Iffat Nawaz
 

I am back home now. Back home where it all started. Around my parents and my siblings who all my life gave me constant support and comfortable negligence. I am back here, since I couldn't become a comfortable part of anyone else's home.

This is the second time it has happened. First time was arranged. He was not a looker nor was he talented in any form. He just…was…And it broke the girl inside me to find him, being married to just another average Bengali man, average Bengali being below average in the world standard, or rather the western standard. It broke my over-active, fluent 19-year-old heart.

I could have coped with his average height, his average facial hair and average thinking process, but when his above average ego started popping its head out I was startled. That would have been okay too, and it was, with that promise I was carrying someone inside of me. That's when the beating started. Why and how I am not sure. Of course there were reasons from his side, many reasons, and like everyone is blind to themselves I was no exception and saw no fault of mine. As I do believe there is no crime that can be committed by a mere pregnant high-school graduate house wife that deserves physical violence. Just for clarification I want to inform that I was not cheating on him, I made three and a half meals a day, and wore proper attires covering most parts of my body and I was (as I have been told all my life) sweet natured.

But it continued, the physical and mental abuses, it was his way of making sure I knew my place at his home. It was important that I knew where I belong, not next to him, but in a naked dark corner, to cook, clean and carry. The romantic fool inside of me still would seek, it would seek a glimpse of appreciation, or a touch of love, but I was no match for him, his average mind definitely found me below average and with a six-month-old daughter I returned home.

My parents were upset, but they let me and my daughter live and breathe the way we wanted to. There was not much that I wanted, I wanted a roof over my head and some reassurance, reassurance that I was still wanted by some out there, reassurance that I was worthy of love and happiness, and that's when I found the internet and the numerous chat rooms.

I didn't go out much anymore; I didn't like seeing the Bengali community with their bitter questions specially made for young divorced single mothers like me. I didn't feel like hanging out with my old friends either, I had out-grown them, which was not necessarily a good thing. So the chat rooms became a window to my new world. That's where I met the second man (in the marrying sense) of my life. It started with a few flirting sessions, a few picture exchanges, then a few e-greetings and then finally we dialed our numbers and from then on pulled all nighters, nights consuming just me and him and sometimes the cry of my 2-year-old daughter awaken by nightmares.

Emotions harvested fast, my mind had accumulated years of untold feelings, feelings which upon sharing made both of our hearts throb with a new impetus. He accepted my divorce, my two-year-old daughter, he wanted me, maybe not as much as I wanted him, since my wants went beyond needing and reached direness, he still wanted me enough to ask me to marry him.

In an impulse I married him, my parents were happy, this time they were more careless to hand me over, I happily accepted the rushed marriage they set up, I left my daughter with my mother scheduled to be picked up the week after. But the weeks went by and the week after never came. And I found like they reveal in day-time talk shows, online personalities and real-life ones are different by day and night. As was mine and so was his. We were just two losers who found each other on a virtual thread trying to locate some empty dreams. I was a bigger loser than him, trying to hold on to hollow words while exchanging bodies and trying to erase pasts.

After more misery, drama and sorrow I came back to my daughter. She is now accustomed to not having me around. I am now accustomed to being invisible to all who are around me. But that's okay, I want to be taken for granted for who I am; I don't want anyone giving me special attention, no special adornment or assurance. I want to in this negligence suffocate that romantic girl inside of me, who still forgets to weep and doesn't believe in mannequins.

Please Note: This article was first published at The Daily Star