"When I Became An Adult"
October 28, 2001, 11:54 p.m.

Searching Collaboration project for October, 2001

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Chronological age aside, at what point did you become an adult? Perhaps you became an adult before you reached 18. Perhaps it was much later. What formative event caused you to grow up?Relate this experience with as much detail as possible.

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When I was 20 years old, I was married and I considered myself to be an adult. I took ownership in my job, I became responsible for the bills, I made sure our house was home. I felt like I was an adult.

In looking at it my life back then - from this distance, I realize that I was playacting. I was playing house. I was playing work. I was playing the part of the good wife.

My husband too was playing. He was charming but emotionally abusive. I did not know or care that he was - I just thought he was hard to live with and that didn't understand what it meant to be married. It was up to me to accept him for who he was and love him unconditionally.

On the meantime, he thought he was a mafia king with a small kingdom. A big shot among his friends. A godfather of sorts. Not a man who answered to anyone. He had a secret artillery under our bed - an array of pistols and automatice rifles. He liked to bully people. He liked to start fist-fights with men who would look at him or me.

I learned to be afraid of him. I allowed him to limit my actions by only allowing me to step outdoors only when I went to work and back. If I was detained or had to work even 10 minutes late. I was in trouble.

I was not allowed to go the grocery store alone. We had to go together - which was not often. I could not drive by myself. I could not visit my friends or my family alone.

Over the years I let him steal my personal freedom and self-esteem because I loved him and I had made my bed by marrying him, now I had to sleep in it. This was the life I had chosen.

It did not matter about the electronics he brought home that had no boxes. He always said he "found" them. He had a knack for finding perfectly good electronics that other people had thrown out.

It did not matter about the women who called all hours of the night or the photos of the women in the trunk of our car.

It did not matter that he never brought his paycheck home from "work". It was okay that I paid all of the bills from my paycheck.

It did not matter because I was being taken care of. I loved him and I knew that plenty of folks had marriage problems.

It seemed I always had to defend him to other people. They didn't understand him. They didn't know him like I did. They didn't realize how loving he was.

Yet, there were times I did try to run away but he caught me and threatened to hurt my Mom, my Grandmother and my Aunt. He knew where they lived.

I'd be sorry if I ever left him. Sorrier than I'd ever know.

I believed him - for awhile.

Then, after 6 years of marriage, he came after me with a broken beer bottle to teach me a lesson about driving the car and I ran from him and hid. I didn't know what to do. I had nothing but my purse and ten dollars. I was afraid to call my Mom and tell her. I didn't want to go to her because I didn't want to cause him to go there and make a scene or bully her or become violent.

I was afraid of what he would do but I was more afraid to go back. I was sick and tired of living the way I had been living. I was tired of always being afraid of his next outburst.

So I made the decision to stay hidden. To leave him for good.

I took a chance. I decided to call him on the phone. I did not want him to hear my voice crack. I steeled myself and took a big leap and told him he would never see me again. I threatened him and told him to leave me and my family alone or I would call the police, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (he was from another country and came here illegally - which I found out after I married him) and most of all, I would call his mother (whom he adored more than anything) and tell her what kind of man she raised.

When I hung up the phone. I cried. I cried in anger at myself and at him. I cried because my marriage was over and possibility of what it could have become was gone - if I had only tried harder to make it work. I cried because I felt so stupid for putting up with him for so long. I cried because I had never felt such strength and such fear all at the same time. I cried because I knew I could not turn back. I cried because I did not know what was to become of me.

The day I really became an adult was the day I took a stand and stood up for myself in the face of what seemed to me then to be a very dangerous situation.

It could have gone another way.

It could have been worse.

But it wasn't.

And I'm older now and that was a long time ago. Now I see the relationship as a blessing in my life because even though it was hard, it allowed me to grow as an individual.

It's nice to have the cushion of time to be able to remember without the freshness of pain or drama or angst while knowing full well that I would not be who I am today, had I not taken the path I took back then. I am grateful for it.