After the Marriage I Never Agreed To, I Found My Way Back to School
I was married at fifteen to a man I had never met. This is not a story about what was taken from me. It is a story about what I took back.
I will not spend these words on the wedding I did not choose. You can imagine it. What I want to tell you is what happened after, because that is the part nobody tells young girls, and it is the part that saved me.
I was fifteen. I had wanted to be a teacher. Within a year of the marriage, that dream felt like something that had belonged to a different girl. For a long time I believed the door to it was not just closed but bricked over.
The first person who said it was not too late
A health worker who came to our hamlet noticed me, asked a few gentle questions, and said a sentence I had stopped letting myself think: you can still study. She did not rescue me. She did something more useful. She gave me information. She told me about open-school programmes that let you sit exams without attending a regular school, and about the women's helpline that exists precisely for girls in my position.
Rescue makes you wait for someone else. Information lets you move on your own. I needed the second one.
What I want other girls to know
- Marriage before eighteen is not legal, and being married does not cancel your right to study or to seek help.
- The National Open School lets you complete Class 10 and Class 12 on your own schedule. Your education did not end. It paused.
- The women's helpline 181 and the local One Stop Centre exist to help, confidentially, without you needing to have everything figured out first.
Where I am now
I passed Class 10 through open school two years after that conversation. I am close to finishing Class 12. I now sit with other girls in situations like mine, and I say to them the exact sentence that was once said to me, because I have learned it is true: you can still study, and you are not as alone as this room is making you feel.
If you are reading this and it is your story too, please reach out to a helpline or a trusted health worker. The corridor is longer than the closed door in front of you suggests. I promise.
If you or someone you know needs support, India's women's helpline (181) and Childline (1098) are free and confidential.
Aisha works alongside survivors of child marriage and domestic violence, helping them re-enter education and rebuild independent lives. She writes to remind other girls that a closed door is not the end of the corridor.
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