Too Young To Marry
When I was about to turn fourteen years old, at a very difficult age, my parents decided to move our family from Venezuela to United States. I understand why they did it even though I was never given a choice in the matter. I just wish they had done it sooner.
Fourteen years earlier they had abandoned all their money and belongings, a house they had just finished building, and all that was familiar, to escape the communist regime in Cuba. They packed the small bag which was all you were allowed to take with you, said their goodbyes, grabbed their one year old son, and got on a plane that would take them to freedom and a new life. I was born in Venezuela five months later.
Ever since I can remember, I was told that we were leaving to Miami, Florida…someday. However, this was a secret. My dad was and is a general surgeon and I was not to reveal it because it may or would adversely affect his medical practice. I guess they felt that the patients would choose elsewhere if they knew he was leaving the country. My siblings and I were not to say a word.
It was a heavy burden for a child to carry. The adverse effect was that I treated everything and everyone as passing ships. You see…I knew that I could be whisked away at any moment; and since I wasn’t told details or plans, I tried not to attach emotionally to anything or to anyone I would miss if I suddenly had to leave. It was done unconsciously but I lived in a transitional state of mind for basically all my formative years.
I recall at least twice that we sold everything because “we were leaving”, only to then change their minds. As time went on and on I began to relax my guard… I started to believe that maybe we wouldn’t go after all. So I began to feel more like part of the group, made friends, and even flirted with a sort of boyfriend. I was popular, involved, and life was good.
Well, I shouldn’t have relaxed. That’s when we finally did move. The truth is that my parents didn’t want me or my siblings to make a life in Venezuela. They lived in fear of the political climate there and always felt that one day it could go sour… just like it had happened in Cuba. I would hear my father say things like, “I lost everything once… and it will never happen to me again”. In fact, it proved to be prophetic. It breaks my heart to see what has been happening to my beautiful Venezuela.
The point is that I was forced at a very trying age to completely change my life. New language, new culture, new everything. Everyone and everything was foreign and it felt a bit surreal to me. I found the boys very immature and uninteresting. The girls were also different in many ways. I felt I was different, I spoke with a strong accent, and never really fit in. I didn’t really belong to any group and I had no shared past history with them. It was exciting in many ways because change always is; but at the same time I was so very lost. The funny thing is that as the “chameleon” that I had learned to be, I made lots of friends, I adjusted to my new environment, life and culture, and became what I had to become to fit in. Come to think about it…I had a fifteenth birthday party with approximately 500 guests a little over one year after arriving in Miami. Amazing and crazy.
However, I know that somewhere in that process, I lost myself. It took me a very long time to find “me”again. It took decades. Even my exhusband said to me when we separated after 32 years of marriage, “who are you?, I don’t recognize you”. I remember saying “I’ve always been here. I just didn’t know it”.
I met who would be my husband at seventeen. He was twenty one. I was a junior in high school and he was a junior in college. It was a big difference in age at that time.. but I liked that he offered a little more maturity. Barely so, but better than the guys in high school. After giving it a lot of thought, I believe that he represented an oasis for me. It’s as if I was yet to find my sea-legs on this new ship called United States and he offered me kind of a lifeboat. A way of jumping off the ship…to get out of the constant trying to fit in a world where I felt a bit like a fish out of water. He was my first and only boyfriend. We were married two and a half years later. I was 19 years old.
That is to say that less than six years after the biggest change and trauma of my life I found myself marrying my first and only boyfriend. Yes I definitely married too young. I hadn’t assimilated completely to my new life. Oh, I put on a good façade. I seemed very secure about what I was doing; but deep inside I was panicking. I knew…even before I married, that there was something off. I knew I wasn’t ready emotionally and most probably sexually. I knew that it was all for the wrong reasons.
It wasn’t so much that I married at such a young age as that I married when I was still lost.
