~More 1986~

1986 was a tough year for me. I jumped around from job to job, not really knowing what I wanted to do. I had finished up my secretarial course, but office jobs were not easy to find. ANY job was not easy to find in Charleston, WV. In the spring, I got a job at a garden center, which was kind of fun. I worked outside all day and watered flowers...very low stress! That summer, I landed a temp job doing data entry, which lasted into the fall.

I was going out with the guy that I had been "stalking" the previous year. We
began seeing each other in March of 1985. My mother nagged me constantly about being with him. He liked to party, and she did not approve. The more she nagged, the more I wanted to be with him. When we first got together, I partied right along with him. Then I stopped...and tried to get him to stop. He wouldn't give it up. Ours was a rocky relationship...a roller coaster ride. There were times we were so happy....we loved walking in the woods in the fall, watching movies and just hanging out with our friends. When we fought, it was devastating. Sometimes he would disappear for days and I wouldn't know where he was.

We stayed together until December of 1987. Our break-up was an ugly one, with him giving back to me every single thing that I had ever given to him. One day in April 1988, I came home from work and he was sitting in my driveway. He was crying. He asked me for one last chance. He said "If you tell me right now that you never want to see me again, I will leave and never come back..." I told him it was best for us to permanently part ways. True to his word, he drove away, and I never saw him again. I still kept in touch with a friend that I had met through him, and over the years, she would tell me how he was doing. He met another girl, they had 2 children. I hoped that he was happy and had gotten himself straight. In November 2003, I got word from my friend that he had killed himself...shot himself in the head. Even though so many years had passed, and our relationship had not been ideal, I still grieved for him. Why did he do it? I heard it was over a trivial fight with his girlfriend over money. His poor kids. The date of his death is embedded in my memory.....11/13/03. I think of him every year, and say a prayer for him and the family that he left behind.