A luminous novel of love, conflict and sacrifice.
Site content © Roopa Farooki 2014
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indifferently on the sofa or in the bath or in the corner of bed, scrawling in her notebooks with a quiet persistent scratching, working on her laptop with a quiet persistent tapping, but otherwise barely there, without a height or a weight or a dress size worth recalling.
She supposes that such a note should say the truth about why she is leaving, but there is no larger truth. There is nothing significant. There is no Big Important Question to be answered. She has not had an affair, she is not in trouble with the law or in debt, she does not hate him or dislike him at all; like most couples, they fight and bicker all the time, about the ridiculous minutiae of their shared life; who last loaded the dishwasher, and where the toilet roll should be stored. They argue about her refusal, thus far, to consider pregnancy and whether to spend Christmas with the in-laws. There is really nothing but the trivial problems of the everyday, and to other people, she looks like nothing so much as an ordinary woman, recently married, as yet childless, with ordinary cares. She looks like this even to herself, on occasion; an ordinary woman, in an ordinary life, wondering why she has striven to be ordinary above everything else. Perhaps she expected it would bring her peace of mind, bringing together the pieces of mind that still inhabit her, their little voices whining inside like shards of glass waiting to pierce through her skin and reveal how sliced up and fragmented she has secretly been within herself, for such a long time. The only thing that currently makes her more than ordinary, extraordinary even, is that she has written and recycled a suicide note, without anyone in the world noticing, and that she has decided to stop fighting, and go home.
She supposes that such a note should say the truth about why she is leaving, but there is no larger truth. There is nothing significant. There is no Big Important Question to be answered. She has not had an affair, she is not in trouble with the law or in debt, she does not hate him or dislike him at all; like most couples, they fight and bicker all the time, about the ridiculous minutiae of their shared life; who last loaded the dishwasher, and where the toilet roll should be stored. They argue about her refusal, thus far, to consider pregnancy and whether to spend Christmas with the in-laws. There is really nothing but the trivial problems of the everyday, and to other people, she looks like nothing so much as an ordinary woman, recently married, as yet childless, with ordinary cares. She looks like this even to herself, on occasion; an ordinary woman, in an ordinary life, wondering why she has striven to be ordinary above everything else. Perhaps she expected it would bring her peace of mind, bringing together the pieces of mind that still inhabit her, their little voices whining inside like shards of glass waiting to pierce through her skin and reveal how sliced up and fragmented she has secretly been within herself, for such a long time. The only thing that currently makes her more than ordinary, extraordinary even, is that she has written and recycled a suicide note, without anyone in the world noticing, and that she has decided to stop fighting, and go home.