Chapter 6. Bodies

When I visited Mrs. Kuzuha, I was already feeling unsure about my own marriage. After I got back to Green Bay, I often thought about my conversation with her. I kept remembering my mother's funeral - the large bouquets of yellow chrysanthemums, the white incense smoke, the black and white drapery signaling death. Surrounded by these colors of mourning, Mrs. Kuzuha and I made the exact same resolution. Seeing my mother in the coffin, I, too, had said to myself: I will never depend of any man to make me happy, I will be happy on my own. I was twelve then. I planned to never marry.
Twenty-four years later, I was married to a perfectly nice man. We had promised to make each other happy. And yet when we started disagreeing about where to live or how to spend our time together, I couldn't try to work out our differences because I had never put aside my resolution from 1969. Even though I was married, I still considered myself to be on my own: I didn't want to give up anything for anyone else - nor did I expect anyone to give up anything for me. Married or single, I believed, all of us are basically on our own through life.
"Nothing against my husband personally," I often said to friends, "but I don't ever want my marriage to be the most important thing in my life. I would have been just as happy if I had never married him. My life would have been different but as good."
It was, I had to admit, an odd thing for a married person to say. I wondered if Chuck ever felt hurt to hear me say it. Many of the statements I made, I began to realize, must have sounded insensitive, even though I had only meant to be honest. When Chuck bought a motorcycle, I told him - and all my friends - that I was never going to ride on it because one of my childhood friends had died in a motorcycle accident and I had vowed never to drive or ride on one. When one of my friends asked me, "So how can you let your husband drive his motorcycle?" I answered, "I don't think it's my place to make decisions for him. He's an adult. He can make up his own mind. What he does is absolutely none of my business." What I said was fair - I expected to give and receive a lot of freedom - but in a way, I was saying that he was free to hurt himself or even die.

Kyoko Mori, Polite Lies