I grew up in a small town in rural Queensland. My only dream while I was growing up was to save as much money as I could to leave home and travel overseas. By the time I turned 18 I had enough money to go.
I spent months travelling through Asia and then on to Europe where I would get any job I could so I’d have enough money to travel to my next destination. After doing this for a few months I met some friends who were off to America. Having never been there before I decided to go with them. It was great! We bought a beat-up old car and went on a road trip across the States seeing all there was to see.
I eventually ran out of money in Las Vegas so I decided to stay there and get a job and enjoy being in totally different surroundings to the small town I grew up in. I got a job as a waitress in one of the big casinos and that was where I met Jeremy.
Jeremy worked on the card tables and was the most beautiful man that I had ever seen. He was tall, blonde and ridiculously handsome. He was also very clean-cut and after months of travelling and seeing men living out of backpacks this was very appealing. I used to take every opportunity to work near his table in the hopes that he would notice me. Eventually he did and we started dating.
Our relationship moved very quickly and after only six weeks we started living together. One night we were joking around about getting married and after a few drinks we decided that it would be a really funny thing to do. So we ran off to a small white chapel where ‘Elvis’ married us in true Vegas style. We were both so excited and kept laughing as we called each other ‘husband and wife’. The only downside was that I hadn’t even told my parents that I was dating Jeremy so I was not too sure how a phone call from the other side of the world telling them that I was married would go down, so I decided to tell them when the time was right.
Everything was great between Jeremy and me, I loved him and I loved the fact that he was my husband. It was after a few months that I started to notice the cracks forming in our relationship. He started hanging out with friends more, coming home late and was getting different shifts to me at work. It got to the point that between both of us working shifts we hardly ever saw each other. After being married for only three months I decided to go and surprise him at work. He was on his break so I went to the staffroom where I found him kissing some girl who was sitting on his lap. I was devastated and marched into the room demanding to know what he was doing. He was very apologetic and told me that this was the first time anything had happened and that it would never happen again. Being young and in love I believed him.
Things worked well for a few more months then he started being distant and I had a feeling that he was cheating again. My suspicions were confirmed when I spotted him with another girl one day when he was supposed to be at work. He didn’t know that I knew and by this stage I was sick of the lies.
I went and saw a lawyer about getting an annulment. He gave me the forms I needed and all I had to do was get Jeremy to sign them. I waited until Jeremy was quite drunk one night and told him that he needed to sign a tax form for work. I gave him the annulment and he signed it — he didn’t even read what he was signing. I posted it off and waited for it to clear. By the time the annulment came though I had saved enough money to go home so I packed my bags, left the annulment on the table with a note telling him that I knew about the other girl and that I was leaving. I got on the next plane home.
I have never spoken to Jeremy again and I occasionally wonder how he’s doing but I am now happily married with a baby on the way and even though my family and husband know that I was in a relationship in America they don’t know the extent of it and I have no intentions of ever telling them.
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