The Wife (The Pieces Of Us That We So Easily Gave Away Edition)

Moonlight. It’s nighttime and I am writing. I rarely write at night unless something deep within me cannot wait for the dawn. I just finished watching a 2017 movie called “The Wife.” The movie stars Glenn Close (as the Wife…Mrs. Castleman who is really a second wife), Jonathan Pryce (as the husband… Mr. Castleman), and Christian Slater (a scandalous biographer named Nathaniel Bone who wants to write the husband/writer’s autobiography). Before I bore you with intimate details of a movie you may not have seen or was not planning on seeing….let me get to the reason why I am writing you…under the moonlight. “The Wife” powerfully exemplifies how most women give up the core of who they are just to be loved by some man who is unworthy of them. The wife’s first mistake is she takes another woman’s husband. You cannot control who you love but you sure can try to control your actions. Picking up another woman’s husband typically means that you have freed her from her problems only to enslave yourself with the familiar issues that you so dirtily inherited. Are you following me? If not…just imagine picking up your neighbor’s trash and then dumping it on your lawn! That is exactly what Mrs. Castleman did! Mr. Castleman was married with a family when “The Wife” first laid eyes on him. The affair ensues and soon she is now The Wife…only her prison is far more toxic than his first wife’s. The Wife stays to the end…until he takes his last breath…engulfed in the flames of her husband’s deceit and affairs. Mrs. Castleman writes all of Mr. Castleman’s books throughout their life together. All he does is EDIT the books. Through each affair, The Wife writes explosive literary tales of their lives. It’s almost as if each affair passionately drives the words on the pages. And what does Mr. Castleman do? He cooks, cleans, takes care of their two children, accepts credit for each brilliantly published novel, and screws many women out of insecurity throughout his second marriage. I…mean…how could his balls not shrink?! He has just received a Nobel Prize in Literature for HIS WIFE’S body of work and no one knows it (for sure) but he and the wife. To add insult to injury, Mr. Castleman always tells people that his wife “does not write.” To the public, The Wife’s only job is to just take care of her husband’s brilliant mind and body. Insert sarcasm here and let me get back on track. I am currently writing under the moonlight because I found “The Wife” to be so disturbingly on point. Some times men ask women to make terrible sacrifices and we do it. No questions asked. This, however, is not one of those times. What I really want to get to the heart of is why the fuck we women sacrifice our mind, body, and souls without being asked?! Yes during the generation that “The Wife” grew up in, a female writer was hardly respected but as time went on…publication after publication…way before that Nobel Prize…why the fuck was “The Wife” not the author of her own destiny?! Why was she okay with laying the foundation for years and financially supporting her family with no credit from anyone but her loser husband?! Not even her children knew that she was the true mastermind of the family! Why do we women sacrifice so much only to receive so little in return?! I…try…not…to. Perhaps if I toned down my intelligence I would be his wife. Perhaps if I pretended I was not beautiful…I would be his wife. Perhaps if I did not make it publicly known that my naked body belongs to me and only me….and just the vision of it excites me three times more than it probably excites him….I would be his wife. Perhaps if I never told myself that I love myself everyday…I would be his wife. Under the moonlight, we sacrificial lambs cannot hide. You see…what frightens us as the sun comes up is hidden with a smile that is gone by moonlight! It’s just too exhausting to pretend at night. And of course…we hope that the darkness surrounding the moonlight…will hide our true hopes and dreams. “She does not write,” he says. Every time he utters these words…she, a great literary mind, dies just a little bit so that her husband can live another day. ~KJM on Serenity Saturday night. Who the hell taught us to give up so much of ourselves for so little?!