I'm sitting here again as I always do everyday looking out the window, thinking of the way my life has turned out. This is not how I pictured my life. I dreamed of being a lawyer, a veterinarian, or even a writer. I always dreamed of being somebody and doing something great with my life. But it never happened. I got married instead and had kids. I ended up living my life for them and never doing anything for myself. That is what I have always been told. Be the good little wife and make sure I always have a clean house, clean dishes, and clean clothes. In addition, always make sure my husband never had to do anything for himself at home. I am there to wait on him and make sure the kids do not make too much noise around him. Always make sure I live for my husband and my kids. Never me.

Therefore, that is what I did. I was a good wife and mother. I made sure everything was done. I never bothered my husband with little things the kids did, with bills or worried him when things started to fall apart. I always took care of it myself because I was being the good wife. Now the kids are grown and departed living their own lives. However, I am still here. I love my family but what do I do now.

My life is going nowhere. Now I just exist. I am not in the best of health anymore and would really like more help with things now. I feel that I am nothing but a slave to my husband. I am such a good wife that he now still thinks he doesn't have to do anything. No matter how much I talk to him and ask for help nothing works, nothing helps. He might get better for a while but then it goes right back to the way things were. I ask myself time and again why did I do everything? Why didn't I make him help me? Why did I make his life so simple while I made mine a nightmare?

It was because I was being the good wife.

So as my husband sits and watches TV, complaining that nothing is on and he is bored and asking what is for supper, I wonder about my life. Is this what it is all about? What would life have been like if I had really gotten to do, as I wanted to do? What if I really had gotten to show my feelings of who I really am instead of being the good daughter and marrying a man like I was supposed too and making my family happy? I love my husband, or I did, and my children are my life. But I wonder if I'd had the freedom to be me would I have had the courage to carry it out.

I wish that I had the courage to have shown my best friend at the time what my true feelings were for her. Instead, I did what was expected of me because I could not show my family my true self and risk losing them. Therefore, I took my true self and buried it, way down deep inside. So deep that now I don't know who I am anymore. I have lived life through my family for so long I don't know how to live life for me anymore.

So I sit here and think and wonder and dream. If I had just had the courage, would I be happy with the feeling of love that only that special person could give me? Instead, I sit here wondering if I am going crazy? Wondering if this will be my life a month or a year from now? Will it always be the same? Me doing everything and waiting on him all the time. I feel as if the world is spinning out of control. That if I just let myself go I will fall apart. It is as if I'm shaking inside but I'm trying to hide it. That if I tell people the true way I feel they will think I'm crazy. So I hide my feelings and just smile and joke and act like everything is ok.

Nevertheless, it is not really ok and I have no place to go and no one to talk to, that can help me. Therefore, I just live in my own little world as I am slowly losing my grip on the reality of this world. Moreover, no one around me sees it because they are in their own little world too. Thus, I wait for my body to slowly fall apart because the stress is getting to me and no one hears my screams for help. They don't listen when I try and tell them what is happening to me.

They think I am just tried and depressed that things will be ok because I have always been there for them. I have always been the strong one. Now I need someone to lean on. I need someone strong to be there for me, but I'm alone. And so, I just sit here waiting for the world to leave me behind. Waiting for the world to go on without me because I did what I was supposed to do. I am the good wife and daughter. I did my duty and made my family proud. And for that?for that I paid with my life.