Sunday, March 28, 2010

I WAS A CHILD BRIDE (TRUE STORY)

I was a child bride. I didn’t always think of it that way. I thought of it, at first, like I was a woman embarking on my life as an adult and then later as a stupid mistake. Now I know that it wasn’t just MY moronic decision. Some of the blame has to be placed on my mother who was an idiot and signed the remaining years of my childhood away like they were nothing.

.. ..

It was my choice so I don’t get a lot of sympathy from it. 16 is still a child in every way that matters and I was married months before I was 17. I had no driver’s license, no education. I had never lived anywhere except with my parents or my husband. My husband had lived with my parents and me for over a year, since I was barely 15. When my dad said that ....Chad.... had to go I went with him and initially everything was fine. The summer I was 16 I had an apartment, a job and anything I wanted to do, I did….then the threats started.

.. ..

My mother would call or come by on a daily basis, always threatening to make me come home. I would have done anything to keep from moving in with her again. She had made my life thus far pure hell. She threatened me with the police, she said she would charge ....Chad.... with statutory rape and I was scared. I didn’t know at the time that the police could not make me come home, not in my state. The things I didn’t know would have made an encyclopedia look like light reading. So I asked my mom to let me get married and despite all her protests about us living together she readily signed the papers, without even consulting my dad.

.. ..

That’s how I ended up married before I could legally purchase cigarettes or do virtually anything an adult could do. My husband now had to sign my permission slips at school. In all honesty, if I could go back 10 years I would slap some sense into 16 year old me. I would have listened if anyone would have tried. I was a smart kid who felt trapped, had anyone offered me another way I would have taken it gratefully.

.. ..

I don’t think about that marriage often. I have enough drama with the current one to keep me occupied with current events rather than the past that is dead and buried. Last night though I watched a show called the Secret Lives of Women: Child Brides and it made me think long and hard about that two year debacle I call my first marriage.

.. ..

On the show you see what people think of as the typical child bride. Girls sold into marriage by their parents, yes, this still happens even in ....America..... There were girls who were having their first child at 13, who had met the love of their life when they weren’t even in junior high. Most of them were poor and rural, chained to the backwoods of ....America.... by poverty and lack of options. All of them who had gotten married in the last two decades needed their parent’s permission and without fail they all signed away these young girls’s childhood, thinking for some reason that it was the right thing to do.

.. ..

I can tell you from experience it is never the right thing to do. If your daughter gets pregnant at 12 years old she needs counseling and the support of her parents, not a veil and wedding ring. If your child runs away to be with her much older lover you call the police, not the notary public. Anyone who signs for their child to be married or, even worse, encourages it, should be charged with neglect and abuse. There is no reason for someone under 18 to be married. Personally I think the minimum age should be 21, 25 if the lawmakers could get away with it. If it is true, everlasting love then it will wait on you to be able to sign the marriage certificate.

.. ..

Laws should be passed and enforced to keep this from happening. Young girls should be taught that marriage is not to be entered into lightly and that any man who tries to marry them before they are out of high school WANTS to marry a child and anyone who wants to do that should be in jail, not at the altar. My situation turned out better than a lot of child brides, better than most on the show. I didn’t have three or four kids by the times I was 18 and by then I had wised up and kicked the lying bum I married to the curb. The damage however was done and my childhood was gone. In trying to recapture it I did get pregnant and not by my husband. 7 years later I have a son and a daughter and my plans and dreams went out the window.

.. ..

I wouldn’t be where I am today if my mom hadn’t signed those papers. I would have finished school. I would have gone to college. I would have been something before I was a wife and mother. Or maybe I wouldn’t have but at least I wouldn’t have my mother to blame and she would be so very grateful for that. For anyone who has a daughter, trust me when I say she will blame you when it fails and failure is just a matter of time for children who get married and expect to be able to play house happily ever after.

No comments:

Post a Comment