One Year Later: A Bride’s Anniversary
Friday, May 15th, 2009Today I am honored to bring you a guest post from fellow blogger Jennifer, who, a few months ago shared with us her plans to trash her wedding dress and document the symbolic destruction in an afternoon photo session with professional photographers. At the time, I thought she was a woman like me, angry and disappointed after feeling like we had been sold a false bill of goods, but ready to dust ourselves off and get on with life. She found herself divorcing after less than a year of marriage. I never even made it down the aisle. How do these things happen, we both wondered.
Jennifer’s story of her unraveling marriage began long before she filed for divorce. And I’m discovering that our stories are very different. Unknown to friends and family, she had been suffering as an abused wife. This month, she is celebrating her first anniversary of freedom, but admits that all is not rosy in her life, and feels only at the beginning of what is a long road back to herself. One year later, she reflects on how she got to this point, and what she hopes the future will hold. Even though my story is not the same, what we have in common (and what all of use have in common) is that we are each rebuilding, laying the foundation for a future that is ours to create. We pledged to stand by our men ”for better or worse,” and now we have to make the same promise to ourselves. For better or worse, we need to be our own best friends.
Jennifer possesses what I call “realistic strength” - strength that ebbs and flows - and is a reminder that in order to be successful you don’t have to win every battle. You just have to keep up the fight.
May 8, 2008
In a lot of ways, this is the day that my life fell apart.
On May 7, 2008, I seemed to be a happy, well adjusted newlywed. What no one knew is that I was anything but happy. I couldn’t wear tank tops, or even short sleeved shirts, most days. I had to buy a shrug to wear over my dress for my brother-in-law’s wedding reception. There were days when I couldn’t leave my house. There were days when I feared for my life. There was even a day that I had a gun held to my temple. Our neighbors had called the police because of the “noise” coming from my house, but I always told them that everything was fine. I would have never dreamed of pressing charges against my husband. I had become the stereotypical battered wife.
I had also had become the wife that was constantly cheated on. I had a husband that frequently didn’t spend the night at my house and shared my bed even less often. This was a constant fight. He said we didn’t have sex often enough. He may have been right, but my reasons for not being intimate with him were directly linked to knowing I wasn’t the only person he was sleeping with, that and my horribly low self-esteem.
I constantly wondered how I had let myself fall so far from the beautiful bride that walked down the aisle and said “I do” just a few months earlier. I lived a life of shame. I had singlehandedly allowed another person to destroy me. I quit taking care of myself. I lost friendships. I hurt relationships between myself and family members. I allowed him to come between myself and every single thing that mattered to me. I hated him for that, but I hated myself even more.
I was far too embarrassed to ever admit the failures of my marriage to anyone, so I dealt with it. This was the life that was handed to me. This was the life that I chose. This was the life that I deserved.
I will never forget May 7, 2008. He didn’t come home that night. His cell phone was turned off. I had recently discovered that he was not working and we had recently gotten into a fight that almost sent me to the hospital. I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew I had to end this, if not, I was legitimately afraid of what would happen to me.
Early the next morning he walked into the house as if nothing was wrong, refusing to explain where he had been. I told him it was over. Surprisingly he didn’t put up a fight. He went to a friend’s house and I proceeded to move into the house that we had chosen together alone. I told my brother and one friend what was happening. I told no one else. Quietly my brother and his best friend showed up to help me move what they could. I hired movers to help with the rest.
My new life was set to begin. May 8, 2009 would be so different. Only it’s now come and gone and not much has changed. I’m still legally bound by him because he refuses to let our divorce become final. I’m still scared because of him. I still have a horribly low opinion of myself. I am still dealing with very real emotional scars because of the way I was treated.
My home has been broken into. I no longer feel safe there. I can no longer live there. I’m now living in my parents’ basement and am putting all of my belongings into storage until I figure out a semi-permanent living situation, let alone a permanent one. My life feels just as up in the air as it did one year ago. I keep thinking that things will get better, and don’t get me wrong, in some ways they have. It just seems that as soon as I start to put my life back together, someone or something is there to tear it back apart.
I’m hoping May 8, 2010 finds me in a much better place. But if not, I’ll still be here trucking along…trying to mend the pieces of my broken heart and my broken life.
You can read all about Jennifer’s new life on her blog http://www.jenn-journey.blogspot.com/.
