Meet Paige

I met Paige not long after I met Jay.  We would be friends on and off for about 12 years.  She and I would have a complex and turbulent relationship over the years.  Forgive me for jumping around, but this one is still so raw that I am having trouble trying to tell this story.

I met Paige in an OA meeting.  She was so beautiful, with her curly brown hair, her beautiful purple dress and this wonderful glow about her.  Paige asked me to be her sponsor.  I agreed.  I’d been in program for a while and never had a sponsee, although I had wanted one.  We went to coffee a few weeks later and she told me her secret.  She was glowing because she was 6 months pregnant.  She was trying to decide whether to give the baby up for adoption, or keep it. 

Paige had grown up rich.  As we say, her Daddy was in oil.  That since of entitlement and that nothing was ever good enough still permeates her being.  She like so many had left Louisiana for work in Texas.  She had gone to Cosmetology school in Austin, and then worked as a hair stylist in Dallas.  Her family would help her out for a long time, but ultimately they would cut her off.  I understand why now.  Paige didn’t just burn bridges, she fucking blew them up. 

I asked her one time, why her dad had never set her up.  I always thought that was odd.  She said, “Oh he did.  When I was about 21 he gave me a car, set me up in an apartment, helped me get my own salon.  I was making so much money I remember doing bricks of marijuania and lots of ecstasy.  I had so many friends back then.”  She never saw that she was using him, or that she was a self righteous princess.  My guess is she still doesn’t. 

Paige and I became very close, very fast.  She had an infectious laugh and exuded self confidence.  Paige’s father ran a little convenience store.  I asked if she could get me an interview with him.  She did, and after many months of looking for work, in April of 2003 I finally got a job with her dad. 

It was there that we would meet Jelly.  She was a beautiful, little half Pekinese and half Dachshund.  She was just a few weeks the first time I met her.  She belonged to the little lesbian couple, one of whom worked in our café.  They used to bring her in the store, and I would hide her in my shirt.  I would walk around with her, check people out and say, “No I haven’t seen Jelly!  I have no idea where she is!”  All the while she would be peaking out from the top of my shirt.  I loved her from the moment I saw her. Jelly’s original owners broke up and Paige acquired her. 

Paige and I had many adventures, while I worked at the store.  That summer Paige gave birth to a healthy baby boy.  He was adopted by a wonderfully, loving, gay couple from California.  Part of their arrangement was that they set her up in an apartment and they gave her a dog, she named Maggie.  I got a job with the state, and moved to Ebarb in October 2003.  Between the time I left and the time I got married in February 2004 Paige’s apartment burned. 

Jelly and Maggie were trapped inside.  Paige had gone to lunch, forgot her purse and came home.  She arrived to find the apartment on fire.  She yelled for Jelly and Maggie and they came to her.  We have no idea how long they were in there with the place on fire.  They were the only thing that survived the fire.  Jelly remained terrified of smoke, fire, smoke alarms, and loud noises for the rest of her life.  Loud noises would make her lose her whole little doggy mind.  So bad that Jay had to put his pager on vibrate.  The beeping would set her off.

Paige had become friendly with my family.  My mother, ever helpful for anyone who is not her family, came to her side, and suggested she move in with them.  When Jay and I married in Mom’s living room, Paige was my maid of honor.  She laughed threw the whole ceremony.  I asked her some years later, why she did that.  She said, “Because I thought you were so stupid for marrying Jay.  He is so stupid.”  She never expressed her hatred of Jay until she moved in with us.

Paige continued to be in my life, while we lived in Ebarb.  Even coming to stay the weekend with me one time, with a feller she had met on line and became engaged to.  Years later she would not even remember his name, or that she had ever been engaged to him.  Paige went thru men, like Kleenex.  A few weeks later she would not even remember their names.  In the 8 months she lived with me she would go thru about 20 or so men.  She would meet these guys on the internet, talk to them for a few days, swear she was in love and then start meeting up with them.  A few days later they would not meet her expectations or run and she would be crushed for a day or two.  Then she was right back at it.  She always had 2 or 3 dangling at the same time. 

Paige was such a part of my life, she was like my sister.  I don’t know who long she lived with Mom and Dad the first time.  At some point she got a little efficiency apartment, but she could not have dogs, so Maggie and Jelly lived with my parents.  Paige never offered to help them pay for their care, and never in all the years she lived with them, offered to pay them rent.

Paige could be awful stupid.  She loved marijuana, we knew that.  I remember being furious at her one time, because she had given all of her tax refund to this guy she was screwing, so he could go and get them some weed.  I think it was about $400.  He took off in her car.  When he didn’t come back after 24 hours, she called the cops.  She knew his first name, but not his last, nor did she know where he lived, despite saying how in love she was with him.  Typical Paige.  They finally found her car, but never the money.

In the Spring or Summer of 2006, she had left the efficiency apartment to go to Dallas, and take care of a sick friend who was dying.  When she came home a few months later she had no place to live.  So she moved back in with my parents for 3 months. 

By the Fall of 2006 my parents had had enough of her.  They asked her to leave.  I was so angry with my Mom when I found out, I threw her out of my house, and did not speak to her for months.  I told Paige we would take care of her dogs, for a while.  Maggie ran away while she was with us.  Paige found her at the local pound.  She was so pissed that Maggie had been spayed while she was there, and that she had to pay to get her out of the pound.  Maggie had just taken off down the road looking for her, one day.  We kept Maggie for a few more days while Paige found a place to stay in Texarkana, about an hour north of us.  Jelly would stay with us, until she could find more permanent housing. 

I would call Paige and check on her.  She would tell me how she was doing, and what new men were in her life.  They changed every few days it seemed.  She never once asked how Jelly was doing.  She never once offered to send me money for food, or medical care for her.  In October of 2006 I had had enough. 

I sent her an email and told her to forget us. I was pissed at her for never caring what was going on with Jelly. I told her that Jelly and Prince were in love.  They had always had a thing on the side, and I would not break them up.  I told her, “Don’t call, don’t write and don’t come home for Christmas.”  I would not hear from her again for seven years. 

Ilsa