Daily Prompt: Never Again

Today’s Daily Prompt:

Have you ever gone to a new place or tried a new experience and thought to yourself, “I’m never doing that again!”  Tell us about it.  Photographers, artists, poets: show us NEVER.

The very second I read today’s prompt, I knew immediately what I did and said I would never do again – get married.

I know that sounds harsh, but let me explain…

As many of you know, I started dating my first husband when I was only fifteen.  (That’s how we do things here in the south, I guess.)  I was “head-over-heels” for him.  At least I thought I was.  As I look back on it, I wasn’t really in love with him – I was in love with the idea of love.

Obviously, as a young girl, I wanted nothing more than to be swept off my feet by my very own Prince Charming.  Every boy I ever had a crush on had a notebook page devoted solely to doodles of my first name and his last name.  Pitiful, right?  Well, that’s what girls do.

Anyway, back to my first husband – Shortly after we started dating, he became abusive.  You can read all the gory details of his abuse and the vicious cycle I found myself in here.  In addition to beating the crap out of me, though, he also did some other pretty psycho things.  He’s thrown a kitten across the room and into the wall; he’s thrown all my clothes into a bathtub full of bleach; and he’s cancelled my car insurance and then called the police on me.

He really was bi-polar, and he really did need help.  Regardless of what his issues were, however, the bottom line was that he made my marriage complete and utter hell.  I had two very young babies at the time, and he knew I had no money and nowhere to go.  I was trapped in a real life living hell.  And he knew it and fed off of it.

Marriage was terrible, and I wished I had never done it.

When it finally came time for a divorce, I was happy.  I thought that meant that my hell would be over.  I was wrong again.  He fought me for three years, tooth and nail, on everything.  He and his attorney refused to budge on anything, and they did all they could to drag it out for as long as possible.

I swore that I would never ever get married again.  It was awful, and I wanted no part of it.

It was smack-dab in the midst of my daily vows to never again get married that I became pretty close friends with Eugene.  He and I started hanging out and talking a lot about our lives and kids.

That’s when it happened: I fell in love with him.  Damn – this wasn’t supposed to be happening.  I loved being around him, and I hated when we weren’t together.  I was continually amazed at the fact that he wasn’t the same dickhead as my first husband.  I really had no idea that men weren’t all the same.  But he wasn’t.  He was sweet and caring and loving.  He was a good dad, and he also showed interest in my kids, which was a major issue for me.

I ended up really falling “head-over-heels” in love with him, a feeling that was so foreign to me that I wasn’t sure what was going on.  I had never felt this way about anyone, and I certainly never felt it about my first husband.  Eugene wasn’t mean to me, and he wasn’t abusive.  Was it possible that someone could actually love me for the broken woman I was?

It was possible.  And he did.  We ended up moving in together and talking about – you’ll never guess – MARRIAGE!

Wait, what?!  I never wanted to go through that again, but I also couldn’t stand the thought of not spending forever with him.  What was I supposed to do?

I’ll tell you what I did – I did exactly what I swore I would never do again.  I married the man of my dreams.  And I haven’t, to this day, regretted the decision to go back on my promise to myself to never travel back down that road.  Of course, I have no guarantees that this marriage will end up any different than my first one, but the difference is that this time, I want to try it, and I want it to work.

You have no idea of all the blessings God has in store for you, even when you’re broken and angry.  Never say never, friends.    

Photo by K&D Pro Photography