The Past, The Present

The unsung melody, unspoken words. . All reminiscent of a time which was memorable, years before Edward started drinking.

Anne, a widow all of thirty seven years lost her husband Edward in a car accident. An hour before the accident, they were having a heated argument and decided to divorce after fifteen years of marraige.

Anne's husband was drinking heavily for over 10 years and had a mood disorder. To add to it, he was dating other women and buying them expensive gifts. This ill spending habit of his made him borrow heavily.

He used to ill treat her and their kids. They had a son and a daughter who were 8 and 5 respectively. It was taking a toll on Anne's mental health as well as the kids.

Edward would take a lot of unwanted digs on her cooking skills, her dressing, her communication etc. Conversations with her husband were rather mundane. This made her a different person from who she really was or aspired to be.

Anne kept plodding on with her daily chores of cooking, taking care of the house and taking care of their kids homework. Sometimes she rued about how she never had any time for her self. She craved for her own space to do things she always wanted to do and was good at.

She had started feeling a void not only in her heart but also in her marriage. The togetherness, the responsibility which usually comes between a couple after the birth of kids just did not happen.

Anne had to play the role of father as well as a mother.

A strong woman once upon a time had become meek and diffident.

She had stopped interacting with her friends and her family.

Her whole world revolved around Ed and the kids.

When Ed passed away, life came to a standstill.

Though there was no guilt of arguing with him before his accident, there was an angst and a fear of what she should do ahead in life to take care of herself and her kids.  

He was the only breadwinner of the family.

Though Anne was employed for a while post her marriage, It was a good seven and half years after she had quit the corporate world.

All these years, She questioned her self, her capability because of her husband's taunts and abuse.

Now Suddenly, when she had to take the role of the bread winner of the family, she went into a tizz. She was at her wits end.

She started looking for jobs through agencies and also looked at ads in local newspapers.

After a week, she got a sales woman job at the Becky's, a departmental store in her neighbourhood . She had to work eight hours straight at the store from 930 am to 530 pm.

Every morning she would wake up and look at the early morning sun and ponder on her day's routine.

A whole month passed by with people offering condolences, with few relatives and so called well wishers passing unnecessary jibes, creditors knocking at their door to demand repayment. It truly sunk in as to how reckless her husband had been and how little he had saved.

Their house was mortgaged with the bank for last six months.

She realised that she would have to make amends by taking up another alternate job.

She approached a coffee shop in her neighbourhood to do part time waitressing i. e.  in the evening from six thirty pm. Her mother moved with her to help her with the house and kids.  

It was very tiring to manage home and her two jobs, nonetheless she knew she had nothing better to do.

Inspite of two jobs , she could not repay the bank mortgage and the flat was taken over by the bank. She and her kids had to move to a smaller flat which was all of just a room, a kitchen, attic and a bathroom.

 Almost six months passed by, she managed to clear some of her husband's dues.

Although her financial strain was reducing, ask all these years she was under mental duress, her self image was poor.

She quit her job as a part time waitress and started learning typing and short hand.

Another two months passed by, it was the 20th of August. She saw an advertisement in the paper for a stenographer at a lawyer's office. She went for the interview and got selected. She was offered a nice sum of 2000 pounds , almost double of what she was earning. She was very happy as this would give a better life to her kudkids er mom and her.

She started to work at the lawyer's office very diligently. In the matter of three months, she won the confidence of the lawyer. The Lawyer, Renita would give her notes such as minutes of client meetings and Anne would do the drafting.

Slowly Renita started giving her drafting work for cases. Renita was a corporate lawyer and reasonably well known in her field. She also was a very matured woman.

She had learnt a little bit about Anne's trouble past from Anne . She knew that Anne was still shackled by the mental conditioning due to her husband's digs and her own lack of self esteem.

People always end up going in a loop due to social conditioning, present circumstances which may be similar to their past and their own mental conditioning due to their past actions.

This often leads to a loop. Renita made Anne realise that by repeating her loop of thoughts or negative self talk, she was not exactly helping the situation but on the contrary, she was rather being counter productive .

Anne decided to work on her self by understanding her seld, her strengths, her weaknesses and also the stremgths and weaknesses in her current life.

To grow in her life, she knew she had to update herself by studying further.

As her mentor now was her own boss, Renita, she decided to opt for a part time law degree from the University of Texas. She managed to pay her fees by taking an advance from the firm.

She enrolled for the part-time course wherein she could go for the weekend classes.

One

 Renita fell sick one day and got hospitalized.  

There was a very important meeting with the client that day and it was regarding a very important meeting mainly for arbitrage between the client and the other party.

Anne was worried about the meeting . She immediately looked into the case file.

She understood that it was a case which she had helped Renita to draft the contents of and not the others.

She quickly looked at the key notes and started for the meeting.

She reached the client's office and gave her name at the reception as Anne from the firm.