Maria Doreen Flores Marzoña

Married at 18 I got married at a young age. I was 18 years old. My husband was 4 years older than me. My family is not one of those conventional families where the father is always there. My parents separated when I was two years old. My father worked overseas, my mother was employed locally and I was left with my older sister. Growing up, I have this conviction that once I get married, I will never separate from my husband. In my second year in college, I got pregnant. I was having second thoughts into getting married because I feel I was too young, that I am not yet ready, and that I may not be able to carry on with the responsibility of being a mother and a wife. But my mother was afraid of gossip, of what the people will think of me esp. that I come from a broken family. Eventually, we were married, in a Catholic Church. And so the start of my journey as a young wife begins… and also as a young mother. I was thankful that I had an easy pregnancy. I never had those so-called morning sickness and I never fainted. It was a happy pregnancy. It was also a joyful marriage. Two young people so in love, so full of hopes and dreams. We never fought. I was happy to be a stay at home wife for the meantime, being preggy and all. I stopped going to school in the duration of my pregnancy. Every day, every moment that passed by, I was in bliss, we both were, even the people around us. We have all forgotten that I was just 18. AT LEAST I FORGOT I WAS. I enjoyed cooking, waiting for my husband to come home from work. We talk and I listen to his stories about his work, his colleagues, and his boss. I said to myself that after I gave birth I will go back to school and finish my studies. I should say I enjoyed every minute of it. Everything was in a good mood, even after I gave birth to my firstborn son. Our married life continued to be great. I went back to school and was able to finish my Bachelor degree. Looking back, it was a common perception that young people were still immature and should not get married. I believe that maturity does not come with age. You maybe 25 or 35 but still not mature enough to cope with being married. Some people are afraid of commitment. We despise the thought of a pledge or a promise, of sticking it out with another person. It was actually so hard to be selfless in order to make the marriage work, whatever the age maybe. In our case, since we plunged immediately into getting married because of my unexpected pregnancy, we both have no way of really knowing how it was to sleep with a stranger. Everyday seemed to be a work in progress. Everything was new, I learn to accept the weird things about my husband. Just like discovering that he wants everything in order, that he was too meticulous in ironing his clothes, and I am not an expert in ironing clothes. The truth was, I loathe the chore. I found out he was more of an obsessive compulsive than I was. I was always cool. All other odd things, you will have to learn to accept. You cannot change it. You married the guy. In the early years of our marriage, I accept the imperfections, I seized the imperfections. Why wouldn’t I? When you were young and so deeply in love, nothing else matters. It was not something that I have to educate myself with. It was not something that I have to unravel first to be able to overcome. It was the time that very few people live together before they get married. It cannot be tested. I have no experience, to repeat, everything was a work in progress. That’s when reality sink in. Despite the fact that I now have a realization of where I have put myself into, I embraced my marriage. It was not bad after all. The pros outweighs the cons. At that point, I am happy to be married and be a mother. I survived the first years of my abrupt marriage. The second phase of my marriage is a different story.