Ink and Vein

Content note for mention of sexual assault

In 2004, when I was 20, I spent a month in Wales for a summer study program. Not long after I got back, my boyfriend of a few months proposed. We met in February, he was deployed in May, I left for Wales in June, and returned in July.

We got married on November 12, 20 years ago today, and shortly after that, moved to Oklahoma.

Originally, I was just going to move with him, and finish college in Connecticut. When we first discussed it in March or April, that’s where his orders were taking him next: Groton. We weren’t talking marriage, and marriage wasn’t on my mind. It wasn’t really something I had ever wanted.

People were concerned about me moving across country with a boyfriend I hardly knew. People called me stupid and naive, and I even lost a couple friends because I was “living in sin.”

When I got back from Wales, something had happened on his deployment and he could no longer go to Groton. His new orders were for Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, several months after we were originally supposed to move.

He cried when I told him I would still go with him, holding me tightly as if he expected me to disappear. I figured I could start college in the spring semester instead of the fall. There would be universities in Oklahoma.

One night while we sat on the couch watching TV, he slipped a ring case out from behind a throw pillow, and showed me three diamonds set in platinum. He didn’t say anything, just put the ring— a little too big— on my finger and kissed me.

I felt a tight knot in my stomach, ropes of anxiety and tentative pleasure at being chosen twisting around each other.

Now that I was getting married, people stopped calling me stupid and naive. Married to someone I hardly knew was okay, was smart, somehow.

The wedding was small; his family wasn’t there. I wore a red dress I’d had for a few years, and we purchased a new suit and a wedding band for him. My rings, I found out later, were purchased for the girlfriend before me.

I wore black lace lingerie on our wedding night. When I asked if he liked it, he laughed. A soft, low sound in his throat.

It reminded me of the way he laughed on our first date, when, in his apartment, I asked to go back to my car when I saw how late it was, of the way he laughed when I didn’t want to go to the bedroom, when I said I wasn’t ready, when I said “no” to unhearing ears.

It was the same laugh he used when he told his aunt and cousin that he couldn’t get rid of me, that he took me out for dinner and I just kept hanging around. The same laugh when he pretended to shove me on the stairs and caught me before I could fall. The same laugh every time he did something I asked him not to.

It was the laugh that told me I didn’t have a choice, so I may as well just do what he wanted.

My body, his choice. My life, his choice.

20 years ago I married a man who disregarded my needs, my feelings, my desires, my choice, in favor of his own. 4 1/2 years later, we signed divorce papers without much external fuss, thanks to no fault divorce laws and the fact that we didn’t have children.

I wouldn’t have remembered my wedding anniversary today, if I hadn’t been reviewing the timeline for my memoir.

I don’t think of him that often, but he still surfaces when I try to love, when I try to trust, when I find old wounds that open as if fresh.

It’s my body, my choice, and it always was, despite what he made me believe.