I was seventeen when I told my parents, the night before my first wedding, that I did not want to go through with it.

The man kept hurting me. I was afraid he was going to kill me or my baby one day. I knew he was going to ruin my life. I knew I was going to be miserable.

They told me to talk to my grandmother.

My father’s mother told me she had gotten married because she was pregnant, and she never regretted her choices. Her path had been hard and painful, but she stood by it.

Then she told me I was going to go through with my wedding and marry the man because he already had me pregnant. She said I needed that piece of paper for the courts, just in case something happened later.

So I went.

I put on a happy face. I told myself I would make the best of that day.

But that piece of paper did not protect me.

The man cheated on me. He beat me. He stole from me. He tried to take my baby. It took almost being destroyed physically, emotionally, and sexually for me to understand how horrible my life was going to become if I did not make a drastic change.

I started small.

I made him schedule visits with our child, and he kept not showing up. When my choices began improving my life, he started stalking me and trying to pull me back into the trauma.

For a long time, it worked.

I lived in hiding. I hid behind food while desperately trying to become a mother my children could be proud of.

While working more jobs than I can even remember, including odds-and-ends work just to survive, I met my friend’s cousin. Eventually, we built a beautiful life together.

I had no idea how minimal his life had been before I came along, and he did not understand the kind of abuse I was leaving behind.

I went from one fire to another.

I gave myself to the life we created. I believed I was never going to be worthy of real love, pure happiness, or anything beyond what I could give my children. So I stayed. I gave everything for longer than I would like to admit.

When the pandemic hit, I did exactly what I always said I would do.

For years, I had told him, “If you ever choose me, I would marry you in an instant.”

So we got married on our thirteenth anniversary.

An anniversary that had been missed more often than celebrated.

Three years later, he was out of state with another woman. He had missed that anniversary for the third year in a row.

That piece of paper trapped him.

It did not stabilize him. It did not give him security. It did not make him choose me in the way I had always hoped it would.

Now?

When I think about getting remarried, I do not think about the paperwork. I do not care about the legal status of marriage the way I once did.

I have become comfortable being with someone who chooses to be with me freely, for as long or as short as they want to be there.

That piece of paper that says “married” is a formal document. It binds financial obligations. You can create legal ties by going into business together. You do not need to call that love.

I would rather be divorced and living freely with a man who makes me feel like a goddess from time to time than ever be married to someone who spent most of our relationship making me feel like a peasant in his eyes.

I am human.

I know I am not actually a goddess.

But I am not a slave either.

I make mistakes. I slip up. I do not always know what I am doing until it is already too late.

What I do know is that I have a major crush on an amazing person who happens to be male, intelligent, and familiar in a way that feels almost like a mirror image. He shares a similar history from the opposite side of the same kind of pain. He understands me better than I know myself sometimes.

He is someone who works every day to become the best version of himself. And when he feels like he has fallen short in any part of that goal, his generational trauma bubbles up. He takes it out on himself, and sometimes on the people he feels safest with.

I know he is displacing emotions from things outside of his control because I spent many years doing the same thing.

One day, I finally realized where my pain was coming from. That was when I began putting the right kind of work into myself.

Therapy changed.

Relationships changed.

My home life changed.

I changed.

I am still healing. I still have a long way to go.

But I am also trying hard to live in the moment, even while everything around me feels like it is falling apart. Even while I feel like I am failing.

Maybe the best parts of life come after you take the biggest risk.

I did not realize how much I loved playing with someone who knows how to play the same games as me.