This story is probably the most perfect example of exactly how I end up in some of my more spectacular moments. It is the record of a time where I made decisions with exactly the information I had available to me and they ended hilariously. Because quite frankly, I chose... poorly.
So flash back to that point in my life. Once upon a time, I was dating a boy in the military. And I would zoom all around in my little Kia to be with him. His family lived about an hour from my house and he would come home every weekend from where he was stationed, which was about three hours away.
I would go see him and fight with his little sister and hang out with his mom and they would take care of me. And it was great, he was affectionate and clever and he bought me things (which is only notable because he was pretty much my first boyfriend to ever buy me anything) and was generally a good boyfriend. For about six months. Spoilers! He didn't stop buying me things, but he DID stop being a good boyfriend.
I feel that this story is kind of the beginning of that.
So, blah blah blah, we're running around like we're young and don't have anything better to do with our time and money, which is really the way it was and that part's still pretty cool.
Then I got my kidney stones. Then I left my job. Then I didn't look for a new one.
And then one day, I went to visit him on post. Even though I was actually going to pick him up the next weekend, I'd driven to visit and whoops. I forgot my current insurance card. You may be unaware of this, but as a civilian visiting a military base, to get on with your car, you present your driver's license and your current insurance. I didn't have mine. And unlike when you get pulled over and they'll verify that you're current, the military has better things to do, which isn't meant to sound disparaging. They politely informed me that, no, I couldn't take my car on post. And that was that for them.
After having driven three hours to get there, I didn't know what to do. To me, the only choice available was to park it at the gas station near post. I was tired, I was only going to be there for a day and well, I'd done it before, the last time I'd visited when I'd forgotten my driver's license. Are you starting to sense a pattern here?
So, regardless, I'm here, I'm visiting, we walk casually up into his room (as it's after six and that's when visiting hours start) and we pull the usual routine, where after a certain point, I just don't leave the room. The next day, it's also business as usual, where when he wakes up late for PT in the morning and his CO is knocking on the door, I hide under the bed, half tucked into one of the rucksacks, half covered with a couple folded blankets. I had to make sure I was hidden for when they did roomchecks, you see. I also want you to reread that, because, yeah, that was actually commonplace enough of an occurrence in my life back then that I still remember, years later, exactly what looked the most like piles of stuff under his bed instead of a girl who is NOT supposed to be there trying to vainly sleep a few hours more.
So I'm there for a day and a night, decide I want more time. One extra day? It's cool. We're going to dinner and then I'm going to leave and I realise my phone is dead. Oh! That's not good. But I'm smart. I'd forwarded a text to him with the phone number I needed earlier in the day, 'cause I kinda figured my phone wasn't gonna last. He's in the bathroom, I grab his phone to get the number.... and what? Wait, I'm sorry, did I just see what I think I saw in his text menu?
Yeah, guys, I'm not proud of what I did next. I have never done it before and I have never done it to another person since.Because I loved that guy and I had never really had reason not to trust him. Nobody had ever really been unfaithful to me. But I saw what I saw and so, I started going through his phone. And what I found was a bunch of messages from this girl named Missy. Missy lived in a city near his grandparents, he had met her through myspace (FUCKING MYSPACE.) and she had a foot fetish (and if he ever protests this, I invite anyone to check his phone records from that time. He had indeed made a new friend with a phone number from that area and while I may not be able to prove the foot thing, I know and so does he). These are the things I learned in the minutes he was in the bathroom while I was reading and my entire body was going all hot and cold from the adrenaline, shame, anger and jealousy coursing through me. It was pretty rough. We ended up in this screaming fight and I, like the idiot I was, forgave him. And having forgiven him, well, what could I do but stay another night? We're onto three now, for those of you keeping count.
By this point it was Wednesday, I wouldn't be able to leave til after 8 PM (visiting hours!) and I was coming back on Friday anyway... so I might as well stay til the weekend and then just drive us both home. Beats adding an extra twelve hours worth of driving, right? Sure does! Until you find out that he doesn't get to go home that weekend. He has drill. So I stay the weekend. As of Sunday, my one day trip has turned into a week and I'm ready to go the fuck home. Haha. But we all know that's not gonna happen.
Because Sunday is the day I started to pass yet another kidney stone. And I was sicker than a dog for that entire week. I was either throwing up in his shower, sleeping under the bed or watching The Shield with his roommate in a vain effort to try to not want to die. Kidney stones hurt. And not in a stubbed your toe kinda way. Or a scraped off half the skin on your finger almost slamming it in a door kinda way. It is a straight up please-god-somebody-anybody-just-make-it-stop-kill-me sort of way. Flash past all the crying and screaming and vomiting and it's Friday again and we're both ready to go home. It's been 12 days and I'd meant to stay one night. So his roommate gives us a ride to the gas station.... where my car is no longer parked. Because it's been towed. Obviously.
We find out it's the military and not the city that's towed my car, which is good. But what's bad is that we're told I'm not allowed to go get it or even talk to the person about it without an active duty soldier who's stationed on that base to go with me. And since it's a civilian that runs that department, their hours are a VERY strict Monday through Friday, 8-5. So we make the best of it. We see a movie since I was so sick and stuck inside for a week straight. The next day we go to a house party and I get to meet some more of his friends. It seems like a pretty good weekend. We go back to the room, thinking, nah, it's cool, bro. We'll get this sorted on Monday.
Bear with me. I know this is a long story. But the following is pretty important information.
Now, I want you to imagine what I was like both emotionally and physically at this point. I'd shown up expecting to hang out with my big burly manchild of a boyfriend and his sweetheart of a goofy roommate for a day or so and then jet on home. I'd come with one change of clothes, enough money for food for a day or two and gas to get back home. I ran out of money fast and got real sick of wearing that same damn outfit but had no other options. And Bees (yes, that was his nickname) wasn't too into doing laundry on post, so all he had he shared, but it was mostly work out clothes. Add onto this the fact that they weren't allowed to smoke in their room, but did anyway, so we could never open a window or the door, especially since I wasn't supposed to be there anyway. On top of all this, I'd found out my boyfriend was cheating on me through sexting (and yes, that IS cheating) with a girl he'd met on the internet in the lamest ass way possible.
The barracks he was in were done in the old style, which means it's one room, longer than it is wide. There's one bathroom with a dorm-style shower and a toilet. There is a tiny sink in the corner and that's it. If I had to guess, I'd say the room was 10 by 20. The layout was: against the west wall, his roommate's bed by the window and front door, then their couch then his bed and a foot or so of space. Against the east wall, it was his roommate's standard issue cabinet/chest of drawers/desk, the TV stand, and my boyfriend's standard issue cabinet/chest of drawers/desk, the constantly full trashcan, a couple feet and then the sink. And I've pretty much described every single time we left the room. They left every day to go to work, from around six AM til often after six PM, and I was in the room, by myself. When they got off work, I still really couldn't leave. We didn't have a car to go anywhere and besides, what if the on duty person realised they hadn't seen me walk up? What if they asked questions? This puts me in this same confined and often smoke-filled space for twenty four hours a day. This entire time.
Ok? You got all that?
So back to the story. The first couple days of trying to get the car are pure fail. The station is only open during the times boyfriend is at work and neither he nor any of his fellow medics are able to get the time to come get me. He calls in a couple favors and is guaranteed to have some time to take me and we can get my car. It's Wednesday. It's been 17 days. Finally, I'll be able to go home! He's going to pay any fines that have accumulated and we'll be in the clear. Except, wait. If I'm not supposed to be here and it's an all male barracks, how in the world are we going to march my little ass downstairs in the middle of a work day to get to the office we need to go to?
This is where this shit gets a little I Love Lucy. Because we're desperate. We try, at first, to put one of his spare uniforms on me. Yeah.... not so much. I'm five feet tall and around this time probably weighed around 120 lbs. Boyfriend is about six foot two (had to look this up, I'd swear he was taller) and has been lifting with a kettlebell, well, for a while at this point. Even with the military's only two sizes available to us (too small and too large), this is not passable. Then we try his PT shorts and a plain ARMY shirt with a baseball cap. I'm still too obviously a girl and besides, my little ballet flats cannot pass for PT gear at any point, ever. Then I tried to fit into his rucksack, since I halfway curl up in there while I sleep under the bed anyway. We also tried to put me in his footlocker, thinking they could carry it down and put it in the car and then I could just pop out like a rabbit out of a hat once we were no longer within view of the building. All of these seemed like the logical courses of action. I cannot overemphasize that. We really, seriously were planning to put me into what was basically a giant laundry bag backpack and hide me from people who weren't supposed to know I was there so we could go to get my car out of impound because I was an idiot who didn't move it/was too sick to think about anything but the pain and left it at a gas station for over ten days.
Long story short, this didn't end up happening. We had to give up. What happened finally was that it was a four day weekend and although both my then-boyfriend and his roommate drew duty on Friday and Saturday, we were finally driven home on Sunday night by a friend of his. I remember sitting in the cramped backseat of that car, curled up in a tiny ball so that everyone and their bags could fit and feeling like I was on my way to rehab. I arrived home about 15 lbs lighter, shaky, emotionally overwrought and the smell of Marlboro Light smoke did not come out of my hair for about two weeks. The first place I went (besides home) was to my best friend's apartment, where I burst into tears because it smelled like girls and was clean and bright. And I wish I could say that I never went back to that barracks room. But I did. And while that was not the last time I went through his phone, nor was it the last time I found exactly what I was looking for, the rest of that particular relationship circus is just gonna have to be another story
Oh and for the record, I did get my car back. My mother and I went the next week, spoke to some guy for fifteen minutes and when he found out there was a female General coming to inspect the property, he let us skip the majority of the process and cut right to the part where I get my car back. Also? Since it was on post and had a current registration and insurance, the total fines we had to pay added up to absolutely nothing. Uh huh. My car was in the impound lot for like more than two weeks and I didn't have to pay a dime. Plus, I had my mom with me to pony up the dough for new tires when I had a blowout on the highway on the way back.
Cause yeah... that definitely happened. But I got my car back, nobody had to pay for it and I evenutally left that relationship. So all's well that ends... well, all's well that ends, anyway.
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