Here, But Not Really Here

Nirmala’s husband Mahesh comes home from work every evening. He has his dinner, sits on the sofa with the television and a bottle, and falls asleep there. He has not asked their daughter about school in months. He forgot their wedding anniversary for the third year running. He has never hit anyone, and he has never lost his job. But Nirmala feels as though she has been living alone for years.

A loss nobody sees

When Nirmala tried to talk about it, people did not understand. Her mother said, “At least he comes home. At least he does not beat you.” Her friends said that all men drink. But Nirmala knew that something precious was missing. The man she had married was gone, even though his body sat on the sofa every night.

This is the second kind of unclear loss: the person is here in body, but absent in mind and heart. It can happen with addiction, depression, serious illness, or even when someone is so swallowed up by work that there is nothing left for the family. It is a lonely kind of loss, because there is nothing for anyone else to see.

Enduring is not the same as coping

For years, Nirmala coped by adapting. She took on all the household work, kept his dinner warm, hid his drinking from the neighbours and told herself that this was what a good wife did. Then her back began to hurt so badly that she could not get out of bed. The doctor found nothing wrong with her spine. He asked her, gently, whether she was under strain at home.

Pauline Boss, who lived through her own first husband’s drinking, writes that endless adapting is not the same as resilience. Resilience is like a bridge that bends under a load without breaking. Enduring everything in silence is more like a bridge that takes on more and more weight until it cracks. Sometimes, the healthy choice is to make a change.

You can only change yourself

Nirmala had spent years trying to make Mahesh stop drinking. She hid bottles, begged and threatened. Nothing worked. A counsellor at a de-addiction centre told her something she did not want to hear at first. “You cannot make him stop. Only he can do that. But you can change how you live, and you can look after your own health and your daughter’s.”

The counsellor suggested that Nirmala join an Al-Anon group, which is a free support group for the families of people who drink. Al-Anon groups meet in many Indian cities. At her first meeting, Nirmala listened to women and men describe her life almost exactly. She had thought she was the only one.

Small changes, one at a time

Nirmala began to make small changes. She stopped hiding Mahesh’s drinking from his parents. She stopped keeping his dinner warm after ten o’clock. She went back to her tailoring classes on Saturday mornings. She took her daughter to the cinema without him. She told Mahesh calmly that she loved him, that she would support him if he chose to get help, and that she would no longer pretend that everything was fine.

Mahesh was angry at first. Over the following year, he went to the de-addiction centre twice. He is not yet sober. Nirmala does not know whether he will ever stop. But she no longer waits for his choices to decide whether her life is worth living.

When it is not safe

Nirmala’s situation did not involve violence. If your partner threatens you, hits you, controls your money or your movements, or frightens your children, that is abuse. It is not something to adapt to. Please call the Women Helpline on 181 or emergency services on 112, and tell someone you trust.

How it is now for Nirmala

Nirmala’s back pain has eased. She goes to Al-Anon every Tuesday and she has started a small tailoring business from home. She still grieves for the man she married. She also has a life of her own again, and her daughter says she smiles more.