TROUBLED WATERS

Short Story of Lost Love – TROUBLED WATERS

The world looks perfect and tranquil from where she stands. Felicia Lockwood ,wife of business mogul  Richard Lockwood, holds a finely crafted Riedel glass of Brignac in her hand while she stares at the dark sky from the terrace of her house at 5th avenue, Manhattan. It’s a cold breezy evening, the golden leaves are sweeping across the roads, as Felicia contemplated about the emptiness of her house  and her life completely oblivious of the mesmerizing beauty of nature . She  looked  beautiful in her evening gown and pair of diamond earrings she had bought earlier today. She wore  a fur overcoat that looked vintage . Her eyes proclaimed an absence of warmth. She was cozy on the outside but ironically the predicaments in her life gave her chills to the bone . All she wanted was her husband to hold her tight but he wasn’t available . Her face expressed that loneliness had become the order of the day in her life. The door bell rang and she rushed to open it expecting the arrival of Mr.Lockwood . Her smile quickly changes to a frown though.

”Madam, there is a package for you from Paris.”

After handing out the package the doorman looks at Felicia and says-

”Happy Birthday Madam.You look beautiful today”and leaves.

She returns to her room and opens the package that Mr.Lockwood had sent for her . It was a limited edition designer wrist watch. Felicia took the note in the box that read ”Hope you like it” nothing more and kept it in her drawer. With a blank look  she tried on the watch  as tears rolled down her eyes like a waterfall. Looking at the watch she thought about the time that went by -every moment in the past has seemed liked a burden. Today she enjoys all the riches of the world-she lives a luxurious life, wears the most coveted clothes, drinks the most expensive wine but the truth remains that despite all this she is alone in this big house on her birthday with no one to celebrate it with.

Each day she wishes the current situation of things in her life would change and with everyday passing by her hope of a bright tomorrow is overpowered by the poignant silence in her life. She didn’t know how long had it been since her marriage had failed.The only thing she was certain about was it would never be the same again.Her husband whom she loved dearly wasn’t faithful to the sacred institution that marriage is and she didn’t know this until a year ago when she had walked on both of them in her own apartment .

She was fully aware that he was not alone in Paris too. In the recent past she had made several attempts to restore the foundation of her marriage –going regularly to sessions of marriage counseling  alone after pleading  her husband to come along but he was just too busy. Cracks that had erupted in her marriage were too huge to be covered.  As her thoughts began to cause a turmoil of emotions , she felt an urgent need to rush out of her house.

Outside,the world progressed  in the usual pace-people rushing to catch the subway and cabs, the traffic moving in turtle speed and restaurants filled with people –but Felicia witnesses none of this. As she walks, thousands of questions crowd her mind seeking for answers . She realized that she had been ,till now, clinging onto a desperate and false hope that everything would be alright but she also knew she had to summon up the courage to take charge of life in her own hands and make a few life changing decisions. Wandering down the streets she kept asking herself or perhaps God,

”Where did I go wrong???How and why did life get so complicated???What am I supposed to do???”.

She thinks over and over again,”If I leave him,where am I supposed to go??What will I do??How will I face my parents,what will I tell them??

Felicia happened to be herself from a rich family . Her mother was the kind of lady who cared more about her status , her persona in the society than any other thing in the world. Felicia knew if she told her mother that she had decided to leave Richard , her mother would never understand the suffocation what she was experiencing. Her mom, Felicia thought, would probably say,

”Every relationship goes through a rough patch but you as a woman should work on your marriage. Ignore what has happened in the past and start all over with Richard not letting him give a chance to complain”.

But Felicia knew this wasn’t possible. She could no longer bare waiting long hours for Richard to show up,she could no longer put up a fake smile and attend those parties pretending she was happy , she could no longer keep on giving Richard second chances. For once in her life, she wanted her first chance to be happy, to live for herself and not for pleasing the world she didn’t even know anyone in. She knew infidelity was completely unacceptable and she wanted to walk out of her failed marriage that no longer was a partnership. Richard had  given up working towards this partnership long back and all this while she was, out of human nature, expecting  the storm would pass by. Unfortunately, the storm grew intense and annihilated everything –her soul and her marriage. All these years she had given her heart and soul to this marriage and now she had nothing to look forward to.

As Felicia strolled she saw an old couple,across the street sitting on a bench,their skin was wrinkled and they could barely walk but their was a pristine sparkle in their eyes as they looked at each other.The sparkle ,the glitter,she thought was the epitome of the boundless love they possessed  for each other. Felicia tried to remember  a time when Richard and she had sat like this ,lost in each others arms.To her dismay she couldn’t recreate a single moment in her marriage of four years that was as beautiful as the sight she saw in front of her.

Nearby she saw a florist  and some impetus surrounding her made her buy a beautiful  and fresh bunch of lilies and she impromptly walked towards the old couple .For the first time in her otherwise dull and monotonous life she felt the wind blowing across touch her core and rejuvenate her soul.For the first time ,after many days of confusion,she saw the haze in front of her eyes lifting and she finally tried to come out of the shell of the perturbed life she was succumbing to.Felicia experienced the love,the life  and the essence of the world whose presence she had forgotten to admire in the past .

Drawing inspiration from every creation around her,she thought to herself

”Maybe i ll be just fine.I need to quit being a coward and just do what i think is right for me ,not thinking about my mom or the world.I did give my marriage my best shot and if now i continue to endure this relationship with Richard i ll always regret the fact that i didn’t give myself a second chance,i didn’t respect my self esteem.I need to just own up the truth that sometimes things just don’t work out but life continues and it grows.I cannot accept the stagnance in my life as my destiny.I might not be much but i am certainly more than that.”

Engrossed in the thoughts ,consoling herself to move on,she finally reached the old couple and smiling at them she gave the lady ,the lilies.Looking at Felicia the old lady praised,

”Thanks,people are no longer friendly in this town.They have the luxury to enjoy luxury but not the luxury to enjoy and celebrate love and honor the life bestowed on them by God”.

Felicia replied with an expression of experience,

”Believe me,I know exactly what you mean.I was a huge part of the world you just spoke about”and she smiled.

Looking at her face,the old man said ”You have a beautiful smile. I am Roger and that’s my wife, and life of forty years, Linda.”

“I am Felicia.Can i ask you how have you both been faithful to each other for so long???”

Roger replied”,Young lady,Linda is my world-she is all i have.I exist because she exists.She is the reason for my survival.Everyday when i see her smile or frown i think our marriage and my faith towards her is worth it.And when it is love you just don’t, for a second even ,think about other women infact i see her face everywhere in all women(he laughs).When its true love ,thought of infidelity never crosses mind.

”What do you do Felicia????”,Roger asked.

“Right now, i am just trying to figure out the purpose of my life and understand the sense of things in it.All my life ,I have done whatever was already planned.Went to the college my parents told,married a family friend.For the first time,i am seeking for a new direction in life,a reason to felicitate myself and experience new things.I want to be spontaneous.”,Felicia felt a sense of contentment as she replied .

The old couple had seen a lot and understood the intensity of the untold story of Felicia and said to her,”Darling,just when the caterpillar thought the world had ended it became a butterfly.And you my dear are a beautiful butterfly with the best smile.Life has many things to teach you and you have many things to learn.Life is an enigma.All the best in whatever you do”.

“I have some important thing to take care,i ll see you guys when i see you”,said Felicia and left .

She thought,”Years after,this walk and this day i ll call the turning point with an end and a new beginning of my life”.

While walking she felt a huge burden had been lifted and that feeling at the back of her head had vanished. She could think clearly and she prayed to the lord to give her courage to do what she had planned.She reached her apartment , removed her overcoat and took a pen and writing pad.She didn’t know what to write or how to begin.After three hours she finished writing ,folded it and kept it in an envelope and  left the envelope on the overcoat.

After two days when Richard arrived,he saw that Felicia wasn’t there and thought that she might have gone shopping.He saw the envelope ,opened it to find a letter written by Felicia.

Dear Richard,

I have spent some of the most precious years of my life with you.I fell in love with you,your smile,your attitude.Its been a while since i have seen that smile on either of our faces.We have grown up to be different individuals.You were always busy to conquer the world forgetting let alone acknowledging the fact that you were my world.

Relationships require a certain degree of space ,time and trust but unfortunately you don’t have the luxury to inculcate even one of them to our marriage.We both know this very well that our marriage is a foundation that turned into rubble long back but i didn’t know how to react to this.I endured,ignored,denied and accepted the rubble and tried to lay the bricks of the monument of marriage again .But its not possible for me to do that.

I have never spoken about this but ever since i saw you with another women ,the bridge i was trying to build  between you and me has collapsed.Your not being faithful to me, hurt me real bad.I was initially shocked and even cursed myself. It was then i realized ,perfect marriage was a myth i was ardently clinging onto.I believed in all consuming love.Many people told me about infidelity on your part but the day i saw you two,the zeal to work on our marriage died along with my zeal to live.

I don’t know why this happened and i don’t expect you to justify but i believe this is not love and this is not worth striving for.Infidelity is not acceptable to me .I refuse to be acting like a coward.Faith towards our love ,our relationship,our years together ,our committment was the only reason for me to constantly try harder and harder to keep our marriage alive but when i saw you two that day,my faith was ripped apart  and my own reflection was shattered into pieces.Ever since then i have been trying to hold the pieces of my life together with glue and tape.

This marriage now has become a locust that has drained every ounce of determination and enthusiasm i had left in me and now i am at a point in life where i can’t survive another blow.I need a fresh start and i need to leave all this behind me.I have lived in perpetual darkness all these years waiting for you to come to me.Every time i think of you ,i think of your infidelity and the thought chokes me to death.

In the past few years i have felt abandoned.The reason i couldn’t say anything till now was because i fear abandonment and our marriage and your presence gave me a false hope of security  but today ,on my birthday,i realize i have been alone all this while.You know, i have worn the overcoat which you bought for me on our first anniversary all this time -in every party,every dinner-thinking you were there with me always even when we were miles apart .

This overcoat made me think you were a part of me and you would come back to cuddle me ,and protect me .I miss the coziness .I was scared of abandonment but in reality i was abandoned by you long back and all this while i was hallucinating your presence.I need a guiding light in my life and that’s the reason i am leaving.While trying to hold onto our broken marriage ,I lost myself.I don’t know anymore who am I .

I have to find myself . There comes a moment in everyone’s life where they don’t have a clue what to do .This is that phase for me.I need change .Someone told me,i am a butterfly.All i know for sure is that i am freshly out of the cocoon and just developed wings and i am learning to fly.I have to find a reason to live for myself.I want to travel , celebrate and spread love and i have to  build a world where each thing defines me but for that i need to let go off my past ,begin once again from scratch and finally move on.

P.S.–Its better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.Know that i always loved you.

love

Felicia.

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