My grandmother passed away a few years ago so I can’t ask for her consent, but I believe sharing her story anonymously would be okay in her eyes.

She met my grandpa when she was barely an adult. There was war in her country, so she was scared and wanted to flee. Her mother told her that under no circumstances was she allowed to flee the country without marrying her boyfriend; at the time women needed to be protected and provided for, and my grandmother’s mom knew this. She wouldn’t let her daughter end up alone and uncared for in a foreign country, unable to return home due to the war at the time.

So my grandmother married her boyfriend of 3 months and then fled. They were married for nearly 70 years, had two children, and were seemingly one of those “dream relationships” from back in the day where “things were better and people didn’t give up and divorce all the time”.

My beautiful, caring grandmother was on antidepressants for decades. She told me about her depression often when I got older and we became friends rather than only family. She told me about how she didn’t want to get out of bed, about how needy and picky my grandpa was, about how he acts nice in front of everyone but never afforded her that. She told me she was too old for a divorce, that they had grown together so much that he wouldn’t be able to be without her, that divorce simply was off the table. She lived for the times anyone came over to their place because then he wouldn’t pick on her.

In the last years, she would travel to her home country often. I used to think she did it for her family, but now I know she just wanted to get away. She escaped to another country repeatedly to get away from her husband. It sounds so crazy and insane, yet it was happening under our noses the entire time, we just didn’t see it.

I owe it to her to be happy. Women no longer need men. Women no longer have to be tied down to them. I owe it to her to not repeat her misery and to not put myself in the same position, because I have the freedom that she did not get to have. I’ll never marry a man without vetting him fiercely. If he ever acts nice to others but not to me, I’m divorcing his ass in her name.

Thank you for reading. I know she is at peace now.