1/26/11

A Marriage

A short short story I wrote this afternoon:



From the get-go, she had known it would be difficult.  Hadn’t they told her so?  Nothing worth having is easily won, they’d said.  Just get through the first two years and you’ll be fine.

It had been seven years, actually.  Seven long, hard years.  She’d been over the figures time and again.  The divorce rate was high.  Last month, she had attended a fiftieth wedding anniversary.  She thought the happy couple deserved a medal.  Why was it that long marriages were never honored?  They were so few and far between.  They deserved recognition, if nothing else.

Her husband had told her the night before that it was a bad seven years.  Was it, really?  She hated to lump all that time together and brand it with a single word: bad.  In particular, she recalled those long summer evenings when they’d take a drive, or watch a movie, or just lay in bed, content in the knowledge that they were alone.  Those moments were the happiest she knew.

She sighed.  Sometimes it was difficult to remember all those happy moments because they had been so simple.  It was far easier to recall the fights, the debt, the exhaustion of it all.  Seven whole years of knowing she should have been different.

Even so, she couldn’t bear to think it was wasted.  That was how life went, right?  You just sort of lived, and hopefully learned from your mistakes so the next seven years would be better.

They were due their big break.  That’s what they’d been told, at least.  Those who believed in karma said it was time for the downhill ride.  It was like reading palm lines, they said.  She needed to believe them, aching to find happiness.  Then again, happiness wasn’t merely circumstantial.

She didn’t want to give up.  Not now.  Nothing worth having is easily won, she repeated.



Note: A Marriage is purely fiction.  See comments below.

7 comments:

  1. This is really, really good La. And very true.

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  2. I always say that I will NEVER marry again if something happened to my David because he is soooooo GOOD to me and marriage is hard. I cant imagine trying to work out things with someone that didnt treat me as well as my David. Hes my bestie for 15 years!

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  3. Thanks, girls.

    Lest anyone interpret my short story as truth rather than fiction . . . I've only been married five years, Tim would never say it was all bad, and we've been best friends the entire time.

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  4. I love how she reasons with herself in this story! It rings true to the way we all, to some extent, engage in that kind of internal dialog with ourselves when things are rough.

    So great to get a sample of your writing! Hope to see more!

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  5. Hmmm. I like it, a lot.
    I love how fiction is sooo full of truth. Sometimes it's WAY better than a self help book ever could be:)

    "Nothing worth having is easily won..."
    Yep.

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  6. Excellent write! :) I'm glad to hear it's fiction, though I can strongly relate (with four years). We've moved past "bad" to "educational" and "complicated". Love is work, life is work, and just like work, when you invest in it you reap the rewards! :)

    By the way, I've awarded you a bloggy award - check out my blog and pick it up! :)

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( hippies always welcome )