A disturbing pattern

         So.....ya......pregnant.   I was barely 17 and fucked off and pregnant.  I was beyond happy and excited.  I remember telling Eric and we stood in the hallway in our condo and literally just stared at each other....speechless.  He was happy too.  So...um....shit.  What do we do with all the speed we just bought? Well I'm allready loaded, I mean I can do another....one more...line right? One more then Eric said he's going to flush the rest and quit with me.  We will do it together.  And we really did.  (Almost)
We told our families and found an OB and started planning a wedding.
We flew home to get married.  My parents signed off for me since I wasn't 18 yet.  I borrowed my stripper neighbors wedding dress and my best friend flew in to be my maid of honor. She wore my old prom dress.  We were married at my parents house and we went to the coast for our honeymoon.   I was 17, pregnant, and a wife.  I was really happy.  I was sober.  I quit smoking cigarettes along with everything else I had been doing.  Eric worked his job and I spent my days preparing for our new baby girl.  At the end of my pregnancy Eric and I had started going on walks around our gated community every evening as I became more and more uncomfortable.  One night we went to bed as normal but I was abruptly awoken to severe pain.  OH MY GOD....I think it's time to go to the hospital!   We called my parents who got in the car and started their 16 hour drive to me.  I felt so alone and so afraid at the hospital.  Holy shit was I in pain.  No epidural...no nothing.....and ten hours later....I had a beautiful baby girl in my arms.  Mom hadn't made it in time. I was crushed.   Her and my dad showed up just a couple hours after she was born though and stayed a few days to help me.
Life became very normal....very routine.  I was a stay at home mom and I couldn't have been more in love with my new daughter.  Motherhood came very natural to me.  When our daughter, Collette, turned one we decided to make to move to be closer to both of our parents.  We moved to Portland Oregon.  Eric was able to transfer his job.   We became very involved in a church and planned our second child.  Holly was born 4 days short of exactly two years after Collette. She was beautiful and I was in love times two!  Our two little girls.  I stayed extremely busy with the girls in ballet, Gymboree, tap, and mommy and me classes.  Between all that and church I had a full plate.  All though I loved my girls I started slowly feeling depressed and I didn't know why. I felt empty inside and Eric and I were starting to change.....or rather I was. I was still very young. Erick was an amazing father.  He loved our girls more than life itself.  He went to every recitle, every show, and wanted to. He was good to me and took care of all of us.  We had everything.
At church I met a single mom close to my age with a little boy Colettes age.  We started talking alot and doing things together with our kids. It was so nice to have a friend. Her name was Ashley and she was such a good Christian and such a good mom.  We started a Bible study for young women and held it at mine and Eric's apartment. One evening she invited me out to have a drink.  A drink?  At a bar?  I was 21 and had never been in a bar.  Sure!!!
I got DRUNK!   We danced and sang and had a fun ... No kids night.  We went to an all night coffee shop after the bar and drank coffee and talked til the sun came up.  I smoked a cigarette for the first time in 4 years.
This became routine. We went to concerts.  We saw Eve 6, Lit, Static x, (Eric came to that one) Korn, Disturbed,  and so many more ...concerts and bars. Bars and concerts. Something had begun and I loved it. I was still very much a good mother.  I just stopped sitting at home day in and day out. The depression was over, it seemed.
Erick put up with my partying because he knew I was young and it was a whole new world for me. A different kind of partying. Adult partying?  Maybe...
Ashley took me to my first gay bar in Portland.  Embers.  It was amazing.  Huge!  We could dance in cages, or on a dance floor or go to the other side and watch drag shows.  We had so much fun and we met so many people.  Erick and I were having problems at this point.  Ashley was starting to smoke weed and I was following suit. We we're having sleepovers with our kids and going to recitles during the week and going to Embers every weekend. One night at the bar Ashley and I were dancing to a slow song and she kissed me. I mean....kissed me. It was like fireworks.....and they never stopped going off.  Ever. We we're a couple from that moment on.  I lived with my husband and she stayed with us and I would stay at her house sometimes.
My marriage fell apart.  One day I packed my car, took the girls and drove three hours to my parents. I left Eric and I left Ashley.  I never thought about it I just did it. I never went back. I never looked back. Little did I know at the time that I had been living my dream life. Unfortunately it was to be my older self's dream life.   A home. A beautiful big old home that we bought, a hard working husband who loved me and our children, two beautiful, amazing daughter's.......it was as normal as it gets....until it wasn't.
It was as if I had no feelings....or too many...I don't know.  It was as if I had no idea what so ever of what I was doing.  Of what was happening.  I was unable to process anything or think anything through or think for myself. I didn't think Erick loved me. I didn't think any one did.  So I didn't think this was anything big.  I just walked out on a family.  Mine.  I don't really know why.  Just like when I was young and having sex.....with anyone.  Didn't know why.
I moved into my old bedroom with my girls and I went and got a job as a waitress. Collette and Holly were my life.  Starting them in the school I went to as a child was really cool.  They even had a couple teachers I had when I was their ages.  They went to their dads every weekend. We met at a half way point to pick up and drop off.    After a while I had enough money to get into a house with my sister, kara and her son.  We had alot of fun at that house.  The cousins living together and having a blast.  My mom and dad loved having the kids over and Kara and I loved having party's. I wasn't using like I did when I met Erick but I was going out alot and drinking every weekend. Seemed harmless.  But it wasn't.  I was struggling.  I was depressed again.  I had started cutting myself and crying alot.  I just felt very mixed up all the time....and when I drank I wasn't like everyone else.  I was out of control.  I was either on the table dancing ...getting naked....or kicking someones ass and getting drug out of the bar kicking and screaming by the bouncer.  I was back to saying yes.  Yes I'll sleep with you.  Yes I'll try that. Yes I'll drink all night before work at 7 am. Yes I'll do this yes I'll do that.  It was as if I was a complete different person than I had been the last 6 years of my life.  Someone familiar but someone a little more severe. I had a ton of anxiety.  I had panic attacks. I was back to man pleasing.
I ran into a guy that I had grown up with and we hit it off and started seeing each other.  The girls loved him.  He was layed back and a goofy guy....alot of fun.  I really fell for him.   I knew he was too good for me.  I turned into that psycho girl.  Insecure. Calling him too much.  Cutting, crying.....after several months he was straight up honest with me.  "You are a complete mess....". My heart BROKE. I woke up one morning and decided I wasn't going to go back to work.  My boss called me and I told him I just wasn't going to come in every again. I layed in bed and had a complete melt down. I remember I put in my Enya cd that I had for the girls lullaby's at night and just cried. More depression.  More confusion and shame.  Why am I acting like this?  Was I sick?  Was I crazy?
I got another job pretty quickly, after realizing, well, I kind of needed money to pay rent and stuff. It was a good job at a cell phone company.  I made some friends....descent friends  and met another great guy.   Amazing.  .successful...gorgeous man.   Things started feeling better.  My girls were doing great. They had alot of little friends from school and I started feeling  more normal.  After a few months we were talking about moving in together. He had a brand new built custom home on the river....this guy was a catch in every single way.  I sabotaged it.   I slept with his brother on his birthday at his party.   It's like I was looking for a reason to be miserable.  All the while still keeping up with my girls and keeping together for them. I was still the fun loving dedicated mom.  I was just falling apart at the seams.  Very quickly.
They were still going to their dads house on weekends but during the summer they would stay with him for weeks.  (Split summers, if I remember correctly).  The times that I didn't have them were the times I would completely lose myself.  I was such a lost soul.   But I didn't know it. I look back at alot of my life and now realize that I just simply had no guidance.....never knew boundaries....and had no self love and zero self control.
My sister had met a guy and was planning to move out and I couldn't afford the house on my own. So I got myself into a small apartment.  It was a one bedroom.  The girls were spending alot of time with my parents and with their dad during this time.
I am crying as I am writting this.  This next decision I made would change mine and Collette and Holly's lives forever.  I had no idea what was coming.
A single decision.....small or big....can change the course of your life in such a significant way.
I was at a bar one night while the girls were with their dad and I ran into someone I had known for years.  His name was Damion.  We sat and talked until the bar closed.  His wife had just left him and he told me how broken his heart was because of their two small children. He gave me his phone number and I took it.
We started seeing a lot of each other. The company I worked for closed it's doors and I was out of a job. I moved back in with my parents.  Damion didn't have a job either and was living with his parents. He had an edge to him.  I didn't know what it was.   It seemed to be dark and I was drawn to it. A couple of weeks after we became exclusive we were walking around down town.....just enjoying the evening and talking. All of a sudden he grit his teeth and put his hands on my sides and squeezed real hard.  I laughed for a second....and then I got confused and unsure.  He was mad. And.....he was....hurting me?   Why was he mad?  What just happened?  I didn't think we were even arguing......seriously.....wtf just happened?   He let go and had a strange look in his eyes and continued talking and walking.   That evening after he went back home I remember telling my sister the odd thing that had happened.  She told me that was not okay. I was so confused.  I defended him and said I don't think he meant to hurt me and I think maybe he was joking.  I had never in my life had someone hurt me just to hurt me.  (Other than some crazy sex).  I told my sister if it ever happened again I would just stop seeing him.
My girls started staying with their dad more and more and with my parents.   They seemed to annoy Damion and they didn't like him for some reason.  He always told me that he was a sad person and that he'd been cheated on and hurt so many times.   He couldn't trust women and he didn't think I cared about him.   I found myself constantly trying to make him feel better.    Always trying to reassure him that I cared about him and that I was so sorry he had been so hurt. He cried alot and I listened alot. His wife had hurt him so badly that he was scarred for life. I just couldn't convince him that he was worthy. All I wanted to do was help this sad man who had been treated so horribly in his life.  His parents were going on vacation for a few days and he asked me to come stay with him for the weekend.  My girls were with my parents so of course I wanted too. We had been there a couple of hours and he had been telling me how horrible his wife was the the entire time. I asked him if we could talk about something else. It was really all he ever talked about and I was starting to realize that we never talked about me....or my girls....or anything except his anger towards his wife. He said something to me like "you don't care about me....you're just a fucking liar....something or other.". I was shocked.  He had never said anything like that to me.  I was out on the back porch sitting in a lawn chair right on the edge of the deck.   It was evening and dark outside.  I just looked down at the ground and didn't say anything else.  All of a sudden he came at me very quickly...I looked up just as he was kicking his foot up and pushed me and my chair off of the deck. His foot pushed the chair on the seat in between my legs so I fell backwards and off.  I landed on my back and hit my head in the gravel...a few feet down from the edge of the deck.  It knocked the air out of me and I layed there trying to breath and trying to process what in the fuck just happened.   I didn't have time to process much because he quickly jumped down and grabbed me by the hair and drug me around to the front of the house.  He was yelling and screaming at me to not even think about trying to leave because he wasn't going to let me leave and it was only Friday.  Our plans were through Sunday.  I was bawling and asking him to stop. I was terrified.   Why was he being so mean? He stopped dragging me and pulled my head up off the ground by my hair and then threw it back down at the ground hard.  He told me to just lay there and think about how I made him feel.  And he disappeared into the house.  I was sobbing and violently shaking.  My car was just a few feet away but my keys were in the house.  I layed there on the ground for I don't know how long....afraid to do anything.  After a while he came out and asked me if I was coming back in to watch the movie we had planned on watching.  I slowly got up ....was he for real?   I walked into the living room and stood there awkwardly.  My legs were bleeding and my body hurt all over.  He was sitting on the couch and said "oh, now you're going to act like your afraid to sit by me?!". I said no and quickly sat down. Trying not to start sobbing again and trying to breath slowly so I didn't shake. He put his arm around me and said he didn't know what just happened.  He had been taking antidepressants and they must not be working and they must be having a bad reaction.  He had never done anything like that before and he was so sorry.  He started crying and talking about how he was worthless and a piece of shit. He told me he really needed me and couldn't be alone.  He was too sad and hurt to be alone.  He told me how amazing I was to understand what he's going through and that I was beautiful and that I came into his life just in time.  I comforted him all night. He needed help. He needed someone who wouldn't give up on him.  Everyone else had and he needed me to stay to prove to him that he was worth being loved.  He could get better if I helped him. He needed me and I needed to be needed.  This happened only weeks after we started dating.  There was no hiding who he was....no playing nice until I was hooked.  It was like a whirlwind.  He showed me from the start who he was and manipulated me from the first words we shared that night at the bar.  I remember literally feeling like my world was spinning during the first few months with him.  Like I couldn't get out of this ....this storm.  It was like a tornado hit and I was picked up by it and tossed around in the fury and it rattled my brain so hard I couldn't even figure out what was going on. He was a scary mother fucker and I loved him.
***As I am sharing my life with my counselor in rehab things are getting real at this point.  I don't want to go any further.  I know what's coming.  We took breaks from the story here and there when things began to feel smothering and when panic would start to set in.  Going through all of this was unreal.....hearing myself tell this story....my story....was so surreal.  An out of body experience.....and yet so healing.  We were closing chapters ...finding closure....and I was growing as a person. I was BECOMING a person.  I  was starting to be able to control my emotions ...to a very small degree. Learning how to think things through before reacting.  I wasn't trying to start fights or kick anyone's ass on a daily basis.  (All though I had almost been kicked out for letting another resident get under my skin a few weeks previous. I got a running start across the room from her and took a flying leap in her direction to take her down with me and pound the shit out of her.....and was caught in mid air by an RA and dragged out kicking and screaming). So, yes I was making progress but had a long way to go still.
This far into my story we had obviously noticed a pattern.  Men.  Ugh.