Marriage

No one really knows what it means to be married other than what you see as an example that you grew up with. He grew up with a single mother and I grew up with parents that stayed together. I had preconceived notions as to what marriage looked like and how it was supposed to work and I couldn't really tell you if he did because I do not think that we were in a mental capacity to understand all that a marriage really was. I can look at that part of our decision to wed in that mindset objectively.

Things were pretty much broken from the beginning because we had just gotten married for "benefits" and it brought out the worst in both of us.

I remember the resentment.

We had gotten married and he moved up to NY to live with me a few months after. He was trying to get a transfer for a job so that he didn't have to look for work. He ended up getting "fired" (lie #1 of many) and he moved up to NY and wasn't able to get unemployment. The lie was big.

He called me and told me that he had gotten in a forklift he was not allowed to drive and hit the side of the truck and caused so much damage that he got fired. He said that he was not able to get the unemployment because of that. The truth that came out years later? He had gotten caught stealing items from his job and because of his stealing he got fired.

The strain of being married and not making enough money and taking on his bills took a lot out of me. At that point you could say that I was not comfortable taking care of a man. I paid the bills, bought the groceries, and had our home. I had pretty much done it all and if I didn't pressure him to find work or ask for status updates on where money was going to come from he was content sitting at home looking at pornography movies or playing video games. There were many times when I would have to ask my father to get me out of a pit and it pretty much happened about once a month. I had to eat crap and ask for money and he didn't do anything. I started to feel the weight of the responsibility of being married and while I was growing up seeing my father work and put food on the table while my mother raised my sister and I. This example and life model was what I was doing but the opposite. The stress of all of that gave into many fights. None of them totally bad but we yelled pretty bad at each other.

A few month later I had found out that I was pregnant with my son and eventually he got a job at a fast food restaurant. He was able to pay his portion of the bills so I stayed pretty content because the phone calls to my father asking for money had stopped. I remember sitting in my office and talking to everyone and they talked to me about day care and the cost of what it would be to put my future son at the time in daycare. They told me that it was going to cost $500. At the time, that was 1/2 of my monthly pay! I could not afford to have my son in day care and work so I took the option to get out of the service to take care of my kid. I ended up moving back home to my parents house when I was 6 months pregnant. Making that decision was the hardest decision I had to make and one that would probably mold me for a long time coming.

You see, I had always wanted to be in the service. I was in 8th grade and had gotten a letter from the Army telling me that I had to wait until I was in 11th grade to sign up for the delayed entry program and that is exactly what I did. I gave up on my dream because I needed to do what was right for my son but also because I knew somehow that staying in and living my dream was not going to be supported by my spouse.