Our Story: A Prologue

To say that Calvin is the love of my life is an understatement. Since they haven’t come up with a word that means “all the love in the world and then some, and then some more”, I’ll have to settle with the word in all its simplicity. Maybe I’ll make up a new word.

Calvin is also my best friend - if you tell me something in confidence, that confidence had better include Calvin (for this there are very, very few exceptions - so few that I can’t think of any right now). Calvin is such an extension of myself that I feel less comfortable, less like myself, when we’re not together. He makes me more… me.

I understand him. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that “gets” him, and he’s the only one that really “gets” me. Even when he’s making me mad (infrequent that it is), I still get him. I can make the connections and see his perspective even when we’re mid-argument (he can see mine too, but that confession doesn’t come until later). I let the stuff that needs to roll off, roll off; I let the stuff that needs to sink in, sink in.

I mean it literally when I say that Calvin saved my life. Not only in the heroic swooping in, kicking ass, and taking names that he so kindly performed during the whole drama with my ex; but also in helping me find my way back to myself, and then loving me even more when I did.

The me that existed at the beginning of our relationship is not the same me that exists today. I’ve done a lot of growing and changing over the ten years that we’ve been together. That growth and change could have meant dark things for our relationship; some people grow apart instead of together. We just got better, stronger, and deeper.

Calvin pushed me when I needed a push, slowed me down when I needed to pace myself, spoke when I needed to listen, and listened when I needed to speak. My inner mouse was slain, and now even if my strength is sometimes used against him (I actually insist on having things my way, sometimes, and voice the differences of opinion that I never would have voiced as the “old” me), I believe that the fact that I have this strength, now, is a source of pride for him.

I would also like to think that some of my “good stuff” rubbed off on him, but he’ll have to write a guest entry some day to talk about that. Which will probably take a multi-state petition with over 5,000 signatures to get him to do. Shall we start on it now?

We are in daily defiance of the statistics. Most of us already know that the divorce rate in America after a first marriage is from 41% to 50%. A figure many may not know is that divorce rate after a second marriage is from 60% to 67%, and even as high as 70% when figuring in blended families (such as ours). Those same statistics say that marriages between couples who live together before getting married fail between 70% and 85% of the time, and marriages where the couple’s relationship started as an affair fail up to 75% of the time.

We’re not perfect (shocker!). We never claimed to be. But our relationship and family grows stronger with every passing day and year. Thirteen years of friendship, ten years of living together, and six years of marriage, and Calvin and I are still ridiculously happy with one another. As Calvin is fond of saying, “I’ve never been this happy for this long, this consistently, in my life.” The four of us - me and Calvin, Michael and Marie - are happy and healthy and solid. We are all better now, together, than we ever had been or would be in our old lives. We took very bad circumstances, from our failed first marriages and the lives that me, Calvin and the kids endured, and turned it into a special kind of happiness that brings new meaning to the words “love”, “family”, and “home”.

So!  I am currently working on “Our Story” (alternate title, “How I Met Your Father”?) and it will be forthcoming within the next week. I’m having a lot more fun writing about my relationshp with Calvin than I did the whole saga about my ex. I hope you all enjoy it.

Ahead of our time.

They’re finally figuring out what we’ve known all along.

Wicked tired.

I am so flippin’ tired. So tired that I didn’t get on-line all weekend long (except to post that song), or yesterday. So tired that I napped yesterday and still felt the crash at about 9:00. So tired that I neglected to change the tagline on this site for this week until just now. So tired that I’ve had two Diet Cokes, two cups of coffee, and now an overlarge iced tea just to get through the day. So tired that I skipped four days of workouts, then worked out one day, then skipped the next day. So tired that instead of trying to figure out what among the foods at home were diet-friendly last night, I just elected to have a bowl of edemame and a Kit-Kat.

I’m SO kicking my own butt in the weight room tonight. As soon as I get home from work. Which will probably be sometime around 6:00. Stoopid meetings.

Here. Look at my cats. I’m too tired to post anything more interesting. This is where they stare at me from every morning while I get ready for work - Oz from on top of the shower wall, Zoe perched on the bathtub.

As Promised

As I mentioned previously, Taoist Biker is doing a series on his collection of 80’s music. He included a couple of Phil Collins songs in his list, but didn’t include “In the Air Tonight” - which I’m sure most can agree is one of Phil’s quintessential songs. Now, he’s only including in the list those songs that he actually owns in his digital library, so we don’t have to accuse him of poor taste for leaving ItAT out. He even implied that the song surely would have made the list, if only he owned it.

Though I do still require an explanation for why “Easy Lover” wasn’t on his list, either.

Anyway, I promised I’d post my favorite version of the song - extended, with a sweet piano entry, a nice back beat, and some strings and such. Enjoy!

Edited to add - Okay, hmm. It seems to be stuck in buffer mode. I’ll futz with it and try to get it to work. It may be that the file format is different because the CD was an import, since the other songs I’ve linked in similar fashion seem to be working just fine. Nuts.

Edited again to add - Yep, it was the file format. Try it now!

Epilogue and Miscellany

I have the best readers on the PLANET. You guys have left some really great, really kind comments during this whole saga that took SEVEN parts to complete. That’s, like, four more parts than I anticipated it to take. Once I started telling the story, I kept backtracking with the thought, “Well, I can’t explain about THIS unless I tell them about THAT. Oh, and I can’t talk about THAT without mentioning this OTHER THING…” Fifty-seven million words later, and you have a rough script for a made-for-TV movie on Lifetime (nod to Taoist Biker, who is currently doing a series of 80’s music themed entries that you guys should, like, totally check out, oh mah gah).

Now. To answer a couple of questions you guys had.

“Why the heck didn’t you write about any of this before?” Eight years into having an on-line journal, an excellent question. And I have no answer. I guess it was just time to write about it. I didn’t expressly, specifically not write about it. There just seemed to be more interesting or fun or relevant things to be writing about. I guess? Really, I just dunno. Perhaps I just like writing about the present and the future, more than writing about the past.

Yes, my former sister-in-law still works for AcronymCo, but on a different campus. Our paths do not cross (I do sometimes have business at the other campus but I’ve never seen her, AcronymCo is a Very Very Big Company), but if they did I’m sure she’d be perfectly civil to me. There were a couple of occasions over the years that we’ve had to talk or e-mail with one another, and she was always perfectly polite to me. Perhaps she went home and bad-mouthed me to my ex and the rest of their family, but what I don’t hear won’t hurt me. By the way, I didn’t report her giving my ex my unlisted number because, well, I kind of understood why she would. He (and their mother, I’m sure) probably pestered her to DEATH. And it didn’t really end up hurting anything, since he dropped off the radar shortly thereafter. Plus, I’m nice as HELL.

Yes, the whole story about how Calvin and I came to be will be forthcoming. Suffice to say he was in the background during a lot of the crap I went through with my ex, and in the foreground a lot after my ex and I separated. Obviously, our friendship progressed to something more than that, despite the two of us inconveniently being in relationships at the time. You’ll get the full story, rest assured. Calvin did want me to mention, that tattoo I talked about getting in my final installment? He was there with me getting HIS first tattoo at the same time. I believe the words he spoke as he read that part of the entry were, “Hey. We did that together.” Accompanied by the cutest little pout, impossible to ignore.

Now, the reason that I kept the description of Calvin’s role during that time of my life to a minimum was because I wanted to keep the story about just what was going on with my ex. Truly, my friendship and subsequent relationship with Calvin had nothing to do with what was going on with my ex. I would have left my ex under any circumstances; Calvin was NOT the catalyst that made me leave him. He just happened to be wonderful and supportive and a priceless friend during that whole part of my life.

Come to think of it, he’s still wonderful and supportive and a priceless friend. And he’s dead sexy, too.

I will write more about what happened during my life as a Witness (and the more recent times, Jen, that they’ve unsuspectingly knocked on our door). Perhaps it will whet your appetite when I state that I pretty much completely blame them for my Grandmother’s decline into senility. I’m still angry at them in a way that I’m not even angry at my ex anymore.

So, the Epic Entries of Doom brought all of you up to February 1998. There were two and a half more years between that time and my very first entry in my very first on-line journal.Two and a half years of romance and drama and step-parenting 101, before I decided to regularly blurt it all out onto the internet for all the world to see and judge. So, yeah! Plenty of more stories to come.

I welcome any other questions you guys may have, I’ll answer them to the best of my ability! Thanks again for all the positive feedback and support.

———————

On a completely unrelated note, Darkhorse is now featuring Rockband every Thursday night. These dudes come and set up their stuff (and WHAT a setup it is) and the folks in the bar (the drunker the better) try their hand at it. Calvin and I had never seen it being… ah… performed before.

You guys, it was totally TITE.

So! I enlisted the uber-geek skillz of one Miss Jen. She is savvy in all things gaming - video and otherwise. So she helped me pick out what we needed (completely gleeful that she had helped “convert us” to gaming), I ordered on-line, and at lunchtime she and I drove down to Circuit City and picked it up.

Calvin doesn’t know about it yet, but he’s on his way home and will surely see the GREAT BIG BOXES on the loveseat. I anticipate a phone call any minute now.

And now you know what WE’RE doing this weekend!

Story of my Life: Part the Seventh

(Read previous installments: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six.)

The evening of my ex’s appointment, I received an irate phone call from the counselor. He was completely pissed that I used my ex’s appointment to have him served. But I truly, honestly thought that would be the best thing. I wanted my ex to have the support he needed to be talked down off the ledge when he flipped out. And flip out he did. While I was on the phone with the counselor, I heard my ex shrieking in the background. I heard from the process server later that the counselor had to cancel the rest of his appointments for the evening.

Suffice to say, I never went back to that counselor again. My ex continued for a few more sessions, and then he too stopped. I was sorry to learn that, because if ANYBODY needed psychological help, it was my ex.

Several evenings after the divorce papers were served, I was at home enjoying some peace and quiet, reading a book. I heard a polite knock on the door. Since the porch light had burned out, I could see nothing but blackness through the peephole. I cracked the door open and peeked out.

The door was forcibly thrust inward, nearly knocking me to the floor. My ex came bursting in, furious and violent. He grabbed me when I tried to run away. I wrenched myself away from him and raced up the stairs. I got to the bedroom before him and managed to shut the door and lock myself in. I raced to the phone and dialed 9-1-1. On the other side of the door, my ex was screaming that he had a knife, and he would kill me and then kill himself. I stammered the situation out to the 9-1-1 operator, simultaneously yelling to my ex that I had called the police. The yelling and pounding continued for a few more minutes, until sirens could be heard approaching.

All of a sudden, there was silence. Then I heard a voice I didn’t recognize calling from downstairs, “Ma’am?” I unlocked the bedroom door and peeked out - my ex was gone. I looked over the railing down to the front door, and saw two officers with guns drawn, cautiously entering the house. I called down that I thought my ex was gone, but they made me stay locked in the bedroom until they had checked the entire house, upstairs and down, all the closets, the garage, and the front and back yards.

I explained the situation to them and told them where my ex was staying. One officer left to track him down. The other officer asked if I had a light bulb for the front porch fixture. I said that I didn’t. So he left for a few minutes and came back with a light bulb he had purchased from a store down the street, which he then installed himself. I was so grateful to the police for their response that night that I was bawling my eyes out by the time the poor officer left. My ex’s viciousness didn’t break me down, but this act of kindness did.

The other officer found my ex where I said he would be, and my ex was promptly arrested for violating the TRO, breaking and entering (since the TRO specified that I had possession of the house), and assault (because he had threatened to kill me). He spent a couple of days in jail for his pains.

Not long after my ex was let out of jail, I was eager to remove him even further from my life. His belongings surrounded me at my house and I wanted it all out. Since I knew the provisions of the restraining order allowed for one opportunity for my ex to pick up his belongings, Calvin and I met my ex and his sister and her husband at my house so that he could do so. An argument ensued, my ex got out of hand, broke some things and threw a mug at me, and I ended up having to call the police again. My ex was arrested again, but this time I was also served with an order to appear at court (just paperwork, no handcuffs and sirens for me!). I didn’t realize an officer had to be present when my ex got his belongings, and as such I had violated my own TRO. I thought having the other people present would be enough. Hell, I was twenty-two and didn’t know how ANY of this stuff worked. But, my ex had to spend another couple of nights in jail, while all I had to do was go to court and be told by the judge, “What the heck are you even doing here? Case dismissed.”

Things carried on. I think the few times he spent some time in jail finally persuaded my ex to keep his distance, somewhat. Also, I updated the TRO to include that not only could my ex not physically contact me, he could not call me or write to me or contact me in any other way. I changed my telephone number. My ex got a lawyer and responded to my filing by filing divorce papers of his own - demanding not only all physical assets, but spousal support as well. So I had to get a lawyer as well, to combat his ridiculousness.

My ex’s sister also had (still has) a job at AcronymCo (that I got for her several years before, go me), and her position was such that she had access to my personnel file. She obtained my new, changed phone number, and gave it to my ex. And their mother. Who called me INCESSANTLY, especially during the first few weeks of our separation, but even well beyond. Her questions were always the same - why was I leaving? Why wouldn’t I give it another chance? Why couldn’t I overlook my ex’s flaws and give him another chance? Then my father-in-law called (which was a big deal, since he didn’t usually participate in the hub of communication in the family), and told me that The Family and The Congregation and The Lord (in that order, I suppose) would FORGIVE me for my sins, if I would just reconcile and admit I was wrong.

Can you BELIEVE that shit?

Nothing I said to them, nothing I told them about their son’s behavior, registered with them. They absolutely refused to believe anything I had to say, and completely sided with my ex and whatever story he was telling them. Even my ex’s sister and her husband, who had witnessed some of his nonsense, sided with him. Apparently I had “changed”. Obviously I was “ill” to be behaving the way I was. They urged me to seek medical and psychological help so that I could “find my way back”.

Holy shit on a cracker. Those fucked up people.

I talked to Grandma on a regular basis, too. Now SHE supported me, wholeheartedly. I told her a supremely edited version of what had been happening (I was three thousand miles away and on my own, and I didn’t want her to worry, the sweet old lady), and the kind of person my ex turned out to be. When I told her I was divorcing him she said, “Good! You do what you need to do. Do you need anything?” And the constant refrain that had begun almost as soon as I left back in ‘93… “When are you coming home?” (Actually, it was September of 1998 before I could actually get back to Maine for a visit… by that time Calvin and I were together, and OH MY LORD did Grandma LOVE HIM.)

So, life progressed, as it has a way of doing. The phone calls and psychotic messages slowed down a bit, but my ex would still randomly appear - parked across the street when I was at a store, circling the AcronymCo parking lot in his car, driving by the house at all hours. So I got a gun (a Lady Smith and Wesson 9mm, which I simultaneously love and am kind of afraid of), and I learned how to use it. Thank God I never had to, but having a weapon goes a long way toward making a girl living all alone with a crazy ex on the loose feel a lot safer.

I heard from my lawyer that my ex’s lawyer had dropped his case. That coincided with the time that my ex kind of fell off the face of the Earth. Which was fine by me - what did I care if my ex was letting court summons pass him by, and letting paperwork revisions go ignored? He was AWAY FROM ME and that was all that mattered.

I spent a GLORIOUS weekend finally removing all of the junk computer equipment from my home. By this time the stacks and piles had migrated to “his” computer room, all the closets, and the entire garage. Calvin and his kids (Marie and Michael, aged eight and thirteen respectively at the time) came over and helped me transfer armful after armful of CRAP from the house to a pile in the side yard. I hired “the guy” to come and haul it all away. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THAT FELT SO GOOD. You have no idea. Well, maybe you can guess.

I went shopping for new clothes (omg!). I bought a bicycle (one of those random weird items my ex forbid me to purchase). I got a puppy (GYPSY! Should have gotten a Rottweiler but I always wanted a Beagle). I nested. I went to the gym. I got my hair styled. I took all of my books out of storage and put them on the bookshelves that used to be entirely occupied by my ex’s programming texts. I cooked every single dish that I loved and pestered my Grandmother for all of her recipes. I went out with friends. I traded in the piece of junk my ex left for me to drive (he took the “good” car) for a brand-new Camaro - the first new car I’d ever owned. I delighted in just driving around listening to music. Oh, man, did I buy a TON of CD’s.

I got a tattoo. Heh. And a navel piercing. Heh again. I started rocking my true personality. My true self. Man, that was one of the best times of my life. It. Was. AWESOME. It still brings a smile to my face.

Every now and then I would get a call from my ex. He’d say he was in Florida. Then he’d say he was in California. Then he’d be back in Maine with his parents. Or else he wouldn’t tell me at all where he was. Since I was trying to get our divorce finalized, I’d take these calls. A couple of times he behaved as if he was planning on killing himself as soon as he hung up the phone. I fell for it… ONCE. The first time he called back with a “FOOLED YOU! YOU STILL CARE!” I set that misguided belief straight right away. I’m ashamed to say that I was angry at being played, and said back to him, “You know what? BLOW YOURSELF AWAY. I couldn’t care less.”

For months, my lawyer was sending paperwork everywhere we thought we could intercept my ex. His sister’s house, his friend’s house, his parent’s house. My ex didn’t respond to anything. I don’t think my ex realized that there was a one-year statute of limitations for him to respond to a petition of divorce. The final court date was approaching, and my lawyer and I made a last-ditch effort. I had to announce my intent to divorce in the paper. More documents were sent to all the addresses we had available - even the paternal aunt he stayed with in Maryland.

There was absolute silence, for once, from my ex.

On February 12, 1998, I met my lawyer in the judge’s chambers at the Maricopa County court. She reviewed the petition with us. She asked where my ex was. We explained all that we went through trying to get him to participate in his own divorce. She reviewed the statutes. Then she signed the document, stamped it, and said, “You’re divorced in absentia.”

Blink.

I figured there’d be an extension. I figured there would be more rounds of documents and trying to track my ex down. It was obvious that he was trying to prevent the divorce by avoiding it altogether. It didn’t work.

After ALL THE DRAMA I’d gone through for YEARS, from the beginning of our relationship until that point, the finalization of our divorce was kind of anticlimactic. I drove back to work from the court house in a daze. Nothing had changed from how my life was when I woke up that morning, but at the same time EVERYTHING had changed.

Irony of ironies, after several months of not hearing anything from my ex, he called me at work the very afternoon that we were officially divorced. He wanted to “try again”. He missed me. He thought that after so much time apart maybe I was missing him too. I said, “Not only would my answer be “no”, but it’s too late. We were officially divorced this morning.” He freaked out, and then hung up on me.

Fini.

Now, after ALL this stuff, my ex didn’t just drop out of my life forever. I know that he wandered as a homeless person in California for a number of months, before coming back to Arizona and moving in permanently with his sister. His parents moved to Arizona from Maine, and also moved in with my ex’s sister. The whole family is currently living a couple of towns away from me. For years I got what I call my “Annual Asshole Update”, in which my ex would call me and inform me of how much BETTER his life is without me, and how much he despises and pities me. There were also several e-mail exchanges, and his merry little bonfire back in ‘04. The last I heard from him was February of 2006 - a fun little e-mail which he wrote while he was “completely BLITZED” (words and capitalization his), in which he was STILL making “recommendations” on how I should live my life. I read it over again every now and then when I need a good chuckle.

Things have settled out. I am no longer looking over my shoulder. My ex went from the intimidating figure he used to be, to a pathetic bully that has no hold on my anymore. Dude, I could so totally take him. Still, I sometimes worry that there are long-lasting effects of my experiences (with him, with his family, with the Witnesses) that are going to pop up and smack me upside the head in the future. Some buried craziness or phobia or reaction that will come rushing up and burst out of me like that alien creature in the movie. Did I need more therapy? Was my self-imposed therapy (writing in my old hand written journals and here, talking about it and dissecting it with Calvin) enough to keep me from going crazy?

Eh. I think I’m fine. We are the sum of our experiences, and my experiences have served to make me a stronger, more together person. So even though it SUCKED to go through everything I did with my ex, I’m actually grateful for the things I’ve learned. I like the person I am today, and that person wouldn’t exist without the years that I lived that whole experience.

Still, if you can avoid brainwashing religions, marrying a crazy man, and marrying into a crazy family, I would highly recommend it.

THE END… NOT! There are so many more stories. I’m on a roll now, people! But this particular story starring my ex has now drawn to a close! Finally! Thanks for hanging in there.

Story of my Life: Part the Sixth

(Read previous installments: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five.)

I ran out of the house, barefoot in a t-shirt and undies, certain that my ex must be right behind me. I jumped in the car and backed out of the driveway just as he was opening the front door. He hollered something indistinguishable as I drove away.

There was only one safe place that I knew of that I could go, at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night, in the condition I was in. Minutes later, I pulled into Calvin’s driveway. When he answered the door and saw me standing there, shivering (it’s damned COLD in January in Arizona), he exclaimed, “What the hell?” and ushered me in. He grabbed a robe for me to wear while I told my story to him and his ex.

Let me pause here in the telling of this tale to mention that, despite everything that came after with Calvin’s ex, and my current opinion of her (and vice versa), I am still grateful for that time in my life when she and Calvin opened their home up to me and gave me a safe place to stay.

So. It seemed like I no sooner stepped into Calvin’s house that his phone began ringing. It was my ex, who knew that Calvin and his ex were the only people I knew well enough to drop on their doorstep like I did. I didn’t want to talk to him. That message was relayed. And yet he continued to call until Calvin took the phone off the hook.

The next day at work, the phone calls continued. I took the first few, but since my ex was vacillating wildly between contrition and abuse, I stopped taking his calls at about mid-morning. Which is when he showed up at AcronymCo, insisting to the security guard that he be allowed to pass so he could go to my desk. The guard, of course, refused. My ex had to be escorted off the property, without seeing me at all.

That evening my ex showed up at Calvin’s. Calvin’s ex went out to speak to him (Calvin was still at work) while I stayed in the house. I could hear my ex, wailing on the front stoop, while Calvin’s ex tried to talk sense into him. Finally, my ex went into some weird sort of collapse. An ambulance had to be called, and my ex was taken away for evaluation. It was a quiet handful of days while he stayed in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. But he bounced back in full force, calling me that evening from the hospital and sounding in fine fettle.

I stayed at Calvin’s for a short time, long enough to convince my ex to leave our house and stay with his sister, so that I could be allowed to “have some space to myself, and sort things out in my own home”. I caught him at a moment when he would grasp at the slim hope that I would “come to my senses” if I just had enough time, a fallacy that I fully enabled at that point, just to get him to cooperate. The first evening I went back to the house, I was met with an absolute AVALANCHE of discarded beer cans, dirty clothes, fast food wrappers, broken stuff, and dirty dishes. I’d never seen the house so destroyed in my life. I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning cleaning up and changing the sheets and blankets on the bed.

After about the first week I was alone in the house, I changed the locks on the doors and the mailbox. My ex had been coming and going freely while I was at work, and was being selective with which items of mail he’d leave for me. Since his psychosis-by-phone had not abated in the least, and had in fact grown worse, I felt distinctly uncomfortable with the thought that he could just waltz in whenever he wanted - perhaps even at night while I was asleep. Plus, by this time AcronymCo had banned him from any of their campuses, worldwide, as he continued to try to push his way through the guards and into my building.

He’s still banned to this day. Security has his picture in the “mug book”. Heh.

The day after I changed the locks I received a call at my desk. The caller ID said the call was coming from inside my own home. I answered, and my ex spewed forth the vilest diatribe I’d ever heard. How I was a bitch for pushing him away. How he could prove that he could get to me wherever and whenever he wanted. That there was nothing I could do to stop him from getting into his own home. That I had every reason to feel unsafe, because I wasn’t safe at all. Plus a lot of other, more colorful observations from his perspective.

When I got home I saw that he had broken into the house through a window in the side yard. I called “the guy” to come fix it, then immediately drove myself over to the courthouse and filed for a Temporary Restraining Order. I hired a very nice, speedy process server who successfully tracked down my ex and served him that very evening. More vicious phone calls ensued.

The flowers started arriving the very next morning. Day after day after day, for several weeks, my ex sent bouquets of flowers to AcronymCo. Each time I either threw them away or gave them to the security guards to decorate their stations. At the same time my ex would leave me voicemail messages (caller ID is so glorious for avoiding people you don’t want to talk to, but they can still leave messages). Some would be weepy and conciliatory. Some would be angry and threatening. Some would be songs recorded from the radio that apparently reminded him of me. Some would be just him crying for several minutes before hanging up. Some would be long strings of epithets, barely discernable in his raging voice. Some would be just silence, then a click.

He even tried getting through to me by calling my boss - a practice that she put a stop to in Very. Short. Order.

My ex and I were still seeing the counselor, separately. The problem was, my ex knew when I was going to be at my appointments (as I knew when he would be at his). I asked the counselor to walk me to and from my car when I had a session, but the counselor blew me off as being overly paranoid. So of COURSE one evening after a session I walked out to my car to discover my ex leaning against it. I reminded him that he was in violation of the TRO. He responded quite sunnily, making small talk and refusing to directly address what I was saying to him. He wanted to “go somewhere and talk”. He wanted to “get our friendship back”. He wanted to “go back to the beginning.”

He wouldn’t get out of my way so I could get in the car and leave, and even grabbed my arms when I tried to move past him. So I bumped the remote and set off the car alarm. People in the parking lot stared at us, so he let go of me and moved away from the car door. I got in and locked the doors. He started pounding on the window and hollering. I drove away. He got in his car and followed me. He harassed me all along the streets, swerving at me, racing to cut in front of me and then slowing abruptly, following so close behind me the bumpers touched. I drove toward Calvin’s, knowing it would be foolish of me to drive home where I would be alone and trying to race to safety into the house.

As soon as my ex saw where I was going, he peeled away, shouting and flipping me the bird as he passed me. So, I went home. I called the police and let them know about my ex’s actions. They tracked him down and gave him a warning to follow the terms of the TRO and stay away from me.

There was no longer any doubt in my mind that I should divorce my ex. Really, there hadn’t been a doubt since the night I walked out, but I was hoping to settle things peacefully and amicably, without the lawyers and the drama. Well, drama I already had in spades, so I decided to file on my own. I got a divorce kit from a stationary store, filled it out, filed it with the court, and then hired my trusty process server. I told him the date and time that my ex would be at his next appointment with the counselor. I figured that would be the safest place for my ex to be served, because he would surely flip out when he received the paperwork.

Maaaaan, was I right.

To be continued…

Story of my Life: Part the Fifth

(Read previous installments: part one, part two, part three, part four.)

The most profound things that happen in your life can take place in a throw-away moment; in an instant that you don’t recognize for being the creation point for the new life that lies ahead of you.

For me that moment came early one morning in April of 1995. I was making coffee in the back of the construction trailer, and Calvin came sauntering in to grab a cup before a meeting he’d arrived for. Our eyes met - I smiled, and he did that, “How YOU doin’?” look that has become OH so familiar to me now. I raised my eyebrows at him, he grinned. I may have rolled my eyes. He went to his meeting, I went to my desk. Later I asked a co-worker, “Who was that guy that came in for the meeting this morning?” She said, “Oh, Calvin? He’s repping AcronymCo for the building controls. He’s funny, isn’t he?”

Hah. Yeah, he’s funny.

Befriending Calvin was one more step on my way to regaining myself. I ended up working with him over a period of a couple of weeks monitoring alarms in the mechanical support building. He and I were stuck together for hours on end in a tiny little office. We got to talking. He got ME talking. And he listened. The more he listened, the more I talked (and I’m not the only one who has blurted their life story out into Calvin’s very sympathetic ears). And then HE talked and I listened - for he himself had an unhappy relationship and unhealthy home life. Both of us discovered in one another what we had been lacking; friendship, understanding and respect. We encouraged each other and commiserated with each other; we advised each other on how to make our individual relationships work.

I told my ex about this friendship, and my ex in turn was rather indifferent about the prospect of fostering any “couples” friendships. Still, the four of us - myself and my ex, Calvin and his ex - went out on a few occasions. We met up for movies once and dinner a couple of times. We had them over to our house for a meal, and they returned the favor. We all went out clubbing when I turned twenty-one in July of 1995. Every time we all went out my ex would act his usual creepy self, and Calvin and his ex would be uncomfortable at best, embarrassed or even angered at worst.

Months went by. The construction company laid me off, and I got a permanent position working for AcronymCo. Calvin and I, now working for the same company, had lunch together and hung out during breaks. Our friendship was as strong as ever, though we were starting to see in one another the qualities we wished our own spouses had. The unvoiced feelings between us grew, but we knew there wasn’t anything we could do about them.

Still, his friendship combined with my new job and trial-by-fire boss served to REALLY boost my confidence. To top it off, in June of 1996 I became the official and only breadwinner of the household. My ex quit his paying job to participate in a startup with one of the guys he’d worked with. A startup that paid no actual money, at any point ever, in the nearly three years that he ended up working for it. I struggled. I tried to be supportive, I really did. But my ability to be the good little wifey and put up with his bullshit was waning. I am all about following your dreams and pursuing what will make you happy. But I think we’ve established the fact that my ex does not have the ability to separate the achievable from the unachievable. I knew “startup guy” was scamming my ex and getting free work out of him, but my ex refused to see it. So I just let him go on his merry way while I worked overtime.

My ex started spending very long hours away from the house - which was fine by me, since when he was home he was usually drunk. He’d started drinking more and more to the point where an 18-pack would be gone in an evening. He kept very late nights, claiming he was working with “startup guy” long into the wee hours. Come to find out what he was REALLY doing was screwing some slutty little chick he used to work with at the paying job. AND frequenting a certain specific topless bar and a certain specific topless dancer.

Even though he was so very, very busy, he still managed to keep tabs on me. He’d page me if I wasn’t answering the house phone. He’d give me a list of things that he expected me to have accomplished by the next time we saw each other. He’d ask his sister or brother-in-law to “drop by unexpectedly” to see what I was up to. You know, while he toiled away from the house, working so very, very hard. If I wasn’t where he expected me to be, or doing what he expected me to be doing, he would rain a tirade of absolute poison all over me.

The thing of it was, the poison wasn’t working as well anymore. I didn’t believe him anymore.

I feel stupid about it now, but I have to admit that things became clear to me all of a sudden. Seriously, between one day and the next I suddenly came to the realization that I absolutely COULD NOT spend the rest of my life with this man. It was a weekend day in November of 1996. My ex was home, for once. He was upstairs on the computer (drinking his way through yet another case of beer), I was downstairs reading a book (oh, did I mention that we finally got couches, over two years after moving into the house?). He hollered down to me to bring him another beer. I closed the book and sat there thinking. Then I got up, walked upstairs, and said to my ex, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

He was poleaxed. And then he FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. He bawled. He wailed. He screamed. He fell on the floor and begged. And THIS is when I found out about the slut, and about the dancer. Because he assumed that was why I wanted to call it quits. Never mind the neglect, the emotional and mental abuse, and the fact that he was just a plain old creep. When he blurted all of this stuff out, it didn’t even anger me all that much. No, what was disturbing me was the complete and utter collapse I was witnessing. I backed away, and he leaped up and grabbed my arms and shook me - all the contrition and guilt turning in a single instant into violence.

I pushed him off me as hard as I could. He changed back in another instant into the sobbing ball of psychosis. He threatened to kill himself if I left. Which made me feel guilty. And trapped.

I scheduled us for marriage counseling. Really I just wanted to get my ex in front of someone who could diagnose his psychosis. I wasn’t overly interested in fixing our marriage - I wanted to get my ex stable enough so that I could leave without him killing himself. After I dropped the bomb on him, he alternated between being sickeningly sweet, and threatening. He’d apologize for his behavior, and then seconds later blame his behavior on me. Being around him started making me feel seriously uncomfortable. I told him I wanted to sleep separately - either he could take the couch, or I would. I just wanted some space away from him. For my own sanity. Plus I certainly didn’t want him touching me after he’d been with god-knows-who carrying god-knows-what.

The counselor was a nice enough guy - after the first session he scheduled separate appointments for the two of us. I told him a lot of how our relationship and home life was, and he didn’t have a lot to offer me in the way of a solution. My ex was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was prescribed medication, which he took a grand total of twice. Then he stopped and refused to take any more, because he “didn’t like the way it made him feel”, and it was “stifling his creativity”. He believed that the inventive, creative part of himself came from his disorder, and rather than fixing it he wanted to encourage it. The drinking, if anything, increased.

He started getting more physically abusive. He would grab me when I would try to walk away from an argument, leaving fingerprint bruises all up and down my arms. He would scream at me from inches in front of my face, throw things, and break things. And then he would start crying and apologizing and try to hug me, then wail and throw himself on the floor when I wouldn’t let him touch me.

Finally, after an evening of this kind of behavior, I went upstairs to go to bed. He’d agreed to take the couch. I was just getting under the covers when he burst into the room, leaped on top of me, and “demanded his rights as a husband.” He held me down and tried to force me, but his drunken state combined with my own “OH HELL NO” enabled me to push him off me.

On the night of January 5th, 1997, I ran downstairs in my t-shirt and undies, grabbed the car keys off of the mantle, and ran out the door. All the while I heard him screaming behind me, “You come back here right now or I WILL KILL YOU.”

To be continued…

Story of my Life: Part the Fourth

(Read previous installments: part one, part two, part three.)

The drive across the country is kind of a blur to me, now. The night we left, my in-laws followed us to the Maine border to make sure the truck would hold up okay. We (and by “we” I mean my ex) were driving a fifteen year old 1/2 ton Chevy with over 100,000 miles on it. My ex and his father had built a plywood box to affix over the bed, into which we stuffed just as much of our belongings as we could. And then we attached a tow dolly behind the truck to tow our car, which was also stuffed full of more crap. Trust me when I tell you that we had a LOT of expectations for that poor old truck to fulfill.

We stopped at a Burger King along the turnpike at the New Hampshire border and the four of us had a meal and said our goodbyes. Then it was my ex and me, on the road for six days straight. He drove, I navigated. I kept track of how many miles we were driving because the gas gauge was broken (and the speedometer, actually, but we could hardly get up to speed in the truck so getting pulled over was REALLY not an issue). We only stayed in a hotel twice - once in Memphis and once in Albuquerque. The rest of the time we got what sleep we could in rest stops along the way. We had five hundred dollars to our name and had to save every cent we could. We were down to splitting fast food meals and washing up in rest stop bathrooms.

We got a flat in New Mexico and had to offload a lot of our belongings out of the truck just so we could get the thing jacked up. The brakes gave out on the way down the mountains from Flagstaff into Phoenix on the final day of our trip, and my ex had to use the ol’ downshift technique to slow us. He told me to keep an eye out for runaway truck pull-offs.

Good times.

We pulled off the highway in what turned out to be the worst neighborhood in Phoenix, so we could call my ex’s sister (who had moved to Arizona the year before) from a payphone (it was 1993 and who had cell phones, yet?) and get directions to her apartment. She was all, “You guys are WHERE?!? Get the heck out of there!”

Once we finally arrived I think we slept for two days straight. We did some tentative exploring around, but I absolutely refused to drive the car on Arizona streets. Coming from my own little back woods experience, the six lane surface streets of Arizona scared me to death.

I started applying to temp agencies, and got a job as a secretary at a flooring company nearby. My ex, his sister and I decided to continue living together, so we moved from the one-bedroom to a two-bedroom apartment in the same complex. Things weren’t so bad, with all of us living together. We split the cleaning and the bills, the grocery shopping and the cooking. My ex wasn’t particularly interested in going to the Tempe Kingdom Hall, so we stopped going to meetings. We didn’t quit being Witnesses, per say, we just kind of stopped going to the congregation. My sister-in-law stopped cajoling us to go after a couple of months. We stopped feeling guilty about it a few months after that.

About six months after we moved to Arizona, my ex’s sister started long-distance dating a man from a Kingdom Hall in Maryland. They “courted” and they married. Once they were married, he moved to Arizona and it was the four of us living in the 700sf two-bedroom apartment. Things were getting a little cramped. And testy.

My ex finally got a stable job programming for a company in Tempe, and we started thinking about getting our own house. I had changed jobs by then, and had a permanent position as a purchasing assistant for a general contractor on the AcronymCo campus. Assumable mortgages were still around at that time, and we found a little 1400sf two bedroom house that we could manage on our own. We moved in on July 19th 1994, one day shy of my 20th birthday.

Now, up until this point my ex had kept his crazy side pretty much at bay. It was always easier on me when we were around other people, and living with his sister and her new husband kept things on a somewhat normal level. Plus we had moved away from the old judgmental congregation and my family, two trigger points that got my ex into his “moods”. He still talked the same talk, about his grandiose dreams and status as a superior human being, but he was better enough to live with that it actually seemed to be an improvement. So I more or less ignored aspects of his personality and behavior that would otherwise cause question in favor of this somewhat amenable version of my ex.

Oh, the hars.

Moving into the new house took almost all of the spare money we had. Once all the paperwork was signed and everything was finalized, we had a couple of thousand dollars left with which to furnish our empty home. We had our bed and a computer desk to our name. No couches, no kitchen table, no decor of any kind. On a weekend day, two weeks after moving into our new house, I was contemplating how we could furnish our house for two thousand dollars. I answered a knock at the front door, and opened it to find a stranger standing there, his arms loaded with a box full of scrap computer parts. A woman was right behind him, similarly loaded. And behind her was my ex, also carrying a box of junk.

He had bought out a garage sale being held by a neighbor down the street. Bought the WHOLE THING, for the two thousand remaining dollars we had. Boxes and boxes of junk motherboards, disk drives, memory chips, and similar detritus. The couple’s garage had been full from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The man (prompted by his wife) was holding a garage sale hoping to get rid of SOME of it (and we all know how garage sales usually go). He must have thought my ex was a gift from God, handing him two thousand dollars for a garage full of junk.

None of it was working. NONE of it. My ex bought it ALL with the thought that he could use this stuff to build his own computers, build experiments and devices. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, I STILL GET PISSED OFF ABOUT THIS. My ex vetoed my protests, ignored my tears. The three of them walked back and forth, between our house and theirs, for HOURS, transferring all of the junk from their garage to my living room, my dining room, all the available closets, and the spare bedroom. I wish I had thought to take a picture of it, just once, so I could post it here. Boxes and boxes, bags and bags, with little paths in between the piles to walk among.

This was just one example in the MYRIAD that I have to choose from, that my thoughts and feelings and opinions had absolutely no value according to my ex.

I know I’m blocking out a lot of details, or maybe enough time has passed that they’re happily blurred. Our day to day life details are somewhat hazy - they involved us leaving in the morning, driving to his place of work so I could drop him off, me going to work, then going back and picking him up at the end of the day. I would cook dinner; he would mess around with the computer or his books or the MOUNTAIN OF CRAP that he bought. I would listen to music or escape into a novel, he would periodically lecture me about how I was rotting my brain and becoming more stupid with every piece of fiction I read. Lights were always out by 8:00, and we still didn’t own television. Not because we just hadn’t purchased one yet, but because my husband dictated that we would never own one. Some weekends we would visit with his sister and her husband, but mostly the expectation was for me to provide my ex with food and drink while he worked on his “projects”.

Going out for entertainment was a rarity, since my ex didn’t like spending money on anything. His idea of going out would be to see a movie at the dollar theater and go to Taco Bell for one soft taco each and a small soda to share. I am SO not kidding.

It all looks very benign written here, but I felt neglected and lonely and stifled. All I wanted was a normal life and a normal relationship, and a husband and home that I could be proud of. I wanted to be able to express my thoughts and opinions, I wanted to have goals and ambitions, and I wanted to NOT be belittled because of them.

Our sex life isn’t even worth mentioning. I’ll just say technique was lacking, and satisfaction was extremely one-sided. The side that WASN’T mine. There were occasions of border-line abuse, since for some reason he really got off on humiliation and submission. Mine.

He liked it when I cried.

ANYWAY. Not talking about that. Lalalalalalala…

I started to establish tentative friendships with the people I worked with. But I couldn’t invite them over to the house for dinner… because, well, you know why. “Hello, sit amongst this computer junk yard! Would you like some risotto? Mind your feet and don’t step on the processors!” We lived a very solitary life and I rarely observed my ex against the foil of other, more normal personalities and behaviors. My ex forbade me from going anywhere at all without him, unless it was to work or to the grocery store. He would listen on another line if I received any phone calls. He discouraged friendships of any kind, and had none of his own. If I expressed a desire or opinion that was contrary to his own, well… it’s hard to explain. He would kind of menace me until I came back into line.

It was the classic isolationist methodology of an abuser. So easy to see, now.

You might ask, as some folks who already know the full story have, why on Earth I put up with this behavior. Why I allowed myself to be in such a miserable relationship. All I can say is that I was young, I was naive, I was isolated from my friends and family, and I had absolutely no confidence in myself. I can’t even explain the mental manipulation my ex was capable of. He could make the most outrageous things seem reasonable, with ME cast as the unreasonable party. He could take the most wrong thing he was guilty of, and spin it so that I was the one that was wrong. He had this ability to make me feel small, unworthy, ugly, insignificant, and stupid. And then he’d confirm these feelings I had by saying them out-loud, as facts.

Gradually, though… oh, so gradually, I began to think of myself in a different light. I was growing up, I was doing well at work, and I was gaining confidence. I had friends at work that I could talk to. My inherent personality finally started to kick back in, now that it was just my ex I faced, and not the brainwashing barrage of nonsense from his family and the entire Witness congregation. Even my frequent telephone calls with my mother-in-law, in which I would STILL tell her how he was and what was happening, and how she would STILL tell me it was my Christian duty to submit to him, began to have less influence over me. I began, internally and to myself at first, to express my own outrage and anger at his treatment of me. I began to think that perhaps I wasn’t the foolish little piece of shit he said I was. I began to listen to that little feeling I had, which knew that the level of his psychosis was greater than I had previously admitted to myself.

I began to see what other people saw. I began to be able to compare him with normal, socialized people. How he’d say very little at what few social gatherings we did attend. He’d sit in the corner with his “observations”. He’d barely speak when directly addressed, and when he did it would be with a superior air. I would watch people exchange, “What the FUCK?” glances with one another, behind his back.

My original sense of loyalty that would automatically defend him, in voice and mind, when others would call his behavior and treatment of me into question, popped up less and less. People would ask me, in private, why I let him speak to me the way I did. They would observe the way he was with me… oh, say if I reached to hold his hand, he would hit it away. If I laughed too much or talked too much, if I started enjoying myself, he would reel me in with a “Laura, you’re embarrassing. Behave yourself.” People would get angry with him for me, on my behalf, but the fallout I suffered when my ex and I were back home was enough for me to ask them, “Please, just don’t say anything to him.”

I didn’t have an answer for them, as to why I let this happen. I didn’t have an answer for myself, and I knew there was so much more beneath the surface, that my ex’s “public face” didn’t let them see. Finally I began to feel ashamed about his behavior, his personality, who he WAS, and the fact that I was married to him. I was tired of having to explain away why we couldn’t go out and meet other people for dinner, or go to the movies. Why I couldn’t leave the house except to go to and from work. Why my husband didn’t like me taking calls at home. Why, essentially, I couldn’t have any friends. I was tired of excusing his behavior to other people, when I could no longer excuse it to myself.

I was sick of not being my own person. I was tired of having every thought and every action and every moment of every day dictated by him. I finally knew FOR MYSELF that I was smart, and good, and had opinions and thoughts that were worthy of expression. I finally realized FOR MYSELF that I should be able to pursue things that interested me - reading, journaling, photography, even going back to school - all things previously forbidden. I finally understood how very NOT NORMAL my life and his behavior was. I was tired of letting him talk to me the way he did, letting him belittle me the way he did.

I decided it was time that he realized his “little wifey”, whom he thought he would “bring up right”, was going off in an unanticipated direction.

So. Thus the seeds of my ultimate rebellion were slowly beginning to germinate. But the path I was about to take was fraught with more drama than I had ever experienced before in my life.

To be continued…

And now for something completely different.

(Edited to add: the third installment of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Laura’s Sordid Past is up just below this entry…)

I’m taking a pause today in the writing of my Epic Tale of Gloom. I go to a really bad place when I’m writing it, I’m finding, and it’s not healthy to stay there for long periods of time. Thus, a happy break. I don’t like to cast my mind back to that time, but I suppose it’s good for me. Call it an exorcism or something. Self-imposed therapy. It’s taking me a lot longer than I figured it would, though. Three parts already and probably another two to go before it’s all said and done. Calvin’s all, “Finish the story already! I want to know what happens!”

Um, Calvin? You ARE what happens.

Anyway. I’ve been playing around with the white balance settings on my camera (why it took me so long to pick up a copy of Scott Kelby’s book is beyond me). And I’ve been having GREAT fun with Photoshop CS3 and the actions provided (free!) by the generous and talented Miss Ree. Plus I’m doing some exploring and fiddling around with the new enhanced features that CS3 has over my old 5.5 version.

My only problem is that there’s not a whole heck of a lot of interesting subjects in and around the place that I live. Just plain ol’ boring Suburbia, until Calvin and I can get out of town this weekend and take a drive up north or something. I was just going back through my Flickr photos and using them to play with in Photoshop, but I REALLY wanted to take some new photos with some of the new camera techniques I’m learning. So I cast my eyes around for something vaguely interesting to take pictures of.

Lo, the subject of my happy break:

“Hellew. I have ze sexy eyes, no?”

“I claim zis basket in ze name of Spain.”

“Do you see how changing the white balance on the camera brings out my natural highlights? I. Am. Gorgeous.”

“My toes, zey are precious.”

Quoth Calvin, “How many pictures of Oz do you NEED, anyway?” I don’t know, readers! How many pictures of Ozzy do we need? A hundred? A thousand? A million?

How about just one more.

“My eyes, zey look blue in zis light. I am stunning regardless of camera setting or photo enhancement!”