It was August of 2005. I finally started coming out of my severe depression. My anorexia was still running rampant though, and I was struggling with it severely. About one to two weeks prior to meeting my ex, I remember that I fasted for approximately 110 hours or so....110 hours of not even one single calorie.
I knew he was younger than me....I just didn't know how much younger he was when I first met him. No, I am not a cougar. I have always dated guys that were older than me. I didn't scope out younger guys...in fact, I wanted nothing to do with dating younger guys. My ex looked older than he was. It was after I started having feelings for him that I found out that he was 9 years younger than me. I hated that! Maybe some women would be proud having a younger boyfriend...not me. In fact, when people would ask me about him, I would say that we were close in age. The age difference really bothered me. Fortunately, not only did he look older than his age, but I look younger than my age. People always guess that I am much younger than I actually am.
I thought he was mature. "Thought" being the key word. Sure, he looked older than his age, but as I would soon learn, he was extremely immature. His family kept going on and on to me about how mature he was, especially since his father wasn't around growing up. Boy, was I fooled.
We married quickly. We got married just shy of going out for 5 months. As I look back now, I can't help but think that a person doesn't really know another person in 5 months. To really get to know somebody takes time. But I got married, which is something that I swore I that I would never do.
I told him about my anorexia, my cutting, me severe depression, and my OCD. Prior to getting married, I kept asking him if he was sure that he wanted to marry me with all of the problems that I suffered from, and I told him that he could find a woman that doesn't have any problems....I basically told him that he could do better than me. He would tell me that he loved me, and that he didn't want to be with anybody else, but me.
He had nothing. One suitcase of clothes and the original X-Box, and that was it. I felt bad for him not having clothes. I ended up cashing in part of my annuity. You know those commercials that they have on TV....why wait, get your money now? Well, I did that. And I set up a budget as to how the money was to be spent.
Boy, could he spend. And spend, and spend, and spend. Up and over the budget. For example....I gave him $5,000 to use strictly on clothes. Not only did he spend his $5,000, but he went way over that amount, and in to the money that I allocated to myself for clothes shopping.
He kept going on and on about how he wanted to make a career out of doing animation, yet he did not want to go to school. He wanted to learn the program on his own. I believed him. So, I bought him the $8,000 animation program that he wanted, which was so big, that a typical computer couldn't house it, so there went another $8,000 on this computer to house the program. I invested $16,000 in his "career" believing that he was serious about it. Long story short, he never even read a full chapter. Due to the high cost, the animation program is so copywrighted, that there is no way to even sell it.
Was I trying to buy his love? No. It made me happy to see him happy. I would always put my happiness aside.
So we met and started going out in August of 2005, and we got married at the court house in January of 2006, and we had a Church wedding which I paid for entirely, in March of 2006.
We both wanted to move out of Florida. It had been my dream to move to Colorado since 1999 eventhough I had never been to Colorado at that point, nor did I know anybody that even lived in Colorado. Yet, I know inside me, that Colorado was where I was meant to live. He wanted to move to West Virginia. So we agreed that we'd visit Colorado first, and then West Virginia, and we'd make out decision from there.
As soon as we landed in Colorado in Februaray of 2006, I knew that I was home. He fell in love with it too, and West Virginia was no longer in the running, and I was glad of that! I paid for an apartment in cash for one year...I had no other choice, since in order to get an apartment, you have to have a job in that state. Considering I didn't have a job in Colorado, paying up front for the whole lease term was my only option.
So back to Florida we went, and we had our Church wedding, followed by our honeymoon, and then we packed up, and moved to Colorado in April of 2006.
I started working for a Commercial Real Estate company approximately 2 weeks after moving to Colorado. He didn't work....not for many months. Eventhough I was making good money, I took on a second, part-time job to make up for his slack. Sure he started working, but he never was able to make good money, nor could he hold a job.
In July of 2006, I signed a contract to have a house built, and I closed on the house in December of 2006.
I worked, and very hard at that. I worked and he spent. Almost as fast as I could make it, he'd be spending it. He was like a kid in a candy shop.
In 2007, I became pregnant. Prior to my son being born in February of 2008, my ex informed me that he thought it would be a good idea for me to cash in the remainder of my annuity. He even said something along the lines of, "there's no guarantee you are even going to be alive when you are supposed to get your lump sums". So I did....I cashed in the remainder of my annuity. Sure, it was easy for him to do as it wasn't his money....but it was hard on because that was my security for when I was older. In an instant, it was all gone. I thought I was doing what was best.
