Category Archives: Heartache

Farmers Markets & Funerals

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It’s been a busy season… so busy in fact, that I haven’t written in a few months. The last time I took such a hiatus was in 2020, when I didn’t want to share my battle with infertility. Nothing so personally tragic has occurred this time, but I did have a baby (post forth-coming), mark seven years of marriage (post also forth-coming), celebrate my girls’ third birthday (yes, forth-coming), and throw a combination “three-rex” dinosaur party and baptism reception. To top it off, Six Months Pregnant Belle had the brilliant idea to sign Eight Weeks Post-Partum Belle up for her first farmers market. Yes. That’s right. I spent a week straight wrangling four under three (one of whom still eats every three to four hours) while I crafted handmade earrings, buttons, stickers, and mugs, tightly wrapped in my post C-section binder.

As with many of my life ventures, I have jumped into these farmers market shenanigans with little know-how or experience. While I won’t say it’s been a total disaster, that first Friday was particularly disheartening, as I watched the lady across from me sell loaf after loaf of sourdough, while I held a naked two-month-old whose daddy dressed him in sleeper jams in 90° plus weather, and sold a whopping $13 worth of merchandise.

I learned from this experience, though, and added baked goods to the next week’s haul, none of which moved until Jake suggested I give out samples. Ill-prepared, I cut up a couple of brownies with a plastic takeout knife from the car and lay them out on a paper sack. I still can’t believe anyone tried them, with Jake waving another sack to keep the flies away. Nearly everyone who did bought one for $3 or two for $5, though. This time, I went home with $53 in my pocket, a substantial improvement. In the days since, I’ve been to Hobby Lobby and purchased a cheap cake carrier for next week’s samples. I plan to add banana bread and chocolate chip cookies to my wares for even greater success, both of which I ruined last week by undercooking and overcooking, respectively.

Truly, it has been an exhausting time of life, but blessedly so. I’ve been so fortunate to safely have these babies after infertility, care for them in a comfortable home on one income, and kiss my healthy husband each evening when he walks through the door… or pick an only half insane, exhausted, and overwhelmed, post-partum fight. As tough as these last few… well, years, have been, I am reminded to be grateful for this chaos, because my sweetest of cousins buried her own 36-year old husband this past week, after a brief, but vicious battle with cancer.

I won’t pretend to have been close to Patrick, but Kayla and I were good friends as kids. Two years younger, she was the cousin with whom I had sleepovers after every family gathering. I was the bossy older cousin always trying to convince her to do things that were forbidden. Kayla was the sweet, innocent younger cousin I envied for her popularity with grown-ups and other kids alike. As adults, we weren’t especially close until we seemed to mirror each other’s milestones. While Kayla skipped the Lifetime Original Movie marriage, she did spend several years with a man her family didn’t like for a multitude of reasons, before finally getting shot of him. A couple of years later, just as I met Jake on Plenty of Fish, Kayla met Patrick on Tinder. Together, we defended online dating to our Boomer aunts and uncles, explaining that it wasn’t You’ve Got Mail, anymore. Even in 2015, it was ubiquitous. People just weren’t talking about it. Eventually, Jake and I married in 2017 and Kayla and Patrick about a year later. In 2020, I began IVF and Kayla announced that they were facing their own fertility problems.

Both having married men from wealthy families, Kayla and I fielded comments together, about how we could “just” pursue treatment. This advice was well-intended, but lacked the understanding that “comes from money” and “has money” are not equivalent. Regardless, just as Jake and I announced our miracle conception with Thomas, Kayla announced that she and Patrick were pregnant with Cillian. It was a joyous few months, in which Kayla and I bonded via text… until Patrick’s diagnosis with stage four colon cancer.

I only met Patrick two or three times, but I was shocked at how similar he was to Jake. Also a Texan, he enjoyed hunting and fishing. He was the life of every party, loud and funny. While Kayla and I were close as kids, I can’t say we’ve ever been especially similar. Kayla is… sweet. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t have to try to think kind thoughts, avoid gossip, word things carefully, and/or bite her tongue. She’s just naturally loving and gentle. I am nothing if not self-aware and would never say these things about myself. I try to be a good person, a loving wife, mother, granddaughter, friend… but I do have to try. More than once this week, I’ve told Jake that, as infuriating as he is in his nearly robotic stoicism, I could not have married a sensitive man. I’m too opinionated, honest, and assertive. It surprises me that Kayla and I would choose men so alike… and it breaks my heart to know that, at 34 years old, with a son two months younger than Thomas, she’s lost hers.

Last week, Jake and I did everything we could to secure childcare for the funeral. However, on very short notice, we were only able to attend the viewing. A more social, less somber, affair, it was still awful to see this vibrant, young father and husband in an open casket. It’s my understanding that, once the inoperable tumors developed, chemo ceased. This meant that Patrick looked exactly like the man Jake and I joked and laughed with at Christmas just before Covid-19 put a stop to all family gatherings. With the cancer diagnosis, I’d never met Cillian, who looks exactly like the father he won’t remember, just as my Thomas is the mirror image of Jake.

I’ve said before that Jake is my best friend and the only man I’ve ever loved. I mean it, every single day. However, the last few months, with four under four, one of them brand new, have not been entirely harmonious. No one has done or said anything too egregious, but life has been somewhat rocky, with so many stressors and transitions. The fourth trimester has bested me after every single pregnancy and this time has been no different… except now I’ve also had three under three to contend with, in addition to a newborn. There has been more than one crying jag in the shower, as well as more than one comment that a stoic and an asshole are not one in the same. I’m sensitive. Jake’s stressed. We’re both exhausted. It has, admittedly, resulted in something of a rough patch.

As we weather this season with all its complicated feelings, I’ve felt a kind of survivor’s guilt. Kayla would do anything to argue with Patrick under her breath at a farmers market… or even to yell at him for refusing to fix the bumper he cracked two years ago. As is often the case in life, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that the kindest cousin of my generation has been hit so hard, with infertility and now widowhood just days before her anniversary. It’s not fair that her little boy will grow up only knowing his father from photos, videos, and stories. It’s not fair that such a young, lively, funny, loyal, good man spent his last months knowing he wouldn’t be there for his wife or son. I had to consider that possibility myself, once, after I nearly died during childbirth with the girls. For months, I would burst into tears at random, knowing firsthand the pain of going through life without a mother. I can only imagine the devastation of it being a sure thing. None of it’s fair, so I’ll just count my blessings that my biggest stressors in life are farmers markets and a funeral. As tense as things are at the moment, Jake and I have our children, our home, our health… and no matter what life brings, each other.

I don’t think I can do this more than once.

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When I found out I was pregnant with Thomas, my feelings were surprisingly conflicted. I wanted another baby, but a natural conception meant there was one more frozen embryo I wouldn’t get to use myself. The cost savings were great, but I was still worried about my health. I wanted more children, for my girls to have more siblings, but not at the expense of growing up without a mother. It was good news, of course, but bittersweet in a sense.

A practicing Catholic, I don’t believe in auras, crystals, or intuition beyond the norm. More than once, I’ve lost respect for someone’s intelligence when they’ve tried to sell me on horoscopes or personality tests beyond silly fun. I don’t mean quietly, either. Words like “hogwash” and “malarkey” are my immediate response to any mention of the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. I’ll even back it up with citations. That said, I’ve always felt that I was meant to have four children, similar to the way I always felt I was meant to have twins. I assign no greater meaning to the idea, nor do I claim to have some kind of foresight or premonition. It’s just a feeling. As I go through this embryo transfer process, however, I feel more and more that this is how it was meant to be, because y’all, I don’t think I could have done this again had it been required to bring my Thomas into the world.

When I wrote about my first appointment to the fertility clinic since 2020, when the girls were conceived, I mentioned how much I seem to have blocked out since then. That being the case, I honestly don’t recall what it was like undergoing back-to-back pandemic IVF. I don’t really remember the mood swings and the side effects of the drugs. Considering the impact of the medications required for this FET, I don’t think I want to remember, either. Last time, I only had Jake to burden, when I lost my temper or found myself incredibly depressed by the entire process. Now, I have three wonderful little humans relying on me as their primary source of affection on an average weekday… and it sucks.

I won’t say that I’m a paragon of “gentle parenting” on a normal day. I firmly believe the constant cajoling and bargaining parents do with their children to get them to behave is why they’re all little nightmares. Still, like most parents, I’m trying to break patterns from my own childhood. I offer choices when possible. I ask nicely at least twice. I try to not to yell, unless someone’s in danger. I refuse to use screentime as a crutch. Put me on birth control pills alone, though…

Folks, I am completely rethinking the ubiquity of hormonal birth control over here. After a couple of years on Mirena with few side effects from the localized hormones, I never went back on any kind of hormonal birth control. Five weeks on the pill before switching to estrogen, though, and I feel like I’m going to be the subject of an HBO docuseries. It doesn’t help that my own mother likely had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, a declaration I don’t make lightly, considering my entire generation’s obsession with self-diagnoses. Whatever the cause, when I was growing up, it wasn’t rare for a night of fun and laughter to take a hard left turn toward broken furniture and bruises. While I’ve certainly not been violent, I loathe feeling as though I can’t control my emotions around my children. They depend on me to be loving, kind, and playful, not angry, short-tempered, and depressed. I know everyone thinks it’s lunacy to have my babies so close together, but my stars, at this point, I’m just glad they won’t remember this.

I hope this transfer works for so many reasons. I want our embryo to thrive and grow into a healthy baby boy or girl. I want our family to finally be complete. I don’t want our financial investment to be for nothing. I want the strain I’m putting on my body to have a purpose. I want a fourth so badly and we have embryos to use, so I can’t say if this fails I won’t try again. Still, I just want this to be over, because I don’t think I can do this more than once.

Not having my mother breaks my heart every single day.

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I went days without thinking about my mother when she was alive. It was easier that way. If I thought about her, I had to think about the time that was passing. If I considered trying to rebuild a relationship with her, while I still could, I had to think realistically about how that would look. At first, she’d be thrilled. Then she’d be clingy. Then she’d be pushy. Then she’d be hostile. I had to consider how that would impact my life. If she started showing up at my work again, how would that effect my career? If she showed up at my home, how would that influence my marriage and eventually my children? If she could have a relationship with me, what would she demand of my relationship with my grandmother, my father, my step-mother? It was easier not to think about her… about who she once was… about who she’d become… and most of all, who she could have been. If I didn’t think about her, I could hold onto the idea that there would always be time to fix things… somehow.

My mother died a year ago on May 10th. After six years of not thinking about her, I don’t think there’s been a day that’s passed that I haven’t grieved her loss. I try to focus on the good memories, but after all this time, they’re just so tangled up with the far more plentiful bad ones that I can’t separate them. I know my mother loved me. She just wasn’t very good at it. I wish I could remember more about the former than the latter.

The other night, I dreamt that I traveled through time and got the chance to speak to my mom at some vague point in my life when she was mentally well. I told her that I missed her, that I missed what we were supposed to have together. When she asked me why, I told her she had died at 60 and that we hadn’t spoken in four years when she passed. It broke her heart, just as it breaks mine every day. I told her that I loved her and that I knew she loved me, but that she wasn’t mentally well, that she hurt me, so we couldn’t be together. I apologized for being so mean to her as a teenager and told her that it was okay that she wasn’t perfect, that I knew she tried. I cried and hugged her and she cried with me. I tried to hold on as the dream faded, begged her to get the help she needed, to fix things. I’ve never been so heartbroken to wake up.

My mother broke my heart a hundred times when she was alive. She broke my heart when my dad left and she pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night to bury a statue of Saint Thomas Moore in the flowerbed and pray for him to come back, while I stood there freezing in my nightgown every night for a week. She broke my heart the time she chased my brother and I through the house beating us with a belt buckle… when she stood slapping me in the face over and over again until I took on what she considered a respectful tone…when she dragged me across the house by my hair and nearly broke all of my toes. She broke my heart when she kept me from my dad with lies about child molestation… when she hit me in the face with a stepladder… when she found out I was cutting myself and used it as leverage to threaten me with institutionalization… when she dosed me with 250 daily milligrams of Wellbutrin to make me more manageable. She broke my heart the countless times she chose my dad over me, my brother over me, and most of all, when she left me my senior year, to go live with a man she met online.

My mother wasn’t a good mother. I know that. I also know that, at one time, that’s what she wanted to be more than anything in the world. She wanted a daughter so badly and I am just so fucking sorry that I couldn’t give that to her. She abused me, mentally and physically, from the time I was eight years old. What would another few years have really meant in the grand scheme of things? Why couldn’t I have just accepted her relentless drama, paranoia, hypochondria, and hostility just to make her happy? No one ever made me her happy. I don’t know if she was ever truly happy in her life. It would have made her happy though, if I’d responded to her last text message, six months before she died, asking to get lunch. I considered it, but we were in the worst of the pandemic and I was just wrapping up a round of IVF. I couldn’t risk exposure. I also knew she’d only bring stress and chaos into my life. It would have made her so happy to know that I was having twins, though. I wish I’d told her.

I don’t find motherhood difficult, despite what all the mommy blogs warned me to expect. It’s heartbreaking, however, not to have my own mother here. My Gramma is a wonderful figure in my life, in many ways the woman my mother never could be for me, but she’ll also be 88 soon. I know that the time I have to call her and share stories of Scarlett trying to climb the dog and Violet chewing on Jake’s Crocs is limited. I know that one day soon, she’ll be gone too and I’ll have no one, in that sense. My mother should be here. We should be having the standard mother/daughter fights she had with my Gramma when I was little, about buying my kids too much stuff or giving them too much candy. She should be accompanying us on zoo trips, watching the girls ooh and ahh over the fish. She should have 20 years of shopping trips with us to look forward to… but it’s just me, doing all these things alone, because my Gramma has grown too old.

I’ve always wanted a healthy mother/daughter relationship, even if that meant being on the other side. It’s okay that I’ll only ever have that with my girls. I am so grateful to have even that much after all it took to get them. Every single day, though, I look at the picture of my mother and me on my first birthday. I look like the perfect combination of Violet and Scarlett. I think about what they would say to me now, if they could travel back in time, what kind of mother I’ll be to them and how it compares to my own aspirations. I think about the relationship my mother wanted to have with me and how sour it turned. Every day, it breaks my heart all over again… for me and for her. I am so sorry this is how it all turned out and I will never forgive myself for not trying harder.

My mother is dead and no one cares.

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When your mother dies, people will be heartbroken. They’ll cry and grieve and mourn at her bedside and again at her funeral. There will be moments when they think of her and remember she’s dead and it will tear them up all over again. They’ll comfort themselves with the knowledge that she had a good life. My mother died on Monday and no one cares.

I hadn’t spoken to my mother in four and a half years. She was not a well woman. A variety of untreated mental illnesses and a man who enabled them manifested in a range of problematic behavior, from paranoia and intense hypochondria to manipulation and cruelty. She was overbearing to the point that any allowance for a relationship resulted in her constant calls, texts, and showing up at my apartment or work, which always derailed into the above behavior. I once declined a lunch invitation, because I had to work, only to receive the response “What happened to the daughter I loved?” More than once, she told of an illness or surgery and deliberately lead me to believe the situation was life-threatening, only to later admit that it was mild or elective. If I suggested she get help, it was always part of a larger plot against her.

These interactions were not limited to me. My brother would respond to this behavior with as much vitriol as he could muster, something that was not in short supply when it came to our mother. She had few friends, if any. She’d long since distanced herself from her extended family, when she married my dad. She’d “quit” her job years earlier, citing ambiguous health problems that didn’t really add up; though I suspect she was fired for chronic tardiness, among other things. Even my grandmother, a woman capable of more grace and forgiveness than anyone I’ve ever known, eventually reached her limit, when my mother self-published a book vilifying her and distributed copies to her whole family. Although I truly don’t think my mother was capable of understanding this betrayal and actually expected praise, my grandma couldn’t get past it and our Christmases became separate that year.

On my 26th birthday, my mother took me out for the day. We had a nice time at first, as we usually did. We went shopping, ate sushi, and she gave me the complete boxed set of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-Ray. Afterward, she needed to make a “quick stop” at Best Buy, which turned into a two hour errand. I worked two jobs at the time and desperately wanted to get home to get some things done and spend time with my dog. I became increasingly frustrated, but tried to keep calm. I eventually offered to have my dad take me home, since he lived nearby. This sent my mother into a rage that resulted in a heated fight on the drive home. I remember telling her she needed mental help, as she began to deliberately drive recklessly, and her cruelly mocking me for self-harming in high school. After she dropped me off at my apartment, I heard a thump. She had hurled the leftover birthday cookie at my door and sped off. I was done. Happy birthday, Belle.

Though I never received an apology, less than a year later, I tried to reconnect for a few months, only to have similar results and once again cease contact. A year or two after that, she showed up at my work one day and, instead of turning her away, I had a nice conversation with her, about my job, Jake, my pets, the life I had planned. She told me of some ailments that the doctors “couldn’t explain” and described symptoms that seemed either fabricated or psychological, knowing her history, but I left it alone. I’d missed her. I’d missed having a mother, even one who wasn’t mentally stable and I couldn’t speak on her health with certainty. I was still hesitant to take the relationship much further, however, as the above events were just the latest of my efforts at a mother/daughter bond throughout my twenties.

Four months later, my mother showed up at my new job site, which was still under construction, bypassed all signs and laborers and entered “just to say hi,” though she lived an hour and a half away. I couldn’t get her to leave, even after insisting that I could get in real trouble for having my mother visit an ongoing construction site. She was baffled at why it was a problem and I had to rudely insist she go. This time she was using a walker, for symptoms that may or may not have been legitimate. I’ll never know. The system director arrived thirty minutes later and I still think I could have, at the very least, seriously damaged my reputation with the director and other members of upper management. It finally set in that it was all or none with her. After 10 years of similar behavior, I no longer had the energy for all, so I chose none. That’s the last time I spoke to her, December of 2016.

This was my adult relationship with my mother. It doesn’t even touch on the abuse of my teen years. I’d grown up with the “wait until your father gets home” threat and my mother had no idea how to discipline a teenager on her own. More often than not, she tried to be my best friend and we had some great times eating cookie dough and watching bad horror movies, talking about our favorite shows and books, gossiping over the cute boys at school. Then, she’d inevitably want me to do something I didn’t want to do and the argument would escalate to physical abuse. After a particularly brutal night, in which she dragged me across the house by my hair, I began discussing moving in with my dad, who was simply the lesser evil at the time, and she told me a story about how he had molested me, insisting I’d blocked it out. Not only did I no longer consider moving in with him, I didn’t talk to him for five years, from the ages of 13-18.

Not long after, my mother somehow managed to have me prescribed a 250mg daily dose of Wellbutrin, without in-person therapy. During our arguments, she’d frequently threaten to have me committed to a psych ward. The physical abuse worsened and each time, she felt horrible, once even insisting that I beat her back with the same dog leash. It was a volatile relationship, in which she had all the power… until she left me, during my senior year, to live with the boyfriend she’d met online, the man she eventually married and seemingly decided was her whole world. Only then did I put the pieces together and accept that my dad might not have been perfect, but he wasn’t a child molester and my mother was, at best, mentally ill and terrified of being alone.

She wasn’t always like this. Before the separation and eventual divorce, before the brain tumor, she showed signs of mental instability, but they were far less frequent, usually just rages far exceeding what the situation warranted or manic episodes where she’d focus on a single cleaning task for days, creating diagrams we couldn’t read yet, with strict instructions to follow them. In between, she made birthday pancakes and planned elaborate parties, took us on vacations, alone or with my grandmother, volunteered for every school activity, using her leave for field trips and our end of the year bashes. She stayed home with us when we were sick and took us to lunch when she had to take off to drive us to a dentist appointment. She painted green footprints in the bathtub on St. Patrick’s Day and put food dye in the milk. She drove us to every after school activity and helped us with gymnastics and softball, despite how absolutely awful I was at both. She let us keep every stray dog and doted on her poodle. She always loved us, I’d dare say more than my father did, and simply grew increasingly worse at it as her mental state degraded. Over the years, she just became an impossible person to have a relationship with, creating for herself a lonely and sad life since she remarried, with no bonds outside her husband; who encouraged and enabled her every delusion, solidifying her hatred for and distance from my grandmother and her family, my brother’s absolute disdain for her, and my own lack of contact.

Last Monday, my mother had a heart attack. She died on the table twice and was completely brain dead when they brought her back. On Saturday, the day before Mother’s day, they unplugged her and I was able to visit, completely alone, due to Covid-19 restrictions, while Jake waited in the lobby. I expected her to be frail and peaceful, but she was morbidly obese, appeared to be bloated with broken blood vessels in her arms and hands, and her breathing was labored through the effort of working her collapsed lung. I gave her husband the latest ultrasound picture of the babies and asked that she be buried with it, somewhat grateful that she didn’t live to know that she wouldn’t be allowed to see them unless she received the help she denied she needed. I spent the next day ignoring “Happy Mother’s Day” texts, while waiting for that fated one from my brother. I’d always hoped that my mom would get treatment, therapy or medication or both, that we could eventually have something, that I’d once again see a shadow of the woman she used to be… and now it’s over. There’s no more time. As that succinct text message said “mom’s gone”… really and truly this time.

When I was little, my grandma used to take my brother and I out and give us whatever we wanted, usually sugar of some kind. She’d bring us home and I’d be hyped up on M&M’s or ice cream and my mom would be exasperated with her and tell me that one day, when I had children, she would do the same. She would have been my age at the time. When she was my age, my mom pictured a future where she was allowed and alive to see my children. She should have had that. She should have had a better life. She should have been surrounded by her kids and grandchildren and a hodge podge of friends. Instead, she had a lonely and pitiful existence with only the companionship of a miserable little man who exacerbated the many mental issues that ultimately ruined her.

The day after Mother’s Day, my mom died at sixty years old… and no one cares. Besides a lack of friends or coworkers, she had no siblings and wasn’t close with her own family. My father’s family was horrible to her, even before she deserved it, and I’ve spent my entire life hearing the nasty things they have to say about her. While I know my dad would love to offer his comfort and possibly even feels he can relate, from the death of my grandfather, I don’t recall anyone ever telling him they’d like to dance on his dad’s grave and I’m not really interested in discussing his choreography, no matter how justified his anger. Worried that I’d keep it to myself long enough to make it really awkward, though, I had Jake call him and deliver the news with instructions to tell everyone that I don’t want to talk… because beyond my husband and grandma, anyone who says they’re sorry is lying. They’re sorry for me, sorry for my grandma, sorry for my brother and his kids… but no one is sorry for my mother’s lost life, in any sense of the phrase. No one but my grandma and I will cry for her and even those are conflicted tears, because deep down, we’re both happy it’s over for her. She didn’t have a good life and it wasn’t going to get any better. She was losing her grip on reality faster and faster and her health was inarguably failing, as well. There won’t even be a funeral, as her husband insists that she didn’t want a service of any kind, which has always been completely out of character. He’ll be having her cremated to bury her alone, without anyone present, like a stray dog. The woman who made those birthday pancakes and binged on raw cookie dough was gone long ago, but now so is any hope that I’ll ever see her again… and no one cares.

Hey, Jude

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2021 has not been a difficult year, comparatively, for Jake and me. In just the first two months, we’ve received a few financial windfalls, bought a new car (with far less friction than The Great Car Fight of 2019), and have both received our first Covid-19 vaccinations. We can have lives again, y’all!

Now that I’ve given credit where credit it is due, I can share how, just eight days into the new year, I experienced one devastatingly unavoidable tragedy. I had to say goodbye to what was once the only boy I’d ever need: my thirteen-year-old beagle, Jude.

I got Jude on Christmas Eve of 2007, just months after my ex burned down my house and killed all of my pets. I was 20 and Jude was six weeks old. At the time, I had a yard and high hopes that my life was headed in a stable direction.

Of course, that’s not how it all panned out. The next few years held seven more moves (because that’s what happens when your ex lies about paying the rent), a miscarriage, the death of a child, literally countless bottles of Everclear, my graduation from college to an empty job market, entry into graduate school, and ultimately a divorce during my first semester, (between jobs substitute teaching and cleaning rec equipment at a community center for minimum wage). These were not good years and, as I’ve written in detail, Jude was not unaffected. My ex was psychotic and abusive and, with me at school and work during his refusal to attend either, my poor Jude bore the brunt of his cruelty.

When Jude and I emerged from the rubble that was my early twenties, we were both worse for the wear. I’ve shared my own trauma, but Jude showed all the signs of a dog abused. Despite my busy schedule not really changing, he developed horrible separation anxiety. I’d leave in the morning and he’d howl at the window as I drove away. When I came home, he’d still be in the same spot, waiting for me. I hope he didn’t spend all day staring, but instead recognized the sound of my car, but I guess I’ll never know. As I’ve admitted in the post linked above, I had no business getting a dog at the time in my life I got Jude… but there we were and rehoming him would have been equally cruel, if not more so.

For years, Jude was petrified of men. I’d invite my guy friends over to my apartment and find myself forced to crate the normally sweet and docile beagle, for fear his aggressive barking would turn to biting. My time was limited, working two jobs and going to graduate school, but I ended every night with Jude by my side, often into the wee hours of the morning, as I did my homework. He slept in my bedroom, preferring the blankets on the floor to my incredibly uncomfortable $300 twenty-somethings mattress, but I called him up every morning to snuggle, before I went to work. I took him on late night car rides and fed him people food, to his detriment, surely. He played in my Gramma’s yard whenever we had the time and camped out in the bathtub with me during tornado scares. I used to say that I wish I trusted anyone as much as that dog trusted me. He even let me bathe him, despite the terror of bath time ingrained by my ex, as long as I sang him through it.

When I met Jake, I took Jude for weekend visits to Wellston, where he’d curl up on Jake’s work coveralls, finally trusting a man, too. He was the ultimate vetting tool as he grew to love Jake as much as I do. Jake, having the typically rigid view of pet rearing that comes from a cattle rancher, showed gentleness and care to Jude and all of his little abused puppy issues, from his food insecurity to his disdain for having his nails clipped. I regret not having more time with my boy when we were both younger, but more often than not, he was the focus of the time I did have. As much as I wish he’d had a better life, it comforts me to know that Jude was so central to mine, that I could literally tell the story of my adulthood trough pictures of him, alone.

There was/were the study sessions and craft marathons…

… the consoling after bad dates…

… the times we got snowed in and someone even got a fancy hand-crocheted sweater…

… the single girl holidays…

… the summers when I worked only twenty hours and simply didn’t know what to do with the rest of my time…

… hangout sessions at Gramma’s house…

… late night drives and exercise…

… the literal moment I got the phone call promoting me to full time librarian…

… obtaining the financial stability to buy the occasional frivolities…

… finally meeting a man worth loving…

… getting a new buddy…

… major life changes with a big move and a wedding…

… more new buddies…

… and finally owning a home, with a great big yard.

Up until his very last day, Jude was by my side, as our lives got progressively better, supporting me through it all. He may not have been the only boy I’ll ever need anymore, but he was my best friend for so very long. After coming home one Friday night to realize that he could no longer move the back half of his body or uncurl his front foot, my rational brain took over. I’d promised us both that I’d never let him linger for the sake of my own feelings, so I called the 24 hour vet, wrapped him in a towel and silently cried as Jake drove us to the city. I fed my boy one last cheeseburger, grateful he could still eat and stayed by his side, tossing the mask so he knew it was me, petting and kissing on him, as he closed his eyes for the last time. I woke the next morning, devastated that I’d had to make the decision to say goodbye, agonizing over whether I’d called it too soon, so grateful to have a husband who would bury him while I slept, as I’d asked. I cried on and off for a week, knowing that despite my love for the others, I’d never love another animal as I did my Jude.

A Lot Can Happen in Ten Years: February 17th, 2011

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February 17th, 2011 was a Thursday… three days after Valentine’s Day and four days after the one year anniversary of the death of a baby I loved. I was 23 years old and living in a mostly empty apartment, after drunkenly throwing out, quite literally, everything I owned, save for my clothes, my bed, an 80s dining chair, and my TV and television armoire, on Christmas Eve. I had no real furniture, no dishes, and no kitchen appliances that didn’t come with my apartment, because he’d touched those things. Life was bleak, as I drove to the county seat, where I sat alone in a judge’s office, tearing up because my life wasn’t supposed to be this way.

At 23, in the South, I was bombarded with social media posts of engagement rings and wedding portraits and announcements of new jobs and new homes. I was even beginning to see a regular flow of ultrasound pictures and self-righteous mommy wars posts… and here I was, listening to a surprisingly compassionate judge explain my state’s laws for remarriage after divorce and thinking about all of the plans I’d had for my life, five years earlier, and how this so very much was not one of them. I was utterly humiliated and completely defeated.

I’d filed the paperwork for my divorce almost three months earlier, but had waited to finalize them until my taxes and FASFA were submitted. I was hyperaware that I’d screwed my life up plenty and, as a graduate student who has always excelled at delayed gratification, wasn’t about to put my educational financing in jeopardy, even if it meant remaining legally married to a psychopath for a little while longer. I hadn’t seen my ex since the day I both bribed him with a cellphone and threatened to call in his warrants, just to get him to sign my car over to me and sign the divorce papers. I was aware that he’d been breaking into my apartment, during the 60 hours I worked each week on top of school, to steal anything of value… but didn’t have the energy to care much or do anything about it, other than drive around with my valuables in the trunk. I’d spent close to my last dime having a paralegal draft the paperwork, to make sure it was done correctly, and was focusing every ounce of energy on keeping my head above water and scraping together the funds to finish the process. That was easier said than done, as I handed over what little cash I had in exchange for as many certified copies of the divorce papers as I could afford.

I left the courthouse and went straight to the Social Security Office, where I officially reclaimed my maiden name on my card and followed it up with a trip to the tag agency, where I did the same with my driver’s license, before stopping by the bank. With no time or money to eat, I barely made it to Walgreen’s to get a new passport photo and requested a name change on that, too. If I recall, it took the last of my budgeted divorce money and cost me $110. Every other 23-year-old I knew had Spring Break travel savings and here I was draining my divorce fund. I went home, defeated and heartbroken, and changed into pajama bottoms and an old high school team t-shirt… yes, I remember what I was wearing that day… and instead of having a good cry, I went to work. I’d already taken off from substitute teaching to run those weekday only errands. I couldn’t afford to lose a day’s worth of minimum wage earnings from my job cleaning rec equipment at the Community Center with my hard-earned bachelor’s degree in family and consumer science education. I couldn’t have chosen a more ironic specialization if I’d tried.

That was exactly ten years ago and it simultaneously feels like someone else’s life and also not that long ago. I remember parts of it so vividly and others are a haze. Within a few months, I moved into my single girl apartment, where I felt safe for the first time in far too long. I didn’t recover overnight, though. I slept with a .357 revolver in a pink gun sock, for several years, in fact. I’m actually not sure if I put it away until I met Jake, the first man to share my bed, and realized how very, very dark that looked. I had nightmares. I developed the occasional stutter, which all research tells me is trauma induced.

In the beginning, I felt like I was taking three steps forward and two steps back, emotionally and financially, but that still equated to progress. I got my first half-time circulation job with the library system, but found myself inexplicably entangled in a lie of omission to my coworkers, deliberately letting them believe I was a spoiled white girl who’d never known a day of hardship in her life. I lost a bunch of weight and started dressing cute and dating, but had no idea how to go about it and never did quite learn how to spot when someone was flirting with me or return the exchange. I slowly built up my credit score, while also taking out the maximum in student loans just to get by and consolidate the debt left over from my divorce.

Ultimately, I graduated from the MLIS program at 25 and was promoted to half time librarian. I had a thriving social life and plenty of hobbies, though I was still working two jobs and rarely got any sleep. I spent the school year saving every dime I could to survive the summers without substitute jobs, the first time I’d find myself with any real free time. I think those summers might have been the best thing for me, as I read by the pool in my $20 drugstore lounge chair, took the dog on long walks, and had dinners of snack foods while yarn bombing the living room during a Vampire Diaries binge.

In time, I made my peace with God and went back to Church. I continued to date, while I tried to figure out if I really wanted marriage and family or if I’d just been told so all my life. I still remember the day I realized, with 100% certainty, that I wanted to get married again and have children. I was subbing an elementary music class during the last week of school. I never subbed young children, unless I really needed the money, but I was looking at three months without jobs, so I took what I could get. That day, there was an assembly, seemingly just for entertainment, where Ronald McDonald did slapstick comedy as the kids roared with laughter while their parents watched from the sidelines. I realized that, although the comedy was childish and stupid, the parents were enjoying their kids’ delight so much, that they were laughing, too. I looked around the gym I’d spent my own elementary school years loathing (never the athletic type) and wondered if I was going to miss this, having children and watching them enjoy moronic assemblies, my husband by my side. I decided to get serious about dating and met Jake approximately one year later. Six months after that, I got my first full time position in the library system and a year later, I had an engagement ring.

Jake and I have been married for almost four years now, together nearly six. We own our own home, in a different town unique to us both, have little debt, and promising careers where we plan to stay, exactly ten minutes from our front door. We have great friends and close family relationships. I still have the occasional nightmare about that time in my life, when I didn’t know what the future held or even what I wanted it to hold. Getting divorced at 23 was easily one of the scariest things I’ve ever done and I was not emotionally or financially equipped for it… but I did it anyway. I shudder to think where I’d be if I hadn’t had the nerve and now, ten years later, I know that I would have been 33 regardless. This way, I’m 33 and have an amazing life. So, for anyone reading this, trying to drudge up the courage to change your life, be it by filing for divorce or going back to school or starting a new career or relocating, just know that time is going to pass either way. It’s up to you where it takes you and a lot can happen in ten years.

Happy New Year?

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If you’ve followed my blog for over a year, you know that I love New Year’s… and I’m fully aware that no one loves New Year’s. When I was a little kid, I was always confused as to how this was a holiday. There were no presents and we didn’t see my extended family. We just… stayed up late and the next day was no different than the one before. New Year’s paled in comparison to Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween. Why were we celebrating this? How was this celebrating?

As an adult, I tried my hand at many different types of New Year’s Eve celebrations. There was the night I went downtown, stayed with a friend and a handful of people I’d never met in some guy’s apartment… who wasn’t actually present. Huh. That might not have been entirely on the up-and-up. It was the first time I almost got my ass kicked in a public restroom… got thrown out of a bar for napping… nearly got my friend in legal trouble by screaming “I can’t do coke, I’m a librarian!” on a city street… the first time I got high… the night I realized I was definitely straight, when a woman kissed me. It was that crazy night I felt I had to have, but knew I’d never want to relive… and I was right.

The next New Year’s Eve, I rented a room at a casino with a friend and had some less crazy fun, with low stakes gambling and bar food, ending the night in a less than luxurious bed that had at least a 50% chance of not having been the site of a rape at one point.

In the years that followed, I learned the best New Year’s celebrations involved small gatherings, with food and alcohol. As I got older, I nixed the alcohol, preferring to start a new year hangover free. In what now seems no time at all, I’ve come full circle from watching the girl who played Mary in our Sunday school play, dance naked in some guy’s apartment, to spending New Year’s Eve with my husband and our favorite junk food. That’s been just fine with me, as we’ve spent every December 31st since we got engaged, celebrating Jake’s dad’s birthday, in his home town. At most, we’ve gone to see some of his high school friends, but overall, we’re boring thirty-somethings, whose children will one day look at our celebration and declare “Why are we celebrating this? How is this celebrating?”

As for New Years Day, now that’s always been a time of reflection and goal setting. I’m pretty sure I’ve written a post for every new year since I turned 25 and started this blog, highlighting my accomplishments from the previous year and declaring what the next one’s will look like, because I love New Year’s resolutions… and I’m fully aware that no one loves New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I didn’t just make a list of 2020 goals last year. I cited goals for the next ten years by opening the decade with a post on how I wanted Belle of 2030’s life to look and well… I think I can safely say that she’ll declare 2020 took a lot out of her, to put it simply.

I posted a little less last year, even taking a five month hiatus at one point, and while I plan to give some more details as to why later, I’m pretty grateful that last year’s New Year’s post gave me ten years to work on said goals, because I’m not sure very many of them were accomplished. I know 2020 was rough on pretty much everyone and I was no exception. There were days when I didn’t get out of bed, weeks when I barely ate, hours of watching the same show or movie on loop, because I found something that wouldn’t upset me. It was a difficult time and honestly, I think my biggest accomplishment of 2020 was getting through it. One thing I can certainly tell January 2020 Belle, is that I do love Jake just as much now as I did then, maybe even more so, because he was there during one of the most difficult times in my life, when I quite frankly wasn’t able to hold it together. He was the string to my kite, y’all.

I cautiously say that things have begun to look up, not just in my personal life, but globally. Covid-19 has multiple vaccines and my being phase two in my state gives me hope that I’ll be able to get it in the next month or two. The divisive election is over, where ever one may stand. Cases aren’t going down, but there’s hope that they will soon. That dim grey lining leaves a pretty bleak outlook on the New Year’s resolutions front, but I’ll give it a go:

  1. Be healthy. Stay healthy, mentally and physically.
  2. Get the Covid-19 vaccine, as soon as possible.
  3. Keep your job. Do well at it. Save your money and put any stimulus money toward debt.
  4. Call family.
  5. Go back to church, when it’s safe.

That’s all I’ve got, folks. I’m so grateful that I finished 2020, I can’t really muster up any more than that for 2021… not even me. So, on January 28th, I say… happy new year? I hope.

A Pandemic Blogiversary and Birthday

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Eight years ago today, on my 25th birthday, I started this blog. Since then, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a five month hiatus… but there also weren’t any global pandemics in that time. As much as I’ve enjoyed chronicling my day to day and making self-deprecating jokes, as much as I love viewing snapshots in time of my life and my person, I just… haven’t been able to bring myself to share these last few months, because 2020 is kicking my ass.

For nearly 10 years, this blog has predominantly been a positive form of self-expression. Sure, I’ve shared tales of frustration with bad dates or disappointment over friendship breakups or work woes and stress, but never have I experienced a full year of devastation… at least not since that 25th birthday.

Jake and I are okay. If anything, this wretched year has made our marriage stronger. I know it’s made me love him more. As for the reverse, well, if I didn’t really know why he liked me before, I definitely don’t now, because I’m a complete and utter mess. We’re both still employed in our fields. He’s actually looking at a promotion. Our pandemic suffering has not been a career crisis, but I can’t bring myself to share all of the horrible details as they unfold, because I don’t want to look back on my worst year since 2010.

I’ve been making annual photo albums, through Mixbook, for years. I started with 2010 and began working my way to present day in 2013. I’ve always been a record keeper, even in my teens, when I carried a film camera to school every day, until I upgraded to digital. I eventually scanned every one of those photos into an album and had it printed, as well. My Mixbooks are one of the first things I’d grab under a tornado warning and I can barely bring myself to compile 2020’s. It’s a good thing I’ve forced myself, regardless, because I guarantee that I’ll have no desire to look back and create it later… something I genuinely enjoy and which makes me feel immensely grateful for my life and all the blessings in it.

So, today, on my 33rd birthday, I’m updating you. Where have I been? I’ve been at home… almost exclusively. I’ve been at the library, where there are almost no customers. I’ve been wiping down tables in gloves and a mask and goggles. I’ve been spending days in bed, because I can’t bring myself to get out of it, sometimes watching Netflix and sometimes doing nothing. I’ve been missing my family and friends and normalcy. I’ve been crying… a lot. There’s of course more to all of this and I will share in time, but the pandemic has hit me hard… and that’s not a snapshot I’ll want to view in five years.

This blog has long been my pride and joy. I’ll try to post more, perhaps sharing my thoughts on the 25 classics I’ve vowed to read this year or who would make a better president than our current terrible options. I am not gone… just coping. Thank you for sticking with me. Check on your friends.

Library school didn’t prepare me for losing a teen.

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Everyone hates teenagers. We all know that, I more than most, as their champion and advocate. They’re mouthy and hormonal and loud and mischievous… and that’s all most people see. Unlike the villainous dislike of children, everyone’s allowed to voice their disdain for teens… and they do, usually within earshot of their subjects.

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Adults don’t care about teens’ confusion and widespread abandonment issues, the extreme self-consciousness caused by the live streaming of their very existence, from their friends and parents and enemies. They don’t care that they’re coming into their sexuality in a minefield of consent and its constantly changing definitions, that their most private texts and photos are often traded among their peers like collectible playing cards, that they’re expected to trade them, themselves. No… most people just assume that if they could overcome their adolescence X years ago, then so can today’s teenagers.

Last night, I learned that one of my daily library kids didn’t overcome his teenage years. I don’t know the circumstances of his arrest, his guilt or his innocence… but I knew him and I liked him. I hadn’t seen him since a program in January. I was beginning to worry, but I was looking forward to having him as one of my teen volunteers this summer. I knew he was looking forward to it, too, since he was the first to register… but I won’t see him this summer. I won’t see him ever again, because he died this week. He was alone and scared and thought he had no future… a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he was discovered hanging from a light fixture in a county jail cell… and that’s all anyone will remember. They’ll whisper about rape charges and suicide and they won’t question why or how it could have been prevented. They’ll only condemn… and my heart is breaking, because I couldn’t help him. I wasn’t that person, wasn’t in a position to do so, but I wish I could have helped him navigate whatever it was to which he was lost. Could I have been clearer, that time on the patio, when I talked to him about the rumors the girls were spreading and the behavior that might lead to them… about respect and consent? Could I have been clearer with the girls about the consequences of such accusations, when upon further investigation, I realized their terms weren’t entirely fair or accurate? I tried, within all my power and professional boundaries, to explain it as thoroughly as I could, without accusation or dismissal… and one of them is still dead.

I wish I could help my teens more, without crossing a line. I wish we were all more invested in protecting them, providing them with the love and care we were so intent on giving them just five years earlier. I wish we were more comfortable and transparent in guiding them through their social and sexual interactions. Mostly, I wish a sixteen-year-old boy hadn’t killed himself in a county jail last week… that whatever landed him there hadn’t happened… that he had a chance to make better decisions and figure out who he could be… that I had any idea how to process this.

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Carcinogenic Radioactive Waste and Oranges: Marriage at 19 vs. Marriage at 29

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Jake: “So, we’ve been married for four months now, give or take. Do you ever look back and compare it to your first marriage and realize how different it is?”
Me: “Well, honestly, I try not to think about that time in my life, but even if I do, it’s just… apples and oranges. Yes, I was legally married and have never claimed otherwise, but that wasn’t actually a marriage in any way.”

When I was a senior in high school, my mother let my boyfriend move in with us, and a few months later, she took off to live with a man she met on the Internet. Because years earlier, she’d seen to it that I had no relationship with my dad, I didn’t really have anyone else. Sure, my Gramma has always been an amazing presence in my life, but it wasn’t the same as having a parent in the home every day to help me through the huge transition that was the end of childhood. Graduating high school, leaving those friends, going to college: those things are really hard with a supportive and loving family… or so I heard from friends. At 18, though, I felt like I had nothing and no one to hold onto as my mother prepared to sell the house she’d left behind, less than gently pushing me out the door, and my high school boyfriend was… there.

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Looking back on my reasons for getting married at 19, it’s no surprise that said “marriage” deserved air quotes. I don’t know that “apples and oranges” is even a fitting phrase, considering those are both fruit. Being “married” at 19 and married at 29 are more like… carcinogenic radioactive waste and oranges. For instance…

The Wedding Day

At 19, on my “wedding day,” I tried to look five years into the future and determine whether or not I’d still be “married.” I couldn’t picture it, but… I also couldn’t think of any other options. The college I was attending would only let us continue to live in family student housing if we were legally married and I had nowhere else to go… or so I thought. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that I could’ve called off the wedding, even the day of, and the rest of my family would’ve supported me. I’d have been able to stay with my Gramma or my dad (who I fortunately reconnected with in time), until a dorm opened up the next semester. There was always an option besides getting married at 19, when it didn’t feel right, watching a troubled young man become a sociopathic grown man, derailing my life because I didn’t want to make people uncomfortable or be the subject of gossip. I couldn’t see this, however, and there was a chapel full of people…

On my real wedding day, as I like to think of it, I was so excited to join my life with Jake. The only nerves I experienced were the result of knowing that in just a few hours, a lot of people would be staring at me… and I’d have to dance. Jake though? He has never been a question. The day I married Jake, I’d already moved past fantasizing about our newlywed days and well into day-dreaming about the complacency and monotony of everyday married life that everyone dreads. I haven’t just looked five years into the future and felt certain I would still choose Jake. I’ve imagined growing old together a thousand times… and not in some romantic Noah and Ally from The Notebook sort of way, but one that includes the horrors of childbirth and dead pets and money troubles and funeral arrangements and prayers and tears and heartbreak. I don’t need a romantic fantasy. I just need Jake. I’ve never doubted that he was the right choice; not when I walked down the aisle with my dad, as he assured me I had chosen right this time, not when Jake elbowed me in the head during our first dance, not when I was seasick for most of our honeymoon, not even the dozens of times we’ve argued since. Jake has consistently been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

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The Religious Implications

As a confirmed Catholic, for any marriage to be valid in the eyes of the Church and God it has to be blessed by the Church. Now, even practicing Catholics elope or get married in beautiful wedding chapels or at pricey outdoor venues. However, their marriage has to ultimately be blessed by a priest in a convalidation ceremony. I knew this when and after I “married” in a wedding chapel at 19 and yet, something prevented me from ever actually going through with the process. In time, I distanced myself, not just from the Church, but from my faith in general. It’s difficult to call someone Godless without drama or exaggeration, but it’s a fitting term for my ex. Unlike an Atheist or an Agnostic, the man truly lacked any moral center. He stole, lied, cheated, and he did so indiscriminately from friends, family, enemies, and strangers. Simply being associated with him as a person made me feel unworthy and yet, leaving him would also be wrong in the eyes of many. It took two years after my divorce for me to shake my shame enough to return to the Church and I promised myself that my next marriage would be official in the eyes of God.

When Jake and I married, we decided together that with his Protestant family and my Catholic family, moving and career changes, our short engagement due to rodeo season (no really), a Catholic wedding wasn’t for us. We were married at a beautiful and rustic outdoor venue, by a friend of Jake’s, who’s a youth minister and faithful husband and father; which was preferable to me over a minister to whom Jake felt no connection if we couldn’t get married by a priest. Jake might not be Catholic, but on this we agree: God’s authority is superior in every way to that of the government and the approval of my faith, as well as his, is crucial. So,we’ve already met with our new priest and scheduled to have our marriage blessed, the day after Jake’s birthday. Because I’m a confirmed Catholic, my previous “marriage” was never recognized by the Church. I have some paperwork to send in to complete my “defect of form” annulment and then, in the eyes of God, my marriage to Jake will truly be, my only real one.

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Our Standing in Life

When I was 19, I had worked a couple of minimum wage jobs and had nothing to show for it. My ex had even less, with no work experience at all. I had no savings, no assets, no real job prospects. I wanted to be a teacher, naively insisting that the money didn’t matter, making a difference in the world did. My ex didn’t and wouldn’t work or go to school, which I hoped would change. I tried not to think too much about the future, because any level of stability seemed so distant. We were renting married student housing, which was about to be condemned by the city (literally) and counting on financial aid to house and feed us. My mother paid for the wedding, because if I was married, she could sell her house guilt free and wash her hands of me. I had no real concept of money, myself, and ultimately accepted all the loans I was offered. It was Future Belle’s problem, as were many things, as I coped with how drastically my life had been derailed since the beginning of my senior year.

At 29, my wedding and honeymoon were always paid in full. At 32 years old, Jake had ample savings from his days in the oil field and zero debt, which of course meant zero credit. At 23, I’d begun working to improve my credit score and after six years, it somewhat made up for my debt, particularly when coupled with my Income Based Repayment Plan and the fact that I qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. While Jake is beginning a new career in hydrology, his bachelor’s degree in the field, his experience in oil, and his crazy work ethic have already been assets to him. Because I make just under $50k myself, in one of the cheapest states in the country, we can afford for him to start at the bottom and I’ve every confidence he’ll move up quickly. We do have debt, but we’re both committed to paying it off and we’re currently saving to buy a home within the next year. The future is looking bright and Present Day Belle handles her problems like a big girl.

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Our Actual Relationship

It’s easy for me to put that first relationship in air quotes, not just because I was 11, but considering the motivation, the fact that God wasn’t looking, and that its primary funding source was financial aid and prayer. I feel those reasons invalidate the union plenty. The foremost reason, however, that my first “marriage” was no marriage at all, was the relationship itself. At the best point, we were extremely codependent. I don’t know that, looking back, I’d claim to have ever loved him, so much as I’d say that I needed someone, anyone, and he was the only one present. 

As time wore on, though, I moved closer to Shetland and my Gramma. Gail and I reconnected after that initial graduation drift, and even any sense of codependency faded. I once explained to Gail, that you get different things from different people, that I trusted and loved her and my dad and my Gramma. All I needed from my ex was for him to work. Literally, I didn’t need love or support or trust or fidelity or goodness or strength of character or a partner or someone to lead me closer to God. I just needed him to feed himself. I was actually completely willing to continue taking care of myself, if he’d stop stealing from me. I used to joke that I’d never get married again, that marriage is miserable, that my next wedding would be on a snow covered mountaintop in hell. However, no matter how hard some readers may judge me for claiming that any marriage can not count (in which case, they can go fuck themselves), I cannot stress enough that the relationship that spanned those four years was not a marriage in any sense. 

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Today, happily and healthily married to Jake, I’ve had to get used to a few things… like the fact that my Gramma and Gail are second and third in my life. It’s strange, having not just an additional person on my list of people I’m willing to see on a weepy and frustrating day, but having someone actually upstage them. Gail has been my best friend since the 9th grade and she still is… but the dynamic has shifted. Jake comes first for me and Terry comes first for her and in neither of our previous marriages was that ever the case… nor could it or should it have been. We were married to scary fucking dudes and were both somewhat distant from our families. It was us against the world… and now it’s not. We still talk every day and have some pretty fucked up shared history, but we’re not 20 and married to psychopaths, eating fish we grilled in a public park because we don’t want to go home. When I get pregnant, she won’t be the first to know. I’ll never drive her and her baby to the ER again… and that’s weird to imagine and sometimes even weird in practice: having someone. Being married.

I’m not driving around with food from The Dollar Tree in my backseat anymore. I don’t sleep with my wallet in my pillowcase. Zetus lapetus, y’all, I trust this man enough to share a bank account with him. What the fuck happened?!? When I went home crying from the stress of my first week at the Cherokee library, Jake was the only person I wanted to comfort me. When I had food poisoning and threw up all over myself in the car, I was only mildly embarrassed that he was present to see me miserable and covered in vomit. If I have good news or a secret to tell or a funny meme to send, Jake is the first person to come to mind and that’s so weird. What is this fantastical adventure they call marriage?!?! I ask, because this is truly the first time I’ve experienced it.

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The most I can say, in defense of 19-year-old Belle, is that she was not an adult. Nineteen-year-olds are teenagers, whose brains function differently. They still need guidance and I didn’t have that. In theory, it would’ve been nice if I did, but then I might not be here… and here is really good.