I was just visiting Celeste’s log and we all seemed to be at a meeting for A&&holes Anon …

“Hi, my name is Jennifer, I was married to an a&&hole at 20, too” … “Hi, Jennifer”

THE SHORT VERSION
I married my high school sweetheart 11.23.97.  We had dated for 4 years and lived together for one.  As soon as the ‘I do’s’ were over, he became a lazy, mean, SOB.  I forced him to leave on 09.09.99 … our court date for divorce is, ironically enough, tomorrow … 02.05.01 …

IN THE BEGINNING
I met Jason in high school.  He was a handsome man, bright, romantic, thoughtful, creative … ahh, a breath of fresh air in my little redneck town of origin.  Perhpas his surroundings got the best of him.  Perhaps he just stopped caring.  Whatever the reason, he gave up.  Too bad I didn’t figure that out right away.

HIS WORK HISTORY
Before we got married, in that year that we were living in sin, he was out of work for 3 months after being fired for excessive absences.  I finally convinced my employer to hire him.  He worked with me for a year and got fired there for being lazy and goofing off all the time.  He then was out of work for two weeks before landing a job at a competitor.  After a year they fired him for threatening a co-worker’s life.  He was out of work for two weeks there, finally accepting a job w/a grocery store across the street from our apartment.  He worked 15-18 hours a week stocking produce and milk and seemed to be able to handle this. *pffft*  He has switched jobs twice in the last year and form what I hear is leaving again …

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Who the hell knows … perhaps after seeing how poorly my family treated me, he decided to quit trying so hard to make me happy and focus more on being selfish.  Perhaps since his mother never had the umbilical chord snipped, he continued to feed off her byproducts of life … deciding to make me into a clone of her.  Or maybe he knew that he had it good and wanted to strip away any self-esteem I had mustered up to ensure that I would never come to my senses and leave.

TOWARDS THE END
He was verbally abusive, always calling me stupid, fat, ugly and lazy.  Actually, he was prjecting all of his insecurities onto me … I was working 50 or mor hours a week to make ends meet, doing freelance work to make up for the money he was using for pot and alcohol, doing all of the housework, all of the laundry and paying all of the bills.  Then I found out I had an STD … and it was because he was cheating on me.  Luckily for me, it was a cureable one, not terminal … but it was a wakeup call.  It suddenly dawned on me, “I’m paying for this oaf to treat me poorly, and I’m rewarding him for it, too.”

SO THE DAY CAME …
… I asked him to leave the house for the weekend, to go to his parent’s house and stay.  I never let him come back.  My stress level went down, I got back some of my self-esteem … everything was a little lonlier, but a lot better. I slept four hours a night for the first month, and I cried for hours at times, but it was all worth it in the end.

AND NOW …
… tomorrow I will be two weeks bpast my 24th birthday and divorced.  A part of me sees it as a failure, that perhaps with enough time it could have worked out.  That is the part that missed him.  The rest of me knows that this was a step in self-preservation … before he completely made me into jello (ie, spineless) and before he exposed me to HIV or AIDS, started physical abuse or a child was born into this situation.

SO I SEE THIS AS …
… the last chapter in a confusing and sad book.  Perhaps I will make a series of it for those that might find strength in the story … It might prove theraputic for me, as well.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm …