Mad Ramblings of an Insomniac (part 1)

I have been thinking a lot lately …  comes from all those hours of being an insomniac and lonely I guess… and not being able to write my novels. 

Tonight my husband asked me if it was lonely being up all night while the rest of the house, heck – most of the world … sleeps.  And it is.  Painfully so sometimes. 

But sleep is an evil thing sometimes.  You can’t force it. When you try, it just laughs at you and taunts you.  You can’t force It any more than you can force love. 

Today I had a discussion with one of my best friends. My ex-husband has been, literally, obsessed with her for over ten years now.  He spent our whole marriage lying to me about one thing or another.  It started before we even got married.  The first lie he ever told me was that he had a daughter with his high school sweetheart, at the age of 14.  He told me that the pregnancy was hidden, after a certain time, and even his best friend didn’t know.  He told me that her dad pretty much owned their small little town and he made it impossible for him to be any kind of father.  Her dad made it clear he wouldn’t be.  He (my ex) told me that he didn’t know if his daughter was being raised as his high school sweethearts sister, or if maybe her older sister had been raising her.  However, he only had one photo of her, and it was a photo he carried in his wallet our whole marriage. 

(Said daughter was a lie, the picture ended up being that of his cousin) 

I know some of that sounds so farfetched and I was 18 and gullible.  I put my trust into the wrong person for ten years of my life. 

I even talked to the highschool sweetheart once.  She told me, she didn’t know what he had been saying, but whatever it was – it wasn’t true.  There was no daughter.  She had never been pregnant.  That he had made up this story in highschool too. 

I only ever wanted one thing, in my life.  I got sick when I was 16, figured no one would ever want to be with me – love me.  Then here was this guy, and he was standing infront of me, asking to love me.  I thought I would be the one out of my friends who wouldn’t get married.  Who would end up having kids and never having a stable guy in my life.  I’d end up having that “whoops” baby …  much like myself.  I was a big ol’ whoops!  I was that thing that happened between my Dad’s marriages.  I am pretty sure my mom wasn’t looking to get pregnant at 20 in the mid-70’s so she could be a single parent.   Luckily she had the support of my Grandparents.  They helped support her with me, and she got to finish school and my mom has always worked so hard.  She’s worked more than one job … and I never tried to be a difficult kid.  But I was, in my own way.  I never did drugs, or drank underage – hell I never really drink OF age…. I didn’t party, or get in trouble much.  I was a good girl in school, just a sick one.  Took me longer to graduate, but I did!  However, I haven’t been able to do much with my life.  I gave her four amazing grandsons, and one adopted one.  But I do try to raise these boys to – I hope – have a better life for themselves, and their kids, then I have been able to give them. 

Anyway – off track.  So here was this guy, offering to love me – and telling me he wanted to create a family with me… and I was like – yeah!  I didn’t like him all that much at first.  I mean – I didn’t hate him.  After our first actual date, though, I had decided not to see him again – on a date.  My gut was like, he’s not that right for you.  Then he just started to show up … and he was injecting himself in my life.  Which I just saw as him being persistent – then.  Now, I realize it was rather stalker-ish.   Knowing what I know now, it was VERY stalker-ish.   He ended up growing on me.   I ended up liking him.  And then I ended up falling in love with him, or at least what I thought was love. 

We were married for ten years.  I can’t say it was all bad.  There were good moments in there. 

But there were A LOT of lies.  A lot of them.  Most of them I didn't even find out where lies until after the marriage ended. 

Though, there was a lot of fighting.  Not like – smack down drag out War of the Roses type fights.  I realize, now, that I let him control me.  We did things HE liked.  We did things HIS way.  If we didn’t, he would make me feel like crap about it because he would throw a temper tantrum and I wasn’t making him happy.  I felt like it was my job to make him happy.  There was a lot of verbal abuse, emotional, mental… and when fights did happen, it was bad.  I remember this one time, it was so bad, I was curled up in a ball crying on the kitchen floor and he was just yelling at me. 

I was 18 when I got married.  I was a teenage wife and a teenage mother and I refused to be another statistic and be a divorced single mother.  I was determined to make my marriage work. 

But it didn’t. 

It got to the point where … he rarely spent time with his “family” and he spent the majority of his time in the garage.  He’d buy stuff and not even talk to me about it.  Stuff that was expensive and I had very little interest in.  But he’d make me feel guilty for not being happy be bought it.  He’d make me feel guilty for not wanting to spend time with him doing what he wanted.  He loved winter, wanted to ski all the time, be on snowmobiles.  I hated the cold.  HATED it.  I loved the snow, but I would rather be curled up by a fireplace watching the big fat fluffy snow falling with a hot cup of coco in my hands, not in the snow.  I am not – nor will I ever be – a snowbunny. 

He'd make me feel guilty over everything.  Eventually – I wasn’t even myself anymore, not sure I ever was because 18 isn’t an age where you even know who you are yet. 

Regardless – and I won’t get into a lot of the why’s – but the summer of 2005 was my last straw.  The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.  I was done.  He was in love with my best friend at the time.  That friendship ended (for a while) because of it.  I was more upset about losing the friendship then losing him.  I actually – by that point – felt RELIEF when I made that choice to divorce him.  We drove to the courthouse (well I drove) and he cried the whole way there, begging me not to go through with it.  I was done.  The papers got filed. 

I was now a single mother to two boys.  Cal was 9 at the time (turned 10 beginning of Jan. 2006) and Noah was 3 (going to be 4 Feb 2006.)   I had always wanted to go to college, so I applied, and got in.  Made sure all the paperwork got done..  and I started January of 2006.

At that same time, I had met a guy.  I remember the first time I met him, I had made the typical mistake of single Mom’s dating … and I took my boys with me.  Well what did I know?  I never dated as an adult.  We had planned to meet up at an arcade – I wanted it to be a public place… I was so very nervous.  I remember I walked in there, figured he would take one look at me and turn around and leave.  He didn’t though.  He found me, I think I jumped when he first talked to me.  He made me feel so comfortable though, it was kind of amazing. 

He was the first guy, I think – that ever TRULY made me feel pretty.  With my relationship with him, though, I found myself gaining a lot of confidence, something I had never really had.  Most of all though, he was just an amazing friend.  He helped me grow leaps and bounds into the person I am. Things didn’t last long, though.

I had found my voice, a little bit – at the end of my marriage.  Then I found that I was doing a lot of things, again, focusing on trying to make him happy – not me.  He broke my heart, but I can’t say I blame him much.  My life was a hellish roller coaster of crazy Jerry Springer drama at the time, I probably would have wanted out too.  I was just so drawn to him, and he had literally become my best friend in such a short time, and I hung on longer because of that – I think.

I don’t have a lot of friends.  I am an introvert – I have a few close friends.  So if I open up to someone, it’s because I like them.  I have a horrible habit though, that when I do – I spew out my life story.  Regardless, I don’t like losing friends.  I don’t – especially – like losing best friends. 

So when he broke up with me, all I saw was losing another best friend, and ended up clinging to the relationship in any way I could – but it was unhealthy, and I realized it.  So I had told him at one point, I was going to be done talking to him.  I packed up all the stuff still at my house, into a box, and put it on the front porch. 

I had been dating again.  There was this guy, that guy that I really wasn’t into, and the guy who I briefly dated who kinda treated me like I was so unimportant …  so that lasted a half second.  There were several guys I was just - only - talking to online or/and the phone.  Nothing was serious on my end.  I think one was serious on their end.  

Dating is hard, especially as a single mother.  I watched my kids heart break after I had involved them so much in that first relationship, I realized that wouldn’t happen again.  Not until I was sure.  They had become pretty attached to him in a short time.  Sadly, he did more with them in the short time we were together, than their biological factor had done all their lives.  And I absolutely adored his daughter. 

So I just figured I would be that mom – like my mom was, kinda.   Yes I was a mom, but I wasn’t going to involve them anymore.  Not until on the – very off chance – I knew it was going to be serious and long term.  Like engaged, serious. 

I also decided that – even though I still believe in marriage and would love nothing more than to actually have a marriage like my grandparents had – which is what I always wanted, it probably just wasn’t in my future. 

I would date.  Nothing serious.  Just fun.  Not involving my kids, as much as possible.

That’s where I was anyway … 

I was a single mom, going to school, supporting her kids the best way she could in the moment…  and my kids were my whole life.  Especially with Noah, and his medical stuff going on ….  So, babysitters weren’t a huge option for me.  So I did the whole online thing. 

It took a lot for me to give a guy my phone number.  A LOT.  I would webcam chat (this was before Skype) a little.  Most of my interactions were messengers.  Yahoo, AOL…. That type of thing.  I was a pretty honest person, I didn’t hide anything or sugar coat my life, and I certainly didn’t catfish anyone.  I figured, I would rather they run screaming sooner then later.   Instead, I was met with a lot of “wow you are amazing” and “will you marry me?”  No joke.  They weren’t serious serious – they weren’t rushing out to buy me rings, but a lot of them were literally telling me I was the woman they would want to marry.  I blew them all off though. 

When they got to the “will you marry me” point, I was like – NEXT …. 

It was always so fast, and I wasn’t into them like they were into me.  There was a wall up, now, that was going to be pretty hard to knock down.  I had loved my ex-husband, I realize now it was more a deep friendship love.  I had loved that boyfriend, more so than my ex-husband.  But I just was not going to be ready to let anyone in that position to hurt me – again. 

And one thing was certain.  I had to be me, and not focus on making someone else happy.  YES, a relationship, a marriage, is about making someone else happy – but not at the expense of making yourself unhappy. 

So …  than that fateful day in June, I had signed onto the different dating websites I was on – so I could reply to the guys I was talking to.  I was doing it for attention, it was fun to flirt – especially online, because I was more comfortable.  This guy winked at me, so I went and looked at his profile.  We had some similar interests, he was a Dad, he was cute. So I winked back, sent him a message.  It had been something quick … like…. “I just wanted to say Thanks for the wink :) and say Hi :) How are you today?” I had noticed he lived half way across the country so I thought – he’d make a good friend.  Obviously it couldn’t be anymore more than that.  I was in Wisconsin; he was in North Carolina. 

He had sent me the wink on June 3^rd.  The little bit of chatting we had on site was on the 4^th and early on the 5^th.  He gave me his messenger handle and so I messaged him, and that was June 5^th 2006.  That’s when we started talking, and we pretty much didn’t stop.  It was talking on there ALL the time, every chance we weren’t busy.   

Things happened SO quickly.  It was very weird.  For the place I was …. Thinking no one would truly want to take me on (sick) and my angry ten year old, and my four year old with medical issues…. Why would anyone want to take us on?  I certainly wasn’t looking for a “Daddy” for my kids either.  They deserved one, the biological one was kinda a POS and they deserved a good role model.  Also, DB told me that he never wanted to get married again, ever (he had been married twice before.)  … and he said he saw my photo and thought, I’m gonna marry that girl. 

And he did. 

(Stay tuned for part 2 of this crazy mind warp….)