Moving out, not moving on

I was glad I chose to move out. It was the least I could do to make up for everything. Ironically, it was she who didn’t find the apartment appealing when we first moved in. She said it was too big. I pointed out that she might change her mind in the coming years and I kissed her neck softly. But if our marriage was built on anything, it was irony. The house still remained big, or rather hollow, for it would never be filled with the laughter of kids.

As I walked into our room, I wished I had chosen another day to pick my things up. But then, no day is a good day for the goodbyes. I propped open her suitcase on our bed, because I had given away the only good suitcase I had to her brother.

I wondered why she had not filed the divorce yet. The separation papers gave me hope. And hope is a dangerous thing. It makes you want to cling onto things that are over, makes you want to wait upon people who are never coming back. Ironically, hope, the only thing that sometimes seems to get us going, is also the one that keeps us stranded in a place we are not meant to be in.

I leaned back a bit, to catch a glimpse of her lying on the couch with the Sputnik Sweetheart propped upon her bosom. I chuckled as I remembered how our mutual love for that book sparked up our first conversation. Now I know what it means to watch life take a full circle.

I dropped a few shirts into the suitcase, then wondered if they really belonged to me, for they smelled of her. How many mornings I had found her in the kitchen, wearing my shirt, and only that; her long, bare legs tempting me to carry her back to the bed. I spotted my books on the shelves, but they had her bookmarks in them, I found my earphones tangled with hers. That struck me as both beautiful and sad. I just couldn’t bring myself to disentangle them.

I sat on the corner of the bed, suddenly feeling exhausted. I heard the walls resonate with the abuses we had yelled at each other, our endless arguments and discussions on pregnancy and miscarriages. Suddenly, I wished that these walls could, for once whisper things we didn’t tell each other. The sorrys after every fight, the suggestion of adoption after every pointless discussion, I love you’s after every hospital visit.

I looked around the room. Everything that was mine, seemed like hers too. I’m hers too. I was, at least. I shut the suitcase; I realized the only thing I wanted to carry to my new apartment was her.

I left the room with only a file that contained my documents. I expected to find her engrossed in the book. But to my surprise, she was standing near the door holding a bunch of papers. Divorce papers, I realized with a sinking heart. I felt something inside me break. Something that had been so fragile, but had remained intact for so long. I looked at the papers, then at her face, hoping to meet her eyes for one last time before the divorce would destroy the home we had built over the seven years, placing one brick at a time.

“Thanks for your suitcase; but I don’t need it” I volunteered, to start the conversation.

She gave me an expression that clearly conveyed that she didn’t care about what I just spoke.

She walked to me, and held out the papers. I refused to look at them, I looked into her eyes. Do we really have to do this? I wanted to ask. But I couldn’t utter anything, because of the huge lump in my throat. I could only stare into her grey eyes that now seemed greyer than ever.

“I know we should have done this much earlier…” I heard her whisper.

I watched her eyes fill with tears. I felt tears sting mine too. She came to my side, took the file away, and almost shoved the papers into my hands. I wondered what I could read with my blurred vision. I gripped the papers hard, as I felt her arm around my waist. My eyes caught only the words ‘Child Adoption’. Only those words seemed to matter anyway. I turned to her. She nodded enthusiastically, the tears now streaming down her face.

I flung my arms around her neck. We held each other in an awkward embrace, with the adoption papers sandwiched between us. I felt the papers crumble, and my shirt become damp with her tears. But we didn’t want to move, nor did we want time to.