Mrs. D. (June- July 1987)

If I live my whole life for you and mean little to you…
If the purpose of my life is merely to arrange your home life for you and receive irritation in return…
If I must swallow everyone of my desires which are not many in themselves…
To see your brow crease into a frown because my service is not up to your expectation…
If you deny my right to expect any support or fulfillment from you…
And yet make demands which are more than I can meet…
If finally you have such a low opinion of me that I appear disgusting to myself whenever you are around….
Then who must I live for and how must I do it?
Just as you have a life apart from me and priorities higher than me…
Just as the goal of your life is not service to me…
Just as a home and later a wife are necessities or pleasant luxuries, not of prime importance to you…
So also, must I now seek a meaning to my life, that is not you…
A purpose to my existence…
Habits are difficult to break, especially when they are contrary to desire…
I have desired to be and been to the extent my poor capability and poorer spirit made possible, your hand maiden…
It gave me great pleasure to serve you and broke my heart to see that I was not good enough…
For five years you were the centre of my life… and now… where do I begin? And how…..
And when will your dreams come true and when will your dreams come true? When will you find happiness?
This is my home, and yours too….
We work for the shelter, work for the food…
We create the furnishings inside, and the atmosphere besides…
It is difficult to say where you end and where I begin…
What is yours can no longer be distinguished from what is mine…
And yet there is another aspect to you.. that of your work…
By mental make up for me there has been only one, our home…, you.
It is imperative that I live a life of my own…
With home as one part or purpose of it,
It is people that make house a home… It is you who make these 4 walls my home….
You, who make this city, my city….
Yet you are not my life, it was my mistake to think so…
You are one part, hopefully a partner in my life, as I am a partner in your life.
Perhaps years must pass before we have `our life’, ‘our priorities’, ‘our work’…
I was mistaken to think that I could shrug my life, my work off,…
And to think that I could leap into yours…
The truth is that we have our lives, and one day they may blend together.
And to think that I thougt could leap into yours….