Like the flaming war was not enough of the trouble, sweltering August 1998 rushed into the country with the heat that was melting everything in its path. Smaller rivers dried up, tens of older people died in the city from the heat wave, while farmers in the outback were desperately trying to save their already miserable crops. August also made first visible cracks in the relationship with my husband.
Rising inflation was greedily eating away everything we would earn, which was not much in the first place, but then on Monday, 3rd of August he returned home before the lunch and silently said he lost his job. I remember hugging him and kissing him in the living room darkened by heavy dark brown curtains, feeling the sweat that was pouring down his face.
"Don't worry, I am sure you will find something else soon" - I do not know if I believed in what I said at that moment, but now I know that he surely did not. Without a word, he turned away from me and laid down on the old washed up sofa and fell asleep. He fell asleep and in reality never woke up. I had a feeling like he left his normal self deep inside some better dream, and woke up as an empty human shell.
In the next two months our small savings were rapidly fading away, and so was he. My husband would motionlessly sit in-front of the TV for hours, staring in the shiny box almost like waiting for something or somebody to come out. The words become rare commodity in our house. I tried hard to pull him out of that invisible strangling cocoon, well...at least the best I could. I tried gently, I tried sexy, I tried screaming and then I stopped trying hoping he will come out when he is ready.
I loved him, I really did and I understood what was bothering him, but I could not understand his easy, cowardly surrender to that dark feeling. Soon he started disappearing without a word for hours at the time, coming back home with the lingering stink of alcohol that was spreading around him. He was not the same person I fell in love and married, or maybe he was and this is the time in ones life when you show the true structure of ones character, the true nature of ones soul. For the first time I thought about my husband as a weak cowardly man.
My parents and his parents, while struggling themselves, became our main source of income soon. My part time job was barely covering our rent, and every other expense was paid by them. At first I thought that fact will bring him out, wake him up, but that situation only pushed my husband deeper into the hole, and his cocoon was becoming a stone wall prison cell without windows.
I felt deserted and betrayed. The silence in the apartment was deafening. I was increasingly feeling a strong need to talk to somebody, about anything, to laugh or even cry. I just wanted to feel something, anything. I had no desire to talk with my friends or family who knew the whole situation. I wanted to forget everything at least for a moment and not talk about it every time we met. I started visiting local chat rooms and spending more and more time talking with strangers for hours just so I do not have to think about the reality. This where I met a man called Marko.
Rising inflation was greedily eating away everything we would earn, which was not much in the first place, but then on Monday, 3rd of August he returned home before the lunch and silently said he lost his job. I remember hugging him and kissing him in the living room darkened by heavy dark brown curtains, feeling the sweat that was pouring down his face.
"Don't worry, I am sure you will find something else soon" - I do not know if I believed in what I said at that moment, but now I know that he surely did not. Without a word, he turned away from me and laid down on the old washed up sofa and fell asleep. He fell asleep and in reality never woke up. I had a feeling like he left his normal self deep inside some better dream, and woke up as an empty human shell.
In the next two months our small savings were rapidly fading away, and so was he. My husband would motionlessly sit in-front of the TV for hours, staring in the shiny box almost like waiting for something or somebody to come out. The words become rare commodity in our house. I tried hard to pull him out of that invisible strangling cocoon, well...at least the best I could. I tried gently, I tried sexy, I tried screaming and then I stopped trying hoping he will come out when he is ready.
I loved him, I really did and I understood what was bothering him, but I could not understand his easy, cowardly surrender to that dark feeling. Soon he started disappearing without a word for hours at the time, coming back home with the lingering stink of alcohol that was spreading around him. He was not the same person I fell in love and married, or maybe he was and this is the time in ones life when you show the true structure of ones character, the true nature of ones soul. For the first time I thought about my husband as a weak cowardly man.
My parents and his parents, while struggling themselves, became our main source of income soon. My part time job was barely covering our rent, and every other expense was paid by them. At first I thought that fact will bring him out, wake him up, but that situation only pushed my husband deeper into the hole, and his cocoon was becoming a stone wall prison cell without windows.
I felt deserted and betrayed. The silence in the apartment was deafening. I was increasingly feeling a strong need to talk to somebody, about anything, to laugh or even cry. I just wanted to feel something, anything. I had no desire to talk with my friends or family who knew the whole situation. I wanted to forget everything at least for a moment and not talk about it every time we met. I started visiting local chat rooms and spending more and more time talking with strangers for hours just so I do not have to think about the reality. This where I met a man called Marko.
