Every Wrong Reason(55)
“Don’t look at me like that,” she growled. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you or wanted to keep it a secret, it’s just that… well, it’s embarrassing! I try not to ever think about it, let alone actually talk about it. Besides, it was a long time ago and has nothing to do with who I am today.”
“It has something to do with who you are today,” I argued.
Her expression crumpled and I realized all of her bravado had been exactly that… just a show of bravery to hide her past wounds… her past agony.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “It does. But I’m serious when I say it was a long time ago. I’m a different person today. I moved on with my life. Really, I built a new life for myself. I just, I just wanted to let you know that I really do understand what you’re going through. And I also know that it gets better… that it won’t always hurt like this.”
“What happened? Tell me, please?”
She rolled her eyes at my soft tone but wiggled in a way that let me know she was gearing herself up for a conversation she didn’t want to have, but would have for me. “You know I have a… precarious relationship with my parents?” She lifted her eyebrows waiting for my acknowledgment. I nodded once and she continued, “They’ve always been overbearing, completely impossible. Ever since I can remember, they’ve always wanted to… control me. It’s always been difficult to live with their expectations, but especially during high school, and even more so when it came to my future and how I would live it out. They had a certain set of demands they wanted me to meet and I just wanted to, I don’t know, be a kid… be free. I just wanted to live out from under their thumb.”
She paused for a moment, seeming lost in the past. I reached out and squeezed her hand. It was a gentle move of sympathy on my part, but she jerked at the contact, jerked awake from whatever memories had momentarily imprisoned her.
“Naturally,” she continued, “I jumped at the first opportunity to get away from them. That opportunity came in the form of Marcus Henry, my high school sweetheart. We were so in love. Seriously, Kate, you wouldn’t have even recognized me. I was out of control. The world revolved around Marcus. The sun rose and set with him. And when he wanted to get married straight out of high school I didn’t even think twice. I saw an opportunity to get away from my parents and bonus, I would be married to the man of my dreams.”
“You got married at eighteen? I thought I married young! Holy shit, Kara!”
She dropped her face into her hand, “I know,” she groaned. “It’s embarrassing. I have no idea what I was thinking. And looking back now I realize how stupid I was. I wasn’t in love, I was infatuated. And there just wasn’t enough substance between us for anything to last.”
“What happened?”
“Well, we got married without my parent’s knowledge. We just snuck off to the courthouse and called it good. I didn’t even change my name. I didn’t know I had to! I thought it would be like an automatic thing.”
I smiled at the eighteen-year-old version of my friend.
“Anyway, my parents were furious, as you can imagine. No, they were beyond furious. I have never in my life seen them so outraged. They cut me off completely, and for the first time in my life, I was introduced to the real world. Marcus was equally furious. Apparently his young and in love plan included living off my parents’ wealth. His parents were a little more forgiving, and let us move into their basement, but they couldn’t help us beyond that. All of our plans for college were abandoned as we went to work full-time at crap paying jobs and tried to navigate our lives as newlyweds. My parents are crazy, don’t get me wrong. But I had a promising future, even if it wasn’t the one I would have chosen. I was suddenly faced with a life I didn’t want and a boy I didn’t love… I wasn’t even sure I liked him anymore.
“It took exactly eighteen months for us to decide that neither of us was willing to fight for happiness in a miserable marriage that was headed nowhere. And then… then he started cheating on me. He didn’t even try to hide it. I think he wanted me to know or find out. I think he wanted out but didn’t want to be the one responsible for ending it. Not that he didn’t play his part. But he was like that. He never took responsibility for his mistakes. He couldn’t keep a job for the same reason. I put up with the cheating longer than I should have. I don’t know why. I knew my life had sunk about as low as it could go, but I was afraid of what else could happen if I left him. At least with Marcus I had a roof over my head.”
My heart broke for my friend. I wanted to give her a hug, but I could sense that she did not want to be touched right now. Her back was stiff and her shoulders painfully held back. She was just barely holding herself together. If I did anything to spook her, she would lose it. “What did you do?” I asked carefully.
“The one thing I swore I would never do.” She gave me a sad, defeated smile. “I went back to my parents. I begged them for their forgiveness and for their help.”
“They gave it to you,” I concluded. She spoke to them now and it seemed very much against her will.
“They did,” she confirmed. “They helped me with the divorce, or I should say, annulment. They let me move back in with them. In fact, after I went to them I never saw Marcus again, except for the last time in court. They took care of removing my things from his house and all of the documents that needed to be signed or whatever. They saved me. And then they paid my way through school. They helped me move on with my life as if I never left them.”