Sunday, 26 August 2007

Hostage

Taiwanese singer A-mei has a song 'Hostage'.

It describes the way I feel about this marriage.

There's no basic trust in the marriage. And I feel I'm held hostage because I signed on the dotted line, plus the fact that this is supposed to be my 'second' marriage, which adds to my fear of getting a divorce 'again'.

I feel like a hostage. I wish to find a way out. Rather than living in fear and uncertainty every day, I hope he could pull the trigger on me and have everything go back to zero with a loud bang.

Sometimes I think of death. Would death be better for me, than worrying endlessly over when he'll ask me for money again, with no intention of repaying me, yet giving me promises that he will - 'tomorrow', 'next week', 'next month', 'next pay day' and eventually 'Stop pushing me! I don't have the money!'?

I'm supporting myself, and Coco. I don't want to end up supporting him as well. I made it very clear before the marriage that part of the reasons I'm marrying him is so that someone could help offload my financial burden. Instead of offloading mine, he expects me to help him with his soccer and credit card debts. It makes me feel that there's no point in this marriage. Not that I base it all on financial issues, but which woman would marry a man if she knows that the purpose of the marriage is so that she could support the man? There may be such women, but I don't think I'm that undesirable or unattractive that I have to resort to such measure to 'own' a man.

He was the one who refused to talk about sorting out the financial issues,"Just don't talk to me about money. I know what I'm doing." If you do not want to pay off the debts, and do not want me to help you sort it out, then basically, you don't have the rights to ask me for money to pay for the debts - and where the money goes, I really don't know. I've forked out $15,000. I don't have more money for you to cheat. The rest is for Coco. I will not be taken in again - for her sake, I will not.

At this point, I really want a divorce.

I really hope to be left alone with Coco. Live together with her and raise her up well. With all the fights and exchanges of hurtful words, I

Monday, 13 August 2007

A battle within me

Things have been well for us these one or two weeks.

Thoughts of divorce continued to linger in my mind since the last post. But about two weeks ago, he smsed me,"I don't want to quarrel with you. I want us to have a week without quarrels." I was moved. Subsequently, I could see that he's making efforts to avoid fights with me. He would try to get things done the way I want them to. He minimised his procrastination time. He gave me a stipulated time for what he would do for the chores. We haven't had too big a fight these two weeks.

Thoughts of divorce still nag in my head sometimes because I hate to nag. Very often, I ask myself if I want to spend the rest of my life nagging at a man. To me, asking him to do a thing twice is as good as nagging already. But sometimes, I wonder if I'm trying to look for excuses for a divorce.

A cousin is finally going for a divorce after having 5 kids and a marriage of close to twenty years. She said to my elder sister,"Congratulate me. I've decided to let it go at last. I'm finally getting a divorce." I feel that it's really sad if a woman only gets a divorce after 20 years of unhappiness. What's there to be left for the woman? I shudder to imagine myself going down this route even 5 years later, or worse, 10 or 20 years later. I would feel that my whole life is wasted on a bastard and hate myself for not leaving him earlier.

At the same time, I wonder if it's right (actually, I know it's wrong) for me to hold all these thoughts of divorce. Divorce is not from God. Yet, another part of me asks if I should continue to hold onto a marriage that does not make me happy just because God frowns upon divorces.

There're times when I wish he is unfaithful to me, so that I have a 'valid' reason to divorce him. I don't know what it takes for a woman to hope that her husband strays.

Things are well now. But deep down in my heart, I know it's only a matter of time that we fight, and loudly at that, again.

As long as the issues are there, it's impossible for us to live happily ever after.

He's still buying soccer bets after two warnings from me that I would certainly leave him if he buys them again.

Although they are in smaller amounts, I'm not sure if I should tolerate this habit. It disturbs me that he does not regard my warnings very much. Either that or it's because he is sure that I will not leave him even if I find out that he's still betting on soccer.

I continue to worry over his credit card debts.
I don't know when they will be settled. Is he really going to take 10 years to repay them? I really don't know.

He mentioned about the reno loan yesterday and reminded me that I promised to help take it up. I didn't say anything, but honestly, my take is this: if the renovation had been worthwhile, I wouldn't mind help paying for it. But the house is in a half-renovated condition, with lousy workmanship. I know I'll feel unbalanced if I help pay for it. Afterall, he was the one who insisted on using this contractor against my wish. He insisted on paying the contractor one lump sum of $11k even before he started on it. And the contractor kept refusing to complete the work and going back on what's stated on his invoices when he finally started any work at all. It gave me so much stress and caused me alot of distress. And it strained our relationship badly. It was a total mistake to take that contractor up because it changed our relationship as well. It made me lose my respect for him for making such a lousy decision, and not being able to get the contractor to do his work. It totally didn't worth the money and effort. Paying for the reno loan would remind me of all these pains.

He was talking about shifting house one or two years later.
I doubt it will come true. Firstly, very few people, if there's any, will want to buy our second-floor flat. Secondly, the contractor had done some illegal stuff in our flat without the hdb's approval. We would be fined and required to restore things in their original state at our own expense if we want to put it up for sale. Thirdly, I have my reservations about continuing to live with him. I seriously don't know how long this marriage will last. I wish I can stop having such thoughts, but I can't help it.

Coco's furniture

It's been a month since I last blogged.

Didn't have motivation to blog because my friend who is an avid blogger, for some reason, stopped blogging. I used to blog just about the same time as she did because I felt 'Hey, this reason got can blog ah?', and so I blogged, with credit of inspirations from her.

Yesterday we went to Ikea to shop for Coco's wardrobe and mirror. I saw a matching bookshelf which I thought would help to make her room tidier and decided to get it too. I had in mind a full-length mirror for her room, but in the end, I got her a round mirror with mosiac-like mirroring squares around the mirror which she liked very much. It costs me $460 in total. What a way to spend my pay the second day it's out!

I don't really want her to wait for her bedroom to be done up anymore. I feel that she's waited long enough, ever since we moved into this flat. She's all excited over the cupboard. I'll sew a nice organza curtain for her bookshelf so that it doesn't collect dust so easily and tie it up with ribbons at the side when she needs the books.