Letters to My Girl

Marriages: #1

Here's where the last letter picks up from where I left off  in order to talk about the second college. I  also will briefly talk about the people I dated before,  after and during my marriages. The timeline's slightly complicated without using names, but I will attempt to be as clear as possible.

I met a couple of guys online who lived in a commune, though at the time, I didn't know they knew each other. One of them became my first online boyfriend,  and by Spring Break, we were engaged to be married. I was going to meet him in person during Break,  and we planned to marry while I was there.  Your grandmother knew someone in the Criminal Studies department, and (illegally, back in those days,) looked up his rap sheet before I went. She didn't know we planned to marry. He'd apparently been in prison for check forgery. How she even knew we'd been dating was beyond me, though now I'm convinced she was tracking my online activities somehow. She tried to convince me not to go, but as she had abused and manipulated me for the past 7 years at that point, she was the last person on the planet I was going to listen to,  let alone believe.

I flew to Florida,  and he and others he lived with picked me up to drive me back to their commune. We started kissing feverishly in the van, and no one said a word about it, just talked amongst themselves. They were very nice people,  and I enjoyed my time there. The leader's wife had sewn a simple dress for me to wear to the Spring Coronation in Trimaris, an SCA event. She showed me how it should be worn, and while I was at the event,  I bought a hooded cape and a pair of daggers that had dragons on the hilts (none of which I still have, sadly.) I also danced medieval court dances, played my flute for the newly crowned king, and learned to belly dance around a bonfire in the Mongolian horde's camp.

If you don't want a description of my wedding night,  skip the next paragraph. I told you, I don't sugarcoat.

I was married in front of a justice of the peace, and spent the remainder of the week in a hotel with my new husband. Since none of my parents had explained exactly what would happen on my wedding night (and my adopted father never penetrated me when abusing me,) he had to stop and explain the mechanics, since I was still technically a virgin. It hurt at first,  because he wasn't much for foreplay,  but when I climaxed, my body tingled from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. No one could have prepared me for that.

The plan was for me to finish college,  then move to Florida to live with my husband. When I returned from Florida,  my first brother's paternal grandfather (now deceased) picked me up from the airport, since my mother wouldn't. When I got to my dorm, my second and third sisters were there with our father. He was taking them to live with him (they'd taken a page from my book and asked,) and he'd stopped by my dorm before leaving. He asked how my trip went,  and I shyly handed him my wedding certificate in silent response. He ground his teeth in anger, but politely told me through clenching them to wait in the common room while he called my mother. You can imagine how that conversation went. I try not to.

I continued attending classes, with a surprise belated bridal shower from my co-workers, and normal coursework. I even made a friend from Japan, who studied in the library every night, and lived in the quiet dorm as well. At Christmas, before he went home to visit family, he asked if I would stand in a photo with him, which I gladly agreed to do. He also asked me what I would like him to bring as a gift from Japan. I had an airline branded happi that Papaw gave me which I loved,  so I said a kite or a happi would be lovely. I chose a watercolor I painted in high school of wolves in a snowy forest to give him, and he brought me a happi bearing the logo and colors of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. I loved that, wore it all the time,  wish I still had it. He loved the painting,  and hung it in his otherwise undecorated room.

At summer break,  I had planned to stay with my mother, since we weren't allowed to stay in the dorms. But she, furious that I wouldn't annul my marriage,  tried to drag me out of the dorm, saying I should just quit college and go live with my husband,  because she was no longer going to allow me to attend tuition-free on her work benefits. She yelled at me so loudly that the resident advisor stepped in, and I explained what was happening. She firmly told my mother that she was not allowed to yell at me in the quiet dorm,  nor could she force me to leave. Other than the landlord from the isolated farm house, she was the only person who ever spoke against my mother's abuse face to face,  but I know it was only because I lived in the quiet dorm and my mother was shouting.