I was fourteen years old and her name was Angie. She wasn't my first girlfriend, she was just the first one that was different. We met and we were together, it was that simple. I think I was her first boyfriend. I saw her and had to talk to her. Just being near her relaxed me, calmed me down. I'd had an older, dominating-type girlfriend when I was thirteen and an on this day-off this day relationship with another. Angie was different. I'd look her in the eyes and get hypnotized, lost. The last time we were together was a night that we spent sitting on the back porch of someone's beach house, just me and her, talking. All we needed to be happy was each other and that night was a perfect example. We'd never say goodbye when it was time for us to go, we just looked each other in the eyes as long as we could. That's not my last memory of her, I saw her once more five years later, but first, let me tell you what happened. I guess my Mother wasn't the best in the world, but she was my Mom. Cindy had an older boyfriend and we were staying at his house. Mama was at her sister's helping her watch her young kids after surgery or something. It was a Saturday morning and I'd spent my last time with Angie the night before. That morning my Grandmother showed up and took us back to Georgia. Cindy ran away and went back, Mama came and picked her up. My Dad signed over custody of me to my Grandmother. She let me call Angie and explain, very hard on me. I'd had a friend at the beach whose older brother gave him pot to smoke so I'd got my start there. It wasn't long before I'd found the right people back in Jesup. That's the first time I started building walls and I used whatever drink and drugs I could get for bricks. I could turn a fifth up three times and kill it at sixteen. I went from honor roll, college prep classes to welding. Best place in school to smoke, maybe not the best career move but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn't care, I'd lost what I cared about. I had plenty of friends that were females, I've always got along better with women, but I wouldn't get close to anyone. I was suprised at who I woke up with on a few occasions, but heavy drinking tends to lead to some wierd partnerships. It never mattered though, I would never let any of them that close sober, and they knew it. Not that it happened a lot, don't get the wrong idea. I'm talking about a four year period here. I met somebody after I got out of school. I didn't love her and would never tell her. I let her get close because she wanted to. She didn't push, she just kept coming around and seeing me, spending time with me, and eventually we went out one night, met up actually when I'd already had a couple of good hours of partying in me. It wasn't a suprise when I woke up with her, I didn't get that far gone. I was tore down and she thought she was taking advantage of it, but I didn't fight it. We were together maybe four months. We woke up on her cousin's front porch, that was as far as she could get me, I guess. I broke up with her when she told me about finding me on a picnic table with her best friend. She didn't blame me, I was at the party with her and she just lost track of me. She took care of me while I was too messed up to take care of myself. She loved me, and I couldn't do that to her anymore. That's the only time I ever cheated on a woman, and I still regret that it happened. Being drunk beyond control is no excuse. Not loving her is no excuse. There is no excuse that can explain the hurt I saw in her eyes. I never want to feel like that again. The way I was living my life just wasn't working out in that town. Cindy was living back at the beach with her boyfriend. Divorced at 20? I needed a change. I was smoking from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. At nineteen I'd been drinking for five years. I moved in with her early that summer and it was November when I moved back to Jesup. After living in a small town for so long and being turned loose at the beach at nineteen, not such a good idea. Got me a job as a barback at Calico Jack's, a nice little bar with a sheltered dance floor outdoors, with only the dunes separating it from the beach. Great, all the free alcohol I can drink. Part time job at Godfather's Pizza pretty much covered the food side. I met Mike and Tony and moved in with them. We moved around a lot, lived in some bad places to hear Cindy tell it. I woke up twice to find my ear pierced. I was straightening out my life alright. I was at a party Mike's girlfriend was having, sitting on the couch pretty tore down, talking to somebody, when Angie walked in. She was with a friend and they were almost through the room before our eyes met. She stopped, started crying, then hurried on out of the room after her friend. I left. I'd looked for her all summer. Any of my old friends, but especially her. I was dying to see her, I was nineteen, she would have been eighteen, and we controlled our own lives then, nobody could take us apart if we got back together. I couldn't handle it though. Her crying, that completely killed me. I left town and went back to Jesup. That's the last time I went back. I'd been back about a year when I ran into someone that knew Cindy years back and recognized me. Another Angie, Miller at the time and soon to be something else. We were friends for six months. I got her a job where I worked, and I quit when she got fired. They fired her for not working on her wedding day. She'd been promised that day off from the day she started and when the boss fucked up his own schedule he used her as a scapegoat and fired her. I was running the place for him pretty much and it closed not long after that. Me and Angie had gotten close. We fell in love somewhere along the way, but she was already with someone. We never compromised that, and he trusted us so much that he asked me to stay with her while he was gone for two weeks of training. There was a lot of temptation those two weeks. We never did anything more than me holding her when she woke up lonely in the middle of the night. We were very close and we spent a lot of time together. We talked a lot. When that two weeks was up, I walked out of her life. I couldn't take it anymore. Holding back feelings wears on me over time. I do have a breaking point and I'd reached it with her. I loved her and I couldn't have her. I moved to Anderson where Mama was living, just like that. My Grandmother told me that Angie just stood there in the yard crying when she told her I'd moved. I'm not good with goodbyes. In Anderson I met my future wife for the second time. We'd actually met four years earlier, when I was seventeen and in high school, working for her brother as a summer job. I never loved her, but I knew she loved me, or whatever love meant to her, I never quite figured that out. For twelve years I was safe. I forgot what love felt like, except for the occasional reminder when I would look into the wrong set of eyes. I tried to make that marriage work. I stayed a lot longer than I should have, because of my kids. Our fighting eventually started affecting them though, so it was time for me to remove myself from the picture. I never wanted to argue with her, that was just her nature. I took a lot more than most would have and anyone that knew us would back me up on that. About a month after I left her, I was alone one night in my apartment, drinking. I found my first chatroom online and being drunk, it blew my mind. I've never found another chat site like that one. I became part of a group of forty or fifty people that were regulars there. There was usually twenty or so there at any given time. People from all over the states, Canada, Australia, and Europe. I "met" a lot of interesting people. It was better than a soap opera. I found it very entertaining. I met a woman that lives in Mississippi. Sherrie. There was something about her that just drew me to her. Music was something we both enjoyed and was always a big part of our relationship. She taught me a lot about the chat program and different things you could do. She wanted to learn to make her own songs to play in the room and share. I learned about it myself and then taught her. From that night on we just got closer and were eventually spending 18-20 hours a day together, either on the phone or the internet. We were both separated and helped each other through tough periods in both our lives. I chased her. She ran. I spent about eight months banging my head against her walls. It was early March of 2001 when I sent a message to someone I hadn't seen online in awhile. I was just saying hey and checking on her. Destiny was her nickname. We had known each other and talked for a few months, but nothing real serious. She was interested in me, easy to tell, she didn't hide it from me anyway. Sherrie had my heart and I always just ignored the flirting from Stacey. After I sent the message checking on her, Stacey replied and we talked that night. We were both depressed and lonely. I was tired of chasing a love I couldn't catch and here she was, right in front of me, wanting to see if I could love her the way she knew I loved Sherrie. I called Sherrie the next day and asked her if we had a future. I told her Stacey was interested in getting to know me and that if she was never going to see if we could have a real relationship, then I wanted to talk to Stacey. She told me to "go for it". Two nights later she called me back, drunk and crying. Seems I'd made her jealous and she reacted the wrong way. By that time me and Stacey had been talking, getting to know each other better and found that we were very compatible. Sherrie had had her chance and I'd promised Stacey that I wouldn't let her come between us. It broke her heart, but damn, I'd chased her, not the other way around. Within two weeks I was driving the 250 miles to meet Stacey. I had my long weekend and spent it with her. We fell in love with each other. I spent six months of my entire adult life actually IN love. Not me loving someone, not someone loving me, it was US. I gave her my heart and soul. Then we broke up. I wasn't in very good shape after that. I'll just say my health was almost non-existant for awhile, I don't want to talk about why right now. I couldn't eat for a week. I still can't drink a beer without it hurting my stomach. An occasional margarita is nice, but my drinking days are over. Never much cared for being drunk anyway, it was the passing out I was trying to get to. It wasn't long before I called Sherrie. She's one of the best friends I've ever had, love or no love. We became friends again and stayed away from the "L" word for as long as we could. I said it again first, I'm sure. It wasn't long before we started getting really close again. I think it was the end of May,2002 when she asked about her coming up for her vacation. She told me she wanted to try but she wasn't sure she'd be able to. I think her being scared of driving 500 miles alone is what eventually killed the idea, so she stayed home instead. Just like every other time she let herself get close to me, but not so close as to actually give in to what she was feeling and make at least a half-assed attempt at getting together and finding out if all the love we had shared could be real. I knew what I felt. I knew once I looked her in the eyes, it would be real. I never wanted to see those eyes before she was ready to show them to me. Before she was ready to be loved and give that love back 100% because she had always held back. She had always ran from what she was feeling. She wanted it so bad, but she ran from it. It was July when I went down and met her. I hadn't been there but a few hours before she told me that I couldn't stay. She wasn't ready to be treated the way I was treating her. I loved her, how was I supposed to treat her? Like shit? Why can't a woman today let herself be loved the way she should be? Why do they stay with guys that treat them like dirt, doormats, slaves? You're a woman, don't put up with that shit. When I met Stacey, I was alone. Seperated from my wife and she was alienating me from my kids. $17 an hour job and after giving her half my check plus whatever else she "needed" and paying what bills of mine I could, I was broke. I gave her money I knew I didn't have to, even though her and her lawyer, doctors, preachers, whoever she could get to believe that she was being wronged threatened me with the law. I never mentioned the fact that when I told her I wanted a divorce she left me for a couple of months, changed our kids schools three times, left her brother's and lived with another man for the last two weeks of that time before asking me if she could come back. Hell, I never wanted her to leave at that time, I had just told her that when I got the money right so that we could get a divorce and both end up standing on our own two feet, I was leaving. I let her come back, only because of the kids. In a few months, the money did get right, I bought us both cars ($1500 more for hers) and I got me an apartment. She wouldn't give me a divorce, she wanted to fight it. I could have tore her down in court, but I didn't have the money. She stole $3500 from me, money that was to be used for the divorce. She fought every plan I had if it meant not getting back together. She made sure my life was hell and that if she couldn't have me I wasn't going to be able to afford someone else. I didn't even want another woman at the time, I just wanted away from that one. When I started seeing Stacey, nine months after I'd left, it really went downhill. I almost had to call the cops to get her to leave my apartment several times. My neighbors were complaining about her disturbances. I started spending more time in Tennessee than in South Carolina. I was living two lives and it was wearing on me. I was back in SC getting ready to go to work one afternoon and I just broke down. Four hour drive, shower, try to sleep but can't because my heart was still in Tenn, get online and talk with Stacey until time to go. Try to leave, can't. She left the same time I did and went to the store. When she came back I told her I wanted to come home. We went back the next weekend and picked up my stuff. I just couldn't live two lives anymore, two lives that were at extremes with each other. So much love in one and so much conflict in the other. I walked out of the life of conflict.