The Fine Line

There is a young woman in review of her life. She has three children, a fifteen year marriage, and her face is just beginning to show the marks of time. The oldest child has had significant health issues over the past few years. The husband is never one to be helpful or even around, for that matter. She does it all alone. She works around fifty hours a week and a lot of weekends. Her relationship with her parents and siblings have been, as most are, strained at times while happy at others. The woman feels alone, abandoned, and trapped like a caged animal by the constant verbal abuse from her spouse and subsequent tongue-lashings from her children who seem to aspire to be “just like daddy”. Even his vengeful cat snakes dangerously around her ankles, as if on purpose, when she is carrying a laundry basket or pile of toys.

Her husband works an unusual schedule but always has time for his friends. As far as abuse goes, he has never once considered her “abused”, after all, he has never laid a hand on her. If she would just “toughen up” and quit being such a baby, such a drama queen, everything would be okay… You know, her unhappiness is her own fault because she is never satisfied. Everything that is wrong falls on her shoulders so she can just blame herself. Everyone knows it, he says. She wants the moon, for heaven’s sake!

She pays the bills, keeps the house, and sends cookies to school for class parties. She smiles and throws up her hand in a big, ole down south country wave as friends pass by. The yard is mowed. The doctors are paid. Appointments are kept making sure to adjust her work schedule because hourly employees are slaves to the time clock. Book bags are ready every morning and every holiday is festive albeit, without any thank you’s.

She had thought more than a few times about leaving, but how could she? She didn’t make enough money to support the kids by herself and getting money from her husband would require far more than some judge telling him to ante up. Where would she go? Her father had made it clear that the “beds made were the beds that were slept in”. Her mother was really just an older version of herself, trying desperately to hold it together so that no one knew what went on outside of Sunday morning church. Would it be fair to the kids to take them away? Could she even get away? Is that why her mom, her best friend, and countless other women just stay no matter how miserably unhappy they are? Is it just how things are? If so many people are unhappy, maybe that’s the norm… Maybe she was asking for the moon…

Her best friend had said something a couple of years ago that she had never forgotten. The two had been out Christmas shopping without the kids, without the husbands, just the two of them. It had been a fantastic day and they were grabbing a bite to eat in the mall’s food court. They had just finished the spicy beef nachos when her best friend plunked down her plastic fork and said, “I hate my life. I am so unhappy every day that I wake up. I just want to run away. I want to pack a bag and go. The kids hate me because I am their only disciplinarian. Always the bad guy. I have never complained about Tom’s weekly poker night or the fact that he is more in love with the remote control than me. He will drop everything to meet up with a buddy or go out of his way to help his brother but the sun would sooner burn blue than for him to treat me like he did when we were dating. Why am I doing this? Why do I bother? I just want someone to love me without my having to earn it or jump through hoops to get it. Is this how my life is going to be until I die?”

Neither one of them said anything for some time and then her friend added one last comment…

“I just want to be loved by someone who wants to love me.”

The words sank in deep. The words meandered throughout her mind and heart and nestled down where those exact same words, those same exact thoughts, had burrowed before. Her best friend had given a voice to the very thoughts she herself had.

She used to want to be a something. Now, as she edges closer and closer to the next decade of her years, she knows she will have to remain a nothing. Dreams don’t come true for people like her.

This was her life. Married young. Kids came. Husband strayed. She stayed.

She is at work one day and a man smiles at her. The smile and the smile alone takes her aback because it is rather unique. Or is it? Hadn’t men smiled at her before? Why was this man’s smile striking a chord in her? They weren’t talking and she didn’t know him from Adam, and yet, he smiled at her. How long had it been since someone, some man smiled at her like that? The next day, she sees him...and he smiles, again.


It isn’t just between love and hate… It’s everywhere, that “fine line”… It doesn’t take much to transform a circumstance. One tiny degree renders an icicle, a puddle, does it not? Are our thoughts and feelings and emotions reliable for making the “right” choices when one, small degree can render our life forever changed? Do we all straddle the “fine line”...


The fine line between thinking it and saying it…


The fine line between entertaining the thought and living it out…


Lessons learned and new mistakes…


Staying while you “think about it” and just letting you go…


Spoken wishes and secret wants…


Staying and leaving…


Flattery and flirtation…


Manipulation and stratagem…


Abuse and enabling…


Ah, the fine line between your ego and mine…


Opportunities and conscience…


Needing counseling and being the cause of someone needing counseling…


Being a victim and being victimized…


A lie and well-crafted truth…


Vulnerability and preservation…


The fine line between being your friend and your being my enemy…


Allowing the chips to fall where they may and interfering…


My pleasure and your desire…


Knowing when to be silent and when to scream…


Taking a chance and walking away…


Laughing with you and crying over you…


Hating myself or hating you…


Feeling like trash on the curb and being swept away…


Hoping you will call and praying you don’t…


Vindication and apology…


Moral sentiments and moral living…


Listening to lies and believing them…


Explanation and excuse…


My care and my apathy…


Trusting in your truth and falling for your lies…


Hating how you love this and loving how you hate this…


Isolation and insouciance…


The fine line between God’s forgiveness and sinning again…


Smiling back at him…


A caveat from you and a farewell from me…


Farewell.