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I have decided not to go see the movie now playing at my local movie theater entitled, "Why Did I Get Married, Too?" The reason is not that I do not think I would like the movie…I enjoy some of Tyler Perry's work...but the fact is I have been asking myself this very question as of late.

I was married, the first time, at the tender young age of 17...I thought, somewhere in the back of my young brain, that I was a very sophisticated, worldly--young, but nonetheless, woman. What I found out rather quickly into this quicksand-type situation was that, in fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. I was being engulfed in a murky trap and suffocated….I had to fight to walk, to talk, to survive.

Now, many years later, I find that I am somewhat more mature—biologically and emotionally...but not a lot more "worldly" and probably not a whole lot wiser, for the most part, either.

I went to work to support myself when I was but 13 years old...yep, I lied about my age and got away with it for a while...when I could no longer get away with it in one place, I moved to another job. I was 15 and claimed to 18. One of my older brothers help me lie my way into a bigger and better paying job as a grill cook for a local hamburger chain (I had been a carhop in another hamburger chain—in the days when “curb service” was common.)

Working in hamburger joints exposed me to many things in life my parents never told me about. At 16, I met a man who thought I was 18...We dated, he fell in love and when I was 17--we married. We had been married for oh, at least a week, when I figured out I was still a little girl in a grown body that was fearful and lacking in the ability to successfully make a life and home on an adult level. All the things I had learned at the hands of mouthy, trashy, co-workers; and my brief exposure to bawdy women and crude men in a nightclub as a result of such associations were only part of the slimy underbelly of life that provided no base for emotional maturity. I knew nothing of what I needed to be a contributing individual with the feeling of any positive self worth.

It wasn’t until I got much older that I understood the self-worth thing…the “hind sight” phenomenon kicked in and I realized I had never grasped from a seedling that I was someone of worth. Even a seemingly insignificant acorn can become a mighty oak if not crushed under a heavy heel before given a chance…I was nearly as the unlucky acorn….I was almost never given a chance. 2B continued.