Walking across the parking lot coming from Aldi, where I had picked up food for the next few days, my heart was struggling. It was sunny and warm, and I was wearing a sundress and flip-flops, one of only two outfits that still fit. At 15 and pregnant, no longer going to high school, my life certainly didn’t look like what it had only a few months earlier.
I had made these choices. I knew that. That’s what I constantly found myself wrestling with inside my head. Me. No one to blame but me. Regardless of thinking it was my only way out, I now wondered if that was even factual. “You’ve made your bed, now you’ll just have to lie in it,” my Mama’s words echoed in my head. Turning back was no longer an option. Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I can unequivocally say that my decision to get married at 15 took me down a much more difficult path.
Upon turning 15, I married my 21-year-old boyfriend. When I talked my Mama into signing the papers, it was because I needed out of an abusive home life that was certain never to change. The years of horrific domestic violence had taken a toll on me — mentally and physically. I had come to the realization that she would never leave him, so I had to. I still remember how broken, helpless and trapped I felt, even though it was 40 years ago. I had to.
However, the adult writing this today knows that at 15, I was almost a decade away from my prefrontal cortex being fully mature — meaning I didn’t actually have the ability to process the pros and cons of my decisions, regardless of how “mature” I was because of my rough upbringing.
Getting married at 15 wasn’t all that happened that November. We were also in a serious car accident, so I quit school to stay home to care for my mother who was critically injured and needed around-the-clock care. “That’s OK,” I thought, “I’ll do my studies at home and still be able to graduate.” Again, cause and effect are not truly clicking away in a 15-year-old’s brain.
Four months later, I was pregnant, living in a hotel turned into weekly apartments, doing any odd jobs I could find to be able to eat and pay for another week of rent. Cut to me now, walking to the grocery store in one of the only two outfits that fit me. Too young for gainful employment. Too pregnant for most other things. Not exactly the “freedom” I had imagined when making the decision to get married and get out.
Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I can unequivocally say that my decision to get married at 15 took me down a much more difficult path. No need to take my word for it. Let’s look at the statistics:
Girls who marry are:
• 31% more likely to live in future poverty.
• 50% more likely to drop out of high school.
• Four times less likely to graduate college.
• Victims of domestic violence at rates three times greater than the national average.
• Divorced from these marriages almost 80% of the time.
This is why I have filed Missouri Senate Bill 767, and why I have joined ranks with my colleague state Sen. Lauren Arthur. At 15, when I made this life-changing decision, I wasn’t Democrat or Republican. I was a child, with a child’s brain and a mother who struggled with mental illness, looking for a way out. This bill isn’t about politics. It’s about protecting children.
