Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

ur own.</p><p id="e70e">Fast forward almost 30 years. I had become the consummate “super mom”. I was a boy scout leader, attended all the PTA meetings, and was seen as a pillar of the community. He, on the other hand, went down the wrong path. He’d gotten into the hard drugs, became a dealer, then ended up going to prison. I’ll never forget the night I got a phone call from a mutual friend who said he’d gotten busted and was looking at up to 50 years behind bars. Even though I’d only seen him a few times over the decades, I cried as if I’d just lost my best friend.</p><p id="4318">I was in a bad marriage. My kids were almost grown and I just found out my 18-year-old daughter was pregnant. I hated my life, but I was thrilled about becoming a grandmother. Her father, on the other hand, thought an abortion was in order. That’s when I knew I had to get out before I ended up in prison for something worse than drugs.</p><p id="964a">I took my pregnant daughter and left my marriage of 25 years. I stayed with my mom until I was able to find a place of my own and ended up working 3 jobs just to make ends meet. Meanwhile, my soon-to-be-ex tried to get me to pay HIM alimony (though he still made twice as much money as I did).</p><p id="fcca">One of my jobs was working in a convenience store. I saw a lot of people come and go. Most were good people, some were less than honest, and few were just downright bad. I didn’t care. I had bills to pay and for what I’d put up with for the past 25 years, I wasn’t scared of anything.</p><p id="24eb">As I was working one evening, I heard the familiar chime of the doors opening. I was putting away another carton of cigarettes and said hi without even looking up. The patron said hi back and there was something about that gruff voice that sent a chill up my spine. I spun around and shot this guy a look that said, “Don’t mess with me, buddy”, but the person standing in front of me took me totally by surprise. It was a face I never thought I’d see again. It was my country boy.</p><p id="34ec">I knew he was still married, but I was thrilled to see my old friend. As I rang up his purchase, he asked me what I’d been up to. I told him about my getting a divorce and his eyes about popped out of his head. That’s when he told me that he was also in the process of getting a divorce. Needless to say, the air between us got a little awkward.</p><p id="8d2e">He had to run off to work and I went on about my night. I tried to get him out of my head, but I couldn’t. I kicked myself for not getting his number before he left, but I figured it was just a fluke and life would go on. I wasn’t in the market for another man. I was doing good to keep my daughter and myself going. She’d given birth to a beautiful baby girl and I was the only one working at the time. My life was complicated enough.</p><p id="8b1f">Almost a week later, I was a

Options

gain working at the convenience store. I was going about my nightly routine when the door chimes rang. I looked up and there he was. My country boy. He had the biggest smile on his face and said that he’d been trying to catch up with me since we’d seen each other the week before. We actually got a chance to talk a bit. We both had birthdays coming up (our birthdays were only 6 days apart), so we decided to take the day right in the middle, September 20th, 2012, and go out for dinner. Just two old friends getting together to catch up.</p><p id="1bed">When he picked me up, I found a vase of flowers in his consul. He still knew how to make a girl feel special. We went out for dinner and had a great time. We talked about our lives up to that point, both the good and the bad. I told him about my living in a loveless marriage to make sure my kids had a good life and he told me about living as a drug dealer and spending time in prison. I told him about how proud I was of myself for taking my life back and he told me that prison was the best thing that had happened to him as he was coming up on his 4th sobriety birthday.</p><p id="7f58">When we’d finished dinner, we went back out to his truck and got ready to call it a night. Then he turned to me, leaned down and kissed me as though we’d been in love forever. Though I was in my 40's, it was liked being kissed for the first time all over again. I was that 13-year-old kid with a schoolgirl crush and all seemed right with the world.</p><p id="1ab5">We decided to continue seeing each other and a little over a year later, on December 12th, 2013, we got married. It was also his 5th sobriety birthday. We filled the void in each other’s lives we didn’t even know was empty. We gave each other the chance to see life for what it was supposed to be. We realized that we had been in love with each other all those years, even though we had been living in separate worlds. We gambled on a shared dream and a beautiful reality happened.</p><p id="dc96">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p id="2049">Thank you to <a href="undefined">Susan Brearley</a> for her awesome weekly writing prompt. I know that people expect these posts to be humorous and light-hearted, but sometimes the best smiles come from the beauty in reality.</p><div id="7064" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-fourth-weekly-muddyum-writers-prompt-3e9ec4edd6e2"> <div> <div> <h2>The FOURTH Weekly MuddyUm Writer’s Prompt</h2> <div><h3>Because We Are All Gambling Here</h3></div> <div><p></p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*TnS1FdhHzChzC5JB9zqPjA.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

I Gambled on a Shared Dream and a Beautiful Reality Happened

Just because life throws you a curveball, doesn’t mean you can’t hit a home run.

In the fall of 1981, I entered a very scary time of my life…Jr. High. I was 13 years old, in the 7th grade, and about to enter a world I’d never known. The world of teenage angst.

One of my closest friends was a couple of years ahead of me in school, 9th grade. She’d lived down the street from me and was more than happy to show me around school. I was terrified.

The boys she liked all had bad reputations. But, being a farming community, I didn’t think they’d be all that bad. I knew a few of them as our parents all partied in the same bars. But there were several new faces and one just seemed to jump out at me. He was a big, country boy. A mop of reddish-blonde hair down to his shoulders and the sexiest burnt orange, 1969 Mercury Cyclone I’d ever seen.

He was 15, in the 9th grade, and looked like he could bench press a Volvo. He was one of those “life of the party” kind of guys and had a way of making any girl he talked to feel as though she were the only girl in the world. When he asked me out to a football game, I thought I was in love.

He took me home after the game, came in and met my mom. I think she fell in love with him too. He gave me a kiss good-night and I was over the moon. It was my first real kiss. My mom wasn’t too happy about it or the fact that he had a car. But he was very respectful towards her and come to find out, she knew his mom.

We dated for a few weeks when I discovered something about him that was a huge no-no in the 80s. He smoked pot. I thought it was cool, but I was just a kid and didn’t know anything about the real world. My neighbor, however, found out he smoked pot and threatened to call the cops if she ever saw him around the neighborhood again. Needless to say, our relationship ended right there.

We remained friends as we hung out with pretty much the same crowd. We would end up at the same parties, drove up and down the same main strip, and spent hours drinking coffee at the same all-night diner. However, we led completely different lives. I liked to party and have a good time but did my best to stay out of trouble. He was always in trouble and was well-known by the local police department. By the early 90s, we’d both gotten married to other people and started families of our own.

Fast forward almost 30 years. I had become the consummate “super mom”. I was a boy scout leader, attended all the PTA meetings, and was seen as a pillar of the community. He, on the other hand, went down the wrong path. He’d gotten into the hard drugs, became a dealer, then ended up going to prison. I’ll never forget the night I got a phone call from a mutual friend who said he’d gotten busted and was looking at up to 50 years behind bars. Even though I’d only seen him a few times over the decades, I cried as if I’d just lost my best friend.

I was in a bad marriage. My kids were almost grown and I just found out my 18-year-old daughter was pregnant. I hated my life, but I was thrilled about becoming a grandmother. Her father, on the other hand, thought an abortion was in order. That’s when I knew I had to get out before I ended up in prison for something worse than drugs.

I took my pregnant daughter and left my marriage of 25 years. I stayed with my mom until I was able to find a place of my own and ended up working 3 jobs just to make ends meet. Meanwhile, my soon-to-be-ex tried to get me to pay HIM alimony (though he still made twice as much money as I did).

One of my jobs was working in a convenience store. I saw a lot of people come and go. Most were good people, some were less than honest, and few were just downright bad. I didn’t care. I had bills to pay and for what I’d put up with for the past 25 years, I wasn’t scared of anything.

As I was working one evening, I heard the familiar chime of the doors opening. I was putting away another carton of cigarettes and said hi without even looking up. The patron said hi back and there was something about that gruff voice that sent a chill up my spine. I spun around and shot this guy a look that said, “Don’t mess with me, buddy”, but the person standing in front of me took me totally by surprise. It was a face I never thought I’d see again. It was my country boy.

I knew he was still married, but I was thrilled to see my old friend. As I rang up his purchase, he asked me what I’d been up to. I told him about my getting a divorce and his eyes about popped out of his head. That’s when he told me that he was also in the process of getting a divorce. Needless to say, the air between us got a little awkward.

He had to run off to work and I went on about my night. I tried to get him out of my head, but I couldn’t. I kicked myself for not getting his number before he left, but I figured it was just a fluke and life would go on. I wasn’t in the market for another man. I was doing good to keep my daughter and myself going. She’d given birth to a beautiful baby girl and I was the only one working at the time. My life was complicated enough.

Almost a week later, I was again working at the convenience store. I was going about my nightly routine when the door chimes rang. I looked up and there he was. My country boy. He had the biggest smile on his face and said that he’d been trying to catch up with me since we’d seen each other the week before. We actually got a chance to talk a bit. We both had birthdays coming up (our birthdays were only 6 days apart), so we decided to take the day right in the middle, September 20th, 2012, and go out for dinner. Just two old friends getting together to catch up.

When he picked me up, I found a vase of flowers in his consul. He still knew how to make a girl feel special. We went out for dinner and had a great time. We talked about our lives up to that point, both the good and the bad. I told him about my living in a loveless marriage to make sure my kids had a good life and he told me about living as a drug dealer and spending time in prison. I told him about how proud I was of myself for taking my life back and he told me that prison was the best thing that had happened to him as he was coming up on his 4th sobriety birthday.

When we’d finished dinner, we went back out to his truck and got ready to call it a night. Then he turned to me, leaned down and kissed me as though we’d been in love forever. Though I was in my 40's, it was liked being kissed for the first time all over again. I was that 13-year-old kid with a schoolgirl crush and all seemed right with the world.

We decided to continue seeing each other and a little over a year later, on December 12th, 2013, we got married. It was also his 5th sobriety birthday. We filled the void in each other’s lives we didn’t even know was empty. We gave each other the chance to see life for what it was supposed to be. We realized that we had been in love with each other all those years, even though we had been living in separate worlds. We gambled on a shared dream and a beautiful reality happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you to Susan Brearley for her awesome weekly writing prompt. I know that people expect these posts to be humorous and light-hearted, but sometimes the best smiles come from the beauty in reality.