I could fill volumes with the past, but ultimately the past is just that...the past. I am doing my best to move forward and build a new life for myself made on my choices, my goals, and surrounding my self with only the people and things that I like. I've spent enough time in the trenches being surrounded by just the opposite.
I am the cautionary tale that few ever hear about. That is, in part, because most marriages that start off so rocky as mine never make it 25 years. They fail early on, people move on and so it goes. But not my marriage. Not my life.
I got pregnant at sixteen years of age. He was 21. I thought he hung the moon. He was older and cool and mysterious. He thought I was challenging. I was not an overly promiscuous girl. In fact I'd only had two sexual relationships prior to meeting the man that would become my quarter of a century husband. That sounded like a small number back then and it sounds even smaller to me now.
My husband to be had been in a very serious motorcycle accident when he was sixteen. I only tell you this that because of that he was under some false idea that he couldn't impregnate anyone. Hence, we didn't use condoms. That's also a huge mistake for many reasons to any of you idiot kids out there just having sex willy nilly with everyone. So, low and behold, I got pregnant. He denied she was his. Finally his grandfather, the only person in the world the man respected, told him that he needed to man up and marry me. And so he did.
I didn't get the romantic proposal that every teenage girl dreams of. I got a sour expression with cold hard eyes and the ever so romantic words of "well, I guess we better get married..." No fanfare. No excitement. Just the beginning of a twenty five year guilt trip.
As a punishment I suspect, he wouldn't let me know when we were going to get married. Therefore, I didn't get to have my Mother there with me. I picked him up at work at 1030 in the morning and we went up to the justice of the peace office here in town. After we said our required vows, I took him back to work. He didn't kiss me. He just got out of the car and left.
I went to the bank where my Mother worked and proceeded to break her heart by telling her I'd already gotten married. I can only imagine how it shattered her world. Her only child, pregnant, now married, and moving out that night. It was a disaster.
We lived together for a month before he figured he couldn't stand me anymore. I moved back home with my Mom. My body was changing and I was broken hearted. I was also still in high school. But I quit when I found out he was dating the girl that sat in front of me in one of my classes. So I broke my Mom's heart again by denying her the privilege of ever seeing me graduate high school. I did, however, go and get my GED and that made her feel a little better, but not much. She never said anything about how disappointed in me she was. My Mother was always loving and supportive. I just realized through the years as my children grew how it must have felt to her.
The idiot husband came to the birth of our daughter in March of 1987. He came into the delivery room with me and held my hand during the c- section. Again, I realize my Mom should have been in there, but she stepped down and made way for him hoping that it would work out for us and that her grandbaby would have a family to live in.
He started coming around and seeing me and the baby. He stayed here with us for a few weeks and eventually we decided to move me back out to the country and try again.
I won't bore you with the story of the 25 years. I was a stay at home mommy with my daughter until one day out of the blue I decided to go to nursing school. Jessica was four when I entered nursing school and five when I graduated the following year. My mother finally got to see not one but two graduations as I graduated from college and got pinned in a ceremony for nurses. She was quite proud of me. And I was proud that she was proud.
I found out right after I started my first nursing job that I was pregnant again. I was two weeks away from getting a tubal ligation. I felt like my whole world was crumbling. Here I had finally had the chance to work and make money as a nurse and my daughter was in school and now I would have a baby to think about. I cried and cried. Idiot husband was the happy one. How odd.
I gave birth to my second daughter in May of 1993. She was beautiful and perfect and it seemed like life was going to work out well. I got a new job making more money. Idiot husband took care of the girls at night. My Mom came and watched them for me while I slept in the daytime. It was ...manageable.
Then a few days before Christmas my Mother had a heart attack and my life drastically changed, never to be the same again. They didn't think she would survive the damage to her heart. She was on a ventilator in a town fifty miles away for a month. Stayed in the hospital almost two months before getting to come home. Meanwhile, my father became ill. For a while there I was dealing with her in the hospital in Wichita Falls and him in the hospital and then a short stint in a nursing home here at home. I was always on the run. Then one day in February of 1994, I came home after a long surgery with my mother and found him dead in the floor of his house.
So we dealt with that. Notifying my Mother was hard. They had been divorced since I was ten but neither had ever remarried or dated. Watching her tell him goodbye in the funeral home was even harder. She was in her wheelchair too weak to walk. She stood up and leaned over and gave him a little kiss and said "you are the only man I ever loved."
Then we went to the service and she had to sit in the limo with the window rolled down because her condition was so bad she couldn't be out in the cold February wind.
She went back into the hospital shortly thereafter and the next few months were filled with dialysis three times a week and multiple surgeries and finally she took her last breath on a dismal Saturday morning 3 days after my baby girl turned one year old.
All of a sudden I was an orphan. And that really hit me hard. I loved my Daddy but my Mother was my best friend. My Daddy had made my life difficult and my Mother had always picked up the pieces and kept me together. She had always been the one to show unconditional love and support for me and without her, I didn't have that anymore.
Idiot husband had no idea how to support someone emotionally. Yes, he was there some of the time. Yes, he held me one day when I cried. Shortly after all that, he threatened to commit me to an asylum because I wasn't over it all yet and I couldn't dig out of the depression and sadness.
I really don't remember much of the next few years. I was numb. Going through the motions with my kids, missing my parents and feeling lost and alone. And to be honest that lasted for a long long time. I didn't seek help. I didn't know or believe that I could be helped. I mean it's not like they were going to bring her back. She would always be dead and I would always be without her. He always said, "you have my family."
How bittersweet it is now to see how right I was in knowing that I didn't. My family still talks to idiot husband. He is still friends with them on Facebook and they of course don't really care enough about me to know how that stings given the fact that his family threw me into isolation instantly. But that's ok. I don't need my family. I sure as shit don't need his idiot family.
So I have my daughters. Jessica is 24. Alyssa is 18. Jessica and her husband live outside of town in a cute little house with their two daughters and Alyssa lives with me part of the time and with her four year boyfriend the other part of the time. Don't bother judging me on that. Either stay here because you want to read the continuing saga of my new life or get the heck out if you think you can do better given MY life and MY circumstances.
Idiot husband and I split up on November 13, 2010. My divorce was final Oct. 11, 2011.
I am now officially single again and I realize that I know nothing about so much of life.
I had stayed home for nine months just being depressed and never leaving the house thinking that he would realize that he loved me and come back. But he didn't.
I didn't get a nursing job around here because I am just not ready for that headache and drive yet again.
So my daughters both work at a local cafe and a cashier position came open working with them. They offered it to me and I took it. Since I didn't have to go out to find it, I assumed God sent it to me so I was not about to disregard that.
So here I am.. recently divorced...working as a cashier when I have a nursing license for any compact state. I'm out in the world...the world I was afraid to be in for so long. I'm meeting people. I'm learning to socialize and I'm seeing things from a different point of view than ever before.
I'm working on my photography more and more. And liking the images I produce.
My daughter told me this morning that she had told her husband last night that she had not seen me "happy" like this in a long long time. And I realized ...I am happy. I am happy and I am open to this new adventure and seeing where this journey might take me.
So follow this blog and I'll share my crazy or not so crazy adventures, thoughts, random musings. Or don't. I will still share. It's helpful to me and that's what I need to focus on these days.
Cheers and I look forward to sharing my life here.
