My Story

My story, in a small nutshell!

I had your basic, run of the mill, average childhood. Married parents, little brother, a couple of dogs, small town in New Mexico. Things changed quite a bit after I turned 13. My parents divorced which lead to my life of extreme antics to get my parent’s attention. Looking back, of course, it’s all very clear. Not long after the divorce, I got into smoking pot, partying and having unprotected sex. I was like a time bomb waiting to explode.

Explode it did, the summer after my sophomore year in high school. I was 15 and having way too much fun. Not far into that summer, I found out I was pregnant! This happened a week after I broke up with the father of the baby. I decided to keep the baby regardless and embarked on my junior year with my secret. It wasn’t until late in the first semester that it became obvious to everyone that I was pregnant. I stayed in school anyway, though I took a LOT of sick days.

March 6, 1986, my beautiful son, Bryan, was born. He changed my life for the better. Sometimes I think he literally saved me. What would have happened had I kept up my partying? The summer after Bryan was born five classmates of mine died in separate incidents. Jeff was the closest to me and not long after he died, I had a dream where he told me I should get back together with Bryan’s dad. As syncronicity would have it, at about the same time I got a job at my local Burger King. Walking in for my first day at work, who should I run into but Bryan’s dad. Turns out he worked there too. To keep this short and sweet, three weeks later we were married and two weeks after that, Loren joined the Army and left for basic training. He was stationed in Hawaii, so I dropped out of high school at the beginning of my senior year and moved to Oahu with my new, young family.

Jump forward to a year later and Loren was discharged for failing a drug test and we were sent back to New Mexico. After another year of partying, going to college and having no luck finding a decent job, I joined the Army in October of 1988. My plan was to leave my husband and become a single parent. This was not as easy as I hoped and one year after we separated, Loren joined me at my duty station in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. As luck would have it, I became pregnant almost immediately. In August 1990, our second son, Jeff, was born. Only two months before Jeff was born, Iraq invaded Kuwait and my unit was shipped off to Saudi Arabia almost immediately. I was given the choice to stay in the Army and join my unit once my maternity leave was up or leave the Army and stay with my family. Since I never really fit in the military, I decided to leave and became a civilian again.

Throughout all this time, my husband and I never really got along, we gave it a good try, but we didn’t love each other and it was very clear to me that I never would love him. It was an abusive relationship and I finally got tired of being treated badly.

After leaving the military, I went back to my previous job working the front desk at a motel, graveyard shift, so I could be home with the boys during the day. Sleep? Who needed it! It was during this time that I got back into drawing, my passion, and started selling my art in the form of postcards. I did a series of pencil drawings of historical buildings in the Tennessee, Kentucky area. As soon as my husband saw that they would sell, he quit his job as the assistant manager of a convenience store and became my full time sales rep.

After a series of misadventures and a stubborn husband who wouldn’t just get a job and let me take care of my art, we ended up homeless and living in our car. I just happened to be pregnant again with our third son, Nate. That lasted about a month until I finally called my dad and borrowed the money so we could go home once again to New Mexico. This was August 1992, a few months later, Nate was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, our home town. By this time, I had finally convinced Loren to get a job and I continued working on my art.

Fast forward a couple more years and Loren had gone back on the road to sell my art prints. He was on the road more than he was home and I started getting phone calls from shop owners, telling me that my husband was cheating on me. I also knew that he was using drugs, mostly speed and cocaine. In June 1995, I finally decided that I had had enough and I didn’t want my kids to grow up in the abusive, unloving environment. July 5, 1995 was my independance day and my divorce was final. Though I was happy to be free, my freedom was short lived and my happiness was tarnished by my step dad at the time.

Though he had helped me out by giving me a place to live and helping me with my business, I soon found out about his ulterior motives. I had started spending time with an old friend, Aaron, who ended up becoming my second husband a couple of years later. My step dad told me in no uncertain terms that I had better stop seeing Aaron or he would cut me off. About the same time, my older step sister warned me to be careful about spending time alone with her dad. Turns out he had sexually molested both of my stepsisters when they were younger. This made me very uneasy so I decided to stop depending on him and look for a job to support myself and my three sons. The day I went to my mom’s house to type up a resume, as soon as my step dad heard the news, he told me that I was to vacate his property and physically threw me out of my mom’s house. Before I could make it home, he was there changing the locks. He let me grab my boys and a suitcase but wouldn’t let me get any of my other things. He held on to it all, including my art. My mom stayed with him and didn’t believe it when I suggested he had ulterior motives of keeping me for himself. I didn’t talk to my mom for two years, but eventually, many years later, she left and divorced him.

I ended up moving in with Aaron and the rest is history! This is not the end of the story by a long shot, but my nutshell is turning into an epic, so I will continue on with the happily ever after part of the story at another time. Stay tuned!