More when I feel better.

Here are some of the reasons given for not wanting to:” I’m fat”,  (yes, he’s about 150 lbs overweight yet won’t go walk or to the gym with me). “I’m tired”  , (from what, sitting on the couch all day and watching tv?)   ” I’m scared I won’t be able to”,  well, you don’t know if you don’t try.  And it’s not like I ever gave him reason to be scared, if it doesn’t work the first time we keep trying.

Question:  Do I have grounds for having an affair?

In case I hadn’t said yet, he was married. I have this thing I guess or maybe because there are so few single men to chose from, but really, who the heck cares? There was a reason I found married men.

We tried to keep our affair quiet from the department for a while. But everyone just seem to see something or maybe we weren’t really trying to hide it that well. I for one didn’t care if anyone knew it, our jobs weren’t really in danger and I didn’t have to worry about the other guys hitting on me.  The only person I really didn’t want to know was his wife, simply because I didn’t want to be in her place and I didn’t really want to hurt her. I kind of got some hints from others that maybe I wasn’t the first, so she wasn’t too surprised I’m sure.  At one Christmas party we had, I had gotten pecan pies for him because he loved the ones made at a certain bakery.  He put one of them in his car when I brought them in. His wife and I both, well, everyone really, got drunk on our asses and had a conversation in the bathroom where she begged me not to take him from her. I wished I had, and am glad I didn’t or couldn’t.

When he left the party, he sat down in the pecan pie that he had left on the drivers seat.

Another time, we were in a tornado,  and the part of town they lived in was shut down from everything while the part I lived in had water and electric. They came and spent two days with me and boy was that a blast. I never slept a wink either night with her in bed with me and him asleep on the couch. It should have been the other way around and if either of us had taken that chance, we may have wound up differently. But in the long run, he wasn’t perfect either. She set me up on a date with her brother once and after we went back to my apt. I had asked my lover to fix my shower head for me. The brother took off. I had a picture of me and lover boy on my tv stand that I didn’t want her to see so I went first and moved the picture before they got upstairs. He and I went in the shower so I could show him what was wrong and she stayed in the living room. She knew there was something strange about the tv stand and turned the picture over and saw me sitting on his lap. She stormed out of the apt yelling she hoped both of us rotted in hell. She told us that a few other times too.  It was a fantasy of ours she would catch us in bed together. I guess he was a chicken shit for not actually doing something but like I said, I didn’t care.

We eventually moved to another state, all 3 of us, and the affair went on and life went on. I was still not settled in my bi-polarism in that I never had quite the right meds. Prozac, man I was on that shit for a year and I don’t even remember that year. Nothing about it, a total blank. I had suicide attempts, some deep therapy, and new drugs would make me okay for a while. It seems like the changing of the seasons would set me off and I learned that sun therapy sometimes helped. But nothing really helps if you don’t keep it up.

I guess you can count him, or not, as husband no. 3 because we did go out of state and get married one year. Of course, the marriage wasn’t legal, he was already married, but that didn’t stop us. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, but we did it. I still have the marriage license to prove it.

We made two more moves to other states and different police depts and life settled into a routine. Once a month we would get caught by his wife somewhere and I wouldn’t see him for a couple of days. I messed the sex more than I really missed him. Are they one and the same, guess so since I couldn’t have that without him. There were times I was sure he was seeing someone else, but they never lasted long. I pulled a gun on him one time and he returned that another time. We fought, we made love, we made love, we made love. God I still miss that man. We were together a total of 13 years.

Eventually, and of my own accord, I decided I needed a change. I didn’t stop loving him, I just needed a change. So I moved back home for a while. I had missed my family and didn’t see them often and just needed their support for a while. I would go to see him once a month or he would come to see me.

About six months after I’d moved back home, my mother had her stroke. I didn’t get to go as much anymore since I was taking care of her, and our visits tapered off. Eventually, I got lonely and horny.  I didn’t have a computer at the time and lived in this rinky dink little town. One day I saw an ad in the paper for some kind of call in dating service and I did just that. I dated one guy and then the second one kind of swept me off my feet.

Enter husband no 4.

While working for the  restaurant chain that moved me around and used me as a trouble shooter, one of the places I wound up was Miami Fla. I had gone there from a town in Ill that got some 23 inches of snow that winter and when my super asked me where I wanted to go instead of telling me where I was going, I asked for Miami. While in another mid western town, I had started seeing one of my employees, a cutie 6 years younger. He wound up going to Miami with me. We did all the fun things Miami had to offer, but after a while I got tired of working for restaurants and decided to find something else. In the meantime, he had started a flirtation with a young woman he worked with. Pretty soon it was splitsville and we went our separate ways but not before I had a nervous breakdown and started doing drugs really heavy. While there, two of my brothers moved down to be with me and it was a boom time for Miami, everyone was going there. I started dating anything that walked and winked. I met a nice cop and decided to be monogamous for a while. Man, this only touches on so little of it, but I’m trying to fit in what to me are the important parts.  After the cop and I broke up, he went back to his ex, I found out I was pregnant, but had no idea who the father was. I went in the hospital, had an abortion and had my tubes tied. One child was all I ever wanted and I still haven’t changed my mind to this day though it wouldn’t make any difference if I did want more.

I went home after getting out of the hospital. I was still mentally not secure and when I had another nervous breakdown from a lover leaving me, I was admitted to the hospital for evaluation. That’s when I was diagnosed as bi-polar.  Then is when I went to California and met husband no. 2.

Ok, lets go back and actually find out something about me.  I was raised to have morals, was a virgin when I got married (the first time), was/am a hard-worker. I am a little severe sometimes and very much a perfectionist. I have some oc disorder problems, and am bi-polar and if the shrink keeps looking, I’m sure he’ll find some more little problems stuck back in that noggin of mine. I never think anyone loves me enough and I am having a real hard time being tied down.  I don’t suffer fools gladly and will speak my mind.  If I don’t like something, I will tell you if asked, or depending on the mood I’m in, I may be kind enough to not say anything at all to you. I do not like people to think they can tell me what to do, and I will never find a bathroom that is clean enough for me, not even my own.

I have one child, who is not a child any longer, and I didn’t get to raise him. His father kidnapped him when he was 6 and went out of state for summer vacation. I didn’t see him again until he was 17, but he found me. I had spent years looking for him, and then he just called out of the blue on Mothers Day one year.  He came to live with me and has not been back to see his father since. More on that husband later.

I started work when I was 14 in a 24 hour restaurant that was the only one in town,  working 40 hr weeks on the grave yard shift and then going to school. Yes, it was hard, but I was young and didn’t know that. I did that for about a year, then went on to other restaurants only part time.  At 17 I met the man who would be my first husband.  He was 21 and separated from his first wife.  The divorce went on and a year later we got married.  He was absolutely gorgeous, blond, smooth Grecian nose, slim body, and so sweet to me. During our first year of dating, he taught me about things I’d never known were out in the world, took me to places I had dreamed of going,  adored me, loved me, bought me anything he thought I would like, worshiped me, and I worshiped him. A couple of months before we got married he decided he was going out of state to work with one of his brothers, and I stayed behind. I couldn’t go because he would be staying with the brothers family and they had 7 kids in a 3 bedroom apartment. He called me on Easter and told me to come on down and we would get married.  At that age, I was so stupid. It wasn’t till later that I started paying attention to some of the things that had been said by him and his mother before and after he left town.

During one visit to his mothers for dinner, she asked him if he had seen the ex and baby. He told her he had, “they had came by the store where he worked. When they were leaving, he asked the baby for a kiss and thought the ex meant to lean in for one too.” He had a kind of excited look on his face that his ex might still want to kiss him. Knowing what I know now, I sincerely doubt she was wanting a kiss from him, and it was really a lean in for the baby.  I found out later that he had beat her. He even bragged about knocking her out the back door of their trailer, that was sitting next to her parents house and had a horse run behind it. He said she woke up with a horse standing over her slobbering in her face, and laughed about it. Stupid, stupid me, I should have had that knowledge then to know the signs, to know what that meant.

They say girls marry boys like their father, and boys marry women like their mothers.  I definitely married my father that time. Once was enough.

While he was out of town working, I would call his mother just to see how she was and if she needed anything. Oh God, let me explain her a bit. She was in her late 40′s when my husband was born and was a born again Assembly of God church member. It amazes me every time I see it happen that some of the most “devout” members of the church are the ones that are the most hateful and mean.  Anyway, I called her one time,  and she actually told me that my boyfriend had been going to church with his pentecostal brother and had been dating a girl named Angie that he’d met at church.  I called the boyfriend, he denied it, saying it was something his brother wanted him to do but he wasn’t going to. I believed, now I doubt.  But it was one of those things that popped in my mind at a later date when some other things started to fall into place.

Anyway, I took a grayhound bus to where he was and 3 days later we were married and had an apartment.  I got a job right away at a convenience store a few blocks from the house.  About three weeks later we were in a bbq joint close to the house and one of my customers and his little boy were also there. I loved that little boy, they stopped in every morning for breakfast on the way to school and he looked just like what I thought my son would when I had one.  I went over to their table to say hi while waiting for our to go order.

Back home, I barely made it in the door before I felt a fist in my back and was laying in the floor, my husband had smacked me.  And he didn’t stop, he hit me another half a dozen times while telling me I was  a slut and I was to never talk to another man when I was with him, unless he told me it was okay.  And that was the first of many. Just like my father, it didn’t really matter what you had done, if he didn’t like it you got a beating. The only time he didn’t beat me was during my one and only pregnancy.  I had broken arms, broken jaws, broken fingers, bruises, black eyes, you name it, I had it.Now I have never been a person to back down, I have back bone, believe me. I’ve stood up to my father which got me more beatings, I stood up to my brothers which made me the alpha do and I stood up to my husband which got me more beatings.  It took me 4 years to get tired of that shit and finally leave, but in the meantime, I got my revenge.  How? By having affairs. The first one was with a man he worked with, a gorgeous brown eyed, brown hair doll that didn’t have a brain in his head. But he knew how to make love, have sex, fuck, what ever you want to call it. I just called it fun and called him any time I got a chance to come and keep me busy. I had stayed faithful all the time we were apart in different states, but now, it didn’t matter any more. It doesn’t take much to beat the love out of someone.

About a year later we moved back to our hometown and he went back to his old job. I was staying home, keeping the apartment nice, doing laundry, all those mundane little household chores we wives and mothers never get credit for.  Life went on for 2 more years, then out of the blue, I got pregnant. I don’t even remember if I was on birth control or if we had decided to have a child and I had stopped or what. I was being faithful again, and knew it was his. A nod to my mother here…we were at her house one night and I had gone upstairs with mother and my sisters to check out something. Coming back down, a sister was in front of me, mother behind. I started swaying and mother reached out to grab me and stop me from falling down the stairs, I’d had a dizzy spell.  When mother got me settled in the living room she told me I was pregnant. Of course my first reaction was no I’m not, to which she told me she would pick me up Monday and go see my dr.  And yeap, the doc told me ” the rabbit died” to which he just got a puzzled look from me and had to tell me outright I was pregnant. I guess every woman does what I did next and that was start bawling my eyes out. When my husband found out, I guess even he had enough balls not to hit a woman who was pregnant.  But as soon as I had healed from the delivery, it started again.  I put up with it for another 13 years and then I’d had enough. About that time, there was starting to be news on about women being beaten by their spouses and getting revenge or getting killed. Society actually started making that a bad thing to do and there was help for people like me and I wasn’t alone. To use a word now better known, that empowered me.

I started making plans on how I would leave and how to get to the point where I could. He was in charge of the money and I never had any he didn’ t give me, and that was never much. He always went shopping with me, whether it was grocery or clothes and he always paid. So, first thing to do was get a job.  I also didn’t have a car. I didn’t need one according to him and if I did need the car for a day, I always took him to work and picked him up. I also always had the baby with me, which was really okay.  Second thing to do, get a car. Third, get the hell away from him!  So, I got a job waitressing at a restaurant/bar combo. I would go in after he got in from work and ha ha left him without a car!  A few weeks after I’d started work, one of my customers came in and was talking about how he was on his way to a car auction. After some conversation I found out he was a banker and had some repoed cars that he was taking to auction to get rid of. Of course I took this as a sign and asked him if he had anything for me.  He did, and I wanted it and the deal was made.  So, stage one had happened and because of stage one, stage two was  done.  Next, figuring out how to get out without getting killed.  It was easier than I thought.

One week before I left, it was 4:30 pm, and I couldn’t decide what to cook for dinner. Waited for him to get home to see what he wanted. Nice thing to do right? Wrong! We were living in a single wide trailer, and when you walked in the front door the bar dividing lr and dr was right in front of you. I was standing at the end of the bar next to the door.  He walks in, I tell him my dinner deliema and wake up across the kitchen leaning against the fridge door, my 13 month old son still in his playpen screaming so hard his face was red and hubby with a coke in his hand, his butt on the couch and watching tv with his feet on the coffee table. He actually had to move my body to get that coke out of the fridge! What an asshole.

I talked to mother all the time and as I’ve said, we had a special bond. She never knew he beat me, I was ashamed to tell her.( I was on my 3rd divorce and discussing husbands with her when she mentioned how much she loved my first. At that point, I had to tell her.)  However, there was something about the conversations that week that she didn’t like because she sent a sister and her boyfriend, who happened to have a pick up over to check on me. Another sign. It took us 2 hours to clean the house out and get out what I was taking with me, and a short time later I was back at mothers with my son.After my sister and her bf left with the furniture and the baby, I stayed behind just a short while to finish up one last job.  When my husband walked in the door I had one last item that I had not packed away and that was a #10 iron skillet.  I wonder how long it took him to wake up?

Two days later I had a job and my sisters and mother took care of my son while I worked. It was so liberating being home again and not having to watch what I said for fear of it being put back in my mouth for me. By this time my father had mellowed out with the beatings on the kids. I think that happened the last time he beat me when my brother who was a big old boy grabbed him and told him if he hit me again he would kill him.  I don’t think he hit anyone else after that.

Shortly after I left him my husband got another promotion and was moved to a bigger city in another state. The divorce went on, I had my son, and I was having a good time.  Then, when my son was 6 and on summer vacation from school, the ex came to get him for visitation and that was the last I saw my son until he was 17.  Regrets, I have a few, one being that I didn’t kill that son of a bitch after one of the worst beatings.

I swore there would never been any man hit me again in my life.