Intro into Jenn's world

I am starting this blog to have a place like my FaceBook used to be before it got so popular that everyone's mom, aunt, uncle, grandma and kids are on there and watching every single thing you say, post, comment and like on others pages and your own. It was my personal place to share my quips about my life, share my dark and sometimes gross humor and talk very openly and honestly about my life and opinions. I never set out to offend anyone and some think you shouldn't tell so much of your personal life to anyone who reads your stuff, I do keep my page on there friends only and I don't care if people I barely know don't share my views. I actually chose my friends based on an ability to not be a yes, friend.. have their own opinions and we can actually share our differences without fighting over stupid things that don't really matter at the end of the day. I am an almost 31 year old mother of two amazing little boys and in the middle of a messy divorce, trying to separate myself and children from a detrimental relationship without losing a wonderful mother-in-law. Honestly I had met the love of my life too young and though we had four wonderful years together and an additional years time that it took to finally give it up from both sides we didn't want the same end result for our lives and it tore us apart. I wanted the whole marriage and 2 kids, a boy and a girl, in that order and a home with a backyard in a decent neighborhood, he didn't. So still mourning that loss I met a man who was also about to give up on the same dream. We met at a bar where I had established myself well and he was a new manager that the owner, who owns three bars plus another industrial ice machine company introduced me to him as his number one bartender. It may not sound like an accomplishment to some but I did work very hard for that title and was proud of it. The owner wasn't a mean guy but he wasn't the easiest guy to work for in that business either, he is a very paranoid person thinking people are always out to steal from him, so anytime that did happen he knew as fast as when they did it. He had infrared cameras and microphones wired throughout all of his businesses that he could access any one of them at any time from his phone and a surveillance  room he spent a lot of time in. So besides the rumors and others telling him when his number one bartender and newly number one manager who got his club going again in full swing with old and new customers flocking to us nightly and an A squad of dancer performers who really worked hard to put on amazing shows nightly had started dating he knew. We knew we had broken his number one rule, at the time though I knew it would be a little hypocritical of him to fire us over it since I had just trained his new girlfriend to be a bartender in the same club. We decided to just come out to him and tell him the truth and see where it took us. He said as long as it didn't get out to the other workers he would let us continue to work for him, but if they found out he would have to take action cause it could turn to chaos of people not respecting his rules. His own girlfriend was quite the gossip queen though and told a lot of the people who have worked there for a long time. The owner decided to transfer my boyfriend, newly fiance to another club to see if he could get the rumors to die down, thinking if we were not in the same spot certain ones claiming favoritism would shut up. But the dancers were also free to work at any of the three clubs on any night that wasn't their scheduled shift at their home club. So it was going around like wildfire how the owner was allowing a manager and bartender who are engaged now to work at his clubs at the same time. He had his second in command give us an ultimatum, one could stay working and the other had to put in their resignation. We figured since I worked mainly off of tips and he got a salary that I would be the one to quit so I put in my two weeks notice. We were surprised they honored the two weeks and I worked up until that date, that was in May and our wedding date was coming up in August. We also decided at that point that we didn't want to wait for children either but since others in his family took a while to get pregnant that we may as well let whatever happen happen. I was pregnant within the first month so about 4 months along during our wedding. That whole night was a blur so I am very thankful for pictures. I chose a long time ago to take anything negative as a learning experience. In past relationships, after they were over I always seemed to only remember the positive memories which made it that much harder to let go completely after it was over. Besides an amazing honeymoon spent in San Francisco and the birth and lives of our two boys all I remember of the four years with him is horror. I know I will write more and more on that in future posts but for a woman that likes to live in my own routines, be close to all of my family and friends a little bit feminist be with a controlling man it was pure hell. I made the mistake of signing on to spend a life with a man that hid who he really was until the deed was done and he thought the paper and children meant he could own us. He lied to everyone about everything, even things that wouldn't have mattered. I had told him before we even started dating to never come between my best friend and I cause that is a battle he would lose, this also went for my family. I didn't think that would mean he would only allow her to be the only one I could see and have over at our home. Anytime I was out though I had to bring at least one of the babies with me and he would text or call me every ten minutes until I walked back in the door and if I took too long to respond or didn't respond it would be a huge fight and accusations from him. If I questioned him about anything, even a simple why for a simple explanation it was met with being cussed out and threatened with physical abuse. He was from Louisiana though we lived and boys were all born in Oklahoma where I am from. He got really bad about keeping or finding work and finally after our second was born he told me that when he escaped the hurricane that he had been on probation and when he lost contact with his probation officer he just decided not to check in anymore. Hiding from a warrant was one reason he avoided even trying to go for certain jobs besides having a previous felony on his record from when he was 19 years old and beat a man almost to death over a girlfriend. I now understand how a woman who is a decent person and attentive mother can have a "baby's daddy in prison." I don't understand the ones who stick by them and continue to have babies with them though. He DID suffer from anxiety so at first I was behind his decision to seek help from our Dr. and get on anti-anxiety meds, I thought it might help him in going to work too. Another wrong turn though, turned out he had no off switch when it came to pills. If he decided he couldn't "feel" the pill in his system he would just take more and more, he would take a whole month's supply within a couple of days and then money his mom would send to help with the boys and bills would go to whoever was out there selling off their supply. When people like my mom bought us expensive gifts for the boys that couldn't be exchanged for money like a nice double stroller I never got to use he would take that back to the store to get the boys the things they needed like wipes and diapers. For Holidays and birthdays he would ask for electronics as gifts just so he could pawn them off for the cash to spend on pills. He then started stealing, he went thru the jewelry boxes I was given of my Granny's after her death and pawned off anything that was real. Any electronics in our home disappeared, I couldn't sleep in my wedding set and one morning when I woke up it too was gone. He told me I had misplaced it and even helped me search for it knowing it wouldn't be found. So of course the next thing that happened was an eviction from our apartment, I was working full time managing a gentlemen's club but of course with economy and all of us trying to survive and his addiction no matter what I made, it wasn't enough. I had to find a home for our newly rescued bull mastiff who was the most perfect family dog I had ever seen. His mom paid for two weeks at one of those pay by the week hotels and all of our stuff went into a storage. My mom was so disappointed in both of us, him for failing and not even trying to support his own family and me for staying with him and not confiding in anyone what I was dealing with on my own. He had also got into my mom's jewelry box one day when we had a family swimming get together and robbed her of a lot of jewelry, some that my grandma had and was even wearing at her death, others that my stepdad had designed for her and had jewelers make from scratch. I didn't know any of that and though she didn't know for months she had a suspicion. She found out that February by going to a couple pawn shops around where we were living and found  3 of her personalized rings on display, the person working the counter said he couldn't tell her the name on the receipt but if she said who she thought it was he would nod, and there was a nod. They couldn't give her jewelry back that they had though unless she called the cops and pressed charges, she decided she didn't want to be the reason her grandchildren's father was taken away and paid over $400 dollars to get back the three rings in the display box. She offered me a deal though, if I were to choose to separate from him she would help me and the boys get into an apartment of our own, as long as I didn't lie to her and he didn't stay there. Everything seemed to pile up all at once, I was confused and hurt and scared to death by everything he had done and said to me. But I decided that for my boys who had to have a home to take the offer and go into an apartment on our own. Not much changed though, he still didn't work, I had found him a place to stay with a friend who had a spare room. I was still giving him money daily for gas, cigarettes and what I knew he spent it on. Again I believed he was trying to better himself when he went to DHS and a state sponsored assistance place that got him a psychiatrist who put him on new and different medication, a state paid apartment and to a company that started him with a few pieces of furniture. He didn't have much there so even though I would bring the boys to see him at his own place, times when he watched our oldest when I was at work (he wouldn't watch both boys for long periods of time so our younger son had to go to a sitter while I worked) he would still steal from me on occasion. Most of the time it wasn't stuff I would have noticed right away, my ipod, more jewelry I had put up, he was greedy though and nothing was ever enough so he did give himself away. He texted me one day asking me where the charger to my camera was, my mom had even bought me a pink camera for my birthday thinking he wouldn't want to go in and pawn a pink camera and that it would give him away to the shops he was frequenting also. It didn't even slow him down but at least I learned that pawn shops didn't take that stuff without the chargers that come with them. He had also pawned off this small flat screen tv his aunt had bought him for his new apartment and the movies I gave him that were his, then one day he stole over 150 of my own personal collection of dvds and when I got home from work and saw a shelf and a half missing on my bookcase he tried to convince me it had only been about 25 movies that he "knew I didn't watch anyway." He had to leave his truck at my apartments and take my car home and back later that week and that night I went thru the truck knowing that is where he liked to hide stuff. I found pawn receipts for 50 movies here, 175 there and for jewelry and a bag full of jewelry that most of them were mine with a few pieces belonging to people I never found out when I asked around so who knows. Then one evening I had told him in a text that the boys and I were going to bed a little after 9 pm, he got high on whatever pills he had sometime after that last conversation. He started blowing up my phone with texts and calls back to back so I turned off my phone and around 1:30am he decided something must be wrong with us (smh) and got in my car and sped this way, we were living at least a 30 minute highway drive away from each other. He got all the way to the stop light right before my street and a cop saw him speeding and running a red light (divine intervention if there ever was one.) He was pulled over and the cop saw he had warrants in Louisiana and he was arrested, the officer was nice enough though to drive to my apartment, wake me up and let me know that my car was parked in the gas station there on that corner and I could go in the morning to get my keys from the jail. That was in the end of May in 2011 and even though he has tried in different ways since then that was end of his reign of terror. Future blog posts shouldn't be as long but now ya know.