How I Met Your Mother

   I figured I would use the popular TV show title as a catchy title for what I am about to write. I decided to "put pen to paper" as they say, and write down the story of how my wife and I came to be together. I am going to leave out some events, as my perspective of them is different than others, and could cause some strife with people I don't want strife. Everything that I am going to keep in is accurate, though. And the story won't be diminished.

   My wife and I met a long, long time before we ever thought about getting together. Back when I was in first or second grade. She and another girl came and stayed with us for a week when my Dad was in college in Oklahoma. Her church sent two girls down to our state to attend a Youth Rally that our church was holding. Rather than stay in a classroom with about 10-15 other girls, sleeping in sleeping bags on a hard floor, my family opened our home to the girls so they would be more comfortable in their sleeping arrangements and have easier access to a bathroom.

   It was love at first sight! ... Not really. I was about seven or eight years old. I barely noticed her, because she was too busy to play Nintendo with me. In fact, I thought she had a boy's name. Charlie. Turns out it wasn't her name, but what some people called her, because her unique name Chaille' was hard for some people to remember. It's pronounce Shaw-lee.

  She was there or a total of five days, four nights. That's how we met. Now, it shouldn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway. My wife is several years older than I am. That will make this next part make more sense. Also, my family used to call me "Bobby". In fact, even though I've gone by "Bob" for nearly 15 years, my immediate family still calls me "Bobby".

   Fast forward a bit. We used to see each other every now and again. Once I got old enough to join our church's youth group, my youth group used to attend her church's youth rally. In what later would be recognized as irony, my Dad used to ask Chaille' if she had a boyfriend yet. Or whatever word you want to use. I know that some people in the church world are sensitive about that. Some prefer to call it courtship, some betrothal (though not in the sense that just went through your mind). Either way, when she responded in the negative, he used to tease her, "Well, you can always wait for Bobby to grow up." Like I said. Ironic.

   Fast forward several years. She has taken some college courses. I have been to a couple different Bible colleges, for a total of three semesters. I get the offer to become an apprentice to a pastor whom I admired. It was at the church that she attended, where she helped in the home-school center. Basically, her job was to record grades, send out books, and generally keep the records straight so that home-schooling families had proof of their children's schooling.

   She was on the tail-end of a failed relationship. It's her story to tell, not mine, so I'll just give the relevant details. She and this guy had planned on getting married at some time in the future. He had to leave, and he told her that one day he would come back for her. (Spoiler: He never did.) I, on the other hand, was in what I thought at the time was a happy relationship.

   She and I got to know each other pretty well. I was told by the pastor that I worked for that I would be seeing her a lot, and so I should keep my relationship with her "just business". I had no intentions of  ever forming a relationship with her at that point. As fate would have it, however, we became pretty good friends. We worked together in a play for the upcoming youth conference that the church still held every year. So we would meet (always in a group) to practice lines. Also, one of my best friends at the time was dating her younger sister. Since I hung out with him, and he'd go over to her house, I would also go over there. We became pretty good friends.

   One day, I thought I found a parking ticket on the windshield of my car. I got angry, and looked at it closer, to see why I had gotten a ticket. Turns out it was a fake ticket, with joking things on it. I knew who it was from by my superior powers of deduction (also, she was the only other person where my car was). So, in response, I put a 3x5 card on her windshield that said, "Just Business".

   My relationship started taking a turn for the worse. Things seemed like they weren't going to work out. I talked to Chaille' about it. I was thinking of ending the relationship. She talked me into putting more work into it, and so I drove the eight or so hours down to where my then girlfriend was attending college.

   It was the perfect night for what happened. I couldn't have scripted it better had I written a screen-play. It was dark, and it was raining. I met my girlfriend on a park bench next to a single streetlight. Long story short, she broke up with me. Leaving me on a park bench in the rain, alone underneath a streetlamp. Had I not felt so bad, it would have been poetic.

   I then went to my car, unsure of what to do next. I called the person I knew would listen. Chaille'. I don't remember how long we talked. It could have been a long time, or only a few minutes. I honestly don't remember.

   I drove back to Illinois, where I picked up my job as apprentice. Chaille' and I got to be even closer friends, and I learned the story of her failed relationship. She still had hope that he was going to come back. She was also telling me to not give up on my failed relationship. Meanwhile, my relationship with the pastor I worked for began to become strained. We didn't exactly see some things eye to eye.

   She had a Camaro. A 1994 blue Camaro. She loved that thing. I rode with her to her house one day, and simply said, "You know what? I'm going to forget about <girl>, and you're going to forget about <boy>, and we're going to get married." She laughed it off. Said it would never happen. (Spoiler again: It did).

   I am going to interject a story here that has nothing to do with our relationship, but is hilarious. Two brothers (one who was dating Chaille's sister) and I took Chaille's Camaro to pick up some props for our play. One prop we picked up was a giant yellow shark. We couldn't put it into the car, so we put it on top, planning to reach out the window and hold it down. Well, the driver was able to do so. But me being on the passenger side, I had to open the door slightly as the window wouldn't roll down. I had a plastic Irish bowler hat on as a prop as well.

   So, we're driving down the road, with the driver having one hand out the window holding the shark and one on the wheel. I had one hand out the door holding the shark, and the other holding the door as closed as I could. The wind began to blow my plastic hat off, so the guy in the back reached up and held it on my head for me.

   The driver got a phone call. He said, "grab the wheel". So, I let go of the door to grab the wheel. The guy behind me reached up and held the door. So, there we were. The driver with one hand out the window holding the shark, and a cell phone in one hand. I had one hand on the wheel, and the other out my door to hold the shark. The guy in back had one hand holding my hat, and the other holding my door. We went down the road this way for a bit.

   And passed a police officer...

  Hilariously, the police officer didn't even pull us over! Looking back, he was probably too dumbfounded at the sight. Either that, or he had to open up his book of codes to know what in the world to call in. But back to the main story.

   I went to an awesome place with my buddy's family, and with Chaille's family. It was for Chaille's sister's birthday, and my buddy was planning on proposing to her. The place was called "Starved Rock", and has a lot of history behind it. I didn't care about the history so much as the fact that there was a lot of rocks and cliffs to climb. We had a good time, and my buddy ended up proposing.

   Chaille and I had a long talk that day. We both were falling in love with each other, though neither of us realized it. We decided that the feelings we were having for each other were actually the feelings that we were feeling for our failed relationships, and that we were channeling them towards each other vicariously. Yes. We used the word "vicarious".

   We performed the play. Shortly after that, the pastor I was working for and I decided to part ways. Well, he decided that we should part ways. I wasn't so sure. But I didn't have any say in the matter. I moved back to Kansas, where my family was. Before I moved back, I asked Chaille' about being in a relationship with me. She turned me down.

   I had Thanksgiving in Kansas, and borrowed my cousin's cell phone to talk to Chaille for several hours. I again tried to talk her into a relationship, and was again denied.

   I had no money and no job. I decided to pack up all my things in my tiny pickup and move back to Illinois. So I did. I stayed in my truck for a night in the cold, stayed with my cousin for a night, and then stayed with my buddy who had proposed to Chaille's sister. His parents didn't want me staying there, though, and told me to move back to Kansas.

   I got a job making pizza at a Casey's gas station. I worked there for 4 hours. I talked to Chaille', and again she rejected my attempts at forming a relationship. I decided to move back to Kansas after all. But the day I was going to leave, I got sick. So I stayed one more day with my buddy, much to his parents' chagrin.

   The next morning, my buddy asked if I wanted to go to Chaille's house to help him cut some firewood. He told me that the girls wouldn't be there. I decided to help him and then head out.

   Chaille' had earlier introduced me into the neat little symbolism of the numbers "143" meaning "I Love You". There's one letter in "I", four in "Love", and three in "You". You get the idea.

   I always wore a boot knife back then. Chaille' had once asked me what it was for. I told her that it was for protection, and without it I felt vulnerable.

   So, I decided to go all out and try one last-ditch effort on Chaille. I took my boot knife and a marker and wrote "143" on the blade. My plan was to leave it where she would find it.

   I rode with my buddy to her house, and to my joy, I saw that her car was in the driveway. I knocked on her door, and she answered the door. I didn't say a thing. I just handed her the boot knife. She opened it, and saw the numbers written on the blade. She moved forward and immediately gave me a hug and whispered, "I love you, too."

   51 weeks later we were married. We wanted to make it an exact year, but that was December 17th. The church where we were married said that it was too close to Christmas for a wedding. So we were married on December 9th, 2005.

   And that kids, is how I met your mother... or whatever.

03 March 2017

   It would be better if I were dead. At least, that's what the voices told me. I hear them sometimes, but not all the time. Not enough to get meds for it, apparently. When I told the Doctor about them, they said that they could prescribes some anti-psychotics, but they wanted to hold off on that. So, I think I was diagnosed with mild psychosis, in addition to my other diagnoses of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, and Adjustment Disorder.

   I only hear them when I get depressed. And today I was. Two nights ago I took a sleep medication and then slept for 15 hours. My body is VERY reactive to medication. So, even though I only took 50mg of Trazedone, I slept from about 2230 until 1330 the next day. Last night, I only took have a pill. I couldn't sleep. I tried, honestly. After laying in bed until about 0030, I got up and moved around. I tried to fall asleep again around 0230, but again failed. I was feeling bad mentally.

   When my alarm went off at 0600 signaling that it was time for me to wake up and practice my Kung Fu, I instead went upstairs and took a shower. That's when the voices started. "You're a loser!" "You should die!" "Fill the tub up and let it drown!" I don't know why that last voice referred to me in third person, but it did. I try to ignore the voices, but they won't go away.

   To get my mind off of them, I tried working a simple physics problem that I had in class a few days ago. If a mass of 100Kg is hanging off a cliff 20 meters from the ground, attached to a rope that goes up to a pulley and then along the top of the cliff to another mass, assuming a .2 friction coefficient, how heavy must that second mass be in order to only be going 10m/s when the first mass hits the ground?

   I worked it out loud, doing the calculations without pen, paper, or calculator. It scared my wife for a second, because she didn't know who I was talking to. I kept messing up the calculations, though I got them close. I came up with 250Kg to accelerate at 2m/s^2. I remembered that the answer was something closer to 270Kg.

   This helped me a little bit, but I could not shut my brain off. The voices kept grabbing at me for attention. Finally, at 0700, when I was supposed to leave for school, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and had to sleep. I couldn't drive anywhere anyway.

   My wife asked me what needed to happen for me to be able to go to class today. I told her I wasn't sure, but that I had to reset my mind somehow. So, she graciously stayed with me until I fell asleep at roughly 0800. I woke up at 1300, but I was still out of it. My wife sat with me on the couch for hours watching the TV show "Scrubs", until I finally somewhat snapped out of it.

   Missing class depresses me, and also gives me anxiety. But, even worse, I missed a newspaper interview today at 1100 that I was supposed to be a part of. The University newspaper wanted to interview our robotics team. I missed it. I keep letting everyone down.

   Even now, since I am feeling out of it, the voices are there. I can ignore them for the most part, though. But I can still hear them when I am not thinking about anything else. "Why are you typing?" "No one cares what you think!" "Give up. You're done. You can't come back from this."

   Are they right? I don't know. I do know that I have my livestream to look forward to tonight, playing Smite on the Xbox with a couple friends of mine. That always seems to help me feel better. Hopefully when I can livestream I'll get to talking to my friends, and they'll pull me out of this. They don't (or maybe they do) know it, but chatting with them live helps a lot.

   I thought about calling the veteran's crisis hotline again today. But I decided not to. They always ask if you're having suicidal thoughts, and I usually have to lie to them and tell them that I've never contemplated it. I don't want them to send someone over to "help" me, and cause more stress. The last thing I need is to be taken to the hospital and put under suicide watch. The stigma attached to that would break me.

   Besides, I have my family. My wife and my three daughters. I couldn't bear to leave them alone in the world. If for no other reason, I couldn't let my girls grow up without a Dad. They need me, as poor a job as I'm doing. It's better than nothing, in my way of thinking.

   I only slept about five hours today. Hopefully that won't interfere with my sleeping tonight. I need to go to work tomorrow. I missed it today. And my disability isn't quite high enough that I can get by without working. Almost, but not quite. I still need to work about 20 hours per week to sustain my family.

   Well, hopefully it can only go up from here.

   - Sapper Woody