Where are you from?
Arizona, but I currently live in Texas.
Really? What made you move to Texas?
*sigh* A boy. (a mistake, my high school boyfriend, some variation of that response)
Are you still together?
No. That was a long time ago.
15 years ago in fact. I still get that question or variations of it to this day and I’m sure that I will continue to do so as long as I identify more with my birthplace, than I do with my place of residence. I’m not sure how many years you can continue to go on about being from some place other than where you live, in 3 more years it will be a tie between the two places and I know that I will be living here at least 2 years after that. However, I do know that I will always be from Arizona, Texans are sticklers for this sort of thing; you are either native or you aren’t.
I never planned on living here this long, frankly, I never planned much past the heinous drive on I-10 to get here. Let me just pause a moment to ask how many of you have made that drive, have you? Have you made the insanely long and boring drive across the lower states on I-10? Because that shit, is RIDICULOUS. Texas goes on for fucking EVER and OMG, do I HATE being in a car for prolonged periods of time! Did you know that you have to go slower when you are pulling a trailer full of your worldly possessions and your car? SLOWER on an already excruciatingly long drive, that you started at 6 am the morning after you graduated from high school.
I know what you are thinking, I obviously must have had a damn good reason to do what I did, right? To just up and leave my entire life behind, just like that, for my high school boyfriend. Are you maybe thinking that he was an amazing person? If you are, stop it, stop it right now. My high school boyfriend was not an amazing person. We did not have a great relationship. We had a long relationship, 3 years-the entirety of my high school years, we had a desperate relationship. By the time I moved 1,200 miles for him, he had already done a stint in jail on work release, moved twice and left me behind and had been discharged from the Army (he claims on medical but everything he says is a lie so who knows). Oh, he had also cheated on me, I’m gonna guess a lot but at least one time for certain because he called me from her house drunk off his ass and I had to ask the girl where the hell he was in order to get him home. Yeah. There are worse things, MUCH worse, but frankly I don’t feel like embarrassing myself any further. When I said our relationship was desperate, I wasn’t kidding.
After much therapy, I realize that I was just continuing in the cycle of abuse that I had grown up in. The sad thing is that I knew this during our relationship. I was IN therapy during our relationship (yes I was in therapy in High School) and had figured all this out and yet, I still moved. We lasted ONE MONTH after I moved here. ONE MONTH after he spent the entirety of my graduation money. I found out that while we were apart he had gotten himself wrapped up in crystal meth, which made him a lovely human being. I don’t know that I can really express what that drug does to a person, what it turns someone into, especially someone that wasn’t that great to start with; that was some truly scary shit.
I could write a novel with all those experiences, the things that happened during that month and beyond. It took a long time for me to be able to detangle myself from him, much longer than I ever could’ve expected and involved events that I was in no way prepared to deal with at 18 years old. I thought I had seen things and I thought that I was grown, I thought that what I had already been through jaded me enough… you just never know though, do you? There is no way you can be prepared for a break-up that involves things like being told he’s HIV positive (so you won’t try and sleep with anyone else) or that he has cancer or him stealing your car on your birthday from your job (his name was on the title since I was underage when I bought it, so the cops couldn’t do anything and he sold it) or having you followed and paging you with your location at various times. It got to the point that I couldn’t answer the phones at my job because it was always him calling and it didn’t stop for over a year. A YEAR. Every time I would get comfortable and let my guard down, he would pop up again. Every time.
When the sprog was wee, I received a call from my then MIL that his wife had called her. REALLY? Apparently she really wanted to talk to me and asked that I call her. I hemmed and hawed for a while before deciding what I should do, I mean I really didn’t want to open myself and my life back up to him in anyway shape or form, but apparently this girl was scared and needed someone to talk to; so I called her. That phone call was the last form of contact I ever had about him and it creeped me out the most. She told me that she had found a box under their bed which contained pictures of me and my lingerie (oh yeah he stole all my lingerie when I left him) they were sleeping every night over pictures of me and my lacy underthings. *sigh* If only that was the creepy part. She realized as she was going through the box, that she looks like me. She and I could be sisters we look that much alike. That wasn’t why she was calling me, of course, but it beared mentioning. So when he couldn’t get me back, he went out and found a me clone. Fabulous! I talked to her about how he was behaving and gave her advice based on my experience. I was honest about what happened in our relationship and told her what drug he was most likely on. I told her I hoped that she got the hell out of there as soon as possible and that she had a strong support system that could protect her, because it wasn’t going to be easy. I never heard from her again, I hope she heeded the advice.
15 years later, I wouldn’t say it was my best idea, obviously, but it was the only idea I had at the time. I knew that it wouldn’t last and I knew that it would probably end badly, but I had no idea how badly, I just knew I needed to get away from the toxicity of my parents and there was a way out. Who could’ve been prepared for that stuff, honestly? My therapist asked me once if I could, would I undo everything that my father had done to me, that my mother had done to me? He was shocked when my answer was no. I wouldn’t be who I am today, had I not gone through what I’ve gone through. Of course, I would wish for an easier life but that’s not the way things work. I am who I am for what I have grown through and the experiences that have molded me, all of them.
My husband would point out that had I not moved to Texas, I would never have met him and that is likely the case but maybe, I could’ve been living in Flagstaff when he visited there on his spring break and met him that way instead and not have had to go through all this shit. Of course that brings up the much more hotly contested, would I have had the sprog conversation and unfortunately, I don’t see a way that I could plug having him into my life in Arizona.
I jokingly say that my life serves as an example to people that it can be much worse. Sometimes it isn’t really a joke, but I can always laugh at just how absurd it is, you just have to.
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Wednesday Writing Prompt group created by Princess Nebraska, with this week’s prompt “I wouldn’t say it was my best idea” given by She Likes Purple if you’d like to play along, please click the linkage and check it out!
