Bien aimé

Amidst the rumpled sheets, I sit silently weeping, clutching the blanket to my breast. Years of neglect have led me here to this place, the despair clawing at my throat my constant companion. Years of being denied, rejected, and pushed away. Years of learning to be quiet, be accommodating, be grateful for what little affection my husband chose to show me. My nature, naturally submissive, put me here, trapped me in this conjugal cage.

I wince as I pull me legs up, the soreness between them evidence of my husband's earlier attention. Never one to waste a moment in idleness or in unprofitable activity, our morning's encounter was perfunctory and brutish. Awakening to his palpating hands on my breasts, I feel my nightgown being inched up my thighs. As his leg slides between mine, a prelude to the main event, I bestir myself to put my arms up, slowing his progress. My only protest silenced by a bruising kiss, more punishing than passionate, I feel him probing for entrance. Unprepared, tense, I set my jaw as the rhythm of the bedsprings attests to his efforts. At his finish, I feel relieved when he quickly rolls off and heads to the bathroom to perform his ablutions.

This is my reward, this extra attention, since I lost weight. From the earliest days of our marriage, our romance has waned until our infrequent unions became near-mythical in appearance. I always took the blame, somehow, for the lack - I was too heavy, I didn't cook enough to provide adequate sustenance, I asked for too much. Was I never satisfied? Was I a pervert, or a nymphomaniac? Did I have serious problems, or did I need therapy for my "addiction?" Sometimes, my hair was to blame after a visit to the stylist: it was too short or it was the wrong color. Other times, my housekeeping was faulty: how is a man supposed to feel romantic among all this dust? I would protest, feebly, that I wasn't always to blame, but somehow, wound up shouldering most of it. I paid lip service to the feminism of my forebears, but never really lived it.

My tears begin flowing as I hear his footsteps recede down the stairs, shouting his goodbye as he trundles off to the DIY superstore to fetch this or that for the house, his duty done for the month. Among the softness of the bedclothes, I feel my heart harden and sink, like a stone cast in a bottomless well. Feeling hopeless, a prisoner to my despair, I lay back against my pillow and try to order my thoughts.

No order comes, but instead the memory of a gentle hug from my bien aimé earlier in the week. Calmed, I head to the shower to wash away the ugliness of the morning. Is it any wonder that a spirit thus broken, revives under gentle attention? Wrong, certainly. Sad, certainly. But revived it is.