Stockholm Syndrome comes in many forms. Sometimes, the victim wants to fuck the captor, others, the victim once rescued, finds themselves so fearful of said perpetrator that they become too anxious to even leave their house after what they’ve been through, unable to speak, unable to sleep. What if I told you I experienced both those feelings, simultaneously? Would you judge me..?
I was freshly nineteen at the time. Young, beautiful, naïve, confident. I met this man, an Army man, who sold me on the possibilities my life could look like, promised me luxury. My father, the pastor/missionary of a church, hated this man, the supposed love of my life. Dad’s threats grew stronger but didn’t mean much to 19-year-old-me, who, more than anything, wanted to escape “daddy’s” abuse and neglect once and for all, after all these years.
I, after being kicked out of my father’s home, as an adopted brown daughter to a white reverend, pastor, missionary, for seeing a black man, decided to marry him. To this day, it was the worst mistake of my life. The mistake wasn’t seeing a black man, someone who looked like me, the mistake was being too anxious to escape my father.
We got married, legally, but there was no ceremony. It was in a stranger’s living room, with my husband’s military buddies there as witnesses. We didn’t even kiss when it was announced to my then-husband, “You may kiss the bride.” I should have known then that this was the first red flag in a sea of them that would lead up to me fighting for my life for survival to the man I now called “husband.”
~Yours Truly
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