My Story: Part 4

Some chapters don’t slowly unravel; they combust. In this continuation of her story, Heather walks us into the rooms where survival dictated every decision: a courtroom where she is named the non-custodial parent, a relationship built on alcohol and chaos, and a Valentine’s Day confrontation that ends with the words, “You have no monetary value,” and a line she will never uncross. The details are unfiltered. Drunken rages, punched walls, holidays hijacked by betrayal, and the quiet humiliation of trying to hold a family together while losing pieces of herself. What follows is not a dramatic rescue. It’s a woman packing in the dark, leaving the keys behind, and choosing to walk away without knowing where she’ll land.

Rock bottom arrives with a smell she can’t ignore. The rental she moves into, filthy and overwhelmed with the aftermath of neglect, becomes a physical mirror of the life she has been living. Heather scrubs floors on her hands and knees, repaints walls, and rebuilds a home from the inside out while finishing hair school, paying child support, and learning how to stand on her own two feet for the first time. Just as stability begins to take root, a lingering illness turns into a cancer scare. Blood counts plummet. Fear moves in. And alongside her mother, she does what healing often requires: she pushes for answers. The diagnosis—parvovirus reactivation triggering aplastic anemia becomes proof that advocacy is strength, and that resilience isn’t loud; it’s steady.

Then something unexpected happens. A late-night scroll, a playful wink on an old dating site, and a string of 4 a.m. emails filled with honesty instead of performance. A phone call full of laughter. A sunrise at the boardwalk. A hug in a driveway that feels like home in a way nothing else ever has. Not a rescue. Not a fairy tale. A partnership built on the woman she fought to become.

This episode threads one truth through every high and low: freedom isn’t a single decision. It’s a daily practice. It’s walking out when shame says stay. It’s rebuilding when the mess feels overwhelming. It’s trusting that even after four marriages, heartbreak, illness, and loss, you are still worthy of safe love and a steady life.

If parts of your story still feel too heavy to speak aloud, let this one sit beside you. Share it with someone who needs courage. Leave a review of the moment that stayed with you. Your words might be the reminder someone else is waiting for.

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Transcript

The Weight Of Telling My Story

Leaving My Husband And Losing Custody

Shame, Survival, And A New Relationship

Divorce, Custody Ruling, And Grief

Dating An Alcoholic Unravels

Heather 0:02

Hello friends and welcome back to the Free Advantage. I'm your host, Heather Davis, and I want to invite you into a new season of real stories, real recovery, and real freedom. This show has always been about self-discovery, authenticity, and recovering a life of freedom. And this year, we are taking that journey together in a deeper way. You're gonna hear raw, honest conversations with people walking this path in real time. Stories of growth, healing, purpose, and becoming whole. You'll also hear from me as I reflect on these themes that rise from the stories, answer your questions, and offer small, meaningful takeaways that you can carry back into your week. This is not just a podcast you listen to. It's a place you belong where you are part of the conversation. Welcome back, everyone. I'm your host, Heather Davis. Ah, well, as I come back this week, I it's been a little bit of a challenge for me already in just recording this. I've had to start and stop several times. Um, some due to my laptop dying in the middle of recording, some due to a lot of distractions in the house this today where I was just unable to get it recorded and quiet. And and the last distraction here was something happened and the camera went off, and and some of it is just the emotional toll that it's taking. You know, I am coming into part four of my story. If you have been listening in any this month, you know that I am sharing my own personal life story, and it's been a lot, it's been a lot of ups and downs in the story, and it's been a lot of ups and downs for me emotionally, just being able to share it. And I literally just not five minutes ago had another moment where I stopped because the camera went off, and I just, you know, my husband came in here and I'm I'm I'm I'm having kind of this existential like epiphany of it all. And you know, it it's hard, you know. I said, you know, uh, you know, God, people must be really getting tired of hearing this story already. Because I sure am. And though that is not the sentiment that I am getting from you guys at all, it is definitely one I'm feeling like I'm tired of hearing myself talk about it. And I think, you know, I've lived it. You you guys don't know it, so it's all fresh and new, but for me, it's just it's a lot. And I really want to say I never really thought that coming on here and sharing it it would be the way that it is for me. I uh the things that I've experienced, the things that I have come to understand about myself, um, new healing that it's brought me, um, but also other things that it's drug up that I realize I'm not quite through yet. Now I'm having to go back and work through those things. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't expecting it. And with me being who I am and the job that I have, you would think that I would expect that. I would ex I would thoroughly, you know, tell somebody else that that is normal to be expected and we would be preparing for things like that. But when it comes to myself, I'm just like out here in La Land going, oh yeah, it's not a big deal. And but it is a big deal. You know, I want to acknowledge that even for myself, that it is a big deal for me to be sharing this story and to sharing it with the um the amount of vulnerability that I am and the the depth and the wrongness that I am sharing it. Um I know that it's a lot for people to hear and take. So thank you for listening again. Thank you for coming back week after week and and letting me be vulnerable and letting me share. But I also want you to know that I I'm sharing for a lot of reasons. And it isn't just to just share my story and get it out there, but as the show has taken a turn into the format in which I'm doing it now, wanting to invite people on to share their stories, wanting people to really out their experience and be able to share their experience of their raw, honest transformations in life and the things that we've walked through. It's very important for me, for you to know that I am also that way. I am also a person who has walked and endured and struggled through a lot of things, and that I have learned a lot from my experiences and that it has brought me to a much, much different place than I used to be. And I've found my identity and I've learned how to walk authentically and I've learned to find freedom through it and in it. And while it is not or was not always a pretty story, it's not always a pretty story now. And you know, what I was just I was just telling Sean, my husband, I was like, you know, sometimes when I sit down to record, it feels like everything has comes against me. The noise, people talking, people interrupting, um, the phone ringing, the you know, you know, the technology just not working. How about that? The internet going down, you know, uh, it doesn't the lighting doesn't work. Like I'm in a space now where the lighting is kind of dark. So, you know, it just, you know, you at some point you just have to go, it is what it is, and I'm just gonna do it, come hell or high water. And and today has been one of those days. And it just feels like this last time, it just feels like distraction after distraction today. And this last time, I'm just like, okay, I can't do this anymore. I'm like, I I'm I'm listening to my story, and I think that a lot of it is I'm emotionally overrun by my own story. I mean, I think before this take, I had recorded up to probably 30 minutes, and then I'm just like, oh, and it stops, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, I can't even with my own self right now. But I said, I told Sean, I said, you know, a couple of years back I read the Bible all the way through, start to finish. And I was like, you know, anybody who um is into the Bible and wants to read the Bible, I highly recommend reading the Bible straight through all the way through. And I didn't read it chronologically, I just read it from start to finish. But there was something about that that it taught me when I did that. And you start to see things differently. You start to see patterns show up, you start to see um how and why people did the things that they did. There are things that you see that you would otherwise miss if you weren't looking at the story from the beginning to the end. And as I have, and I said it's, and I'm finding it to be that way a lot with my own story, listening to it back from beginning to end, straight through, without, you know, taking like the conversations that you would have with somebody, you know, where you're either doing an interview or you're just having conversations with people you know, or or you're strangers you don't know, and you're sharing bits and pieces here and there, right? You're hearing this little story or that little story. But it's different when you hear the whole picture and you see it from the beginning to the end. You're like, oh, you know, I start to see different things that come out. You know, I I told I literally just told him, I said, you know, I got on the struggle bus when my parents divorced, and I feel like I never got off. I feel like I never got off. You know, and the space that we find ourselves in right now, you know, my husband had lost his job a couple of years ago, and recouping from that has been one of our life's greatest challenges. We have lost our home, we have lost vehicles, we have lost almost all of our belongings. You know, we're we've been living in the family's home in these two tiny bedrooms. You know, you lose what all this autonomy that you have. And here I am almost 50 years old, and this is the space I'm in. Like that's that is a hard pill to swallow. And as I go back and I look at my life, there's a lot of things that I I kind of take a step back and I'm like, oh great, you know, nothing's changed with you. You're still in the same boat you've always been, right? Like you you don't have money, you don't have a job to take care of yourself, you don't have these things. And while I do have those things, I do have a job. I am the CEO of my own company. I have coaching clients, I have a podcast that I'm running. I still don't feel that same. Well, I don't I I mean, I I honestly I still feel the same I've always felt. I still feel like that same little girl who's been running around like a chicken with her head cut off, just trying to fucking survive. Pardon my language, but that is how it feels. And some days it's really overwhelming. And I just wanted to share that because I've been really struggling getting this recording out, and it's I don't just want to come on here and be like, okay, here's my story. I want to kind of express how I feel about I'm going through it too, because these things are coming up for me. You know, I go back and I look at my husband, I'm like, well, I'm just in the same boat, right? Like I met you, and now you have always taken care of me, and I just went from one man to another man and you, and now, you know, how was it ever different? And while it is wildly different, it is extremely different, the situation that I'm in with my husband. Now, when I look back, the trauma still sits in there deep. And it wants me to think and it wants me to believe that the same place I was 20 years ago is the same place I still am now, just because sometimes life situations may mimic one another. And the truth is that that is not true. Just because some things look alike don't mean that they are alike. And it doesn't mean that they are the same. And the path I'm on now and the reasons on why and which I am on it are vastly different from the life that I had led before. And that's something that not only do I want to share and tell you, if you ever feel that way, but that I have to remind myself. I have to remind myself because I I'm like just like you. I get down on myself, I get uh I get overwhelmed with myself and with life and with my past and with the traumas and uh and in the and the work, the inner work, the the healing, the processing, the the reflection. It can all be a lot. And it's hard. And while it is hard, it is extremely worth it. It is extremely important, and it's an important thing I think that we we need to do. And um yeah, so before I got started, I just really felt like I needed to share that. So one, it helps me to get out how I'm um I'm truly feeling in the moments of of my sharing and of what I'm experiencing while doing this, and for you who may be feeling that same very thing in your own life. Um so thank you. Thank you for coming back, thank you for letting me share, thank you for letting me be vulnerable as we step into part four of my story. I'm gonna share this part a little bit differently, not exactly like from little story to little story like I have been. Um I'll share I'm gonna share because it was it was a different time. Things happened very differently in this way, but so after I left my last husband, he had gone off and found himself work. And he had both of my children staying with him at the time. Now this was a the beginning of another very I mean they're all life-altering, but this was another the beginning of another huge life-altering change in my life. And it was another huge hole in my heart that began to grow over a very long period of time, and there are parts of that that I am still working on and healing today. So I found it very difficult to believe and understand that I was in a situation where I found myself losing a home, losing my car, losing my husband, and losing my children. I had been with this man, married him, had a child with him, raising this family with him, who was incapable of working, who was incapable of being responsible, and was incapable of doing incapable of doing the things that he needed to do for us and for his family. And when I had gotten to the point where it was too much and I could no longer do it, I was tired of the evictions, I was tired of moving, I was tired of losing our car, I was tired of pawning everything that I owned. I decided, you know, and living in the dark and not knowing what was coming next, I had decided that this was it and this was enough. And that I was done. And when I did that, when I did that, um he promptly moves out, finds himself an apartment, finds himself a job, finds himself a vehicle, and starts doing exactly what he needs to do and what he should have been doing all along. And because of this situation I was in, I had nowhere else for my kids to go because it couldn't be with me because I had no home to live in. They stayed with him at the time, both of them. And though Austin was not his, he took him and he took care of him you know, all the same while I was trying to figure out what in the hell I was going to do. And yeah. And the despair of it became worse and worse and worse. You know, my my dad was putting me into this state of constant shame, um, you know, about who I was and what I was doing, who who what my decisions were, what got me here, why I was here, you know, it's all my fault. Everything I'm done has just been bad, um, you know, and that I didn't deserve to be a mother. And all of those things really started settling in. Like maybe I didn't deserve to be a mother. Maybe I didn't deserve to have my children. Here I am in this situation, and I'm both of my kids aren't even with me anymore. So, you know, I don't have anywhere to live. I lost my kids. I don't have a vehicle, I don't have a job, you know. You know, maybe what everybody's telling me, or at least what some people are telling me, is right. So I just, you know, I let it happen. I um, you know, I remember coming going to my mom and you know, and she's not telling me these things, but at the same time, like she's just kind of living her own life. And and I'm kind of just along for the ride with that as much as I can be. I'm trying to stay at her house a little bit because I'm staying in this apartment that I literally have just a you know a handful of weeks to be out of because I'm getting evicted out of that place, not knowing where I'm going or where I'm gonna put any of my belongings. Um, you know, and you know, I guess next the next decision to be made was that I need I need to find another man. And I I always go back down that road where I run from man to man, right? Because men for me meant survival. They had something that I didn't, or at least most men had something I didn't, and that was a job. They had a skill, a capability, they had, they worked, they were able to provide for themselves. Um, and that was just something that I wasn't able to do. And when I ended up with this last guy, he couldn't do that, right? And so I had to walk away from that situation because it was only making mine way worse. Um, you know, love at that point doesn't matter if you can't eat. And so, you know, I remember my mom had invited me to a sh her and my stepdad were volunteer firefighters and they were having a family day at their firehouse, and they had invited me to go. And so I went and I hung out, and there was this, you know, cute firefighter there, and he was kind of flirting with me. And when he had left for the day, he had slipped me his phone number. And um then at the same time, like it's not all just this plot to survive, right? Like you think that I'm telling you that because that's the ultimate subconscious plan in my head somewhere of survival, because that's what us humans do, right? It's all about survival. And it wasn't like I was setting out with this intention in order to do these things, but you know, I'm also I'm young, I'm in my early 20s, I want to be with somebody, I, you know, I want to have fun, I want to do these things too. So it's it's both things, you know, and both things can be true at the same time. And so this guy was nice, he was cute, he was flirting with me, and I was like, hey, you know, I want to I want to go out with him. And we went out, we had a great time, and we started hanging out. And before you know it, we're dating and we're in a relationship, and he's helping me pack all of my stuff up and put it in a storage unit, and I'm end up staying with him, you know. At that point in my mind, things progressed the way that, you know, I I'm glad that they did because I had nowhere else to go. And um, our relationship, you know, it was I mean, I it wasn't tumultuous at the time. And the first the first year that we were together, it was fun. We had a lot of fun. He had a lot of great friends, he had a huge French group friends group, and they went out all the time and they had a they had fun, they went to concerts, they they they did all kinds of things. Like we went to the beach and they had parties, and and while I was doing that, I was kind of living this like not single because I was dating him or we were together, we were living together, but I I was free of the responsibility of my children because they were not with me. They were with my ex-husband and they were far away. So when he had moved back to college station, college station is like three hours from where I live, three and a half hours from where I live. So I I didn't have a vehicle at the time, so I wasn't able to like go and get them and and and pick them up or visit them. So and he wasn't bringing them to me. And the best I could do was have a phone call conversation with him. Um, and that's what I did. Um and I did that for a long time. Um probably for the f like I know I had mentioned last week for the first like that first year, that whole year, it was I saw them, I think I saw them around like I think I saw them one maybe one time, and then uh like fall time and then again at Christmas. And that was it was just not I did not see them a lot of times until later on that next year, and that had happened, that started happening in May, and then I saw them that fall and at Christmas. So it'd been quite a few months before I'd actually got to see them. But I'm dating this guy, and and while it was a good time, I still suffered from this constant conviction within me that I'm not a good mother, and everything about the situation just proved to me that I wasn't. Like I couldn't see them, I couldn't get to them, I couldn't afford to see them and get to them. Um, I'm having a phone call conversation, and here I am, just living my life out here with this guy, going out every night, having a good time, and I felt like the world's largest piece of shit, to be honest. Like, how can you even enjoy yourself when your kids don't even have your their mom around? And on top of me shaming my own self and accepting the shame from other people, you know, telling me about who I am and what I deserve. And it didn't get easier as I went because I'm dating this guy, and I shortly realize though we're having a good time, I'm like, we're having a good time every single night. Now I don't drink. I I never did. I'm not a drinker, I don't like to drink, I don't like to feel inebriated uh in any way. But I would always go and hang out with him. Like I drank my Dr. Pepper and I smoked my cigarettes. That's that's the most I ever did. And you know, I always became the designated driver because of that. And it was nice to have me around for them because they were all drinking all the time. And it was all the time, every single night. I would find myself literally at the bar after he got off work and we would close it down every single night. And after a couple of months, you know, it seemed like it was a good time and we were having fun until I realized, like, oh, this is every night. Like, this isn't we're not just doing this during the summer. This is his way of life. And he would he started getting so drunk all the time that he would have to have people put him in the car and or in the back. I remember them throwing him in the back of his own truck bed, driving his truck home, and then carrying him, carrying him up the stairs and putting him in bed. I remember having to undress him. I remember him getting up one night in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and he thought the closet was the bathroom and then peeing on the floor in the closet. I remember having to recant the events to him every night or every morning because he didn't remember what happened. I remember where I started becoming an inconvenience in the relationship where unless we were hanging out at the bar or, you know, we were going to bed together at night, I was becoming an inconvenience. So to hang out with me, do things with me specifically, he started pawning me off of one of his really good friends. He was like, Oh, well, he'll come with you. Why don't you go to the store with her? Why don't you go grocery shopping with her? Why don't you do that? And his friend was really, really, really nice to oblige me in that way. And we became like best friends. And we did everything together. We went to the movies together. We went shopping together. We did all those things together. We would watch cool, fun movies that I wanted to see together because my boyfriend wasn't interested in doing any of those. So, like this poor guy, he's my best friend, but he's basically like, we're the ones in a relationship without any of the benefits. And then my boyfriend is getting all the benefits without any of the real relationship. It was just, it was a crazy time. And, you know, I I didn't think a whole lot of it because I was so internally in turmoil. Like these were the least of my problems, you know, and that really was the truth of it. Um, and we were together for a while, and then eventually he lived in a house with roommates, and eventually, like we moved out into our own place. And when we did that, I was kind of really excited because I'm like, okay, now I can like I'm seeing a path forward. We're in our own place. I can get my children back because that was the arrangement. Like my ex-husband and I is like, kids can stay with you until you get your own place and get you get settled, and then the kids can come back, right? So here I am. That had happened in May. We finally, like a year later, it was literally in May, a year later, that we finally got our own place and we got our own apartment. And I'm like, yes, now's the time. And of course, nothing's changed. Like, he's still out going to bars every night, except now I'm working. I've got a job at a title firm and I'm making decent money. So I'm able to like help take care of the apartment and do things like that. So I'm like, I'm in a much better space. I finally have another car. And so I'm like, okay, the kids can come back. And so I call and I have a conversation with my ex-husband. And we're in the process still of getting divorced because I I didn't, I couldn't afford a lawyer. So I was basically filing a petition, writing the petition, and doing all of these things by myself. So I didn't have a lawyer doing it, and he wasn't going to do it for me. He didn't want to get divorced. He didn't want any of that. I think he felt like if he held out long enough that I would eventually come back. But I wasn't, no way was that ever gonna happen. Like, there's no way. I I'm not, for me, I'm not that person. Once I'm in a situation and you have gone past my limit and I've had to leave, we're I'm not going back. I'm not going back. Like I am a person that will stay until until I am already like over it, over leaving you already. Like I once I leave, I've already grieved the relationship before I left. A hundred percent. Like, so once that happened, and then thinking about the kind of trauma that it caused me, there I'm not ever putting myself back into that situation with the same person, at least with the same person again. So he was holding out as far as a lawyer, so I ended up having to do it all myself. So right before our divorce is finalized, I'm like talking to him about the kids coming home, and you know, he was all great and fine with Austin coming back because he didn't have a choice. Austin is not his biological child, he has no legal rights to him, and so he really had no choice, but Austin came back, but then he informed me that Andrew would not be coming back and that he was not gonna let Andrew come home. And I really lost control when that happened. I went off the deep end with him. I remember the screaming, the crying, the desperation of of trying to convince him, like not understanding why he would like you lied to me. Um and had I had known, had I had really believed that he would have kept Andrew from me, I never would have let Andrew go like with him and or and and Austin. I never would have let them stay with him. I trusted him. And it's kind of funny because in my mind, I think, why would I trust him? I couldn't trust you to keep the lights on. Why would I trust you with something else so important? But I just never saw him being that or doing that in my mind. But we fought and we fought all the way to the courthouse. I remember when we went in for the finalization, I was at the point where there was nothing else I could do. I had no lawyer, I had no money, I really had no leg to stand on. And when I stood before this judge and they were telling me that we would have joint custody, but that he would have primary custody of Andrew. And I remember when he told me that I had that I would have to pay child support. And it was like I was just flooded into a flashback of the whole situation I had when I gave my um second son up for adoption. And when the court had brought had given me this, giving me, had given excuse me, I can't talk, had given me the rights back and I had to sign him over again to his dad, it was either give up my rights or pay child support. So when I was sitting in the courtroom now and they're telling me I have to pay child support, I'm like having a huge PTSD moment and trying not to like pass out or have just a massive panic attack in the middle of the courtroom because I'm thinking I'm not in any better position. I still don't have enough money to pay child support, and I'm thinking, what happens if I can't? Then I'm gonna go to jail. And that's something that can very easily happen here in Texas, and it happens all the time. So I'm very nervous, but knowing that there is no way in hell I could give up my rights. There is no way I'm doing that again. I can't lose another one. And at this point, because Andrew isn't living with me, I already feel like I've lost him. Another, another child, another battle. And the divorce was final, and they told me that I would have to pay child support, and my ex-husband was awarded uh primary custodian. So it you know, when I left, I was excited to be divorced and free from him, but at the same time devastated because I just walked out of there and felt like my whole world had crumbled because I lost I lost Andrew. And while I you know, I did what every non-custodial parent does, I got him every other weekend. We swapped holidays, you know. And you know, thinking back about it, um I got to spend time with Andrew later on, actually just a couple of years ago, where he came and he lived with me for a while. And I remember when we celebrated his birthday, it was a very overwhelming feeling because when I lost Andrew then Andrew was three and I never spent a birthday with him until he turned twenty one.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

And so I lost a lot of time with him, but um it was another just really huge devastating time of my life when excuse me.

Heather 31:50

And there's definitely still a lot of things that I still have to work through with that situation. Um anyway, it was over. You know, the divorce was over, and life was just kind of set in stone from the way that it would be from then until now. And I remember going back home and just living my life. You know, what else do you do? What else do you do? You just keep moving on the best way you know how. And I threw a lot of focus in on Austin because Austin was home and he was back, and I was so excited to have him. And I remember just going home and hugging him, and every single day just being so grateful that I had him there.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

And um, you know, and then dealing with the fact that not at the time not even realizing like that I've separated him from his brother. There was just a lot of things that when you get yourself into certain situations, you don't really realize the ramifications until it's too late. And when it comes to my boys, it is the one thing that I regret the most because they truly are my heart and soul in God's gift to me. And so many things that I wish I could go back and redo, but can't.

Violence Escalates And I Plan Escape

The Clean Break And Legal Closure

Reaching Out To The Best Friend

Heather 33:25

So from that time on things were m moving in the direction that they should when you have a kid. You're like, he's going to school, he's doing the things, excuse me, he's doing the things. I'm getting Andrew on the weekends now, or at least every other weekend, and you know, trying to play the happy family when I do have them all together. And the in-betweens with the man I was with at the time just got worse. His his partying, to say the least, was less partying than it was just drinking. He was turns out to be a severe alcoholic, and it was an uphill losing battle. When we moved in together, we stopped hanging out with his friends as much, and so we weren't all going out and hanging out partying together anymore. And of course, I'm living the mom life now, and he's kind of trying to like step into that stepdad role, and it just wasn't working. It just was not working. Um, he got to where he would not come home after work anymore, and I couldn't find him. I remember getting in my truck, driving around, trying to find him, excuse me, literally going from bar to bar to figure out where and which one he was at, and then finding out that he was hanging out with a lot of women, or he'd be hanging out with girls and catching him, and then then came this huge thing. He had a wedding to go to up north with a friend, and I was supposed to be going with him. And when he went and bought the ticket, the plane tickets, and I was prepping to go on this trip with him the night before the trip, he informed me that I was not going, and that he did not buy me a ticket, and that he was going by himself, and it turned into this huge fight, turned into this huge argument. And uh, like I said at the time, I had been he had been kind of pawing me off on his his really good friend or his best friend, and um so I was like, I called him and I'm like, I don't understand. Did you know about this? And he was like, Yeah, I didn't think you were going at all because he had said that he was going by himself. And so I was trying to figure out why what this was happening, and then my boyfriend at the time was just doing all kinds of like real shady things, and I'm like, What is going on? Well, come to find out he had been having a lot of conversations with one of his ex and sending emails back and forth, and so he was hoping to be able to like see her. Turns out um he didn't end up seeing her, but on this trip, he had met a woman on the airplane who he started a relationship with, and they were it was a long distance relationship, and then they had been planning to meet and each other later on, just a wild thing. He he was a really bad cheater and he was a really bad alcoholic, and I dealt with that for a very long time with him. But even in the midst of all of this stuff, like I didn't I didn't leave him damn well knowing that I should have. And but I he was kind of like I know that a lot of women will get into these relationships with men, but that everybody's kind of got that one, right? You've got that one that you just can't let go of. You you you feel like you're just head over heels in love with them, and that no matter what, no matter how bad they are, like you're you're gonna make it work, and you just don't want to lose them. And for me, he was that person, and it was extremely toxic the entire time, but I was just like we fought incessantly. He was running around, he was drinking all the time, and then he was getting to where he was drunk all the time, all the time that I would see him. He would go to the bar and drink, he would come home drunk, he would go to bed drunk, and then he would get up and go to work, and it would just start the process all over again every day. And eventually it led to the point where one weekend he just came home from work, packed all of his stuff, and he left. And he said he was going to his parents' for the weekend, which is was about three hours away from where we lived, and I was just like, okay, what does this mean? And then he calls while he's there and like he breaks up with me on the phone. And at this point, I'm just like, okay, screw it. Like, I know you're probably not etraparents. I know you're probably with some woman or some girl, and I'm just done. I'm done fighting it. And I remember calling um his best friend, which is now my best friend, over and being like, what do I do? And he was like, You just and he just kept encouraging me. He's like, You need to let him go. Like, he's not good for you. He has been cheating on you. You know, he he was telling me the things that like you know, he should have been telling me. And, you know, I started finding a lot of solace in him because I didn't have anybody else. There was nobody else. I had no personal friends whatsoever. And my mom is doing her own thing, and it's just me. It's just me and Austin at this point. And um, I remember it was getting close to Christmas time, but he had spent the weekend out, whatever, he finally comes home, and it was just like nothing had ever happened. So, like, he says he's broken up with me, and then he just shows up like nothing's happened. And because he did do that, and he just acted like everything was fine, like he comes home, he hugs me. We we have a little conversation, and he was just like, you know, I just needed to get away and see my parents, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I'm like, okay, things are back to normal. And then literally, like, we started talking about getting married. I let's be honest, I started talking about getting married. I'm like, okay, well, like, all right, so I need to start pushing to get married so I can kind of lock him down because he's been cheating on me. He I think he's wanna, and I don't want to lose him. So in my mind, the best way to do this is like we need to go ahead and get married. And we had talked about it previously before, but we're going on being together two years now. And and so he was like, okay, so like he went. I remember we went down and bought a ring, and he kind of he didn't really propose to me. Like he he bought the ring in the store and then proposed to me in the store, and it wasn't like a romantic thing or anything, but it was just like that. And I remember we called our friend to come meet us, like our best friend. He came and met us at a restaurant after we had got the ring, and we wanted to surprise him and tell him. And I remember when we did the look on his face, he was in shock and disbelief and in dismay. And he was just like, Congratulations. And I remember my my fiance then at the time got up and went to the bathroom, and then my friend was just like, What are you doing? What are you doing? And I'm like, What do you mean? Like, we're gonna get married, this is gonna help, this is gonna fix everything. And he was like, This is the worst decision that you could be making. But I was like, No, this is it, this is gonna be good. And and it wasn't, you know, I knew it, my friend knew it, my fiance definitely knew it because he knew who he was, he knew his plans. And this was right, this was right around Christmas. So right before Christmas happened, my fiance does the same thing all over again. He gets mad, he goes to work, he comes home, he's like, I'm out. And this time he leaves for a week. He goes to his family's house. Now, this is like literally right before Christmas, like the week before Christmas, because I have to do Christmas shopping, I have to go like wrap presents and do all of this because Andrew's fixing to come home for Christmas, and um, he just disappears on me. So he's not there to do any of that stuff. Like I'm just kind of left to it all by myself. And basically, my friend is supposed to be obviously the stand-in boyfriend for me, or stand-in fiance now, I guess, for me, while he's gone and he's checked out because he wants to get into a fight and play like he's mad and like he's gonna break up with me so he can go do whatever it is that he was doing, and more than likely he was seeing another woman at the time. But I remember I was at work and I remember calling my friend and being so upset about it all again, and he was on the phone and we were talking, and then he kind of got it started acting a little strange, and he was like, Well, I really, I really need to talk to you about something important, and I'm like, Okay, well, what is it? And I'm thinking, oh God, he's gonna tell me something else that I don't know about about my fiance. And so I was like, Okay, well, just tell me what it is. And he was like, Well, I talked to my friend, because he's talking to his friend at work, and he's like, Well, he told me that I should really tell you, and I'm like, Okay, well, spill it because I'm I need I need to know what's going on. And I remember I was on my work, on my way to work when we were talking about this, and he I'm driving down the road, and he then confesses his undying love for me and tells me that he's in love with me and that he wants to be with me, and that it's killing him to watch me be with my fiance knowing what he's doing to me behind my back. And I was like, What do you want me to do with that? I I didn't know what to do with that. I I was so one astounded, you would think that I wouldn't be, but I was. I was shocked, I couldn't believe he said that, I couldn't believe he told me that, and I didn't know what to do with it because now I'm like, the only person that I have excuse me, the only person that I can trust, the only person that I have to run to is him, and now you're telling me that you're in love with me, and now I feel like I'm gonna lose that, lose my my best friend now too. And it was it was it was such a weird thing. And we I I I I told him that I just really needed to think and I didn't know what to say, and then I remember he called me later while I was at work that day, and he was like, you know, I don't want you to worry about it. I I knew I shouldn't have said anything, you know, can things just go back to the way they were? And I was like, no. Things can't go back to the way they were. Like, I it's not something that I can unknow now. And but he's like, nothing has to change, you know. I'm just like, let's and he just kept saying, Let's just forget about it. And I was like, uh, okay. And we proceeded to go on as normal. Like my fiance never came back. He was still gone. He had been gone definitely about five or six days at this point. And I was like, okay, well, I gotta go Christmas shopping. So my friend and I went Christmas shopping. He helped me wrap gifts. He ended up spending Christmas Eve with me at my parents' house and Christmas Day because my fiance never came home. He stayed through Christmas with his family or wherever he was. And he wasn't calling me. He wasn't um answering my phone calls. Um, he wasn't answering my texts, he wasn't doing any of that. And I was like, okay, well, he's gone for good now, right? He's not coming home. And I had been in contact with another one of my fiance's friends, and he was kind of feeding me information that, yeah, basically, you know, he's not coming back. And so I was like, okay. And I remember um I remember um the once Andrew went back home with uh his dad, I had let Austin go with them to visit um through like right through New Year's time um before school started back, just for the weekend. And I went and stayed at uh my best friend's house. Him and I were there, and we had gone out and had dinner with his family, and then we went back to his apartment and I was hanging out on the couch, and I remember laying there, texting my fiance over and over and over and over again, trying to get a response, and nothing happening. No response, no nothing. And it was like, all right, that's it. And I remember getting up from the couch, going into my friend's bedroom and being like, Can I sleep in here with you? And he was like, Yeah. So I remember just crawling in the bed and laying with him and just being like in my head, like, why is this happening to me? Like, why am I I chose this guy and now he's been cheating on me for probably the whole time we've been together. You know, here I am with this guy, my best friend. He's always been here for me. He always does everything with me. He's been basically my pseudo boyfriend for the past two years. We've become so tight and best friends, and he loves me. And here I am in here trying to get a guy who's been cheating on me to fall in love with me and to stay with me and want to be with me. And here I am right here with a man who does love me. Like that is that is the argument I'm having in my head as I'm laying in his bed trying to go to sleep. And of course, we're laying there, and of course, before you know it, we end up having sex. I mean, it seems like that would be the most natural thing for any something to happen, right? So that is what I did, and it was a very weird experience because I was just laying there and neither one of us said a word. It just happened, and then I remember afterwards I got up and I went back and I laid on the couch and I went to sleep. And funny enough, when I woke up the next morning, my fiance had texted me. He goes, Where are you at? And I remember this immediate fear coming over me. I said, What do you mean, where am I at? I'm like, Where are you at? I've been texting you for like weeks now. Like, where are you? He's like, I'm at home, where are you? And immediately I was like, I didn't want to tell him where I was. I'm not gonna tell him I'm over here. And and I'm like, I'll be home. I I lied, I told him I was at my mom's, I said, I'll be home soon. And I remember my friend waking up, and then I mean, after we've just done this, and he's probably like, Oh, because he's in love with me, and we and I've done this, and he's sure that we're broken up from my other relationship. And I remember getting up and I was scrambling to get all my things together, and I'm like, I gotta go. And he was like, Well, where are you going? I'm going home. I said, I said, he called me. He's home, he's looking for me. And he was like, Well, what do you mean? What does this mean? And I'm like, I gotta go home. And I remember just leaving what a weird time. And so I go home and my fiance's there. And he, as soon as I come in, he hugs me, acting like he's missed me. He's like, I love you so much, you know, and he just wants to hang out with me. He wants to go, he wants to go out to eat, and I remember going out to lunch and sitting there and and looking at him and and I being the one who felt ashamed. I remember feeling like I could still feel and smell this other man on me, and I'm sitting at lunch with my fiance while he's looking at me, thinking that everything's okay, and that, and that I'm this loyal person who doesn't who who would never cheat on him or do any of these things. And I was the one walking around feeling ashamed. And I think back now about how much that literally pisses me off. That I had been giving to this man for two years who was cheating and running around on me behind my back, who was coming home drunk every single night, completely disrespecting me, completely disrespecting my son, disrespecting our home, leaving unannounced, going off with other women while I knew it, not showing up for weeks, disappearing during major holidays, while I had children at home, expecting him to be around. And then I'm the one sitting there feeling ashamed. While he was quite content with who he was and all the things that he was doing.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

And that was right at New Year's. And we got married on the 27th of that month.

A Fast Marriage And Faster Collapse

The Accident, Neglect, And Final Straw

Valentine’s Night: Choosing To Leave

The Cat House And Hitting Bottom

Heather 51:02

I want I always when I get to these little spots in my story, I want to I want to be able to say that that's the time, that's the moment I woke up, that's the moment that I realized, that's the moment that I knew I needed to change, that's the moment that changed everything for me. But it it wasn't. It wasn't. It was me feeling that shame for myself and then trying to hide it and then just in my mind keep moving forward. And I devastated my best friend. He walked away from that comp completely ruined. It ruined our com our complete relationship was compl was over. It was just completely over. And he did spend some time like begging me to please don't do this, please don't do this, please don't do this. And then I remember I didn't tell anybody that we got married, and when we did, I had text him like like a surprise, like, hey, we're married. And it was that was just it was the straw that broke the camel's back with my friend, and it was done, and uh he never really spoke to me again after that. And you know, life continued on and it didn't get better, it things got worse, it escalated with an alcoholic, it always does. Um he ended up eventually, you know, there weren't a lot of things that happened. He just he finished graduating from college. Um, we up and moved um to out in Hallettesville, that's where his family lived. So we moved out there, and when we did, we moved into a home that they had on they had a like 300 acres, and we moved into this house. This house was built in 1914. It has no heat, it has no air, and when the wind blows, all the curtains blow. So it was a very like shack of a house, and that's where we moved into. And that was the beginning of the end. I once we moved out there, it was kind of like a really cool thing for Austin. Austin loves being in the country, he thought it was really fun and he enjoyed it, which I'm really, really grateful that he enjoyed his time there because once we got out there, my my now husband, you know, there was not a lot. He was kind of like back in his his like stomping grounds. So it was full on. And there was nothing, we're out in the middle of nowhere. So there is really again, I'm out in the middle of nowhere, but there was nothing else for him to really do but drink. He worked and he drank. He would go to work, he would drink beer on the way home from work. I remember he started getting to where he was hiding it all the time, which is funny because I don't know why alcoholics try to hide it when there's no way they're actually hiding it. One, you're drunk. Two, I can smell it. And he would stop and get like a 12-pack on the way home while he was driving home because his drive from work was like about a 45-minute drive, and he would drink all the way home. And then he would stop when he got in town to where we were, he would pick up like a six-pack and then he would bring it home. And then he would finish that off. And you would be surprised at the amount of alcohol that somebody could put away. And it was every single day. We fought incessantly while we lived there. Um, then the fights would get escalated where it would become physical, where he would start pushing me around and he would start like really getting in my face. I started calling his parents and trying to talk to them, and everybody was definitely against me in this space. They were like, he's not an alcoholic. There's, you know, they did not want him with me anyway. They didn't want him, I was like damaged goods because I had already been married and I'd already had children, and they did not want him marrying me. So when he did, it was kind of like nothing I said mattered. I mean, he could have been like wildly intoxicated in front of them, and they would have just said that that's not true. And I remember his dad having a conversation and sitting down with me because I had yelled at my husband because he was so drunk and he was yelling at Austin, and I was like, You're not gonna treat him that way. We're I'm not dealing with this like it was a whole thing. And then his dad sat down with me and told me how I was emasculating him and that that's why he did these things, and that, you know, I I needed to learn how to be a good wife and all of these things. And I just remember thinking, my God, everybody out here is so misled in what the truth is. And I started getting to where I I couldn't sleep with him in the bed because he stunks so bad from alcohol. And I was the whole last year we were together, I slept on the couch, and he would come home drunk, and he would be so drunk that he would just go on like these little rants and like rages without even being involved in an argument. I don't know if anybody else out there has that kind of experience with alcoholics, but he would just come home and just be angry, and he would just walk through and he would just be making noise and slamming things down, and I remember he would just lay down and he would just punch the wall over and over and over again. And I mean, I remember one night he came home and he broke a bunch of windows and then it just passed out, and you know, and it it was like it was just weird. It was just weird. I am very grateful though at the time that like the most physical altercations that we got into was him just kind of shoving me and pushing me, um, that he didn't hit me, and I'm I'm so grateful and that God protected me in that situation that it didn't escalate to him being physically um abusive to me. It was all verbal, mental, and emotional for sure. And he was kind of like a tyrant in the house when he was drunk, which was every day. And sometimes it would be like where I couldn't sleep. He would be up till five o'clock at the night, just he'd be singing or just talking and and punching the wall and all of this stuff until eventually he wore down and he just passed out. He would get up in the middle of the night and he would just like get his shotgun and like I'm going hog hunting. And I remember it got so bad, you know, and I hate saying it, I hate admitting it, but the truth is it got so bad that I would lay and just plot his demise. You know, I was like, I didn't know how to get out. I'm like, here I am, how do I get out of this again? Um, and I would just like pray, like maybe he'll just, you know, he would crawl up in trees, drunk as a skunk, trying to, you know, hunt hogs. And I would just pray, well, maybe he'll just fall out of the tree and the hogs will lead him, you know. Like, and a couple of times it almost happened. Like he was so stupid and he was so drunk all the time that he would get himself in these situations where he almost killed himself over and over and over again, let alone get behind the wheel of a car. And so, you know, I started to realize that once my mind started getting homicidal, I was like, okay, it's time to go. It's time to go. And during this whole period of time that we're living together there, I had started hair school. So, like, this is my story at home. And then here's my actual life. So I had started hair school in Victoria, Texas. So I'm going to school. I'm going to hair school. We're driving back and forth every day, about 45 minutes away, because we share a car. Austin's in school. I, you know, I get Andrew every other weekend and I'm traveling back and forth doing that. And then I'm putting up with this. And it and it started to escalate where I would like, I couldn't handle him. I would go hang out at my mom's. So it just, it's a whole long story where it is with my mom. But they used to live in in Houston. And then when I lived out in Hallettesville, they ended up moving out to Hallettesville close to where we were for some unknown reason on why they did that. They had lost their home and Hurricane Ike. And so they decided to move out there to be on land closer to where I was. And um, so I remember going over there to get away from him, and then he showed up drunk and then started beating down like the carport uh at my mom and stepdad's house, and then that turned into a whole thing. So, like these are these are the kind of places that we're escalating to, and it all leads up to Christmas time. Now, with him, stuff always started to happen around the holidays. So, um, like the big blow-ups. I remember my entire family had come, and this was in 2009. No, 2008. I'm sorry. This happened in 2008, Christmas of 2008. My whole family had come to my mom's, and we were having Christmas there. And he was we all stayed at the house, and he was so bad the entire time. He was drinking so bad. Like, and I know this is such a weird thing to say, but like I remember we were all laying, and there's a lot of people like sharing room on the floors and in different bedrooms. There was a bunch of kids there, whatever, and he had passed out on the floor. And um, I'm sorry if my camera's shaking because I'm the my situation I'm in right here is a little unstable, but um he had passed out and he had been drinking so bad that he started passing gas and he basically was like stinking up the whole area there, and everybody just kept looking at me and they're just like, what does it matter? And matter with him, and I'm just like, I'm so I was so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. And there had been several incidents where like we had been playing a game, and then he starts provoking me, and then like I was sitting there, like he had kept like we were playing cards, and he grabbed the cards out of my hand. It was just uh and he got into it with my brother and my sister-in-law. So there was just all these things, and it by the by the end of Christmas time, I was like, I'm done. I was thoroughly over this relationship, and I'm like, I I don't care what it takes, I'm not doing this anymore. And I remember we went back, it was New Year's Day, we went back to the house from my mom's, and on the second, he had to be back at work. I had called my stepdad and I said, I am taking him to work and I am coming home and I am packing my stuff and I am moving out. And my stepdad was like, Okay, you can come stay here with us because I mean he already he already knew the situation. It was already escalating to this point anyway. And I remember acting like everything was normal. I drove him to work that morning. He thought I was going to school, and instead I turned around and I came back home. Um, my stepdad met me, I packed up everything I owned in that house, and we moved everything out that day. And my stepdad drove me back into where he was working, and I left the keys in the car, and I parked the car at his job, and then we left. And when he had texted me because he well, he out he didn't text me, so he texted me later. But the thing is he comes out of work and I'm usually parked in the parking lot waiting for him. And so when he came out to the parking lot, the car was there, but I wasn't there. And he had texted me and he's like, Well, where are you? And I'm like, I'm at home. And that's all I said. And so he, I'm like, Keys are in the car. So he gets in the car and he comes home, and when he comes home, of course, he sees that I'm not there and that everything that you know we own is pretty much gone because everything that we had was mine. So he is he's losing it. I remember he um I know that by the time he had gotten home, he was already drunk. So I knew that when he got there, it was going to escalate fast. And it did. The phone calls came and they did not stop. And then the text message started, and it was all night long. I had eventually had to turn my phone off because I was not responding to him at all. I'm like, nope, this is done. It is over. Um he the funny thing is that he did not show up at my parents' house, which is what we expected him to do. I'm like, if I'm not answering the phone, he's gonna show up because I know he knows where I'm at, but he never did show up. And I think that that is a really weird thing. I think that's one of the oddest things about it is that he never showed up. And then, you know, of course, at the same time, I think not so odd. But hundreds of phone calls, hundreds of text messages, and tons and tons and tons of voicemails. And the second day, um, it there was nothing after that. And that morning that I dropped him off at work was the last time I ever saw him. We never saw each other again after that. I um my stepdad helped me get a lawyer and helped me file for divorce. And because we did not share children, it happened very quickly, and he did not show up. We thought he was going to show up to the uh to the hearing um for the finalization, and he did not. He waived his right to do it. So that morning that I had dropped him off at work on you know January 2nd was the last time I ever saw him. And boy, can I say I have never been happier to be rid of somebody in my life. The constant torment that he put me through between the time that we started dating until the time that we were divorced was just unhinged for me. I mean, the drinking, there's so many things that I like, I just can't even remember, like falling asleep with his gun and and you know, that he would threaten me, he was cheating on me, he was, you know, you know, the threats of not knowing if he was going to come after me, if he was gonna hit me, if he was gonna hurt me. Um, the one thing that I, you know, in the moment that I didn't worry about was was Austin. Thank God. Like I think Austin that God just kind of kept Austin in this little bubble during that time where my my husband at the time never really every interaction that he really had with Austin was a good one. And for that I'm very thankful. But it was just it was it was those moments that were were slowly, and I will say slowly because you would think that would be the last time that I got myself into a situation, but it wasn't. Um, I was slowly getting myself to a place where eventually I was gonna come to my end. You know how everybody's like, you gotta hit your rock bottom, or you gotta, you know, for me, I was I was well on my way, but apparently my bottom was really far down. There and let's see, that was that was in the beginning of January. I think we were literally divorced like two weeks later. It happened very fast. Um, the only thing that did happen at during like as I say during that time that he always had these good interactions with Austin was that after the divorce was finalized, he tried to go pick Austin up from school. And luckily, luckily that did not happen. Like the the principal didn't let them because I had told them, I'm like, look, we're divorced. He's not supposed to be seeing Austin, he's not supposed to be picking him up. And when he tried to pick him up, they notified me and I had to move schools. I took Austin out of school and moved him into another. And then the next week after that, his sister tried to pick Austin up from school. And then I had to file like um these injunctions against him and his sister. And then because I was like, or you know, I was then I started to get afraid that they were gonna kidnap Austin. And because of that, um, his father got involved because somehow he had put his sister now involved in all of this and getting her in trouble. And so once his dad got involved, it was everything else after that stopped, and I never heard from him again. So come February, he was out of my life completely. And he never called anymore. There were no more voicemails, there were no more text messages, there was no more nothing. It was just over. And um, you know, I'm just I was so just like, ugh, I was so done and just ready to move on with my life after that situation. And I'm trying to finish hair school, um, get graduated so I can get to work. Like, and that's my mind. I'm like, I have been, I have been going from man to man to man, just trying to survive because I don't have any education. I don't have any skills of my own to make enough money to support myself and to support my kids. So I'm like hair school, I'm like, I'm finally living my dream, I'm finally getting there, I'm almost done with school. And um at the time I had, you know, I'm sitting around in the evening times and being by myself a lot, um, hanging out just because my mom and dad are doing their thing and Austin's sleeping um, you know, at night. And I'm thinking, okay, well then, you know, I'm like, oh, well, you know, I'll just text some friends. And I basically was just texting my stepsister at the time, which was um she lived in Houston, and I eventually reached out to my um best friend, my ex-best friend, the one that um, you know, after he had kind of confessed his love for me and all the things that happened between us, and once I had gotten married to my husband, he had um he had just had nothing to do with me. After that, I remember texting him and seeing if he would speak to me. I said, I I I said, I left. I finally left, and I'd love to have a conversation, you know. Do you want to talk? And he said yes. And so I remember calling him and talking to him and uh just about all the ins and outs of everything that had happened. Um, you know, the things that he already knew that it took me a long time to not know, but to catch up to in my mind that this is not the way of life that I wanted to live. And so we started talking a lot, you know, and him, you know, me asking for forgiveness for the things that had happened and the things that I did and you know, and how I know that it hurt him. And um I remember I told him I was gonna come into Houston to see my stepsister, and I would love to see him if he was willing to see me. And so I think he was apprehensive about it. Um, we had all gone to dinner together, like uh my sister and some of her friends, and I was like, well, we're going to eat dinner over here if you would like to join us. And I remember um thinking that he wasn't gonna show up, but he did. He did show up. And um we kind of started seeing each other a little bit um when I would come in to town. Um, I would probably come into Houston every every weekend and like visit um just to get out of the house and hang out with my sister and like she would help watch Austin for me because all she had kids and they were the same age as Austin. So they would all hang out and play. And I remember I would go and I would see my friend, and before you know it, I'm in another relationship. And you know, I feel like this would surprise people, but it shouldn't, and I know it probably doesn't, but here I was in another relationship. I'm literally not just weeks divorced and out of this super toxic relationship, but I'm now in another relationship with this man, which to me it was kind of like I was just kind of like in this swoop, right? Like I'm out I was out of this one and right into this one in my mind, is like where I probably should have been to begin with. And so I'm like, I think maybe I'm finally in my mind reconciling that that I'm doing what I I probably should have been doing in the first place. And long story short, on that, um we were together for that was in February, we started seeing each other, and we were married by September. And we were done by next February. And I know that if you have listened in to any of the previous stories that there I had, I know I had had an episode um last year where I had talked about the cat house. If anybody remembers that or has heard about it, um, you know, I'll post the episode number so you can go back and listen to that, but I'll tell you a little bit about how that got had that happened here. But so him and I, it was a very short and fast uh relationship. Um, yeah, a lot happened during that time. I'm trying to recover from a divorce and all of that toxic things that happened to me, which, you know, obviously if we know anything, I'm not really processing or, you know, healing from many a thing before I jump into something else. I got into a really bad car accident um during that time while we were together. And uh the woman who one of the closest people in my life to me was my mama, and she passed away during that time. And so I was dealing with a lot of things, and our relationship was not good from the beginning, and it wasn't something that I realized. I think I thought that he had forgiven me um for the things that had happened with us before previously, but he hadn't. And I think that he got into the relationship with me as a kind of way to find resolve or revenge because he we it was good in the beginning, and then as months progressed, he started getting like biting, and he got started getting a little more snide and and then a little more spiteful towards me, and then he would like kind of hold things against me, and there would be things that happened, and he would treat me very poorly, and so he basically was extremely abusive during those few months that we were together. And when we got married, we went down to the justice of the peace and got married, and I remember now listen, this would be my fifth marriage, no fourth marriage. I'm sorry, it's been so many times. How should I ever remember them all? This would be my fourth marriage, and having been married a lot of times already, I have no matter the circumstances around any of it, I have never walked into a situation before I said I do and felt the pure anxiety of that moment going run. Like I I just wanted to run. I didn't feel like I mean I wanted to bail, and it took everything in me to stay in that courtroom and say yes. And immediately after that, immediately after we got married, we get out to the car, and his first thing that he says to me is like, you can't tell anyone. And I was like, What do you mean I can't tell anyone? He's like, You can't tell anyone. I'm not telling my parents, you're not telling your parents. He did not want anyone to know that we were married. Red flag, much? Now, obviously, I did not abide by that. I told my family that I was married, and then I told them that he did not want anybody to know. I'm not gonna not tell anybody. I don't know why we were lying or hiding for any reason. But we were. And in fact, none of his family even knew that we were married until after we got divorced. So, you know, there was it was it was kind of those things that he was always using to hurt me. And I I realized that towards the end of our relationship, that it was like that. And he was not nice to my children. He was he was not good to Austin or to Andrew. And once like he really started settling into that, I was like, I I don't know what I'm going to do. And I remember at the towards the end of our relationship, I had been in a really bad car accident. And I ended up in the hospital and I had injured my neck very badly, and the top vertebrae of my neck got sh basically shoved into my brainstem. And I was meeting him for lunch. I was on my way to meet him for lunch when I got into the accident. And I remember being in my car calling him, saying, I've been in a really bad accident. I said, I'm waiting here for the ambulance. So he he comes and finds me where I'm at, and the ambulance gets there, and they're loading me into the ambulance to go to the hospital, and he just looks over and he's like, Well, who's gonna deal with this car? Because I got to get back to work. And then he just went back to work and left me there. I remember going to the hospital and laying in that hospital room all by myself. Nobody was there. Nobody knew I was hurt, nobody knew I was in an accident but him. He didn't call anybody, he didn't call any of my family. He just went back to work like it was a regular day. And I I didn't even know what I was gonna do. I didn't know what was happening. I laid there for hours before I knew what was actually wrong with me. And then they had, you know, they were like, well, we'd like to do surgery eventually. And I was like, no, I'm not having surgery on my neck. Like I knew I knew not to get surgery on my neck as long as I knew that it I wasn't going, like I wasn't in life or death situation. But I was very unwell. And I remember calling him when I got out of the hospital, saying, like, are you coming to pick me up? And he had already gotten off work and went home. He didn't ever come back up to the hospital and he didn't ever call me. And I remember sitting there calling my stepsister to please come get me from the hospital, and she even and I'm waiting, just sitting out on the sidewalk, and she ended up coming there and picking me up and taking me home, and then us getting into this huge argument about that and how he's upset because now he's gonna have to help pay to fix my car, and it became about all this stuff, and then I had to call my mom and tell them what happened, and then my mom comes down and then she like stays with me trying to help me recoup and take care of me because I was down. Like I by the time I got home, and the next day I woke up, I couldn't move. And um, and it was it was a whole thing. It was the the accident was a whole thing, and then having to deal with the police department and the way that it was all handled was it took a couple of months for that to happen. And that was well, not even a couple of months. It took probably took it was in January when it happened, it was right after Christmas. And my mom, it was like right the beginning of February. My mom had been there for about a month and then she goes back, and then um my husband at the time was traveling for work and he was gone. And it was um during he was gone the very beginning of February, and it was like right around Valentine's Day because he was supposed to be coming home. And he had come home on Valentine's Day. Now, this was a very big day. This was this was the day that like changed everything. So he comes home. Austin and I are are there, and it's Valentine's Day. He's already been a little weird with me on the phone while he's been gone, because like like not taking my calls or not calling me or you know, those kinds of things. So it's he's very hot and cold, and I'm just you know, whatever at this point because I'm recouping from an accident and I really don't have the energy for it all. But he comes home and I remember thinking that, oh, maybe he would buy me flowers. Like, you know, in my mind, you know, I think back now, I'm like, I would never think that now. But then I was still in that mode thinking, oh, maybe he would would, you know, do something nice for me, but he didn't do anything. And when he came in, he didn't have anything, and I didn't say anything about it, but he came in and he was like, hey, he didn't tell me hello, like he said hey, he didn't give me a hug, he didn't kiss me hello, and I haven't seen him in like two weeks. But he um I remember something had happened. I don't know if maybe he didn't realize it was Valentine's Day or something, but I remember he came out and he threw 20 bucks at me and he said, Hey, it's Valentine's Day, go buy yourself some flowers. And I was like, What? And then it just like I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, right? And he was like, no. So I remember getting really upset and I left the house and I went out, I bought myself a pack of cigarettes, and I came back and I was standing outside on the porch smoking them, and I was like, I can't believe this is happening. Like, what is going on? And because in my mind, I haven't done anything to him. That nothing has happened that would like lead him to be treating me this way. And I remember after I finished my cigarette, I walked inside and he's sitting on the couch watching television on his computer. And I just kept like kind of pacing around. And I was like, hey, we need to talk. And he was like, talk about what? There's nothing to talk about. And I'm like, yeah, there is like that this isn't good. Like, we need to talk about our relationship. Like, this just isn't good. And he got very irate very quickly. And I remember like the way like the kitchen is this kind of circle, and it's like living room, kit, so it's like living room, kitchen, and then there's the hallway. So it kind of you can make a circle around. And I was standing in the hallway, doorway to the kitchen, and he was on the couch, and I'm looking at him this way, and he's like, he jumps up, slams his laptop down, and he looks at me, and he comes around the corner around the kitchen and he meets me in the doorway. He comes around the long way and he gets down in my face. Now, we've been arguing just about having a conversation about a relationship, so nothing else is really transpired about this, but he looks down at me and he's literally he's six four, so he's very tall. I'm a very tiny man, or I'm a very tiny person, he's a very large man. He's probably like 6'4, 285, something like that. And he looks down at me and he's in my face and he's yelling at me, and he goes, you know what? He goes, It's very and this is hard because this is really stuck with me. He goes, you know what? You have no monetary value. You're a worthless piece of shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:55

Get the fuck out of my house. And I immediately just step back and I just went into full-blown action mode.

Finishing School And Rebuilding

A Health Scare And A Mystery Solved

Heather 1:22:10

I remember grabbing, because I have my cell phone, I remember grabbing my phone and reaching to call my mom with it, and he goes to grab it out of my hand, and I snatch it back, and he was like, That's my phone. But because he pays, because he pays for it, right? And I was like, No, that's my phone. And I remember shoving it down in my shirt, and I'm like, come get it. And he was just like, fuck it, whatever. And I remember he remember just goes and lays back down on the couch like nothing ever happened. And I remember picking up my phone, calling my mom, and they were actually having dinner, and of course, I told her what happened and what he said to me. And I I hear my stepdad screaming on the other end of the phone. And he's like, put him on the phone, put him on the phone. And I was like, hey, my dad wants to talk to you, and he was like, he was just ignoring me like I didn't exist, and I'm like, he won't answer me, he's not gonna come to the phone. And my stepdad was like, put him on speaker or put me on speaker. So I put him on speaker, and my stepdad just unleashes on him, unleashes on him, and basically tells him like what a man he isn't, and how dare he, it was a whole lot of things that he said, but basically, like my stepdad was coming to get me, and that he better not be in that house when he got there. And so I hung up and I'm like, I know that you're not listening and you don't want to hear this. And I'm like, but I'm telling you right now, you better not be here when he gets here. And he knew my stepdad, and my stepdad was a little bit volatile, so he definitely did not want to be there, especially with his irate as he was, because I can't imagine what he would have done. Um, I finally convinced him that he needed to be gone when he got there. So he leaves and he go, he packs a bag and he goes to his friend's house. And I immediately start packing everything that I can because, like, again, all of a sudden, in a flash, in the blink of an eye, I'm moving out. Now, and mind you, I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing because I have nowhere to go and it's at nighttime. So I'm waiting on my dad to get here, my stepdad to get here, and my mom, and they're like three hours away. So I'm waiting on them to get there, packing as much of stuff. My dad calls prepping me. He's like, pack everything, get everything ready. I want everything prepped by the time I get there. And he he's making arrangements to try to find somewhere for me to be. And so he calls his um nephew, and they're talking back and forth because he lives in town there not too far from where I'm at. And luckily, my nephew's there's a house across the street from him that had come available to rent. And he called the guy because he know he's friends with him, so he called him and he was like, Hey, he's like, I have my um, you know, my uncle's daughter needs help, you know, is could basically could I rent it? And so he was like, Look, he goes, the house isn't cleaned up yet. He's like, but if she's willing to clean the house, she can go ahead and move in. And they called me and asked me if I was willing to do that. And I'm like, yes, I'm willing to do anything, you know, and that I could be in this house. And the rent, he was gonna give it to me for like 500 bucks. And I'm like, okay, like that's my dad's, my stepdad was like, Yeah, I'll help you do whatever, you know, we got to do. Um, you know, we'll help you. And I was like, okay, then that's what I'm gonna do. So now I'm prepping to get everything packed up and moved all in like this nighttime, this one night. My husband starts calling me and he's trying to apologize to me on the phone because I guess now he's having like a moment of clarity as he's driving to his friend's house and he's like, oh no, what have I done? Like, and I'm like, I'm leaving, I'm moving out, they're coming to get me. And he was like, No, please don't move out. So now he starts begging me to stay. And I'm like, the car has left the building. We are done. Like, it is over, and we start being we start going back and forth over the phone for the next two hours while my dad or my stepdad and my mom are on their way. And he's now crying on the phone, begging me not to leave. Let me just come back. I'll talk to them, I'll make it right, or whatever. And I'm like, please do not come back here. I can I cannot imagine the hell that would unleash if you were here when he gets here. Like, please do not do that. Like, it's over. I'm leaving. Like that you cannot take back what you said to me. You cannot take back the the past year of what has happened, the hiding our marriage, the the the verbal and the emotional and mental abuse you've been putting me through. Like, I'm done. You're right. I need to get out of your house. And so I did. My dad got there and we moved. And I remember um driving over to the house where I was gonna stay in. And they they told me that it was dirty, that the tenant had moved out, and that he hadn't had time to clean it up. And if I could clean it, I could stay there. And I remember my my stepdad's nephew calling me and he was like, Hey, I'm just gonna warn you, it's really bad. And I said, Okay. And he goes, you know, it it smells bad. And he was like, but you can clean it up, it's not gonna be a big, you know, that big deal. I just wanted to warn you how you know that it was it was pretty rough. And I was like, okay, it's look, I'm thinking it's fine. I there's nothing I can't clean. And if any of you have heard the episode, you know. Um, but I remember when we pulled up. And if you've if you if I've ever hit hit a low in my life, tonight was the night. It was Valentine's Day of 2010. And instead of getting flowers, I got a letter box. We pulled up to this house and I get out of the car, and you could literally smell the house from the street. The smell is truly indescribable. The lady or the previous tenant who had lived there had been there for about five years. She was a drug addict and she lived there with her like teenage daughter, and they she basically never left the house. And she basically opened her windows and fed as many stray cats as she could, and she let them come in and out of her house through these windows all the time. And so when I went in the house, the entire house is a litter box. There is cat shit from one end of that house to the other. It is all over the floor. It is all over the walls. It is up the walls. It is on the ceiling. It is in every track of the window. Like the window tracks, when you lift it up, it's it's cut it's everywhere. It is everywhere. And some of it had and a lot of it is like dried, like it has been there between the pea and and the poop, all over this house. That I was standing there and looking around and going, This is where I live with my son. There was a room in the back of the house that was clean, and that was where I'm assuming the daughter stayed because it was the only part of the house that was clean. I remember I we took our mattress in there, and that is where Austin and I stayed together in that room, and I woke up that like we got everything there, like in a U-Haul where it stayed until I cleaned up the rest of the house. I remember we um I woke up the next morning, we cleaned out the garage so we could put all of my stuff in the garage, and that's where it like staged until everything else was clean. And uh, oh man. And I remember every night and every day getting up and working my fingers to the bone cleaning this house. My parents had stayed at my um uncle's house one night um while I had cleaned up the other rooms. There were like three bedrooms, so I cleaned up the room we were in was clean, and then I cleaned up another room so they could stay in that room. And they came and they stayed and helped me for a couple of days, like move my stuff in, and then my stepdad left and my mom stayed. And when my mom stayed, she helped me do like very little things, but I remember being on my hands and my knees, cleaning and scrubbing, just weeping in disbelief of my life and the situation that I was in. And it was so difficult because I was like this one, it was so utterly disgusting, just filthy, nasty, disgusting. And being in this mess, like not only what I realized was like the house was mimicking my real life. This was the life that I was living. My life was a mess. It was just shit. I had created this box of shit that I was living in, and now I am it's physically manifesting in my life. And I am here having to clean it up on my hands and knees and up to my eyeballs in it. And I, you know, I'm glad at the time that my mom did not help. I'm glad that she did not get down there and help me do this, which, you know, I I probably wouldn't have either. I it was something that I I personally needed to go through. And mind you, I had been in hair school back in when I was living in Hallettesville with my then the previous marriage, and then I had transferred to Houston when I moved back and then was in this marriage with this guy, and I still wasn't done. And because I was going part-time, and then I had to switch to nights. So I was cleaning this house during the day, going to school at night, still recovering from this car accident and realizing that I was having some like heart issues during this time. And really, I think it was just stress. Let's be clear like uh the amount of stress I was under was insurmountable. And then trying to pick up the pieces of my life. And there I was. There I was, living in utter disarray, an utter mess. You know, the the animal control was coming, like the cats was a real deal. The animal control was coming daily with traps and catching cats. And I think they estimated like almost 150 cats that they had caught during this time, from the time the lady had moved out until the time they finally caught the last of them when I was there. Like it was rough. It was rough. I had honestly personally had never seen anything like it. Um, but I did get the whole home cleaned up. I got the whole house cleaned up and the it and I repainted, I refinished the floors. Like I did all of this at this round house so I could stay there. And I was like, I'm gonna make this this my home. I mean, this is the first place that I have lived by myself with Austin that was mine since before I had had Andrew. And at this time, Andrew was like eight years old. So it had been a minute. It had been a long time. And I finished school. I finished school. I graduated hair school in May, and I when I finished school, I had already had a job lined up at this nice little hair salon that lives right down the street from where I lived. Austin was in school. I mean, I was starting to work, I was starting to make money, I was doing really, really well. I'm in my own place. I'm now like working through the divorce with my with my husband at this time, and I'm just I'm finally in this space where I feel like I got my head screwed on right. I I mean, I remember thinking, that's it. I'm not something has to change. I hit that moment where I finally realized what my mama had been talking about when she had kept saying, How many times are you gonna go around this mountain? And I remember, I remember being in my garage folding clothes, thinking about her and thinking about her saying that to me all the time and thinking, like, this is the last time. This is the last time I'm not doing it anymore. I'm done. I am done.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:42

I finally understood what she meant when she said that to me.

Late-Night Winks And Chance Emails

Sunrise First Date And Finding Home

Hope, Freedom, And What’s Next

Heather 1:35:51

So pulling myself out of that situation, getting myself through this house, getting myself out of the relationship with this man and thinking, I'm not going back, I'm never going to be mistreated ever again. I will never be with anybody ever again if this is how it's gonna be. I am better off alone than I am in these kinds of relationships. And so I focused on myself, I focused on Austin, I focused on spending the time that I had with Andrew, and I focused on, you know, creating this home that we now had. And I was doing so well. You know, my mom actually ended up, as sad as it is, is my mom ended up um going through a divorce with my stepdad at the time, which was also really hard for me because he had done so much to help me. He had helped take care of me, he had helped provide for me, and he was still doing it. Even through and after their divorce, he was there for me. And I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful for him and that time that I had him in my life and and what he did for me during that time. He did a lot for me that my own parents weren't doing, and I was very grateful for that. And if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have gotten back on my feet. I wouldn't have ever finished hair school. I wouldn't have ever been able to honestly continue to pay my child support. I would have ended up in jail, which he helped me take care of that. He helped me finish school and helped me do the things that I needed to do to get me there. He was that kind of support for me during that time, and I will be forever grateful to him for that. But I was doing it. I was at my new job and I'm working, and everything was going great. And come around, I'm gonna say September time, I had caught a cold and I wasn't feeling very well, and I'd just been like, oh man, and it was just like a cold I couldn't beat. I'd had it for like two weeks, and I was thinking, Jesus, I'm gonna have to finally go to the doctor. And I think I had this really bad sinus infection, and I'm like, obviously, I'm gonna need antibiotics. So I remember going to the doctor and being just so overdone with this, and them coming in, and of course, you know, they do the proverbial, they need to test your blood to make sure you don't, you know, if you have an infection or whatever's going on. And I remember coming back after that into the the the room where they're giving me my results, and as good as everything's going, I'm sitting there and I'm staring in in the face of this doctor who looks at me and he looks at me in my face and he's like, We think you have cancer. I really wish that at the time he had one prepped me and made sure I wasn't alone when he said those words to me. But he did. And I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know why he was saying this. I mean, I feel bad, but I didn't feel that bad. I didn't feel cancer bad. I don't know what cancer feels like, but I'm like, it doesn't feel like I'm dying. But he was like, when they took my blood, I had very low blood, and there were some other indicators in my in in the blood work at the time that that led him to believe that I possibly had cancer. And so he said, um, you need to immediately go ahead and start making, he made these arrangements and referrals to um the Texas Cancer Center and all of these things. And I remember getting in my car and calling my mom, going, I'm just crying as I'm driving down the road, and she's like, please just pull over and be safe and you know, until you can you can get back on the road or just calm down. But I told her, I'm like, they think I have cancer, and I I I did not know how to handle it, and then I walked back into my home, and I remember setting my purse down and just staring at my mom, just blinking, and thinking, after all this, after all I've been through, after all I've endured, after all I've survived, it has all come down to this. Getting sick is not anything anybody wants to hear. It's not anything that anybody wants to think about having or to endure. And the next few months led me not few months, I mean it's not a few months, it was the next few weeks. It was a very short-lived period of time. The next few weeks led me down doctors and blood work and them trying to figure out what was going on and what was wrong with me. Um, the truth was is I ended up not having cancer, which thank God, I'm so grateful that that's not what it was. But they didn't know what it was and they couldn't figure it out. They were testing me for lead poisoning, they were testing me for all they were had I been poisoned by something, there was there, they didn't know what was going on, but there was a lot of weird things going on with my blood that they couldn't understand. And every time I would go back and get blood, like I was dropping blood very quickly. And so what started happening is I was having an aplastic crisis. So aplastic anemia is where the body just starts dumping blood very quickly and it sends you into a crisis. So where you're like they don't, they can't stop it, and then you have to get a transfusion. And I was not quite at transfusion level, was almost there, and they were just trying to figure out what it was to see if they could stop it. And my mom and I were at home and we were online trying to do research ourselves, like you mean, you have to be your own advocate when it comes to your medical health. And so we were doing all of these things. And I remember late one night, my mom and I were both online, and she was sitting in the living room on her laptop, and then she calls in and she's like, Hey. And so this is part of the story that if you've been listening in this month, you will hear me come back to this. I told you y'all would hear about it more in the future, and this we have arrived to that time. My mom had said, Hey, you did tell me you had parvo, right? One time. And I was in the kitchen and I was like, Yeah, I did. I had it when I was pregnant, um, you know, with my second son, and that's when I had been recovering from the surgery from that. I had also been recovering from that virus. And I said, Yeah. And she goes, I think that's what you have. And I'm like, what? And she's like, Yeah. So she starts reading all of this information about it, and it talks about how it can cause an aplastic anemia crisis, that it can cause how it causes the bone marrow to stop producing blood. And these were things that I had not really been aware of previously when I had it. But I we were reading about now, and she's like, I want them to test you for it. I think you have it. So we scheduled a doctor's appointment to go back and have me tested. We go in, we're having a conversation. My mom's like, I want you to test her for this. The doctor immediately does not want to test me. He's like, No, there's no way she has that. That's a childhood disease. And I try to explain to him that I've had it before when I was pregnant. And he's like, Well, you know, the hem-hawing and they're trying to explain it. And my mom was like, You're going to test her for this. Like, we're not leaving here until you do. And he didn't want to because he was 100% sure. But he finally relents and he tests me for it. We wait for it to come back. And when the results come back, it was positive. Now we had an answer. And though we had the answer, guess what? There's nothing you can do about it because it's a virus. So basically, you just maintain symptoms. And because I was so ill and my blood had gotten so bad at the time, they sent me home and they're like quarantine in your house because they didn't want me catching something else, like a flu or a cold, because I had already caught the cold and could turn into a bad sinus infection, which I'd been struggling to get rid of. But as I go back home, I'm starting to have all of these more symptoms where like I couldn't stay awake. I would be sitting there. It was almost like I was narcoleptic. I would just be sitting there and just pass out. And then I would just take a nap and then wake back up. And my sleep schedule was completely off. I would really just when I was asleep and awake, it was just kind of a toss-up. It was just whatever was kind of happening to me. And so that went on that all of September, all of October, and into the beginning of November, I started feeling a little bit better. Um I my blood had finally started coming back, and I was starting to like not be so exhausted and trying to get back up and get out in the world. But during this time, I had been out of work so much that I had lost my job at the hair salon. So um I was looking at trying to re-enter the workforce and figure out where I was gonna go and when I was gonna be able to go back, where I could actually, though I was better, I could not physically stand for 12 and 14 hours doing hair every day. So, you know, my mom was living with me at the time and helping me out so I was able to be able to stay home and recover. But that's kind of where I ended up. And, you know, one late night, my mom and I are trying to have fun and um goofing off and playing around on the internet. And we were watching this television uh show and this commercial came on. And I don't know how many of you listening in remember, but there was a dating apps, not apps, because we didn't have them, but dating websites were a really big deal back then. It was like very popular, like eHarmony and um uh they had Christian Mingle.com, and there was another one that was a really big one. Like I can't even think of it now, but um uh they had this other one called Zeusk.com and it was it's just a dating website, and we kept seeing the ads for it. We were up, it was probably like two o'clock in the morning, and we were laughing and making fun of the people on there, and we're like, because it just seems like there's crazy people out there. And my mom had looked over and she goes, I wonder what kind of people live around us who are on here. And she's like, Let's get on there and look. So we were just looking around, and you didn't, it's free to be on there, so you don't have to pay anything. And we were looking and just honestly, we were just kind of being really judgy and making fun of the people that were these guys that we had saw men who were living around us and thinking, oh guys, uh, you know, like ew, no, you know, just kind of having fun about it. And I remember coming across this guy and thinking, oh, well, he's a cute, but he wasn't he didn't live really close to me. But um, so back then, like when you liked it, like somebody's picture, they called it winking. So I like you wink at them, and I had like winked at this one guy's picture or whatever, and um he was really cute. And then I just moved on, and I think I probably liked two other pictures from two other guys or whatever, and then you know, that was it. My mom and I we called it a day and moved on. And uh a couple of days later, I had received a message from one of the guys that had I had you know winked at. And you so back then you gotta you it was free to be on there, but you gotta you gotta pay to play. So um you it was like 20 bucks a month, but you if somebody messaged you, you could not read the message unless you paid, right? So then you could have the access to, you know, send messages back and forth. And so I was like, well, I mean, this cute guy messaged me, but I have no idea what it says. And my mom's like, well, aren't you gonna like do something? And I was like, no, I can't because I can't see it. You know, I can't, I don't have the money to pay for it. And she was like, Well, I'll pay, I'll pay for the 20 bucks so we can see what it says. So, um, so she did. And um, we got on there, and this guy was like, Hey, you know, like he, you know, I saw you winked at me, he liked my profile and he would like to get to know me, blah, blah, blah. And he gave me like his email address, but it was in like um, it was like encrypted, like a little code or like a little coded message. It was like um, gave me the the tag of his email, and it was like at the um most popular um search engine or whatever. And I was like, okay. But though though he had messaged me and he was really cute, I was, I mean, I'm just in a space. One, I had been so sick, and and two, I was just really turned off. I when I left my ex-husband in February and I moved into this house, I was just like, I'm not doing this again. Just not. And so I really was not looking forward to getting back in any type of relationship, and I was not interested in anything serious whatsoever. So I really just kind of ignored it. And about three weeks or so later, I had gotten a notification that I had gotten another message, and it was the same guy. And he had said, and mind you, my mom, my mom had decided to go skydiving during this time. Um, and her and I had been out at the field getting ready to skydive, and but the weather had was just really was not cooperating that day. So we had been out there like exhilarating, right? You're like adrenaline's pumping, you know. I'm not doing it, but she's doing it. But I was like freaking out for her the whole day, and then she didn't get to jump. So we came home, and then like I was just like wide awake after that, and I had gotten in those. notification about a message he had messaged me. And I uh I read it and it was just like, hey, I don't know if you're still around, but um if if you're interested, I'm still interested. I want to talk to you. And then he was like if you if you didn't know like he thought maybe I couldn't guess the email like what the search engine was or whatever. So he he said if you don't know it's Google. And I was like I laughed and I thought yeah I'm not stupid. I know that you're talking about Gmail but um you know I was like all right so it was about four in the morning and I was like I'm gonna respond to this guy. You know, he thinks that he's like whatever and that I may not be as smart as as he thinks that I should be so I wrote him this email and it was literally just a string of random thoughts that I was having at four o'clock in the morning and basically inform it was like a string of information about myself. And I just wrote all of this random stuff and it was just like you know I'm being an insomniac tonight you know I and I was basically just literally this I love Dr. Peffer right I drink way more than I probably should you know I've been you know married four times and I have three different children by three different men like I just wrote all of these random things right I wrote like I have this favorite ring that I wear on my hand and Fridays are my favorite day. Like it was just all of this stuff just about me. It was a whole very long email with just random stuff and you know at the very end I you know I signed it and I said you know I these are my random thoughts at four o'clock in the morning and I said I don't know um never written an email like this before and I don't know why I feel so inclined to do so for you but here you go and by nine o'clock the next morning I had another email back exactly the same way and I wrote him back again the exact same way with more information and then I got another one back exactly the same way and he was just like girl you're something else and so he and he just kept it on. So the next email I sent was an email with just a list of questions. So I back then I had a whole list of questions that if I would ask these questions about you and you would answer them would tell me a lot about you. I'm a highly intuitive person and I have a lot of discernment so there's kinds of like things I know about people that I probably shouldn't know or and I don't know how I know and you know and I know that you know God's given me a gift of insight and of you know knowledge about people sometimes. So you know I also have these kinds of things that when you answer things a specific way it tells me a lot about you. So I asked him all these questions and he answered them and then he was like okay now your turn and it's kind of funny because I have never been asked to answer those questions back. So I did and then he asked me to answer and he the next time he emailed me back this was all in the same night he asked me um give me four things you love and four things you hate and then I'll give you I'll give you the I'll give you my phone number and I was funny because I never asked for his phone number but I was like okay so I answered his questions and then he sent me his phone number and he was like okay well don't call me tonight because like um I have a super sexy tired voice and I you know I need to build up some resistance before I do that so to wait till the morning and I was like oh okay so um he uh he gave me his phone number and I remember the next day uh or he had he had given me his phone number but he was also going to the Renaissance festival and he had invited me to go and I was like well hey look like um I've never met you I've never seen you and the Renaissance festival is like three hours from here so I'm not getting into a car with a guy that I've never met before and driving far away so I was like I'm gonna have to pass on that but um I did text him the next day I did text him the next day and that night after he had got back from the Renaissance festival he called me and we spent from probably 11 o'clock at night until maybe three o'clock in the morning on the phone and I laughed hysterically the entire time consistently while I was on the phone. In fact I was laughing so much so hard that my mother came in the room to check on me to make sure I was okay and I was like I'm like this guy's hilarious and I'm like I have to meet him. I remember feeling after these conversations on the emails that we were having back and forth like I'd never had an experience in conversation with anybody like I did with him. And then to get on the phone with him and to just be laughing so much I had never laughed that much with anybody and I told him I said hey look I got to meet you and then on his dating profile on the website it had said that like he wanted his first date to be something special and something different and unique. And I said hey I know you wanted to have a unique first date I said why don't you come out to my place I said and we will go out to the boardwalk because I lived close to Galveston at the time and Kima boardwalk is out there and I said why don't you come and we will go watch the sunrise come up for our first date on the boardwalk and he was very tired and probably did not want to get in his car because he lived about an hour from me and he was like well I'm really tired and I'm like that's okay you don't have to do it we don't have to go out on the day we can do you know at another time but I think he wanted to and I was like but I really need to meet you and so he finally is like okay I convinced him to do it he comes out he's worried that you know um I'm putting myself in an unsafe situation which is really funny um which I wasn't scared at the time I'm like I own a gun I'm good and so he was like okay and like my mom's here I don't know I felt safe so he came and he shows up around five o'clock in the morning and I remember excuse me I remember seeing him pull up and thinking okay I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna meet this guy and I've seen nothing but pictures right on that were online and I open the door and I walk out to the car and he's already grinning from ear to ear in his car and he opens up the car door and he looks at me and he's just grinning super big and I look at him and he gets out and he just hugs me and he puts his arms around me and I hug him back and I remember when he let go and I looked at him and I turned around to go back inside and I was like oh my God oh my god and I open the door I mean you know being funny as I was um at the time I remember I walk in the door and he's like fiddling with this car and locking in or whatever and I opened the door my mom is sitting on the couch it's five o'clock in the morning we haven't slept she's looking at me and I'm going I walk in and I remember I just hold up my hand and I just said this and I'm like and she just shook her head at me and rolled her eyes and I'm like well you know Heather being Heather I was like number five I knew from that moment forward that I was gonna marry him that I was gonna marry him that yes he was gonna be my fifth husband. Sean and I have been married 15 years this year and I will never forget how I felt the very first time he stepped out of that car and he put his arms around me. And when I hugged him that night in my driveway at five o'clock in the morning it was the first time I had ever felt home. I cannot wait to tell you guys about our story together next week. Through all the hell that I have lived and I have experienced it was all worth it for what God brought into my life with Sean He has been the grace that has covered my life and I want you guys to know I know I've been saying it every week that no matter what you have gone through no matter what you have seen no matter what you have experienced no matter what you have endured no matter what you have struggled with that freedom is the advantage that you already own and that life is out there freedom is waiting for you to take a hold of it thank you guys for joining me thank you for listening in thank you for enduring my story with me and letting me be vulnerable and letting me share with you week after week I will conclude my story next week and then we will move on into other people's stories. I have other people lined up and I can't wait for you to hear their story and for them to come on and share but I am at this time so grateful for you guys. Thank you. Thank you for being here with me. I'll see you next week