The story of Alex (the ex-husband)
March 1995
“Alex” and I were the not-so-typical teenage romance. I was 14 when we met, almost 15, he was 16. Met through mutal friends, mostly hung out, listened to music, watched movies. More like a friendship than anything. In fact our first ‘date’ was to see Billy Madison in the movie theatre. Not very romantic.
I didn’t even kiss him until September, loss my virginity to him that December. 15 years old and I thought I had met the love of my life.
Everything was perfect. How often do you meet someone who you could relate to in so many ways. Someone who never judged you for being different, for liking the music you did, for dressing the way you did. Those were the most important things.
I’m not sure what it was that made me fall in love with him at first. No matter how hard I think I still can’t put myself into that frame of mind from 7 years ago. (7!?) I was a very different person then. Very different.
He had thick curly italian hair, long, to his shoulders, maybe a little longer. Wirey, not soft, more like a brillo pad, seriously. He always wore a hat, usually a Soundgarden hat, or a White Zombie hat. We always saved little things for each other, movie stubs, newspaper articles, anything that reminded us, of us. It was cute. Blue eyes, long eyelashes, a nice smile. Not very nice skin though, oily, but not too oily. Dressed in jeans and band t-shirts, the same as me. Obsessive. Loved very deeply, not always in a healthy way. Always felt like he wasn’t good at anything. Wasn’t very bright either.
April 1996, my surprise 16th birthday party, I get my first car, he shows up with a shaved head. Announces he’ll be leaving for the U.S. Navy that August. I, of course, was crushed. What was I going to do? For the last year, this person was my everything, and now he was going to be gone. I throw him a going away party, I write him a letter -every single day.- I even decorate them with stickers, eventually the mail people on the navy base didn’t even have to look at the label, they knew they were mine. He wrote once in a while.
For some reason we were convinced to be engaged, I don’t know what made us think to get engaged, but we did. For Christmas he asked me to marry him that year, while he was home on leave. He put me under the mistletoe and kissed me with the ring in his mouth at a party I was having. I was ecstatic. A boring young girl like myself was engaged to a soldier. How quaint. I felt like my life was moving on though, I thought I had everything I really needed.
He refused to tell his parents, his mother wasn’t very fond of me, but both of my parents adored him. So we kept the engagement quiet around them, I wouldn’t wear my ring. In fact he didn’t tell them until a month after we were married.
1996 was one of my best years, I changed as a person completely, being able to feel intimacy, being comfortable with myself, of who I really was. It was a life changing year. I had straight A’s in highschool for the first time, I had my car, new friends, the love of my life.
1997 - early 1998 we visited each other off and on, he was in Chicago for a while, then Mississippi. I missed him something awful, but I credit my sanity of dealing with it to my friends, and parties we had. They distracted me a lot, and wouldn’t let me dwell on things. But my grades were slipping.
May 1998
Ah, finals coming soon, senior year of highschool. I was slacking, my grades were slipping even more, I’m not sure why, maybe all seniors do that their last year. Had a huge party the weekend of the 3rd, HUGE party, almost set the house on fire. But for some reason I had the worst, and I mean -worst- headache, I had ever had in my entire life. Something was wrong, and it wouldn’t go away, I tried to credit it to just partying too hard, but I know it wasn’t that.
Two weeks later I get a phone call from “Alex”, on a Sunday night, even closer to finals. Probably around midnight or so. “I need to tell you something,” wasn’t what woke me out of a dead sleep. “I cheated,” was what did. I sat straight up in bed and asked him what he meant, my heart starting to race and I think deep down I was telling myself “no” over and over. “Um…some friends and I went to New Orleans for the weekend, and when we were all in the hotel room, my friend and his girlfriend started making out, and the other girl and I kinda just….started too.” By now I’m in tears, by now I’m panicking, looking around my room for answers that just aren’t there. I asked how far they went. I started asking specific details, what they did, did they kiss, who started it, I wanted to know every move they made. And he told me. It was during my party 2 weeks prior. And they went all the way.
The feeling that sunk into the pit of my stomach, just can’t be explained. I didn’t know -what- to do. I used the other phone line to call my friend Shelli. Hysterical, I told her everything, while he was still on the other line. “Oh my god I’ll be right over.” She didn’t stay long, there wasn’t anything she could do, really. But I needed more. I needed to hear someone say anything at this point. In desperation I ran upstairs, two stories, and almost broke my mothers door in. She was still up, reading one of her romance novels. For 3 hours I cried on the floor at the side of her bed. I curled up as much as I could, trying to shut out the world, and cried. I guess she tried the best she could to comfort me. Mostly talking in a calm voice about how everything was going to be okay. Not really what I wanted to hear. She talked to him on the phone, told him that she was glad he came out and said something, and said he must have been manipulated by this “whore.” (Manipulated? Sure).
I was exhausted when my alarm went off for me to get up and get ready for school. How in the hell was I supposed to go to school. But I had to, end of year and all. I remember walking around the track in gym in a trance almost, just crying and staring at the blacktop the entire class. Some people asked what was wrong, sometimes I told them. My gym teacher, the bitch that she is, told me to not worry about it, it wasn’t worth worrying about. wtf
I went home after school and hopped on the internet. I looked up cheap plane tickets to Mississippi. I knew I couldn’t afford them so I called my mom and begged her for money. She told me I should just pack up everything in the bronco and drive down there because I would never be satisfied otherwise. (gee thanks mom.)
I wanted to kill the girl, and I truly believe I would have if I had the chance at the time. Her name was Kristy Cox. (Not sure of the spelling of course.)
I didn’t get the chance to see him again until July, I rode 34 hours on a Greyhound bus to Mississippi from Frederick Maryland. I made him pay $600 for me to stay in a hotel for 2 weeks, and then eventually stayed with another friend who was staying in the same hotel for an extra week. Tired, sick, hurt, the entire weekend. I was miserable. The whole time I just held onto him and tried to pretend nothing ever happened. But it was impossible.
Eventually I come home, broke moneywise and emotionally. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do now. My mom encourages me to get a job, so I look around for a nice simple secretary or receptionist job. I eventually apply for one at a networking company which just so happens to do web design. Though they didn’t have a web designer. So when they saw that I designed sites on my resume, they immediately inquired and hired me for $25 an hour. What luck.
“Alex” and I had talked about me moving in with him in military housing when he gets stationed in Virginia. But we both agreed that I shouldn’t lose this job because it was incredible. So we wait. No matter how desperate I was for us to live together so I could try to fix things back to the way they were.
October 1998
A party one night, I’m drunk as an ox, my friend Phil starts talking about throwing “Alex” a bachelor party and hiring strippers. Not a good idea in my state of mind, especially while drunk. I throw a bottle at him, and it breaks. He starts yelling at me, calling me pathetic (he was drunk too.) So the guys pull him away to talk to him while I’m sobbing like a baby in the middle of the floor. I stood up and grabbed a piece of the bottle while no one was looking and nestled myself at the bottom of the stairwell where no one could see me. Closing my eyes for a second I pretty much slam the glass into my wrist and yank downwards. Pieces of it break off into my arm, it didnt’ take long for blood to start spilling over the floor, over my clothes. I didn’t feel a thing. My body was so numb, the alcohol made me so numb, that I felt no pain.
My friend Clay finds me, he was about 16 at the time. He panicks and runs upstairs to grab bandages and stuff to clean me up. Embarassed more than scared I try to wipe the blood away, only smearing it all over myself. I think I even tried to lick it away. I apologize profusely as I watch him bandage me up. Finally realizing how pathetic I really am. He finds me a new shirt, with long sleeves, and holds me for a little bit. No one knew, not even my mother. I never spoke about it again. But I still have the scar.
November of 1998, we have a courthouse wedding, $45 bucks in my t-shirt and jeans. The whole time I was thinking “What the hell am I doing.”
The company folds, I’m laid off and eventually cheated out of $200 from my last paycheck. And I actually get a job at the same place I’m working at now. I work there for a long while, until October of 1999 when I find an affordable apartment in Norfolk Virginia where I eventually move that month.
I had always dreamed of living on my own. My mother didn’t want me to move, because she would be all alone, but I didn’t care. What I did care about was my sister. She was only 5 when I left, and there were many nights I watched her sleep, and I cried because I would miss her so much. I didn’t know what she would do without me.
I came to visit a lot, it was only a 4-5 hour drive or so. Every time I did though Sister would never want me to leave. She’d throw herself down onto the ground, and cry, pleading for me to take her with me. It broke my heart so many times. My mom, desperate for some company, starts dating many guys from the internet. Some married, some that just slept over. Of course she was dating guys like these even while I was living with her, part of the reason I moved out. I always felt guilty for leaving my sister there. If I had stayed, none of this stuff with her new husband would have happened. None of the stuff that happened to Sister would have happened.
But I had to try to fix my marriage. “Alex” and I were so perfect for each other. But things just went down hill. I saw how lazy he was, how…….different things seemed to be. I was changing, but he was still the same person I met when I was 14. He played video games every day, all day. He ate pizza and drank coca-cola, and nothing but. He gained weight, and played more video games. He spent money on stupid shit like lifetime batteries for his truck that you could hang upside down and shoot with a gun if needs be. (Like anyone shoots their car battery with a gun). And eventually I realized that he was an idiot, a bum, and that nothing would ever go anywhere.
He leaves a lot, and eventually leaves for good on some mission over seas in the Mediterranean. We weren’t getting along at the time anyways. A pile of debts, and I was living there alone, no one to know. I tell him we need time apart.
So I tell him I’m moving home, to save money. He can’t really dispute. And we needed to save money, badly. So I do, my father comes down, along with my friend Dan, and my cousin Stephanie, and I move home. Where I am now.
He is still down there. And he gets out of the navy after 6 years as a U.S. Soldier in August. We will have parted ways.
I have found love again, in Jeff. I haven’t the money for a divorce at the moment, but I will soon. I am cautious with Jeff. We don’t really have the same things in common at all, which is probably a good thing. But he does have some of the same qualities as “Alex” that scare me so much.
What I went through with “Alex” left me with a lot of emotional scars, that I don’t know if I can ever get rid of. I can only hope that Jeff is willing to help me, to understand sometimes why I do the things I do, why I can get clingy or emotional.
This really is a pointless entry, maybe I just wanted to lay things out on the line for myself. Maybe I just needed a good cry while trying to remember everything. Maybe I wrote it for Jeff, so he can understand where I’m coming from. Maybe I wrote it for myself so I can realize that Jeff, isn’t “Alex”.
In a few weeks I will have to explain to “Alex” that this is for good. And it will not be easy. Sometimes I feel like I am wrong in doing so. I feel guilty, ashamed. Like I should have done it sooner and now it’s too late. I am a coward. I’m not strong, but weak, scared.
Sometimes I wish I could just go back in time.
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One Response to “The story of Alex (the ex-husband)”
June 15th, 2002 at 4:13 pm
Oh my God. Jesus. Let me tell you one thing. At the end of that, you said you’re not strong. Well babe, you’re wrong. You are quite possibly the strongest person I know, and I’m proud to call you my friend.