Eat your words

He said, “You don’t understand about commitment.”

I passed him the bowl. I carefully placed inside it a portion of the dessert I had spent all afternoon constructing. I didn’t make it often because the ingredients are very expensive. But I knew he liked it. And today was a kind of anniversary. I wanted to please him. The last thing I wanted was an argument. Especially the same old pattern. He’d talk about choice and how occasional backsliding was only natural. How nothing could be perfect but we all had to work at relationships. I’d try to stay calm, not to provoke him, not to displease him. Sometimes I was so quiet he called me meek. Or even weak. Which made me less interesting than I used to be, at the start.

It seems a long time ago, but actually not that long. Not considering. Considering it was supposed to be a commitment for life.

I am not physically weak. I can cook, clean, carry shopping, move furniture, chop logs. I go to work every day, even when I have one of those shivery days and my head aches. Physically, I am probably stronger than he is. But apparently sentimentality is a weakness. I suffer from sentimentality. I am not realistic. He argues better than I do.

I worked on that weakness. To please him, I tried to change. I stopped expecting the fairy tale, always-together, never a cross word kind of life that comes wrapped in pink ribbons. I realised a lifetime commitment is a long time. It can only really work if your life is shorter. He is right. The ingredients were very expensive. But for a lifetime commitment, worth every penny.

284 words

Paul Eustice