I APOLOGIZE FOR ALL THE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS YOU WILL COME ACROSS THROUGHOUT READING I WILL TRY TO EDIT THIS SOON

"Oh!"

As soon as the door of my bedroom had been, out of nowhere, slammed with a loud thud, my body took off from my bed, subconsciously throwing my blanket and book across the king-sized bed with a shocked expression plastered all over my face. I was not used to anyone penetrating into my room without permission or at least a slight knock on the door, and I was too absorbed in reading that I didn’t even notice someone opening the door. Once I had functioned the person who was standing across the room I heaved a sigh of relief, but soon my relief was replaced with nothing but worry and intenseness as my eyes were locked with his intense gaze. I stood for a couple of seconds beside my bed, my small figure swallowed into the big master room, it hadn’t been long but I thought it was time to avert my eyes from that intense gaze of his. I have always hated looking deeply into someone’s eyes even though I was not an introvert and I never really understood what it is like to be one but I still felt extremely uncomfortable around people who like to look deeply into others’ eyes. The atmosphere surrounding us heaved with more and more awkwardness by every passing second, and somehow, I found myself intertwining my fingers nervously together for some reason I did not really know.

Was I nervous?

"What do you want?" I sighed my words heavily as I regained my strength and bravery once again, trying to shrug off the shock that took over my body at his sudden burst into my room. I sat down on my bed, put both of my legs on the bed and wrapped the blanket around them anew. As soon as I realized he was not yet ready to say whatever he had to say as he remained silent for what seemed like the longest time ever, I got a hold of my book and searched for the page I was previously reading when he suddenly burst into our room, my room. I read the first two lines of a page I didn't even reach before, just trying to look absorbed in reading, but as I read them over and over again, I finally realized that I would never be able to concentrate while he was wondering around the room as if he had never seen it before.

"What is it?!" I slightly raised my voice after giving up ignoring him. He shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other as he averted his eyes from the vase he was silently observing and locked our his gaze with mine once again, this time mine holding an intense look while his flickered with an uncomfortable one, as if he had regretted ever entering my room.

"I am here to talk about what happened last week?" He finally collected his courage or whatever was stopping him from voicing his thoughts out to tell me what he came here for. His words earned nothing from me but a quiet laugh and a sneer. He had no right to enter my room the way he did, talk to me in that tone he held in his voice, or even look me in the eyes, but he was shameless enough to be able to do such things. The shamelessness held in his intimidating eyes had the aura that would make you feel as if you are the who started it all, the one who has been wrong all along, the aura that would make you feel as if you are the one who is guilty and who needs to apologize, and as much as I hate admitting it, he had that exact effect on me for just by looking at his gaze right now, I blamed myself for ever having the thought of visiting his office last week cross my mind, for being careless enough to let such thoughts invade my mind and conquer my sick and weak emotions.

I tried my best, I really did try my best to build up all the courage I have scattered within my body, those broken pieces which are long lost and sickly dissolved into my poorly-treated constitution. Regardless of how much I hated being rude to people, even towards people whom I hate and hold great grudge against, such as the one standing across the room. I had to put my weak emotions aside, I had to let my love and one-sided appreciation slip out of my mind, I had to be tough, or at least act as if I’m tough, I had to voice out my silent traumas and poisonous emotions, even if it turns out to be nothing like I had expected, as it had always been like, around him. I had to do it for the sake of the last broken piece that I have hold tightly on from the painful massacre of my dignity, I had to do it for the sake of me.

“To talk about what? How much of a coward you are?” I scoffed, a laugh of amusement filled my-full-of-venom words as I slightly rolled my eyes, but as soon as I was done with rolling my eyes I tried my best to hold onto my courage to meet his gaze again, knowing that if I avoided his gaze I would look nothing but a coward myself. I spoke whisperingly once again with my venom-spitting voice, with my intense gaze and tensed muscles “Save it. I already know how much of a coward you are.”

A smile, no, not a smirk but a smile appeared on his face, something that made me tense even more, I had never expected him to smile, not so genuinely, upon hearing those words. He started talking with the most calm voice I have ever heard my whole life of being married to him, a whole span of 4 years, as he approached the seat thrown across the room in an abandoned corner that I inhibited so long ago, a chair which I purposely put before the big window that replaced a cemented wall to show the beauty of the outer world. It might sound funny, but on the contrary of what I am now, before marriage I was a whole different person, a hopeful person, full of colors, dressed in colors and even provided everyone around me with colorfulness full of happiness and hopefulness. I chose this house, with him, because I thought it was beyond beautiful, I thought it was the house of my dreams, surrounded by tall trees from the west, a small lake on the east, and a whole beautiful garden that kids are used to play in every holiday in front of it, I am the one who designed the wall, required for the cemented one to be demolished and to be rebuilt in nothing but glass, glass to be able to see the beauty of the world, to be able to witness the beauty of God’s creation, whether in the happiness of those tall trees clinging onto each other or the happiness that hued the garden every holiday, when kids happily gathered and played together for hours. Sadly, now I do not really see any beauty, I no longer dare to even look at the beauty of pureness and innocence that filled the kids’ souls.

How can I see beauty in a place in which my beauty was liquidated and buried?

Can an eye that lost its innocence I did not really know. long time ago not refract and distort the pureness and beauty of things?

“Since when did you start speaking so disrespectfully? How can a Woman of the Year prize-winner be so disrespectful towards her own loving husband?” His sarcastic smile turned into a one-sided smirk that was too necessary to provoke me even more. He did not lie, I was really a prize-winner for having the public and peers’ respect for, and I quote, my enthusiasm, integrity and heart. I had always been favored by everyone around me for I had always accepted whatever my parents, teachers, friends and non-friends asked me to do with a big smile on my face regardless of how much I internally hated how much people around me only liked me because I did what they wanted me to do, and not for myself. My life was never mine, it has always been guided by others, and everything had always been decided for me. And whenever I had the courage to voice out my own decisions I would find that everyone was already one step ahead of me just as the shortest sad story I had when I had always dreamed to pursue my career as a writer and I was ready to tell my parents, who never knew about my dreams, about it and I found that my father was already one step ahead of me as he had already had everything ready for me to start studying medicine, without even bothering to put in consideration that I have something called ‘an opinion’ ‘a dream’ or even ‘a decision’. That day, I remember how my smile withered upon hearing my father’s words of carelessness. I was too shocked that I couldn’t even fight back and all I did back then was let an oblivious tear roll down my cheek as I nodded my head and walked away along with my withering dreams.

“I only speak respectfully with people I respect, and last time I checked you really weren’t one of them.” I simply stated putting my lips into a thin line and averting my eyes to the book I held in my hands once again after noticing a slightly annoyed furrow of eyebrows on his face. He barely saw this side of me, it wasn’t really a wild side, but it was really weird of me to have such an attitude when in reality I barely talk back to anyone, anymore. Each time he saw this /ironically/ wild side of me, it would cause nothing to him but pure confusion, and this time was no exception, really.

“Is it the time of the month? A couple of days ago you were practically begging for mercy?” His statement of true events that happened a couple of days ago were voiced out as a question, as to question my whole weird attitude towards him. He did not fail to irritate me, he never really did fail to do so. He did notice the quite sudden change of feelings on my face and his lips, once again, flew upwards into a one-sided smirk as he noticed the symptoms of the perfect me’s lack of control over my anger.

“Do you really think this is funny?” I held the page of the book I had been holding for a good 15 minutes tightly, my upper lip quivering angrily, something I couldn’t stop when anger took the best of me. My fingers dug more deeply into the page as they crawled inwardly to form a fist along with the paper I held, I hastily cut the paper as I took my fist off the book and threw it aggressively on the floor as I abruptly stood up causing the blanket I was once wrapped into to fall lifelessly on the cold ceramic floor. What I did caused nothing but more amusement to be plastered on his hideously beautiful face. “Do you really take what you did last week so lightly?” I screamed every stressed word at the top of my lungs, my scream filled with anger and somewhere deeply down it filled with hurt, my chest expanded up and down, and my slightly glassy eyes sent daggers right through his own amused ones. “Look at me like this one more time and I will make sure to wipe it with my own bare hands!” I continued to yell at him but that was of no effect to him, his facial expression remained the same as nothing of the things I have just said had been said.

“Why do you think I am here then?” The amusement that once filled his facial expression was now wiped off his face as if it had never been there. A serious, intimidating look took over his face as he eyed my angrily trembling body questioningly, and even though he didn’t actually roll his eyes, I believe he did, deep down. “Do you really think I am here to try to be a husband?” His voice raised by each word he voiced out but his voice was never loud enough to be considered yelling, yet, he was not able to throw his the look of ascending frustration into complete oblivion. Even though I didn’t really know why he was getting mad when I am the only one who should, and is allowed to, be angry here, I totally understood the reason