestal. I looked up to him, generously offering my adulations to him at his long-winded travel stories. Gradually, I became comfortable with the image of me standing next to him with a snow-clad mountain in the backdrop. I had dethroned Nirupama from the image.
What he saw in me, I don’t know. And he made no attempts to tell.
That was the first red flag I chose to ignore.
Shortly after his infamous London trip, I began to see a therapist.
“So, what brings you here?”, my therapist asked routinely.
“My husband..” I hesitated a little.
“he is in London”, I completed that sentence in a small voice.
She waited for me to give more context, her face remaining stoic and I couldn’t decipher what she was thinking.
“He said he was packing for an upcoming trip, but I didn’t know it was to London,” I added, avoiding eye contact with her. I was wearing my beige sweater, an old, faded piece of clothing that I had been using since the time before I met Ronald. I would wear this sweater whenever I felt low, it was my go-to, my pick-me-up. It had seen me at my worst, but was still her, offering me comfort.
“And why is it bothering you that he is in London”, she asked trying to understand.
Because he is always doing this to me! My mind exploded. It was hard for me to articulate why my feelings were in the neighborhood of deceit and betrayal. It was hard for me to understand why I was feeling this way.
“Because he didn’t tell it himself. I found out through his social media.” I replied my tone flat.
I was doing everything that I could to remain calm and composed but I could feel my cheeks burning. The truth was, it wasn’t the first time he had done something like this. It wasn’t the first time I was learning about his lying habits.
“London is close to my heart. I went to school there” I offered some background.
“Oh so you have been to London before?” she replied.
“Yeah. Lived there for 5 years before coming back here. Why would he hide something like this from me! I wanted to show London to me through my eyes, give him an insider view into life there, I have so many stories from there.” I moved my hands really fast as I said this, and my hands which were lying lifeless on my belly, had suddenly found life.
Now he has ruined London for me.” I said, folding my hands, and slumping my back on the couch. I was angry at Ronald. At everyone else. Saying it out loud felt good.
“I can understand why that would bother you,” she said.
Thank God! I thought to myself. She wasn’t going to lecture me about the importance of giving space as my friends had. A couple of months ago,I had asked him what exactly he did for work. I still didn’t fully understand what he did for a living and asked him to tell me more about it. I genuinely had little idea about what he did.
“You won’t understand. It is complicated.” he had responded defensively. When I shared his defensive reaction with Komal, she also dismissed my concerns.
“Arrey, he is doing well for himself. Why are you nagging him to talk about work? Give him space. Give him space”, she had advised. ‘Give him space’ was the response to all the relationship problems I shared with her. She hadn’t been helpful. I doubted if she cared even. Komal, much like Nirupama ( and perhaps Ronald) wasn’t too concerned about how others made money for their living. I doubted if she knew what he did herself. Maybe this was her attempt to hide the fact that she didn’t know him too well after all.
I began feeling relieved at having shared this feeling with someone other than Komal, or Das, people who had an equal stake in both my and Ronald’s life. I was relieved to hear that someone understood what I was going through. I looked at my therapist, not knowing if the relief was shown on my face. I let the silence continue to linger between us. My mind was also quiet for a while, not replaying conversations between me and Ron, looking for evidence of his shady behavior.
I hoped after seeing a therapist I would know how I could stop Ronald from overtaking my life. I wanted to revert to the version of myself that I was before, much before.
It had been a couple of sessions since I began visiting my therapist alone. Perhaps it would have been better if I had taken Ronald with me. Would it have been better if he had agreed to come with me, I don’t know. It would help if he acknowledged that there was a problem, It would help if he weren’t actively avoiding the fact that I was unhappy. It would help if he wasn’t so keen on living the lie he was manufacturing.
“This is who I am”, he had said, after he returned from London. I had just asked him why his trip was something he kept from me.
“I thought you were mature and understanding. Since when did you start becoming needy?”, he asked me. His eyes widened, and honestly, I was frightened. Was it the same person who had managed to charm a crowd of people he had just met? I thought as I recalled our first meeting. He left the house, slamming the front door dramatically, the same way he had done multiple times earlier when I had spoken about how some of my expectations had not been met.
He had a way of making me feel like I had asked for too much. That any question to him was a question of his autonomy as a person. My therapist pointed out that feeling emotionally secure was one of the core items that made a relationship work. I constantly felt drained having to walk on eggshells around him.
I made my way to the kitchen and opened my laptop.
I was far from feeling emotionally secure.
Before I knew it, I was typing Nirupama’s name on Facebook Search. I was gritting my teeth without realizing it, and her feed only made me feel worse. Some of us have never had to question our choices. Some of us have never been penalized for the decisions we have had to make. I could see that Nirupama was not one of us. I was looking at a photo of her farewell party. She was moving to Italy, and everyone I knew from Komal’s Party was attending. They were dressed in white. Even Ronald. Was it deliberate? Did she send out a memo before the Party to everyone about a Dress Code?
Ughhh! Do people do such things anymore?
Nirupama could. Only she did. Only she had the power to influence people into having a dress code, and not be judged for it. If she did it, everyone followed suit. I was scrolling through her feed and found a picture where they were all laughing, mid-pose.
I would be seething with resentment if I didn’t see how childish it was. Who was fooling whom here?
Beep. Beep.Beep.
The microwave stops whirring and the timer begins to ring, snapping me out of the screen.
I took another look at Ronald’s face in the photo - his smug face breaking into a burst of laughter. Ronald, who was fooling who here?
Who was this guy?
The day I told Ronald that I was leaving, was literally the day I left him. As I packed my clothes and grabbed my personal items, I could hear him screaming, calling me mad for imagining things. I had spent a good part of my married life, questioning my sanity, thanks to Ronald. Ronald, who could never be wrong, Ronald who always pointed out that my feelings were inaccurate, Ronald who twisted his truth the way he deemed fit. He always had a quote ready, a man with a never-ending list of platitudes, to back his stand. He held a moral high ground and built a foundation constantly questioning my version of truth.
He made himself the center of the universe and sucked every living energy out of me.
As I closed the door behind me, I felt a sigh of relief. He was no longer going to be my problem.
Sentiment would have told me to take one last look at the house - my home, our home, a home where I wanted to be accepted as an equal, a place where I could be myself. But, I didn’t. No last looks were necessary. Not today. I was feeling lesser and lesser conflicted about what I was doing as I walked up to my car. I don’t need this anymore, I told myself.
Before I knew it, I was driving away from that place. Away from him.
I began driving to my parents’ house the same evening after I told Ronald that I was leaving him. On the way, as I drove to the countryside, I couldn’t help but wonder how my life had taken shape for the worst. I had been a good person my whole life. Why was I given this? My therapist tried to indicate that our problematic patterns often have roots in our childhood. But that wasn’t true. Why didn’t therapists have more nuanced answers and approaches to our emotional problems? In this case, it was clear. The problem was with Ronald withholding love from me, from his wife, and indulging in power games. He was a horrible person. End of story. However, my therapist had sought to ask me about my childhood and my trauma responses. There was no trauma, and hence no response. Ronald was an asshole, how difficult was getting to this conclusion?
If there was any trauma, it was in Ronald’s past. He was estranged from his family, and he had not told it to me until the day after we were engaged. Looking back, I now realize how little I knew of him at the time of our engagement. What was I getting myself into? How could I be so smitten that I had overlooked where he came from?
At that moment, I hated myself. I hated how I had jumped on trying to seek his validation from the time I had met him. I am ashamed of how much it had mattered to me all these years.
I couldn’t care less about him anymore. I wanted my sanity back. I lowered the window and felt the fresh air fill up my lungs.
I took a deep inhale, it had rained somewhere. I was beginning to feel like myself again.