I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 43

That doesn’t mean that living with David and letting things out was easy. At times it was downright difficult. Having to work didn’t help matters. I don’t know how many days I went to work with my emotional stuff churning around inside of me, but I couldn’t do anything about it till I got home.

When I moved in, it was just David, his son, Darren, and my son, Caleb. I had no trouble with Darren living here. After all, he worked two jobs and was almost never home except to sleep. Also, he would have to move when his car was paid off. The real problem started when Darren’s girlfriend, Angela, who was having trouble with her mother and her mother’s husband, with whom she’d been living, needed a place to stay. He wanted her to stay with us for a few days. David and I discussed it and I told him that under the circumstances, I didn’t want her here. I was honestly afraid that her presence here would interfere with my ability to confide in David and deal with my emotional issues. The end result was that David told Darren that his girlfriend, Angela could not stay with us.

Darren brought her home anyway a few days later when her mother’s husband threw her out. It was very hard to have her here in more ways than I had anticipated. Especially because Angela and Darren both seemed to think they could do as they pleased and not pay any consequences when they broke the rules. This made me angrier than a wet hen.

First of all, she wasn’t working, so she hung around the house a lot. Then when she did get a job, she had a hard time keeping it. In the 5 or 6 months she was here, she quit 2 jobs because she didn’t like her supervisor’s attitude. Secondly, she tended to sleep till at least noon and since she slept on the living room floor, this made life interesting, especially on Saturday mornings when my son and I were home. I finally told her that on weekends when we were home, we had lives to live and that I wasn’t going to make any special effort to be quiet. Thirdly, Angela and Darren were terrible about following the three simple rules David and I laid down. They were as follows:

      1.      If it isn’t yours, don’t use it.

      2.      Don’t eat food you didn’t buy.

      3.      Keep your belongings in your area. Anything left outside of your area for over 24 hours will be confiscated.

I remember the morning we told them the rules. I had fixed breakfast for everyone to be nice and in hopes of making things go smoother. When Darren heard the rule regarding keeping things where they belonged, he said, “I don’t see why everyone can’t be nice and just put things in the person’s area.”

I looked at him and flat out said, “I am not your maid and I’m not your mother. Even my three year old son is learning to pick up his things.”

That shut him up, but it didn’t solve the problem.

I frequently found clothes strewn where they didn’t belong. I don’t keep my house so clean it’s sanitary, but I don’t like to have general clutter laying around when it’s not necessary. So, I started picking up and hiding anything left out for more than 24 hours.

Then Angela had the nerve to go into David’s bedroom where I keep my clothes for lack of any other space to do so, and steal some of my things. I caught Angela wearing my best slacks which an aunt had given to me for Christmas just a couple of months prior, and she not only insisted they were hers, she wouldn’t give me a chance to prove they were mine. I got sneaky and smart. I washed all of her clothes that I was holding, as they were filthy and gave them back to her. When I saw here wearing something besides my slacks, I got nosy and took them back and then immediately took them to the cleaners to be cleaned as she’d worn them for at least 4 days straight without washing them, and to keep them out of her reach. Unfortunately, not everything she did to my slacks came out.

While I was at it, I checked her area for other things and found one of my favorite blouses, which she’d managed to burn a hole into and some underwear. I took everything back, washed them and made sure I put them out of her reach.

I got out my makeup brushes one morning to get ready for work and discovered they’d been used by Angela. My brushes were in a case with each one in its place and I always put them in with the brush part facing one way. When I opened them that morning, my blush brush was turned down the opposite way. I used it anyway as I didn’t have any choice, but as soon as possible I washed my brushes, then hid them so she couldn’t do that again.

Another big problem was that neither one of them could accept the fact that I was told by David that I was to treat his house as if it were mine and that meant that I had complete authority, second only to his. More than once when I raised a fuss about them breaking the rules, Angela told me it wasn’t my house and just because I paid rent, it didn’t give me any right to say anything.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 42

When I first told my brother, Mike I was planning to move in with David, he said he wanted to talk to me. We arranged a time when we could sit down and talk without his wife, Danice or any of our children around. He told me he didn’t agree with what I was doing as he didn’t trust David and neither did Danice.

I told him my reasons for my decision. I told him about praying for help and how God answered that prayer and my initial reaction to the answer. In the end, he still didn’t agree with my decision and I hadn’t changed my mind, but that wasn’t the purpose of our talk. He simply wanted to know where I stood and I needed to let him tell me how he felt. In the end he told me that he would pray for me every day that I live here. I couldn’t have asked for better support.

Mother was very supportive of the idea at first, and even a little excited about it. She was full of ideas about what to do with the rooms Caleb and I had occupied. Mother was going to give Caleb’s room to Bill for his hobbies and take over my room as her sewing room. As the time drew closer for Caleb and I to move, she suddenly started coming to me with doubts about my moving. She told me that Darren, one of David’s twin boys, had once been accused of molesting someone’s child. For that reason she didn’t think I should move into David’s house. I told her in no uncertain terms that Darren wasn’t likely to be home when Caleb and I were. Even if he was, he certainly wasn’t going to be alone with Caleb. I didn’t trust him that far.

 I also heard that she questioned why I didn’t apply for Section 8 housing. Well, it’s not that easy to get and there is a waiting list, which can take two to three years to get to the top of. A friend of mine who has section 8 housing told me that getting approved and finding section 8 housing are two different things. It can be tough to find a place, which accepts section 8. Also, part of me didn’t want to be responsible for the maintenance of an entire apartment or house on a daily basis. I know there are people in my shoes who do it, but as long as I have a choice, I much prefer having a roommate like David.

Moving in with David meant making some major adjustments for all of us. I made it a point to spend weekends here before we moved in, in hopes of making the adjustment easier on Caleb. I’m not sure if it made it easier for Caleb, but I know it was easier for me. I think one of the hardest things about the move for Caleb was that his mommy started changing before his very eyes, almost immediately. He started saying, “Mommy? Are you my mom?”

The first time it happened, it about broke my heart. Every time he asked me, I tried to gently reassure him that no matter what happens; I will always be his mom. And that I will always love him. Eventually the question stopped.

Another thing that happened with Caleb is that shortly after we moved in; he started being afraid of monsters at night. I always thought when that happened, I would make “monster repellant” with some perfume I had for that purpose. Instead, I taught him to pray about it and soon nearly every night, he would pray about being scared and then he’d generally be fine. There were still times when he didn’t go to sleep right away, but it was usually because he wanted a glass of water or he needed to go potty, not because of monsters.

David told me that when I was moving in, God spoke to him and told him to treat me as he would a wife, short of having sexual intercourse. David asked God what he meant by that and God told him again to treat me as he would a wife. David finally realized that he was supposed to allow me full freedom to do as I wished in the house. From what I cook for meals to how the house is decorated. David also gave me full authority in the house, second only to his.

By the time I had finished moving into David’s house, I was so desperate to open up, I was willing to do something I hate, and only because I thought it might help. Get drunk. I’ve been drunk once in my life and I hated it. I hated being out of control and not remembering even half of what I did. Thankfully, I didn’t have to get drunk to open up. What started me opening up was very simple. David and I were sitting on the couch one night and he leaned over and kissed me. This time instead of being passive about it, I kissed him back and from that moment on, I had no real trouble opening up to him.

I don’t know why kissing him back made it easier to open up to him, but it did. Maybe I suddenly felt safe with him. I really don’t know. I just know that after that kiss, I had no trouble opening up to him in ways I couldn’t with anyone else.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 41

Intimacy

What does it mean?

When we think of Intimacy, what do we think of?

I would bet most of us think of physical intimacy

Sexual intimacy

Being physically and sexually intimate with someone

I don’t see that as true intimacy

To me, true intimacy is emotional as well as physical

Intimacy is as one person put it:

“Into me see”

Real intimacy is allowing someone to see into you

Into your soul

Into the very heart of who you are

Without allowing someone to get that close to you,

There is no intimacy

Without true emotional intimacy;

The physical expression is nothing

Physical and sexual intimacy are fleeting

Emotional intimacy can last a lifetime and beyond

Emotional intimacy creates a bond between people

Which is stronger than any physical bonding

There was a time in my life when I could not separate emotional and physical intimacy

To me they were one and the same

Now I know differently

Now I understand the difference

and I am glad I know

Emotional intimacy satisfies in ways physical intimacy cannot

Emotional intimacy can refresh and strengthen

Physical intimacy alone takes strength and gives only physical pleasure

Emotional intimacy can lighten sadness and increase joy

To achieve true intimacy, you must be willing to be emotionally intimate

willing to be vulnerable to another person

When David and I started getting together again, things were easier this time. He and Jan had separated several months prior, so she wasn’t around to barge in all the time. As for his boys, young David had gone in the army and Darren worked two jobs and had a girlfriend, so he wasn’t home much.

Shortly after this happened, David and I were at his house, talking about my living situation at mother’s house. Mother’s house was always cluttered. The only time the clutter ever really got cleared away was if we were having the family or guests over for something major, such as a holiday get together. Then the clutter got picked up and hidden. The floors were never really clean. It was Bill’s responsibility to clean them and even when he did, he did such a poor job you couldn’t really tell someone had cleaned them. 

The yard was little more than an overgrown jungle, which desperately needed to be cleaned up. He knew I hated living at mother’s house, but I felt trapped, as I didn’t have money to move elsewhere. He told me that his son, Darren was almost never home and even when he was, he didn’t sleep in his room, instead he slept in the living room. David said he’d rent it to me for less than what I was paying at mother’s house. I told him to give me time to think about it and I’d let him know within a week. At the time, he was half joking and I thought I would just call him in a few days and politely decline.

Instead, when I got home less than three hours later, I took a good look at where I was living and called David to accept his offer. He was surprised, but agreed to the date I set for moving in. I actually got Caleb and I packed up and moved in a week early. Moving in with David would not have been possible had his ex-wife, Jan been living here.  We both realized later that because the door was open for me to move in, God decided to use it for my benefit.

If anyone had told me before I decided to move into David’s house that I was going to do so, I would have said they were crazy. I never in my wildest dreams or imaginings thought I would be living in his house. However, the funny thing is that I had dreamt several months before, that David and I made love in his bed. What makes this so funny to me is that it wasn’t “just a dream.” At different times during my life, I’ve seen little glimpses of my future, though I didn’t know at first just what it was that I was seeing. The dream I had about David and I being so intimate had that kind of “feel” to it as if it was something, which would happen in my future. When I woke up and realized what I’d seen in my sleep, my initial reaction was, “Why HIM!? Why not Sean Connery or Michael T. Weiss? Or Dorn? Why on God’s green earth did I have that kind of dream about David?!” I never thought it would really happen. After all, just because I see “glimpses of my future” doesn’t mean I can’t change things.

Come to think of it, I did have a dream about being intimate with Dorn. In my dream Dorn was spending the night with me and as I went to put clean sheets on the spare bed for him, he told me he wanted to sleep with me. In my dream, I said, “okay, you stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.”

He said, “No, I want to sleep with you.”

I ran. I started running and didn’t stop until I was far away from the house.

When I woke up I wondered why in my dream I ran away from something I wanted so badly. I told David about my dream later and he said it showed that I had a fear of intimacy. He was right; the thought of intimacy scared me silly at that time in my life.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 40

Eventually, I got tired of his impatience and his “I’m a man” speech among the other problems and quit trying to hang out with him. In retrospect, I can see that I wasn’t as ready to deal with my emotional damage as I’d thought I was.

            After I quit trying to hang out with David, I started dating Ricky R. The man who got me pregnant. It didn’t take me long to realize that Ricky and I wouldn’t work out. As I was trying to figure out how to break it off, I learned I was pregnant.

            During my pregnancy, I started seeing David again. At this point, I really didn’t want to raise a child with all my emotional crap determining what kind of mom I’d be. Things were better this time. I even came to a place of trusting him enough that I asked him to be in the delivery room with me when I gave birth. I knew if things didn’t go well, he wouldn’t run out on me. I also asked my sister – in – law, Danice to be there. Things went well during labor and the next day I took my beautiful baby boy, Caleb home.

One night, when Caleb was about two months old, I asked David and Jan to watch over him while I went to an evening test at the local community college I was applying to. I didn’t get to take the test that night as the night testing had been discontinued and someone had forgotten to remove the notices. I probably wasn’t gone more than an hour and a half. When I returned to pick up Caleb, Jan told me they’d fed him some orange sherbet “just to see how he’d react.” I was shocked. He wasn’t nearly old enough for any table food, much less something citrusy and sugar laden. She justified it by telling me it wasn’t much.

I took Caleb home. By the time I got there, I was furious! How dare they feed my son something like that without my permission?! I settled Caleb in, then called Jan and told her in no uncertain terms just how angry I was. That what she’d done could have endangered my son if he’d been allergic to what she’d fed him. She apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again. I said, “You’re right. It won’t. Because I won’t let you watch him again.”

I knew David had to be at work early, so I didn’t ask to talk to him that night. I did, however, write him a letter. I really poured it out to him in that letter. As the head of the household, I figured he held primary responsibility for what had happened that evening.

For the next couple of years, every time I thought about David, I’d say, “Lord I know you told me to go to him for my healing, but I don’t trust him. If I have my way about, I’ll never see him again.”

The Lord let me rant. He never once made me feel like a bad person for how I felt or for telling Him. At some point, as I was driving down the same stretch of highway on which He’d told me that David was my go to person, the Lord spoke quietly to me and said, “It’s time to forgive David.”

I sighed and said, “Okay.”

I was living with mother at that point and she went to church at the old location of the church that had fallen apart. I knew she would know if David went there, so I asked her. She told me that he was there every other week. So, the next week I took Caleb to church in hopes of seeing him. When we arrived, he was sitting in a pew along a wall next to a wooden beam. I sat on the pew on the other side of the beam. I was uncertain what to say to him or how to tell him that I’d forgiven him. At some point, I decided I’d just put my hand out by the beam and see what happened. He took my hand and we stayed that way for the rest of the service.

We talked afterwards and he told me that when he saw my hand come out, he knew I’d forgiven him.

Happy New Year 2019

            I know it’s tradition to make resolutions for the New Year, but I’ve learned that doesn’t work for me. I always forget within a matter of days or weeks. If I do remember, I tend to shrug it off because I forgot. So this year, rather than make useless resolutions I decided to make some wishes instead.

            I wish for you, dear reader, abundant good health; physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For I have learned they are intertwined.

            I wish for you strength and wisdom for the challenges that will come your way this year.

            I wish for you joy, peace, and love.

            I wish that you would live life to the fullest extent you’re capable of; for then you’ll never grow old.

P.S. If you’ve been following my blog, I will resume telling my life story next week. Thank you for reading!

My Favorite Christmas Music

With the holidays just around the corner, I thought it’d be nice to share some of my favorite Christmas carols this week instead of my life story. I hope you enjoy the music and have a wonderful Christmas. So, in no particular order, here are my favorite Christmas songs.

 “Joy to the World”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDmIddF7DfQ

            “Silent Night”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GUnfLPpjLs

            “Little Drummer Boy”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1fA59oH7Q

            “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”

           

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRqq5EeVpRo

            “Oh Holy Night”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17kiIIxSdC0

            “Carol of the Bells”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Tr1qCHwq4

            Last, but not least, “Christmas Eve”

           

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHioIlbnS_A

            I found the last one while looking for just the right version of my favorites to share with you. I hope you’ve enjoyed them. I wish you and your families a Very Merry Christmas.

            Thank you for reading my blog.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 39

If time healed all wounds, which it doesn’t, I would have been healed a long time ago. I wouldn’t still feel all the pain and all the rage.

I prayed off and on for years for God to heal me emotionally. I honestly thought He’d just reach in and heal me as a surgeon cuts out a cancer. Boy was I wrong! One day I got to thinking about it and realized that maybe God wanted me to seek human help. So I started praying about that and I said, “Ok Lord. Obviously you’re not going to do this work yourself. So, where do I go? To whom do I turn?”

Every time I prayed, I felt the Lord telling me that David was that person. My initial reaction was “What?! Are You crazy?! Have you lost your marbles and the general universe isn’t aware of it, yet?!”

After all I thought He’d send me to a woman, it hadn’t occurred to me that God would send me to a man and certainly not that one. I could think of other men I’d far rather go to. After going round about this with God a few times, I acquiesced. It wasn’t easy. I still wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but God knows what He’s doing, even when we don’t. I had to learn to trust God’s choice for me even though I wasn’t sure I could trust David as I didn’t really know him that well.

I’d met David and his wife Jan at a church we attended. I babysat their twin boys for them one night, while they went out. I think that was the only time I babysat for them, but I’d see David in church from time to time and we’d say “Hello. How are you?”

That was the extent of our relationship pretty much until God told me that he wanted to use him to help me heal.

A lot of the reason for my not trusting David was that in the past, whenever I saw him, he looked like he had so much of his own pressure, he couldn’t possible handle mine. Not only that but on one occasion he shared something with me regarding his marriage to Jan, which should only have been said to a counselor or minister; certainly not to a former babysitter. Then on top of that he was the person who insisted I repair my relationship with Andrew before going to Canada with him and Patty. No wonder I didn’t think I could learn to trust this man!

I talked to him about what I felt God had told me and he told me he’d felt God leading him to me as well. He’d been helping mother deal with her own crap and had taken her as far as he could. In fact, he tells me that when he told mother that he felt God putting me on his heart, she looked at him and said, “Have fun.”

I started by going to visit him at his house in an effort to get to know him better and learn to trust him. Unfortunately, that didn’t work as well as I hoped. He was impatient with me and my lack of trust. He often gave me what I came to think of as his, “I’m a Man” speech. Basically he’d say, “Honey, I’m a man. As a man, this is the way I am with all my faults. Etc, etc, etc.”

I never really understood how that was supposed to help me trust him, but I persisted in hanging out with him because I was desperate for emotional healing.

There were other problems with hanging out at his house as well. His wife and sons would frequently barge into his study where we were talking. I didn’t mind his boys so much as they often had good reasons for coming in. His wife, on the other hand, seemed to suddenly decide that she needed to work on some art project or other and the supplies were in his study. After the third interruption, I looked at her and yelled, “Don’t you ever knock?”

I think she thought she’d find us locked in an intimate embrace doing God knows what in his tiny study. What she didn’t know was that I had absolutely no desire to do anything physically intimate with him. I was just trying to learn to trust him enough to allow God to use him in my life.

There were other problems, too. At times we’d get in his car and go looking for a place to park where we wouldn’t be disturbed, but in a city like ours, that’s virtually impossible. Hanging out where I lived wasn’t an option either. I lived with mother and her husband, Bill who ran hot and cold about David. Some days he’d think David was okay, others he couldn’t stand him. Then there was mother herself. We’d be in my room as that was the only place in the house we could talk privately and if mother wanted to talk to one of us for some reason, she didn’t hesitate to knock on my door.

During this time, David was taking a bath one day when he felt the Lord telling him to look in Song of Solomon as there was something in there which I needed to hear. He asked the Lord where, but all the Lord would tell him was that there was something in the Song of Solomon he needed to find and give to me. David got out of the tub and went in his study where he started looking through the Song of Solomon. When he came to chapter 4 verses 12-16, he knew he’d found what he was looking for.

12 A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse;

 a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

13 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates,

 with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,

14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all

 trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices      

15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters,

and streams from Lebanon.

16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south;

blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

David wrote this story in a letter to me and included a copy of these verses, which I later lost. This didn’t crack me open, but it did help me to realize God was in this. It also helped me realize that God understood me.

With the holidays around the corner, I thought it would be nice for the next two weeks to post holiday related blogs. This means that for two weeks, my life story will be on hold. I will resume posting it after the New Year. Thank you for your understanding.