Did you ever have someone push your buttons to the point that you were staring into the face of doing something you'd never thought you would do?
Well, that's where I am right now, staring at three cans of gasoline that I'm getting ready to load into the trunk of my car. I can't believe I let him push me to the point that I'm willing to take this chance.
Yes I can. I should have known better, I should have realized that he would pull this on me. It wasn't the first time, not even the second. The only excuse that I could offer as to why I kept letting him do it was love.
Stupid excuses. I'm beginning to wonder if there actually is such a thing as love. I mean, if you think about it, I gave up cigarettes and it about killed me, maybe love is just an addiction like that. No, I didn't think my heart was being yanked out of my chest through my toes when I quit smoking but it did hurt and it was hard.
Anyway, on to the reason I'm standing outside my home at 2 am, my two beautiful little girls sound asleep in their beds, staring at this gasoline. His name, Colin.
I met Colin when I was 24 years old. I was in the process of a divorce from my first husband, a man who thought that wife and punching bag were one and the same. I'd walked out on him, my nine month old daughter in my arms, and began the long process of finding my self esteem once more. It wasn't easy, considering he had his friends following me, calling me at all hours with creepy threats, knocking on my windows while I huddled on the floor in my daughter's bedroom, trying not to scream.
He killed my dog, leaving it for me to find, tried to run me off the road, and when that didn't work, tried to terrify me with notes left everywhere, even inside of my house. I became almost a prisoner in my home, scared to go anywhere. I was trapped there, until my mother offered to send me back to college to finish up my degree.
Now why did that make a difference? Well, I was getting out, meeting people, going back to the college I had started at before I'd gotten married the first time. And I loved going to school. So I went back amid all the 18 and 19 year olds, feeling ancient at 24.
I made friends, I gained more confidence, and my first husband's domination over me slowly evaporated. When I quit fearing him so much, he seemed to stop doing half of what he'd been doing. I still got the calls and the knocks on the windows. But I wasn't as scared as that was all they were, attempts to scare me.
I met Colin a third of the way through the spring semester. He was taking a nap at his friend's apartment, working nights and going to school during the day, he slept where he could. His friend was my friend's brother, and I happened to have given her a ride home that day. She invited me in, thinking she could set something up between her brother and I.
I saw Colin, lying in another man's bed, a stupid yellow Hawaiian shirt on and it was like getting slapped in the face. I managed to make somewhat intelligible conversation and the left quickly. He bothered me, besides being really cute, he was smart and funny. And he seemed attracted to me.
Now, I'm no dog, being five seven, around one hundred and thirty pounds with dishwater blonde hair that I kept cut pretty short and big gray eyes that have always been one of my best features. I'd worked hard to lose the weight I gained during my pregnancy, mostly because my first husband would beat me if he thought I'd been eating too much. And the habits that were so well learned during my short time as his wife, well, they were hard to unlearn.
But, I was five years older, married and getting divorced with a kid. What nineteen year old college boy wants to get involved with that?
Colin did. He found me the next day and started a slow and gentle campaign to win my heart. He was always careful not to scare me, never even wrestling with me until I became comfortable with him. He was understanding and sweet and so totally different from the man that I had married before, I was seeing little cartoon hearts fluttering around my eyes before we'd dated over two months.
And he seemed to feel the same way, asking me to marry him before that two month time period. I quickly said, no way in hell, which he laughed at and told me that he'd wait. He moved in with me, even though he had his own house, which his older sister was now living in. And, as soon as he did, the threats stopped, the noises and phone calls quit. I felt like God had opened up a tiny piece of heaven just for me.
Colin took on knight in shining armor status, especially with my daughter. She loved him, climbing on his lap, bring her books and her blankets and then settling in to be read to. She listened to him better than she did me and she started calling him "Da".
We had an amazing sex life, long marathon sessions where he'd have me panting and feeling the next day as if I'd taken advanced Yoga and learned to wrap my ankles behind my head. I actually think we tried that one time. Sex with him was wonderful and inventive and he always wanted me to be myself, to enjoy what we did.
Colin's parents lived a couple hours drive south from where we were living and he'd take weekends and go down to visit, occasionally taking me with him. I loved his family; they opened up their hearts to me and to Cassie, my daughter. I thought there would be tension, the married woman their son was sleeping with, the one with the daughter who wasn't even divorced yet. And on top of that, I was five years older than him. But instead, there was acceptance as Colin's girlfriend. And Cassie earned herself a new pair of grandparents.
I helped Colin find a job after he graduated college, using my secretarial skills to write him a cover letter and a resume and sending them throughout the entire state of Michigan. He'd graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice, passing everything with straight As. And the job interviews started flooding in. He went everywhere, from Marquette, all the way at the top of the upper peninsula, to Adrian, down by the Ohio/Michigan border.
Finally, he was offered a job in the Upper Peninsula and we decided he should take it. He went, begging me to come up there with him. When I agreed, which meant selling my house, leaving my family and moving three hundred miles from everything I knew, he decided we should get married. We'd been living together for over a year, my divorce was finally going to be finalized, after as much hemming and hawing as my first husband could do, and the man I loved was moving away. What could I say but yes?
In six weeks time I put together a wedding. It wasn't big long beautiful dresses and tuxes, doves being let loose at the "I dos", bands and caterers. It was family and friends, a small reception held in an old school house with a DJ. We spent our honeymoon at a Holiday Inn where I used to party when I was younger. And when the three days were up, he went back up north and I started the daunting process of packing and getting ready to move six hours away.
The move went pretty smoothly, considering that it could have been worse. We found a two bedroom apartment and I settled in to be his wife. He didn't want me to work because we'd talked about having kids right away. So two months after the wedding, I threw away the birth control pills and we started having hot monkey sex anytime we could. It was incredible, three or four times a night, and if he was working nights, nap times for Cassie were spent heating up the sheets.
Our daughter, Katie, was born five days after our first anniversary. We bought a house and moved in, Colin worked as a city policeman. He'd work four days, have three days off, work five days have two days off and then work five days and have either four or six days off depending upon the month. But he had to work a week of days, a week of evenings and a week of midnights every month.
When he would be working midnights I had to keep the kids quiet so he could sleep during the day. Anyone who's been around children knows how hard that can be with a toddler and a five year old. I started going down to see my mom and dad for a few days every month, taking the kids and usually the dog, with me. That gave Colin his sleep and gave my parents time with their grandchildren whom they both loved.
It wasn't a perfect existence; we fought, usually over money and bills. But then again, what couple doesn't fight over those things. Colin once showed me an article that stated that most married fights were either about the children or money. And we did both. But beside that, I thought we were pretty happy. I adjusted to his schedule, making sure meals were ready when he'd come home for dinner or get up to get ready for work. His days off, we spent mostly together except for special occasions such as deer hunting season.
Then I started getting the phone calls.
"Hello."
"Yes, could I speak to Colin please," a strange woman's voice, no one I knew.
"I'm sorry, he isn't home right now. Could I take a message?"
"Is he at work?"
