"No Forwarding Address" - A Short Story

"Help me! Please God help me!" she said as she ran frantically through the house looking for a way out "I need to get out of here! I need some air! I need to breathe in some life again!"

This was Polly, a distraught married woman in her thirties, finally realizing that after all her ambitions and dreams that she had had in the past she was to be just one more lonely housewife, a mother to 3 children, a wife to a cold and distant husband who no longer spoke to her, and a slave to her boring daily routine.

"What to do, what to do..." she said to herself as she cleaned the kitchen floor "Surely my life is worth more than being a maid to everyone and appreciated by nobody... I need to escape from all of this" She looked at the time and remembered that today was a shopping day. No, not a wonderful day to take time out to go shopping for something nice for herself; those shopping trips that she had enjoyed so much with her best friends years ago, the same friends that had now drifted away into happily married life, but no this was food shopping in one more busy supermarket full of clones of herself in dowdy comfortable clothes and faces without smiles.

"I used to have a career, I used to have a life, I used to be someone" she said to herself sadly, then upon remembering her children she felt guilty of having such selfish thoughts and continued mopping the floor.

But the thoughts won't stay away; however much she loved her children, however much she still loved her husband, despite his fondness for any woman that gives him a simple compliment, women that have come and gone over the years, those affairs that Polly had known about but kept everything quiet within herself, thinking that everything would maybe someday change and that he would magically become a better man, that he would see this wonderful girl that he met years ago and become a better husband. She finally accepted in her mind and heart that she had been day-dreaming all these years and that he will never change, she's simply invisible to him now.

"Enough, enough!" she said as she stopped what she was doing "My days are always the same, I am always here looking after the house, taking care of the children, alone in everything and I can't take it anymore!"

She went upstairs to the marital bedroom, the same bedroom where she had waited for years to be satisfied by her husband, to be pampered, loved and adored by him but to no avail, and started packing some clothes into an old dusty brown suitcase, a suitcase that was battered around the edges and showing the signs of life, not unlike herself. The same suitcase that was last used for a romantic weekend some six or seven years ago... "This is good, this is change, this is what I must do" she said as she started planning in her mind everything that she had always thought about doing on every single lonely night of her marriage.

She made some phone calls... none of them to her husband. She booked a plane ticket with her credit card, she phoned her mother and asked her to pick up the children from school and take care of them. She packed everything that had sentimental value into the suitcase, closed it up and left it by the front door. A taxi would be arriving in ten minutes...

Two nights later her husband arrived home and found her note on the kitchen table, together with her worn-down wedding ring:

"I've had enough, I need a life, I need love, I need to be held again and made to feel special, not someone who is special because they cook the dinner or clean the house but to be special because of who I am, who I really am, who I was and who I will be again once I get out of this ice-cold marriage... I want to feel as special as you made all those women feel who you slept with over the years. The children are with my mum, you have no commitments, as usual, so it shouldn't disrupt your life too much... It's time for me to put myself first. Yes, at first you will say that I am a lousy mother, a lousy wife, a good for nothing whore who abandoned you all, but after some months you will finally sit down and realize that you have been all those things for many, many years, it's just that you have been the acceptable male version of all those things. So good luck, you're going to need it big boy.... and maybe it's time for you to get a maid."

P.S: "Don't ask my mum where I have gone, she doesn't know... I've left no forwarding address" - Polly.