All the Different Wrong Men

Growing up girls are fed fairy tales and made to long for a husband and to be moms, but we have no control over how the effect of the men in our lives shapes the kind of man that we end up finding ourselves attracted to. Unfortunately for most of us, we either have no father, or he is either detached or abusive. Then there is the first relationship, our first love, the man that we unconsciously set the standard by. Even if the relationship was not a good one, we still tend to look for that type of man. I had a father who was very good at providing for us, but lacked emotion. He was crude with his words and I was left crying a lot and felt unloved. Then there was my first boyfriend whom I was off and on with for five years. The first two years were solid. We had all of the same friends and drank and smoked together and i practically lived at his parents house with him. When I was 17 I had a scare of dysplaysia on my cervix and he went with me to the doctor and he and I cried in the waiting room because we thought this was going to end up being that I was not going to be able to get pregnant. It came back that I was fine and I just had to do annual exams to ensure it did not progress into cancer. After a while he would break up with me, probably to go and sleep with someone else or do drugs, and be able to say that we were not together, and then he would win my affection back. I loved him like a crazy person. By the time I was 20 we were off more than on and he was actually dating another girl whom had claimed to be pregnant and he was so excited to have a baby and just knew this was going to turn his life around. Well, she ended up not knowing if it was his or her ex’s baby and had gotten them to AGREE TO PAY FOR AN ABORTION!!! Can you believe that? Well, a couple weeks later she, “ had a miscarriage.” A few months later he and I were “on” again and after just a little while I myself was pregnant. I was working at a liquor store at the time and I had him come there to inform him of this, and when I told him I informed him I would have an abortion, and he responded with yes, that is what he wanted to do. In that moment I died. Not literally, obviously, but I was never the same person after that. In that same moment I hated him for that. How could you not want my baby? The girl who has loved you for five years and cried with you in a Dr’s office because we thought we would never have this opportunity? I asked him several times over the course of the month before our appointment and he always replied with a yes. He took me to the appointment, I had the procedure, and then we went back to his parents house, where he was still living, and there he left me in his bed to lie in pain while he went and got drunk with his friend. I was hard and wild after that. He hates me now. Telling all of our friends he could not believe that I did that to him!!! Excuse me? What? I went through a phase of about eight months of being at the bar and pretty much womanizing men, I do not know how you word that… mannizing, anyways. In the midst of the wild bar scene I met a guy named Jeremiah, whom only eight short months later I would conceive my daughter with Jeremiah, and only six months after that he would go off to jail. Jeremiah and I partied together, and he lived right by the college that I was attending so it always made for an easy wake up and commute to class, but later I found out that he attempted to rob a store and was supposed to be doing community service and serving weekends in jail. He was a mess from the beginning and I thought I could help him. I was more wrong than I had ever been in my life. He continued to drink, and now that I think about it even more so than before I got pregnant, and I kept waking up in his urine. I could not have been more grossed out by a man, and I left. The same night that I left he went to the bar and picked up a girl who was at his house for the whole next week! About a month went by and he had been forging his community service and finally went in to catch up on his weekends and the DA served a warrant for his arrest and from county he went to a boot camp style facility and was there until Jostlynn was 13 months old. In the time that he was in jail I lost all of my baby weight, plus some, had graduated from college, and was living in my own duplex. He came to live with us, yes, I forgave him for being a horrible human being for the sake of being able to tell my daughter I tried to make things work with her father. I had started working for Jeremiah’s stepfather at a security company making pretty good money, the best money I had ever made actually, and he got a job working for a portable potty company and had turned down a job in the oil field making more than double what he was making for the portable potty company. After that, I was done. I could not ignore that I absolutely hated this man. only a month or two after I made him move out he was back to drinking and on drugs. He has not seen Jostlynn since, and at this moment is back in prison. I went on a few dates after that, nothing promising, and was actually enjoying being single and it being just Jostlynn and I. Jostlynn was a little over two when I met a guy named John. I had been out with a friend because I had been stood up and I seen John and thought he was absolutely gorgeous, and even though he was with a girl, I introduced myself. Brave I know, but I knew the girl and just thought to myself, “ there is no way he is “with” this girl,” I know, horrible of me to think, but he found me on facebook the very next day and we went on a date later that week, and it was only a couple short months later and he was living with me. He was a boxing coach, and was so good with Jostlynn, and he took us out to nice places, and we grocery shopped together, and cooked together, and the sex was the best I have ever had, still to this day. I ended up moving out of my house and we got a nice house in a great neighborhood together, but it was all a lie. He asked me to not work, said that he wanted me to be at home with him, that he would love to pay for everything so that I could be a stay at home mom, but in reality it was because he did not trust me and started using that against me. He ended up getting very abusive and very controlling. Physically, emotionally, verbally, and mentally abusive. You name it and it was happening. He never hit me in my face but he would hit my legs, push me, and scream at me, throw things at me. He had never done this in front of Jostlynn, but then there came a night that he did. He pulled my arm and flung me down to the ground with her in my arms. I was done at that point. I got a job at the country club and a receptionist job at a surgery center. I temporarily lived with some friends of mine, and then my best friend and another co worker loaned me the money to get a duplex. I was working at the surgery center from 7:30 A.M. until 5:00 P.M. and then going straight to the country club and going straight there and working until anywhere from 9:00 P.M. until 2:00 A.M. just depended on if there was a party or if I was just working in the grill. Needless to say I was sleep deprived. My mom would sometimes keep her overnight since I worked late and would have to be back to work early in the morning. Well, that same best friend who loaned me the money was getting married and was having her bachelorette party in Dallas, and I could not afford to go, so one night we went to a local bar her and I drank way too much, and was going on almost no sleep. I had a friend follow me to my parents house. My unconscious brain must have been feeling guilty, having not seen my daughter very much because I went there, took my shoes off, emptied my pockets, and the next thing I know I am talking to a cop and have been pulled over and I have Jostlynn in the car with me. I had hit rock bottom. Luckily the cop had been going to let me go so he had allowed me to call my mom for a ride before he realized that my daughter was in the car so I didn’t ever lose her to dhs custody. I would have died. I had allowed a man to take everything from me and now I had endangered my daughters life and spent four days in jail, and the next six months working with dhs to prove that I am a good mom, that that was just a horrible accident that should have never happened but it did, and it has made me a better mom than I had ever been. I went to court, got a six year suspended sentence, with two years supervised probation, and have to have an inter lock device in my vehicle for four years. Talk about having a shameful moment in your life that is devastating and you have to tell people, because they can look you up and find out, and then it be even more embarrassing. It came time for my best friends wedding in October, a month after my arrest and one of the groomsmen asked for my number and we talked for a bit, but it was not what I was looking for, and then I dated a really nice guy for awhile. He was sweet and took me to dinner at places I had never eaten before, but I could not encourage him to lose weight. I know that sounds shallow but I worried about his health when he was older and I just could not imagine falling in love with a guy and then him dying, and decided I needed to be with someone who had more of my healthy life choices. By no means am I a health nut but I love to be active and workout. So, that following year, I met a guy named Frank. He was at the bar with a friend of mine and we laughed and talked a little, but he was from out of town and I did not hear from or about him for a while, and then a month and a half later my friend messaged me saying Frank was in town and wanted to go out and asked if I would go with him. I accepted the invite and we had a great night and talked every day and then he ended up slowly moving in and eventually did move in. We work out together and he is always up for anything that I want to do, and at this moment I am pregnant with his baby, it is going to be a boy, and my daughter loves him, and I still find myself pushing him away. I am permanently damaged from the men of my past. I am lucky enough to have found a man, that may drive me crazy at times, but loves me, genuinely loves me enough, to accept who I am with all of my damaged parts and love my daughter as his own. It was a long journey to get here, and it may not be over, but one thing that I have learned from all of these wrong men, is you learn something from every single one. You either learn about yourself a little, about what you do or do not want in a man, or a better way to communicate certain things. I am a true believer in every man is a lesson learned for the right man. Do not waist tears when a relationship ends, which I know is easier said than done, but there are a lot of guys out there and, there is a person who will be the right kind of crazy for your crazy….. I promise.