We survived the honeymoon, went back to Utah, and moved into our new apartment.

We had somehow managed to sign a lease at the only truly terrifying apartment complex in Provo—2.5 stars on Yelp, dirt-cheap rent, and a resident population made up almost entirely of drug dealers and people who screamed at streetlights.
We fit right in.

I was still working at RC Willey, where I was being verbally abused on the regular. The job was hell, but the employee discount was divine. So, we went shopping to furnish our new 500-square-foot home. Well—he shopped. I followed.

He insisted on making every decision, so I stayed out of the way and let him do what he wanted.

This would become a theme.

Soon he decided we should combine finances—even though we had already agreed to keep separate accounts. I pushed back. He pouted. He argued. He wore me down. Eventually, I agreed to put his name on my account “just in case.”

The second he had access to my account, he drained it.

Not that long ago, I could have gone on a dream trip to Europe if I had been willing to do that.

This was traumatic.

He used my money to pay down his debts, fix his teeth, buy our furniture, and purchase himself a state-of-the-art computer.

A computer I was explicitly not allowed to use.
It was password-protected so I “wouldn’t get any ideas.”

Next came the name issue. I’d already told him I didn’t want to change my name. I have strong opinions about women not having to erase their identity because they got married. He cried. He pouted. He would not let it go.

So, I finally filled out the paperwork.

I had to ask him for the cash to pay the processing fee, since I no longer had any money.
And I didn’t have access to his account.

When we moved, we were assigned to a new ward. So, we went to meet our new bishop. He took one look at our “shameful” non-temple marriage and immediately challenged us to get sealed in the temple on our one-year anniversary.

The only hurdle, I was informed, was TJ’s porn addiction.

Now, if you’re familiar with a church that talks about purity roughly every seven minutes, porn is not exactly on the approved reading list. I was floored. Horrified. Confused. But the bishop wasn’t finished.

He informed me it was my responsibility to monitor TJ’s “progress.”

Which is a polite way of saying:
Congratulations, Sister Bellows—no, wait, Sister Satterfield—here’s your badge and your new calling policing a grown man’s browser history.

TJ grudgingly handed over his computer password. I was instructed to check his history regularly and report back if he visited any “girly sites.” Mortifying doesn’t begin to cover it.

And of course, it didn’t work.

He stayed up late, waited until I was asleep, and cleared his history when he was done. So, the only thing I consistently found on that computer was regret.

Until one day.

While fulfilling my sacred calling as Porn Patrol, I saw a message from a classmate of his named Gina.
“Sorry we couldn’t do more—I was on my period.”

Apparently, he’d started cheating on me just weeks into our marriage and stopped short of intercourse since he didn’t want to deal with another bloodbath.

When I confronted him, he made it about my “lack of trust.” He admitted they’d kissed and gotten “a little hot and heavy,” but he absolutely refused to stop talking to her.

I briefly wondered if murder was an acceptable response.
Had I repented enough yet, or was I already damned? Because if so, I might as well multitask.

Living with him gave me emotional whiplash. Around other people, he transformed into Mr. Charming—laughing, affectionate, urging me to tell stories, keeping a hand on me like I might float away. He praised how clean I kept the apartment (I tried; he was a slob), how good my cooking was (it wasn’t), how lucky he was to have me.

Then the next day he’d tell me I “wasn’t keeping myself up.” Apparently, seeing my bare face first thing in the morning was a personal betrayal.

One afternoon, I was plucking a couple stray eyebrow hairs when he asked—cheerfully—if he could do it for me. Like I’d be granting him a special privilege. I hesitantly agreed, but I was very clear: “Just the strays.”

He had me lie down on the bed. He leaned over me with the tweezers.

And then the massacre began.

It became obvious almost immediately that he had not listened. He wasn’t plucking strays—he was harvesting. I told him to stop. He laughed. I tried to sit up. He put me in a chokehold.

When I stopped struggling, he went right back to work like this was a perfectly normal hobby.

When he finished, I had wisps. Suggestions. The ghost of eyebrows past.

I stared at myself in the mirror, horrified. When I confronted him, he complained—without irony—that he liked thin eyebrows and that I should try harder to look good for him.

About six months in, TJ graduated college and received his first Air Force posting in Albuquerque.

So, I quit my job at RC Willey, packed up what little of myself was left, said goodbye to my family, and pointed my car south.

Except we weren’t headed straight for New Mexico. No. TJ wanted to “make a fun road trip of it” by driving to the opposite corner of the state—St. George—so we could visit his siblings. I agreed, on one condition: no staying in other people’s houses. Hotels. Non-negotiable.

(Haha. Adorable that I thought boundaries worked.)

He happily agreed. Naturally, this meant he had already mentally crumpled that boundary up and tossed it over his shoulder like garbage.

We caravanned down the road, each in our own car, both packed to the gills with everything we needed before the movers delivered the rest. When we arrived, I discovered he had not told anyone we were coming. We caught his brother loading a 4-wheeler onto a trailer on his way out to go riding with friends. TJ insisted we join them.

To him, it sounded “fun.”
To me, it sounded like “the universe preparing my obituary.”

I am not a wild-adventure person. I am the person who can get injured crossing a level floor. I had putted around on a 4-wheeler a little at dad’s shop, but I don’t know if I had ever taken it out of 1^st gear. I did not want to go.

But I was told to stop being a spoil sport, and suddenly two more machines were loaded up for us. No helmets. No sunglasses for me—an especially fun detail since I wore contacts and we were headed into sand. I asked TJ if I could wear his sunglasses and he scoffed. Of course not.

Still, I let myself be herded along.

A two-minute tutorial—“This is the throttle, this is the brake”—and we were off. The rest of the group took off like bats out of hell. TJ’s brother stayed right behind me, riding my tail, trying to push me to go faster. I finally tried to speed up a little… and that’s when the ground disappeared from beneath me.

There was a hill. A steep one. And whatever the correct way to tackle it was, I did not do that. My machine flew over the edge and then went end over end, and I went with it. The hot, heavy 4-wheeler landed on top of me. Face-down in sand. Inches from rock. Inches from a gravestone that read: Here lies Diana, defeated by peer pressure and a terrible marriage.

TJ, who was far ahead of me, had stopped and waited for my descent. He watched my spectacular entrance, then drove up to where I had landed. His brother arrived seconds later screaming, “Oh no! Oh no! MY 4-WHEELER!”
Not “oh no, Diana, the human woman who is currently underneath it.”
No. His poor ATV.

He rolled the machine off me to inspect its damage. I lay in the sand, barely able to move. And TJ? TJ stood over me taking pictures like I was roadkill he wanted to document.

Someone (neither of them) called an ambulance. At the ER, they checked for broken bones (miraculously, none). My tri-cep muscle had been torn though, but there was nothing they could do for that but give me Tylenol.

The worst injury came from going face-first into sand—my eyelid was pulled open as I slid, ripping from the edge of my eye socket toward my hairline. And they needed to stitch my face back together.

They told me to pick a place to look and not blink while they repeatedly stabbed a needle toward my face. They sewed it up beautifully; you can’t even see the scar.

But TJ was angry that when I chose the spot to look at, I hadn’t chosen to look lovingly at him. Poor guy.

During the chaos, TJ lost his sunglasses and spent most of the hospital visit running around trying to find them.
Thank you, Karma.

That night, we stayed at his sister’s house—because of course we did.

The next morning, we got back on the road.

I was bruised, stitched, black-eyed, and very much looking like the battered wife I often felt like, even though, technically, he’d never hit me.

Mormonism loves a technicality.