“That’s why everything needs to be perfect.” Of course that was why everything never was even good enough. He was constantly complaining, criticizing, demanding his version of perfect. Even in those moments when he didn’t she was anticipating it.
All these years she found that she had never measured up, she had tried very hard at first. To do it his way, or in some way that would please him. If it wasn’t awful it was ignored and in the end she had just given up.
In the early years she had shared everything with him. Her hopes, her dreams – not grand enough or just silly had been his estimation of them. She’d shared her fears which he then used to torment her.
She had been outgoing, full of life and laughter then but slowly she had been drained of all of that. Until now she was grey, nondescript. There was little of her left. When she looked in the mirror there was no light in her eyes. She had lost almost 40 pounds from her already slender frame.
Every night she felt a little bit more of herself disappearing, until that fateful night. She had not planned for it to happen. All the anger that she had pushed down, blocked or held at bay finally came bubbling up. When she saw the sympathetic smile of the woman across the restaurant she knew it was her time.
She stood up. “Enough!” She said. She threw the wine in his face and suddenly she was free. Everything that she held back was released. She floated out of the restaurant then know that seven years of dying was enough. She would no longer be his miserable, imperfect, unsatisfactory grey woman.
She would be fully alive, satisfactorily imperfect and exceedingly happy without him.
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