295: What if you had to betray your family to save them?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I was hurting the most important people in my life. You were told you are nothing and that she feels you're a danger and she picked something else. But they couldn't see the situation I was in. And that just made it that much darker and that much more upsetting.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 295. What if you had to betray your family to save them?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. My family is Persian.

They migrated to India about 200 years ago, and they migrated because the Iranians were precious stone miners. So we came over as miners and worked for the Rajas and the Maharajas. And over time, you know, the businesses started mixing and we became a part of the community, but also wanted to be very, very separate, which is why Persians would only marry other Persians. That's what they did. And that's what they're still doing to this date.

My mom was one of seven kids and she was born into this very, very wealthy prestigious family and a loving family. Like every average Indian Muslim family, they were just required to have as many babies as possible and populate India. They were all married between the ages of like 16 and 18, so her mother was probably 16 years old. My grandparents got married, they had seven children.

And then my grandfather had some loss in business and very, very quickly he went from very wealthy to seven kids in a one-bedroom apartment. His wife could not tolerate the change and killed herself. Ultimately, my grandfather became an alcoholic and passed away a couple years later.

Now the responsibility of my mother's family, these seven young children, fell on the aunts and uncles who were not happy about assuming this responsibility. For females, you have to give dowry. And there were two females. If you're not offering anything, you're not getting anything. Wealth marries wealth. And when you're a breadline in India, you are marrying other people like you.

So my grandparents, brothers and sisters decided to just marry her off to the first guy they met. And he would be willing to take her on because he was just as poor as my mom. So my mom was 15 years old and she met my father, who was three years older. The night of their wedding, had no idea about anything. She had no parents to tell her what to expect.

She has this beautiful red dress on and she's placed in the center of the bed as if she's this prize. And she's got a veil over her head. And my father unveiled her. And that's the first time he learned what she looked like.

You know, she's undressing for the first time with an unknown man that she meets minutes before this is happening. You know, 15, not knowing a guy, having been put in this position, I'm guessing is the most uncomfortable feeling ever. But he was innocent himself. He's 18 years old. Nine months later, my older sister was born.

My father was one of 10 brothers and sisters, five boys, five girls. And his mother also being a very young mom, if she was 15 at the time, by the time she was done, she was probably 30 years old with her children. After the last child, she lost her husband. My father was the fourth oldest child.

And when his dad was dying, he had asked my dad at the age of eight to take care of his brothers and sisters. And that is exactly what my dad did. He spent countless years working. He would work 18 hour days. He would take the food off of his plate and give it to his brothers and sisters. That's actually really how bad it was. And the water was so dirty that he would strain it in his mom's veil.

And that's how they would get clean water. So my parents are not literate. My father didn't have a chance to go to school. My mother didn't have a chance to go to school. They couldn't afford it. And they had to be responsible for their families.

So my dad, he was always in the jewelry business, but he was a small broker here and there trading and making the nominal fee. But he had this idea that if he left India, he could actually make some real money. So he left India when he was 16 years old for Thailand.

And then from there, it took off. My dad got married to my mom at 18, had four children, got five of his sisters married, paid the dowry. And he went back and forth. He was in Africa for business. He would go to Thailand for business. He would go to the US. He would just travel everywhere. And then he would come to India and my mom would get pregnant. So that's how four of us came to be

In the early 90s in India were the Hindu-Muslim riots. People were just killing each other left and right. You couldn't leave your homes. And there was a lot of, go hide in this room, go hide in that closet, stay over here, don't go outside, you're not going to school today.

So all of that was so alive and well in our existence that I knew that something bad was happening. I didn't know it was the Hindu-Muslim riots. I just remember seeing blood out of the window and they were fighting with each other. My dad flew in from Thailand and he said, we have to get out of here. We need to go now. And the fastest place again that we could go to was Thailand. He had a home there.

I was four years old and got into a Jeep, which had bench style seating. And the right side was lifted up and there was luggage, lots of luggage with four kids tucked under there. And my mom was sitting on the left side. We're Muslims, so she had a burqa at the time. That was just what was expected of her.

And I remember listening to screams and yelling and my father driving around in curves, dodging dead bodies. And we finally get to the airport and my parents just picked us up and we boarded this plane to Thailand. And I remember saying, I don't want to go. Being uprooted from that was just, even now I can feel it. And even then it hurt.

Ten months later, nearly a year, we finally got our visas to move to the States. My dad described America just the same way everyone describes it. Disneyland, princesses, lots of candy. It's clean. It's fun. And my dad had told us that we're going to live in this apartment that has three whole rooms, which is very, very exciting. So I was nearly five. We get to Queens, New York.

There was the 1996 blizzard. There were leaks that were coming in and windows wouldn't close entirely, so it was cold. It was the worst apartment ever. We were not trained to be quiet and reserved. It just happened naturally in the beginning because we were so new to the place. And just trying to fit in was the most difficult thing.

Miss Antonacci was my teacher, a blonde, 5'11 woman who hated everything about me. I was a tomboy. I had very short hair. I wanted to look like a boy. I wanted to pee standing up. And she didn't like it. She would tell me that I smelt bad. She was just like, why don't you sit over there? Or why don't you wear your hair this way? Let your hair grow out. She just made me feel really, really bad.

But once we got a hang of it and started fitting in a bit more, our personalities started to come out. And I had all the friends in the world. I was comfortable in my own skin. And then my mom had her sixth baby, my baby brother. My father, he decides to take a trip to India. And this is where we learn for the first time how toxic his mom is.

When he comes back after a month or so, he is fighting with my mom. He is just so aggressive. You could tell that he was holding something against her as if she did something wrong, as if he's punishing her for something she did. My grandmother told my father that when he was away on business, my mom would cheat on him with the neighbor.

And my father believed that till the day his mother died. He gave my mom hell to the point that he would not give her any money. And she was a stay-at-home wife who had to raise all six of her children. We thought everything was fine in our family. And we hadn't seen what bad would be like.

The fear came on when he started yelling at my mom and scaring her. It was an emotion I was not familiar with. And that went on for so many years. They fought. They spent three months not talking to each other, six months not talking to each other, years not talking to each other.

And they stayed together because my father knew that to raise his kids properly, he needed her. She was the woman who cooked, the woman who cleaned, the woman that would deal with his shit. We started to get older, all starting to defend my mom. But he always had an opportunity, a place or a time he could find to verbally abuse her and make her feel like she was the worst thing in the world to the point that she started believing it.

My mom started looking differently and she was physically unable to take care of herself because she woke up defeated and fell asleep defeated. He would go to India more and more to see his mom and to see his siblings and they would tell him hateful things about her, make him super angry and send him back to take it out on all of us.

We had a very, very unhappy home for an extremely long time. And my dad made it a point to tell us, this is how it is in everybody's home and you're never supposed to talk about it. So I knew that it was wrong, but I was convinced it was normal.

Once all of us were in school, my dad didn't trust my mom so much. He made her go to the office with him and she would be with him all day. So now she wasn't able to spend any time with us. And one day we came home and this is our best part of the day is when they're not home. We don't have to listen to them, but they were home that day.

And we walk in and I could hear it from the front door. That's how loud he was yelling at her, calling her a whore, a slut. She sleeps with every man that walks by our house. She's the dirtiest woman ever. And the last two children probably aren't even his. Horrible, horrible things. And I was done.

Once they were all off to bed, I decided that maybe if one of us dies, my parents are going to realize that they need to stop fighting. Otherwise, all of us will die. And I took a bottle of Tylenol, just as many pills as I could fit in my mouth. And I started feeling really sick. Then I started throwing up. And then my parents were asking me what happened.

And I told him the truth on the first go because I didn't want to die. I didn't realize what I was doing. And my dad didn't want to take me to the hospital. He was so scared that they were going to put him or my mom in jail for making this happen. But once I started throwing up blood, he took me to the hospital and he told me, please don't tell them you tried to kill yourself.

When I got into the hospital, they were pumping my stomach. I told them that my kidney stones that I have, I said that they were acting up and I was in a lot of pain and I didn't realize how many pills I ended up taking.

The next day, a psychiatrist came in and she had my family leave the unit. My dad, I remember how panicked he was and he was just shaking his head no, which the psychiatrist saw. But she couldn't make me say anything. She said, are you hurt? Is your family hurting you? Are you in pain? Is there anything going on that you want to tell me? And I said, no, no, no. I was having kidney stone pains, which is why I took the Tylenol.

They had no choice at the end but to believe me. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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So after the suicide attempt, I continuously believed I was wrong. And I started doubting a lot of my decisions. There's days when you want to blame yourself, days where you feel like I wish I should have died. Days like where you say, I can't believe I did that. Who was going to take care of my brothers and sisters? And that guilt was the constant that I had from my parents. I think my mom felt like I betrayed her too, that I would do something like that.

It was definitely because of what my father was telling her and making her feel bad as if it was her fault on top of everything else that's her fault. Now I've become a reason for her to get more abuse rather than the people that she looks towards to just love and be affectionate with and are her safe place. Now I've made her not feel safe.

I knew she was in more pain than I was. That's where I left it. I said that I will leave this house. I will go be someone's wife. I'm going to live in a different home. I don't have to deal with this, but she has to live with him forever. So if I make her life harder, it's just going to cause her more pain.

I was 18 years old and I got into a few universities, but my father wanted us to stay close to him. He's got four daughters. He is concerned about us losing our virginity and being used goods that no one's going to want to marry. He wants us to be these non-tainted girls that he's going to marry off to someone that he pre-approved like a car.

I knew at that time I was never ever going to marry anyone. I hated the idea of being with someone that could potentially be like my dad. I went to Berkeley College in Paramus, New Jersey.

I started my first day and everybody has got these tiny, tiny shorts on and tiny skirts on, belly button pierced. Everything's out there and I think it's magnificent. I wanted to be just like them.

My dad gave us all credit cards and no cash ever because he wanted to know where we were spending our money. So I went to this shop that same day after orientation and it was called Level 10. And I shop like a crazy person and I get all these really small articles of clothing. And for the second half of the orientation, I had completely changed my clothes.

And I looked like a total different person. I had shorts on, I had a belly shirt on, and I felt like I fit in. I noticed that a lot of boys were looking at me. And that's really the first time that I felt I was being checked out. And that day, I felt like I had lived 18 years of my life that I was yearning to live.

So for my entire time at university is I went to school in one outfit. I was there in a different one. And then I came back in the same one I wore in the morning. I take 8 a.m. classes. I wanted to be done by 1 p.m. every day. And I had to be home at 7. And in those hours, I would drive to the city. I would go meet my friends at their place. I would hang out at the mall. I would flirt with guys everywhere.

So a whole world was opening up for me. My father, in this year, he had talked to me a bunch about, hey, you know, you're 19 years old, 18 years old. It's time for you to meet some guys. So after university, you can get married and that's what you're going to do. He said to me, he's like, you need to do this. If you want to keep going to school, you need to do this.

And so I did. I agreed that I would go meet potential candidates. My dad calls me around 10 a.m. after we've had this conversation at eight. He's like, you have a flight to New Delhi from JFK Airport on Continental Airlines at 1 p.m. And you need to get there ASAP and go meet these guys. And that's it. And that's all he said. And he hung up the phone because he did not want to hear me respond.

I looked at my mom and I said, he said that I have to be at the airport by 1 p.m. And she didn't say anything. She's like, well, you better hurry up. You got to go. I didn't get to the airport two hours before, as they say for international flights, you have to be there two hours before. I was less than that.

So the TSA agent told me, you can't board the flight. And I said, look, I only have a small piece of luggage. I just want to get on the plane. I have to get to the other side. And he was not having it. And being the angry person and taking my anger out on other people, I ripped up my e-ticket and I threw it in his face. And he proceeded to call the police. My brother grabbed my hand and we went to the Air India booth.

And the only flight available at the time was for a 3 p.m. flight from JFK to London, London to New Delhi. I get on this plane and I sit down. I was looking around and I see a guy looking in my direction. And I look back at him, wait a couple minutes, and I look that same direction again and he's still looking at me.

At this point, I'm frustrated. So I just, I don't look in his direction anymore. And I'm sitting next to this really old lady that I just knew was going to be a horrible flight. She was going to snore. I had all these like preconceived notions that as I sit and stare at her, I look to the front of the aisle and I see this guy walking towards me. And I think he's coming to me, but he's not. He's going past me to his seat. But as he's walking by, he says, hi, hi.

and continues to go to his seat. I think about it for a moment and I think to myself, "Well, he's not bad looking. Let me go get another look at this guy."

So I start to walk to the back of the plane and I don't actually see him. I get to the back. I realize what I did and I pretend that I am using the bathroom and I manifest that there is a bathroom here and I just live it. Like I count that it's going to take me 60 seconds. I put some eyeliner on using my mirror and my phone and I stand there and then I walk back in confidence as if I knew what I just did and it's totally okay.

As I'm walking back, I don't notice him. So I go sit back at my seat, but I turn one last time to see if he's behind me and he's looking at me and he points to me, then points to himself and then points down to the seat next to him.

And without a thought, without a single thought, I pick up my bag and I go and I sit next to him and I introduce myself. I say, hi, I'm Mev. And he tells me his name is John. And that's the first time John and I met. As we're learning about each other and he's telling me a bit about himself, I immediately ask him his age.

And I start guessing it. I'm like, are you 22, 24, 25? And he's 29 years old and I'm 19 years old. I say to him, well, at least you're not 30. The flight doesn't take off for another hour. We're stuck on the tarmac. He and I start getting a bit cozy and close. And he tries to kiss me. And I tell him, look, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know what it's going to feel like to you. But I've never done this before.

He says, don't worry about a thing. I will lead you into it. And that's exactly what he did. And that was how at 19 years old, I had my first kiss. But that plane ride was seven more hours long. In that seven hours, we talked about everything. He told me about where he was going. He was going to Ibiza. And I had told him I was going to Delhi, India.

I didn't tell him why I was going to Delhi because I'm sure he would think that it's absolutely absurd a 19 year old is going to go find a husband. So I didn't want to make anything weird. I didn't want to say anything out of the ordinary. I just showed him the best version of myself. It was a true version, but I eliminated anything that would create any confusion or doubt as to my intentions. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

I learned that he is a real estate broker in New York City and I am at university and he and I are both just about a 30 minute drive from one another. Outside of kissing on the flight, we nearly ended up joining the Mile High Club. So I was having a lot of first experiences on this plane and it was incredible. It was completely brand new to me and I was blown away. And by the end of the flight, I knew I had fallen in love with him.

As this flight came to a close, we exchanged information and he was going to leave Heathrow Airport to meet a friend and then fly to Ibiza. And I had to catch my connecting flight. He asked me to stay with him and I knew I couldn't. I said, I have to go. There are people waiting for me. I need to see my family. My sister is there. I told him everything but what I was actually going to do. He understood everything.

And as I was walking away, I stopped and I looked back at him and I thought to myself that maybe he's really not the one. And I just met him to learn about what it could feel like to like someone and that someone better was waiting for me in India. And with that thought, I carried on and I didn't turn back.

And I didn't doubt my decision to go to New Delhi because there could be even better out there. When I got to New Delhi, I was completely jet lagged, but the mission was a go. My sister took me to a restaurant and she insisted I go inside and meet this guy.

And she walks away and I wait a very, very long time. And by long time, it was an hour before I went in. And I watched this guy from outside. I roamed the area and he didn't leave. It's like as if he was also on a mission to meet me come hell or high water. So then I finally go inside and I introduce myself and he introduces himself to me. And he has an English accent.

He went to a fancy university. He was telling me everything about him, and he definitely loves himself. Then he wanted to learn about me. Something happened to me in that moment that said that he sounds so wonderful. He's just not my wonderful person.

He was not rude. He complimented me, made me feel comfortable. He asked me, he's like, what are your hobbies? I said, I have none. What do you like to do? Nothing really. Do you have any favorite TV shows? I don't like anything. Do you like to cook? I don't like to cook. So anything he would say, I would say the opposite to make him dislike me. And I kept that going for a really long time. Finally, he said to me, he's like, you seem like a really nice girl.

But I don't think this is going to work between us. And that's when I had change of tone. And I said to him, really? I thought it was going really well. And we were being really honest with each other. Could you do me a favor and call my dad and say that you're not interested in me?

And he did that. He actually picked up the phone, called my father and said, she's very nice. I don't think we are compatible. It's not her. It's me. Took the entire blame on himself because it's much easier for a guy to say no than for a girl to say no in an Indian family. The second time I did it again. And again, wonderful guy. Very, very pleasant. Perfect for someone else. Someone else is perfect.

By this time, my father had flown to India and he was saying to me, he's like, something's completely, completely off. What's going on? Said the third guy, I'm going to meet him with you there. And why don't we do a big old family thing at our house in Jaipur? So I drive from New Delhi to Jaipur, meet him in Jaipur. My mom is there. He's there. My brothers are there. My sisters are there. Everyone is there.

This guy comes to our home and he asks to speak to me in private. We go upstairs on my parents' rooftop. We're talking with each other and he seems like a nice person. And I tell him the truth. I was like, look, you're not for me. I don't think this is going to work. I hope you understand. He was not okay with it. Third time is not a charm. He's like, I can't believe I just got rejected by a reject.

I didn't say anything further to him. He went downstairs and he asked his family to get up and they all left. And my dad just looked at me. He's like, what did you say? And I said to him, I was like, he called me a reject. That's the only line I told him. And my father was like, he called you a what? He was like these people bastards. Like nobody calls my daughter a reject. You're perfect. And yeah, that was it.

And then I flew back to the States. And when I landed here, I sent a text message to John and I said, we should meet up. He texted me and he said, why don't you meet me in the city after your classes are done?

I go see him and he seems like a wonderful person. I got to know him a bit more. We went out and had lunch, which was lovely. And we kissed a little bit more. And I just got to feel a lot of affection from him. So I said to him, look, my entire family is in India right now. Why don't you come to my house? And that's what he did. He came to my house in New Jersey. And that is the first time I had sex.

We learn so much about each other. We fall in love with each other. And I still maintain the fact that I'm not going to be with you forever. I tried to break it off a few months in, telling him that, look, this is bad for you. This is bad for me. We really shouldn't do it because we can't be a thing. And you don't understand. You don't know my father. But John was always optimistic that I'm making him out to be worse than he is and that he was going to tolerate it.

A few months go by and John proposes. He brings me a ring and he says, look, I love you. I want to marry you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I say yes, because I'm also falling head over heels, but I don't have a plan. I don't know what I'm going to do next.

In this interim, my dad realizes that I've been going to the city a lot and the easy pass shows that I go in and out of the city every day. And he calls me down and says, look, I know what you're doing. I know you're messing around with someone, but you better know that you are going to marry an Indian guy. I blow it off. I pretend like I don't know what he's talking about and I let it go. We're all going to pretend like it's nothing.

it starts to get worse. I start defying my father's orders, which are, you can't do anything on the weekend. And I told him, look, I got the school trip on the weekend. I have to go to it. And I just make all these things up as I'm going along. He doesn't want to fight me really on it because he doesn't want me to be out of control. So he says, go, go on this trip. I get to the school and

I feel like I'm at a comfortable point where no one is following me or no one's near me. I leave the school and I drive to the city to go see John. And I start doing that more regularly. My dad, eight months in, says to me, look, now you've pissed me off. Now you've managed to piss me off. You see this guy in a photo. He pulls out a photo. He's like, this is the guy you are going to marry.

And I looked at my dad. I said, I know you're angry. I understand. But this this can't be the solution. Like, I felt like he was using this man to torment me. It was an immediate trigger to the fact that I may end up the way my mom did with someone she doesn't love, who is not kind to her and a decision that isn't mine.

I start worrying. I start panicking. And I'm like seeing this guy in the middle of the night now and while I'm dreaming that I'm his wife. And I go to John's place and I say to him, my dad is about to marry me off to this guy and we need to do something about it. Either you marry me or I marry someone else.

And John said, look, you have a curfew. You have to get home. Your father is going to he's going to come looking for you. And I had a low jack in my car. So he knew exactly where I was. And John takes this key from an armoire and he says, if it points to you, you're staying. And it points to me about 10 times. And I was looking at him like a key is going to decide my fate. Fantastic.

I was scared. I was terrified. I was like, I have to make it look like I'm coming home, but I can't go back home. So John rents a zip car. I start driving ahead of him in my car. So to my parents, it looks like I'm coming home. And I drive this car all the way to Crestgill, New Jersey. And I leave it about a half a mile from my house in a restaurant parking lot called Sam Dan's. I'd send him a text saying, I left the key on the car wheel.

I'm not coming back home. I'm going to stay with John forever. I get into John's car, coming back to the city. I turned off my phone and that was it. Even though I was just 19 years old at the time, I genuinely love John.

And the fact that somebody could take me away from that and then I would have to spend the rest of my life with someone I don't love knowing that someone I loved I left behind was unbearable. The next morning when John turned on his phone, there was a message from Detective McCarthy from New Jersey that said, you are in for kidnapping charges. You need to turn yourself in immediately.

My parents were able to file kidnapping charges, one, because he knows everyone, and two, because they found an abandoned car at a restaurant. We panic. He panics. He's like, we need to do something. So he calls his parents, who live in Larchmont, New York, and he says to them, Mev's with me. I'm in for kidnapping charges. We need to turn ourselves in to the Mamaronek police.

We take the Metro North to Larchmont. His mom picks us up and then we drive to the police station. Once we're at the police station, I have to talk to Detective McCarthy. And Detective McCarthy says to me, you're on the missing persons list. Do you know what that is? And I tell him that, yes, I do know what that is. I didn't know I was on there.

He yells at me, what were you thinking? It's very scary. Do you know this guy? Like asking me a lot of questions that have nothing to do with his police or FBI status. So I give the phone back to John and he talks to him for a couple seconds and we hang up. I tell John, I was like, you know, the one thing that will keep me here with you is if we got married. Otherwise, I'll always feel this obligation towards my parents that

I knew I needed someone to hold me. And if I wasn't married to him, I would probably be back with them. So he agreed, but it was Saturday. All the courts are closed. My in-laws knew a judge. They were friends with a judge whose house we went to. And my mother-in-law were there, my father-in-law and my sister-in-law, John and I.

And here is our judge friend. And he puts on his black coat and he brings out some legal documentation and he reads us our vows. And we say, I do. And that is how we were legally married on a Saturday in a judge's living room.

Now I'm legally wed to this person. Now I'm legally tied to this person. Now I'm emotionally tied to this person. And now I'm traditionally tied to this person, which is what I needed on my side to make it that I don't need to go back home. Then I confidently called my parents and I said, look, I married him.

And my mom and dad were screaming in the background, disappointed, disgusted, and said to me, do you know that 50% of white people get divorced? They have no values. He's going to cheat on you. You have no idea what you got yourself into. He'll leave you on the streets and just awful, awful things to try to convince me to come back. But I wasn't going to leave.

My brother, who was a couple years older than me at that time, was very angry. So he said some really bad things, hurtful things like, I'll kill you, I'll hurt you, all in anger, all in rage. So we decided to file a restraining order against my brother and my father. They got a call from the police and they got a letter in the mail and they were told they can't contact me.

I just knew for the comfort of my in-laws and my husband that that is what they wanted and that is what it would take to feel safe. But it was like turning my family over to the authorities and saying, you mean absolutely nothing to me and I am able to turn you over. I'm willing to give up 20 years of living with you for this guy that I've known for nine months. That was a true betrayal.

Especially for my mom who suffered in silence and took my dad's abuse and that the flip of a switch, I was able to leave all that behind for all the suffering she did so she wouldn't break us up as a family. And I did it in a heartbeat. She must have thought, what did I teach her? Same thing for my brother and sisters who were all there for each other.

It felt like I was doing the worst thing in the world because I loved my siblings so much and all we had was each other our entire lives. It'll never feel normal. I was hurting the most important people in my life. You were told you are nothing and that she feels you're a danger and she picked something else. But they couldn't see the situation I was in.

And that just made it that much darker and that much more upsetting. I left the house March 6, 2009. We got married March 7, 2009. And then we had another wedding on March 20, 2009. And I wore a white dress. I got my hair done. I got my makeup done. We had 50 of our closest friends there. And it was very nice. I was still devastated that my family couldn't be there.

I was 80% happy, but there was that 20% that was missing. This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe.

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I had an amazing 10 days because it was away from the pain. It was away from the sadness. When we got back, I told John that I am really hurting and I'm extremely depressed. I can't live like this. And I love my family. We're very, very close, especially my siblings. And I need them back in my life. So we had these conversations back and forth until one day he decided to call my parents. My father was in India at the time.

And when we called, he was just grateful. He was grateful that I was okay. He was grateful that John called like very, very thankful. Because how do you even sleep at night if you can't get in touch with your child? And he said to my dad, I'm sorry about how things played out, but I want to make things work. And she loves you and she's in a lot of pain and I can feel that you're in pain too. How can we make this work?

And my dad said to him that that was one of the most unbelievable things and respectable things that someone's ever done. My dad flew back immediately and his parents and my parents and a few of my siblings, not my older brother because he was so upset from the whole thing, came and met at this restaurant on the Lower East Side and we talked. They were sad. They were hurt, but they weren't yelling at me at dinner. They weren't making a scene. They were just telling me how they felt.

And that was very, very new. My mother got to tell me how heartbroken and sad she was. And seeing her so heartbroken and sad, because I'm directly tied to her pain. And the last thing I want to do is cause her more of it. So she expressed her pain and I said, I'm very, very sorry.

And he, my father, got a chance to tell me how much pain he was in. But then he said something to me that I didn't expect out of him. And he said more than anything, he was worried that this guy, he said to me, I was scared that he was going to hurt you. And what would I do? I love you so much.

And in those moments, so much happened. My father got to show me this love and it came through loss. It came through fear. It came through emotions that he probably wouldn't have felt any other way. That's when our relationship really started to change. They asked John to convert. John said to me that if this is what makes you happy and this is what makes your family happy and this brings peace, then I'm happy to do whatever it takes.

That coming Friday, my father invited us to the mosque and we all sat down and he said his Shahada, you say a small prayer to convert and they called him Jahan Sharif, that was his Muslim name and he was happy to do it. And then the next Friday, we all went back to the mosque

And my parents aren't extremely religious, they're more cultural than religious, but they wanted to do a wedding at the mosque and they invited 300 people, unknown people, to come to this wedding. So I went there, we said "Kabul" three times, which means I do. I mean it turned out to be exceptionally beautiful, everyone gave us their blessings, and we went back home.

Time goes on and my parents are bringing him into the family. And my dad really, really likes him. He feels like I couldn't have made a better choice. He's falling in love with this guy. Everyone is falling in love with him and thinking that he's the best addition to our family. And John is feeling the same, that my parents are so welcoming. Their mindset's changing. The way they think, the things that they believe are completely different from what they were months ago.

Love is not conditional. And my parents showed me that they have unconditional love for me. They went against the entire world and made it okay. They said that she is the priority and we're going to be what she needs us to be. And she will be this person and no one is changing her.

I was only 20 at the time and I needed to graduate college and he needed to build a career. So we waited, we tried to enjoy each other, we tried to learn about each other. I learned his middle name after we got married. I didn't know what he liked to eat. I didn't know what his favorite color was. So there was so much exploring happening after we were married that there was no time to think about anything but us. We cultivated a very, very beautiful relationship and became the best of friends.

So now we have an eight-year-old and a six-and-a-half-year-old that are very beautiful, very healthy, but a product of love, a product of two people that fought to be with each other and will continue to do so for just the sheer idea of loving and living and spending time with each other. Things I wasn't exposed to as a child, things my parents didn't have time for as a child.

In a family like mine, where you're grown up with these traditional values and these cultural religious values all co-mingled together, it's important to remember if the person across from you actually truly loves you, they're going to see past all the bounds, just like my dad did.

That was his eight-year-old boy trauma, his 18-year-old young man trauma, him trying to raise six kids in a foreign country trauma that eventually became something beautiful because I was able to teach him something different. And the fact that he accepted it was unbelievable, was beautiful, that he came around in just two months, whereas there are other people whose parents never, ever talked to them ever again.

He had this realization that love is the most important thing. And I know it wasn't temporary because after that, my brother married the woman he wanted to. My sister married the man she wanted to. And my younger sister is marrying her boyfriend in about a year. So my dad, nothing surprises my father anymore.

Eight years ago, my father went to India. His mom wasn't feeling well. She passed away. And my mom and him hadn't spoken in two years. They had nothing to say to each other. No love, no affection. She did her wife duties by folding his clothes, making him dinner, but that's about it. And she went to him and she said, I'm very, very sorry that your mom passed away. It's very hard not having parents. I haven't had parents most of my life.

And he started talking to her and they started talking to each other and he told her memories of his mom. And then he went into stories about his father before his father passed. We were all watching it happen. It was as if two people were meeting for the first time. And this is the first time he's telling my mom about, you know, his mom and his dad and some of their stories. He asked her the same day if she wanted to go have food with him. Yeah.

And she said, yes. And that was just the start of it. The last trip they took was to India. They have a home out there and they went all around India and they were gone for eight months. This is the kind of stuff they do now to spend time with each other. It's like two people are dating each other. Now it's their time to enjoy each other.

He doesn't talk about anything in the past. He just talks about his wife. He loves my mom. My mom loves him and adores him. They were both so young. They were teenagers when they got married and had kids. And they fell in love in their early 50s. It was just, it's absolutely amazing. I think that day when I ran away and put him through this actual parental pain, he really woke up.

So I feel like I took some of that power away from my dad too when I left him. Like you're not in charge. There's no greater pain than knowing that your child might be in trouble. Now feel all your feelings and suffer. And he did just that. He gave into it. He gave up. Which is how he learned to show his love or feel his love was through this catastrophic way.

I haven't heard him raise his voice at all. He's a mellow guy. He loves his kids. He loves spending time with his grandkids. And he changed. And through me, my dad discovered himself. He discovered my mom. He realized that he has six children who are able to and should do what they want to do. All of that is life-changing. Even though I was just 19 years old at the time, maybe I went about it the wrong way.

How I left them and the car and the kidnapping charges and all that. Maybe that was not the right thing, but I knew it was the right decision. And had I made that decision, I could be with somebody that could be very abusive in a foreign country. That is not a reality that I wanted to live.

So, although it was the hardest decision of my life, my future projection of what it could be had I gone the way that they wanted me is far worse. I essentially took everything that mattered and I crushed it. I said, you don't matter. This matters. And that's what sucks. That's what hurts. Is that I can't, for the life of me, figure out what I could have done differently.

It's like murder. You know, it's that's the most painful and difficult thing to cope with even today. But it was the only way that is what made the change happen. I want other people to have the courage to make that decision for themselves. Make that one decision. Doesn't have to be everything. But once you get a taste of how it feels to live your decision, whether right or wrong, it's yours.

Take back that control. Take back that power. Because power in other people's hands, that's not doing anyone anything, especially in the way of love. And you'll make it work. You'll try. Where when it's someone else's decision, we don't try. We fall with their decision because that's what's expected of us. So you can suffer with someone else's or live with yours.

Today's episode featured Mev Shubet. You can find out more about Mev on Instagram at Mev Shubet. That's M-E-V-C-H-U-B-E-T. You can also reach out to her over email at mshubet at gmail.com. Mev has also written a memoir about her experiences called The First of Many Flights, A Love of East and West, which you can find on Amazon. Also, a special thanks to Jason Blaylock for bringing us today's story.

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Today's episode was co-produced by me, Jason Blaylock, and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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