A love story untold
- Part 1 -

Samarjit Kambam *

Like every girl nextdoor, she married to the man she loved most in the world. Simple, innocent and dreamy eyed, she had great expectations and entered marital life with high hopes, hopes that were alive and kicking alongwith a very promising future.

Having married to the man of her dreams, everything was magical to her. Then, they got a lovely and beautiful daughter. It went on like that for some months, until the she found out about the real person behind the love of her life, her better half.

She slowly began to find out that her beloved husband has become a drug abuser. Soon, the magic of marital life disappeared into thin air. Her hopes crashed and apprehensions began to build inside her head.

Gradually, she began to notice the changes in her husband's behavior. Since she had been sleeping on the same bed and sharing the same pillow, no other person will know more than she knew about her husband, be it good or bad.

It was beyond her wildest imagination that her better half who she trusted and loved so much would turn out to be a junkie. She was at an emotional crossroad and tried to the best of her capacity to make her husband to become a sober and normal human being, free from vices. Her husband on the other hand became adamant, hardly spoke to her and gradually began to live his life in a drug induced 'perfect world' of his own.

As his mind was drowned in a purple haze, clouded and hazy, his mind got far away from reasoning and craving for the stuff got the better of him. Slowly, he began to depend more and more on the stuff he was abusing. He became more reclusive and his attention to her and their lovely daughter dwindled.

He became more like a zombie, a living dead, an undead. With each passing day her husband's behavior changed and with time had even taken a total overhaul. Every morning when he woke up he felt like a hundred year old. It wasn't that he didn't love his wife and daughter, but his addiction has reached the ultimate level.

Sometimes he felt like he was living his life just for the stuff that he has been abusing. He hardly looked after the welfare of his family as though they were non-existent.

He began to hate almost everything. He hated the early morning, the chirping of the birds, the sunshine, the changing seasons and most of all hated talking to others. When he woke up everyday in the morning, he felt weak and lethargic as though suffering from a chronic or terminal illness.

He hated talking to friends and relatives and most of all he even began to hate himself. Every night he would swore to himself that he would be sober and clean from the next day, but he simply couldn't for the chemistry of his brain has been totally and fatally altered, his mind hazy and cloudy all the time and thus the same old story, repeating itself, like a loop, like a nightmare on ELM street.

Meanwhile, his wife's life has turned into a nightmare. She wished that she had never entered marital life. She felt like her husband whom she loved dearer than her life has been totally taken over, possessed and snatched away from her by drugs. She felt that, to her husband the 'stuff' is of paramount importance, others are secondary.

That left her life more meaningless and miserable. Sometimes she thought of committing suicide but she just couldn't because she loved her daughter and was afraid that leaving her daughter to his husband's care would not work, for her husband had become too self-centered. However, her love for her husband never waned.

She tried, in every possible way, to the best of her level to pull out his husband from his deadly 'perfect world'. She believed in "Failures are the stopping stones to success'. But that didn't work to her husband. All her numerous efforts went down the drain.

Sometimes she thought of running away somewhere, but she just couldn't for she loved her husband too much, however bad he was. Her love for her husband is exemplary, hard to find in real life.

As nothing worked out to get back her husband from the tight-gripped tentacles of addiction and to become sober and lead a normal life, she began to think of many things, some even unimaginable. As days passed by they seemed to become more and more distant.

Even though they lived in the same house under the same roof, they seemed to be light years apart, as though a million people stood between them. He hardly uttered three words a day to her.

He did not feel like greeting people, nor go near relatives and lead a life of a recluse. The chemistry of his brain has been altered to such an extent that, just like a nocturnal animal he became an insomniac.

Whenever he woke up in the morning he felt like a 90 year old. He hated the sun, the rainy weather, summer, winter, autumn, whatever. Gradually his life has changed in such a way that he wanted to be left alone, not to be disturbed. The stage has been reached where he didn't give a damn about his daughter or his wife.

All he thought about was his "stuff". He has been living in a different world, oblivious of the environment , oblivious of his friends and relatives. His social life went down to such a level that nobody wanted to speak to him, nor do he want to mingle with them.

As he has been living in a different world, the bond between him and his wife has gone down abysmally. He received no respect from anybody, nor did he respect others. In fact he hated to be a social human being.

He didn't care a damn about others, about what they said regarding him, with a false pride that the cost of a huge bungalow and four to five cars or SUVs have gone down inside his belly.

To be Contd...