Welcome to a new series from Culture Shock, Be Younonymous. Here, anonymous members of the BU community contribute their stories from campus life and beyond under the condition of complete secrecy. Have a story? e-mail it to Beyounonymous@bucultureshock.com . We’ll take it to our servers’ graves.

I’m marrying my boyfriend so that his military benefits will help get me through my last year at Boston University. I never thought I’d have to take the drastic measure of getting married just to finish college. When you’re a kid you look at the world in these black and white terms: go to college, study hard, have fun, graduate, get a great job, live a happy life. You don’t think of how a simple lack of money could keep you from your dreams.

I did not grow up with money. As a kid, we ate at Captain D’s every Tuesday because kids ate free. McDonald’s was a regularity, but my mom never bought anything for herself; she just ate my sister’s and my leftovers. When you’re a kid you don’t find these nuances strange. Still my mom always told me that I could go anywhere I wanted for college, and somehow we would find a way. Whatever way she possibly had in mind was destroyed when the economy hit the fan. Now she’s declaring bankruptcy.

I’m staring at this, my last year, wondering how I could ever pay for it by myself. Financial aid may look at $12,000 as an easily manageable sum, but they don’t have the eyes of a young woman with a student job. I decided I would drop all my extracurricular commitments and work two jobs. But my boyfriend—who I haven’t even been with for that long—offered to marry me so that the extra money the military would pay him could help me. However, we’re not supposed to think of it as a normal marriage; it’s a contract marriage, just signing some papers so that we get more money and I can have health insurance again. To me, he’s still just my boyfriend, and should we not work out, we just sign some more papers. But legally, we will be married. We’re not going to tell anyone. The only people who will know will be my mother and his military friends who will figure it out when he moves off base.

I do love him, and he loves me. We talk about having a white wedding, years down the line, where we would be officially married in front of all our friends and family. But we’re too young and new to make that kind of forever decision now. In an ideal world we wouldn’t be doing this. He just wants to help me through school. He doesn’t want to see me work myself sick. I think that it just wouldn’t be my life if I wasn’t struggling.

Some might say I should just take out more loans. I already have $20,000 in loans. How will I pay them back when I graduate with a liberal arts degree and no internships or relevant work experience to get a career with? I work the student jobs that make money, not those that look great on a resume. If my boyfriend goes on one deployment he can make $20,000 in seven months if we’re married.

Next month I will go to a courthouse and sign some papers, just in time for me to get health insurance again to have compliant status at BU. I will survive this year, and when I graduate, I’ll have the time to finally find a job I actually want to work. I didn’t plan on taking this route in life, and many would judge me for it. If you figure out who I am, I ask you to keep it to yourself. I’m just a girl whose “just keep swimming” mentality has hit some rather rough rapids. What would you do if offered a life raft?

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