I, Amy Thomson, grew up without many material possessions in a semi-rural area. While I was decent looking I wasn't someone that guys would immediately swoon over, and considering my economic situation could not really gussy myself up to impress them. Also, to be honest, most of the boys I knew I either considered not good dating options, or I was just friends with. I also was not the smartest person around, but was at least smart and/or dedicated enough to get a High School diploma.
There was a small college near the semi-rural area that I grew up in which was probably the only real economic engine of the region. Since other jobs were scarce, once I did graduate High School I got a job at the college bussing tables in the cafeteria. It was there that I met John.
John was an instructor (not a full professor) at the college teaching computer science. He was eight years older than my nineteen years when we met. At first he was just nice and smiled at me when I was working in the cafeteria. After a while he often came in when things weren't busy and chatted with me. Eventually, he asked me out on a date. Even though I wasn't really very sexually attracted to him, he wasn't bad looking and if I was ever going to get out of the rut my life seemed to be working toward, he might be my ticket, so I accepted.
While John was a nice guy, he did have moody periods, which I chalked up to stress of his job; maybe I shouldn't have.
John's courtship of me was actually pretty quick and direct. He had been offered a better job at another college in a city, and was also talking about setting up a business, so if he wanted to make things permanent with me he had to act before the end of the college school year. I pretended to be more excited than I really was when he proposed to me, and the night that he did I had sex with him the first time.
I was surprised that sex with John was as good as it was. I wasn't a virgin, but the three boys – not men, really, they were between eighteen and twenty years old – that I had had sex with in the past were slam, bam, thank you ma'am types and at least John was more considerate than they were. We got married in a church ceremony followed by a small reception in the church basement – since my parents really couldn't afford more even with John paying sixty percent – and ten days later we moved to the city.
John's economic opportunity turned out to be even better than he expected so he just worked part time as a college instructor and set up a software business with two other part-time instructors; the business hit it big almost from the start. I worked as a checkout girl at a local supermarket for two years until the business hit its full stride, and then John wanted me to stop working and start on a family. John still had many moody periods – if I knew about psychiatry when I got married I might have realized that he was a functioning bipolar – but since I am an easy going and tolerant person, and since my life was better than it had been where I grew up, I was reasonably happy and was convinced that a child would make me even happier.
I went off birth control, and John and I fucked every night during my fertile period. By the second month I was pregnant – I guess I really was fertile.
My pregnancy was fairly normal, but the child I gave birth to was not. While our little girl Nancy (named after John's deceased mother) was extremely cute – cuter than either John or me – had no physical impairments, and was extremely smart, we learned early on that she had significant emotional and behavioral problems. In fact even though ADHD and bipolar disorder cannot normally be diagnosed until a child is four, in view of Nancy's advanced intelligence doctors were quite sure by the time that Nancy was three that she had one or – frighteningly – both conditions.
By the time that Nancy was three and a half she was more than a full time job for me. Some of the less difficult behavior that she exhibited included: she rarely "heard" parental instructions, so she don't obey them; she was disorganized and easily distracted; she started projects and forgot to finish them and it seemed impossible to get her to clean up after them; she often interrupted conversations and demanded attention at inappropriate times; she was very verbal but spoke before she thought, saying tactless or embarrassing things even for a little kid (it wasn't "cute"); it was often difficult to get her to bed and to sleep and she rarely slept more than five hours a night; and she tore around the house, or any other building or area we were in or at, even doing things that put her in physical danger. Again – those were her less difficult activities.
We did build her a playroom with padded walls so she didn't injure herself, and sometimes getting her to play in that room for a few hours was my only salvation during the day.
Even though John was now making very good money, he was cheap, and couldn't see any reason why I needed to spend money to get away from Nancy on occasion. Finally, when Nancy was four despite my normally easy-going tolerant manner I had a nervous breakdown he finally grasped that things were serious. When he had to be the primary care giver for just three days he couldn't handle it and almost went nuts. Therefore he essentially gave me carte blanche to do what I needed to handle Nancy since he almost never again took any responsibility for her and she completely frustrated him.
Despite Nancy's condition, by the time of my nervous breakdown John had already started lobbying to have another kid.
At the recommendation of my doctor, I started taking strength and conditioning courses, and then added diet and cooking classes. When I took these courses I left Nancy at a special school/day care center for children like her – actually there was no one really like her, but at least the people at the school/day care center could handle her. The courses helped me immensely both mentally and physically; in fact after a year I felt – and looked – better than I ever had before in my life. Everyone that I came in contact with noticed it.
I also received instruction from a child psychologist and behaviorist on how to handle Nancy. Things actually got bearable. That's when John ramped up his lobbying for another child.
Doctors had told me that Nancy's condition likely had a large genetic component. I knew that even though I had reached equilibrium with Nancy that there was no way that I could handle two kids like her, or maybe even just her when I was pregnant. I tried to make this point to John, but it fell on deaf ears.
I investigated John's family history as best I could (both of his parents had died young) and from what I could glean from John's living relatives, his moody periods, and a few stories that he told me, it seemed that the genetic component of Nancy's condition was clearly from John's side of the family. This was not something that he would even rationally consider when I subtly brought it up, so I decided to pursue it on my own. I surreptitiously got a DNA sample from John, and one from Nancy, and had the samples tested at a high end laboratory. The tests revealed that there was no doubt that her emotional disorders came from John and that there was at least a 75% chance than another child would also have a disorder.
Other things had happened during Nancy's first five years. While I became better looking and healthier than I had ever been before despite the stress of dealing with Nancy, John had gone in the opposite direction. He was overweight, grossly out-of-shape, balding, bordered on slovenly, and – sorry to say it – he became unattractive to me, if not repulsive. I really didn't know what I would do; despite the fact that I truly loved Nancy, I simply could not have another child with her disorders; it would either drive me crazy or cause me to simply escape my family.
Also, John's growing unattractiveness to me was causing me to think about divorce, although I didn't see how that could possibly work out if I didn't get all of the financial means that I needed to take care of Nancy. When John was in one of his "moods" he would mentally abuse me and tell me that if I left him he'd make sure that I never got a dime.
The "Martyr Option" was not something that immediately came to me. It developed over a period of about a year.
One of the things that I did to supplement my strength, conditioning, and diet courses and my meetings with child psychologists and behaviorists, was when Nancy was five in addition to school/day care I enrolled her in a course where a parent and the child interacted with other parents and children with similar conditions for two hours Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Most of the parents there were mothers, although there were two exceptions. One was a handsome house husband named Brian, who was my age.
