Marriage

It's a thing I do.  It's kind of hard to explain.  I defy odds.  I do my own thing.  To people who spend their lives obeying the rules and doing what they are told I seem quite wild and unpredictable.  If I make up my mind to do something the whole world could tell me I am wrong, and I will do it anyways.  At nineteen I didn't know how to stick up for myself in any way other than being hyper-masculinized.  I didn't even know it was intuition I was using.  My spiritual studies hadn't really begun yet.  I could hear that call within my mind and I would honor it regardless of consequence.  It’s part of being an idealist maybe, never caring about practical consequences.  I loved her and that was all that mattered.  What society thought about it mattered not.

Rachel wanted to marry me.  Not joking.  It wasn't really my idea at all.  Naturally everyone was telling me not to do this.  By this time though it was clear to me that no one even knew me.  I never let them. All they knew were my facades.  They knew the show I put on.  They knew what I was raised to be, what prison made me, what this society cast me as.  Rachel though, knew who I really was more than any human on the planet.  Is that not a wife?  What does it matter if there was a ring or not?  I don't know why she needed me, but I knew I needed her.

She didn't want to wait till I was out.  She wanted to get married while I was in there.  I couldn't afford to disappoint her.  I couldn't afford to lose her.  I couldn’t afford to question it all either.  I considered it for some time before saying yes.  Sometimes in life one must do what they must do.  Being married caused a huge internal conflict in me.  I so badly didn't want to be like JoAnn, married five times before I made it out of high school that I swore to never divorce.  My desire to not be like JoAnn made marriage a really big deal to me.  That was my bad.  My being married to her had so much more to do with life than whether or not it lasted our whole lives.  I do not see that fact as being a reason to say our marriage was a failure. 

The truth is I married her because I loved her.  I got married because I needed out of there.  Not just prison, but I needed out of my life.  I needed a new life.  This was something Rachel and I shared.  Her life had not been so much better than mine.  Not only were our childhoods quite similar, but we were born very close together in the year.  I was born on the 1st of Sept. and she on the 4th.  There was a great deal we shared in common as Virgo's.  We have been separated for over ten years now as I write this, almost as long as we were together, and I still miss her as a friend.  Whether she meant to or not; she saved my life.  How could I not feel some connection with such a person? 

She bought the rings.  They were exactly what I wanted.  Plain gold bands.  As an idealist the rings just didn't have anything to do with it.  Neither did the preacher man.  JoAnn picked him out.  Naturally to her such things mattered.  Leave it to the woman who can't keep a husband to think the preacher is important.  It's kind of sad how long it took me to get that bitch out of my life.  I’m practically defined by my ability to stick up for myself and that was still quite difficult to do.  The fact that I hated her did not remove my desire for a mother.

Rachel wore simple white.  Not a real wedding dress, but something modest.  They escorted her to the church during lunch with the preacher man.  He was from whatever church JoAnn was using to feel good about her shit life at the time.  The ceremony was over in less than ten minutes and they escorted them all right back out.  That had to of been a trip for Rachel.  During my bit in Booneville not many civilian women were ever in there.  How could it not have been a trip?  She had to walk through the upper quad, with the big brick buildings everywhere, inmates in grey everywhere going to and from chow, cackling and snickering about the girl in white.  I'm not sure how she could not have felt some fear.  Only having one guard around is never really reassuring. 

We barely got to hug and kiss.  Everyone was criticizing me for this.  People would say, “You got married in prison?”  I didn't care.  Did they know Rachel was all I had?  Did they know that I had no family?  Did they know sex had nothing to do with it?  Even within the realm of love I was on one hand an idiot, and on the other a genius.  I was an idiot for thinking I would never get a divorce.  I was a genius for marrying her despite all the criticism.  I could see people looking at me like I was a fool, I could feel it, but that was the difference between them and I; I could see it in myself, but they couldn’t see it in themselves.  Not a single one of those people criticizing me were happily married themselves.  Even at nineteen I knew I had to pay prices.  Marriage isn't about finding someone and then living happily ever after.  That's that fairy tale shit they sell on TV.  Marriage is about bonding with someone.

I could see it even if I couldn’t say it clearly.  According to societies standards there were a million very obvious reasons we should not have gotten married.  According to life we had every reason to marry.  Despite those failings society was pointing out so adamantly we had a bond that in my experience was quite rare among humans.  I’ve never had one like it since.  It nearly killed me too, when I lost it years later.  I've read the stats regarding men who lose their wives and it is sketchy.  Like I said, it's a thing I do; defy odds.  The divorce was just as odd defying as the marriage. 

I won't lie.  My memory regarding Rachel is sketchy.  I've spent a great deal of effort over the last decade getting her out of my memory.  For over a decade she was the center of my life, then one day she wasn’t.  It was devastating.  In order to move on I had to practically act like it never happened.  It's one thing to mourn someone who dies, but another all together when the one you mourn is still walking the earth. 

I don't even remember what housing unit I was in.  I called her one day during the afternoon.  She was crying.  I was feeling sick to my stomach because I kind of knew what was coming.  She informed me that she couldn't do it anymore.  She was seeing her neighbor.  There was nothing I could do.  I was in there.  She was not.  Had I not put in so much work to pull myself out of the hole that conversation would have ended my life.  I could feel the spiral out of control trying to suck me in.  

I just sucked it up, and through sheer will did not let it all go.  It was a defining moment in my life because I had every reason to just unleash.  I impressed myself with my ability to reign it in.  I was so embarrassed I didn’t even tell anyone.  I just kept it in.  I don’t think I even let myself cry.  I just told myself that I always knew it would happen.  I had taken so much criticism for marrying her I wasn’t going to humiliate myself by telling people what she was doing. 

Naturally I got depressed, but I just kept on marking the days.  Kept praying in the weight pile.  Kept devouring books.  Kept accumulating power.  I only had like five or six months before my parole board meeting.  There was a voice in me saying it wasn't over yet with Rachel, even though she said what she said.  I was on my own for a while.  Growing up is a bitch. I was proud of myself for not having snapped. 

After I got the verdict back from the parole board meeting I called her.  I spent several days working myself up to that call.  We hadn’t even been writing.  I had no idea what was going on in her life.  I hadn’t talked to her for months.  I told her that I would be out within a year.  We both cried on the phone.  She didn’t even know that I had gone up for the hearing.  She was as shocked as me by the release date.  I was going to get out.  I couldn’t blame her for not waiting it out.  How could that be easy?  It wasn’t her fault whatsoever that I was in there.  I didn’t give a shit about anything; I was going to get out.  I had somewhere to go again.  We were still married after all. 

What would you pick?  A life in prison or a marriage deemed imperfect by society?  It was an easy pick for me.