The house next door has finally found new occupants recently. It didn't take very long for the rest of us living in the vicinity to notice a peculiar thing about the new comers though—they quarrel all too frequently. At times, there will be loud screams at odd hours of the night, doors banging and all. We have had visits by a couple of policemen on those little funny motorbikes too. I'm not sure what those policemen thought they could achieve. I arrived home from work one evening, and two policemen were there; and the woman was crying loudly. She was eventually escorted away by the policemen to who-knows-where, but the next day there she was again. This evening, we heard loud quarrels again—I'm not sure if somebody will end up dead sooner or later.
It reminds me of my parents when I was still a very young boy all those years ago. It's strange that I have the tendency to forget some events as recently as just a few weeks ago, yet I can remember quite clearly the trauma of seeing my parents fighting all the time. At the height of it all, mom grabbed a knife to defend herself. Or was it for the purpose of stabbing dad? After all, I'm guessing he might have deserved it anyway. I can't remember the exact details, but I can still remember the pain of seeing my parents like that.
It wasn't until many more years later before my parents' divorce became a reality. I felt very sad for a long time. But as the years passed, I had a strange change of mind; I started feeling happy for my parents—especially my mom—that they decided to go their separate ways when it was still not too late to do so. Mom was eventually able to find love again and remarried a few years later. And dad, well what can I say, he remarried too, although I can't vouchsafe that it had much to do with love. Seeing my parents today, I really can't imagine how the heck did two very different people end up getting married in the first place!
Some people fall victims to infatuation and mistake it for love. The fairytale idea of "love at first sight". And then they take the big plunge; they get married. But eventually they realise that the marriage is nothing like the fairytale love story that they had imagined after all. I once wrote about a similar topic as posted here.
We are just human; we all make mistakes. But how should one deal with the mistake of marrying the wrong person? How many people actually have the guts to admit his or her mistake and call it quits while it's still not too late? So in the end, he endures the miserable relationship; or rather whatever's left of it. He struggles to keep it going in the hope that somehow some sort of miracle will happen and make it work again eventually.
The never-ending quarrels for years and years, and still the struggle to keep it going. And then one of these days about 30 or 40 years down the road, when he looks back at his life, he is suddenly haunted by the question: Was it really worth it to endure for that long to live up to the fairytale love story?
