The Past, The Present

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

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 ten years and had an abusive nature. 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 eight and five years old respectively. It was taking a toll on Anne's mental health as well as on their kids.Anne had become very moody. It was such a swing from being a rebel before her marraige to becoming a conformist after her wedding.She could hardly identify with herself anymore.

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 and how to take care of herself and her kids.

 She decided to teach her kids the value of money so that they did not end up like her husband.

 She always used to believe that nothing comes free and that there are no free lunches in the world.

Ed 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, and all these years she was under mental duress, her self image was very poor.She had lot of cobwebs in her mind.

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 dollars , almost double of what she was earning. She was very happy as this would give a better life to her kids, her mom and herself.

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 troubled past from her. 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 strengths 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.

There was a fire in her belly and 
the thirst for just doing better kept her awake.
Now she would not let anyone douse the fire within her, not her mother, not her kids and not her self.

Her wound was healed, but her scars were deep.She was proud of her scars.

It reminded her of what a warrior she  had been!
She never forgot my fight.
She had only made peace with it

 Renita fell sick one day and got hospitalized.

There was a very important meeting with the client that day. It was regarding an  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.

The receptionist asked her to wait.

After about fifteen minutes of waiting, the receptionist finally showed her to the board room where there were three men and a woman seated.The woman introduced herself as Maria and the others as Gary, Travis and Luke.

They were board members in the company. Anne introduced herself as Renita's executive assistant.

They had a look of dismay on their face and asked Anne as to why Renita could not attend the meeting.

Her own personal belief system was that certain skills or knowledge can be acquired by reading or by observing and need not always be taught.However keeping her personal belief system aside, she had to now tackle the group in front of her.

Anne briefed them about her career profile and also that Renita was hospitalised. Since she had helped Renita with the case, she was close to it. She informed that she could help them strategically in the arbitrage.

Gary and Travis had a wry look on their face.Gary retorted that as she was not qualified to give an opinion, it would be a waste of their time.

Anne had half a mind to walk away as she believed that " Sometimes walking away from the table is better than having the last word."

She knew heart of hearts she could not do that.She was representing the firm.

She politely told Gary that they didn't have much an option right now but to listen to her advice.

To be continued....