The Weight of Endurance

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When I introduced Daniel to my friends and family, they just could not stop talking about him. They kept talking about his height, broad shoulders and his smile. And also how handsome he was. My friends often nudge me and say, “You’re so lucky, it’s like he came out of a magazine”. I did not really care about his looks though. I didn’t fall in love with him because of his face or anything of the sort. I fell in love with because of how he spoke so softly to me when he was wooing me, laughed at my silly stories and because I knew he loved me.

I did not even hesitate when he asked me to marry him and I thought I was going into the kind of marriage that would be different from the ones I’d seen in the women of my family.
But that illusion did not last.

After our wedding, I became his possession more than his partner. He sat me down one night, his tone was calm but firm as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Quit your job” he said, not looking at me but at the television “My wife doesn’t need to work. A woman’s place is in the kitchen, taking care of her home”

I stared at him, “But Daniel, I love my work. It makes me feel like I’m…”

“Stop” he raised his hand, silencing me. “You don’t need to feel anything. I provide. That’s enough”

And just like that, I stopped going to work. My days turned into a cycle of cooking, cleaning and waiting for him to return from work, which, more often than not, reeked of perfume that wasn’t mine.

Then the insults began. It came in small doses at first, little remarks about the way my body had changed after childbirth, how I wasn’t “as polished” as his colleagues’ wives. But then they grew bolder when his family was around. One evening at the dinner table, he laughed as he gestured toward me. “Don’t mind her” he told his mother and sisters “She’s hopeless with money. I cannot trust her with it” They chuckled politely and I forced a smile, but inside I was unraveling. I wanted to scream that I was once the best accountant in my firm, that I had earned my own money and made my own decision. Instead, I kept quiet because enduring felt easier than walking away.

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You see, in my family, women walk away. My grandmother raised her children alone after my grandfather’s affair. My mother was left with three of us when my father disappeared into another woman’s life. My elder sister packed her bags one night when she got tired of how her husband was treating her. They all became single mothers, and the neighbors gossip about them and tell it like some cautionary tales.

I told myself that I would not end up like them. If I can just hold on long enough, I can break the so-called curse in my family, after all, marriage was like a test and it requires patience. So I endured.

I endured the nights he didn’t come home, the mocking laughter from him when I said I still dreamed of painting. I endured when he sat our daughter down at just thirteen years old and declared “You will study medicine. That’s final” her eyes moved to mine, silently pleading but I could only sit frozen, trapped between rebellion and fear.

“Daniel, maybe she should choose for herself…”

“Enough!” his voice cracked like thunder and I flinched, like always “Don’t fill her head with nonsense. Look at you, all your choices and what did they bring you? Nothing. She will do as I say” My daughter ran to her room and I was there feeling like I had betrayed her too.

At night, I press my palm to my lips to muffle the sobs. I think of leaving, of gathering my daughter’s hand in mind and walking out the door. But then I see my grandmother’s weary face, my mother’s tired eyes and my sister’s hollow laugh. I also hear the neighbors’ whispers “Another one who couldn’t keep her marriage”. So I stay.

I convince myself that staying makes me stronger, that my sacrifice is noble and that perhaps ne day Daniel will look at me the way he once did. But deep down, I know the truth. Endurance has become my prison, and yet, every morning, I wake up and smooth my daughter’s hair before school. I tell her “You can be anything you want” even though my words tremble with fear. I tell her because maybe, just maybe, if I cannot break the curse for myself, I can break it for her.

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