Helen Gets Married, Take One!

A wise person once said, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” This quote is exactly how I deal with thinking about my ex-husband. I have to fully admit, I don’t like the man. I can’t tell you how many times I have envisioned him being smashed by an anvil, Wiley Coyote style, while looking at him with a dazed smile on my face; with him thinking that I am just giving him a kind smile back.

However, it is all a double edged sword. I want my son to grow up to be the best, most whole person he can be. No matter what, this will require him having a father figure in his life, no matter how wonderful or crappy he will be. My son, I am convinced, will figure it all out one day. I will not lead him into thinking his dad is a terrible person or ever tell him what he did. Basically, what I am saying is that I am challenging myself to change the way I think about it, as I am not going to allow my son to not have a father in this lifetime because of my own selfish reasons (i.e. the fact that I know he is a completely selfish dirt bag.)

This whole rant is like putting the cart before the horse, so I feel like I need to back up before I can go on. You learned a little bit more about me in the last chapters, but now for the meat and potatoes of why Helen is so thoroughly confused about men (just like Gigi is), and has become a skeptic and a cynic when it comes to love. You need to know how the whole chapter of Jonah began in my life and why I fell in love with him. It wasn’t always bad and he wasn’t always a jerk. Yes, once upon a time, I fell in love with someone that is completely different than the person I now know.

The last you learned about my ex-husband, I met him standing in a bar in the midst of a bunch of my college friends. The moment we began talking, we both realized that we had a lot in common. He was a high school teacher, I was studying to be a teacher. We were both twenty four, but still felt like we were eighteen. We had both been engaged and had broken the engagements off. We both loved comedies and tried to find the humor in anything. The list goes on and on. Basically, from the moment we began talking, we never stopped talking, soon began dating, which quickly blossomed into a blissfully happy relationship.

He met my parents a couple months after we began dating because we seemed to be going down a path that would lead to more serious things. After a year of dating, and he and I driving back and forth to see each other (I, from my crappy little apartment and he from his parent’s house), we decided to move in together. This brings us to our tiny, one bedroom cabin.

Originally, it was built to be a summer cabin. When you held your hand up to the wall in the winter time, you could feel the wind blowing through the cracks. It was a frigid, crappy little cabin that was kept warm solely by our love. The plumbing was “illegal plumbing” as my dad called it and the toilet needed to be plunged every time someone had to use it. When the weather got warm, we had so many lady bugs that clung to the windows that each day, we would take turns on who would have to vacuum the lady bugs from the windows when we got home from work. Seriously, there must have been hundreds of them on a daily basis that would appear. But, we were so happy, it didn’t matter.

Little notes were left around the house for each other, telling one another of how special we were and how grateful we were to have found each other. Even when the money was tight in that time of our lives, instead of fighting, we asked the land lord if we could spend the summer re-roofing the cabin in lieu of paying rent. We had every stressor you could think of, but nothing mattered except for the fact that we got to be with our best friend on a daily basis, and to be with someone we liked to do everything with. Life was great.

We lived in that little cabin for two years, and I have never been so content with anyone. Although it was a tiny cabin that could have crumbled to the ground at any moment, it was still on a lake and I was in heaven that I could swim on a daily basis and fall asleep reading out on a blanket on our dock that floated above the water. We even decided to fish together one day. It was hilarious, because I grew up fishing and could bait my own hook in the blink of an eye. However, Jonah’s face turned positively green when I handed him a minnow and told him to try to spear the hook through the eye (that way it wouldn’t fall off as easily).

He responded with a look of horror and handed the minnow back to me. As soon as my laughter subsided, I took the minnow back and baited his hook for him. I pushed the worry to the back of my mind that he couldn’t bait his own hook, as we stood there fishing. I know it may sound funny that I thought of him not able to bait his own hook to be a red flag, but after growing up with my dad and three brothers who were very manly, I couldn’t help it. We ended up catching four fish that day and I took them beside the cabin to teach Jonah how to filet the fish. After about two minutes, he was inside our cabin, looking out the window making heaving gestures. We both laughed over our fish fry that night and followed it up with a bonfire.

The night air was cold as we sat outside, I wrapped in several blankets (I get cold easily and hate to be cold) and he in his red, hooded Indiana sweatshirt and jeans. We sat there talking like two old souls about everything under the sun. All I remember is that I was as jovial as I could ever imagine myself to be as we sat outside, talking, looking at the stars as the bonfire warmed us and the water looked like a shiny sheet of glass over the lake. For some reason that night, Jonah looked a bit jumpy. When I pointed it out, he got up, walked over to me and said, “Helen, I know I have been jumpy. I have been wondering about something all day.”
I began to worry as I thought perhaps he was going to tell me that he wanted to break up. Instead, as I opened my mouth to ask him about it, he got down on his knee and said, “Helen, you are my best friend. Nothing would make me happier in this world than for you to be my wife”.

“Yes!“ I practically shouted without a moments hesitation (and this time without a resounding, “No” in my throat). Even though it was midnight, I still ran inside and called everyone in my family to tell them I was engaged. I was giddy with excitement, thinking that there was no other person in this world with whom I would rather be.

We planned our wedding in less than six months. We still took our marital counseling classes, but at his church rather than mine. If someone gets married in a Catholic church, usually, they have to take six months of marital counseling with a priest. However, because Jonah was Lutheran (I know, he didn’t meet that part of my criteria, but I saw past that), we took about three months of marital counseling with a pastor from his church.

Our wedding went off without a hitch and was in our favorite time of the year, the fall. I got to dress up like a princess and be whisked around on the dance floor by everyone that I loved in a very beautiful reception hall. Yes, even I got to experience the glamour, glitz and shininess of a white wedding. It was one of the most beautiful days I think I will ever experience in my life.

We didn’t take a honeymoon (huge mistake #1) and stayed in a hotel in town instead. We laughed because we got married on a Friday and went back to work on Monday. We did this for various reasons. I had just gotten a teaching job and couldn’t take a vacation so soon. Also, Jonah was a teacher and couldn’t take time off so soon. We thought about waiting to have our wedding until summertime, but we were at the point in our lives when we just didn’t want to wait. We wanted to pledge our lives to one another and make it official. We had a blast that weekend, just the same. Our room had a Jacuzzi, which I filled to the top with bubbles and we sat watching movies, opening up wedding cards, laughing, drinking champagne, and making love all weekend. We didn’t even leave the room once.

Our marriage ran just as smoothly as our dating relationship had. However, our first bump in the road came when he left the next April (our spring break as teachers) with his friends for baseball spring training, rather than taking our honeymoon with me. His friends thought they could make it up to me by buying me a spa package. Jonah reassured them that I was fine with everything and off they went, leaving me at home and alone for a week. To be honest with you, I protested to him, but not as much as I should have. I should have put my foot down and insisted that we spend time together. But, I didn’t want to make waves and agreed that we could do our honeymoon another time. (I wasn’t the Helen then that I am now) I went home to visit family and began to look at properties online because we felt as if we were out growing our tiny cabin.

When he and his buddies returned from Spring Break, we went house shopping and found many cute homes that we could buy. It was so exciting to think that we were going to possibly buy a house. It felt as if we were playing a game of make believe and playing the adult roles, even though we very much felt like kids. There was a house close to the schools where we taught, but an offer was presented to us by a fellow colleague who was going to move to be with her fiancé. She needed to sell her house quickly and offered us a deal that we couldn’t refuse. (Mistake #2).

I know now that we shouldn’t have settled for this house, even though it was ridiculously cheap. They say location, location, location when buying property is key. This particular house just happened to be in the middle of a neighborhood where many of his high school students lived. It didn’t seem to be a problem at first and it was even kind of great to see the students outside of school and get to know them as acquaintances too. (Mistake #3, the biggest one yet).

We liked all of our neighbors with the exception of a crotchety old couple that seemed to hate us from the very first day of moving in. Despite my many attempts to take them cookies and go over to visit them, they never once opened their door to us. “Oh well”, I would think each time and just leave a note card or a plate of cookies on their doorstep and go back home. Not that it was a long walk. If I was doing dishes, our houses were so close that I could see right into their sun porch where they often sat. In fact, it was times like these, when I knew they were home that I would try to take them cookies. I would see them sitting out on their porch, so I would run, grab my coat along with a plate of goodies from my freezer and run over to their house. However, as luck would have it (ha, ha) they always seemed to be gone as soon as I reached their steps. I am picturing them running as fast as they could to a different room when they saw me, cookies in hand, making my way out the door to their house. I can almost hear that grumpy old woman yelling at her poor shmuck of a husband, “Turn off the lights, dammit! She’s nearly to our front stoop!”

Anyway, I never quite built a relationship with them. However, I did build one with a police officer and his wife that lived across the street, who eventually turned out to be my biggest allies (and you will see why soon). Also, we became close with a family down the street that had two young girls (one of which was a seventh grader at the time and one that was a freshman in high school). At first, it was just seeing how the girls were doing and keeping an eye on them at school. I had moved onto teaching middle school at this time and actually had the youngest (Samantha) in math class. The oldest (Shakayla) was in high school with my husband and he kept an eye on her and made sure she was doing alright in classes. The reason we did this, was that they had been through a lot. The oldest of the girls, Shakayla, had accidentally burnt their house down when she had forgotten to put out a candle at night. She was also known as a “cutter” (a person who cuts himself or herself) and she just had a lot of problems. The parents were clueless and weren’t very involved in what their girls needed. So, Jonah and I became their biggest supporters. We would help them with homework, I would regularly make them dinner (about twice a week) and we would play board games. Some nights, we would make popcorn and watch movies. They ended up calling us Mom and Dad and we felt like we had adopted daughters.

Jonah and I also wanted to become parents. After spending time with these girls and feeling the parental gene kicking in, we felt like we were ready to have a baby. We were twenty-seven at the time and felt as if no one could have ever been more ready. The first time we tried for a baby, I got pregnant. No, we didn’t have to struggle with infertility or anything like that. Our appointments were going great and Jonah went with me on each appointment to see how our baby was doing. We were convinced that the baby was a little girl and began buying little pink and yellow outfits and hanging them in the closet of the spare bedroom. Peach pie was what I craved like it was my life’s blood and we were happily moving along through the pregnancy.

Until that fateful day. I was almost to the second trimester of my pregnancy, as we merrily walked into the office and I said my hellos to the staff as I always do. I climbed up on the table for them to do the ultrasound of my belly when the doctor’s face fell. Our baby appeared on screen, but much smaller than it was supposed to be. The nurse (who was a complete insensitive twit) said out loud, “Oh, no. This doesn’t look good. This doesn’t look good at all”. Jonah and I looked at each other, with panic on our faces as my heart leapt into my throat.

“What?!” I cried. “What’s wrong with our baby! What?!”
“Well, Helen.” The doctor replied, calm but also troubled, “The baby isn’t where it should be growth wise.” He continued, as he kept moving the instrument around on my protruding belly. “We are either going to have to abort this baby or it is going to be severely impaired with Down’s syndrome or some other horrible health problem”.

Jonah and I looked at each other, too scared to cry and we didn’t want to believe what we had heard. “No, this isn’t happening” I said, as tears began to threaten falling from my eyes. “This can’t happen. The baby will be fine and if God wanted us to have this baby, we will. I will not abort this baby. Maybe God wanted us to have a special needs baby.”

The doctor and nurse looked at each other, shook their heads and he gave me a prescription for bed rest. The next week was pure agony. I didn’t want to move, in fear that I would do something to harm the baby. Jonah and I were going through guilt and fear. We started snapping at each other and having little arguments like we have never had before.
“Helen, it’s my baby, too!” Jonah screamed in my face one day as I told him, crying, that he didn’t know what I was going through. I prayed that day for a miracle and our baby to be fine. I apologized for any wrong thing I had done, feeling like I had done something to deserve being put in this position. But really, I hadn’t. I know that. It is just something that people in that situation go through.

A week later, when we went back to our appointment, they did another ultrasound and the baby had died. When I went in the next day for surgery, I was so hysterical that they had to put me all the way under anesthesia, rather than just the twilight anesthesia they had told me about. The worst part was, the surgeon’s name was David, which is the middle name we were going to give the baby had it been born a boy, as that is my father’s name. Hours later, after the epidural wore off, Jonah and I went home, feeling defeated, and cried as we held each other. Over the next weeks, we became closer as we grieved together. Although we went through this, we didn’t give up hope that we would eventually become parents to a healthy baby one day.

About six months went by and we tried to get back to our normal lives. We didn’t try for another baby right away, as they said my body needed time to heal. We both kept on teaching and I began a youth ministry for my middle school kids that were getting involved in gang related activity. Although I was head of this, Jonah never once came to the weekly activity that we held on Friday nights. He claimed that he stayed home and just watched t.v. Because I loved and trusted him, I never once questioned his whereabouts.

Jonah also coached high school girls basketball at the time. I went to almost everyone of his games and supported him as much as I could. I chaperoned countless high school activities with him and was well-known around school. My kids, however, never once met him. Looking back on it all now, I realize how very selfish he was. There are too many examples to record in this chapter, but I see now that I did all of the work in our household. I cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, trimmed the hedges, fixed things that needed to be repaired, etc. etc. However, because this is a chapter and not a book, I will tell you the most important events.

As the year progressed on, we finally took a honeymoon to a little island in Michigan. I know, it doesn’t really count as a honeymoon, but we still enjoyed our time together. We continued to have the neighbor girls over on a weekly basis to help them with their homework and even began hanging out with their whole family once and awhile on a little lake nearby. Life was busy but good and never once did I ever doubt that Jonah’s heart would stray.

Soon, we began talking about trying for another baby. We felt that we were much closer after we lost the first baby and felt hope in our hearts that this time, it would happen. So, we tried again, and on the first time, once again, I became pregnant. The day I found out, we had dentist appointments. I was going to wait to tell him in some cutesy little way, but instead, as I do with all good secrets, I couldn’t keep it in any longer. On our car ride to the dentist I said, “Jonah, I don’t think they can do x-rays on my teeth today”.
He looked over at me and knew almost instantly what I was going to say. “Why not, Helen?”
“Because, I am pregnant.” I said, beaming.
“Are you sure? I mean, absolutely sure?” he asked.
“Yes, I took a pregnancy test and it said positive! Let’s just start praying that everything goes well”.

From then on, our bi-weekly doctor appointments began. Usually, women don’t have to go that often, but with our past history, they wanted to make sure. Everything was going great and this time, I was craving only vegetables. I knew this time, it had to be a boy, since our last one was a girl and my cravings were completely different. Around month four, Jonah decided that he was going to go on another trip with his guy friends. This time, I protested, as I was at almost the exact same stage as I was this first time I miscarried.
“Please, Jonah. I need you. You don’t have to go on this stupid bachelor party trip. You guys have gone on about four since we’ve been married. I need you just in case anything happens. My family is three and a half hours away from here, it’s not like they can just show up if something happens”.

“Helen, you are going to be just fine. I have to go on this trip, Sean is only going to get married once. Besides, I thought we agreed to think that everything is going to be fine this time. My parents are only a half an hour away and can be here immediately if you need them,” Jonah said, as he stuffed the last of his socks in his bag and began heading out the door. “I will call you when we get on the road. I love you,” he said, as he kissed my forehead and turned to leave. As I watched his tail lights pull out of our driveway that night, I didn’t know what to think. I felt alone and scared and didn’t know what to do. He was going to be gone for an entire week. What if something happened?

Two days passed by and the summer months were upon us. It was getting hot outside and not only was I teaching at the time, but also doing all of the yard work and everything else. That day, I had overworked myself and felt very sick. However, with this baby, morning sickness wasn’t just during the morning. It was all day long, so I attributed my feeling sick to this and went inside to lay down. Immediately, when I laid down, the contractions began. I clutched my belly, crying and scared, not knowing what to do. In between heaves, I crawled to the phone and dialed my mother-in-law’s number. She came right over and we sped to the doctor.

As they did the ultrasound on me at the hospital, we saw that although the baby was growing just fine, my body was again rejecting the baby. So, they started me on hormones and other pills and after that, my body straightened itself out. Amazingly enough, Jonah did not come home after this happened. He stayed for the remainder of his trip (ahem, hint number gazillion that he was a selfish bastard) and when he came home, he was surprised how much my belly had popped out in just a week.

The times after this are now just all a blur. I remember I was sick until I reached the seven month mark with the morning sickness that lasted all day. Because of this, I had only gained about ten pounds. I wasn’t complaining, however; the sicker I was, the healthier it meant the baby was. Finally, when my third trimester began, I felt like eating again. All was right with the world and Jonah and I were happily washing and folding infant clothes and trying to get the room ready for the baby that would soon arrive. We were both excited and he even fell asleep one night with a baby outfit his arm.

Then, one day, Jonah began acting different. The neighbor girls began showing up more. One day, when I came home from school, Shakayla’s shoes were on our doorstep next to Jonah’s and I found them downstairs sitting in front of our computer. I was dumbfounded and asked to speak to Jonah privately. We began arguing, as I told him that as a teacher, it was a very bad idea to have a student at our house alone with either one of us. The things that could happen and the rumors that could fly were unimaginable. He shouted back, saying that I was overreacting and insane. It was almost as if I was now speaking to a different man, one that I didn’t know anymore.

After this, the girls were over on a daily basis. When they weren’t, his car was down at their house. I even went home for lunch one day and he didn’t show up. As I got in my car to head back to school, I saw his car in their driveway. So, I drove in the driveway, my heart pounding and opened the door. Immediately, both Jonah and Shakayla jumped away from where they were (obviously sitting pretty closely together), and I began my rant. I yelled that it was such a completely stupid idea to do this. What in the hell would happen if someone found out they were having lunch together, alone. Even if it were innocent. What was I supposed to think? Jonah ran out after me, assuring me that nothing was going on and that he loved me. He talked until he was blue in the face and had me convinced that everything was okay.

However, after this, he began sleeping out on the couch. He claimed he didn’t feel good. Eventually, after a week, he began sleeping downstairs and was barely home for even five minutes. I would make his coffee in the morning and hand it to him and he would take it and leave without a word. I would set our lunches out (we met everyday for lunch for a year before this) and he would show up in the last five minutes to eat a bite or two of it. (Despite my warning on that day when I caught them having lunch together, I would still see him driving from the neighbor girl’s house to ours during this time). At night, he would come home at about ten o’clock only to snap at me to leave him alone and would disappear downstairs.

Finally, after two weeks, I confronted him. After begging him to tell me what was going on and just to sit down and talk to me, he angrily plopped on the couch opposite from me and said, “Helen, I don’t think I love you anymore”.
“What?! Jonah, what in the hell is going on? We are having a baby! What are you doing?” I cried, bewildered and thunderstruck. I felt as if the air had been sucked out of my lungs and had to quickly sit down as my world turned hazy.
“What does this mean?” I asked as I sat down. “Please, please work with me on this. I will do anything. I will go to marital counseling. Is it my t.v. shows that you don’t like? I will stop watching them. If it’s my youth ministry, I will stop going. Whatever it is, you name it, I will fix it”. But as the words tumbled out of my mouth in desperation and fear, the answer was on his face, as plain as day. He didn’t want to fix anything. He wasn’t there with me anymore.

So, I began checking everything for any little answer that I could get. Why was this happening? Was there someone else? Was it Shakayla? I went through his phone, his car and his things in the basement when he was in the shower. After the two weeks were up, he began keeping an overnight bag in his car and not even coming home. I later found out that he and Shakayla were going over to a fellow teacher’s house (who was also a good friend of mine) to stay. How fucked up and crazy my world had gotten in just a matter of weeks.

Then it happened. One morning, he came home to shower and I searched everything. I searched his car, his bags, and eventually, I found it. I looked in his phone to see countless text messages between him and Shakayla telling each other that they couldn’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off, etc. etc. I wish I would have just left then with his phone in my hand and gone to the high school where he worked. Instead, I waited and confronted him. Amazingly, I was as calm as I have ever been. I didn’t scream, yell or cry. I told him that I had seen the messages and knew what he had been doing.

At first, he screamed at me and called me crazy. He said that I was a crazy bi&*h and making it all up. After about five minutes of this and seeing that he was getting nowhere, he admitted it. He followed me around the house and begged me not to turn him in. I asked him if we could go to marital counseling and work things out. After all, I was eight months pregnant by this time and still loved him very much. I just didn’t know what to do. However, he claimed that he didn’t love me anymore and that he loved Shakayla. The only response I gave him that day to all of his piteous tales was, “Wrong answer, Jonah”.

I immediately went to school that day on autopilot, preparing to teach. I needed to keep my mind occupied. But, after calling my best friend and colleague, she showed up and took me home. First, however, I told my principal everything and soon, the ball was rolling with Jonah being suspended from teaching ever again. People all over town were yelling at me for turning him in and even his own parents, those who were my greatest allie’s blamed me for everything. “His needs weren’t being met,” they would say.

Because I needed insurance to have the baby, as Jonah was going to be fired, no doubt, I had to stay teaching. I stayed for over a month in that God forsaken town, with people coming up to me everywhere I went, either to yell at me or give me their condolences. I was in hell and actually lost fifteen pounds in my last trimester of pregnancy. Thankfully, my best friend, Josie, stayed with me and made me choke down a piece of toast and a glass of milk everyday just to keep going. Thankfully, I had Gideon (my baby) growing inside of my belly, reminding me that I had to keep moving on. I had to keep living, even though I just wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

It was as if a freight train were rolling right through a station at top speed when all of this hit our tiny town. In court and through the state police, I found out that the “love affair” had been going on even before the conception of our baby. Also, that Jonah had been looking up things on our computer that would make even the sickest person blush. Things that I had never heard of and don’t wish to repeat. Overall, I felt as if my world had come to an end. Not only did I have to deal with his affair and leaving, but I also had parents of his students and athletes coming to my class during school that wanted to tell me that I did the wrong thing by turning him in. I couldn’t go to the store, because I would be bombarded. So, we stayed in and ordered out as much as we could, with my friend Josie running to the story whenever we needed anything. Thank God for her.

As things began to quickly unravel, my lawyer would bring all of his printed emails to me to review. Now that I look back on it, it was a very insensitive thing to do. However, at the time, it was much like that car accident that you have to look at.

In an email between he and Shakayla, Jonah had said, “I wish both Helen and the baby would both just disappear”. Because of this, the court said I was allowed to move wherever I wanted to have the baby and I even had police protection in the hospital where Gideon was born. After months of battling our divorce in court, I was granted sole custody of my little miracle. It was a time in my life that I would never, ever wish upon any other human being. I would go to sleep crying and wake up, remember what had happened and start crying all over again. All of the sudden, I was a single Mom. I, who had the most perfect life in the world, had been cheated on and left for a teenager.

But, as they say, never look back. Now, as I look down at my sleeping little boy who makes my very world spin on its axis, I am thankful. I am thankful that I got through my hellish ordeal that Jonah threw me into and thankful that I have Gideon. Not everything was bad about Jonah. No. We had four great years together. And, although he put me through something that no human being should ever have to go through, I have one person in the world that has taught me love. He calls me “Mommy” and is sleeping in the very next room right now.

To read Gigi’s Part IX, see The Adventures of a Thoroughly Confused Gigi – Part IX