Reader Response: Taking Moments Of Love For Granted
Though I’ve written something small about this already, I find the quote “”We thought we had such problems. How were we know to know we were happy?” (Chapter 9) interesting and relatable. Here, Offred struggles through recollections of her past life. As a common occurrence, she fixates on small details. How they were then, how it is now, how she wishes it was different, how she can get through this. She grieves, in a hidden, entirely hidden to the naked eye fashion in which readers can relate. In life, when something feels so intense, so painful, so guttural, sometimes it is better not to feel it at all. Many use their trauma in comparing them to when times were better, to ease or validate the emotions they are feeling in the present. In this quote, we see Offred doing this same thing. She speaks to when her and Luke thought that because they were having an affair and Luke was married, they had big problems, ones that could keep them apart, or cause alienation of them as a couple, to the outside world. This, she says, opposed to now, feels almost like a dream. She wants those problems, instead of these ones. She wants to fight with Luke rather than fight internally with herself in a silenced society. She wants that, those problems, instead of these. She reflects that maybe, just maybe despite those issues prior, that she was happy. Only something she can figure out and feel now, if she truly is whittled down to nothing, to this, to what she is now. As I said in my prior response about this quote, my girlfriend and I were a couple that never fought. The first 365 days (and a little more) we never even raised our voices at each other. We used to make it a point that we didn’t fight, that we were the perfect most healthy couple ever. It felt so good to be so on each other’s level, never have moments of miscommunication, always be on the same page. Looking back, there were probably times we should have fought, but we didn’t. We never did. That said, around our 1.5 year mark, we started fighting constantly. It ranged from real fights that we probably needed to have, to things completely stupid and unnecessary, just for us to get our individual petty points across. During this time in our relationship, I felt so angry at myself, and at how I was handling things. We both felt so out of control of what was happening between us. In some ways, I look back and appreciate this time, thinking it was necessary for us to learn more about each other, and become a stronger couple, but it was so awful in the moment. I remember looking back often at times before this era in our relationship and being so upset that I thought we had problems. That she didn’t understand I wanted this thing then and I didn’t realize when she felt this way at that party. I used to believe that those, those tiny and insignificant things were problems, things we needed to fix and to work through, not knowing that later, we would have real problems and real things we needed to work through together. Just as I took advantage of our first year of no conflict, Offred took advantage of the time and hard moments for granted with Luke. She no longer had Luke at all, not to fight with, not to be angry with. And I, no longer had a conflict free relationship to brag about. Both of us, in obviously very different contexts, didn’t appreciate what we had and how good it was until it was gone and now, it was different. We didn’t take enough time to take in and hold onto those moments prior. It’s heartbreaking to think good memories were wasted worrying about other things, but it’s something that both me and Offred experienced, as I’m sure many readers have. Now, as my girlfriend and I hit our three year anniversary, conflict obviously is still present, as it is in most relationships where you love someone, but it is at an acceptable and helpful level. We have learned to communicate with each other in a way we wouldn’t have learned otherwise, appreciate each other in a deeper sense and love each other with more purpose because of that time we went through together. Right now in the book, Offred hasn’t been able to have an experience like that but I know at some point in her life, she will find that conflict and hardship brings strength and knowledge and though it feels like forever, waiting is the only way to get through it.
