What should I say when you're tired?

My friend looked at me with dark circles under her eyes, a testament to countless sleepless nights, hard work, and exhaustion. "Try to take care of your health, you look so tired!" "Yes, I will, for myself, for my child. No one else cares about me. This morning, my husband just asked: 'What are you doing that makes you so tired all the time?'"

You mentioned that when you're tired, all you really wish for is for your husband to ask, "What medicine do you need? I'll go buy it for you," "Do you want to see a doctor? I'll take you," or simply, "What do you crave to eat? I'll buy it for you." But those seemingly simple things only exist in your imagination. The most frequent question your husband asks you when you're sick is, "What are you doing that makes you so tired all the time?" accompanied by an undisguised frown.

"And what did you reply?"

No one likes being constantly tired. But if being tired means your husband cares, then pretending to be tired is worthwhile. But if you're tired and your husband frowns, scowles, and throws a question you don't know how to answer, then I bet no woman wants to be tired. I said that, thinking he understood, but instead, he said, "The frequency of your tired days is alarmingly high. Other women aren't constantly gloomy and exhausted like you." At this point, you just smirked: "Other women complain to their husbands when they're tired, why would you compare yourself to my husband?" Then you turned your face to the wall. Facing a blank wall when you're tired turns out to be more bearable than facing a husband who can't understand or share your feelings.

My friend, in her thirties, sometimes admits she looks older than women in their 40s and 50s… She says that by the time she gets home, her eyes are tired and her back aches. Her young children are fussy, and when they see her, one wants to be carried and the other wants to be piggybacked. Often, after work, she has to “avoid” the children, retreating to her room to read and listen to music, letting the kids play among themselves and preventing her back from aching after a long day at the office. This dreary situation shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Someone said that women over 30 are at their most beautiful, but instead of beauty, she only sees weariness and boredom from tired eyes, backaches, and a readiness to argue back at her husband's ill-timed frown.

* * * * *

Another friend, Na, almost left her husband after being bitten by an ant. It was a tiny, deadly fire ant that could cause serious injury. She accidentally killed it when it was crawling near her eye. If she had thought more wisely, no one would have done that. But fearing the ant might harm her eyes, she simply killed it.

And then, exhausted, Na went to sleep, not thinking she would face the impending disaster because of a tiny ant. While half-asleep, she woke up feeling burning hot. Her eyes were swollen and burning, making it impossible to lift them. She fumbled around for her phone, frantically dialing her husband's number. Na was always careful in emergencies, putting an "A" before her husband's name so she could call him immediately, even without looking at the screen. It took a great effort for Na to explain everything. In response to her efforts, her husband's voice, muffled with the sounds of "1, 2, 3, go, go...", said: "Well, I'm more than 10 kilometers away, I can't come right away. Just put some menthol balm on it and you'll be fine." Mặc Na tried to explain further, displaying all sorts of pain, pleading, and anger, but her husband remained perfectly calm: "In short, it was just a poisonous ant bite, right? It's just an ant, why make such a big deal out of it? If you want, I'll call Linh to take you to the hospital. I can't be there right away anyway."

"Linh" is her husband's driver. If all she really needed was a driver to take her to the hospital, Na had a whole range of services available around her, and there was no need to bother with her private driver who was far away. Na proactively hung up the phone. She felt as if someone had rubbed a handful of salt into her wound. Na intended to ignore it and wait for her husband to come home and see her face and body, to teach him a lesson. But then, in unbearable pain, she randomly dialed a number from one of the most recent calls. Na couldn't remember what she said to the person on the other end, or even hear what they said because her head ached terribly. Luckily, it was an old classmate who had called that morning to invite her to a class reunion. It had been easily 5 or 6 years since they last saw each other.

Her friend took Na to the hospital. After a few days in the hospital, no one dared mention Na's husband's name because if they did, Na would burst into tears like a madwoman. Her husband, after a night out drinking, rushed home to the hospital upon hearing about his wife's condition. Seeing the doctors intensively caring for her, he realized his mistake, but Na wouldn't give him a chance to see her and apologize. They separated from the moment Na returned home from the hospital.

The next day, on Facebook, Na saw a picture of her husband's thin arm holding an old bowl to catch the dripping rubber sap. Along with it was the caption, "Missing you." Na called Linh, her husband's private driver. The driver said he had gone south to work in the rubber plantation with a friend. The weather there was bad, he was sick, but he absolutely refused to come home. He said that being close to her without her made life meaningless. Just hearing that, all her hurt vanished. She choked up and told the driver to tell him to come home. Linh shook her head: "Only you can get him to come home. Let it go, what if something happens…?"

Much later, when their marriage had finally blossomed, the husband recounted that it was a "test" he had "taken a risk" to see if his wife still loved him. Luckily, she did. In reality, he had been on a business trip to the South, stopped by a friend's rubber plantation, took a picture, and the story unfolded with… half the truth. When Na called him home, he knew he had rediscovered the happiness he had built over a decade, a happiness that could sometimes be lost due to a few moments of carelessness when his wife was ill.

* * * *

Hanh was not as fortunate as many other women. For women like Hanh, simply having all her limbs intact was a blessing and a source of happiness. Hanh was dragged by a train for over 10 meters, her lower body crushed. The day Hanh opened her eyes in the hospital, waking up after days in a coma, she saw her body wrapped in white bandages and just wanted to close her eyes and die. At that moment, she also recognized a familiar face beside her, looking at her with sparkling eyes and a radiant, open mouth. It was Hoa, her fiancé. "Thank God, you're alive," he said. And innocent tears welled up in Hoa's eyes. Hanh said that his smile and innocent tears – her fiancé's – gave her strength, preventing her from thinking about death.

Anyone looking at Hanh and her husband's love story might use words like "fairy tale" or "happy ending" when they see the girl who had both legs amputated years ago, seemingly unable to overcome her challenges at her young age, now a mother and wife who always maintains a bright smile and warm eyes. But for Hanh, as someone who experienced it firsthand, there's nothing fairy tale about it; it's simply because she has Hoa always by her side, always smiling and holding her hand whenever she feels weak.

Hanh was a girl I happened to meet in the park one weekend morning, when she and her husband were taking their twin children for a walk. The two children were as beautiful as angels, chatting and playing together under an old tree. Their parents, one in a wheelchair, the other sitting on a park bench, held hands and smiled.

If someone feeling weary were to suddenly see that image, as I did, I'm sure all their weariness would gently vanish like clouds in the wind...

Vo Thu Huong