Thinking Over The Past And Giving Revelations

I was reading over past entries of mine and another person from when I was in Kansas.  It’s still kind of hard to believe I took the plunge and did that whole venture.  For anyone reading who doesn’t know the backstory, my mom works at a company called TransNational.  It’s a dispatch company that works with truckers, assigning them shipments of whatever to take wherever.  My mom’s started talking to several of the different truck drivers she’s given loads to, and one was this guy named Fred who was looking to rent a house he owned in Kansas to reliable people.  (The ones before me and Rob skipped out on him after not paying for something like six months.)

I’d been looking to get out of New Jersey anyway, wanting to escape all the memories and reminders of the people here.  All in all, I was hoping to escape my memories, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  I just knew I was incredibly restless and wanted a change.  A big change.  I was together with Rob at the time and when my mom told us about the house in Kansas, my parents, Rob, and I took a vacation out there to see it.

Though after walking in the door, we should have just turned around, gone to Wichita, and made it a nice vacation there, we didn’t.  We worked to fix up the house, and Rob and I decided to move out there come October.

From October of ’06 to August of ’07, I lived with Rob in Kansas.  It wasn’t all bad.  I just can’t believe I actually packed up and moved to Kansas.  I left everything I knew in New Jersey, hoping I could have a new start in a foreign state, and just forget about everything that had happened to me in New Jersey.

It didn’t work out that way.

I couldn’t forget and the more I tried, the worse it became.  And whereas Rob and I had left for Kansas as fiance’s, we came back in something of a stasis period.  I wanted to just be dating, but he didn’t know how to act, so basically stayed away from me.

It’s not like I wish the Kansas thing had never happened.  I’m glad it did.  It helped me really grow up and learn how to handle things like rent and such.  Plus, I don’t think that Drew and I would be as compatible as a couple if I hadn’t done it.

He was asking me on Saturday why I love him.  Why him?  What was so great about him?

I wish I knew how to put it in words.  First and foremost, last year in May . . .

You know what?  I never did write about this in my diary because I just couldn’t handle it back then.  But I should probably finally give the story of what happened with me and Rob, shouldn’t I?

Other long story very short, he has epilepsy.  His parents, after he was diagnosed, basically over-protected him to the max, stopping him from any kind of activity where he might hurt himself because of a seizure.  They stopped him from roller blading, biking, even running around with his siblings because (and this is just stupid,) it "made him out of breath."  Out of breath?  Hello! it’s called having lungs!

Anyway, Rob and I figured out that meditation did wonders for him as far as controlling and even stopping his seizures.  But his mom decided no, he had to be on some kind of medication, that was all there was to it.  No thought or concern to what Rob wanted, no thought or concern to what kind of side effects the medications had on him, no thought or concern to the fact that medications hadn’t helped him completely stop the seizures in the twelve years he’d been taking them, and no thought or concern that maybe doctors don’t know everything.  Nope.  They were doctors, so they HAD to be correct.  Regardless of the fact that she has a personal experience that should have proven to her that doctors aren’t always correct.  See, when Rob’s first younger sister was still developing, the doctors told Rob’s mom that the baby had died in the womb, (she was roughly six months along,) and that to spare her having a stillborn, she should instead have an abortion, since there was no hope of giving birth to a live, healthy baby.  She went home, talked about it, prayed about it, etc., and decided to go through with the rest of the pregnancy.  Thus, Rob has three younger siblings instead of two.

Anyway, she decided she was gonna take things into her own hands and decided things were being done her way or no way.  So, Saturday, May 10th, I went to Shop Rite because I was gonna pick Rob up from work and see if I could talk to him, at least one last time and thoroughly find out if he was as spineless as he was indicating with his lack of action.  Well, I didn’t pick him up, because his mom was actually standing there by his register like some kind of guard dog.  Basically, she told me to stay away from him, that he didn’t want to talk to me anymore, and all this; to which I looked at Rob and said, "Why didn’t I hear any of this from you?"  And a few more lines between his mom and I were exchanged, including me saying that I wanted to be paid back for all the expenses not just I’d, but my parents, lost, thanks to paying for different things for Rob.  (Doctor bills, student loan stuff that his parents co-sgined for but kept insisting, ‘Oh, we’d like to, but we can’t’ when Rob said he needed help paying it.)  She just says well, then I’d have to bring her to court.  Oh, and before that, she’d actually threatened to have a restraining order put on me if I came near Rob again!  Ha!

So, anyway.  I had stuff of Rob’s in my car and I turned to him and asked if he wanted it.  He said no, but I certainly wasn’t keeping it.  So I went to my car, found a couple plastic bags, put all of it in there, and took it to the courtesy counter where I asked if they would make sure that Rob got it before he left.

When I left Shop Rite, I think I had something like two hours before I needed to get to work, cuz I worked five to closing that day.  I seriously didn’t even want to go in.  The previous day had been bad, it was another whole thing with Rob, and then that day . . .  it was just too much.  I didn’t want to go in when I was in that condition.  But I’d already been working with Drew for three months, I’d called out on him on (I think another) closing shift just recently, and I knew I couldn’t do that to him again.  Moreso, I didn’t want to do that to him again.  I didn’t want to be at work when I felt so horrible, but at the very least I figured maybe I could just go on autopilot, shut my brain off, and go through the motions.  It’s worked for me before.

I think it was right after I left Shop Rite, I texted Drew, saying there was something I needed to talk about with him, because he’s the only one I could think of that has any knowledge in this area.  After that, I went to the Cliffwood/Matawan police station, because while maybe they couldn’t help me with the money situation, I was going to stick it to Rob and his family any way I could.  And why I became so vindictive on that front is because the previous night, after his mom decided he’d spent enough time with me and came and picked him up, his brother texts me over Rob’s cell phone, posing as Rob, saying he doesn’t care about me and doesn’t want to see me anymore.  I knew from how it was typed it wasn’t Rob, so I said whoever it was, they should have the guts to say this from their own phone, instead of stealing someone else’s.  So, his brother texts me, admits who he is, and basically curses me out and insults me.

Well, Rob told me right after we got together that when his family came down from Utica (a place in upstate New York,) his dad brought a gun with him.  And Rob never told me what kind it was, but apparently, his dad shouldn’t have brought it down to New Jersey.  Apparently, the kind of gun it is?  It’s illegal to have in New Jersey; he wasn’t allowed to register it.  So, he just kept it hidden.

I went to the police station and said that I needed to talk to an officer.  When he asked what about, I said that I’d been together with Rob, explained about how he’d told me about the gun his dad had, explained that it was one he shouldn’t have kept and had never registered in New Jersey, explained how Rob’s dad had recently died, and said how ‘I was worried how his brother was taking it, since his brother and dad were really close.’  And that I ‘didn’t know if he would do anything, but he’s a junior in high school, I didn’t know what kind of course his grief might take, and I’d rather say something and be wrong, than not, and have another school shooting or something.’

The officer said there would be some kind of investigation, that my coming to them would be kept anonymous, and that if I wanted, I could get a copy of the report in about a week.  I went back a couple times, but each time, the office for print-out stuff had already closed.  I never did get a print-out, and by now, it’s probably too late.

Anyway, I did that and got to the store, where Drew pulled me into the office and asked what was going on.  He already knew from my texts that it involved something legal, so the assistant, this guy named Nick, (who is now the manager in Eatontown,) was there too, and they both listened to my whole description about what his mom said about take her to court, and the things my parents and I’d paid for for Rob.  Nick said I should go see a lawyer he knew down in Point Pleasant, cuz that guy could give me some good advice, but I never did go.

That weekend, I was just depressed.  I was so damned sick of getting into situations where parents ended up hating me for whatever fabricated reasons they wanted, and their kid, who always claimed to ‘care about me soooo much’ proving that he doesn’t care at all because he can’t stand up to mommy (or mommy and daddy) and claim his own independence.  I was so tired of putting my heart out there and having it trampled.  Sick of getting betrayed, screwed over, abandoned, left behind, all in all giving everything to a person and having them show that in the end, it meant nothing to them.

I was just plain hurt.  I was at the point where I just wanted to stop caring, because after everything I’d gone through in Wichita with Mike, then coming back and the IM I had with him where afterward I scared myself more than I ever had in my life, then everything with Rob, I was done.  I didn’t want to put myself out there anymore.  I was so sick and tired of being hurt, of winding up cut and bleeding because of people who were supposed to care about me.

While working, I actually started to feel myself letting go.  Just not caring what peoples’ reactions were.  Putting on a fake smile for the person whose door I went to, but feeling like a part of me was dying inside.  The part that once held so much caring for others.  I was just slowly watching that part of myself shrivel up and die and it wasn’t mattering to me that that was happening.

And I remember, that should have bothered me.  But it didn’t.

It bothered someone else, though.  Or maybe not bothered, but he noticed something was off about me.  Drew saw that I wasn’t being my normal, smiling, laughing self, and he tried to do something about it that weekend.  He cracked jokes, he told stories, he actually turned to me at one point and said, "C’mon, laugh!"  (I think I did crack a smile at that one.)

He never did manage to make me laugh that weekend, though he did also try on Sunday.  But the seed that someone did notice, someone did care, that I was unhappy, was planted.

When he asks me why I love him, that’s what always comes to mind first.  That he tried to make me laugh.  I wish I knew how to explain to him how much that meant to me.  I was this close <imagine me holding my fingers about a quarter inch apart> to giving up.  I was standing on the edge of a precipice between being who I’d always been and being an empty shell person who just couldn’t care less, and if Drew had just been another employer, just acted like a boss that weekend, I might be a completely different person now.  But instead he acted like a friend.  And thus, I decided that I had to live for myself.  I had to focus on my friends, my family, my schoolwork (cuz I was still at Brookdale then,) and myself.  Most importantly myself.  I was gonna live the single life and enjoy it, because my entire life, I’d been looking for Mr. Right.  The one to sweep me off my feet.  The one I would love forever.  My soulmate.  Yet I’d never really taken the time to find out who I am, without a guy.  I’d never taken the time to be happy with myself and just myself.  I’d never taken the time to get to know who I am and what I can accomplish, without always wishing there was a guy by my side.

So I decided to do that.  I would learn to be happy being single.  And once I made that decision, it was surprisingly easy.  I was my own person and I enjoyed it.  I went out with friends, had fun at work, put effort in (though not as much as I should have,) in school, and learned all the things I should have my senior year before I got together with Mike.

I couldn’t have done all of that if it weren’t for Drew planting the seed in my head that it mattered to him that I wasn’t smiling.  And I suppose that’s the biggest reason why I love him.  Without even meaning to, he kept my faith in people alive.