Throwback Thursday: And Then He Kissed Me

It was May, 1969. I was 18 and he was 17 1/2.  We had just learned I was pregnant. Oh, dear yes I had tried everything in hopes it wasn't true.  Long hot baths to relax my body.  Crying.  None of the many hacks worked.  Simply yes; I was pregnant. 

I moved home so I could be closer to my mother while we fought. Yes, I was a terrible daughter. Yes, I was always trouble for her. Yes, I really did ruin everything all the time. Yes. That was me.

We can laugh about it now.

When we told his parents that I was pregnant, his father asked him--in front of me in the room--if he was sure it was his baby. Yes, I really was a slut. Yes, I wasn't being responsible. Yes. That was me.

We can laugh about it now.

The families decided we would be married. We were excited about it, even though it was too soon in our lives. We had thought a year later was a better time. But then again, I was pregnant. 

The date was June 14, 1969. It was a fast trip to Las Vegas and a short ceremony at the Little Chapel of the Chimes. We all stayed the night at Circus Circus, a newly opened casino on the strip. After the ceremony, the parents went out to gamble while we, who were too young, hung out on the outskirts and watched.

We can laugh about it now.

He and I had a room for ourselves! It had a king bed! Unfortunately when we climbed in, we found it to be two twin beds pushed together! I fell between the mattresses. 

We can laugh about it now.

We settled into our little duplex and became husband and wife. We were cute. We tried to be good, to do it right. We were playing house while we waited for the big event.  He got a job through my father's connections, learned how to weld. He was apparently too young to understand the responsibility of feeding a family and disappointed my father's expectations. He found another job.  He tried to be a husband.

But there were times when I frustrated him or made him angry and he would hit me. Yeah, hit me. Just reach out a punch me. Shocked, I just let him do that to me. I had never seen that before in any couple, let alone my own mother and father. I remember sitting in the nursery, holding my baby's Winnie the Pooh and crying, scared to come out even though he was no longer home.

I will never laugh about that.

After our son was born, we moved to Southern Oregon. He had always wanted to live in Oregon where a good friend had moved, so there we went. Our son was four months old. We lived in an apartment that used to be a motel. We had the head office. I was very lonely without friends and my husband not home often. We moved into a smaller place that we could afford; moved out the day before the house next door blew up from a gas leak that blew up our apartment.

We can laugh about that now.

We lived in Southern Oregon for three years. He went through ten jobs, mostly because he refused to work in the timber industry. The last job he held was trying to have a auto repair shop of his own. We lived on very little as his shop needed tools. I tried to make things work out for us. I learned how to cook inexpensive meals, how to bake bread, make granola, and can fruits and vegetables. I registered us for Food Stamps. He would come home tired and it was much easier for me to irritate him. The last time he hit me was when I went into labor with our second son. I was too loud and kept waking him up. After our younger son was born, he pounded the wall beside me instead of hitting me. He made sure I knew it could have been me. We had holes in the walls in every room.

I will never laugh about that.

He met my cousin in Portland and they hit it off. We moved north and he got a job at a VW dealership. We found a little house to rent and settled in. Our sons were one and three. Across the street from our house was a little store. I mentioned to the owners that we couldn't get our heat going yet and they loaned us a heater. The owners and the neighbors were good people.  I settled in with a bit of family around me. He mostly stopped hitting the walls and changed his attacks to verbal abuse. I was fat. I was ugly. I was stupid. I was useless. I was no better than the dirty doormat on the porch.  Yes. That was me.

He started heading to the tavern most every night. And then he often started staying away all night, coming home to clean up and change his clothes. I'd go into the bathroom after he'd leave and cry into a towel--didn't want to wake up my sons--and truly bang my head against the wall.

I finally asked him what he wanted--to be married or to leave. He said he wanted to stay married. I asked him why. I thought it was a reasonable question. He said, "It should be good enough for you that I wanted to stay." And then that night he didn't come home. When he did come home the next day, his stuff was packed and ready for him to hit the road.

I still laugh about that. 

When I was in college, I studied the social issue of abuse. I didn't remember that he used to hit me, abuse me. Somethings you just don't want to remember. During a Sociology class, the professor started a discussion about deviant behavior and a fellow male student said that women just asked to be abused. I didn't know where it came from, but I stood up and stated, "No woman ever asks to be hit in the face, the stomach, the back. No woman ever wants to have a man beat her up. No woman asks for abuse. No woman. Ever." and sat back down. The class looked at me shocked. And then the professor turned to the young male and replied, "But it seems like it sometimes, doesn't it?"

I will never laugh about that.

It was a year or more later that I remembered all the abuse during therapy I had started in my Junior year in college.  I was trying to understand why my current partner left me. When the therapist asked me about my years in Southern Oregon, I refused to talk about it. I always had a heavy house sitting on my chest. Something broke through one evening and I walked into her office, announcing I wanted to talk about Southern Oregon. That's when my real healing began.

Fortunately for me, I did get to college and learn some things about life and love and me. I had always been a free spirit in my heart...after my divorce I remembered that. I have had great friends and lovers, partners that have supported me, accepted me, built me back up. I have accepted things people have said about me and rejected things other said about me.  That is, rejected them unless I'm in great stress; those awful things people have said can jump right back. But that's what many people experience. I can accept that.

And since 1975, I have been living my life out-loud, skirt flying, my head flung back, all the while I laughing with the world. 

 

And so it goes
peace~~~