The in between years

When I left Michael I was so unsure of the world around me and myself I often wondered if the floor under me would hold.  I wrote in the “Prodigal Daughter” years ago that, “In 1994 I was heralded out the front door amid pomp and circumstance.  Seven years later I was quietly sneaked into my community threw the back door.”  I was broken and half dead.  I had long ago surrendered my soul and any shred of decency to Michael and his addiction. 

I moved back into my old room with my parents, like so many of my generation.  I had nowhere else to go, and I am grateful that when I fell, they caught me.  My father, as always, was true to his word and paid for my divorce.  In Louisiana you must be granted separation prior to your divorce.  We filled the papers in or around July 4^th, 2001, my own personal independence day.  I loved what the lawyer told me.  I will never forget it.  “In six months, if you two are not found in bed together, you will be granted a divorce.”  And so it was.  In December of 2001 a motion for divorce was filed.  It was granted in March of 2002 just in time for my birthday.  We were granted what is called a “102 vanilla divorce,” meaning there was no property or children to argue over.  I never had to see Michael for the signing of any of the papers and we never had to appear in court.  Everything was handled in house.

I remember the joy and elation I felt of driving my own car, and going where I wanted, when I wanted.  Mike drove most of the time, and we only had the one car.  Mike must have told me I was stupid with directions or something, because I remember navigating to Liz’s office on my own one day and how excited I was when I got there, that I had done it by myself. 

Mike liked to control everything.  We were riding in his old Topaz one day and I wanted to change the radio station.  He pushed my hand away from the dial and said, “One day when you have your own car you can change the radio station.”  I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to give it back to him some years later.  We had just bought a new Saturn in my name.  He went to change the radio station and I pushed his hand away and said, “One day when you have your own car you can change the radio station.”  He looked so shocked!

Those early days were filled with wonderment and sadness for me.  Wonderment that I had somehow survived, I still don’t understand how.  The freedom of being able to watch what I wanted on TV and the ability to express some of my long held beliefs that I had to hide or squash around Mike.  I had changed myself into someone I didn’t recognize, to appease him, and try to keep him from having violent outbursts.  That was really sad for me.

I spent the next year and a half chasing boys, recovering and trying to figure out who I was. I remained in counseling with Liz even after I lost my job in the Summer of 2002. I feel now that if I had not done that foundational work in those early days, answering my life’s questions and healing I would never have found Jay, wanted him or much less kept him.  Somewhere in there I began going to Overeaters Anonymous and Ala-non.  Working the twelve steps became a major part of my life. I changed my eating habits, got into yoga and swimming, and for the first time began to lose weight.  Between graduating college and meeting Jay I lost almost 90lb. 

And yes there were boys, Charlie, Joe and finally Jay.  My mom set me up on a blind date with her 6’6” checker from Wal-Mart.  I chased Charlie for about a year.  We had a few dates and he began to take me to his Baptist church.  I converted not long after 9/11.  I was baptized a few months later.  I think part of it was to get Charlie, but I think I was also looking for forgiveness in the way I had treated Mike in the end.  I felt a lot of guilt about having been Buddhist.  I knew I would go to hell.  I think I also wanted help with the PTSD and the tapes of Mike abusing me continuingly playing in my head. 

But Charlie… Charlie was gorgeous, tall and red headed.  He was very timid.  I would come later to find out that he had OCD quite badly.  He would do things to me like make a date with me and not show up.  I would go to his house, see his car, climb the stairs to his house, and knock on his door.  I could hear the radio on inside, could hear him moving about and he would not answer, despite me banging on the door and calling his name.  He would not take my phone calls.  I feel I had a long and tumultuous relationship with his answering machine.  When we did make out on his 4 poster bed, he made me unscrews the posts so that they did not hit the wall and so his neighbors would not know we were making out.  I still never understood that one. When Charlie did not show for my baptism, which I had called and invited him too, I knew I was done with him.  He was such a sweet guy, that I believe he could not bring himself to tell me to go away, to tell me that he didn’t like me.  I was tired of chasing men what did not want me.

Joe showed back up in my life not long after I parted company with Charlie.  I had lost touch with Joe.  I emailed his sister, told her that I was now divorced and hoped Joe was well.  She emailed back with Joe’s new email address and told me that he would love to see me.  I nearly fainted.  Joe ever the gentleman, would not sleep with me until I was officially divorced.  He was also worried that he would get in trouble with the Army, for messing with a married woman. 

Now the sex with Joe was the best I had ever had, up until that point.  He was a kind, companionate, and responsive lover.  He wanted me and I wanted him, and he was not shy about it.  I had not seen that look in a man’s eyes in a long time. We had so many years of pent up desires for each other.  I was also the first time in a long time that I had sex without having pain.  Sex with Mike was frequently rough and hard, and I would often bleed and have pain afterwards.  Joe and I had one or two wonderful afternoon trysts and it was over.  Joe was moving to Georgia to his new assignment. 

I wanted to try the long distance thing.  I wrote and called him.  Finally the email came that he was, “actively involved in the dating scene in Georgia.”  I was so hurt!  I wrote him a nasty email.  I don’t think I have ever used fuck so many times in anything I have ever written.  So Joe and I parted ways.  Then the war started.  I became terrified he had been killed.  I listened to the news for his name and I Googled him frequently.  It was in one of those search engines, on Christmas Eve that I found him on MySpace.  My Gods he was alive!  I wept.  He had just returned from serving with the UN in Germany, with his then wife and baby boy.  He had never been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.  I immediately contacted him and he came out not long after for a visit.  It was good to see him.  Joe and I remain in contact thru Facebook.  He is now remarried, to a wonderful woman that loves him and his son, and takes wonderful care of them.  I could not be happier for him.

Ilsa

The Goings on of Apartment C

In August of 1997 as we prepared to spend another semester in different dorms.  When we received the good news that we had gotten into married student housing and that apartment C would soon be ours. Mike’s manipulation and control also began in earnest about this time.  I was told what I could watch on TV.  Anything that was empowering or liberal he told me I was not allowed to watch.  He really hated Oprah.   He began to turn me against my parents so that I felt I was backed into a corner, and had no one but him.  The porn got worse.  My attempts to stop it became more frequent.  When I tried to confront him about it he flew off the handle and blamed me that I was no open enough. 

I began to try to remove the temptation from him.  I remember one time filling up half of a large black garbage bag with magazines, video tapes, and cd’s that I had cooked in the microwave.  They sparkle and pop when you cook them.  I went through his disks and his browser history.  I remember one time going thru a stack of floppy disks to see how many had porn on them.  My stack was about a foot tall when I stopped.  I destroyed them all.  It got to the point that I could not even keep a clothing catalogue or magazine with a picture of a woman in it, because he would steal them, hide them and use them.  What’s worse is I had to pick up his crunchy socks in the morning, because he would never put them in the hamper. 

I still have no idea how much money he spent on porn.  He hid so much of it from me.  I made the money and was in charge of the bills when we first got married.  Until I bounced a few checks and he took the check book away from me.  I turned the bills over to him, like a good little Christian.  He was the man.  He was supposed to run the house.  I remember one day getting a $500 phone bill.  Turns out he had been calling 800 numbers, that would then route him to a 900 number, where he could have phone sex.  He was furious when I found out.  I had to put a 900 number block on our phone.

We were piss ass poor.  I was working as a lab monitor and it paid very little.  Mike, when he did work, was delivering pizzas.  I remember even scrubbing his shirts on a washboard at night so that he would have clean clothes.  I did all of the house work.  If I did ask him to help, he would just ignore me.

I tried to throw him out one night.  I packed his bag, his teddy bear included, and threw it out on the lawn along with all his porn. I locked the doors and would not let him back in the house.  He banged and screamed on the door and windows.  I made it 30 min. before I finally gave in.

I would often begged him to stop, to get help, but in the late ‘90s there was no help for sex addicts in our area.  And that’s what he had become, by the definition.  He would just become more enraged, and fly into a tantrum, hit the wall and terrify me.  Always blaming it on someone else, USL, Liberals, me.  It didn’t matter.  He never took responsibility for what he was doing. I always expected his next punch would be my face, but he never hit me.  He just verbally, emotional, mentally and financially abused me. 

As for me, he would not touch me.  It took weeks, often of begging on my hands and knees for him to touch me or have sex with me.  This man I loved, no longer wanted me and I became a prisoner in my own home.  I would go to bed, and he would masturbate by the computer in the other room until the wee hours of the morning.  I would try to go to the bathroom to pee and he would scream at me to get back to bed.  I developed bladder problems for holding it for so long.  I still think this is part of why I developed IC.

I was depressed and under so much stress I developed Shingles.  I reached 300lb. I was suicidal, and wrote several suicide notes.  I reached out for help several times, but to no avail.  How could I ever tell them what was going on?  How could I tell them I was not enough for my husband?  Joe and one other friend were the only ones who knew what I was going through.  I had to have someone to talk too, and it took years for me to get to that point with them.  But neither them nor the councilors had any real answers for me, or could help me understand what was going on.  I was too embarrassed to tell them what was really going on. I did not understand I had been abused until after I left him.  I remember one night even calling a local rehab center and telling them what was going on.  They told me they had no programs for porn addicts at the time.  All they wanted to know was whether he hit me or not.  Mike was furious when he found out I called them.

Oh and this was also one of his things.  I have told you I would often get Bronchitis.  When I would get sick he would tell me, “You just think you’re sick.  You’re not really sick.”  Mike played head games with me.  Every time I caught him in a lie he would say, “It’s not a lie.  It’s omission.”  Or my personal favorite, “I told you.  You just forgot.”  Now I have a memory like an elephant, I didn’t forget, his lying ass just didn’t tell me. 

We continued to play nice in public.  Few knew what was going on with us at home. In the darkness I reached out for anything.  I happened to find a book by his Holiness the Dali Lama, called The art of happiness.  I began to get very into Buddhism.  The first rule of Buddhism is that all life is suffering, and I was most definitely suffering.  The second rule is there is a cause for suffering.  The third is there is a way out of suffering.  I began to look for a way out of that suffering.   I started to study with a small Buddhist group in town, which kind of hid as a book club.  Buddhism helped give me a little light in an other wise dark life.

Then there was Joe.  He had stayed for a few semesters and then he left to join the Army.  He could not keep up with the break neck pace that his scholarships demanded.  He had also been in ROTC for a long time.  It was in Joe that I had hope that I had not lost all my sexiness, despite my weight and my current predicament so I tempted him.  I let him talk to me while I was in the tub.  I could see I was still attractive to someone.  Obviously the problem was not me.  Mike knew about this and was angry, but never tried to stop me.  He never tried to fight for me. 

Mike and I had changed his major, not long after we moved into apartment C.  As a Sociology major I had to chose a minor.  I started taking classes in Anthropology.  I fell even more in love with it then I had with Sociology.  In my senior year I changed my major to my minor.  By the time I graduated my GPA was 2.9, while still a C average, I had pulled it up a full point from the time I left USL.  Mike changed to journalism, just like his father before him.  In the Summer of 1999 Mike left me to do his internship at a news station in Shreveport.  We were elated he had got what we felt was a prestigious internship.  Mike received a D in the class.  Later I found out it was because he spent all his time downloading porn while he was at work. 

That summer I had to master 9 hours of French, or I would not graduate.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I was in class from 8 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.  Then I went home to study until midnight or so.  Get up again about 5 a.m. to study and then do it all again, five days a week.  I passed by the skin of my teeth.  I don’t think I even remember how to say, “What is your name?” in French anymore.

It was during that summer that Joe and I became even closer.  I had not been away from Mike for many years.  Joe, Gods’ bless him, would drive up from Fort Polk every other Friday to take care of me.  We would go to put my check in the bank and buy groceries.  I didn’t see Mike for three months.  He could have cared less what happened to me.  While he was gone, Jim would sleep in the bed with me, while we both had our clothes on.  Hey it was better than him sleeping on the love seat.  I was scared to go to sleep on my own back then.  I remember the first few weeks that summer going to sleep with one of Mike’s lightsabers in my hands.  I didn’t have any other weapons.

I was still not sure what I was going to do with my life after I graduated college.  I began looking at attending graduate school.  I had thought about becoming a professor.  You really cannot work in the field of Anthology without a Doctorate.  We made a trip to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for me to look at the college.  I liked it and hoped to enroll.  My GRE, the test to get into a master’s program, was to be paid for by NSU.  Mike comes to me one night and says that we can’t go to graduate school just yet.  He says we need to take a year off and pay some of our bills.  I am devastated.  But he is my husband and he knows best.  We graduate in May of 2000, literally one behind the other.  The next day we pack up and move back to Shreveport. 

Ilsa

NSU

I spent the Summer of 1996 working at Wal-Mart and being with Mike.  That fall I started at NSU as Sociology major.  The classes were much easier at NSU then at USL or at least I thought so.  I was also taking classes in something that I loved.  I still had no idea what I was going to do after college.  But I was assured by everyone around me, get a good college education and you will have a better life. Yeh right.

Mike was still a music major and I don’t remember if he was delivering pizzas at that time or not.  We were college students.  We were living on student loans at the time. 

I had started getting into computers at USL.  Three of the four fellers I road back from St. Louis with were computer majors and hung out at the Wesley with me.  They introduced me to the internet.  The computer lab at USL was freezing cold, as computers were known to overheat.  The floor was raised and made of metal to hold all the cables connecting all the computers to the printer and the main frame that was in another room.  The internet was in black and white, and Yahoo was just one page.  And it was not a search engine yet, it was a directory.  You had to click a link and then another link to get what you wanted, unless you had the URL.  I have been messing with computers ever since.

I remember trying out email for the first time.  On a black screen with white letters that looked a lot like DOS.  Later learning to go into what were early chat rooms.  These were a lot more sophisticated then the computers that were in the dorms that had either lime green or hunter orange text on a black screen for you to type your papers on.  I even remember Windows 1 and what a wonderful improvement it was over the damn orange and green text.  Now you could chose your writing program, and you typed on what looked like a white piece of paper and you could chose the color of your text, you know if you had a color printer and those were only for rich people. 

When I got to NSU the Sociology department was just setting up its own computer lab for students to use and I was made one of the monitors.  Now a monitor was someone who helped you with the ins and outs of software, the internet, and made sure that people did not down load porn, which was starting even in those early days.  Mike started downloading porn just as soon as he figured out how.  I turned a blind eye for many years.  If my bosses had known I was letting him do it, I could have been fired and him expelled.

Mike’s attention and lust for me seemed to be fading with each passing day.  I wanted to so much to get back to that summer, the Summer of ’95, when he had wanted me so much.  I don’t know when I started having to beg for him to have sex with me.  I know that other then the first few times I always initiated sex.  I also know that once Mike had sex that first semester it was downhill from there.  I feel he saw me as concurred, like Mt. Everest.   Once he planted his flag that was it.  I was saddled and put up on a shelf like a trophy, not to be touched or played with again.  Into my life walked Joe. 

The first time I ever saw Joe he was leaning up against the door frame of the Sociology lab.  Oh he was so beautiful with his blue eyes, sandy colored hair, trim little body, and allergic little sniffles.  The first thing that caught my attention was his Boy Scout belt.  I asked him about it and we soon became fast friends as he told me about him being an Eagle Scout and that he was also from the Shreveport area.  I invited him to the Wesley and Joe started hanging around with me and Mike.  We all became very close fast friends.

It was later, in my darker days, that we would begin what my therapist termed an emotional affair.  But Joe is another story all together.  I still believe if it was not for him, I would not have survived, and for that I am ever grateful. Oh the flirting between us began almost immediately, but nothing came about until much later.  We are both horrible flirts. But Joe began to give me what I desperately wanted in those days, attention.  Most of the time I think Mike could have cared less.

No I was committed to Mike, no matter what my heart or my loins might have told me to do. My bible told me to not have sex outside of wedlock.  I had barely got it in under the fact we were engaged.  After all Mary and Joseph had been engaged when she had Jesus, right.  I had to marry him.  I remember before leaving USL having this conversation with a very Christian friend of mine.  I had my reservations about marrying Mike, even then.  She was the first to tell me I didn’t have to marry him just because I was sleeping with him.  I had never heard that before.  But I wanted to do what was right and proper and so that included marrying him, even if I was starting to see the signs the ship was sinking.  Hey I was 20, over 200lb., and still no car.  I felt I didn’t have a lot of options. 

Ilsa