What I often find strange is the fact I was married longer than I wasn’t, and yet it feels so far removed. My memories are of another person, someone else’s life, as a woman, I reflect on what has become a distant shadow in the ever-accumulating past of my existence.
Even now, in this moment as I write, my heart aches with the pain she felt and the burden she carried. Not just her own, but generations of trauma and oppression, which impacted her ability to know any different type of life.
I never saw a healthy example of a relationship.
Of my few memories, one of the earliest is, of my mother being beaten by my father. Which, as a child of four “ish”, set a standard in my brain and triggered a fight-or-flight mechanism I’m still working to recalibrate.
My great-grandmother had children nearly as soon as she was biologically able. My grandmother was 16 and my mother was 16. A baby being the pathway to marriage. Marriages that would fail, fueled by poverty, alcohol, drugs, violence, and ultimately lead to divorce.
As a small child, I knew, somehow, as I existed in the life around me, it was not normal. It was abnormal. Everything always felt…wrong. As I grew up, to avoid following in those very worn-in paths, I just did the opposite of what I knew was wrong, because I had no idea what constituted right.
Drugs…don’t do those. Must have a job to avoid welfare. Finish school! Marriage before baby, and then you just stay married no matter what. Unless they hit you. If they hit you, they’ll do it again and again.
I had my first 40-hour-a-week job at 15. I finished high school and started community college. Then got married. I started a new path.
My plan was working….
Until it wasn’t….
I married at 21 in May…pregnant by October…husband cheating by November, and laid off in December. It got so my standard answer to the question, “How’s married life?!” became, “Still married!” As that’s all I had going, I took all I had to keep going.
Two household incomes went to none, as I was placed on bed rest for my pregnancy. Fancy work-sponsored PPO medical insurance transitioned to state-sponsored medical insurance. Every vision I had of my adult life continued to disintegrate.
Those first few months of marriage set the stage for the next 14 years. Every day felt like an eternity. Every day took all the prayers, effort, and sadly, gaslighting of my own self to make it to the next. I traded pieces of myself, the light inside me, to hold a marriage together that had been nearly shattered from the moment I said, “I do”.
With every cheating situation, I felt I was to blame. I read all the How to Be a Good Wife books. I cleaned and cooked with every ounce of Martha Stewart, but without her assistants or crew. The harder I tried, the less I was given. The less I was given, the more I gave.
My husband never hit me, but for 14 years I’d lie in bed late into the night and quietly cry…and sometimes I might be lucky enough to cry myself to sleep.
Freedom does not come without sacrifice or fear. It does come when the fear of things staying the same outweighs the fear of the unknown change of things to come, and the worth of the life you know is now a price worth sacrificing.
In that 14th year of marriage, my husband was fired from another job yet again. He once again found comfort outside our marriage. And as with every time between the first and what would be the last, my heart broke, so much of my worth was invested into the success of this marriage…which had never been successful.
This time, though, what I had left of me was worth the price, and the fear of staying the same was greater than the fear of change.
I could never fix something someone was actively tearing down while I worked alone to build it. I could not endure another moment of that life and knew staying in it would mean I wouldn’t make it any further in life…I had nothing left.
I gave of myself, until only the spark of love for my daughter was all that remained. I had nothing left for myself, which meant nothing left for her. Just the flicker of love for her remained with me.
That was the last day I ever put myself last. That was the first day I began putting myself first. The rebuilding of me, so I could be an example for her.
There is a special kind of freedom that comes from having nothing to lose. It doesn’t require you to do anything to earn it. It just surrounds you in a way that tells you it’s yours and nothing can remove it from you.
The next two years, were hard. So…HARD. And yet…they are of the most precious to me. Becoming untethered from the weight of the responsibility I believed was normal was a life-altering open door.
Sometimes we are our own prisoners; we just haven’t realized we are also the ones who can grant the pardon.
Surround yourself with love, the way you’ve always wanted to be loved. With support, the way you’ve always wanted to be supported. The way you’ve always deserved to be loved and supported. It is within your power to free yourself and watch yourself do what you’ve once thought impossible.
C. Taylor
