Living Life In Reverse Order

A timeline running backwards

I was engaged when I was 19. From my cultural context that was a pretty normal age in which to be engaged. When the time came to marry at 23, a few people asked me why I was getting married at such a young age. At that time I guess I just didn’t know any better. I had been working as a licensed physician for a year, was about to start my residency, and my fiancé (who was also my cousin) had just graduated medical college. I had months of free time before my current job ended and my residency started. He had free months as well before he embarked on a year-long internship in medicine. We had been engaged for four years. It just practically seemed the right time to have the ceremonies and the honeymoon, before we both got busy with 90-hour work weeks and 36-hour duties for the coming years. As the quote I would read years from that point in time said,

“Circumstance can turn good decisions into awful realities.”

What a terrible decision that was.

At the age of 19, when I was supposed to be dealing with issues like how to get control of your acne. Yet here I was dealing with another person becoming a part of my life and shaping my life around our combined choices. He had a strong involvement in all my actions…