Tag Archives: Depression

Short Story, Teddy Bear

Ch. 18- Temporary Insanity

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I was broken hearted. My life torn to pieces once more. Dreams of any future once again, gone. I managed to work, but I felt like a zombie just going through the motions, holding back the tears in public and crying myself to sleep every night. His mother came to the house to pick up the box of his belongings, she knew that he had made a mistake, she didn’t know all the circumstances and I didn’t tell her.

I still had my job but wanted to just run away. A few months later I get a call from my father telling me that my mother was in the hospital and to fly home right away, she was in a coma.  She had a terminal illness that had gone into remission, so they had gone on vacation and when she came back her back was feeling bad and she went to a chiropractor.   She had called me that day, I remember telling her,“Oh Mom, don’t go to that ‘Quack-o-practor'”. She just laughed.  Those were the last words she and I ever exchanged.

The girls and I flew home to Kansas, my flight arrived close to midnight, I dropped the girls off at the house and immediately went to the hospital. There she was, lying there.  My father said she had been unresponsive to anyone for the last week.  I went to her bedside and took her hand, leaned down, kissed her on the cheek and told her I was there, it was okay now.  Tears fell from her eyes. She knew I was there, she had waited for me. It surprised my father and the doctors. I stayed and spoke to her.  We had finally made our peace with each other five years earlier.  We had always argued before, but finally, she told me she loved me and that she was proud of how I was raising the girls. We finally had become close and now we had a connection. I knew in my heart this was the end for her. I told her it was okay if she was tired and wanted to cross over, I was here now and all the children in heaven were waiting for a teacher like her.  I sat by her bedside for awhile longer and my father came in and insisted I go home, actually told me to go home, he didn’t want me there anymore.  I kissed Mom goodbye.  She died early that morning.

When Dad came back to the house after Mother died that morning, he immediately started cleaning out all her clothing and belongings. I supposed that was his way of dealing. But he took one look at me and told me that if I wanted anything of my mothers, I had to try it on right then and there. I told him in no uncertain terms “NO”.  He followed behind me, everywhere I went in the house, not leaving me alone for hours, insisting I try on the clothes, because I was “fat” and Mom was not. I showed him the labels of our clothing being the same. But I was not going to try them on the morning she died. He ranted and raved. He stalked me throughout the house, hovering like a monster.  I finally had enough and told him to “FUCK OFF!” I had never used those words in my life.  It was a first for me and a first for him to hear it from me. I got disowned that day.  Everything went to my brother.

I went back home to Maryland, broken-hearted about my love, broken hearted about my Mother, and broken because of my father. A couple of months later  I went out dancing to distract myself ( I love to dance) and met a man from Colorado. We won a dance contest that night, we were good! He was on a business trip and had family in Maryland, he asked if he could see me.  I agreed. He was a smooth talker and said all the right things. He went back to Colorado and sent me a ticket to go out and visit him. Colorado was beautiful, absolutely the most peaceful and gorgeous place I’d ever seen. I hated to leave. He asked me to marry him. We married only six weeks after meeting. Temporary Insanity!

I should have known when he was three hours late to the wedding, that it wasn’t meant to be. I guess I was just desperate to run away from Maryland, desperate for love, desperate for change, desperate to be needed.

Results of Temporary Insanity:

  • Kids knew it was wrong
  • Loss of a good job
  • Lose profit on selling home
  • Need to find new home, when you leave the jerk after only a year of marriage
  • Need to find a new job and they have never heard of a woman chemist in the west
  • Starting all over from scratch, again
  • No friends
  • No Support

After about four weeks of marriage, the new husband calls me a financial burden, even though I pay my way and pay for all my children’s expenses.  I even split the household bills.  I desperately look for a job and take a horrible job as a chemist analyzing human urine for toxic chemicals.  YUCK!

I cry every day going back and forth the work because the boss is abusive and the job is horrible. I finally quit after four months and the husband screams at me.

My husband kicks my dog for no apparent reason, except to say he thought the dog was going to bite him.  She never even looked at him.  I’m thinking, who is he going to kick next.  We have no love life anymore, he has ignored me since the first month we were married.  I hear through the vents of the house that he is talking to old girlfriends and that he wants to “evict” me? Okay, it’s time for me to leave.  But I have to get a better job.

I finally do, it takes me an hour to get to work, but I’m back to making explosives and igniters for airbags, and for strategic defense.  It took some doing and persistence but I got the job. I’m leaving. He goes on a business trip, I pack up our things and I leave.  I am getting my sanity back.

I had fallen in love with Colorado, but not the man.

 

Short Story, Teddy Bear

Ch.17 – Growth and Loss

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I loved my job with aerospace and strategic defense.  It was perfect for me, I actually got to use my chemistry education and felt that I was making a difference in the world. I found out that the company had originally planned to hire a man for the job, but he had taken a better position somewhere else and to meet their government quota for women hires I was next on the list.  I was told this at my ninety-day review when my boss also told me he was pleasingly surprised at my performance and the skill that I performed my work.

I found my niche, I found where I belonged and knew I was good at what I did.  I only got better at the job as time went by.  All in all, I helped launch about 24 space missions and the Magellan explorer and did research and development of numerous other programs. I had my secret and top secret clearance when needed. I loved this job.

I was thrilled.  We did have our heart breaks when missions failed and my company was blamed for the o-rings. But we did warn NASA not to launch. We watched the launch from the lab that day. I was supposed to visit my daughter’s school and tell them what I did for a living.  That didn’t happen.

I wish I could say my love life during this time had improved. I did have my suitors and boyfriends.  I think, however, that maybe I was supposed to come into other’s lives, not for myself, but to help them through the difficult times and I was there to guide them. I had been through the same experience or similar and was there to advise. It just got confused with romance.  There was the one relationship with one gentleman that was going through a difficult time with his ex-wife and the custody trial and visitation problems regarding his young son. His young son was being physical, sexually and emotionally abused by the ex-wife and her boyfriend. Being left alone in the middle of the street late at night, coming back to his father with cigarette burns on his hands and legs.  The man didn’t know what to do.  Finally, he got full custody, he had to forcibly take it.  We had to take the child to a psychologist for counseling to overcome some of the other abuses.  But all this drama also took its toll on the father and his temper became shorter and shorter. I had to end the relationship.  It just wasn’t good for me or my girls to be exposed to this sort of environment.

Later, I did actually fall in love with someone. He was much younger. But he had his share of problems too. When I met him, he was clean—a recovering alcoholic and substance abuser.  He was a hard worker and he loved me too. I had never felt that way about anyone, except maybe for Teddy Bear, who still managed to show up every now and then and have coffee with me.  But this man, I was ready to take the plunge for, my children were now teenagers.  I had never lived with anyone before. I loved this man. I felt the children were old enough to understand that I needed someone now, after all, their father had someone. I had that right too. He moved in. We got engaged. We only had one person who was not happy about our relationship, his brother.  He thought I was too old, I was 39.

My love told me every day how much he loved me, he worked with me at the same company. I saw him all day, every day, I knew he was staying clean. He told me that if her ever “fell off the wagon, he loved me too much to put me through the hell that it would entail and that he would leave and I would never see him again”.  One day he got laid off from work, his brother was getting married and ask him to be his best man.  To be the best man, he spent a lot of time with his brother.  He planned his brother’s bachelor party. He fell off the wagon and I never saw him again after the wedding.

 

Short Story, Teddy Bear

Ch. 15 – The Pendulum of the Lost and Lonely

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When I was a child I was a very submissive child, I was the child to be seen and not heard. I was the child who never disagreed with her parents. I never even looked like I wanted to disagree or I would get slapped or spanked.  I had very strict parents.  I stayed a very quiet and agreeable girl.  I tried desperately to please them to get their love.  I strived to be the best in everything, to make the grades, to be the best daughter.  This attitude continued through my courtship, I was the good girlfriend, I was the proper girlfriend, I was a virgin when I married.  Then when I married I was the proper wife, the obedient wife, the good executive wife.  Breakfast on the table before he went to work, dinner on the table when he got home, the house clean, the children clean.  I made all our clothing and his shirts and ties and even his suit jackets.  I kept the finances that I knew of.  I didn’t question him.  I accepted his excuses for a long time, I was ready on the spot when we had to entertain without notice.  I tried everything to keep the spice in our marriage.  I took belly dancing lessons, I danced for him.  I learned electronics so we would have hobbies in common. I got him interested in Ham Radio.  I tried kidnapping him for a romantic getaway.  Nothing worked.  But in all, I was a very reserved and submissive wife.

I still am an introvert, basically shy among strangers, but that period after the divorce, those months of unemployment and indecisiveness in my future and feeling of betrayal and unworthiness took its toll on my personality.  The pendulum from submissive, shy, sexually inexperienced began to swing to the other extreme.  I began to trade sex for comfort, for attention, were hoping for just the holding involved — the human touch.  I know it probably wasn’t very smart of me, but I was lost and climbing my way back out of hell. I needed someone to love me. I deluded myself sometimes that they cared, now that I look back on it.  I only took a lover when my children had visitation with their father.  I tried carefully not to let my “love life ” come into contact with my young children who were already coping enough with a new young step-mother.

It was during this time, that the doctors told me I was pregnant. I was horrified!  I couldn’t be, I had been having regular periods, but I was in miserable pain, so I went to the doctor. He didn’t do a blood test, just a palpitation. The doctor did say however, I was in the process of a miscarriage.  My emotions ran wild. My pain was tremendous, my depression was increasing.  Fortunately it was during this time, my girls were with their father in Kansas visiting their grandparents and my parents.  I was alone for two weeks, to panic in private.  I wanted to die.  I prayed for death, I wanted to never wake up, I was too chicken to consider suicide.

I had wanted a third child but the ex had said no. A new baby, my heart clenched at the thought and at the thought I was losing it too. If by any chance I didn’t lose it would I lose my girls and then losing it just killed me.  There was no good outcome.

I had been studying for my GRE in psychology and scheduled to take my exams. During the exams I started feeling very ill, starting hemorrhaging, a migraine suddenly erupted during the second half of the exam. I had to go home. I “miscarried”.  You might wonder why now I have the word miscarry in italics. You see that experience was enough to bring me to religion.  Yes, the pendulum began to swing in that direction.  I got religion, I went celibate.

A year later, the doctors say I’m pregnant again. Not on your life! They say I’m four months pregnant. Not unless it is an immaculate conception, doc!  Come to find out I have a tumor the size of a four month fetus.  Again, I’m in extreme pain and bleeding. Again, my children are in Kansas on vacation with their father.

This time, I go to the hospital alone, I have no one, no family, no friends to support me. The doctors say they will try to save my uterus, I am only 34 years old after all, I still want to marry again and have more children.  I lie there in the hospital room and I wake to the doctor telling me, “I’m sorry, we could not save the uterus, we had to take it.  The tumor was embedded.”

I go home the next day, barely moving to an empty house with an empty heart only full of tears. I now know I really probably wasn’t pregnant before, it was the tumor then. Now I will never have another child.

Romance, Short Story, Teddy Bear

Ch. 4-Series Teddy Bear

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Tender Touch and Teddy Bear

I listen intently on the citizen’s band radio, it’s quiet. She’s not on these days. I listen from the apartment across the courtyard with all the devices at my disposal. I hear her with the children.  She is putting up a good front for them.  She has managed this week to go the marriage home and day by day pick up few of their things that she could carry by herself.  A small TV for the kids, their toys, more of their clothes, their personal necessities, her clothes, a coffee table, some blankets, some pots and pans, some eating utensils.

But at night, after the children go to bed, I hear her quietly crying, every night. He calls her every day because he notices things are out of the house.  She reminds him, that it’s still legally her home too, she owns these things too.  She decorated the home, she supported him while he climbed the corporate ladder, she supported him and played the good little executive wife. She was a loyal and faithful wife, these are her things too.  He calls her a whore, he tells her she’s crazy and she should check herself into a mental hospital or why doesn’t  she just go back home to Kansas to her mother’s because she’ll never make it on her own. He’ll take away her kids so she’ll never see them again and he’s going to come on the weekend for his visitation.  She says visitation is only fair. But she will have joint custody of her children.  He was never there while they were together he was always gone. Traveling on trips, at parties, gone. She was the primary caregiver, she was there twenty-four hours a day.  He had no clue, but she will be fair.

The weekend comes and he comes to pick up the children on Friday night.  She hugs them tightly and kisses them with tears in her eyes as she watches them drive away.  This is the first time she has been without her children overnight, let alone a weekend. She’s devastated.  She runs up to the apartment, this time, she doesn’t cry quietly. I hear sobs, resounding sobs of despair.  She cries herself to sleep that night and wakes early in the morning to face a weekend alone for the first time in her life, she is totally alone.

I watch her get in the van and drive away.  I get in my truck and follow.

“Breaker, breaker one-nine, breaker breaker one-nine, Tender Touch, you out there?”, I query, hoping she has the radio in the van turned on. Crackle, crackle, “Breaker, breaker, you’ve got Tender Touch, is that you Teddy Bear?” She’s on.  I’m thrilled.  “Yep, sweetheart, it’s me, how you doin’ today?  Haven’t heard you on in a while.”  She weakly says, “Ok, hangin’ in there, hey, how about that cup of coffee, want to buy a girl a cup?” I smile to myself.  “I thought you were a happily married woman”, I radio back.  “That was last week, darlin'”, comes the reply.

We finally meet at Rosie’s Diner for that first cup of coffee and I get to see those beautiful green eyes, although red-rimmed from tears, they were the kindest and most gentle eyes I’d ever seen.  I ask her what she means by the last week statement knowing full well everything that has been going on.

I know things that she doesn’t.  I know about her husband’s affair with the young girl and the drugs.  I sold him the drugs, I hate to admit it, but I did. I’m not a nice guy.  In fact, I’m a really bad guy when compared to most people.  I’m the kind of person, you would not take home to mother.  I belong to a couple of organizations that, well, let’s say, I can’t tell you about, or I’d have to kill you, you know what I mean. I’m a biker. I’m Italian. I live on the East coast. Let’s just leave it at that.  She doesn’t know this about me. I’m a truck driver, that’s all.

Anyway, all she says is that she and her husband have separated and probably will not get back together again.  She doesn’t say anything bad about him. She just leaves it alone.  She does say he’s got the kids this weekend and she misses them terribly and she is looking for a job. But today, she’s got go to the garage sales to get her new apartment in better shape, to make it more like a home for the kids.  She also has to buy a typewriter to start writing her resumes and sending out job applications.  She hasn’t worked since she’s been married and although she has a degree she has never used it.  She’s a little worried.  She’s running out of money and soon summer will be over and she really needs the job before school starts.  Her oldest will start kindergarten and the youngest will be in preschool.

I buy her breakfast and we just sit and talk for a couple of hours about absolutely nothing. She doesn’t talk about him or her problems. She talks about what’s she’s looking for, the kinds of jobs, I talk about my family and all that kind of stuff.  I’m falling for her and beginning to feel guilty as hell at myself and angry as hell at him.  We part and I watch her drive away in that big blue van, I smile. I want to see her again, personally this time, not professionally.