We were engaged two weeks after our first date and we had our first baby three years into our marriage. We have now been married more than 13 years, and while I could say a million things about getting married so fast and getting married so young and then having kids so soon, I really want to focus on the life potential I lost when I made the decision to become a teenage bride.
At 19, I was everything you'd expect a 19-year-old to be: irresponsible, overly-emotional, immature, impulsive and most certainly not cut out to be a wife. My husband, Cody, was 22 and had grand plans of someday becoming an attorney and one day a judge. He was completing his undergrad while working at Radio Shack and living in a tiny apartment on the wrong side of town. I was working at a lingerie shop, living with my sister and three other male roommates, with no big plans for my future. No one took our relationship seriously so there wasn’t much investment in our wedding. We had cheese and crackers at the reception, a terrible DJ, a homemade cake, and whole lot of relatives I didn’t know. Apparently when your parents have just barely released you into the world, they get a say on who attends your wedding.
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