Continuing on, without going into too much graphic
and gory detail, I'd been hit by a car, nothing horribly serious at
the time, it broke my leg, and gave me various contusions and cuts,
scrapes and the such, but the type of break was quite "nasty", in
the words of the doctors, and would require surgury to repair.

To read the whole story behind this accident, go to the "stories" page
and read a story currantly being written about it, much easier that
way and escapes redundancy, at least this time.

So a few years went by, and I married my (then) boyfriend, seemed like
the natural and logical thing to do, after all, we'd been together for
a few years by that point, and it seemed, most of the time, to be a
good relationship, granted, with a few problems, but what relationship
doesnae have it's little problems?

Things changed rapidly, for the worse, he tried, and succeeded, for awhile
at least, to isolate me from my family and what few friends I had.
I learned that he was prone to bouts of severe depression, and became
verbally abusive when he was at a "low point".
Having shattered self esteem from the scars left from the accident, and
not having had "good" self esteem before the accident, it wasnae too long
before I believed I was as useless, worthless, and ugly as he told me I was.

Life went along in this vein for quite awhile, and things peaked and
worsened by stages, a good day, a bad day.
He could not keep a job for very long, he quit school, "because of me",
and eventually, we fell into debt, which dinna make things any better,
by any stretch of imagination.
He started on a new medication called "Paxil" and things began to brighten.
He began to get up in the mornings, as opposed to noon, or later,
treating me nicer, and best of all, he got a job and kept it for over a
year, which began to pull us out of the pit of debt that we'd accumulated
and falled headlong into.

Pity that it dinna last.
We moved in with a roomate, and through a long series of events, the
roomate made life intolerable for the both of us.
I kept calm by working and by keeping to myself, my husband however, had
fewer coping mechanisms then I did, and when things came to a crux, with
the roomate unplugging the phone and banging on the door to the locked
living room with a baseball bat, my husband had a nervous breakdown.
And so, once more we moved, my husband lost his job, and started taking
more of the Paxil to compensate for the loss of self control that the
breakdown had wrought in him.
Things went from bad to worse, for what we dinna know about Paxil, and
should've been told, is that in some cases, when one has a perdispositon
towards being "bi-polar", (aka; being Manic Depressive)a combination of
the stresses and the medication can flip you into BEING Bi-Polar, as
opposed to being "merely" Depressive.

I first figured out that something was very wrong when he stayed up for
48 hours straight, a first for him, as he was prone to sleeping for
many, many hours when he was having a "down time", then he slept for 18
hours straight, and when he finally woke, he acted like he was drunk.

With the help of his mother, I got him to a hospital, (a place that I'm
not too fond of, and certainly not too trusting of) where he was seen by
psychiatry, and subsequently admitted.
The very next night, he checked himself out and went into the woods beside
the hospital to kill himself.
He dinna succeed, his hands were shaking so badly, he couldnae hold onto
the shard of glass that he'd found to do the deed, and finally seeing
that something was seriously flawed with his way of thinking, he checked
himself back into the hospital.

I know, you're probably thinking, "exactly what does that have to do with
you, J Star? Much of this is about your (then) husband." It does have a
bearing on the events that followed, so please, just bear with me.

After being in the hospital, he was a changed man, he was on about five
different kinds of medication which had to be taken religiously, his
emotional state was skewed and his logics flawed.
In short, as once he "took care of me", I had to take care of him,
but the situation was a tad different.
He never had to deal with someone who was abusive, verbally and physically.
I may not have been the nicest person to be around when I was in a
great deal of pain, but I never behaved in quite the manner that he did,
I never had to be watched to make sure that I took my medications, I never
had to have money taken away from me for fear that I'd spend the rent
money playing pool, or "eating out", and I never had to be forced into
going to the hospital and seeing my doctors.

I began retreating furthor and furthor into myself as a result of the
abuse and the pain that was being inflicted on me, and it would've been
around then that we discovered the chat rooms.
How wonderous!
A place where I could be myself, and not get screamed at, where I could
make friends and not have them look at me with pity in their eyes, be
encouraged to share my thoughts and feelings, a place where I felt
safe and content.
So, predictably, my Husband wasnae too fond of this at all, after all
anything that took the attention off of him, was NOT something to be
tolerated.
Things escalated again, and the words turned into hair pulling, slaps,
shoves, and threats.
But honestly, I dinna much care, I had an insurance settlement coming in
"someday", I had friends who dinna see me as a horrible person for
wanting to escape the nightmare that my life had become, and most
importantly, I was beginning to see that this pattern of behaviour by
my husband was NOT normal, regardless of the medication and problems
that he was having.

I became close to a few of the friends that I had made online, and I began
to formulate some semblance of a plan of leaving.
It took some time, and things coming to a head, but I kicked my husband out
after one particularly vicious fight, and things got..quieter, more serene,
and most importantly, more sane.
Throughout all of this insanity around me, I feared for my own mindset,
feeling that I was being dragged along with him into this maelstorm of
emotions that were without control, but when he finally left, things
began falling nicely into place.
About a month later, the insurance money arrived, and I decided to go on
vacation to meet some of the friends who I'd made online.
The night before I'd left, I called my friend Dan, I already missed him.
We'd talked close to every night for months and months, and he had been
simply wonderful to, and for me.
I planned on visiting him, but first I wanted to get myself a little more
together then I was, I was still very fragile, and still very unsure of
myself and what I was going to do, now that I was free.

We talked until 6 in the morning, a few hours before my plane was to leave
for Kansas, (I was meeting with my friend, Jet first) and I knew then that
I had been falling in love with Dan for some time now, and gods alive,
this was a frightening thing.

I dinna want it to be a transiatory thing, a "rebound relationship", if
you will, I'd had far too many of those in my past, and he was so very
sweet, gentle, and kind, he deserved more then that as well.

I boarded the plane at 8 or 9 that morning, and headed to Kansas to do
some well needed healing and rest.

I only lasted about 3 days before I called Dan, I missed him so very much.
We talked for hours and hours, and while I had a pretty good time in
Kansas, my best memories come from those phone calls that lasted until
all hours of the morning.
A week later, refreshed and feeling a bit better about myself, I flew to
Texas to spend some time with C and Wynter.
The phone calls continued between Dan and me, and we sent letters and
packages of things while I journeyed, and I began to worry, "what if he
doesnae feel the same way about me, that I feel about him?", after all,
we'd never discussed it, and I was venerable to being hurt.
I decided to wait until I was in South Carolina, with him to gauge the
situation.
Two weeks and a bit, after I'd been in Texas, the time came, I was headed
to South Carolina for 2 and a half weeks, I was SO nervous!
I missed my plane because of a fender bender in a taxi on the way to the
airport, but even that dinna faze me overly much, I just dinna want Dan
to be worried when I dinna show up at the airport at the appointed time.
So I called from the airport, and thankfully he was still there.

I explained what had happened, and his first concern was whether I was
alright. I was, I just was going to have to catch another plane a
little later.
Finally, I made it to South Carolina, and he was at the airport, waiting
for me. He spotted me first, as I had taken my glasses off to clean them,
and I gave him the hug I had promised he'd get the moment I spotted him.
We went back to his house and I met his parents, and we talked for hours
and hours, just like we had been doing for months.
Later that evening, we went for a walk through his neighborhood, and with
the stars overhead, and the fireflies dancing through the air, we walked
hand in hand through the pitch black night, hand in hand.
Magical evening.
Suffice it to say, we became quite close over the time I spent with him in
South Carolina, and when the time came for me to leave and go on to Georgia
to meet shadojak, I was more then reluctant to leave him.
We made tentitive plans for the future, with me living in Canada, and him
in the United States, we knew that it'd not be an easy relationship, but
we dinna want to just say our goodbyes and have that be it.
In August, he came up for my birthday, and what a wonderful birthday it
only surpassed by the next year's when he came up again.
Since then, we've spent most of the holidays with each other, and a
few weekends in the long periods between summer and American Thanksgiving.
Last year, he asked me to marry him..*smiles*..
Of course I said yes!

In order to improve myself, not because I have to, but because I want to
in the meantime, I've obtained my GED, gotten a poem published, and am
working towards several goals.

To be continued in "Moving On"