Twenty-two years of history ripened like a strange, rich, essential fruit. Sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter—or maybe both at once. A flavor I can’t quite place... it took so much, yet gave so much in return...
Long ago, when I was a hopeful, wide-eyed young adult, I got married. I didn’t even have dreams yet—just one: that it would last forever. I smiled naively into the future, believing I’d have all the time in the world for happiness. In fact, only happiness.
The young wife’s glow was like chasing butterflies—always smiling, laughing, full of life and hope, blissfully naive. I floated, unaware of danger, waiting to create and to have children...
Then something broke, and I thought the bond had ended—the bond of marriage. But no, it never ends... because long ago I believed it would last forever. I didn’t believe I’d be happy, but I believed in "forever"... You may be disappointed in your spouse, think they lied, but you can never lose faith in your own belief—it never lies. It creates the future. So I got what I wanted: a sky-shaking, pure, naive faith that it would last forever—and it did.
The father of my children has been acting strangely for a while. Like he’s saying goodbye. Offering a cruise because we never went on vacation. Financial help for publishing and promoting my book, and a random laptop—things he never supported before, not even my existence.
A belated “sorry” and “I love you” after twenty years, a dropped comment that he wants to die at home, in his homeland—not in London, among strangers... I see the emotional pain in his eyes.
He carries a pain that doesn’t make sense to the world, it just exists... the puzzle of the past twenty years doesn’t fit together for him, so neither do the present moments. I watch how a person literally dissolves in guilt, visibly fading away while waiting for me to forgive him, hoping to regain love. I see how the wasted twenty years hurt him deeply. It truly hurts because guilt and the awareness of being loved are his only lifelines. He can’t forgive himself, and I can’t do it for him...
But it hurts me too... why did the madness, shame, and bitterness of the past twenty years have to happen for him to find humility for life? Why drag three children into this chaos? I blame him, rightfully, and I can’t absolve him of his sins because I have no power to do so. Everyone must learn to live with themselves and their mistakes.
I got my justice, yet I still carry guilt. Twenty years ago, I felt robbed by the broken promise of "forever." But the possibility of "forever" lived in my faith, not in him. Time robbed us both, because only the time that’s happy counts in the rules of existence. It took back those borrowed moments life gave us at the start, moments we couldn’t live fully. That’s the price of life.
This makes true the idea that negative thoughts—anger, envy, resentment—kill. With these emotions, you pay the ferryman day by day, who takes you across with two silver coins over your eyes. Time robs us by forcing us to die when we can no longer live with it. The sooner we can’t live with time, the sooner we die. You can recognize those robbed by time—they have no light in their eyes, hidden more and more by the two silver coins.
Here’s a secret... the physical body can’t grasp the concept of time because its sense of time is locked between birth and death. So time itself is the living person, created and given meaning by their thoughts. Time is the glue that keeps us from falling apart and dissolving into the universe. Time gives self-awareness and purpose. Time is what shows us the difference between good and bad.
They say a minute isn’t much time... hmm... a minute of happiness, or a minute hanging on a rope... which one feels slower?
Happiness is the naive wonder at the world... "blessed are the poor in spirit"... happy is the one who doesn’t want the impossible, who doesn’t need to understand the world at any cost. They just want to live... to fully experience the borrowed moments given by time...
In conclusion: despite wishing for my ex-husband’s destruction many times in anger over his huge mistakes, I could never fully let go of his hand. I think that’s called responsibility, faith, and "forever"...
