I was the most beautiful girl in the town. I mean, all the boys wanted me and thus they did lots of crazy things for me.
He was the richest man in the town. So with his money and his experience he was the one…
I had a super luxury wedding - the most lavish wedding in the town’s history. I was just 18. He has been waiting for me to finish high school. I would not need to work, he was a businessman so all I would have to do was look after the house and enjoy being married. All my girlfriends were jealous but I was prettier than they were and so he had chosen to marry me! Our first son was born when I was 19. And that’s when I met his “special business partner” for the first time - a woman 25 years older than me, who made fun of me.
She told me they were not only business partners.
I was angry. I left his house and went back to my mother’s. I asked him to apologize and break up with that woman. Unfortunately for me he refused, at the end of the day, money was more important to him than I was. My mother didn’t want me to go back home. She said we are a well-educated family a girl from a family like ours does not run away for a reason like that. She said our family would lose face because of me if I did not go back to my husband, so she even took me back and apologized to him for my behavior! She said that I was only 19 and needed to learn more about life.
I got pregnant almost right away, when my eldest son was only 8 months old. And that’s when he started beating me. I wanted to run away, I wanted justice. But no one supported me. Mom said that it was a wife’s duty to keep her husband by her side. I needed to learn about his moods and deal with it. The women’s union said I should keep my personal problems behind closed doors. They did not want to lose their “completive” to other women’s unions just because of me.
I nearly miscarried twice.
Finally I did escape from his house. I found a shelter in Hanoi by myself and moved there. That’s when my daughter was 1 month old. I was just 20.
Now we are here, with other single mothers of my age. All of them are with their daughters. Their boyfriends don’t want to marry them and don’t want to take responsibility for a daughter. I tell them my boyfriend did the same thing to me.
None of them know that I had the most luxurious wedding in the history of my town.