When You're Forced Into a Mercy Killing | Part 1

This story is purely fictional.

I'm Tabitha, a 29-year-old woman with an adopted 13-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old son. My husband, Damian, though struggling with mental illness, has always been a good partner to me. But everything changed dramatically one day when his condition worsened significantly.

We reside in Clyde-veil, a secluded small town nestled in the heart of the woods, home to about 200-300 residents. The community is close-knit, and while I know several people, I wouldn't say I'm familiar with everyone. My interactions with neighbors have been limited; in fact, my rare social engagements were what eventually led to my marriage with Damian.

Our marriage wasn't born out of love but necessity. Coming from a financially struggling family, I found myself arranged to marry Damian for economic reasons. Both of us were just 13 at the time. I am a Kaló Romani who migrated with my family from Britain to America, while Damian is a Sinti Romani, having moved to the States from Germany.

My mom thought it would be okay to arrange for me to marry Damian, because he was 13, like I was, and thus she thought it wasn't pedophilia.

My family did not understand the issues with arranged marriages and marriages between underage people, especially since, in America, people typically get married at young ages if they are pregnant as teenagers. But at the same time, you could say this was for a reason: they felt like they had to create a stable household for the baby by including both a father and a mother, and it was to keep the father from abandoning the mother and child. But it's not a great idea, since those relationships don't always work out and will sometimes end in divorce.

I did not feel my family had to marry me off, since there were so many opportunities in America for us, although there was a lot of racism. But at the same time, I feel like we could have had another way; however, that's not how things turned out.

Granted, this is not to say that my husband was a bad husband at first. At first, I thought he was a good dude, and at the time, I didn't understand arranged marriages. I didn't want to get married, but I thought "It wouldn't be that bad since he's rich and he'll take care of me." So, I was very young, naïve, and dumb, and I agreed to go through with it because we were poor, he was rich, so "he's going to be able to provide for the family." I did not understand that a 13-year-old is not the one who provided, especially in America; a 13-year-old is the one who's being provided for.

We got married, and my parents set up an arrangement where we would still live with our parents due to the state of America. When I grew up, I was 18, and they had moved us both out into our own little home.

We went to college regardless of this. They never really barred us from our education, solely because they said that there was no need for it, especially with community colleges being free in some states. Our little town was in Texas, and because he was rich, we were able to afford a computer, I started going to online colleges because it was more flexible for me.

I convinced him to go to college, but he would often go out to college, and I would try to work on small things. I would learn business, and psychology in college. I even went on to learn writing, game development, etc.

I didn't start with business and psychology; I started with writing, then math, then game development, then business, then psychology. The reason I did business before psychology is that my structure was to do the easy stuff first and then graduate to the harder stuff. This was so that I could have a much easier time in college because I always heard of Americans being incredibly stressed out.

I would always do one major at a time. I never wanted to do multiple majors because it would be stressful to do multiple majors at once, so I always had primarily one major that I did, and I do not regret that. I especially don't regret it with the game development, business, and psychology majors, because I needed the rest of my day to, in my opinion, live my life and handle my marriage.

I didn't have any kids at the time because my parents, were kind of allowing us to date even though we were married, but they were not allowing us to have sexual intercourse, and they told us to wait on the sexual intercourse until after college because they were worried that we would be like the Americans and be very irresponsible with sex. His parents, especially more so than mine.

I was a very business-minded person.

I had a lot of online stores, and I wanted to progress in owning them. I also wanted to learn business as a side job. I wanted an extra skill so that in case my creative ventures didn't work out, or they didn't make as much money, I could always take on another job.

I wanted something else on my resume.

My husband, Damian, had a very set job, and this set job was pretty much the one his father owned that made him rich. This is why his father had him do a business major. Thus, My husband did everything in reverse: it was always hard stuff first, then easy stuff last, and it made college difficult at first, but it was just the regular stuff.

Damian's father still wanted him to do everything one at a time.

With me, it was kind of me coming up with all these ideas for myself. With his dad, it was kind of his dad always telling Damian how he should navigate college.

It was beneficial because I only focused on my college journey, without getting involved in Damian's. I was quite busy and didn't consider assisting him with his studies.

After graduation, I felt excited but also limited, having only completed a few majors. Unsure about my employability outside of business. Although I knew MLA format, I had forgotten some details. To prepare for the workforce, I began refreshing my knowledge.

Eventually, I took a journalism job while writing creative stories on the side. In my journalism work, I sometimes added personal touches, like comic strips or fictional stories, always ensuring they were well-crafted for publication. I was very concerned about being rejected and cared deeply about public perception, as my work was being released to a wide audience through the news.

Years later, when Damian and I were 23, we chose to adopt a 7-year-old girl named Diamond, who is now our 13-year-old daughter. We found her crying and abandoned on the side of the road, so we called the police. Her mother gave her to us, and we legally fostered and then adopted her. When she was 13, I accidentally got pregnant and ended up telling my husband about it. I had sex, but I never intended for a baby to come out of it because I just wasn't thinking about having more kids at the time. I chose to keep the baby, anyway, because despite the pregnancy not being planned, I was happy, and so was Damian.

We named our son "Gold," who is currently 2-months-old. It was the happiest day of my life holding him for the first time, and Diamond got to hold him second, then my husband. Damian was jealous of Diamond holding him before her, but I thought it was okay since they were siblings, and every sibling wanted to hold the baby. He wasn’t too mad and just let it go.

One day, however, when Gold was 1-month-old, I left him and Diamond at home with Damian to go to work as a journalist and got into a car crash. I was in so much pain and horrified; I not only didn’t want to die but I was scared for my children. Diamond is an adoptive child, and it was my idea to adopt her. Can my husband raise her? Will he continue to? Will he be able to feed my son? I was still breastfeeding and was the primary source of food for my baby.

I remembered my son's deep brown eyes and his sister's sky blue eyes crying at my funeral; I was sure that I couldn't die because I needed to be here for my son. I cried at the thought. I heard a neighbor call 911, and I was trying to call 911 for myself, but I couldn’t find my phone, so I ended up panicking and calling for help. I was blessed to be conscious. I was so scared that I’d end up in some coma or something, then taken off of life support, with all my children left to fend for themselves. I imagined that my family couldn’t function without me.

When I was admitted to the hospital, I was put under and had surgical procedures done on me. Both of my legs were broken and one of my arms was as well, I had brain damage as well. I developed these tics. I’m not sure why, but I’d jerk my body in random ways that I couldn’t control. I felt like a robot, not in a way that meant that I had no feelings, I was distressed, but when I say I felt like a robot, I meant that I felt like I was malfunctioning because on TV, I saw robots making random jerks, and this made me think that humans were like robots in some ways, like how we glitch.

To be continued...