Bollocks!
I tried. I really did. I was not going to be beaten by this. I had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to just walk away from Yossy, our marriage, and our happiness and so I made a conscious effort to really try and get things back to the way they were before.
I let go of the resentment I had been feeling and I resolved to work even harder in an effort to get back the life we had before. Rather, the life I thought we had had before. However, it wasn’t easy, and sometimes I felt that she was being deliberately obtrusive, as if she was trying to push me away; trying to get me to be the one to call time on our marriage.
Her whole demeanour told me she was still nowhere near happy and she seemed to blame me for this. In fact, she seemed to hold me singly responsible for every slight misfortune or setback we experienced. Every time things didn’t run quite to plan or as smoothly as she would have liked that was the sign for another tirade of how all it was all my fault, of how I had brought misfortune and bad luck into her life, of how stupid and thoughtless I was.
An example: it seemed Yossy had transgressed in age by about fifteen years and all of a sudden become extremely childish. I’m not exaggerating when I say she would blame me if the weather was bad. Really. If it rained she would use her womanly logic to conclude it was my fault for being such a miserable person and so God was acting accordingly in sending mood-appropriate weather.
Another example: If we went shopping I would often find myself cast in the role of a parent trying to deal with an errant child. She would walk the aisles of the supermarket picking up superfluous items and putting them in the basket even though she knew we had barely any money for true necessities let alone nonsense like ornaments for the house or boxes of chocolates ‘in case we get visitors’.
It was so soul destroying to see her so unhappy and to think, if even for just a minute, that I was to blame for her unhappiness. Every day was just a haze of unpleasantness, indifference or inherent sadness for the pair of us and I really didn’t know why.
It got to the point I was scared to look at her, let alone talk to her. I could see the resentment coming off her in waves, and I just knew she was spoiling for a fight: an excuse to let rip at me again.
I really didn’t know what I could have done to shatter her so. I could only hope and pray that all of this passed and one day we could get back to being how we were before. We were happy back then; really happy. I would have done anything to go back to how things had been.
As much as I fought for it, though, I didn’t hold out much hope. I truly believed, and spent many a tearful night trying to accept, that my marriage was over in all but name. I knew she wanted to be free of me but there was no way she would say as much. To ask for a divorce would result in massive loss of face for her in front of her family, and there was no way she would go through that, so to try to push me into leaving of my own violation seemed her only way out.
Oh, what a nightmare!
I was devastated, absolutely heartbroken. You see and hear other people talking about their failed marriages and they seem to just brush it off as ‘one of those things’ or a ‘tough break’ and they get on with their lives.
Not me. I was in despair and literally didn’t know what to do with myself at times. I never knew pain like that and I hope I never do again.
Three years later – Surabaya, 2000
I watched as Tessy burst into tears for what was already the fourth time that morning and it was still only 6.30 and I couldn’t help but smile. Not that I took any pleasure in her distress, I hasten to add. It’s just that the simple act of watching her in action, any action, has always been capable of filling me with pure joy and happiness.
Since her birth, she has been my light, my love, my feelings, my heart, my hope, my happiness and my life. I have loved every hair, muscle and sinew of her being with an intensity that at times has threatened to have me self-combust at any given moment. When she was little, especially, I couldn’t bear to be out of her presence or sight for even a second and goodness only knows how I ever got any work done in those days.
What’s more, what was even better, was I knew the feeling was mutual. That was one little girl who loved her daddy with a passion.
She always wanted to be with me, to sit with me, to have me hold her or feed her or talk to her. No one seemed to be able to calm her when she got one of her little tantrums like she was having now, but just the sight of me always seemed to do the trick and once she spotted me and opened up her arms with tears rolling down her little face and she implored me, ‘DADDY …’ the deed was done.
I was hers and she was mine and all was well in the world for us both again.
Tessy came along as a surprise, to say the least. Without going too much into detail, at the time of Tessy’s conception there wasn’t a
