Entry 15-01.03.04 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

ENTRY TABLE OF CONTENTS

(a) Greeting
(b) Preamble
(c) Story Time
------ Ch. 1) The Darkness Within
------ Ch. 2) Mad as a Hatter
------ Ch. 3) Skipping a Beat
(d) TL;DR… nah

Salutations readers, writers, and thinkers! May your first weekend of 2015 be productive, relaxing, and long.

I’ve been giving it some thought and… since spousal issues are already a major concern for the year; I figured I’d write this here. Some of you may know this story, some of you may not… and I can’t promise certain details won’t be different if/when I write this part of my autobiography. As with all stories… I honestly don’t know how far back to begin. Everyone always says “start a story at the beginning” but in life… our reactions and emotional understandings begin to form as early as our first experiences. So, since figuring out where to begin is always such a problem… this may be wicked long. Hopefully not too boring. But… yeah, there is a LOT of ME here.
As with any story I share; if you have questions or want clarification on an issue, please feel free to ask. I will answer if I can.

STORY TIME

The Story of Life
The story you are about to read is true, or true enough as my memory can relay it. The names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

Ch. 1: The Darkness Within

The year was 2004, late August. I was living with my parents during the summer in between my Second and Third year at college. That summer had been a particularly interesting and particularly challenging one. I had finally gotten Thompson to date me the previous winter, but we started out rocky. A few years prior, I had tried to approach her on the subject of dating but was cast aside for an old boyfriend. I should have seen that as an obvious sign of the girl’s personality, but I was too interested in her to think clearly. The February of 2004 we’d agreed to give “us” a shot. Our colleges were 2 hours away from each other. It isn’t that difficult a drive to make, or so I had thought. As I said… our relationship was rocky. The girl didn’t even tell her mother about me until June. Not that it made much of a difference but Thompson and her mom spoke every day. I can’t imagine speaking to someone every day for five months and not mentioning a boyfriend. The summer made the distance worse as my parents lived further south, turning the drive from two hours into 5. But because my parents lived in the happening state capitol, Thompson felt no qualms about visiting. I’ll tell you straight, Thompson was one of the most attractive women I’d ever dated. Sure not everyone would agree with that, but that was the point. She wasn’t a stone cold fox always on display for the world; but what I saw was a quiet beauty alive inside a tiny frame. Plus the fact that I got to see her in a bathing suit a few times didn’t hurt how I felt about her. But then it all came crashing down, late August 2004. We’d been arguing more frequently, usually about the same things. I felt like I was putting more effort into the relationship than she was; I was making all the drives and all the schedule adjustments and it never felt like she was doing the same. So she called it off. I took it badly. Very badly. Some time I’ll go into it all, but I spiraled into a pretty desperate emotional place. And with all of my emotional energy drained, the physical pain that was my constant companion became too much to bear.

Being late August when everything went down, I had already moved back to college. But instead of the dorms, I was moving in to an apartment suite… a real unique one. The layout is worth covering because, as the physical pain became my jailer, the apartment became my jail. Right away when entering the door, there is a space for shoes and what not. To the left of that is a bathroom and a bedroom, to the right the kitchen area, and the remaining space was a living room. Just in the back corner of that living room, though, is a staircase going up. That second floor contained another bathroom and two bedrooms. My old college roommate from the Dorms, Brody, picked the bedroom on the bottom floor and he was going to share it with a new friend… a tall, unattractive man named Vincent. One of the upstairs bedrooms had a walk in closet that could be converted to an office, so the newspaper man Lance wanted that room. He’d already agreed to share his room with his old High School buddy Matt. That left me, odd man out, a room alone at the top of the stairs. I suppose it may be possible that the isolation contributed to how poorly I took the break up with Thompson. I know the move to the apartments sped up the process of my pain. Within a little over a month, the pain went from “that annoying ache all over that I’ve gotten used to” to “a debilitating torture preventing me from sleeping, thinking, or walking.”

Like typical college-aged men, my apartment-mates didn’t ask questions, didn’t want to be involved. I was left alone in my room at the top of the stairs while they threw raucous parties in the living room. Occasionally, I’d make it downstairs to at least attempt to be friendly but what I saw usually bothered me more than I could stand. Somehow… unattractive, tall Vincent had gotten himself a gorgeous, very busty girlfriend with a heart of gold… a nursing student named Sanger. It didn’t help matters that Sanger was so caring, attentive, and came from a great deal of money. She and I became friends (of a sort) that semester and her help would prove invaluable. But that friendship also led to my discovering why a beautiful woman that enjoyed helping people was with a selfish, physically repulsive man. Turns out that she was one of those women that just naturally saw men over 6 feet tall as potential mates; and men under 6 feet tall as nothing more than friends. Of course, she also said that Vincent’s cock size always made her stay with him no matter how many arguments they got into. But I’ve strayed too far off the story. My apartment-mates simply thought I was depressed about Thompson and was still going into a depression. Not being very good friends, they never actually talked to me about any of this or showed concern when I stopped going to classes.

I did have a good friend that cared, though. It was just… she didn’t know what to do in the situation for a number of reasons. You see, Goodwin had known Thompson since they were both in high school. Goodwin also lived about an hour away from the college… ironically, she was precisely in the middle between Thompson’s college and mine. But, periodically, Goodwin would come to check in on me. She thought I was just getting more and more depressed as well, and that isn’t wrong to believe. When physical pain strips you of sleep, movement, and motivation… you do get depressed about it. Therein lies the problem though… I never told people why I was getting so depressed so everyone assumed it was because of Thompson. But, as I said, Goodwin was a great friend. She had an annual Chicago Trip that I usually accompanied her on; and 2004 was not going to be an exception. If you’re wondering why Goodwin and I never became a thing, the answer is I wanted it to and she didn’t. She was far too good of a friend for me to push that issue, so I accepted that we wouldn’t be a romantic thing and enjoyed the friendship a great deal.

Back to it: the Chicago trips always happened in October and Goodwin wanted to make sure I could go as a way to cheer me up. She also wanted to bring along a friend, someone she had met in her semester abroad in Greece. This friend of hers, Lydia, had recently gotten divorced. Were I of a clearer mind, I would have likely seen the entire thing as Goodwin trying to set us up but the excruciating physical pain and emotional issues I was experiencing clouded my ability to piece anything together. Goodwin’s friend was kind enough to drive and my old roommate Brody was going to come with us. So, it was to be four of us on the road to Chicago. Goodwin introduced us to her friend Lydia and, even though Lydia was bundled against the cold October wind, the woman oozed sex appeal. As I’ve said before, I’m not one to instantly go for blondes; but Lydia had that certain quality. Something about her that instantly made men want her. The drive to Chicago was full of conversation between her and I about all manner of things from our mutual enjoyment of Tool to our aesthetic tastes. We honestly became friends on that drive but friendship also involves exposing things that may allow others to judge us harshly. For me, I spoke with her about what had been going on with Thompson and my pain. For her, she spoke with me about her failed marriage and her new-found appreciation for drugs and casual sex. A smarter man may have been able to suggest that I missed a perfect opportunity. A woman that oozed sex, that I definitely wanted and who confessed to me that she enjoyed casual sex… but lest we forget, I wasn’t thinking clearly and I wasn’t likely to make a move due to my continued virginity. On the second day of the trip, I confess I was considering at least approaching the subject of dating with Lydia… when Thompson showed up. Like something out of a poorly written sitcom! Thompson had to come to Chicago for a conference that weekend and had tracked us down to spend the afternoon with us. Seriously? But, of course, since Goodwin always wants to be a good friend… it wasn’t like she could just say no. So… excruciating pain and an unclear head (me), now spending the afternoon in Chicago with Sexual Lydia, Goodwin, Brody, and most recent ex-girlfriend Thompson.

But that led me to an important realization. One that I needed. With Lydia present and knowing everything I had told her about Thompson and I, she was able to take my mind off things with Thompson. Unfortunately, not by engaging in a whirl-wind physical relationship, but that is largely because of me. BUT getting my mind off Thompson didn’t stop the pain, the depression, any of that! When we came back home, I wound up talking to Sanger about it to see what she recommended. She encouraged me to go to Student Health and simply lay it all out for the attending physician. All of the pain, from when it first became noticeable to when it became overwhelming, and to let him know about what was going on with me that semester. The doctor diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia and was kind enough to authenticate my medical withdrawal forms. Because, due to the inability to move without extreme pain, I had missed nearly two months of classes.

Ch. 2: A Mad Tea Party

December of 2004 saw me back at my parents’ with their love and support as we tried to find the proper combination of drugs that would allow me a clear mind and lessened pain. However, the entire experience truly made me feel like I had lost all honor. My parents were kind and supporting and encouraging. But to me? I had wasted an entire semester. Wasted time, wasted money, wasted experiences. I truly felt like a man without honor and I wanted to get it back. I was determined to spend my next semester doing what I could to capture what honor was still allowed me.

That determination is one of the reasons I rather forced myself to have a social life in 2005. Of course I still wasn’t exactly warmly welcomed to the parties thrown in my own apartment suite… too many months of being “that guy alone in his room” had convinced the apartment regulars that I was some Quasimodo Phantom Beast and I’ll confess… being treated as a monster in those respects still gets to me from time to time. But Goodwin, who at the time was 23, knew of several clubs where the minimum age to enter was 20. And since I am me and wouldn’t drink before turning 21, I could help by being DD if/when it was needed. So I was invited to go clubbing with Goodwin and Lydia a lot. That made the Lydia thing more complicated. Because now I got to see her in hot, sexy clothing… I got to see her dance… but I also got to see how free she really was about men. I’ll admit that it made me uncomfortable. I was still her friend and still attracted to her but… when she’s openly stating how upset she is because she hadn’t been fucked that week.... I was uncomfortable.

It was a February in 2005 that has rather changed my life towards what it has become. The cold mid-west February had become something to rebel against, so I got my hair cut short and wore something summery for our evening at the club. When I arrived, Lydia said that she had invited a friend from work to join us. Lydia worked in the Photolab at Wal Mart and said that there was a friend of hers that needed a night out. I didn’t know who to look for, who to expect, or any of that information but I shrugged and told Lydia to let me know if the friend shows up. I hit the dance floor… yes, part of my reclaiming my honor involved telling my leg pain to fuck off. I had been a dancer for years, I was going to try very hard to make sure that this Fibromyalgia wasn’t going to take that away from me!

On the dance floor I saw an attractive short female with long dark hair. I considered going up to her for what felt like a long time. You see, I had only done something like that once before and it failed miserably. BUT this was to be the semester where I started regaining my honor! So, I decided to approach the young woman if only to tell her how well she was dancing. She appreciated the compliment and we began talking. I honestly don’t remember what I said; I didn’t think I was likely to see this woman again so I didn’t really pay much attention. Until I relocated Goodwin and Lydia. And the woman I had just danced with approached. And Lydia introduced her as the friend from work. I… changed a bit. You see, despite everything, our clubbing outings usually involved a great deal of playful verbal parrying between Lydia and I. Always dancing around the edges of will we/won’t we. Sometimes going so far as to involve touching in those scenarios… a hand on a leg or a shoulder, nothing too scandalous but always just suggesting. Neither of us knowing if or when we’d actually make a move. But not that night. That cold February night in 2005, my attention was on this new girl. I wanted to know about her, I wanted to know everything. She was 24, a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, had graduated with an Art Degree and didn’t know what she wanted to do with it. We talked and laughed and danced all night. At the end of the evening, she went to her car and Goodwin, Lydia and I went to mine. At which point Lydia mentions… that friend of hers… Alice… has a boyfriend. Has been living with him for the past 2 or 3 years. Have to admit- I was a bit crushed.

I know that some people say “taken doesn’t mean off limits” but there is no honor in that. How can I regain my honor if I am trying to take someone else’s girlfriend? Especially, when it isn’t just someone else’s girlfriend… it is a woman with whom a house has been purchased and pets have been adopted and… yeah, there is NO honor in being a home wrecker! So I promised myself, I wouldn’t pursue her. If she came out with us again, cool, but not a big deal. Apparently, Alice started asking Lydia about going out a lot after that. She had enjoyed her time at the dance club and wanted to do that more. So… when we went to the club, there she was. I admit, it put me in an awkward position. It actually started to push me closer towards honestly pursuing Lydia. Our playful teasing became more sexually charged; I’d grab Lydia’s ass, she’d put her hand on my crotch. The thing most holding me back was… I was certain I could not both stay a virgin and begin any type of relationship with Lydia. I was certain of that. After all, she had complained about not getting fucked for a week… how patient would she be with me? More importantly, how patient would I be with myself? After all, this is a woman that I had always been strongly sexually attracted to… could I hold off on having sex with her if we were to date. And is that how I want my first time to be? With someone who acts like she doesn’t care who it is with as long as it doesn’t suck. My mind was playing all of these questions and tying itself into knots for months!

Finally, Spring Semester 2005 was over. Not only was this good simply for the fact that I had completed an entire semester of class (a slow but necessary step to regaining my honor); but my birthday is in the beginning of May. Usually aligning with a Final Exam or the End of Finals Party. My apartment-mate Lance also had a birthday in the beginning of May. AND we were both turning 21! W00T! The apartment chipped in and bought us a large photo cake for us… but we weren’t allowed to unveil the cake until Goodwin and Lydia arrived at the apartment. When they arrived, both women were looking awesome (of course) and right behind them in came Sanger (also looking awesome… though, as fit as she was, I can’t imagine her back not being in constant pain due to the size of her breasts!) We unveiled the cake and… the photo was a naked woman… that was easily 700 lbs. There is a picture of Lance and I’s expression that… it’s pretty quality.

After that… off to the club! We all took separate cars to make sure that whoever was sober could drive those who weren’t. Lydia and Goodwin arrived ahead of the rest of us and were ushered right in. The rest of us? Had to wait in line… because it was the End of Year Party… and there were about 300 people waiting. Okay, it happens. No worries. Of course, I’m distracted as hell mentally because I’ve been going around and around and around in circles about the whole Lydia and Alice thing for 3 months now! Luckily, I had been able to talk to Sanger about it a lot but… that made Vincent jealous. That never made sense to me. He gets to sleep with her, have sex with her, and no matter how often they fight- she always comes back to him. I talk to her for around twenty minutes a week and he gets jealous… still can’t believe Sanger ended up marrying that guy! Anyway, Vincent sees that my mind is occupied and it is obvious to everyone what I’m thinking about… I’m probably the only person from our little group that hadn’t had a girlfriend that semester. So he starts needling me. Pretty viciously, too. And… I release the darkness. I can be surprisingly violent and deliciously dark, but those are traits I’ve worked very hard to keep in check. Even though I’m 5‘7 and Vincent is easily 6‘3; my right hand shoots out and grabs him by the throat and I lift. I lift Vincent off of his feet by his throat and growl, “Keep talking, Jackass. I’d love a reason to squeeze.”

After that… I wasn’t much in the mood to wait in line with those guys anymore. So I just left. Happy Birthday to me, eh? Stopped by a Hy-Vee Grocery store on the way home so that I could at least purchase some alcohol on my 21st birthday. About an hour after I left… everybody came back to the apartment. And I don’t just mean the people who lived there… everybody. Goodwin and Lydia came back, the apartment folks, the friends that come to the Apartment Parties and more. Apparently, a lot of people were sick of waiting in line (we didn’t know at the time, but from when we arrived, the club was already at 1 in 1 out status.) So, now the apartment is full… even my room has people milling about. Of course, since it is my room… the people in it are either friends of mine or people that haven’t been to our place before… because perish the thought of entering the realm of the Quasimodo Phantom Beast. But Goodwin, Lydia, Alice… even several very attractive women I’d never met before… these people were in my bedroom… it was like a college dream come true. There are some great photos of it, too. There is a nice one of Goodwin, Lydia, Alice, Lance, and I all sitting on my bed talking. A nice one of Goodwin’s twin sister laughing. And a bit of a scandalous one where Alice is laying her head in my lap. Yeah. That threw me. After that, Alice and Lydia disappear for a while and I’m left sitting there talking to this immaculate hottie. It is just me sitting on my bed, and this gorgeous woman sitting on my bed and we’re talking… of course, we’re talking about her boyfriend in the military. Because the story of my life is usually when a gorgeous woman feels comfortable talking to me, it is because they want to get advice on their boyfriend. It is what it is. After about twenty minutes of that conversation, I was ecstatic when Alice came back.

As the party dies down and people start leaving, it is pretty apparent that Alice is in no condition to drive. I discover much later that it isn’t strictly too much alcohol but also some marijuana that is keeping her in a no-drive condition. Anyway, it isn’t a concern. I have a sofa that pulls out to a bed for just such occasions. There should never be a “good excuse” for driving under the influence. Of course, the apartment has had (maybe) 100 party goers and all of their smells combining; so I crank up the Glade Plug Ins for the sake of the apartment. Turns out, however, that the smell of the Plug Ins is making Alice nauseous. I offer to remove them, do, but the smell lingers and combines with the original offensive odors I was trying to mask. I’d had a bit to drink and I’m a nice guy so, without a second thought, I revert to caretaker mode. I start rubbing Alice’s back to try to soother her. She pulls herself up and her face is smack in the middle of my chest… and she just humms with happiness. She looks at me and says, “You are the only thing that smells good right now. Don’t go.” So, I lay down with her on the pull out bed. And she starts cuddling, snuggling, and that turns to hardcore making out. We fall asleep in each other’s arms.

The next day, she leaves… I feel like I’ve just hit the reset button on my honor again, and Sanger is ecstatic with joy for me. I try to tell her that… it is no reason to celebrate. Alice is still not single, is still living with a guy… what happened was just a drunken making out. In order to best deal with the situation, I just figured.... I wouldn’t have any further contact with Alice. I’d simply cut ties completely because… it isn’t fair to either of us. Anyone who knows me would also know that I have a flare for the dramatic so… anytime Goodwin would call to hit the clubs, I knew Alice would be there, so I declined… and then watched Batman TAS Mad as a Hatter. The strategy worked pretty well for over a month. Until one night Alice refused to leave Goodwin alone until Goodwin gave her my phone number. Alice still has the wristband that Goodwin wrote the number down on. Alice called me and came over. I told her to give me an hour or so because I was watching Donnie Darko with a friend of mine. It still surprises me that it took me so long to see that film!

Chapter 3: Skipping a Beat

As you may have deduced, Alice is now my wife. She came over that night, talked and told me that she was leaving her boyfriend. She’d be getting her own place and we could start dating. She walked away from a house, her cats, and moved into a small apartment. Then July 3rd, 2005 we officially started seeing each other. There were bumps along the way but nothing too tragic. Until about 2007. I was finished with college and planning on moving back home to The Capital. I was planning on giving a lot of serious thought about Law School before taking LSATs… I wanted to make sure that it was what I wanted to do before just jumping into it. But, the question came… what to do about Alice? After the disaster of Thompson, I wasn’t going to do a long distance relationship! I certainly wasn’t in a position to consider marriage. I know a lot of people would think, “College degree, he’s 23 and she’s 27, they’ve been dating for two years… why not?” Easy answer… it felt way too soon for that. Some people can decide quickly on marriage proposals… my family doesn’t. We like to know someone for at least 5 years first! And I wasn’t going to ask Alice to move for me. Not again. And it would have been really rude to ask that since we wouldn’t live together. Never before a marriage proposal; big family rule! I was fairly resigned to break up with her as “the right thing to do.” But before I did, she surprised me by saying she’d already gotten a job at the Wal Mart Photolab at The Capital and was moving a month before I was!

So… that’s the thing. This woman left a boyfriend, a house, and her cats so she could have a relationship with me. She got a job and moved to The Capital with me. She married me and moved to Omaha so I could go to Law School. But… after the marriage… no intimacy, no active relationship. No sexual activity, no “nice little things,” no considerations, few conversations. It really is (more and more) like I was dating One Person.... we got married, moved, and she got placed in a very crappy Wal Mart… and now she is Other Person. This woman that once gave up a house on the chance of being with me… now won’t even do a date night. It is one of the reasons this year is so important and so difficult. I don’t want to believe that everything we had before is gone. I don’t want to believe that my wife is Other Person permanently.... when she blames all of it on being at ghetto Wal Mart in the electronics department… I want to believe her because it gives me hope that the woman I married might come back once we’ve moved. All these things that I want to believe but am terrified are genuinely not true.

TL;DR… nah, you don’t get one! Just kidding… sort of. What I wrote above is essentially the story of one of the most important 20 months of my life. My pain diagnosis, how I met my wife, how we started dating. The woman that my wife once was… kind and understanding. A woman who, while never 100% comfortable with her body, would show physical signs of affection. A woman that… I’m honestly worried… may be gone now.