06. Chapter 2: The Truth

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Transcript

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Chapter 2 The Truth. For years I lied about what really happened, telling different versions of this story to different people, keeping secrets and living in shame. Some of my best friends messaged me immediately after the engagement announcement, and I responded saying, don't tell anyone, but we're actually married, and I'm kind of freaking out about it. A few of my closest relatives still think I was only engaged to this man from Mexico who was part of my life for a short period of time in my early 20s. When I was living in Abu Dhabi, many of my colleagues didn't even know that this part of my life existed at all. And they thought that I was always the happy go-lucky girl that they got to know in November of 2017. This is the truth of what really happened. When I was 24, I met Santiago, a man from Mexico living in Kuwait. In Kuwait, living with a partner outside of marriage is haram or forbidden. So less than eight months later, due to circumstances that seemed right at the time, we decided to get married. We read online that getting married in Kuwait was time-consuming and only possible if both expats held valid residence visas, which Santiago didn't have as he was between jobs. So due to Santiago's lack of documentation, we didn't qualify to get married in the country in which we lived. The marriage felt urgent. We were living together out of wedlock and needed a marriage certificate to legally do so. We'd face threats from the security guards where he previously lived. We were moving apartments and didn't know if we'd be able to live in our new place together, being unmarried. We didn't have the time to travel to Canada or Mexico for a wedding, so we chose to elope. We had one long weekend in April and were set to move into a new apartment in June. So that was how we ended up leaving Kuwait one day in late April as boyfriend and girlfriend, and returning 72 hours later as husband and wife. We were legally married before we were even engaged. After getting married at 9:30 a.m. on a Friday, popping bottles of champagne and shotgunning cans of beer all morning and afternoon, Santiago proposed to me around 12 hours later by getting down on one knee and revealing a diamond ring in a small black box on a pitch black, starry, empty beach. Marriage is an army of two was one of the beautiful phrases he said to me in his proposal. That's all I could remember, partially because I was numb from drinking all day, and partially because I was already panicking inside. How do I say no when I've already said yes? I disassociated from the moment. We stumbled down the beach for a few rounds of shots before eventually making it back to our hotel room. Hung over and running on a few hours of sleep, we caught an early flight back to Kuwait the next morning. The next evening, doom was already dawning on me. This person who I barely knew was now my husband. By midnight, we were already back in Kuwait and influenced by his excitement, we announced to the world on Facebook and Instagram that we were engaged, when we'd actually already signed the papers and made the marriage official 24 hours before. Minor details. As the weeks went on, we started planning a wedding at a remote countryside castle in Mexico for the following year, leading everyone to believe that we weren't married yet, when we actually were. When I gave him back the diamond ring, all of this flashed before me. It wasn't as simple as handing it back and saying goodbye. We'd legally and verbally agreed to be an army of two. Now, I wasn't even an army of one. I was defeated. And it wasn't over.