Marriage never seemed like a good idea when I was young. From what I could tell, most people who were married were miserable. Dating made sense. It was hard to imagine how people went from a weird level of obsession with one another to barely tolerating the same person. There was only one reason that made sense of why people get married: protection. 

Where I grew up, women were not idolized for being strong and independent as they are today. Strong women were looked down on. Lesbians were shunned unless performing for male entertainment. Even as a girl, I knew that the only way I’d survive in that place was to attach myself to a strong man.

“You girls are so fat. You’ll never meet a man.” My best friend’s mom used to tell us when we were twelve. “At least she is white, what chance do you have?” She’d add as one last jab at her daughter’s Mexican heritage. My friend’s mom was one of the only other white people in our community, but my friend had taken on her father’s Hispanic features making her blend in with the rest of the town. 

The thought of marriage horrified me. Even so, a lot of the kids I knew were engaged or married before their senior year of high school so it was on my mind from a young age. Could it be an escape from my father’s house? Could a strong young man be my heroic knight that saved me from the monster in my home? No. It wasn’t hard to see that it would end miserably ever after. Still, it was a tempting thought, but who could take on my father and actually keep him away?

“See that kid there?” my friend pointed to a boy across the field. Even though summer camp was in our very small town, kids would come from even smaller towns to attend and I guessed this boy must be one of them. “I think he likes you.” 

I rolled my eyes. Too many times I’d been dragged into the camp gossip and felt like a fool. Besides, other than being white, I didn’t have much going for me. As the week went on, it seemed my friend was on to something. 

Turns out, the boy had a backstory. He was part of a pretty powerful Mexican gang in his town and was noted as someone up-and-coming. At just twelve, he had taken out one of the more dominant leaders of a rival gangs that happened to be his father and that was only his initiation. Within a few years, he was expected to have money, power, and, most importantly, could offer protection. 

I don’t know for sure that the stories about him were true, but when I looked into the boy’s eyes, they were dead and cold. Whatever he had locked inside, it wasn’t good. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. People who were from the same town reacted when he came near as if he was to be feared and he was almost never alone. It was clear by the way he carried himself that he was used to getting what he wanted and, for that week at least, what he wanted was me.

I let my mind entertain the idea for a while. If he could protect himself from his father, could he protect me from mine? I’d never really let myself think of marriage as a possibility since, as was often pointed out, I was too fat and ugly anyway, but would I really be happy getting the things I often saw women marry for? 

I knew how these things usually go. Best case, he would be able to give me a nice house, a few kids, and immediate safety. Sure, he would get bored and have affairs. I may get bruised and battered on occasion, but I’d watched my mom put up with that for so long I imagined it wouldn’t be that bad. Would that life ever really make me happy?

It may seem silly considering marriage when someone was rumored to have a crush on me, but if entertaining the crush didn’t end in marriage, what was there? Heartbreak? I couldn’t be happy with either. I avoided the boy as well as I could for the rest of the week. Tempting as it was to imagine getting away from my dad for good, it wouldn’t be at the cost of enslaving myself to someone else. 

It was a long time and a different town before I could see anything other than slavery in marriage, but I am eternally happy that I did. If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence and seeking help, please visit the Domestic Violence National Hotline.

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