It’s funny, when you’re young. You think life has a problem, something changes, and then you live happily ever after. I was about to have my very first run-in with the idea of “peaks and valleys”… because the enemy is never happy to lose any kind of ground and attacks seem to always come after the victories.
January 3, 1994—my first day of waitress duty at Flying J. It was a travel plaza, which is just a fancy way of saying truck stop. And if I thought life was going to be so much easier now that I’d been baptized and got a job, I was sorely mistaken.
My boy-addiction was problematic in high school, but I was soon to find out that high school was nothing compared to the “real world”. After all, everyone in high school was basically my own age, had as much experience (or lack of, rather) as I did, and hadn’t yet learned the ropes of conning people as well as older men. Once I got outside those high school fences, it was a whole new playing field.
Men at work were such smooth talkers! I had never heard some of the things come out of boys’ mouths like I heard in just the first few weeks of working there. To an insecure, naïve, starving young girl like me, it felt like just what I needed for my bruised self-esteem.
The fact that most of these guys were married never crossed my mind. Despite my own parents’ marriage, I never really believed that anyone else would really do such a crappy thing as cheat on their wives—that only happened on TV. I was in total shock to later learn that the sweetest talkers were the married ones.
I had been working there for about a month when a new cook started. He was older, handsome, fit, confident & was super nice to me. It wasn’t long before he aggressively flirted every time we worked together. Even though I was in “love” with Jesse, I found myself checking our schedules to see when I would get to work with Rusty next because the attention I got from him made me feel so special.
All the waitresses whispered about how cute he was. I fell for the same trap I had fallen for before: I couldn’t believe such a handsome man that everyone liked was paying so much attention to me. He’d walk by and say, “I want one of those for Christmas”. Or he’d stare at me while I was punching in orders and I’d say, “WHAT?” and he’d smile that smile of his and say, “Just looking.” I started hearing that he was married. I chose not to believe those “rumors” though.
That entire school year, I had been preparing to go on a week-long school trip to Paris during Spring Break. I took about a three week break from work to be able to get ready and recuperate when I got back. On those days that I had off in the week before the trip, I suddenly remembered my quest for Jesse. I was running out of time. I needed to “get him” quick because graduation was coming up pretty quickly. I figured I should start praying harder. In my studies, I had heard that fasting was a great way to clear your mind to be able to more clearly hear what God might want to say to you. I was willing to try anything so I fasted that whole Friday before school let out for Spring Break.
That day, after school let out, we were all outside waiting for busses/rides. The whole day had gone by and I hadn’t heard a thing that might have possibly come from God. No big news, no big events. I wondered if I would ever hear from Him. I was sitting with Jesse and we were talking about how weird it was that it was already Spring Break…that soon we would be graduating and high school would be over. The he said matter-of-factly, “Oh, I’m going to be moving after graduation.” I was floored.
“M-m-moving?”
“Yeah…I got accepted into a really good school in California.”
I couldn’t believe he was talking about it so nonchalantly! Didn’t he realize that we were supposed to end up together? How could he just take off like that? I managed to maintain my composure until Mom came to pick me up. As soon as I got in the car, I burst into tears. Mom asked what was wrong and I couldn’t even answer, I was so distraught. She asked, “Is it something about Jesse?” I nodded and she let it be at that.
When we got home, she went inside the house and I stayed in the car, crying and praying. I said, “Okay, God. I understand now. I know how much I love him and how I can’t lose him. I’m sorry I’ve been wasting time doing all these other things.” Then again, I said “Lord, here are all the feelings I have for Jesse. Please take them away from me if you don’t want me to love him.” I suddenly felt like Jesse had to know how I felt.
I got out of the car and went inside. I remembered that Jesse had been really hard to get a hold of lately. He never answered his phone. So I said, “If he answers his phone, God, then I’ll know that you really want me to tell him.” I took a deep breath and dialed his number. Actually, I dialed the first six digits and hung up…several times. Finally I just dialed the whole thing and let it ring.
One ring went by. No answer. Whew!
Well, that answers that…two rings, no ans–
…and suddenly a “Hello” in a handsome voice that clearly belonged to Jesse.
I asked him if he was busy and he said he only had a couple of minutes because he was fixing to go to church. I figured now I had to tell him. I said, “I have to tell you something, but please don’t say a word until I’ve said it all. It’s
hard enough to say as it is.” I managed to get it all out and then I waited for his
response.
Finally he said, “Wow. Well, I have to admit, I kind of knew. But this is cool.
I love the truth. The truth is good.” He couldn’t say much else because he had to leave. He said he would talk to me the next day after he had time to think about what I had just said. I told him I was leaving to Paris very early in the morning, but I would talk to him when I got back.
The entire week in Paris, I was deep in thought. I prayed to God every waking second that things were okay. That my little speech was going to be what finally made things happen between us. I really didn’t enjoy Paris as much as someone should. We went to castles and museums in which I’d drag along behind, thinking about Jesse. On the subway and tour bus rides, I prayed quietly about how things would turn out. At the Louvre, I walked through hallways and hallways of paintings, picturing Jesse in all of them. (Except the Mona Lisa…I actually paid attention to that one) The ferry on the Seine River only reminded me that I was on a very romantic boat ride without the Jesse I was missing. I distinctly remember retreating to an empty area at Notre Dame just so I could be alone to think…I couldn’t care less that I was standing on history. (As the history fanatic that I’ve become now, this makes me very sick to my stomach!) At the top of the Eiffel Tower, I looked out over Paris and couldn’t think of anything else except the fact that Jesse was more than a whole ocean away.
I didn’t even notice any cute guys over in that city, and that was very abnormal for me. I just wanted to get back home so I could find out what was happening. When I got back, I called him.
He didn’t beat around the bush. He said he hated to be blunt, but he just didn’t feel the same way. I would have expected to be more discouraged than I was. But I wasn’t. I said, “Okay, God is testing me. He knows how unfaithful I’ve been with this promise he’s given me and he’s giving me time to think about what I did, get right with Him and deepen my faith. I can deal with this.”
So for the next few weeks, I prayed all the time. I read all kinds of books. I didn’t look at other guys. One of the guys that I would occasionally make out with tried to make a move on me during that time and I backed away. He seemed shocked and I was so proud of myself!
But, things weren’t changing. Jesse hadn’t cut himself off from me, but he wasn’t moving forward either. He was still the same old Jesse. Just-my-friend-Jesse. I became heavily discouraged. The next week I went back to work, like stepping onto a battlefield. And I stepped on all the land mines.
Rusty was still there, flirting and smiling all the time. He started telling me that he had heard from the other waitresses that I had a crush on him. I was mortified! He’d ask me “Is it true?” every time I saw him. I’d always say, “Maybe” and he’d roll his eyes. One day he brought his little boy in and I was forced to acknowledge that he really WAS married.
Once I had to come to terms with his marital status, it really scared me that I was so attracted to a married man … but I felt powerless to stop liking his comments. It was literally a war in my mind. I felt like a ravenous lion, hungry for somebody to care about me…and here was this guy waving a steak in front of my face. Still, I knew it was beyond wrong, and I reminded myself that I would never date a married man. I would just enjoy his comments and that’s it, I told myself.
About a month after I came back from Paris, I realized that I was missing out on a lot of what little high school I had left. I also wanted to refocus on what was important, so I decided to quit for a couple of months. I no longer saw Rusty on a regular basis, and I was happy to be free from the burden of that temptation.
That temptation lightened up, but life became more of a struggle in so many other areas all at once. Fred was getting less patient by the day. Throughout my high school years, everything I did got more and more under his skin. Some days his anger was so bad that I just stayed at Gramma’s or the McCartys’ from church. The closer I got to being 18, the more anxious Fred was to have me out of his house. He never tried to hide the fact that he expected us to leave once we hit that magical age..
Also during that time, something happened at my church. There was a misunderstanding between the pastor and some of the congregation that came to a head one Sunday. After that, it started falling apart. All of the families that I was closest to started to leave, including the McCartys. The pastor and his wife ended up moving away as well. I couldn’t go anymore because 1) most of the people I was close to had left and 2) there was such awkwardness. There was a giant pink elephant in the room that none of the remaining people would talk about and everything felt weird. Church had been the one steady thing in my life after losing so many things AND my best friend. After that collapsed, I truly felt like a wanderer in all walks of life.
I still kept in contact with my old manager from Flying J, Zenia. She was very nice and had been supportive of me when I had had problems with Fred, so I always stopped by and said hi to her when I had the chance. One day, I stopped by and she asked me if I wanted to stay the night at her house and go to a co-worker’s (Lynn) party with her. Of course, I agreed and we went.
Zenia was making margaritas and for the first time ever, I felt like drinking. She ran out of mix tho, so she told me to share with Lynn’s brother, Gene. After a while, he started to kiss me and I let my guard down and kissed him back. I knew I had promised myself I was going to steer clear of these types of things… but life just felt so tough. My confidence felt like it desperately needed a lift— & this was my medicine of choice.
Two weeks later was my senior prom. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to go, but I figured that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t go–although I didn’t even have anyone to go with. Gene ended up agreeing to meet me there, so there I went. When I got there, I sat down with Mario and our little group of friends. I actually had fun for the first few songs, dancing the Chicken Dance and the Cotton-Eyed Joe with some of my oldest buddies.
Then Gene showed up and we danced a few slow songs together. During
one, a George Strait song, I looked out at the dance floor and caught a glimpse of Jesse with his date. She wasn’t from our school, so I didn’t know her, but I already didn’t like her. He was holding her in his arms as they danced and talked. Then as luck would have it, I also came across my ex-boyfriend Evan dancing with his date…one of the girls I had heard he cheated on me with. They were caught up in a super-romantic moment that really made me want to leave. My past love and my present love, both really enjoying themselves …. and there I was with some guy I hardly knew.
After that song, Gene asked if I wanted to go for a drive and I was ready to do anything to get out of that torture chamber. We went up to Scenic Drive where we spent the rest of the night. I got home way past curfew and ended up getting grounded. And it totally wasn’t even worth it.
A week before graduation I stopped by Flying J to see Zenia again and she invited me to another party at Lynn’s house. As soon as we arrived, I could see this party was not going to be the small, playing-pool-with-a-few-co-workers get-together that the last one was. This party was a full-fledged, loud-music, kegs-of-alcohol, swarming-with-people graduation party for Gene. I didn’t know half the people that were there, so I wandered through the crowded patio and found a seat outside next to Zenia’s boyfriend.
I talked to him for a while, and then Rusty showed up. He pulled up a seat next to us and we all talked for a long time. Rusty got up and handed me a drink. Normally, I would have said no, but after trying to drink at the last party, it didn’t seem so bad anymore. It was strong, tasted like cough drops and the only effect I noticed it having on me was that I felt more sociable. After a while, Zenia disappeared with her boyfriend, so I was left alone with Rusty.
He got up and pulled my chair closer to his. He said, “So tell me, is it true?” I just laughed. He asked me again and I said, “Maybe.” He groaned and said, “No, no, no, not maybe again. I’m so anxiously waiting for a yes. If you said no, you’d break my heart.” I said, “Sure.” He said, “You don’t believe me? I am so afraid of rejection, that’s why I never told you.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me to a dark corner in the yard. My heart was pounding as we walked, because I knew what was coming. I was scared — terrified, actually — because he was married .. and what the HECK was wrong with me? Why was I not stopping this??? This was against all the things I knew to be right. But at the same time, I wanted to go through with it so bad. He was so attractive, he said such nice things to me and the alcohol in my system surely didn’t help my judgment. So I was just happy to be there in his arms for the night. We kissed for about two hours. At one point he told me he wanted to…do more. I told him no and naturally he wanted to know why. I said, “You’re married, Rusty.” He said, “If I was happily married, do you think I’d be here with you?”
Something about that sentence snapped me back to reality and we went inside shortly afterwards. He asked me, “Do you have a boyfriend?” I said no. He said, “Are you sure? Because I am really jealous and I get my feelings hurt easily. I’m not into one-night stands, either. I want to see you on a regular basis.” I didn’t say anything. He said, “Think about it. Come see me at work this week. Please.” Then he kissed me and left.
I was in complete shock the next morning, sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe I had sunk to such low levels…drinking and kissing married men. I was so ashamed of myself. It was stuff like this that caused my own parents to get divorced and here I was doing the same thing! There was no way I was going to go talk to him at work—seeing him regularly was out of the question.
The worst part was that I knew for sure I had ruined things with Jesse. I couldn’t possibly deserve him. On the one hand, I was so angry at myself & didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I made such stupid mistakes that I knew I’d regret later. On the other, I kind of felt like God was teasing me–he had put Jesse in my life and showed me what a Christian guy acts like and then just ripped him away. And the only guy willing to give me what I needed was this married one!
This would have been a great time to put all of the things I had been learning at church into practice. This could have been where I built my faith up. Looking back, I wish I could say “I did the right thing and trusted God and His word, and He rewarded me greatly.” But that didn’t happen. I was scared & self-centered and thought I knew more than our Creator. I really thought I had heard Him say that Jesse and I were going to be together– and it was the only logical way for my life to turn out. But we weren’t going to be. He was moving!
So I rebelled. I didn’t SAY I was rebelling. I was too scared to do that. I would never deny that God is God. But I was exhausted. Who could pull off this Christian life? Who could follow all these rules? I wanted it to be me, but clearly I was too weak. My resolve was gone. My motivation was gone. My heart was gone. In the mean time, boys were paying attention to me.
On the day of graduation, I was walking to a friend’s house & walked by an old building. A guy was standing outside and he looked familiar. Then he
started waving. I looked harder & recognized him as Steve…the jerk from last summer who had been living with his girlfriend. He called me over and we talked for a while. He even had the nerve to ask for my number. Anyone else would have walked away. I, however, had the nerve to give it to him. He wrote it down on the sidewalk with a white rock.
Then I left and went to my friend’s house. As I walked back home, it began to rain. It rained cats and dogs for most of the afternoon/evening. I was sure my number was long gone from that sidewalk and that I’d not be hearing from Steve. Wrong. He called that day right before we left for the graduation ceremony. Mom was dumbfounded that I had given him the number again. She was not impressed by last year’s fiasco.
And so ended high school. For the graduation ceremony we sat in alphabetical order, of course. My school was so big that I didn’t even know anyone sitting around me. I just remember feeling so sad and so scared, because I had no idea what the future had in store.
Steve called again the next day and every day after that. We actually ended up dating. Things were different this time. He was single now. We had long conversations. We went on dates and he felt soooo good to hold. The one thing that hadn’t changed was his hunger for “more”. I was even starting to consider it because I was so, so, so tired of fighting the main thing that caused so many problems with these guys.
A few weeks after we started dating, I went to a Christian camp in Glorieta. It was a very moving experience. One of the counselors there quickly became someone I looked up to. One night I went up and talked to her. I told her about my problem with Steve pressuring me and she told me she understood pressures—but it was possible to be strong because she was still a virgin. I couldn’t believe it! She was 23! She was gorgeous….pretty and thin. If SHE could stay a virgin, surely I could. I went home with a new resolve.
Around the end of June, I got my job back at Flying J. I was a little nervous about going back there because of Rusty, but I decided things would be okay. My first day back, Rusty completely ignored me. I figured it was because I never went back and talked to him the way he told me to. Later that day, the hostess told me that she had heard Rusty was mad because Zenia had told some customers that he had gotten me drunk and seduced me.
I was upset because I didn’t want him thinking that I had told anyone that. I was afraid to talk to him because I didn’t want to start anything that might get romantic again. Still, I couldn’t let him think I said that. I asked if he was mad at me. He said, “Should I be?” I said no and we agreed to talk after work. Then we were right back to the way we always were–popping each other with towels, flirtatious smiles, joking around. After work, he pulled his car up close to the restaurant and I got in to talk to him about everything. We finally resolved it, and I was starting to get out of the car when he said, “I thought about you every day since the last time I saw you.” Then he started kissing me. I really didn’t want to kiss him, but I JUST gotten him to stop being mad at me so I felt like couldn’t follow that with an immediate rudeness. I was really worried about people being mad at me for some reason. So I figured I’d kiss him back and tell him I couldn’t see him later. I had just gotten back from camp! I didn’t want to be leading this kind of life.
Yet somehow, I lost all conrol over the next couple of months, and never wound up pulling the courage to have that conversation. I had the strangest kind of life. By day, I was Steve’s girlfriend. By night, I was Rusty’s mistress. I really never meant it to be, but that’s how it ended up. When I would come home from another tryst with Rusty, I would sit in bed and vow to break it off with him the next day. I liked him a little, but I was extremely uncomfortable knowing that he had a wife at home. He swore up and down that they didn’t even sleep in the same bed together and that the only reason he even stuck around was because he didn’t want to leave his son. They were for sure getting divorced, though!
Still, I was terrified that God was going to strike me down at any given second. Besides, I was much more interested in Steve. Steve was just such a source of pressure. He said it wasn’t possible for two people to have a real relationship without having a sexual one, so any time we got closer, the pressure got worse.
One night I was in a position where I could be alone so I called Steve and he came over. He said he had waited two months already and I wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to show him how much I liked him. He gave me an ultimatum, explaining that he couldn’t believe in a relationship with someone who couldn’t show him how she felt. By that time, I was completely tired of arguing. I started to give in, but then at the last second came to my senses and decided I didn’t want to. It was too late though. I kept asking him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I was NOT emotionally prepared for what happened that night. I’m an open book when it comes to pretty much anything, but I just don’t like to think or talk about that experience because it disgusts me. He then put on his pants and said it was getting late. He rode off on his bike and I never saw him again.
He did call me a few months later, though. He said he had been walking across the border when he got jumped by a Mexican gang who beat him up and slashed his eye with a broken bottle. He had had to have several surgeries to fix the eye, but during the ordeal he had managed to find God. He said he was calling to apologize for what he had done to me that night, and he hoped that I could
forgive him. And I do, because God knows I don’t know why I’ve done half the things I’ve done.
Over the next few months, I saw a bunch of other guys. I knew dating so many guys, especially all at the same time, was wrong. But I figured that if being committed to guys got me hurt, then I might as well play their games too. There were no more rules to follow as far as I was concerned.
I still saw Rusty at work. I didn’t really have strong feelings for him and I still planned on breaking it off just for the fact that he was spoken for already. But he made it so hard! He made me feel so special. He had this way that he would look at me that just melted my inhibitions about him. He talked to me like he cared about me and my feelings. He never pressured me for sex. He made me feel comfortable with him. After a few months of that, I was suffering from severe inner conflict. I was starting to really like Rusty, but I was terrified of what I was doing. I decided to get away for a while and think.
Aunt Nena, my dad’s sister, had been writing to me and wanted to send me a ticket to go visit her in Corpus Christi so we could get to know each other again. I took her up on it. It was an overnight bus trip that left El Paso at 10pm. I had gotten stuck in an aisle seat next to a very large man and I couldn’t get comfortable to save my life. When we stopped in Van Horn, some people got off the bus and more seats opened up. I went to the back and found a much more comfortable one.
The guy next to me started making conversation and I discovered his name was Ruben. He was really nice. After a few hours of talking, Ruben said he liked my eyes. Then before I knew it, we were kissing until the sun came up. The bus stopped in San Antonio, which was Ruben’s destination, so then he was gone. On the rest of the way to Corpus, I was even more discouraged. I couldn’t believe I had just spent the last few hours making out with some guy I had just met. I felt like I was in a bad dream!
While I was in Corpus, Aunt Nena kept asking me if something was wrong because I was so quiet. I was worried to the point of nausea about my lifestyle.I prayed constantly and promised God that I’d stop seeing Rusty when I got home.
I got back into town on the night of our company picnic. It was at a little park in Canutillo and I was looking forward to just hanging out with everyone. When I got there, Rusty was sitting in a corner. He motioned for me to come over to him, so I did, planning on just talking to him for a while and then leaving. But it didn’t happen that way.
We left together and he gave me a ride to Gramma’s, where I was going to spend the night. We sat out in front of her house for hours. I just couldn’t tell him that I couldn’t see him anymore. Not only that, but we got even closer. I gave up completely on trying to break up with him and just accepted the fact that I was starting to love him.
Maybe a couple months after that, one night he told me that he needed to talk to me after work. I sensed from his body language that it was something bad, so I told him it wasn’t necessary. I avoided him the rest of the evening. Towards the end of our shift, he confronted me, wanting to know why I was so upset. I explained that I was sick and tired of being dumped so I was saving myself some torture by staying away him. He sighed real hard, then looked in my eyes and said, “That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to tell you that … I feel like I’m falling in love with you. And I wanted to ask you if we could start seeing more of each other, please.” Deep down, I knew he had made that up, but my heart believed him because it desperately wanted to.
After work, Rusty drove me to my house and we parked in the driveway as usual. He kinda “mentioned” that since we had been seeing each other for so long, it was getting hard for him to resist getting more physical. At first I hesitated, but then suddenly I couldn’t see why I was fighting it. My “waiting for marriage” plan was already ruined. So I made a hasty decision and told him it was okay. I said, “Hurry up before I change my mind.” He laughed like he couldn’t believe it…and it happened. He even told me that he loved me.
After it was over, he suddenly threw his head back against the head rest and said, “What have I done?” I asked him what he meant and he said, “I made you do something you had told me you didn’t want to do and I … OMG.” I told him that I was fine, but he said that he felt like a weasel. He hung around for a while and then had to get home since it was already 5:30 a.m.
The next day at work, he acted frighteningly strange. I told him that it was terrible that I was the one who didn’t want to and now HE was the one freaking out. He said that he’d get over the shock eventually and then things would be back to normal. I wasn’t convinced.
We weren’t scheduled to work with each other again for four days, so I had plenty of time to develop a “stop-worrying” speech. When that day came, I was nervous when I pulled into the parking lot. Then my heart stopped beating for a few seconds—Rusty’s car wasn’t there! As I hurried inside, I rationalized that maybe he had gotten dropped off or something. But there was a different cook on the line! I ran back to the schedule to see if maybe I had read it wrong or if he had called in sick.
What I saw shattered my heart. His name had been scratched through several times. His shifts were all given to other people. In the margin, the words “QUIT” had been written next to his name. I just knew it had to be a mistake, so I asked the cook on duty. He said, “Rusty? Yeah, he’s gone.” I tried to stay calm. I went out onto the floor and managed to get a few orders taken. Then I snapped. I ran into the bathroom and cried for a long, long time. My manager was talking about sending me home, but I definitely didn’t want to go there to be alone with my thoughts. So I forced myself to pull it together and when I was able to breathe without sobbing, I went back to work.
I had both nightmares and beautiful dreams about Rusty for the next few weeks. I wanted to feel sorry for myself, but I knew that all of this had been coming to me. No one can do things they know are wrong and get off scot-free. I felt like I couldn’t even pray because I knew exactly what I was doing when I walked into this. Surely God was furious with me by now and wasn’t interested in hearing from me.
So I took the burden of fixing my life upon myself and started thinking about who I could find to replace Rusty. I fooled myself into believing that the only reason it had failed was because he was married—not because I was looking for answers to life in the wrong places. I sat crying about Rusty for a couple of days. Then all of a sudden, I decided it was enough and was back to my old habits.
Around this time, I also started to notice the new cook at work, Ray. I had met him about a month earlier. He had come in to talk to the manager about getting a job and was sitting at the counter. The manager took a really long time to get to him, and I wasn’t really busy, so I talked to him for quite a while. He was handsome, but I hadn’t noticed that morning because I had been working with Rusty.
When Ray started working with us, we never worked the same shifts so I forgot about him. I heard a lot about how cute he was from the other waitresses, though. Suddenly, we were scheduled working graveyards together for a couple of weeks. The first shift we worked together, I was singing along to the radio that was playing, “To Be With You” by Mr. Big. Ray yelled over, “That’s a really awesome song, huh?” And then we just hit it off. He really was as cute as everyone said he was. He had a little limp when he walked, due to a “bad leg”, which I thought was sweet. He was funny too–we laughed a lot when we worked together. Soon there were ideas already floating around in my head.
One morning, when we got off of work, I asked Ray if he could give me a ride home. On the way there, he asked me, “Would you like to do something later on?” I said sure. We agreed to meet later that night. A few minutes after he dropped me off, my phone rang. It was Ray. He said, “I have to tell you something. Remember my bad leg I was telling you about? Well, it’s a little more than that. It’s a prosthetic.” I admit, I was a tad shocked. But I pretended like it didn’t bother me at all. He said cool and hung up. Then he called again. And again. And again. I was trying to sleep and the phone kept
ringing. He just kept calling to tell me little things like what time he’d be there to pick me up. Or what we’d do. Or some other little detail. My mom asked me if I had gotten a hold of a nut, but I assured her I didn’t.
That night, he picked me up and we went to his house. He apologized for the shape it was in. He had just gotten divorced and had moved from Arizona to stay with his step- dad. The house wasn’t finished and didn’t even have inside doors or electricity. But he had rigged up an extension cord from the neighbor’s house and we watched TV together in the dark. We went down to the bar where his step-dad was a bouncer and hung out there for a while. Then we drove back. We sat on his couch again to watch TV and then we were making out. I was attached to him…immediately.
The next night he dropped by my house after work and asked me if I wanted to come sit with him outside in his car and look at the stars for a while. We talked for hours and he told me a lot about his life story, his divorce, how he got to where he was. He was so sweet and easy to talk to. I looked into his eyes and suddenly I knew I had found someone special. Someone who needed me as badly as I needed him. I was tired of going through men faster than I could go through a bottle of shampoo. I knew instantly that I was going to love him so much that he wouldn’t hurt anymore.
We became inseparable after that. I was always bumming rides to his house. And if I couldn’t find one, I’d walk. Then I worked harder at buying a car so I could spend more time with him. I was so infatuated with him that nothing about him could bother me. Not the fact that he was divorced with kids, living in an unfinished house. Not his prosthetic leg. Not all the other little things that started popping up.
He had lost his job at Flying J shortly after we started dating. He hadn’t showed up to work one day. So he got a job at a grocery store down the road as a carry-out. But the work was too much for his leg. So he didn’t have a job for a while and hung out a lot at the bar we had gone to on our first “date”. He borrowed a lot of money from me, too, but I figured that was just a result of him being divorced.
One night he picked me up at my house and it had been obvious he had been drinking. He even fell down in front of Fred, who of course, was NOT amused. We went over to his house and we were lying down in his room when his front door opened. It was a girl and when he ran out there, they began to argue. She was furious at him for cheating on her and she threatened to take the car away from him.
He had mentioned something about her a few times, but hadn’t gone into much detail. Something about her thinking he was cute so she lent him her car. But she was in there yelling, “What about all those times we made love Ray? What about when you told me you loved me?” I could hear him hushing her and she said loud, “I don’t care. LET her hear. LET her hear what she’s about to get herself into.” Then she took off and slammed the door. She opened it again to tell him that she was going to be down at the bar if he wanted to talk.
When he came back in the room I asked him about what she had said and he said she had just made all that stuff up to hurt him because she knew I could hear. She was just a crazy girl who had a crush on him and was mad because she couldn’t have him. I calmed down a little and then he started kissing me. He started trying to undo my pants and I pulled back. I didn’t want to be doing this again. He said, “Don’t be scared.” I said, “I’m not scared, I just don’t think we should do this so soon.” He got upset and said that if I wasn’t going to, he knew where that girl had gone to…..and she was so crazy about him that SHE would. So I gave in. I reasoned that he had been drinking and that he didn’t mean what he was saying. I felt sorry for him that his ex had driven him to drinking like that.
The girl ended up taking her car away from Ray. After that, he couldn’t get a job without transportation. He was very upset. I told him that I would be willing to drive him to the next big town every day so he could work there. So he got a job at Denny’s in Las Cruces working the graveyard shift. I would take him and pick him up every day. Some nights he would have to work when I was at work, so he’d stop by and get my car. I’d have no way home, so I would sleep in the driver’s lounge until he came to pick me up in the morning.
At home, the Fred situation was boiling. I was already 18 and he was pushing for me to get out of the house. One night he glared at me and told me, “It won’t be much longer.” I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I didn’t want to find out. Ray was tired of driving back and forth, and was starting to get really depressed. One day to make him feel better, I told him that maybe we should move in together…like roomies. We both needed a place, so it would all work out. He was ecstatic and we started looking for apartments immediately. He took it upon himself to find two roommates at his work who were going to help us “split rent”. That kind of bothered me, but if it was going to help with the rent, I figured it would be ok.
I moved out on January 21, 1995. I came home on the day we had set for moving day and found most of my stuff outside. My mom had helped move stuff outside so my sister could move into my room. Suddenly it hit me that I wasn’t going to live at home anymore. I wasn’t going to see my precious
little brothers every day anymore. I had never lived anywhere but home and suddenly I was very afraid. I started crying and soon everyone else did too. Everyone except Fred, that is. I went into the house to go to the bathroom and I left the door open. He came in from the garage. When the door to the garage and my bathroom door were both opened, they collided with one another, so when he opened the door, it banged into mine. He sighed his notorious sigh and slammed my door shut just as I was fixing to come out of the bathroom. I wasn’t in the mood to sit there and wait for him to stop playing games. So I opened the door almost as soon as it shut on me. When I stepped out he glared at me with hatred flaming from his eyes. Then he growled through gritted teeth “BOY am I glad you’re leaving.” I was so angry that he would say something like that when I was feeling so down and out that I said, “So am I……So am I.” But I didn’t mean it. I was starting to feel pretty crummy about moving. But things like this just more fully convinced me that I was making a wise decision.
Out of the Box 
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