A little more...and then some

I don't know where to begin with regards to the continuation of the previous post. I guess I should go back to what happened to destroy our relationship in the first place. I'll be digressing from the actual subject matter a bit, but it will all lead up to the fateful end.

It was 1998. Senior night club was the same night as graduation. For those who aren't aware of such a festivity, it is basically an all night party at the high school to keep graduates from getting too wild on their first night out in the real world. Local businesses provide prizes and parents provide food, decorate, take pictures and help with games. It is really neat, though most opt to leave early and do their own thing anyway.

Well, Chris and I stayed for the duration of the night. I won the grand prize TV/VCR combo and a few other nice gifts. I remember getting home at 5am, full of so many emotions. I was not only madly in love, but ecstatic about the life before me, nervous about college, and deeply saddened by the fact that our Hungarian exchange student was going home. (She was one of the best friends I ever had and we still keep in touch.) Anyway, I had turned down an $11,000 scholarship to a college in Illinois so that Chris and I could commute to Ball State together. He was going to finish up his degree in Criminal Justice and I was going to start in Pre-Veterinary Medicine. I was going to start my own veterinary practice, we were going to get married and live happily ever after somewhere far away.

The following day, I had an awesome open house that my grandmother held for me. She's a caterer with her own restaurant, so we had it there. She had everything from steaks to chocolate covered strawberries. The only sad part was that my mother refused to show up because of her long-time ambivalence towards my father's side of the family. (They're divorced.) Chris's entire family (aunts, uncles, and all), showed up, but no, not my selfish mother who couldn't put aside her differences for ten minutes to make an appearance.

So the second day after I graduated high school, I was on a plane to Spain with Spanish Honor Society. Grandma paid for the trip as my graduation present, and dad was going to send spending money with me. But when it came down to it, he said that if I took the money I got from my open house, he would pay me back later. It was a hefty chunk of dough and I had planned on using it towards my first semester of college. But I took his word on it and enjoyed myself, spending every penny. It was kinda crazy though, because I still had less than everyone else on the trip. I believe I ran out the day before we came home.

Two weeks later, I came home to a mess. Our phone had gotten shut off because dad hadn't paid the bill, and he failed to fix the brakes on my car like he had promised. The house was a wreck, but dad's girlfriend (an absolute BITCH named Kim) had nearly moved herself in while I was gone. I was in a pickle. Since I had been working at the local veterinary clinic for vocational school, the job was supposed to end sometime that summer. I had planned on submitting applications to find new employment, but without a phone, there was no way anyone could notify me. And with a car that had no brakes, it was just as bad.

So the night after I came home from Spain, I walked into the living room and approached my father about the situation. I knew he was stressed, but I asked when he was going to get the brakes fixed. He mumbled something to which I rolled my eyes.

He snapped, jumping out of his chair in a rage and screaming at me about our financial situation. Now my father is a big man, 6'4 and somewhere around 280 lbs. He cowered over me, yelling through gritted teeth. He told me that I needed to get my ass out of his house, get a job and take care of my own shit. (The irony is, he couldn't afford to have the phone reconnected, but he was in the process of designing and planning to build a house!) I thought he was going to hit me because he kept coming closer and closer--while the bitch was sitting in the corner of the room with a smirk on her face--so I put my arms up to shield myself.

And he did it. He smacked me so hard my head bounced off the wall. The bitch didn't move, though blood was visibly spurting from my lip. With that, I burst into tears, grabbed everything I could that was mine, and took off in my grandmother's wood-grained station wagon that dad had borrowed. I vowed that night to never have anything to do with my father again.

I had no idea where I was going to go, but my kitten, Peachie, and I were off to find a new home. I went to Chris's, of course, since he was the closest, most stable person in my life. I told him everything and he was outraged. His parents offered me a place to stay, but I just couldn't do it. I knew there had to be something else. I may not have been raised in church, but I was moral enough to know that I really didn't want to live with someone until we were married. Yeah, I know, I succumbed to the sin of sex before marriage, but hormones spoke louder than sensibility in the teen years.

So I went to my mother's. I knew it would be a mistake in the long run since she, too, had shoved me into a mirror once and busted my head. But I thought I could make it until college started and I could find a roommate. Her two cats bullied my little Peachie, but things went okay for about six weeks. I started working as a waitress at a Denney's Restaurant and continued to work at the vet clinic on weekends. I had to return the station wagon, so I relied on Chris to get me from Point A to Point B, which nearly killed me since I was used to being independent.

I was finally able to get a car in August--a boxy little red Aspire that looked like a ladybug creeping down the road. I hated boxy cars with a passion, but it was something I could afford even though it was at a whopping 26% interest rate. Since I had no credit whatsoever, my mother had to help me get a loan. She hated to do it, but thank God she did help. However, she and dad had filed bankruptcy after their divorce a couple years prior, so her credit was crap. That's how we got stuck with a finance company that demanded 26% interest.

Then a harsh reality hit--who knew you had to pay for college BEFORE classes started? I got the bill a couple weeks before and I about croaked. I had two scholarships that, combined, totalled $500. Well, that's how I learned of the wonderful world of deferment option. The $500 was good enough to hold my classes, though I was going to have to try like hell to come up with the remaining $2000 + by October.

As luck would have it, I got my first credit card right before school started. badda bam...there was textbook money!

But that wasn't all. Someone must have been looking down on me, because that's when I got a notice in the mail from an insurance company that since I was 18, I was able to take out the money from a policy my father had opened when I was born. YAY! I picked up the check and immediately took the $1800 to the college. First semester accomplished.

Living with my mother was becoming less tolerable. She started getting mad because I was never around-- said that we never got to spend time together. So I began to look at apartments with a girl I went to high school with but didn't know very well. "Kristi" seemed nice enough and since we were going to the same college, it only made sense.

If you've read my post entitled "Where does a person go?" you know how mentally deficient my mother is. She got upset when people started returning the calls I made to check on apartments. So one Friday afternoon after my Chemistry lab, I came home to a note that said, "I would rather you be out on my terms than yours. I want you out by Sunday night."

I know, it doesn't make sense. I was supposed to be at work an hour after I got the message, so I called in and then called Chris to come help me move. This time, I didn't resist when his parents insisted I move in with them.

Living with Chris was all right, though it was incredibly weird because his family was abnormally functional in comparison to my own frenzied and dysfunctional parents. His mother was cooking for me...COOKING...and doing my laundry. I hadn't had someone to do those things for me since I was 13, so it was really hard for me to accept. I just didn't feel right about it, not only because I wasn't really their daughter, but also because I felt old enough and quite capable of doing those things for myself. His father even fixed some minor things on my car, which I greatly appreciated, but also felt horribly guilty about. I always felt like I needed to pay them back, which sucked because I was barely able to keep my own head above water.

They even bought us a house, for crying out loud! It was a dilapidated old thing across the road, but it was huge and definitely had potential. They planned on us living there after we got married! It was just too much, but I loved these people.

And remember that jealousy issue I spoke of? Oh yeah...it only intensified. Since I was right under his own roof, I thought for sure Chris would have been more content knowing my whereabouts. But I started to feel smothered. I wasn't supposed to go anywhere with friends, and if I did, I had to endure the 20 questions game when I got home.

For instance, I went to Denney's with a female friend late one night when I was off work. We were both starving, so we got appetizers, meals, drinks, and desserts. My total came out to nearly $15, and I realized I had forgotten my purse at home (Chris's). So I went back to the house to pick up my purse and casually mentioned that I had spent $15 and Carrie didn't have enough to cover me.

Next thing I know, I'm being acccused of shacking up with someone at the hotel behind Denney's because the sign out front advertises rooms for $30. Chris said that he figured $15 would be my share of the room.

I was astonished. But it went even further than that! I had amassed a little bit of money to do some shopping. I bought some new underwear, and he immediately insisted that I had bought it for someone else to see!!!

He had no logical reason to believe any of this. I was hopelessly devoted to that guy even though he always thought the worst. It made me sick and I started having a hard time working third shift at the restaurant, going to classes from 8-5pm four days a week (and being functional!), working weekends at the vet clinic, AND trying to maintain a relationship with an obsessive boyfriend.

But how do you break things off or even slow things down with someone when you're living with that person?????

I told him I thought we should cool it awhile. I didn't want to in my heart, for I loved him like I could never love anyone else. Aside from the recreational fun of dating, we talked about absolutely everything under the sun. He was there by my side in absolutely every way, for anything I needed, whether I wanted it or not. He was goal-oriented, intelligent, attractive...yes, the sex was fabulous, too.

It was simply too draining on me, emotionally and physically, to deal with his ever-tightening obsessive grip he had on my life.

He agreed to chilling out with our relationship, though he was confused how that was going to work when we lived under the same roof and rode to classes together. What I really wanted was him to chill out with his childish ways, but in retrospect, maybe that's where I messed up with communication. But I knew if I cast if off on him, he would explode, so I thought that the best thing was to say we both needed space.

So he took up a second job, as well. We were both working tw0 jobs and going to college. The tides turned and I became the jealous cat. Part of it was probably guilt because I was starting to get hit on at college AND work, and I knew that if it was happening to me, it was happening to him. When I would stop in at his new job working the counter at the local bowling alley, it killed me to stand back and watch the girls that would come up, giggling and chatting with him. I was afraid the window of space I was pushing for would allow ample opportunity for some cutesie little thing to walk right in. The last thing I wanted was to lose him...I only wanted to lose his obsessiveness!

One night when we were both home, he came in my room and we talked. He sat down on the bed and started speaking of marriage...HOLY COW. After all that was going on in our lives, I freaked. I told him that I didn't think I wanted to get married. He said, "We can be engaged for a long time. We don't have to get married right away." But I was adamant. With him being so constantly demanding about my life, there was no way.

He was crushed. He started bawling and before he walked out of my room, he said, "Why do you think I've been working two jobs?"

And it hit me with a force that brought me to tears, myself. He had taken on the extra job to get me a ring for Christmas, which was just six weeks away.

Well, I mentioned that I was getting hit on at work. Yeah, well...there was this guy...Bobby. He flirted with me, sang to me and whatnot. He seemed like a really swell guy. One night he had brought me flowers and a card that said, "Do you know the difference between sex and a cheeseburger?" And on the inside it said, "If not, then let's have lunch sometime." I tried to brush it off as just more flirting. I was never good at saying, "Get lost" or "Stop it, I have a boyfriend." It wasn't that I ever considered being with anyone except Chris; it's just that I am a nonconfrontational person. I felt like I had the situation under control, though, because I knew what my own intentions were. So I had tossed the flowers before I got home and had put the card in a box in the closet in my room.

Damn if the day after the epiphany that Chris was getting me a ring did he find that card. I came home, ready to talk to him more about where our relationship was heading, and there he was on the couch, his mother sitting in a rocking chair, and both of them glaring at me coldly.

An argument ensued. He didn't want to hear what I had to say, though I begged them both to believe me. He was just sure I had been cheating on him. When I turned to his mother, pleading for her support, she said, "Well I think its been obvious for quite some time now that you've been seeing someone else." It nearly killed me. I had always taken pride in being honest, and here they were calling me a liar. The people who took me in. The people who took care of me like my own parents never had. The people who had invested in my future...It really nearly killed me.

Needless to say, I was told to get out. This time I went to my grandmother's. It was Thanksgiving weekend, just starting to get really cold. I lived on the third floor of her house--very nice, but it was freezing up there and still not a place of my own to call home. I hated moving. I hated living with my belongings in boxes. I hated dragging Peachie all over the country. Chris's parents let me keep Peachie at the house across the road until I found another place. I knew grandma wouldn't let me keep her there, so I stalled. Next to Chris, Peachie had been the biggest blessing in my life. I had adopted her the summer before my senior year when dad's 2nd wife moved out. She was a little fur ball. I took her everywhere, even had my senior pictures taken with her.

I was so disgusted and embarrassed about the incident that I decided I could never look at Bobby again, so I quit my job at Denney's. I became friends with an acquaintance in high school named Katie, and she got me a job as a housekeeper at the local Holiday Inn. (NEVER stay there--they don't clean their sheets!) It was a lousy job, but it sufficed. I lived with my grandma for a week or two while Katie and I started to look at houses/apartments together. We finally found a large one bedroom duplex and moved in.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to get back with Chris. We barely talked to each other in class, and the week of final exams of all times, I quit. I couldn't handle sitting next to him, not talking, acting like strangers. It was so stupid. I had come so far in my first semester of college, but I just couldn't take it anymore. There was another couple of factors involved, which I'll surely divulge later, but I mainly couldn't stand seeing him and not being with him. I figured the best thing I could do was quit going and start over the following semester at a different college that was also close by.

I had called Chris one night from my grandma's and he said, "It's hurting you more than it's hurting me, so you really need to quit calling." And he hung up. It was then that I started to realize it was over.

But it wasn't.

I got Peachie and took her to my new place. FINALLY, a place I could come home to without the fear of an abusive father, a psychotic mother, or an obsessive boyfriend.

As I said, Katie was an acquaintance. I was naive and desperate, so it wasn't like I really got to know her before we moved in. It didn't matter for the first few weeks, but I'll go into that later, too.

Enter Megan, the best friend. Meg and I had been instant friends since the day we met at marching band practice our sophomore year. We were both new students, involved in a lot of activities, and even had a couple of classes together. We also worked at Denney's together. She and I were pretty exclusive friends. We had other friends, but on any given day, Meg and I were hanging out at some point.


Two nights later, I'm sitting on the futon in our living room with another acquaintance/friend named Molly. There's a knock on the door. She answers, and its none other than the obsessive ex, raging and fuming. He burst in, pointing at me, making accusations, calling me names, etc. I had never seen him violent, and yet I was absolutely clueless as to what the heck was happening. He picked up a note on the end table that he had wrote me and ripped it into shreds. Then he took the Tickle Me Elmo (remember when those were big?) that he had got me, and hurled it through the window as I spun around saying, "What? What? What?" I thought I was in a hellish nightmare when Meg then walked in, smiling.

I later discovered that she had paid a trip to the bowling alley that night when Chris was working and told him I had been sleeping with Bobby. Or rather, she had told her boyfriend, Clint, and HE told Chris. Seemed to be her way of "getting even" for me not taking time to be with her.

How ridiculous, huh?

Yes, that night was a tragedy within itself. Molly took me to the police station and I filed charges on Chris for breaking out our window. I knew Katie would be upset, not to mention the reaction we would be getting from our landlady. It was mid December, and the broken window let in enough draft to keep an eskimo happy. I figured the only solution to make sure it would be taken care of, and not at our expense, was to file charges. It doesn't sound like something a person would do to the person she loves, but at this point I was trying to look out for my own best interest. And there was no way I could afford replacing the window.

But again, it wasn't the end...