The Universe Put Me In Time Out

I know what you're probably thinking after seeing the title and the picture for this story.... probably something like "Oh, here we go....another story about how a lost girl found her one true love when she thought it was hopeless...". Am I right? Well, if so then you're WRONG!!! This is no love story. This is quite the opposite actually. This is a story about how you can fool yourself into believing something is good when in reality it's actually killing you inside. This is a story about how you need to love yourself before trying to give the love you so desperately need, want, and deserve to someone else. This is a story about how you can think you know someone, but in reality you know nothing. This is a story about how you can channel rage and anger from an awful situation and turn it into magic. I'm getting ahead of myself though as usual. Let me start from the beginning of THIS story. It's only one in the seemingly many lives I have lived in my 36 years on this Earth. THIS story though....it's the one that bitch slapped me back into reality and up on my feet. It also started my journey of finding my true self and loving her.

It was late July of 2017. My latest "boyfriend" ...if I can even call him that had just ripped my heart out. He took me out for dinner then decided that was the occasion he was going to tell me he wanted to start dating another girl. Right there....in the middle of a Ruby Tuesdays I got dumped. I hadn't even ordered yet. This one hurt though. Bad. Though I had only known this man....we'll call him "T" for 2 months...I swore he was IT. I adored him. I thought he could do no wrong. I put him on a pedestal so high that I was blinded by reality. You'll see that's actually a pattern in my life if you divulge into any of my other writing that I will soon start on this beautiful platform. As I was saying though....this one STUNG. After crying the whole way home after the lovely dinner dumping my phone chimed. I looked down....it was JUST IN TIME. He always was. It was my middle school sweetheart (7th grade puppylove) Robbie, we had stayed in touch over the years via social media. He was living in Texas for 10 years by then after moving from my hometown in Georgia back in high school. Lately, we had been chatting a lot more and having our "virtual wine nights" while catching up pretty often. He was just coming off a break up....well not really....they had been broken up for over a year he was just now coming to terms with it. They had been together for 9 years when infidelity on her part led to the breakup. I was ecstatic to to hear his voice when he called to cheer me up and he said "I'm in town. I took a job offer because I needed a change and I'm moving back. We should go on a real date." YUP. Just like that the tides had turned. I was still drowning my sorrows of the "T" dinner dumping when Robbie met me at a local steakhouse for a drink. I was with my coworkers at the time and still toying with the idea of going on a "REAL" date with him. I was so nervous.I hadn't seen Robbie since the beginning of 9th grade. Right before he moved to Texas. My mind was going a mile a minute while I was nervously starting on my second mixed drink at the bar when he walked in. A wave of calm came over me and suddenly I wasn't nervous at all. He looked exactly the same as the last time I saw him. "Hey girl, this seat for me..." he said as he walked up and my coworker Sherry gave him a huge smile and scooted her purse out of the saved bar stool. And that's all it took. After that night me and Robbie were inseparable. I have always been a person that likes their space but when involved with someone I have the tendency to wrap my whole existence around them. This is what happened. Before I knew it he was all moved in to my first apartment as a single mother of three. I'd been divorced since 2012 from my children's father. The kids seemed to really like him except my little spit fire youngest daughter who is now 13 years old , Julia. She is a tough critic and can't be anything but brutally honest. She is VERY protective of HER Momma! Julia never really liked him from the beginning. After a while she "tolerated" him. She eventually gave up the rude act though and it turned into indifference. She just acted like he didn't exist and every now and then would laugh at his jokes to appease me.

Fast forward to March of 2019. Robbie and I had been going strong since that summer of 2017. I was taken by surprise when he popped the question on my birthday in January of 2018 and all of his friends and family were in SHOCK. One of our mutual middle school friends Kevin didn't hold back his shock when he commented on our Facebook engagement status "You are ****** crazy!!!" LOL. At the time, I was kind of offended. Why did he have to be crazy because he knew that he wanted to marry me after a short period of time? I had always heard that when you know they are the one...you just know. So it was no surprise when only a small group of our closest friends and family showed up for our planned Las Vegas wedding. We were tying the knot in the same exact chapel that the famous Britney Spears had married her high school sweetheart and then shortly after annulled. Britney had always been a huge part of mine and Robbie's middle school past. He saw her "Baby, One more time.." video on TRL (yup, I'm that old) while we were on the phone one night and it was over. He had the biggest crush on her. So of course I wanted to be just like her. She was my idol from then on out. I still am a die hard fan to this day. So there we were.....in the same chapel Britney stood to say our vows. And we did!!!! It was beautiful. The rest of the trip was all honeymoon in Vegas....we stayed in the Golden Nugget "Spa Suite" for the first 3 nights then went down the road to The Hard Rock in what they call "new Vegas" for a change of scenery. Both hotels were beautiful and we had a blast. We gambled and we lost of course.....coincidentally, I was up then lost on the Britney Spears slot machine in the hotel lobby. Should have known then.....that was foreshadowing my future with the one person I thought was a given to me from God. I thought he was my person. I finally had someone who loved me for me, appreciated me, and for once put ME on a pedestal. I was overjoyed. Not in my wildest nightmares could I have known that only a year later I would be as empty as my pockets were leaving Vegas because I made a really bad bet.

April of 2020. I was so distracted by how my new husband had been behaving lately that the news of the pandemic upon us seemed to be the least of my worries. He was getting home later and later. Drinking more and more. I couldn't understand how somehow that I used to have to SHOVE out the door to go out with coworkers after work was willingly not coming home for hours into the night. Even when I knew the bars were closed. Even one night not coming home at all. My dream marriage had slowly crept up on me and turned into my worst nightmare. If you have never been so confused and in need of answers that your "partner" refuses to give you to the point that you cry yourself....more than cry.....you SOB yourself to sleep every night then I hope you count your blessings. It is the worst,most heartbreaking, most empty, terrible, and confusing time I have ever experienced in my life. After almost 3 years of being together, 1 year of marriage, and knowing or thinking I knew this man I called my husband since I was only 13 years old..... here I was.....BEGGING him for answers. BEGGING him to go to marriage counseling to try to fix things...which he REFUSED. I pleaded for him to be honest with me. Tell me what I did. Tell me if he met someone else. Tell me how we could fix things. He offered nothing. It's like he just quit. That's actually EXACTLY what he did now that I am typing this it is the most clear it's ever been. HE QUIT ON ME. To make matters even better we were sent home for lock down due to the pandemic and my oh so sweet (I wish there was a font for sarcasm) dear hubby refused to stay at our house during mandatory quarantine. THIS is what I call the "time out" the universe cruelly threw upon me. I was by myself. My children were with their father every other week and I was left. In that house. The one that we were supposed to spend the happiest times of our new marriage in. Make memories. Being a family. LEFT ALONE. It was just me and my thoughts. It was like prison. All I did was obsess and think ALL THE TIME. My own special kinda hell. At first,I still had no answers and he had stooped to not answering my calls or when he did he was cruel. Saying "I just needed to accept it" or "It's just not working out" ....so vague. Like it was nothing to him. Like it was so simple and easy for him to do. Like I deserved to be deserted. To feel like you do not deserve love is possibly the worst place mentally I have ever been.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that I got my answer I had been so desperately looking for. My sister called me one afternoon, "Is Robbie at the beach????" she asked. I embarrassingly responded that I had no idea he wouldn't speak to me anymore. She was furious and told me that her manager saw him (Maggie her manager had met him a few months back at a company Christmas party of theirs that we attended) and she knew it had to be him or his twin brother which he did not have kissing a girl that was DEFINITELY not me on the street at the beach. Her manager asked if we were still married after telling my sister this and her face gave it away. YUP. THEY'RE STILL MARRIED!!! My sister then immediately called me. It was my answer. As much as I hated it. As much as I BEGGED him for the truth. As much as I told him even if he did cheat on me or had an affair we could work through it with counseling. To which he would adamantly tell me he was NOT seeing anyone else. LIES.All LIES. He was. I went into a deep dark hole and cried for weeks. I physically felt my heart breaking. It was literally painful to get up some days. I was also having to cover all of the bills in "our" new home since he decided to go live with his new girlfriend abandoning not only me but my children too. All the bills that we agreed to split in half were ALL mine now. I had three children to take care of too. I couldn't even take care of myself most days. I didn't know how I was going to get through this. THAT was the moment my life changed. It completely rerouted my path. I had to find the strength within me to get up from such a low place and slowly pull myself up to where I am now. It's hard having something you thought was going to be there for you always just disappear. In what seemed to be the blink of an eye. One day there. The next GONE. He did a 180 in a year. He was no longer the Prince Charming that saved me. He was a LIE. He sold me a dream he had no intentions on delivering. He made promises he never intended on keeping. I had to accept that. I had to be my own friend, wipe my own tears, figure out my finances, hustle and work my ass off to make ends meet in my new found single motherhood. That's exactly what I did.

I'd be lying to you if I told you that anger didn't fuel a lot of what helped me get out of that black hole I was in, because it most certainly did. I used my rage to find new ways to make money and keep my household standing. Thanks to the pandemic and my job as a legal assistant now being home bound and my living room being my new office, I found a lot more time on my hands. I started to build a name for myself as a brand ambassador on Instagram and slowly my work paid off. I took it and ran with it. When I got sad I would put all the tears into building up my new found confidence in myself. I modeled apparel, jewelry, and swimwear for a select few companies via Instagram and through that gained the confidence I needed to start loving myself again. Even though I was still a bit of a mess. I was my own mess. Paying my own mess bills. Not depending on anyone but MYSELF to get things done mess. It was all me. That is something I was and still am proud of. By October 2020 our divorce was final and I was the proud new owner of my own business. I literally took the pain, anger, sadness, shame, and all the hate I received during this turbulent transition and stacked it all like bricks. Those bricks eventually built my business. Though my business is still under a year old and still trying to find its footing as most new businesses do it is standing strong and only getting stronger. I doubled my income in 6 months and was able to move into another apartment....this time it had all the bells and whistles I wanted. The princess tub, the infinity pool, the balcony, the lake, and the tennis courts, etc. It's nice and my kids love it. I'm able to say I did that all myself. All because I was put in a place so dark and I had to use every bit of strength I had left to dig myself out. I pushed through. The most painful lessons can sometimes turn into something much more powerful and beautiful in your life if you just let them. If you just find the strength to get up and keep fighting. I fell several times before I finally stood up strong. That bad bet of a marriage I so blindly took in Vegas turned out to be my winning ticket to the most independence I have ever known in my life thus far, and the closest I have ever been to finding myself. I'm still on that journey and it's what intend on writing about on this platform as I continue on my path to being a self made "boss babe"! I want to be someone my kids are proud to call Mom. Someone they can look at and know they too can make it, because if Mom did it....so can they. This was my new beginning. Not my ending.