**Diary Entry**
I’ve already packed a bag in my mind, everything we’ll need to escape—me and my little boy—from my husband and his parents, away from this suffocating village. No, I won’t dedicate my life to their goats, cows, and endless vegetable patches. They seem to think that marrying Oliver signed me up for a lifetime of unpaid labour on their farm. But I never agreed to that. This isn’t the life I wanted, and I refuse to let my son grow up in this backwater, where the only entertainment is debating how much milk their prized cow, Buttercup, gave today.
When I first arrived after the wedding, it didn’t seem so dreadful. Oliver was attentive, and his parents, Margaret and her husband, came across as warm. The village even looked quaint—rolling green fields, crisp air, quiet. I thought, maybe I could adjust. But reality hit fast. A week after moving in, Margaret handed me a bucket and sent me to milk the goats. “You’re one of us now, Emily. Time to pull your weight,” she said with a smile that still makes my skin crawl. Me, a city girl who’d never lifted anything heavier than a laptop, expected to master goat-milking overnight. That was my first warning.
Oliver, it turned out, had no intention of standing up for me. “Mum’s right—everyone works here,” he said when I tried to protest. And so began my new life: up at dawn, feeding livestock, weeding, scrubbing floors, cooking for the whole household. I wasn’t a wife—I was unpaid help. If I dared ask for a break, Margaret would roll her eyes and lecture me: “Women in my day worked themselves to the bone without a peep!” Oliver stayed silent, as if it had nothing to do with him.
My three-year-old son is the only light left. Watching him play, I know I can’t let him grow up here, where his future is either farming or leaving as an outsider. I want him in a proper nursery, learning, seeing the world. Here? There isn’t even decent internet to download cartoons. When I mentioned enrolling him in an art club in the next town, Margaret scoffed: “What’s the point? Better he learns to milk a cow—that’s useful!”
I’ve tried talking to Oliver. Tried explaining how suffocated I feel, how this isn’t what I dreamed of. He just shrugs. “It’s how things are, Emily. What more do you want?” Then last week, I overheard Margaret planning to expand the barn, get another cow—and, of course, all the work would land on me. That was the final straw.
I’ve been stashing money away. Not much, but enough for train tickets to the city. An old friend promised temporary housing and help finding work. I keep imagining us boarding that train, leaving behind the goats, the cows, Margaret’s endless criticism. I dream of a tiny flat—just ours—where I can work, and my boy can grow up somewhere… normal. Where I can feel human again.
Of course, I’m terrified. Will I find a job? Will the money last? But one thing’s certain: I can’t stay. Every time I watch my son playing in the yard, I think—he deserves better. So do I. I won’t let him see his mother broken under the weight of others’ expectations.
Margaret says I’m “too city” to ever belong here. She’s right. I don’t want to belong. I want to be myself—Emily, who once dreamed of a career, of travels, of a happy family. And I’ll do whatever it takes to reclaim that. Even if it means stuffing a bag and running with my son to a place where no one will force me to milk a cow.
