She Tried To Kill Me On Our Honeymoon

The scars still ache.

Photograph by Author

Blood poured across my chest, pooling across my lap as the knife shuddered in my shoulder.

I tried not to scream, but it’s hard not to when you’ve just been stabbed by a crazed person who, merely hours before, made you the happiest person on earth.

Welcome to the beginning of my first marriage.

The wedding was beautiful. Her parents went all out to make sure their daughter had everything she wanted. I took a back seat to a lot of the planning, which everyone was okay with.

Especially me.

I never wanted it to begin with.

See, the trouble is, the marriage wasn’t something I really wanted. I hadn’t planned for the events of my life to go the way they did, and found myself wholly inadequate to the occasion.

We discovered she was pregnant just a few months before the wedding.

Both of us were young. I, especially, was nowhere near mature enough to handle being married, much less a father. I was still dealing with the tumultuous ordeal of emotions my own abusive father left me with, and I could not fathom how I would be adequate for a kid.