That feeling was what carried me through drama filled school days and turbulent home nights. My family looked all happy and complete to outsiders and during functions, but behind closed doors it was a nightmare. My father lashed out randomly, cowed by my mother. My mother was an unstable woman with depression, though now I wonder if she too is bipolar but none of her doctors ever pays attention to the signs. And my brother... I tried to protect him but more often than not, he pushed back and fought with me, drawing the ire of both our parents. The older I got, the worse it got. Thus I retreated more and more into my worlds, where there was peace and justice and balance. And at night, I soaked more and more strength from my visits with him.
College didn't help much. And I finally let an aunt match me up with a friend of hers from church, thinking that if this didn't work out, well I would just be a lesbian, because He had to be a figment of my imagination, even though every night, the last thing I heard before waking was his precious voice calling to me... "Hold on, love... hold on... I will find you!" The match was nice, or so I thought. The boy was nice, a church boy, a family boy, and he had a nice voice and I loved his blue eyes. I thought I had stumbled upon Him, and that I was saved. How wrong I was... And how I suffered for this mistake, this impulsive grasp at threads thinking it was a lifeline. It was really a rope leading to hell.
The boy charmed me, told me stories, painted himself to be a hero, and I ate it up. I thought I had found Him in this boy, that maybe He would surface if I was just patient and showed the boy how much I loved Him. The boy convinced me that he had shared those dreams with me, that he had seen me in his dreams, as He would have. I married the boy. The night that we were married was the last time I ever felt Him. And something in me died that night. My marriage was a sham... in time, the love turned to ash, the boy cowed before his parents, his loving family was more a lie than mine had been... I had lept from one frying pan into a bonfire. Each day, they chipped more and more of me away, and without the shelter of His arms in my dreams, I began to despair of having anything good. Then my daughter was born... she was my angel, still is. She is a light among the darkness, and I clung to that for every scrap of sanity I had left. Still I spiralled and still they pushed me down. I was never good enough for them and now I was not good enough for their grandchild.
I found some measure of relief in my worlds, and I shared glimpses of those worlds with others like me through the internet. I gave them a chance to be a part of those worlds. Some came in, some stayed for a little while and vanished, but some, some stayed forever. One of those was a young man who cared about me in and out of those worlds, the ones we shared and the ones he held to himself as I held some to myself. He became a friend and confidant. Thus when another friend from school offered to take me to a convention, I was overjoyed to learn that my new friend would be there too. We agreed to meet there, to have the chance to say hi face to face and to just hang out like any good friends would. He wanted to introduce me to a few musicians, and since music was another respite from the hell I lived daily, I was more than agreeable.
When we got to the convention, my friend's hotel room wasn't ready yet, so we just wandered the convention. It wasn't until we sat down with some sandwiches that my sleep deprivation caught up with me. I had worked a full third shift job the night before after spending the day taking care of my daughter, and hadn't slept yet, so I was literally staring at my half eaten sandwich when I noticed a nice pair of shoes walking by. Then I heard a semi-familiar voice call my name. I looked up, slowly I'm sure, and smiled. It was my friend from the internet. I called his name, and to this day, I'm sure I sounded confused. He sat down next to me and we talked while I finished my sandwich, and the entire time, I kept thinking that this felt familiar somehow. I just thought it was one of my deja vu experiences that I have a lot thanks to my vivid dreams that are often prophetic. He saw how exhausted my friend and I were, and he offered to let us use his room to nap until ours was ready. We took the offer gratefully.
This is where it gets fuzzy. We went to his room and slept, but I swear to you, I felt Him again... I felt His arms around me... but I woke to my friend asking me if I was feeling better after some sleep. I told him I was and I attempted to clear the sleep cobwebs from my brain. Then my friend brushed my hair back from my face, knowing I don't like my face being covered much. As soon as his fingers touched my face, it was like all those dream caresses flooded my memory. I had found Him after all, after everything. I wanted to soar... I wanted to be the happiest woman in the world, but I couldn't. I was already married... this couldn't be happening. After all these years, I finally found Him but I couldn't be with Him. For the four days of the convention, I soaked up every moment with Him that I could. I thought I could somehow store this up and live my life under the rules my family had taught me, impressed on me from a young age. Good girls only marry once... Divorce is wrong... Divorce destroys everyone... Yet again, I was wrong. Horribly wrong.
I went back to my family, feeling like I had ripped out my heart and all that remained were the shreds that loved my daughter. The rest of my heart was with Him. He and I still talked online, still visited our own worlds where it was safe for us to be together. I think those talks and visits were what allowed me to even survive the following years. It wasn't until my mental conditions deteriorated and none of my doctors would listen to me telling them that something else was wrong, that there was something else horribly wrong, that the hell I lived in burst open wide for all to see. My inlaws called child services, and the result of that nightmare was that my husband and I were deemed unfit parents. Our daughter was taken from us, and from my parents by his parents. They were given temporary custody. I agreed solely because I was told by the case worker for child services that if I didn't go along with this and sign the papers, my daughter would be put in the system, and I agreed because I never wanted my angel in that hell. My marriage degraded even faster, as did my mental health. And He couldn't talk to me often because His unit was being sent to Iraq and He was in training far from home. Then the boy that was my husband told me he wanted a divorce. After I fell apart and collected myself, I called Him. I managed to catch Him with some cell signal and free time, and my heart broke to learn that just two weeks earlier, He had proposed to a long time friend who needed his help and he had some feelings for, though He assured me that had He known what was going on with me and that this was how it would turn out, he would have waited on me.
I barely survived the divorce... Nothing the boy and I had talked about was in the papers but because I just wanted this over with, I didn't notice until months later when it bit me. I had asked him to help me until I could get on my feet again, just with a place to stay and a little money to keep me in my medications. Eventually he stopped that, claiming that he couldn't afford what little I asked for. I had to depend on friends and eventually, family too, for survival. My hero, my Marine, saved Christmas for my daughter. If it wasn't for the money that He made sure got sent to me, I wouldn't have been able to buy her anything for Christmas that year. Shortly after He got home from Iraq, He broke off his engagement, and the two of them remain good friends to this day. I had a medication error, a poor reaction and an error from a doctor resulted in an overdose that nearly killed me. It took me months to recover, and that story itself is nothing but embarassment to me. Even now I hate to tell that story to anyone.
Eventually, I got a decent job and worked hard. I moved in with some friends and tried to start anew. Still, something was missing in my life and it was driving me crazy. I kept in touch with Him as best I could without regular internet access, and finally, one day, I decided that I had had enough and called him. When I talked to him I told him to find a good time to come visit me. He scheduled out two weeks, and I came to his hometown and picked him up. As soon as he touched me, it was like the fire revived within me. I felt whole again, like I could survive again. Within three days of arriving at my house, he proposed to me one night... laying in bed with me, he said "I know the timing isn't right... and I know this isn't the most romantic thing ever... I don't even have a ring... but will you marry me?"
It was all I could do not to bounce as I lay there. I kissed him before I squealed my answer. "Of course! Yes!" Now, months later, we are living together with some friends, and despite the rough spot we are in thanks to recurring migraines that keep my from working and his own issues keeping him from working that relate to him being a Marine, I couldn't be happier. I'm not so much a wreck mentally any more. He balances me just as much as I balance him.
This is how life should be... how love should be... how partnership with the one you love should be. Now I just want him home from drill... I love my Marine...
College didn't help much. And I finally let an aunt match me up with a friend of hers from church, thinking that if this didn't work out, well I would just be a lesbian, because He had to be a figment of my imagination, even though every night, the last thing I heard before waking was his precious voice calling to me... "Hold on, love... hold on... I will find you!" The match was nice, or so I thought. The boy was nice, a church boy, a family boy, and he had a nice voice and I loved his blue eyes. I thought I had stumbled upon Him, and that I was saved. How wrong I was... And how I suffered for this mistake, this impulsive grasp at threads thinking it was a lifeline. It was really a rope leading to hell.
The boy charmed me, told me stories, painted himself to be a hero, and I ate it up. I thought I had found Him in this boy, that maybe He would surface if I was just patient and showed the boy how much I loved Him. The boy convinced me that he had shared those dreams with me, that he had seen me in his dreams, as He would have. I married the boy. The night that we were married was the last time I ever felt Him. And something in me died that night. My marriage was a sham... in time, the love turned to ash, the boy cowed before his parents, his loving family was more a lie than mine had been... I had lept from one frying pan into a bonfire. Each day, they chipped more and more of me away, and without the shelter of His arms in my dreams, I began to despair of having anything good. Then my daughter was born... she was my angel, still is. She is a light among the darkness, and I clung to that for every scrap of sanity I had left. Still I spiralled and still they pushed me down. I was never good enough for them and now I was not good enough for their grandchild.
I found some measure of relief in my worlds, and I shared glimpses of those worlds with others like me through the internet. I gave them a chance to be a part of those worlds. Some came in, some stayed for a little while and vanished, but some, some stayed forever. One of those was a young man who cared about me in and out of those worlds, the ones we shared and the ones he held to himself as I held some to myself. He became a friend and confidant. Thus when another friend from school offered to take me to a convention, I was overjoyed to learn that my new friend would be there too. We agreed to meet there, to have the chance to say hi face to face and to just hang out like any good friends would. He wanted to introduce me to a few musicians, and since music was another respite from the hell I lived daily, I was more than agreeable.
When we got to the convention, my friend's hotel room wasn't ready yet, so we just wandered the convention. It wasn't until we sat down with some sandwiches that my sleep deprivation caught up with me. I had worked a full third shift job the night before after spending the day taking care of my daughter, and hadn't slept yet, so I was literally staring at my half eaten sandwich when I noticed a nice pair of shoes walking by. Then I heard a semi-familiar voice call my name. I looked up, slowly I'm sure, and smiled. It was my friend from the internet. I called his name, and to this day, I'm sure I sounded confused. He sat down next to me and we talked while I finished my sandwich, and the entire time, I kept thinking that this felt familiar somehow. I just thought it was one of my deja vu experiences that I have a lot thanks to my vivid dreams that are often prophetic. He saw how exhausted my friend and I were, and he offered to let us use his room to nap until ours was ready. We took the offer gratefully.
This is where it gets fuzzy. We went to his room and slept, but I swear to you, I felt Him again... I felt His arms around me... but I woke to my friend asking me if I was feeling better after some sleep. I told him I was and I attempted to clear the sleep cobwebs from my brain. Then my friend brushed my hair back from my face, knowing I don't like my face being covered much. As soon as his fingers touched my face, it was like all those dream caresses flooded my memory. I had found Him after all, after everything. I wanted to soar... I wanted to be the happiest woman in the world, but I couldn't. I was already married... this couldn't be happening. After all these years, I finally found Him but I couldn't be with Him. For the four days of the convention, I soaked up every moment with Him that I could. I thought I could somehow store this up and live my life under the rules my family had taught me, impressed on me from a young age. Good girls only marry once... Divorce is wrong... Divorce destroys everyone... Yet again, I was wrong. Horribly wrong.
I went back to my family, feeling like I had ripped out my heart and all that remained were the shreds that loved my daughter. The rest of my heart was with Him. He and I still talked online, still visited our own worlds where it was safe for us to be together. I think those talks and visits were what allowed me to even survive the following years. It wasn't until my mental conditions deteriorated and none of my doctors would listen to me telling them that something else was wrong, that there was something else horribly wrong, that the hell I lived in burst open wide for all to see. My inlaws called child services, and the result of that nightmare was that my husband and I were deemed unfit parents. Our daughter was taken from us, and from my parents by his parents. They were given temporary custody. I agreed solely because I was told by the case worker for child services that if I didn't go along with this and sign the papers, my daughter would be put in the system, and I agreed because I never wanted my angel in that hell. My marriage degraded even faster, as did my mental health. And He couldn't talk to me often because His unit was being sent to Iraq and He was in training far from home. Then the boy that was my husband told me he wanted a divorce. After I fell apart and collected myself, I called Him. I managed to catch Him with some cell signal and free time, and my heart broke to learn that just two weeks earlier, He had proposed to a long time friend who needed his help and he had some feelings for, though He assured me that had He known what was going on with me and that this was how it would turn out, he would have waited on me.
I barely survived the divorce... Nothing the boy and I had talked about was in the papers but because I just wanted this over with, I didn't notice until months later when it bit me. I had asked him to help me until I could get on my feet again, just with a place to stay and a little money to keep me in my medications. Eventually he stopped that, claiming that he couldn't afford what little I asked for. I had to depend on friends and eventually, family too, for survival. My hero, my Marine, saved Christmas for my daughter. If it wasn't for the money that He made sure got sent to me, I wouldn't have been able to buy her anything for Christmas that year. Shortly after He got home from Iraq, He broke off his engagement, and the two of them remain good friends to this day. I had a medication error, a poor reaction and an error from a doctor resulted in an overdose that nearly killed me. It took me months to recover, and that story itself is nothing but embarassment to me. Even now I hate to tell that story to anyone.
Eventually, I got a decent job and worked hard. I moved in with some friends and tried to start anew. Still, something was missing in my life and it was driving me crazy. I kept in touch with Him as best I could without regular internet access, and finally, one day, I decided that I had had enough and called him. When I talked to him I told him to find a good time to come visit me. He scheduled out two weeks, and I came to his hometown and picked him up. As soon as he touched me, it was like the fire revived within me. I felt whole again, like I could survive again. Within three days of arriving at my house, he proposed to me one night... laying in bed with me, he said "I know the timing isn't right... and I know this isn't the most romantic thing ever... I don't even have a ring... but will you marry me?"
It was all I could do not to bounce as I lay there. I kissed him before I squealed my answer. "Of course! Yes!" Now, months later, we are living together with some friends, and despite the rough spot we are in thanks to recurring migraines that keep my from working and his own issues keeping him from working that relate to him being a Marine, I couldn't be happier. I'm not so much a wreck mentally any more. He balances me just as much as I balance him.
This is how life should be... how love should be... how partnership with the one you love should be. Now I just want him home from drill... I love my Marine...
