The Wives

by Tarryn Fisher

No one tries that hard to keep their husband unless they’ve already lost him.

But the truth is that the heart’s desire is a mere current against the tide of nurture and nature. You can spend your whole life swimming against it and eventually you’ll get tired and the current of genes and upbringing will pull you under. I became a lot like her and a little bit like me.

Cooking, my mother taught me, is the only good way to be a wife.

Everything is just right, the way he likes it, and thus, the way I like it. It’s not that I don’t have a personality; it’s just that everything I am is reserved for him. As it should be.

My existence is exhausting, all of the games I play. This is a woman’s curse. Be direct, but not too direct. Be strong, but not too strong. Ask questions, but not too many.

soda for breakfast is not something you want people to know.

You can play with them in secret. No one has to know. You don’t have to give up something you love just because other people disapprove,

Secrets: I’m good at having them and keeping them.

He just smiled at me, and I knew right then that I was in trouble.

What did people do before emojis? It seems like the only reasonable way to lighten a loaded sentence.

Half the known world could start an excuse with “my father.”

It’s all too perfect, I think. When things are that perfect, something is wrong.

Our existence together is a shallow one. If not for children, what is there? Sex? Companionship? Is anything more important than bringing life into the world? I reach up absently to lay a hand on my womb. Forever empty.

My father—sticking up for me and promoting patriarchy all in one sentence. Bravo!

We’re all just waiting for someone to stand behind us, aren’t we?

That is male folly; they expect you to always be the same, reliable cow, but women spend their lives changing. Our change can swing for you or against you depending on how fairly we’ve been treated.

When did I become the type of woman who isn’t believed by her own mother? When you started lying to yourself, I think.

women are stuck in a cycle of insecurity perpetuated by the way men treat them, and we are constantly fighting to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are okay.

Sure, women occasionally lose their minds over men, but does that mean we’re all unstable, or that men made us unstable with their careless actions?

he would say I was deferring responsibility. But that’s not what I’m doing at all; I’m holding everyone accountable, because it takes a village...

The way people perceive you is the really mentally thwarting thing in life. If everyone is against you, you start to question things about yourself, like now.

Waiting...waiting...that’s what women do. We wait for him to get home, we wait for him to pay attention to us, wait to be treated fairly—for our worth to be seen and acknowledged. Life is just a waiting game for women.

don’t know if there’s anything worse than someone forcing cheerfulness down your throat when you don’t feel a bit happy.

People treat being sick in the body as fine, normal, empathy-worthy; they’ll bring you soup and medicine, and press the back of their hand to your forehead. But if they think you’re sick in the mind, it’s different. It’s mostly your fault—I

A woman in love loses her sight first and then her courage.

We busy ourselves trying not to be lonely, trying to find purpose in careers, and lovers, and children, but at any moment, those things we work so hard to possess could be taken from us. I feel better knowing I’m not alone, that the whole world is as fragile and lonely as I am.

A woman’s greatest foe is sometimes her hope that she’s imagined it all. That she herself is crazy rather than the circumstances of her life. Funny the emotional responsibility a woman is willing to take on just to maintain an illusion.