First, you must get married. Find a man that you half-way love, and convince yourself he is the love of your life. Ignore his faults, and tell your parents he is the one. Craft a fairy tale in which he is your prince, and he’s found your glass slipper in a hole-in-the-wall sports bar. Throw away all your convictions of love, because this illusion will be your reality of love. Know him for five months, and talk about the subject of marriage. Get no engagement ring. Decide you’re both too mature for that. Plan a wedding for the somewhere tropical, maybe Key West, but get eloped in Vegas. Be a walking stereotype for twenty year olds in love. Move from his hometown to New York. Be young, and in love, and New York. He pesters you to have children. You’re not sure it’s what you want. Spend a couple more years, just the two of you and your career. Write love letters to him, telling him he’s different from all the other football players you’ve dated. There’s something about him you can’t put your finger on. Or maybe you just can’t capture it within the 8 x 5 letter paper.
Tell him you’re pregnant. Watch as his co-workers pat him on the back, and say “Congrats man!” Spend the next couple of months watching your belly grow. You tell him you’re going to go back to work a week after she’s born. He complies. Notice he becomes less frustrated, and pray that it stays that way. Give birth to your baby girl, and fall in love for the second time. You look past her crooked nose and smushed face. You see an angel. Interview nannies and realize you cannot leave your angel alone. You never go back to work. Beg him for more children.
Get pregnant for the second time years later. His anger starts up again. Hear his yelling, and pray again. Pray. Pray. Pray. You still believe in God because your child is proof from heaven. Have your second child, a boy, and love deeply. Convince your husband to move back to his home town, to be closer to his parents. Your husband’s anger will burn bright. Try your best to shield your children from it.
It escalates from throwing words to throwing objects. T.V. remotes, shoes, anything. Argue with him about what kind of dog food to buy, if your boy should play sports (he doesn’t want to, much to his dad’s dismay), where all your saving’s money is going to, etc. He will deny that he is in the wrong about anything. Watch as one cup of wine turns into ten shots of vodka. One night, at three a.m. he will stumble in from bar hopping. Somehow, in his haze, he will tear the fan in the master bedroom down to the floor. He will try and salvage the ceiling fan drunkenly.
Wake up the next morning, call the handyman, and pretend like nothing happened. You will pretend so hard that you will forget what’s real and what’s not. When you’ve had too much, you’ll bring up the idea of couple’s therapy, and he will pretend right back at you. This is when you’ll realize your marriage is a lie. A childish fairy-tale, similar to when you little girls plays make believe. Contemplate leaving for the first time. You’re not sure where, but it doesn’t matter to you.
Contemplate leaving for the second time and decide you want to move back with your parents.
When you contemplate leaving for the third time, you call your mom, and tell her you’re coming home. Tell your husband later that night that you’re leaving. He gets angry again, screaming about how life is unfair and all the reasons you aren’t allowed to. Just tell him the way it is, and that you’re leaving come next week. He doesn’t seem to believe you until he comes home a week later and the only trace of his family is a forgotten baby shoe.
Leaving your marriage is the exact way you save it.
