It's August of 2012, I was living in a motel run by a Gas Station in southcentral Wisconsin for about 5 months at this point. The story as to how I ended up here is for another day. This motel is in my hometown, I have family that still lives in this town, which is part of the reason I've stayed..
The owner of the motel/gas station also owned a pizza joint just a few hundred feet from the motel. That's where I worked. I was a pizza maker.. I know, glorious job, very rewarding.. it attempted to pay my bills, but fell short a couple hundred a month.
Today I wanna talk about flags.. and I don't mean red, white and blue, or green and orange.. I mean little red flags.. The kind you trip over on your way to on your way to making a meaningful connection with another person..
Red Flag #1
I like to think I've had a rough go of things for a good part of my life, I always seem to invite very aggressive people into my world.. which seems crazy from an objective point of view.. I'm very laid back for the most part, always been very "go with the flow." It could just be my own poor decisions or just horrible people I end up around.. but most likely, the answer is somewhere in the middle.
So one day I'm sitting in my claustrophobic little motel room, I had access to the internet there, I was just fucking around on Facebook when I got a message. It was a girl I went to elementary school with. Her and I were very good friends up until I was about 12 years old.. She moved away and I had no idea what had happened to her.
She had just split up with her husband, and guess where she was living?? That's right, there's a motel in a little town 7 miles from me.. St. Vincent De Paul had set her up there until she could find a place of her own, for her and her 2 children.
The day I saw her again for the first time, it was hot as fuck outside. I don't remember the specific temperature, but it was probly in the 90s.. with that humidity that just sticks to you. She had messaged me and asked if she could come over and use the shower in my motel room.. I guess hers wasn't working for whatever reason..
She came over with her son, and I let them both use the shower.. She went first, he immediately commandeered my computer, and sat in silence as his mother used my shower.. 15 minutes later it was his turn to use the bathtub.. she set him up in there, and came out to catch up with me..
I got the basic rundown of her life, she was married twice before.. had a child from each marriage, her daughter was with her father in Florida, set to come back a few days later. She had a boyfriend who was only 22 or so.. Her and I were both around 33 at the time.. She seemed rather devoted to him, so I didn't push.. but I was obviously interested. I'm pretty sure she was too. Looking back I think she knew she was on the outs with this guy and was looking for a replacement.
Just the fact that she already had a boyfriend, just a month or so after splitting up with her husband.. should have been a red flag.. but just like I always do.. I pretended I didn't see it, and continued to hang out with her.
Red Flag #2 & #3
One day we decided to meet up at a park located halfway between the towns we lived in. I guess her daughter had made it back, and I was about to meet her. I got to the park and her son, her daughter and her were hanging out waiting next to her cavalier..
Her daughter seemed like a very sweet girl. She was about 12 years old, seemed very typical preteen girl.. She seemed to be a little hostile towards her daughter at times.. her daughter complained about the heat, and various other things. Every complaint was met with just a slight hint of hostility, almost like she was holding back, maybe because I was there?
By that time, her son was warming up to me.. I've always gotten along with kids, he wanted me to pick him up and carry him on my shoulders.. I of course obliged.
We walked the whole length of the park, which was probly a good mile and a half. After about 10 minutes of carrying her son on my shoulders, I started to smell a fairly strong smell of shit. So I casually said "I'm gettin pretty tired, I think you're gonna have to walk the rest of the way."
I had assumed that maybe he had some gas or something.. but the smell just wasn’t fading. Eventually his mother told me that he has bladder and bowel problems.. and isn't able to control either.. this becomes a common issue in my time spent with this little family. It's not so much the fact that he had the problems, but how she reacted to it. It wasn't that big of a deal to her, he was 7 years old and almost never made it to the bathroom, it was as if he didn't care.
My better judgment told me that something was wrong here, the hostility towards her daughter, and the indifference to her son's accidents.. just didn't sit right with me.. Something seemed very much "off" about the situation.
Red flag #4
Within a week or two, I was spending all my free time with the 3 of them. Mostly I would drive to her motel room when I was done with work. The motel she lived in was old, it was only open in the summer, and was right near a small lake. It was actually a series of unconnected cabins, rented out by a family.
A few weeks had passed since her daughter came back, and in that time, this girl and I had made it official. She dumped her boyfriend, who she said she hadn’t seen in weeks. We were both huge stoners, so it seemed like a great idea.. right? Her and I started dating almost immediately. This is when the drama really started playin out..
I came over after work one day, and her daughter was apparently very upset. My girlfriend explained to me that while her daughter was in Florida with her father, he had taken a swab from the inside of her cheek, it was the young girl's understanding that it was taken as part of the man's biology class in college. Turns out that wasn't exactly true, and she wasn't exactly his daughter.
I can't imagine the shock a child would feel from that, and when I say that I really mean it.. I have no idea what she might have felt. My girlfriend explained to me that she had slept with several guys in a short period of time, when she was young and stupid. This guy was the most stable of the lot, so she pinned it on him. Despite her mother telling me she was upset, when I saw her, the girl seemed rather indifferent to the news.. but who knows??
That's a huge red flag, and I ignored it.. so at this point, going forward I have nobody to blame but myself. I still didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into, but given the signs, looking back.. I should have..
Red Flag #5
The motel she was staying in like I said was only open during the summer, and Fall was here.. it was just about time for them to close it down for the winter. This girl had found a real apartment, just across town from that motel.. and somehow got them to agree to rent to her.
She signed the agreement, borrowed enough money from her mother to pay for the security deposit.. she had also recently started a job, doing roofing (she was by no means a girly girl.)
She still couldn’t come up with the money for the first months rent. The job hadn't started yet and she needed to be out of that motel immediately. I still had my reservations about the situation, so I wasn't gonna move in with her permanently. With my crappy job, I couldn’t afford to part with much of anything.
She needed to come up with money quick. We were talking about ways to make money, and she had mentioned that when she was younger.. she was a stripper. She told me she would do what she had to do to get the place.. I told her I would not date a stripper, and she said she'd find a way to make it work.
Well, that way happened to by my mother. She brought it up when my mother took us all out to dinner, and my mom forked over $600 to pay for the first months rent. My mother has a desire to make all people like her, she had just received a decent settlement from an accident, and was handing out money left and right.
I was actually very uncomfortable with this, my mom had told her she would do it. She also volunteered for St. Vincent, and at the last minute before she cut the check, the people at St Vincent that helped this girl get on her feet, told my mom a few things that made her wanna change her mind. She told me about it, and I said "well you already promised her, but it up to you."
She ultimately did pay for it.
Red Flag #6
I was staying with my girlfriend at this new apartment. I would come over from work every night. I rarely ever stayed at my motel room anymore. In that time, my boss had offered me a job at the gas station, where the motel office was located, I took the job because it was more money and more hours. I had to work later in the evening because of this job.
I started to show up around 1030pm every night, it started to be that every time I showed up there, she wasn't there. I had a key to the place, so I'd go in and make myself comfortable.. she would show up later and later as time went on.
She would take her kids to a friends house in a town about 15 miles away. She would be drinking and smoking the weed I had spent my money on. I started running out of money from buying weed for the both of us, with the understanding that she would pay me back at a later date. Later never came and I was finding that I had less and less money, even though I was working more hours, for higher pay.
So while she was taking my weed to go smoke with her friends (male friends at that) she was drinking too, and then driving back home around midnight, with her children in the car. If I questioned why she had to go out there every night.. I was immediately attacked. This went on for a couple months.. we fought, I would threaten to leave, we'd make up, rinse and repeat.
One day in particular, we were fighting about money.. I kept forking over more and more money for weed, and I kept insisting that she pay me for it. I finally got to the point where I wouldnt buy any at all unless she gave me the money for her half up front. That's where 90% of our fights started. This fight was something else though.
We had the typical fighting over money and weed. We argued back and forth, she insisted that she had paid me back for everything when in reality I was spending $300 a month on weed.. and she would maybe give me $25. That weed went to get her friends high. I pointed this out in one of our fights. I was standing in her apartment, about 3 feet from a wall.. after I told her I wasn't gonna pay for her friends to get high.. she walked up to me, shoved me into the wall and stormed into the other room.
It didn't hurt me at all, but she came right back into the room about 10 seconds later and just stared me down. I didn’t realize it til after the fact, but she was trying to get me to hit her. I started realizing the only way this girl knows how to express any emotion was through physical violence. Later she told me that she had to push me like that.. because, and I quote "You are twice my size and I felt threatened."
I am twice her size, but I am not a violent person, I've never tried to start a physical fight, and I see no point in expressing yourself with violence. In the weeks to come, it only got worse..
Red Flag #7
You would think I'd have left for good by now.. and believe me, I just about did on many occasions. It was quite the rollercoaster at this point. I threatened to leave, but I didn’t wanna be alone, so I put up with the mental abuse. We would fight, and while I would make arguments, she would use words like "pussy" or "stupid" or "asshole" to get her point across.
When I threatened to leave, she would use her children to guilt me into staying. In one fight in particular, she said to her son "you better say goodbye to him, because you're probly never gonna see him again." Which really upset him, I tried to do my best not to fight in front of her children.. but she was having none of that.
I would keep an eye on her kids sometimes when she was working, at this point it was winter, and she was working for a delivery service as the person who takes the packages up to the door, she never once had a permanent job while we were together, and this was only for the holiday season.
I got to her apartment one day, she had already left for work and her kids were alone for maybe 20 minutes before I got there.. when I walked in there were two holes in the living room wall about the side of a softball, parallel to eachother, to me it looked like chair legs had gone through. I looked at her son, and looked at the wall, he knew I was curious, but he didnt say a word.
A couple hours later he was playin on the couch and looked at the holes again.. he looked at me and said "mom told me not to tell you what happened." I left it at that, never spoke a word of it again.
Shortly after the hole in the wall incident, I did leave. We got into a typical fight like we always did. I threatened to leave, and she called me every name in the book, guilted me, used every possible dirty trick she could think of to continue the cycle of mental abuse I had been sucked into.
This time I didn’t pay attention to one word of it. I packed up my things, her yelling at me the whole time.. I didn't say one word. I didn't really keep much of my stuff there, so it only took me about a half hour to collect my things and leave. I drove the 7 miles back to my motel room, opened the door and looked around.
It was cold, empty and dusty from not being lived in. I hated being alone, but after the roughly 9 months we were together, I hated her more than that.
I immediately had more money. That was the first thing I noticed.. what I needed to survive on was about 10% of what she needed. I had wasted a lot on her and swore I would never go through that ever again..
Red Flag #8
She had gotten kicked out of the apartment she was in while we were apart. At one point about 7 months later.. she messaged me again. Being the sucker for abuse that I am, I didn't think it would be that big of a deal to go hang out with her at her new place.. this place was in a decent sized city. A city that is known for a very high crime rate.
Her daughter had left to go stay with her grandma.. I assume after I left, her daughter was the only one left there for her to berate. Just like me, a person can only take so much before you have to get out.
It was like we had almost started all over again.. it was just her son, herself and I at this point.. in a 2 bedroom upper level apartment. I didn’t mind it so much at this point.. until she immediately started in with the violent ill-tempered bullshit. It was a slow progression, but still escalated..
After about 3 weeks, she invited her male friend.. the one who she used to spend so much time with in to live with her, along with his girlfriend and 2 pit bulls.
I had fallen asleep on her air mattress one afternoon.. she had no money for a real bed, so that had to do. Her son left the door open and in come the 2 pit bulls jumping on the air mattress and going for my face. I was asleep so the best I could do was cover my face so I didn't get mauled.
She came into the room and immediately and started screaming at me. "what are you fucking stupid!?!? WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THE DOGS?!?" To which I replied "because I was asleep, it went for my face, I had no idea what was going on."
It was still decidedly my fault.. somehow?
Red Flag #9
I offered to go get a patch kit for a bike tire in order to plug up the hole in the air mattress. She argued and argued with me that nothing was gonna fix it, I had let the dogs destroy it.. and it totally ruined her life.
She finally agreed that the bike tire patch was the best course of action.. so I looked online to see what they offered at the local Walmart. I found a cheap one for about $6 on Walmart's website. I told her I would go get it AND put the patch on, so long as she gave me the money to go get it.. I was broke, and only had $8 to my name.. I didn't have enough gas to get home in the morning.
She said "it's your fucking fault it's busted in the first place, and YOU'RE A GROWN FUCKING MAN, AND YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY ON YOU? FOR GODS SAKE"
She gave me the money, I picked it up.. used my money to pay for it and gave her money back to her when I got back.
I also put the patch on myself, and it worked perfectly.. until the next day when the same thing happened again.. but she was sleeping on the bed when the dogs jumped up. I'm sure somehow that was my fault too.
Red Flag #10
She actually had a job at this point. She said she was bartending. She would leave around 5 or 6pm and not return until around 2:30-3am. When she got home, she reaked of booze.. she could barely walk, yet she had driven 20 miles back from the "bar" she was tending..
Oddly enough she would come back smelling like fruity body spray, covered in glitter, decked out in knee high leather boots. She also smelled like sweat, it really mixed well with the smell of liquor.
She would say she wanted me to come over, and when I got there at 2am it was like she didn't want me there. The very last night I ever saw her, there was an exchange.. something to the effect of:
Me "Do you mind if I lay here"
Her "yeah do whatever you want"
Me "ok, cuz it's 3am and I'm dead tired"
Her "You know, you don't live here.. you have no right to demand anything, this apartment is for me and my son, so don't you dare think you have any right to anything"
I left that night while she was sleeping. I never went back. Almost a year after that I was watching the news and an amber alert came out with her son's name on it. She had been living in her car because she broke up with her boyfriend. Her son was living in the car with her.. she was arrested and the court ordered that he be put temporarily in the custody of her cousin..
Just a few days after that all went down, she snuck into her cousins house in the middle of the night and took him.. Maybe that'll be on her current boyfriend's list of red flags someday.
It's been a slow process after all of this to get my life back on track, I do understand that she is not the only guilty party in this situation. I'm no angel.. and I could have left at any time, I just really didn't want to for so many reason. I think in the end I made the right choice. Had I made that decision sooner I may have saved myself a lot of suffering, but in the process I would have cheated myself out of some very important lessons..
Every story involving more than one person has two sides, and its gonna be biased in favor of the person telling it. However, she was way outta line.. extremely abusive and outta her fucking mind. I have a hard time feeling like I hold any blame for how things turned out.. I'm just guilty of trying too hard for a person who wasn't worth it.
The conclusion to this story for me is that it was a learning experience, I let people walk all over me.. when something bothers me I never speak up. I had red flag after red flag and I just kept on ignoring it until it got to the point of no return. Had I spoken my mind and set boundaries with her.. she would have left me. She needed someone to treat like a doormat. So in the future, I would be better to speak up when something isn't right..
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Thanks for reading.
