A WOMAN’S ORDEAL

A woman is another woman’s sister. But the story that follows is not just another woman’s ordeal. It’s my half-sister and best friend’s predicament. Hence, her heart struggles are much like mine as well.

I guess bit by bit I’m beginning to find some sense of problems in relationships like that of mine and my sister’s. I detest the idea that difficulties and unspeakable down times surface as a curse or punishment of sinful acts in the past. Whether this is a biblical truth or not, my gut tells me there’s no reason why people, whether believers or not quite, have to suffer because they need to be punished. I say it’s for the better. It is either there to wake us up to a certain realization or to strengthen our immune system for what challenges are up ahead in terms of relationship. I’d like to focus on the latter. I and my sister have been friends. We do not talk everyday but we have each other when it is tough out there.

We used to share a room in one bed when we were single. It wasn’t much of a bed. It was meant for one but since our parents could not afford another one, we (or more appropriately, I should say, my sister had to endure my presence every night in that rocking small space) content ourselves in that borrowed bed. Yes, it was borrowed from my old church friend. I would say I am the more vocal or should I say noisier about my emotions than she was. That explains why I couldn’t confront her about her personal life up front. I choose not to barge in to her shielded world to insist what’s best for her. I respect her private emotions. I love her that much that I hallow her silence. Although oftentimes, in the middle of her drowsiness when her waking moments were gradually slipping away, I get to blabber the many trivial events in my life. And she, being the most frank of all women that I know of, would smack to my face her irritation, hence, my self-imposed silence.

Lately, though, just when I’m exiling away from the family, so to speak, she came to me for the first time and spilled all her guts out about what is truly going on with her and her husband. For eight years, it is only her close friend who knew about what’s slowly eating her alive. For eight years, I tried to believe everything was all right with her—that she can handle being the only one to carry the cudgel when it comes to providing financially. However, her predicament is worse than who provides who. In fact, worse than what she already knows as a root of it all—her husband’s lack of sense of responsibility and maturity—it’s how she is emotionally and psychologically abused, making her feel useless and worthless as a partner, even as a mother.

Of course, I could not help being biased. Had I the prerogatives, I would have her shoo her man away from the house, which is technically her house anyway. I have my reasons—very private ones, that even thinking about them would seem to be a curse to a woman’s existence. Other than that, the woman that is hurt and mangled badly is my sister, one who has produced 4 very charming and intelligent children. And what’s heart-breaking is when my sister told me he even doubted that her 7-month-old baby was his. Now that simmered my usual cool self. Enough of too much respect of someone else’s married life, I finally mustered the courage to finally demand, “Let him go.”

Now, I didn’t know how she took that from her elder sister which she used to bully with her uncensored comments before. But that night, I could sense that it only took that comment to give her that signal from her family to move on without the man she used to call her husband.

My sister has been living like a headless woman swallowing all the embarrassments this man has been causing her. I wouldn’t say I hate him. I’d say he’s not worth a woman’s emotion.

The only thing that concerns me now is for my sister to find her peace and perhaps come back, no matter how slow, to the church one of these days.