Irene Wilde
New Member
This is actually part of larger story I'm working on in bits and pieces. Just interested in any reaction anyone cares to post. Apologies in advance if it offends anyone.
Irene Wilde
Each woman is a river, touching and being touched by all around her. Men think they know her by her banks, her curves and contours, but they know nothing. As they walk her familiar shores, the river flowing past them is already forever changed from the day before, and within her depths are the secrets only she knows. Only a woman knows her own heart. Men may fill it with joys or sorrows, but only the woman knows. A woman knows love deeper than a man, and she knows when she will never love again.
All the times I told my lover, “I will always love you,” he did not understand. He only knows love as a man, and men are quick to call any emotion “love.” They “love” often over their lifetimes, but a woman is lucky to love once, if at all. We give to others, but that is not loving. That’s the secret of woman’s heart: we give so much to others and they call it love, but we know love is more and love is rare. We see destroyed carelessly, and we must stand as mute witness to the tragedy; the secret stays buried in our hearts. A man destroys our love before our eyes and we accept it. The surface of the river stays serene and smooth. The river changes again, moving forward, giving life, nurturing the earth, while its deep current weeps, “I will always love you” and the secret remains in the depths of her heart.
So my life goes on, the secret of my heart buried deep. “I will always love you.” Always is such a long time.
I didn’t mean to fall in love. I though I was beyond love’s reach. Twelve years of marriage to the wrong man had removed all thoughts of love from my mind. I was beyond caring about love, and cared very little about life. In the spring of my 37th birthday, I had pneumonia. One night, as I sat up in bed, perched on a cushion of pillows trying to sleep, listening to the fluid rattling in my lungs with each breach, I realized all I had to do was lay down. Just lay down flat on my back and there would be no morning to face. The thought of that sweet oblivion was nearly overwhelming. Just lay down and go to sleep and I could erase everything.
For five years I had watched my marriage die. My husband, to whom I have devoted myself, not so much from love as from need, had changed. He no longer laughed. He no longer saw the joy of the human comedy. He saw himself on the way to becoming “successful” and “respectable” and had ceased to be tolerant of human flaw and frailty. He believed he longer needed me, that all he had achieved and hoped to achieve, he had done alone. In the lie he told himself of not needing me, I thought at first he would cast me off. Instead, he chose to ignore me, except when it pleased him to examine my faults under the magnifying glass of his new-found wisdom on all things, the wisdom of a “self-made” man. Be even that game failed to hold his attention long, and so I was completely ignored. If I spoke, he ignored me. If I worked, he ignored me. If I didn’t work, he ignored me. If I reached out to him in our bed at night, he ignored me.
I suffered in those five years. I believed his lies about my many shortcomings. I tried all I could think of, demeaned myself in all manner of ways, trying to find a way to please him. I gave up all he found not to his liking - books, music, friends, ideas, opinions, sex. Our compromises for the sake of our marriage consisted of my complete capitulation. I was euthanizing myself a piece at a time, until I was more dead than alive. Still I kept trying to reach him, to keep our marriage from being a failure. Until the day all suffering ended.
I remember the stubble of his beard scratching the tender flesh of my breast as he took it in his mouth, always too rough. But he was reaching for me again, so I forced my cry of pain into a sigh of desire. After weeks of silence and denial, he was reaching for me. This was right, wasn’t it? This was what I wanted? Foreplay ended. He pushed onto me, grabbing my legs, shoving them into my chest, and entering my body in one swift motion, cruel with carelessness. Always too soon, before I was ready for him. My knees dug into my shoulders, pinning me helpless to the bed. I could not embrace him; I could not come. He pounded into me like an angry fist over and over, pushing me up against the headboard until my neck was cramped at an awkward angle, but I remained silent. There were no words. I searched my fantasies for something to keep me wet enough to endure him, to keep accepting him into me, so I wouldn’t lose him, so we wouldn’t lose each other. This was my punishment for desire, for wanting happiness.
My legs ached from the force of his fingers digging into the back of my thighs, pressing my knees deeper into the sockets of my shoulders. I could not move. The pain was blinding. I was folded over, nearly in half, so that all he could reach of me was my sex. I was a hold in the mattress for him to fill. It would be over soon, I knew. The one thing I could count on was how soon it would be over.
I remembered that it wasn’t always like this with us. I remembered years before, when our desire was new and shared. We could hide away in a hotel room, wild with abandon and heat. My mind grasped this memory and held it while his mute assault on my body continued. I remembered our meeting behind the locked door of that anonymous room, stripping down to my stockings and heels. We didn’t even wait for the bedroom. I straddled a chair, like a model in a 1930s French postcard, leaning forward, my back arches, presenting him the image of long blonde hair cascading down to the white orbs of my buttocks; hips and thighs framing my sex. He knelt behind me, taking me almost in worship of that image. I could respond to him then, and our climax was full and mutual. Then, he had enjoyed my responsiveness, my sensuality. Now he turned my own desire against me. “Can’t you ever get enough?” he would bark in disgust, annoyed if I approached him. So I would wait in loneliness for his approach, hiding my disappointment as weeks and months would go by, certain that if I could find a way to please him again we could reclaim our bond.
In bed once more, I felt his spasm. He spilled his hostility and resentment into me, but I remained empty and unmoved. This is his love, I told myself. This is life. Not a word, not a caress, not a kiss passed between us. He climbed off me, out of the bed, put on his clothes, and left.
My husband.
I turned over, finally able to stretch my legs, feeling the bruises of his love, too hurt to cry. I felt dirty between my lefts, but too numb to wash, to scrub him off of me and out of me. I went to sleep and died, frozen from within by the hate his seed spread within me. I would wake again, but live no more. The bruises faded, but the scars remained.
I was living-dead. I had no joy; I had no life. One day, I realized that I had done all of this for nothing. He was too busy admiring himself under that magnifying glass to see me at all, but I finally saw him. I saw what he had become: pompous, arrogant, shallow. No, he no longer needed me. There was nothing I could give him. There was nothing I wanted to give him. And so, I gave up, until that night when I knew there didn’t have to be another morning.
What stopped me, I can’t say. I can only guess that the few frozen flames of life left in me were determined to burn again, but I faced that next morning and realized I didn’t want to be married anymore.
Irene Wilde
Each woman is a river, touching and being touched by all around her. Men think they know her by her banks, her curves and contours, but they know nothing. As they walk her familiar shores, the river flowing past them is already forever changed from the day before, and within her depths are the secrets only she knows. Only a woman knows her own heart. Men may fill it with joys or sorrows, but only the woman knows. A woman knows love deeper than a man, and she knows when she will never love again.
All the times I told my lover, “I will always love you,” he did not understand. He only knows love as a man, and men are quick to call any emotion “love.” They “love” often over their lifetimes, but a woman is lucky to love once, if at all. We give to others, but that is not loving. That’s the secret of woman’s heart: we give so much to others and they call it love, but we know love is more and love is rare. We see destroyed carelessly, and we must stand as mute witness to the tragedy; the secret stays buried in our hearts. A man destroys our love before our eyes and we accept it. The surface of the river stays serene and smooth. The river changes again, moving forward, giving life, nurturing the earth, while its deep current weeps, “I will always love you” and the secret remains in the depths of her heart.
So my life goes on, the secret of my heart buried deep. “I will always love you.” Always is such a long time.
I didn’t mean to fall in love. I though I was beyond love’s reach. Twelve years of marriage to the wrong man had removed all thoughts of love from my mind. I was beyond caring about love, and cared very little about life. In the spring of my 37th birthday, I had pneumonia. One night, as I sat up in bed, perched on a cushion of pillows trying to sleep, listening to the fluid rattling in my lungs with each breach, I realized all I had to do was lay down. Just lay down flat on my back and there would be no morning to face. The thought of that sweet oblivion was nearly overwhelming. Just lay down and go to sleep and I could erase everything.
For five years I had watched my marriage die. My husband, to whom I have devoted myself, not so much from love as from need, had changed. He no longer laughed. He no longer saw the joy of the human comedy. He saw himself on the way to becoming “successful” and “respectable” and had ceased to be tolerant of human flaw and frailty. He believed he longer needed me, that all he had achieved and hoped to achieve, he had done alone. In the lie he told himself of not needing me, I thought at first he would cast me off. Instead, he chose to ignore me, except when it pleased him to examine my faults under the magnifying glass of his new-found wisdom on all things, the wisdom of a “self-made” man. Be even that game failed to hold his attention long, and so I was completely ignored. If I spoke, he ignored me. If I worked, he ignored me. If I didn’t work, he ignored me. If I reached out to him in our bed at night, he ignored me.
I suffered in those five years. I believed his lies about my many shortcomings. I tried all I could think of, demeaned myself in all manner of ways, trying to find a way to please him. I gave up all he found not to his liking - books, music, friends, ideas, opinions, sex. Our compromises for the sake of our marriage consisted of my complete capitulation. I was euthanizing myself a piece at a time, until I was more dead than alive. Still I kept trying to reach him, to keep our marriage from being a failure. Until the day all suffering ended.
I remember the stubble of his beard scratching the tender flesh of my breast as he took it in his mouth, always too rough. But he was reaching for me again, so I forced my cry of pain into a sigh of desire. After weeks of silence and denial, he was reaching for me. This was right, wasn’t it? This was what I wanted? Foreplay ended. He pushed onto me, grabbing my legs, shoving them into my chest, and entering my body in one swift motion, cruel with carelessness. Always too soon, before I was ready for him. My knees dug into my shoulders, pinning me helpless to the bed. I could not embrace him; I could not come. He pounded into me like an angry fist over and over, pushing me up against the headboard until my neck was cramped at an awkward angle, but I remained silent. There were no words. I searched my fantasies for something to keep me wet enough to endure him, to keep accepting him into me, so I wouldn’t lose him, so we wouldn’t lose each other. This was my punishment for desire, for wanting happiness.
My legs ached from the force of his fingers digging into the back of my thighs, pressing my knees deeper into the sockets of my shoulders. I could not move. The pain was blinding. I was folded over, nearly in half, so that all he could reach of me was my sex. I was a hold in the mattress for him to fill. It would be over soon, I knew. The one thing I could count on was how soon it would be over.
I remembered that it wasn’t always like this with us. I remembered years before, when our desire was new and shared. We could hide away in a hotel room, wild with abandon and heat. My mind grasped this memory and held it while his mute assault on my body continued. I remembered our meeting behind the locked door of that anonymous room, stripping down to my stockings and heels. We didn’t even wait for the bedroom. I straddled a chair, like a model in a 1930s French postcard, leaning forward, my back arches, presenting him the image of long blonde hair cascading down to the white orbs of my buttocks; hips and thighs framing my sex. He knelt behind me, taking me almost in worship of that image. I could respond to him then, and our climax was full and mutual. Then, he had enjoyed my responsiveness, my sensuality. Now he turned my own desire against me. “Can’t you ever get enough?” he would bark in disgust, annoyed if I approached him. So I would wait in loneliness for his approach, hiding my disappointment as weeks and months would go by, certain that if I could find a way to please him again we could reclaim our bond.
In bed once more, I felt his spasm. He spilled his hostility and resentment into me, but I remained empty and unmoved. This is his love, I told myself. This is life. Not a word, not a caress, not a kiss passed between us. He climbed off me, out of the bed, put on his clothes, and left.
My husband.
I turned over, finally able to stretch my legs, feeling the bruises of his love, too hurt to cry. I felt dirty between my lefts, but too numb to wash, to scrub him off of me and out of me. I went to sleep and died, frozen from within by the hate his seed spread within me. I would wake again, but live no more. The bruises faded, but the scars remained.
I was living-dead. I had no joy; I had no life. One day, I realized that I had done all of this for nothing. He was too busy admiring himself under that magnifying glass to see me at all, but I finally saw him. I saw what he had become: pompous, arrogant, shallow. No, he no longer needed me. There was nothing I could give him. There was nothing I wanted to give him. And so, I gave up, until that night when I knew there didn’t have to be another morning.
What stopped me, I can’t say. I can only guess that the few frozen flames of life left in me were determined to burn again, but I faced that next morning and realized I didn’t want to be married anymore.
