How Do I Continue To Stay?
Part 2 of You Were Never Supposed to Leave
(Trigger warning: Dark thoughts, depressing situation)
It has been 3 months since Yusha married Aisha. When they first met at Aisha’s home, her mother had served them chai — spiced with peppercorns, cardamom, ginger, and a healthy dose of sugar cubes. The drink was too strong for him, but he couldn’t say that. He didn’t want to look proud. The ceramic of his cup was warm enough to turn his hands pink. The tea burned his tongue.
She appeared in the living room's midst, looking as beautiful as she had looked in her picture. Yusha had looked down, so quickly that his vision had blurred. He barely caught anything but a tangle of brown skin and sparkly bangles. Stupid. He always acted too fast.
“Would you like to go inside?” Her mother had said. They had preferred the balcony. Yusha didn’t like tight spaces. The sunset turned Aisha’s eyes amber. They looked watery. There was a look to her that worried him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
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“I,” Yusha stopped, running his sweaty palms down the back of his pants. “I don’t want to force you to do anything. I can tell them that I don’t want this if you don’t. I will leave you out of it, entirely. If you want to.” There’s nothing on the face of this earth that can stop his God-forsaken rambling.
“I will marry you.”
The way she said it, punctuating each word like a statement, should have put him on edge. Instead, Yusha smiled, like the gentleman he had been brought up to be.
It’s early in the morning in Toronto. The sun’s only beginning to color the night sky, and the waning light paints Yusha’s bedroom in blues. Objectively speaking, he should be happy. There was no denying that Aisha was a gorgeous woman. With syrupy olive skin and a dimple at the corner of her mouth, she looked every bit the girl who had everyone falling at their feet back at home.
But visuals did nothing to counter the fact that she was empty. For the first few days of their marriage, she had cooked him lunches and folded his laundry — all with that dead-set expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else.
He had not wanted that. He didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t like him. He had not asked to push someone into laboring menial tasks for him.
When he had asked her if she wanted to visit her parents, her eyes had almost flashed at him — ferocious, as if he were the one in the wrong for suggesting it. She didn’t want to see her friends. She never seemed to have a great liking for the food that he made for her.
Yusha stretched his hands above his head. With her hair spread across her pillow and her lashes spilling across her cheekbones, Aisha almost looked ordinary while she was asleep. He tugged her blanket over her shoulder and then padded out of their room.
Softly, he made his way into his kitchen. The hardest part of his situation, Yusha knew, was fighting the urge to hate himself. On some days, he found it impossible to look at his wife, and not beg her for the reasons why she seemed to not care for him. It had taken Yusha so much anxiety to ask Aisha if she wanted a divorce. He had spent an entire night awake, worrying about whether he would hurt her or if he was being a coward for not trying. In the end, his efforts had been in vain. She had only turned to Yusha and told him that she only wanted to be with him.
Yusha whisked his egg whites with an electric beater. There was always something to adore about a good breakfast. On some days, it was the only thing that kept him from going insane.
