A thought

Perhaps my marriage would be much happier if my husband's mother would just drop dead. I will have no regret. Ugly ugly ugly woman. Nasty old woman. She will either have to die, or he will. That's what he said anyway, when I took the car and went out for a drive around the city in the middle of the night. I was so angry, so mad I suddenly wanted to smoke. Half a cigarette is all I can take now, but it was so good, it calmed me, for some reason, despite knowing that the cigarette is a nasty nasty thing. I couldn't stay in the house and cry anymore. I needed to get away, even if the act is temporary and I know I will come back to it afterwards, to him, to the kids. But how I wanted to drive away! To drive so far so far away. Across the ocean, to a different place, where coffee isn't coffee and love isn't love and I can stand or fall wherever and whenever I like.

Speaking of crying: before, I used to think that it was shameful to cry outloud in front of the person who made you cry, who caused you enough pain to make you cry, that whenever I felt enough chagrin against whomever (usually the boyfriend, this time around, the husband), I would cry silently. I was too proud to let them know they had made me cry. Having pride as a woman meant something like, "I am not going to let you see me cry, you fucking asshole." And I would let the tears run and hold my breath to stifle the sniffling. Even in the dark I would turn the other way so they wouldn't see me crying. But now, now I think differently. I don't know why, but one day, I just got tired of crying by myself. Tired of trying to hold my breath to stifle the sniffling. I just bawled out loud (not wailing, I don't wail). So now, it's more like "I want to let you know that you have made me cry, asshole. See the pain you've caused. See the damage you've done. See my crying, feel guilty, and eat it!" Now it's more like that.

"If you want me to die soon, then just say it, you don't need to do this." My husband said this to me in place of an apology to try to get me to stop driving and come home. I think it's the funniest thing in the world to hear someone say. It's hilarious because it doesn't fit! It's neither here or there. What he wanted to say was, "If you want to kill me..." but because he was thinking in Vietnamese, but being used to speaking English, it came out a half-breed, English words but Vietnamese..what would you call it, grammar?...in Vietnamese one can say, "Nếu bà muốn tôi chết sớm thì bà nói..." and I guess that was what he was trying to say. My poor husband. He doesn't know how funny he sounds to me.