My 16th birthday was not like most as it also happened to be my wedding day! My mother had been trying to get me married off since I was 13, luckily and somewhat surprisingly for me most men were turned off when they found out my age.
Yet all good things must come to an end and when I was 15 my mother’s 5th husband found me a suitor who happened to be a follower of the same cult as us, my mother thought it best for legal purposes to wait until I was 16 to have the wedding, so I spent my 16th birthday getting ready to be wed, I didn’t have a wedding dress or a party, no rings were exchanged, no vows – nothing.
I spent the day cooking and cleaning so that when my husband arrived with his friends they could eat I served them while my mother packed my bags ready to send me off to live with a complete stranger. My mother didn’t meet him before we married and even refused to when asked she knew almost nothing about him but his first name and that he lived in London – that’s it!
My mother argues to this day that this was my ‘choice’ that the only thing she is guilty of was trusting her husband! This was not my choice, I am gay and she knew it. I was lead to believe that once I had sex with my husband that I’d like it and that would be the end of my attraction to the same sex, that the religious bond would make me closer to God and that this was all part of my religious life – it was my duty to get married and have lots of babies! I was young and I sadly believed this bull.
To explain to you how young I really was the only thing that excited me about moving in with him was that I would be able to go to Madam Tussauds – something I had wanted to do for years. I believed I was old enough and smart enough to get married, mainly because I had been told I was rather than because I actually thought that.
I spent the day rushed off my feet and barely had time to think so it really only hit me when I went upstairs to rest and found my mother packing a big pink suitcase with all my things when she asked me to help panic set in and I just knelt down and watched her as I was too scared to pack my things. After a couple of minutes I asked her to speak to him and to let me know what she thought of him but she said “no” as she was not comfortable with social situations!
To really understand what was expected of me in my marriage it should be noted that the gifts I received from my mother before the wedding were a set of pots and pans and lingerie! I remember her packing the lingerie saying things like “Oh he’s going to love this” and “Are you excited?” “Hopefully you’ll get pregnant quickly!”
After the meal my new husband dragged my suitcase to the door without saying a word until a friend of his, who was also our driver, tried to say ‘hello’ to me he aggressively said “Don’t talk to my wife” and my mother who saw this whispered to me “aww isn’t he protective” so I got in the car and we started travelling to London about an hour into the journey I got a text from my mum which said “I don’t know where you live now, send me your address when you know it!” up until them I had been completely numb and I hadn’t absorbed the situation until I received this text. It was this that made me feel truly alone and suddenly vulnerable, I realised that no one in this situation could help me and that there was nothing I could do about it – I was totally powerless.
He spent most of his time abusing me he would tell me I was ugly and fat and that I was lucky he was willing to marry me, he kept me locked in his studio flat while he went to work and when he came home he would have sex with me, I used to just lie there and try to keep my mind occupied by listing my top 10 favourite films, actors, actresses, songs, female singer, male singers – pretty much anything and everything so that I didn’t have to think about what was going on, I just disengaged.
It wasn’t long until I started getting sick, I was losing weight, becoming faint and pale and one day I managed to convince my mother to let me come back home for a hospital appointment – so as not arouse suspicion with the authorities and of course my husband came with me and the sex continued – much to my mother’s delight.
Then one night I awoke to find him on top of me I asked him to get off and he said “10 more minutes” I watched the clock and waited for 10 minutes then asked again, again the response was “10 more minutes” and again I watched the clock and waited – this carried on for nearly 2 hours. He had me pinned under his weight and even though I was crying it did nothing to stop him, in fact at one point he actually started licking the tears off my face. When he was done I kicked him, ran into the bathroom and locked the door I stayed in there for as long as I could waiting for him to fall asleep then when I felt the coast was clear I went downstairs and just sat in the living room for the rest of the night waiting for my mother to wake up so I could tell her what happened.
I truly believed she’d rise to my defence and protect me, I though she would save me – she did not instead she told me I was “mistaken” and later that day bought me some lube.
Shockingly I feel into a deep depression which culminated in an argument in which I yelled out “HE RAPED ME!” finally she believed me but told me off for not explaining it better at the time.I could go on and on about how she wouldn’t let me call the police and how I was forced to have an exorcism at one point but this is already too long and probably too upsetting. I know that there is no satisfactory conclusion to this ordeal it would be nice to tell you that it all worked out in the end but it didn’t. Sometimes you can’t fix something it just stays broken.
Just know this sometimes its necessary for me to be given the opportunity to express something like this, to get it off my chest and hope that you do gain something from it even if it is just “Holy Shit!”.
Survivng Life 