I Still Hear Her Scream Begging Me to Come Back

That sound left a scar.

I was overtaken by the tug of polarized emotions. The heart-wrenching agony of leaving her vulnerable. And the thrill of knowing I've taken the first step towards my emancipation.

The night before, she was on the floor.

She never looked that vulnerable. There was too much alcohol in her and she was at the lowest point of her life.

Her fingers clawed on to my collar. With swollen, teary eyes and trembling lips, her words were struggling for clarity through all that wailing. "You loved me so much! I was your entire world! How could you become this? Why did your heart turn into stone?"

Part of me wanted to give her the answer, yet again. But she knew it already. She just couldn't believe it's possible. After all, each day that I loved her, my arms wrapped her like a blanket on a cold night.

Then one day, I just couldn't love her anymore.

She knew why.

She couldn't believe that I, someone who always comforted her for the tiniest specks of sadness, denied helping her up as her legs gave up to the distance between my heart and herself, to the realization that the person who loved her above all else is long gone.

I was just a walking memory of someone ready to give up the world for her.

She was on the floor, crying, with her arms wrapped around and her face pressed against my leg. "I'm sorry! I didn't want to hurt you. I did all of it out of my own misery. Please take me back!".

She didn't mean it. Even if she had, she wouldn't get a change of heart from me. Yes, she was sorry. She understood that everything is over and she was petrified. She was desolate  - - the loneliest she had ever been. And still, her words ran parallel to her feelings  --  they never really merged.

She was sorry, but not because she hurt me. She was overtaken by the remorse of everything collapsing in her hands while she thought her world was in her control. Knowing how long it takes to harden my heart, she couldn't process how she already pushed me over the threshold. She overestimated my capacity to suffer in the name of love.

She thought my bias that favored her against the rest of the world could overpower the stabs she landed on my heart, one deeper than the other -- one deception at a time.

So yes, she was sorry that day, but not for the right reasons. And I just didn't have a word left for her. I was tired, done, and had already moved on.

'Out' was the only way out.

If I hadn't stepped outside of my bubble of denial, I would still be going to bed in the storage room behind her restaurant kitchen. Because I couldn't return to our bedroom. After all, several men got to spend a night with her there. 

And I couldn't afford to rent an apartment. I had long left my own business to dust to save hers from collapse, slaving there without pay.

If I hadn't reached my long-overdue awakening, I would keep giving her unlimited benefits of doubt. I would dwell in a delusion that her heart could still change. I would continue wasting empathy on someone who would only abuse it to advance her own plans at the celebrated expense of my life.

If I hadn't, I would keep sucking the soul out of my own life to fuel hers. I would watch my ambitions, my dream of a family, my desire to be content, and my sense of self suffer a slow death.

I Knew I Would be Prejudiced by the Society

They would readily assume her to be the victim of divorce, and me the criminal. The sinful discrimination that terms women as the weaker sex also translates to 'she can do no harm to a man'.

I knew they would ask how I left 'that poor woman helpless' --  although she had millions in her bank and I walked out with only a backpack and a bus ticket.

I knew they would point fingers at my 'heartlessness' although I was the one who left with scars all over my skin, a body fatigued with 12-hour unpaid shifts, eyes bloodshot in sleep deprivation --having never fought back against her torture.

I knew they would criminalize me for the blasphemous breach of the sanctity of marriage that I've committed simply by leaving. Because I would be quiet about her inviting several men into our bedroom, about a 22-minute audio recording of her climaxing to a guy on the phone, or about the pictures of my bruised body that paints a picture of her violence.

She knew that being a modern-day woman gives her the advantage to sneak into a trending topic and easily adopt the label of the oppressed and establish me as the oppressor.

And I knew the truthfulness of my story would be scrutinized, my masculinity questioned, and people would say that 'real' men don't take kicks and punches from a woman -- they hit back. That 'real' men show women their place and carry on with life unbothered. I knew I wouldn't be able to amass the appetite and patience to fight misogynists trying to leverage my story to further perpetuate their rotten cause.

I knew I would just want to be quiet and it would be anything but easy.

Knowing all of that didn't matter to me. All that mattered was my first step to freedom. I began to believe, if I never love again, I'll still make it through life. But if I never live again, I'm as good as finished.

After All These Years, I Still Hear Her Crying

It unleashed a storm through me. Why wouldn't it? I was hardwired to shield her from sorrow, ache in her agony, and run to her rescue.

All the strength and willpower that every atom of my body could accumulate, I needed them that night. I needed them to remind myself that her tears are not of losing me. They were of the rude awakening to the cold reality -- the one person who played the role of her savior, day in day out, left without a word.

That night, even at the lowest point of her life, she kept mumbling the same selfish words over the phone, again and again --"Nobody will ever love me as much as you did."