(no subject)
I have made no mistakes in my life.
Let me clarify: I have done things that, on the outside, seemed silly, ill-conceived, or foolish. But these things have helped me to be who I am, today. These things have placed me here, now, with the people I love and the joy that I am feeling. Sometimes I think I may have screwed up here or there. If I hurt someone, it wasn't intentional. With a few exceptions. And I hope if my friends were hurt or slighted by me, they would know that I am not aware of it and whatever I did was not intended as hurtful. If it has affected my life's path, that only goes to support my statement.
But on to my road:
My initial relationships were shit. I went out with and married people that had nothing for me to love and who were simply selfish and, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid. But they taught me how to be my own man and not to take shit from relationships. This will also play a part in my not getting promoted in the Army, which helped me further.
The first was with an emotionally damaged girl from northern Georgia, the summer after I graduated. Sherry came on to me, but I didn't go for it (Summer, 1989). My mom still thinks she was my first, but fortunately, she got to Ferris first. I wouldn't touch her with someone else's ten-foot pole before that happened, much less after. My decisions in this matter were further vindicated when she became the Lady of Vidalia, fucking everything that moved and some that didn't. Dead fish. Oh! Walk away...
Now I don't have a problem with promiscuity. Do what you will and to hell with morality and all that bullshit. But there was something wrong with this girl. I heard things, chilling things, that really made me worry for her and any spawn that might come of it. She was not careful or selective in any way. She used sex as a chip to get attention.
I was relieved. I went to college. There was pretty much a year of nothing in this arena.
I need to point out that it was shortly after this that I met Stacy. Dain had roped her into playing a D&D game he was coming to at my place, where I lived with David. She stayed back and we ran a solo game. In spite of the tension at the time, nothing happened and "solo game" is not, in fact, a euphemism for anything. But it was the planting of a seed that would nuke my ass later.
The second was with my sister's husband's sister (1989). Yeah I know. People look funny at that one. But those taboos haven't got a hold on me, anyway. We made out on the couch during thanksgiving dinner at his parents' house. Her dad walked in on us and stepped out. I thought I might have stepped over a line, but as it was related to me, he was quite happy with the situation, with her usually being attracted to mouth-breathers and rednecks. He apparently had a huge grin on his face after finding us. This was a problem for Lynn, as she was just doing it to get to her parents. This didn't last long, oddly enough. Break-up happened.
It was after this that I professed my love for Stacy. She was determined to say that I was just sad over the break-up. This was not true, but I had used all my ball points telling her initially and didn't have any left to disagree. She started going out with the same Dain that brought her to the game. Apparently she wasn't really attracted to him, but felt guilted into dating him because he was "helpful" and ugly. She said later that she didn't want to be that person. What kind of person? The one with standards? Oh.
Then I met the fickle Mike (1990). She was David's girlfriend and I came home one day, running from my karate class. I was pretty buff and she was all over my grits. I thought the other two were nuts? Ha ha! I was in for some fun! She dumped David and called me THE NEXT DAY. If I'd had any experience at all at the time, I would have known that is IS NOT COOL to go out with your friends' exes until at LEAST a couple of years have passed and they are like, married or some shit. But being the desperate loner that I was, I went for it. She didn't really make it any less clear when she asked me to meet her outside the "mobile home estates" where we lived.
Commence the crazy. She loved to quote the Beasty Boys. Something about fucking a girl with a whiffle ball bat. Never got that one. She disrupted D&D games with non-consensual sex play, she constantly flirted with other guys in an attempt to get my goat. And when the summer came, we didn't see each other for a while. I visited her once, while her parents were away and we tried to have sex, but she was ill-equipped to handle it. So we waited. While away from each other I gained a little weight. Not even much at all! When we met again, there was a flash of open derision on her face. We had already planned to move in together. She convinced her parents that she was rooming with someone else. So many alarms should have gone off! It's fucking weird. At the time she told me that her name was Mike because her father had wanted a boy.
First she wanted to wait on sex, which is fine, even though she had completely been on board a month before. Then she wanted separate sleeping arrangements. I agreed to that. One day I woke up and she was talking in hushed tones on the phone. Having good hearing, I heard everything. She was planning a date. Her final sentence was, "Bye. I love you."
I got up after she left for work, picked up the phone, and had a decent conversation with Dain. At the end of the conversation, I said, "Hey man. Can I get your number, I lost it a while back."
"Didn't you just use my number to call me?"
"No, I hit redial."
"Dude..."
Things came to a head and she moved out and continued to see Dain on the sly. After many conversations with Stacy, when I slept over but nothing still happened, in spite of occasionally being in the same bed for comfort and cuddling, I found out that Mike wanted Dain for his equipment, or lack thereof. Oh, did I mention the lingerie modeling on Stacy's part? That's how much of a clueless idiot I was at the time. I could have totally had that out at the time. She later told me that she was pretty much waiting for me to move in for the kill. That's life.
I heard through the grape-vine later that Mike was telling people her name was Misha or some shit, and that I called her Mike because I wanted her to be a guy. She also claimed to be a real vampire and generally chewed the scenery and lied about me wherever she went after that.
Then I met Theresa (late 1991). She was in a study group with her friend Jennifer and David. That's how that happened. We were over at a friend's house and she was coming on pretty strong. I figured she wasn't my type but fuck it, I'd give it a try.
Turned out that the whole thing was set up by David as a joke on his part to try to see if I would hook up with a complete redneck. Thanks Dave. Awesome.
But that sort of fits in with his behavior at the time. He loved telling people weird shit about me that simply wasn't true. I heard many stories from numerous credible and separate witnesses to that effect. He also did everything he could to keep Stacy and me from ever happening.
Again, thanks Dave! Awesome.
So I went out with Theresa for a while and she was a hot mess. She wasn't cute. She wasn't funny. She was dumb as dirt and bigoted as a tea-bagger.
It's a wonder I put up with her long enough to have a nervous breakdown and join the Army.
That turned out to be a fair move. They also sent me to Texas, where I hooked up with not a few good friends. I stayed on the MUD because Bill joined up with Vargon after MUDDog collapsed and shared that with me.
My first marriage was, quite simply, a disaster. She bought a car with my name without telling me while I was in Basic. Then we got married on Christmas leave (1993). She had adopted a poodle. When we got to Texas, she adopted another bunch of animals. She had a miscarriage and blamed me, citing the fact that I wasn't upset enough about it. She cheated on me a few times after that and thought I was too stupid to see the signs. I mean, how does one wind up two hours late to pick someone up from work who is fifteen minutes away? I found out later, when I was four hours late for picking her up for work in Georgia when I visited. Ahem. But that was only confirmed later. I was pretty miserable even without all this shit going on.
I had a dream I was standing out behind my company area. There was a slim man with a very nice suit, with red skin, tiny black horns, and a goatee. He asked me what I thought I was doing. I asked him what he meant. He showed me a vision of Theresa and me with a gaggle of kids, none of which were mine. He looked at me pointedly and said, "That."
At this time I also had reoccurring in my dreams an attractive lady with black hair, in a skirt and a sweater, as well as a black cat. In addition to Satan. I think these were my sub-conscience trying to warn me about shit.
This was when I got clever and convinced her that she could do better. We parted somewhat amicably without a messy divorce or alimony or any of that nonsense. I avoided the messy crap by letting her do things her way and taking what she wanted. While I did have a couple of crises of decision, I finally let her go on and be free to be her redneck, ignorant self, the way she was meant to, all along. I won't further mention the cheating and horrible behavior on her part.
I met April at a frat party in some town north of Austin (1995). She was nuts. She and I hit it off and started seeing one another. She got onto the MUD as well. It was horrible. She got a lot of her friends in on it and they sort of polluted the place. My bad, VMUD! Her acquaintances caused all sorts of drama and rumors, not the least of what was the one about how I stalked and bagged a virgin girl and ruined her life. She smoked pot and everything! The horror! If one could only see a picture. My gorge rises just thinking about this girl.
April went on, while attesting true faith to me, to get it on with Don, a fellow in Georgia. Yep. My former haunt, Statesboro, was where she chose to sow her oats. This taught me a little lesson about life and April in particular. It also gave me and his wife a little chance for some revenge sex when I got some time off, with him lying awake and crying in the next room. I do not regret this at all. I actually laughed when he told me about the crying bit. It doesn't hurt that this was some of the best sex I've ever had. Boy was she enthusiastic. She might have been fueled by revenge a bit, herself. Only a little later, April decided that she wanted to sow more oats than I had to give.
Back in Texas, she invited me to breakfast with her parents, who were visiting from California. She wanted to convince them that she was doing well there and that she was ready to get a job and her own place. Her parents wanted her to move back to California. I told them that this was a good idea and that April wasn't ready for real life. She might never be. Her jaw dropped. I didn't see much of her after that. We talked on my mother's mud-haunt once. I was immediately beset by a bunch of female friends of hers who had swallowed her line that she was the victim of a horrible rapist asshole...and I was him.
My mom actually supported this behavior. But then she still talks to Theresa as if she wasn't a lying sack of shit racist redneck, even going so far as to discuss my business with her. Yay. I can't call her on it, much. A lot of her family is a match for that crap.
Back to Texas! I knew a guy named Greg. He was one of the friends I met in the Army. I introduced Greg to the MUD and he took to it pretty well. But he knew a fellow by the name of Adam. Adam saw in the MUD a way to meet women when they couldn't see him. He reminds me of the crypt keeper. Every time I noticed his face, I would think, "Oh that is unfortunate. poor guy." But did he deserve it? Maybe.
He would cruise the mud for girls and try his methods that usually don't work in meat-space, as not only is he really not a good-looking fellow, he exudes creep. It's like a sticky film in the air around him. That and cigarette smoke.
I had achieved Wizard status on the mud. One day, I saw a "Bubbles" in a private room with "Amalica", his name on the mud. I sent her a tell warning her of his ways. She told me that I was just fooling and that he is open and honest. I said, "Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you. Watch for the poetry he might show you that he's shown to no one else."
"Oh he wouldn't do that."
Five minutes later: "He just did that."
But in spite of all this, she let him visit, and our relationship budded from her encounter with His Sliminess and our making fun of him.
Things grew with her slowly, and we got to know each other honestly. Turned out her name was Jodi. I didn't have a problem with her being with other guys on the mud or even in real life. When I went to Georgia, that fateful summer, she tracked me down at Beth's house and was inexplicably jealous. She said she didn't even know what she was thinking at the time.
Then she visited for a week. That was the best week I had ever had. What's funny is that April called while she was there and cried at me to take her back. "But I thought we were going to get married and have children!" Jodi said the look on my face was priceless. The confusion in the face of the crazy overwhelmed me for a second there. Then I laughed and told her to fuck right off.
So she went home and I stayed and we kept in touch with the MUD, letters, and not a little phone sex. I brought up the idea of her moving there with me. She said, "My parents would never go for that unless we were married."
"Well them marry me." (1996)
We got married that Christmas leave.
I'm going to blur through to the next point a little. Things went well that six months until I went to Germany. I reenlisted because I was going there and I figured it might be fun. She got pregnant after I got home from NTC a month after we got married, but we were fine with that. It gopt hairy and there were problems after she had Sydney. I was gone a lot. A LOT. During that time she did a complete personality 180, I cheated once, I went to Albania, she continued to sink into depression, I kept trying to help, and by the time it was all over and we were in Colorado Springs with another kid, life wasn't too great for either of us. I counted up the time and it turned out that my child had seen less than 50% of me due to deployments alone. That doesn't even count late working hours and training stints.
Oh and I also went nuts and joined the LDS church. Fuck me, I was crazy.
Anyway. It didn't get much better in Colorado with the furor of 9/11 and Stacy getting in touch after years of silence. The first time wasn't so bad. She got a little touchy-feely and tried to extricate me from Jodi and I told her off. She actually blamed me for not getting in touch with her after divorcing Theresa based on her asking if I would talk to her if things didn't work out with Theresa. I said, "Sure." and she took that as a solemn vow. Well after I told her off, she hooked onto some fool from the MUD.
So that would come back to haunt me.
When I finally got out of the Army, I got a job working in security. Things got worse between Jodi and me and this was when Stacy showed up again. We talked rationally at first. She told me she wasn't there to break anything up, just to be friends. But she has a way of creeping into other aspects of one's life.
It was about this point I had a crisis of life. I was questioning my "faith" and what I was doing with someone who didn't appreciate me for who I was. I was not free to be myself and all she wanted to do was sit around and watch TV and gripe about my being distant. I kept trying to get her to come with me to do things, but she would more often than not not feel like it. When I convinced her to do something, she would gripe the whole way and sabotage it in any way she could.
And that was just the relationship aspect.
All the while, Stacy was there pushing, poking, prodding, wheedling, and generally poisoning the situation. She blamed me for the relationship with her former guy that she met on the MUD. She was still with him at the time, weirdly enough, in spite of her claims that he was a pedophile with stories of raping children on his hard drive and no regard for her daughter's presence while he masturbated. I am fairly certain all of this was fabricated and I wonder what kind of shit she says about me to her current beau.
Finally, Jodi and I decided to separate. She went to live with her parents in Willcox with the kids and I stayed there to work. We were still talking, but it was strained.
Then I had that auto accident with clots in my heart and lungs and the hospital stay. Somehow that broke me out of my deep blue funk.
I was still on the wrong path.. But wait... It wasn't the wrong path.
I kept talking with Jodi, who had her eyes opened and had come back to her original self, complete with common sense and libido like crazy, but Stacy had convinced me to go to Michigan and try things there for a while. In my mind I had an obligation to both women somehow. One was completely artificial, though. I bet you can guess which. The trippiness of these dual obligations really messed with my head. But Stacy has a way of making one think that one owes her for imaginary things.
Jodi and I started talking about the whole D/s thing. We met in Albuquerque and had a little play time and it went quite well. So well, in fact, that after all was said and done, we are now 24/7.
But I still went and stayed with Stacy for a month (November-December, 2003). And boy howdy a month was all I could take. That girl was flat-out insane. It's like the crazy escalated every time I was in a relationship! I know some people say that and some will say, "Oh but you're the ex, so it's just a matter of perspective." But I have evidence and anecdotes to chill in every case.
I have related a few stories to a few people in professions within the psychology fields, and each one, independently, said, "Sounds like borderline personality disorder." I joked that she was nowhere near the border. Everything I did she looked at like she was the one in that situation. She basically attributed all her flaws to me. For instance, if I talked politely to a store clerk who happened to be a young woman, I was a pedophile trying to get into that girl's pants. If I sighed, just to sigh, I was being passive-aggressive, and if I didn't say anything, I was being hostile. Fucked up, it was.
It's funny that I found numerous instances of her continuing to fish for men on the internet while I was there. It's also funny that I didn't really care, except about the hypocrisy of it. She was truly a serial monogamist.
I have to say that my time in Michigan, what was good was very, very fucking good. And what was bad was horrid. Damn that was a weird month.
But then I went back to Jodi. And the only place we had to go was Willcox. And we got along famously after that, even during my crisis of decision involving Stacy and her continuing crazy. Jodi has been stalwart through it all, even though she could totally get another guy. She's mine and she wants to be mine, in more ways than most people think.
I have now laid out my life's "mistakes".
And I can say that not one was a mistake. Since this I have met another love of my life in my girlfriend. She gets me in a way that most people don't even try to and it looks like that is only getting more excellent every day. My cup truly runs over. My wife is wonderful. She sticks by me no matter what happens and knows that I trust her more than I trust almost anyone. I think she might have learned more from our lives together than I have, sometimes. We have two of the grooviest kids I have ever met. My girls are smart, weird, funny, and cute as hell. Matthias is getting there with swiftness. I am glad I can be here while they grow up.
I am the happiest I have ever been. Just when I think I can't reasonably expect things to get better, they do!
My job is mediocre and finances suck. I am not working in my field. We live in a shitty little hole in the ground in the desert and to visit my girlfriend I have to drive for an hour and a half, but I can say that I have never been happier.
The path that brought me here was fraught with peril, but I am here and wiser for the trip. If it weren't for all the mistakes I've made and the things I've learned and the events that brought me to this place, I wouldn't be writing about how happy I am right here, right now.
I have made no mistakes in my life.
Let me clarify: I have done things that, on the outside, seemed silly, ill-conceived, or foolish. But these things have helped me to be who I am, today. These things have placed me here, now, with the people I love and the joy that I am feeling. Sometimes I think I may have screwed up here or there. If I hurt someone, it wasn't intentional. With a few exceptions. And I hope if my friends were hurt or slighted by me, they would know that I am not aware of it and whatever I did was not intended as hurtful. If it has affected my life's path, that only goes to support my statement.
But on to my road:
My initial relationships were shit. I went out with and married people that had nothing for me to love and who were simply selfish and, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid. But they taught me how to be my own man and not to take shit from relationships. This will also play a part in my not getting promoted in the Army, which helped me further.
The first was with an emotionally damaged girl from northern Georgia, the summer after I graduated. Sherry came on to me, but I didn't go for it (Summer, 1989). My mom still thinks she was my first, but fortunately, she got to Ferris first. I wouldn't touch her with someone else's ten-foot pole before that happened, much less after. My decisions in this matter were further vindicated when she became the Lady of Vidalia, fucking everything that moved and some that didn't. Dead fish. Oh! Walk away...
Now I don't have a problem with promiscuity. Do what you will and to hell with morality and all that bullshit. But there was something wrong with this girl. I heard things, chilling things, that really made me worry for her and any spawn that might come of it. She was not careful or selective in any way. She used sex as a chip to get attention.
I was relieved. I went to college. There was pretty much a year of nothing in this arena.
I need to point out that it was shortly after this that I met Stacy. Dain had roped her into playing a D&D game he was coming to at my place, where I lived with David. She stayed back and we ran a solo game. In spite of the tension at the time, nothing happened and "solo game" is not, in fact, a euphemism for anything. But it was the planting of a seed that would nuke my ass later.
The second was with my sister's husband's sister (1989). Yeah I know. People look funny at that one. But those taboos haven't got a hold on me, anyway. We made out on the couch during thanksgiving dinner at his parents' house. Her dad walked in on us and stepped out. I thought I might have stepped over a line, but as it was related to me, he was quite happy with the situation, with her usually being attracted to mouth-breathers and rednecks. He apparently had a huge grin on his face after finding us. This was a problem for Lynn, as she was just doing it to get to her parents. This didn't last long, oddly enough. Break-up happened.
It was after this that I professed my love for Stacy. She was determined to say that I was just sad over the break-up. This was not true, but I had used all my ball points telling her initially and didn't have any left to disagree. She started going out with the same Dain that brought her to the game. Apparently she wasn't really attracted to him, but felt guilted into dating him because he was "helpful" and ugly. She said later that she didn't want to be that person. What kind of person? The one with standards? Oh.
Then I met the fickle Mike (1990). She was David's girlfriend and I came home one day, running from my karate class. I was pretty buff and she was all over my grits. I thought the other two were nuts? Ha ha! I was in for some fun! She dumped David and called me THE NEXT DAY. If I'd had any experience at all at the time, I would have known that is IS NOT COOL to go out with your friends' exes until at LEAST a couple of years have passed and they are like, married or some shit. But being the desperate loner that I was, I went for it. She didn't really make it any less clear when she asked me to meet her outside the "mobile home estates" where we lived.
Commence the crazy. She loved to quote the Beasty Boys. Something about fucking a girl with a whiffle ball bat. Never got that one. She disrupted D&D games with non-consensual sex play, she constantly flirted with other guys in an attempt to get my goat. And when the summer came, we didn't see each other for a while. I visited her once, while her parents were away and we tried to have sex, but she was ill-equipped to handle it. So we waited. While away from each other I gained a little weight. Not even much at all! When we met again, there was a flash of open derision on her face. We had already planned to move in together. She convinced her parents that she was rooming with someone else. So many alarms should have gone off! It's fucking weird. At the time she told me that her name was Mike because her father had wanted a boy.
First she wanted to wait on sex, which is fine, even though she had completely been on board a month before. Then she wanted separate sleeping arrangements. I agreed to that. One day I woke up and she was talking in hushed tones on the phone. Having good hearing, I heard everything. She was planning a date. Her final sentence was, "Bye. I love you."
I got up after she left for work, picked up the phone, and had a decent conversation with Dain. At the end of the conversation, I said, "Hey man. Can I get your number, I lost it a while back."
"Didn't you just use my number to call me?"
"No, I hit redial."
"Dude..."
Things came to a head and she moved out and continued to see Dain on the sly. After many conversations with Stacy, when I slept over but nothing still happened, in spite of occasionally being in the same bed for comfort and cuddling, I found out that Mike wanted Dain for his equipment, or lack thereof. Oh, did I mention the lingerie modeling on Stacy's part? That's how much of a clueless idiot I was at the time. I could have totally had that out at the time. She later told me that she was pretty much waiting for me to move in for the kill. That's life.
I heard through the grape-vine later that Mike was telling people her name was Misha or some shit, and that I called her Mike because I wanted her to be a guy. She also claimed to be a real vampire and generally chewed the scenery and lied about me wherever she went after that.
Then I met Theresa (late 1991). She was in a study group with her friend Jennifer and David. That's how that happened. We were over at a friend's house and she was coming on pretty strong. I figured she wasn't my type but fuck it, I'd give it a try.
Turned out that the whole thing was set up by David as a joke on his part to try to see if I would hook up with a complete redneck. Thanks Dave. Awesome.
But that sort of fits in with his behavior at the time. He loved telling people weird shit about me that simply wasn't true. I heard many stories from numerous credible and separate witnesses to that effect. He also did everything he could to keep Stacy and me from ever happening.
Again, thanks Dave! Awesome.
So I went out with Theresa for a while and she was a hot mess. She wasn't cute. She wasn't funny. She was dumb as dirt and bigoted as a tea-bagger.
It's a wonder I put up with her long enough to have a nervous breakdown and join the Army.
That turned out to be a fair move. They also sent me to Texas, where I hooked up with not a few good friends. I stayed on the MUD because Bill joined up with Vargon after MUDDog collapsed and shared that with me.
My first marriage was, quite simply, a disaster. She bought a car with my name without telling me while I was in Basic. Then we got married on Christmas leave (1993). She had adopted a poodle. When we got to Texas, she adopted another bunch of animals. She had a miscarriage and blamed me, citing the fact that I wasn't upset enough about it. She cheated on me a few times after that and thought I was too stupid to see the signs. I mean, how does one wind up two hours late to pick someone up from work who is fifteen minutes away? I found out later, when I was four hours late for picking her up for work in Georgia when I visited. Ahem. But that was only confirmed later. I was pretty miserable even without all this shit going on.
I had a dream I was standing out behind my company area. There was a slim man with a very nice suit, with red skin, tiny black horns, and a goatee. He asked me what I thought I was doing. I asked him what he meant. He showed me a vision of Theresa and me with a gaggle of kids, none of which were mine. He looked at me pointedly and said, "That."
At this time I also had reoccurring in my dreams an attractive lady with black hair, in a skirt and a sweater, as well as a black cat. In addition to Satan. I think these were my sub-conscience trying to warn me about shit.
This was when I got clever and convinced her that she could do better. We parted somewhat amicably without a messy divorce or alimony or any of that nonsense. I avoided the messy crap by letting her do things her way and taking what she wanted. While I did have a couple of crises of decision, I finally let her go on and be free to be her redneck, ignorant self, the way she was meant to, all along. I won't further mention the cheating and horrible behavior on her part.
I met April at a frat party in some town north of Austin (1995). She was nuts. She and I hit it off and started seeing one another. She got onto the MUD as well. It was horrible. She got a lot of her friends in on it and they sort of polluted the place. My bad, VMUD! Her acquaintances caused all sorts of drama and rumors, not the least of what was the one about how I stalked and bagged a virgin girl and ruined her life. She smoked pot and everything! The horror! If one could only see a picture. My gorge rises just thinking about this girl.
April went on, while attesting true faith to me, to get it on with Don, a fellow in Georgia. Yep. My former haunt, Statesboro, was where she chose to sow her oats. This taught me a little lesson about life and April in particular. It also gave me and his wife a little chance for some revenge sex when I got some time off, with him lying awake and crying in the next room. I do not regret this at all. I actually laughed when he told me about the crying bit. It doesn't hurt that this was some of the best sex I've ever had. Boy was she enthusiastic. She might have been fueled by revenge a bit, herself. Only a little later, April decided that she wanted to sow more oats than I had to give.
Back in Texas, she invited me to breakfast with her parents, who were visiting from California. She wanted to convince them that she was doing well there and that she was ready to get a job and her own place. Her parents wanted her to move back to California. I told them that this was a good idea and that April wasn't ready for real life. She might never be. Her jaw dropped. I didn't see much of her after that. We talked on my mother's mud-haunt once. I was immediately beset by a bunch of female friends of hers who had swallowed her line that she was the victim of a horrible rapist asshole...and I was him.
My mom actually supported this behavior. But then she still talks to Theresa as if she wasn't a lying sack of shit racist redneck, even going so far as to discuss my business with her. Yay. I can't call her on it, much. A lot of her family is a match for that crap.
Back to Texas! I knew a guy named Greg. He was one of the friends I met in the Army. I introduced Greg to the MUD and he took to it pretty well. But he knew a fellow by the name of Adam. Adam saw in the MUD a way to meet women when they couldn't see him. He reminds me of the crypt keeper. Every time I noticed his face, I would think, "Oh that is unfortunate. poor guy." But did he deserve it? Maybe.
He would cruise the mud for girls and try his methods that usually don't work in meat-space, as not only is he really not a good-looking fellow, he exudes creep. It's like a sticky film in the air around him. That and cigarette smoke.
I had achieved Wizard status on the mud. One day, I saw a "Bubbles" in a private room with "Amalica", his name on the mud. I sent her a tell warning her of his ways. She told me that I was just fooling and that he is open and honest. I said, "Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you. Watch for the poetry he might show you that he's shown to no one else."
"Oh he wouldn't do that."
Five minutes later: "He just did that."
But in spite of all this, she let him visit, and our relationship budded from her encounter with His Sliminess and our making fun of him.
Things grew with her slowly, and we got to know each other honestly. Turned out her name was Jodi. I didn't have a problem with her being with other guys on the mud or even in real life. When I went to Georgia, that fateful summer, she tracked me down at Beth's house and was inexplicably jealous. She said she didn't even know what she was thinking at the time.
Then she visited for a week. That was the best week I had ever had. What's funny is that April called while she was there and cried at me to take her back. "But I thought we were going to get married and have children!" Jodi said the look on my face was priceless. The confusion in the face of the crazy overwhelmed me for a second there. Then I laughed and told her to fuck right off.
So she went home and I stayed and we kept in touch with the MUD, letters, and not a little phone sex. I brought up the idea of her moving there with me. She said, "My parents would never go for that unless we were married."
"Well them marry me." (1996)
We got married that Christmas leave.
I'm going to blur through to the next point a little. Things went well that six months until I went to Germany. I reenlisted because I was going there and I figured it might be fun. She got pregnant after I got home from NTC a month after we got married, but we were fine with that. It gopt hairy and there were problems after she had Sydney. I was gone a lot. A LOT. During that time she did a complete personality 180, I cheated once, I went to Albania, she continued to sink into depression, I kept trying to help, and by the time it was all over and we were in Colorado Springs with another kid, life wasn't too great for either of us. I counted up the time and it turned out that my child had seen less than 50% of me due to deployments alone. That doesn't even count late working hours and training stints.
Oh and I also went nuts and joined the LDS church. Fuck me, I was crazy.
Anyway. It didn't get much better in Colorado with the furor of 9/11 and Stacy getting in touch after years of silence. The first time wasn't so bad. She got a little touchy-feely and tried to extricate me from Jodi and I told her off. She actually blamed me for not getting in touch with her after divorcing Theresa based on her asking if I would talk to her if things didn't work out with Theresa. I said, "Sure." and she took that as a solemn vow. Well after I told her off, she hooked onto some fool from the MUD.
So that would come back to haunt me.
When I finally got out of the Army, I got a job working in security. Things got worse between Jodi and me and this was when Stacy showed up again. We talked rationally at first. She told me she wasn't there to break anything up, just to be friends. But she has a way of creeping into other aspects of one's life.
It was about this point I had a crisis of life. I was questioning my "faith" and what I was doing with someone who didn't appreciate me for who I was. I was not free to be myself and all she wanted to do was sit around and watch TV and gripe about my being distant. I kept trying to get her to come with me to do things, but she would more often than not not feel like it. When I convinced her to do something, she would gripe the whole way and sabotage it in any way she could.
And that was just the relationship aspect.
All the while, Stacy was there pushing, poking, prodding, wheedling, and generally poisoning the situation. She blamed me for the relationship with her former guy that she met on the MUD. She was still with him at the time, weirdly enough, in spite of her claims that he was a pedophile with stories of raping children on his hard drive and no regard for her daughter's presence while he masturbated. I am fairly certain all of this was fabricated and I wonder what kind of shit she says about me to her current beau.
Finally, Jodi and I decided to separate. She went to live with her parents in Willcox with the kids and I stayed there to work. We were still talking, but it was strained.
Then I had that auto accident with clots in my heart and lungs and the hospital stay. Somehow that broke me out of my deep blue funk.
I was still on the wrong path.. But wait... It wasn't the wrong path.
I kept talking with Jodi, who had her eyes opened and had come back to her original self, complete with common sense and libido like crazy, but Stacy had convinced me to go to Michigan and try things there for a while. In my mind I had an obligation to both women somehow. One was completely artificial, though. I bet you can guess which. The trippiness of these dual obligations really messed with my head. But Stacy has a way of making one think that one owes her for imaginary things.
Jodi and I started talking about the whole D/s thing. We met in Albuquerque and had a little play time and it went quite well. So well, in fact, that after all was said and done, we are now 24/7.
But I still went and stayed with Stacy for a month (November-December, 2003). And boy howdy a month was all I could take. That girl was flat-out insane. It's like the crazy escalated every time I was in a relationship! I know some people say that and some will say, "Oh but you're the ex, so it's just a matter of perspective." But I have evidence and anecdotes to chill in every case.
I have related a few stories to a few people in professions within the psychology fields, and each one, independently, said, "Sounds like borderline personality disorder." I joked that she was nowhere near the border. Everything I did she looked at like she was the one in that situation. She basically attributed all her flaws to me. For instance, if I talked politely to a store clerk who happened to be a young woman, I was a pedophile trying to get into that girl's pants. If I sighed, just to sigh, I was being passive-aggressive, and if I didn't say anything, I was being hostile. Fucked up, it was.
It's funny that I found numerous instances of her continuing to fish for men on the internet while I was there. It's also funny that I didn't really care, except about the hypocrisy of it. She was truly a serial monogamist.
I have to say that my time in Michigan, what was good was very, very fucking good. And what was bad was horrid. Damn that was a weird month.
But then I went back to Jodi. And the only place we had to go was Willcox. And we got along famously after that, even during my crisis of decision involving Stacy and her continuing crazy. Jodi has been stalwart through it all, even though she could totally get another guy. She's mine and she wants to be mine, in more ways than most people think.
I have now laid out my life's "mistakes".
And I can say that not one was a mistake. Since this I have met another love of my life in my girlfriend. She gets me in a way that most people don't even try to and it looks like that is only getting more excellent every day. My cup truly runs over. My wife is wonderful. She sticks by me no matter what happens and knows that I trust her more than I trust almost anyone. I think she might have learned more from our lives together than I have, sometimes. We have two of the grooviest kids I have ever met. My girls are smart, weird, funny, and cute as hell. Matthias is getting there with swiftness. I am glad I can be here while they grow up.
I am the happiest I have ever been. Just when I think I can't reasonably expect things to get better, they do!
My job is mediocre and finances suck. I am not working in my field. We live in a shitty little hole in the ground in the desert and to visit my girlfriend I have to drive for an hour and a half, but I can say that I have never been happier.
The path that brought me here was fraught with peril, but I am here and wiser for the trip. If it weren't for all the mistakes I've made and the things I've learned and the events that brought me to this place, I wouldn't be writing about how happy I am right here, right now.
I have made no mistakes in my life.