Voices From the Community: Standing up to Society

I love a woman who used to be married. She is no longer married. She and I are together.

I make no apology for these simple facts, though I am sorry about certain things that have happened, certain hurt feelings that have occurred.

My partner was in a marriage that was very bad for her. She left that marriage honourably. Now both she and I are being painted as villains in the lives of people who made adult decisions and now refuse to take responsibility.

I require no apology for any of this. I wish it would stop. I wish people would take responsibility for their own part in a bad situation. I wish her husband would. I know her family does. I wish some of our friends would.

But people speak ill of each other. And people like to gossip. This is Pakistan. It happens. I am not particularly interested in explaining myself apologetically to anyone. I think that, on balance, if everyone takes responsibility for their own part, the discomfort and unhappiness left in the middle can be attributed to chance and circumstance. Shit happens. You live the best life you can.

Since the day-to-day drama and trauma of living toghether and coming out to her family has stopped, Lovely and I have been focusing on the future, and the happiness of the present. Today, friends asked us how we met, what went on, how we felt. And we couldn’t stop talking. Now that we’re home, Lovely has turned to me and said, “We’ve been keeping this in so long. We don’t talk about it. The more we talk, the sooner we’ll get over it.” And that’s really true. That’s why I haven’t written here in a while. One out of ten comments questions me and us, and I couldn’t handle that for a little bit. When you get questioned daily in your real life, your online existence needs to be rosier.

-From the blog Mera Terrha Pakistan