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I’d Like to Believe in Happily Ever After
Number 22 in Keeley’s February Writing Challenge
Call me an eternal optimist but I’d like to believe in a happily ever after even if it doesn’t happen to me. As a child of divorced parents who was taken from my mother and didn’t see her until I was in my twenties with a child of my own, the odds of my marriage lasting were not good. History repeating itself — my mother was pregnant with me when she married my father. I was pregnant with my eldest son when I married his father, but I was determined I wasn’t going to fail!
I could have left before my 21st birthday when I endured 3 weeks of silence including my birthday. He threw a card at me that had nothing written in it — I should have left then and there. But that was nothing compared to what I had to endure in the following years. But I persevered — I’m not a quitter — until the night I was bashed in front of my three children, my friend’s three children, his mother and his tiny little grandmother — all 5 feet of her — who was the one who tried to calm him down. His mother blamed me and said I needed to go to counselling. I had actually been going to counselling but my husband refused to come — I was the “crazy one”.
This was the third time I’d been beaten but the first time the kids had ever witnessed it. I made my decision at that…
