Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Summer of 1995

In the Spring of 1995 the first letter from Mike arrived.  I did not even read it.  I tore it up and threw it across the lawn of the USL Presidents house.  It happened to be on the way between the post office and the Wesley United Methodist Campus Ministry.  Sorry I littered!  I was even stronger in my resolve that what I had done with him and being involved with him was wrong.  But the letters kept coming.  I finally gave in and began to read them and then to write him back. 

By the summer of 1995 I was very much in love with Michael. So much so that I proposed to him twice, and both times he turned me down. I did not want to be in love with him, because he was still with Charlie, his girlfriend.  It was a very mixed emotional and difficult time for me.  I in no way wanted to hurt her.  I never believed I would ever fall in love, marry, or have children.  I had been told all my life I was too fat and too ugly for such a thing to happen to me.  So the idea that Michael wanted me was just overwhelming.  I soaked it up like a sponge.  Every moment of attention I hid in my heart.  What we were doing was wrong, but I could not bring myself to stop.  Mike’s hold on me, as threw out most of our relationship was hypnotic.
That Summer of 1995 Charlie was in Baton Rouge, Mike was in Shreveport and I was in Keatchie.  I was an hour away, compared to her 6 hours away.  Mike and I spent every moment we could together, locked in each other’s arms, and each other’s bedrooms.  The rule was no clothes off.  Everything else was fair game.  We kissed, groped, dry humped all to the point of orgasm.  But no we never had sex, just everything but.  I never realized until now maybe he just wanted me for the thrill of the affair.  Maybe he was using me ever then. Who knows?

Now I knew about the porn.  I found the tape in his player.  His magazines while putting up his socks and making his bed.  I knew about the ones under his bed and in his night stand.  I explained it way.  He misses Charlie.  He’s not getting sex on a regular basis.  I think that summer he only made one trip to Baton Rouge to see her.  Course then money was tight and neither one of us was working at the time.  I figured the porn would go away once we got together and he got sex regularly.  That he would grow out of it.  He never did and it only got worse.
In August of 1995 Mike went back to NSU and I went back to USL.  With heavy hearts we parted ways.  Mike reported for band camp, a few weeks before Charlie was to report for school.  A few days after he arrived she called to break up with him.  They remained friendly threw out our marriage.  Charlie would confide in me years later that she had broke up with him over the phone because she was terrified he would hit her. 

Mike had a violent streak, although he never hit me, he hit everything else.  The walls in our home had holes in them.  I learned early on not to keep glass in frames, because when he would beat the walls, our pictures would fly off and the glass would break.  I kept boxes of telephones on hand, usually three at a time, because he would break the phones so often. He had road rage and would beat the steering wheel so bad it had no cover left on it.  This was pre airbag days.  The cover came off and for years he beat the part where the metal part for the horn was, until it had a dent in it.  He would throw temper tantrums if he did not get his way.  He would bang his fists against his leg, gnash his teeth, and stomp his foot.  And he did this in public with me many times.  I always feared I would be next.  And he had no remorse for any of it. None of these things he showed until after we officially became a couple. 
Where there warning signs?  Yes there were warning signs.  Experts have come out in the last few years and told women not to date men with holes punched in their walls, because one day it will be your face.  The first time I walked into Mike’s family home I was shocked to see this nice suburban home so destroyed.  There were holes in the walls and holes in the doors.  Nicholas, Michael’s younger brother had no door.  It had been destroyed. 

Mike and Nicholas were violent towards each other.  Always yelling and screaming.  I’ve seen then try to kill each other with baseball bats.  Their mom was no better, constantly screaming at them.  Mike’s father, a former news editor, had long ago checked out.  Yet I believed I could be a positive influence on the situation and I could fix Mike and his family, with love and understanding. 

Ilsa

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