Eight years are not a short time, especially when you spent it everyday with a person whom you love and decided to marry. You'd think that you understand him and know him inside-out.
It turned out, you have never got to know the real person in him. It was as if you have married a stranger, and you couldn't help but wonder if you had been living in dream for all those years. You felt like a total failure for not seeing and not knowing who the person really is.
贝 has been living a dissipated life since the incident started. He smokes (getting heavier each day) and drinks (even in the afternoon), and mix with friends with questionable moral values. And of course, throw in the part where he pretended to be single and starting dating and fell in love with another girl, all these behaviours and personalty are that i'd never imagined he'd have.
The 贝 i know may not be a goody-goody, but he was a person who read a lot and had the wisdom in discerning good and bad, right and wrong. He was smart and could see through people, and would not be easily blinded by scheming tactics of the opposite gender. He was not a staunch Buddhist, but he always tried to follow the doctrines of Buddhism and avoid things that are bad, even though evil thoughts might have crossed his mind. He was loving, caring and considerate to me, and take me as the most important person in his life that he would love, cherish and protect.
Now, everything has changed, or rather, perhaps his true self has surfaced. His sister told me that the 贝 now reminded her of the person before he knew me. She said he was like this when they were growing up, until he met me and slowly became a changed man whom the family likes so much.
But the problem is that i've never gotten to know the 贝 before our time. Since i knew him, he had always been the way i thought he was. The other 贝 who broke my heart and being selfish and dissolute is a total stranger to me. Why i had never seen this side of him is a puzzle. I may have been blinded by love for all those years, or he may have suppressed the real him unwittingly because he wanted to be the kind of man whom i would love.
Now that i recall, a few month back, 贝 had said to me that he felt he may be the kind of person who wants freedom and may not be suitable for marriage because he could not take the burden of commitment and responsibility. It was the time when he started to let his heart run wild towards that girl.
贝 is now like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and i am at a loss now. I love 贝 dearly still, and for that, i do not want him to feel restrained. I do not want him to suppress his true self again because of wanting us to be back together, and then that side of him re-appeared and break my heart again in another 8 years. By that time, if this happens again, it would not be simply breaking my heart; it would have ruined by whole life.
Then this means that i'd have to let him to be the person he is and still love him for who he is. There is no point in changing a person to the one we desire, as the real self will always find a way to let loose and come out. After all, that is the true meaning of love and marriage -- to love someone unconditionally and to accept the person for who he is.
But do i have the capacity to do so? I am but a normal person and not saint. I am not sure if i could really do it from the bottom of my heart.
People always say love conquers everything. I just hope that my love for him is strong and deep enough to forgo my principles in life and accept him for the way he is.
Labels: introspection, love
