MY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY

MY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY

I was only fifteen
when I thought that I knew love,
too young to see the warning signs,
too young to know enough.
I believed him when he told me
I was everything he’d need,
and when you’re fifteen and in love,
your heart is easy to mislead.

By eighteen I had my baby,
and a home I called my own,
but behind those doors were secrets
that I carried all alone.
Everybody said it wouldn’t last,
they warned me from the start,
but I swore that they were wrong
because I loved him with my heart.

On my eighteenth birthday
we had a party at our place,
friends were laughing, music playing,
there was happiness on every face.
Then I saw him dancing with you,
holding you a little too tight,
and something in the way he looked at you
didn’t feel quite right.

I didn’t really know you,
you were just somebody there,
until I saw him kiss you
as though I wasn’t anywhere.
My birthday carried on downstairs,
but mine had fallen apart,
so I quietly went upstairs
with a breaking eighteen-year-old heart.

He followed me into the bedroom
and asked me why I’d gone.
I told him I had seen that kiss,
I knew what he’d done wrong.
But instead of saying sorry,
instead of holding me that night,
he kicked me as I lay there
and then began to fight.

I cried until I couldn’t cry,
then knew I had to go.
I lifted up my baby
as quietly as I could do.
I tucked her in her little pram,
then walked out through that door,
into a dark and lonely lane
at somewhere around four.

There weren’t streetlights guiding me,
just darkness, fields and fear,
and every little sound that night
seemed louder to my ear.
I pushed that pram towards my sister’s,
my bruises hidden well,
carrying a truth inside me
I was too afraid to tell.

I waited quietly in her garden
until the morning came.
And when they finally found me there,
I played my usual game.
“We’ve only had an argument.”
I made it sound so small.
Because if my family knew the truth,
there would have been hell for all.

They’d warned me he would hurt me.
They’d said it wouldn’t last.
And somewhere in my stubborn heart
their warnings held me fast.
I couldn’t face the “told you so”,
couldn’t admit they’d been right,
so when he said he loved me again,
I went back home that night.

And that’s the strangest thing about it —
how a sorry can disguise
the same two hands that hurt you
when they’re wiping at your eyes.
He’d kiss me and he’d hold me,
tell me everything was fine,
and somehow I’d forgive him
every single bloody time.

From fractured feet to fractured thumbs,
from bruises black and blue,
I never knew which man I’d meet
or what he’d put me through.
One minute he’d say he loved me,
the next I’d somehow pay
for questioning where he’d been
or something I might say.

I loved him more than I loved me.
That’s difficult to explain.
I kept believing love could somehow
wash away the pain.
And every time I nearly left,
he’d pull me back once more,
until the woman wanting freedom
disappeared behind that door.

Then my little girls grew older,
and something started changing me.
Because things I’d tolerated
I couldn’t bear for them to see.
I could hide another bruise myself,
pretend another tear had dried,
but I couldn’t hide what frightened them
however hard I tried.

I remember my little daughter crying,
and him walking to her pram.
“Shut up,” was all he told her,
and suddenly she went calm.
Her little eyes were open wide,
the tears still running free,
but she had learned to cry in silence —
and something broke in me.

Another day I painted,
balanced on a ladder high,
while my little girl held tightly to my legs
and began to cry.
He’d slept until the afternoon,
then came downstairs dressed to leave.
She looked towards her daddy,
still too innocent to believe.

“Where are you going, Daddy?”

Such a little thing to say.

“To the betting office,
to get away from you,”
he answered her that day.

And perhaps he never realised
what those few words had done,
but something inside me finished then.
Something else had begun.
Because hurting me was one thing —
I’d endured that year by year —
but I wouldn’t let my little girls
grow up believing love was fear.

Fourteen years I’d battled on,
determined they were wrong.
Fourteen years of proving
that somehow we’d belong.
But being right no longer mattered.
Neither did my pride.
I had two little girls who needed me,
and they became my guide.

So battered, tired and finished,
I finally knew the score.
I told him, “Pack your bags now.
There’s nothing here anymore.
Go back to her, your latest love.
I’m finished being your wife.
You’ve taken more than enough from me.
You won’t take the rest of my life.”

And when he finally walked away,
I didn’t beg him to stay.
I didn’t care who’d warned me
or what anybody might say.
Let them tell me, “We told you so.”
Let every one be right.
I’d survived the lonely mornings
and I’d survived the darkest nights.

My girls became my reason.
My girls became my world.
I stopped being the frightened wife
and became their mum — their shield.
I couldn’t change the years behind me
or undo what I had known,
but I could make damn certain
they’d never face that fear alone.

And sometimes I still remember
that eighteenth birthday night —
a baby sleeping in her pram,
a lonely lane without a light.
I see myself still walking there,
bruised, frightened and unsure,
never knowing that one day
I’d finally close that door.

I wish I could stand beside myself,
that girl so young and scared,
and tell her she was stronger
than she ever knew or dared.
I’d tell her, “Don’t be ashamed, Marie.
You loved. That’s what you did.

But one day you’ll love your daughters
enough to finally choose to live.

I did make it on my own. He died a few years ago. However I made it on my own. Funny thing was I never told my Dad or Mam about this nor my Brother and Sister. They would have killed him.