I gave in. Once again, I became weak and I gave in. I had refused to marry him for months but I finally said yes when he proposed during breakfast one early morning. I didn’t find his proposal particularly romantic, but for some reason, in between my last bite of butter and cream on toast, I found myself saying yes to a man I loved too much. I liked the idea of being someone’s wife; in a weird way that I still find odd today, I liked the feeling of being possessed. But at the time when I was 21 and too young, I thought possession was the same thing as love. I thought that him having me for himself would mean he would love me endlessly. The funniest thing about this marriage was that I had been against the concept my whole life. I had been so set on not ever getting married because I was simple and a marriage seemed too complicated. I used to think that a happy life with someone I loved would be enough, no strings attached. But I had also been logical, cautious, and never a risk taker. And this was my one chance to break my own rules. It was my one chance to take a big risk, forget my better judgment, and ignore the rules I had once so perfectly drawn out for myself.
I finished my toast and couldn’t stop staring at the diamond ring on my finger, the ring that was meant to map our love for eternity, for better or for worse, in sickness and in heath, ‘till death did us part. But of course I didn’t think of any of those customs. I just looked at, thinking and believing that I had taken a risk, and that I had freed myself of boundaries and limits. I was too young, too young to know that the man in front of me was in love with something else, that he was doing what he thought was his duty. He was a boy who wanted to be a man, a husband, a caretaker of a fragile, insecure portrait of a wife.