PART III: THE CONCLUSION
So here we are it's 1999 and my life is just about to do a one eighty on me. You see the last three years had been fairly turbulent. I was engaged for a short time. Which was one of the most chaotic relationships I've ever had and trust me it ended with a bang! In her defense she was later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and without this relationship I don't meet Tiffany. After the big bang Tiffany and I became good friends and not long after that I began dating another one of Tiffany's friends. It was a radical departure from my last relationship. I went from someone who couldn't keep her opinion to herself straight to a person with no opinion at all. We dated for a year and then she started dating someone else and that's how that one ended. Looking back on it now I see how bored we both were but at the time it was devastating. During the time we dated I had become close to Brad and Tiffany, but I figured I keep my friends and she keeps hers as the break-up agreement (which was not actually discussed by us as I refused to talk to her after I found out). This was in September of 98 and I think saw them twice in the next year. I know once at Christmas and once during the summer, but I think that's it. I had gone in a new direction. I had new friends, new places to go and old habits to revisit.
With the fall out of my past relationships and friendships Tropical Storm Deaton began to gain strength. It started out slowly though. The first month started with my first tattoo. And for the record not only is it a Smashing Pumpkins album cover it's a man and a woman in a picture frame, which was my reminder I wouldn't always be alone. By the end of that month I could no longer handle feeling that I had given all I had to these things and was left with nothing but betrayal and emptiness. So I did what every self respecting 21 year old does ............... for the next year I got high everyday and on weekends drank myself into a oblivion. Oh and the occasional weekend of hallucinogens. You know the problem with suppressing all your feelings is they don't go away, they just intensify. Honestly I had a lot of great times. I hate to admit it, but I did. I was always the life of the party and people wanted to be around me. All was good, well until I was left alone. Here is the greatest truth I ever learned the only person you can't hide from is you. I could never convince myself that I wasn't lonely or that the people who loved to be around me actually loved me. On the outside I was fine, but on the inside I was becoming a shell of the person I once was. Lonely people generally have two choices they can make. First choice is to become needy. You try to compensate for the lack of effort by the others. The second is to become withdrawn. You pull away to see if they will do the compensating and if not you get to write them off. I'm much better at the second option. So I guess it's not surprising that I didn't see my roommate tail spinning. The end of that era was a party at our house that I was not even in town to attend. It was evidently enough to get us evicted and brings us to September of 1999.
So here we are it's 1999 and my life is just about to do a one eighty on me. You see the last three years had been fairly turbulent. I was engaged for a short time. Which was one of the most chaotic relationships I've ever had and trust me it ended with a bang! In her defense she was later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and without this relationship I don't meet Tiffany. After the big bang Tiffany and I became good friends and not long after that I began dating another one of Tiffany's friends. It was a radical departure from my last relationship. I went from someone who couldn't keep her opinion to herself straight to a person with no opinion at all. We dated for a year and then she started dating someone else and that's how that one ended. Looking back on it now I see how bored we both were but at the time it was devastating. During the time we dated I had become close to Brad and Tiffany, but I figured I keep my friends and she keeps hers as the break-up agreement (which was not actually discussed by us as I refused to talk to her after I found out). This was in September of 98 and I think saw them twice in the next year. I know once at Christmas and once during the summer, but I think that's it. I had gone in a new direction. I had new friends, new places to go and old habits to revisit.
With the fall out of my past relationships and friendships Tropical Storm Deaton began to gain strength. It started out slowly though. The first month started with my first tattoo. And for the record not only is it a Smashing Pumpkins album cover it's a man and a woman in a picture frame, which was my reminder I wouldn't always be alone. By the end of that month I could no longer handle feeling that I had given all I had to these things and was left with nothing but betrayal and emptiness. So I did what every self respecting 21 year old does ............... for the next year I got high everyday and on weekends drank myself into a oblivion. Oh and the occasional weekend of hallucinogens. You know the problem with suppressing all your feelings is they don't go away, they just intensify. Honestly I had a lot of great times. I hate to admit it, but I did. I was always the life of the party and people wanted to be around me. All was good, well until I was left alone. Here is the greatest truth I ever learned the only person you can't hide from is you. I could never convince myself that I wasn't lonely or that the people who loved to be around me actually loved me. On the outside I was fine, but on the inside I was becoming a shell of the person I once was. Lonely people generally have two choices they can make. First choice is to become needy. You try to compensate for the lack of effort by the others. The second is to become withdrawn. You pull away to see if they will do the compensating and if not you get to write them off. I'm much better at the second option. So I guess it's not surprising that I didn't see my roommate tail spinning. The end of that era was a party at our house that I was not even in town to attend. It was evidently enough to get us evicted and brings us to September of 1999.
We had two weeks to get out of the house and I did not want to move home. So I did what every great magician does after disappearing, I reappeared. I tracked Brad down and all I said was "Man I have to find a place to live". Brad immediately said " When do you want to move in"? Now these are strange words from a man who is getting married in less than a month, but Tiffany concurred and I moved in. What ensued was pure insanity, but at the same time for me it was the rebirth of my sanity. Let's see where to start? Well I moved most of my belongings into my parents sun room and showed up with just my suitcase full of clothes and my windshield squeegee collection. That's right I said windshield squeegee collection. When I was drunk or high and the person carting me for the night stopped to get gas I'd steal every squeegee from the gas station. Why I don't know, but I probably had hundreds (Brad or Tiffany will have a better estimation). I also never remember doing laundry, though I'm sure at some point I did. They only had two chairs for the kitchen table so I claimed a five gallon bucket as my chair and refused to sit on anything else. I know there are a million stories about the first couple months, I just need a little help with them. I was coming out of a fog at the time. The best analogy I can give you is this, in our youth we often treat our lives as though we are in the movie Speed. We live at such a fast pace for fear that we will miss out on something and the metaphorical bus will explode. However at this point I was forced to slow down and what I discovered is I had never taken time to enjoy anything. I had never just stepped back to see things for what they were. This includes relationships, friendships, things I had been through, but most importantly me. That's when the second tattoo was born. It's a sun with the words "And we all shine on -John Lennon-". It's to remind me that things always get better. It was some time in December I moved out. I knew a young married couple would need space. I was still over there all the time though. In April Tiffany landed a job in St. Louis and moved down there. .Brad stayed to finish classes in Decatur, so I moved back in. Brad and I had pizza or cheese burgers every night, and we drank a lot of beer, and watched a lot of South Park, and played the South Park game on the N64. At the end of the semester Brad was on his way St.Louis, but not before our last big Decatur throw down. That's right my Non EPA bonfire. That night we drank way to much and threw everything we could think of in the fire. My squeegee collection, Pierson's basketball, couch cushions, the recycle bin (which made the worse black smoke), my brilliant idea of bottle rockets, and lots of other stuff. I'm pretty sure I stripped, and I think Brad chased me around the yard with a rake. If I did strip I'm sure I sang to the neighbors too. It was a fitting end to that era, and the beginning of a very different one. Oh and their dog ate everything I owned.
With my best friends gone I was forced into the position I'd always feared, I was alone. Not completely, I had reunited with some friends from high school, but I spent a great deal of time by myself. I think I probably did the most growing during this time. I didn't have much more to work on other than me. I also hadn't really dated in two years so I was starting to get lonely. I knew I would never meet the right person in a bar. I tried that for years and ended up meeting the same girl every night. Plus the fact I had no real social circle left me wondering how I would meet people. Enter Yahoo personals. Lets just say I have always been pretty fond of myself, so it should be no surprise I started of by stating I was an attractive male. Evidently the fact that I referenced myself as a male caught the attention of my future wife. She replied to my ad, in her words, in a sarcastic manor thinking I was some idiot tool bag. Now I say in her words because, be it altered state of mind or ego, I didn't read it that way(then again she is horrible at being mean). So I messaged her back and we ended up hitting it off. Now maybe I should tell you this, if you made a list of our characteristics and traits we most likely never would have come near each other. I'm just saying Jen is pretty straight arrow and my list would have read: Tattooed, multiple ear piercings, pushes the envelope until it can't bend any farther then pushes it again, doesn't do well with being told what to do, doesn't really have a strong respect for rules, he's a mess and everywhere he goes messes follow, oh and he's so laid back you'll need to take his pulse from time to time. And the aforementioned me would have read: very organized, doesn't drink, tends to worry about situations down the road, lives life with structure and guidelines for efficiency, and has a devotion to keeping a clean and well put together living space. I think these differences are most evident in our first date. She only had two rules for me. The first was I had to call before I left (evidently she though she could tell if I was psycho by my voice) and the second was no kissing on the first date. Well I was running behind so I figure why call her she's probable already left. She had also told me about her nice teeth quirk so I was sure to have my bubba teeth in for her first person to person view of me. I think I yelled something from my car with the teeth in as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Then we ate at Bennigan's in which they loaded her salad with bacon (for those of you who didn't know Jen in the day, she was a hardcore vegetarian) after she had asked for no meat on the salad. She said nothing to me or them not wanting me to think she was high maintenance. Then we go to a mall and walk around. I couldn't get a good read on if she was into me or not so when we went out to the car I open her door and planted one on her. She was so taken by surprise that she stone walled me (stiff lipped). She is my polar opposite and some how my carbon copy. She is the funniest person I know and just like me in that she doesn't think people get her. The funniest thing to me is she says from that night on she knew I was the one. I'm sure I don't say this often enough, but she was right. We dated for three years and have been married for a little over five. The rest is history or I guess the present and future.
