I wore a wedding dress that was left at the dry cleaner where my sister-in-law once worked. The headpiece came from my stepmother — the stepmother who hated me and convinced my father to give his consent for me to marry a man who was not only seven years older than me, but also someone I had only known for maybe two months.
I had just turned 16 in September of 1992, and by the end of 1992, I was married and forced to drop out of school because my now-husband was jealous that other boys might look at me.
My mother died in October of 1991 and, soon after, my father married the woman he had been having an affair with while my mother battled ovarian cancer. We moved away from the town I grew up in and away from all of our family because my new stepmom wanted it. She wanted me out of her life, so my father consented to let me marry a 22-year-old man I had dated a few times.
No one ever asked me if I was sure I wanted to get married. When my father went to the court clerk to sign permission for me to get married, no one batted an eye. No one asked, “Do you want to get married?” Not even the pastor who required we attend one of his counselling sessions prior to marrying us.
Soon after we married, my husband quit his job and we moved in with his grandmother. Then the abuse started. His mother, his brother and even his friends saw it. No one did anything to help me or stop him.
His grandmother had an overnight job. She cooked all the meals: breakfast and then a huge meal that was to be for lunch and dinner. I was not allowed to cook any meals in her house. I remember one time I wanted some soup for dinner instead of the food she cooked. She saw the empty can of soup in the trash and raised hell with my husband, who in turn hit me for making her angry. We put up a Christmas tree one year and she came home and threw it in the yard because she did not want it in her house.
There were so many rules or things I was not allowed to do. I wasn’t allowed to drive, and I couldn’t attend college after getting my GED because my husband feared I would get a degree and then leave him. He didn’t have an education because he dropped out in his 9th grade year, so we both took our GED tests at the same time. I passed and he failed. He beat me that night because he said I made him look stupid.
My father lived in the next town over and would occasionally stop by to see me. He knew I was being abused and did nothing to help me. In fact, he and my stepmom moved to Florida and didn’t tell me until I heard about it from a friend.
I left at least three times prior to leaving for good. In July of 1994, I had finally had enough and left. My husband had slammed my head against his steering wheel because I changed the radio station without his permission. My brother and his wife took me in. That is when I found out that my brother had tried to keep my father from letting me marry, that he and his wife wanted me to come live with them. But my father, in his pride, would not let that happen. The most important years of my life, my high school years, were ones filled with abuse and being forced to grow up way before I should have.
Even though it has been over 20 years since I left my abusive marriage and remarried a wonderful man, I still have severe PTSD from my experience of being an underage bride. I should not have been allowed to marry. There is no good reason for someone under the age of 18 to marry. Period!
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*At Michelle’s request, her name has been changed and the photo used here is not actually of her.