What's been going on...

I was glad to figure out that I just needed to change my URL and not have to set up a new blog.

------------------------
What's been going on...

Chantel moved in with me a couple months ago. She is one of the sweetest people I have ever known, but she has a major problem that I couldn't see until she moved in.

First of all she didn't work. I knew this was going to be an issue because her husband wasn't paying enough child support as it was. What he paid hardly covered the grocery bill for them. Also, since she has no job, she was bored, so she would work on the house. New drapes in the family room, a canopy top for the deck, new paint throughout the house. Decor stuff coming out of my ass. She spent $2000 in just over a month. That wasn't including the $3400 I spent on new furniture (I was already planning on this before we were dating), $700 for new washer and dryer, then my TV went out... there's another $1500.

Then she started in with how we needed to move. I told her that I cannot afford to buy a new house. She didn't like the middle school her kids would have to go to. Our school district is way over crowded so you don't get to pick the school you go to. She was used to living in the richest school district in the state. The schools they were in had all kinds of extra curricular stuff for them to do. Mine doesn't offer extra stuff because most of the schools are about 50% over capacity.

She took all of our kids out looking at new houses one day while I was at work. I did not know about it ahead of time. When I got home from work I was ambushed by her kids saying how they found the perfect house for us, and that they had picked out rooms already. I had to be the bad guy and tell them we weren't buying a house. She said she likes to look at model homes to get decorative ideas, but another agenda was obviously there. I started noticing a pattern of her manipulating me using the kids to prop up her view of things.

Then she asked me if I would be willing to buy the Ford Excursion from her ex. I said no because it was already 5 years old with a ton of hail damage. Plus he still owed a shit load of money on it. She said we'll need a vehicle we can all fit in. I told her "eventually". .

I even took a test drive in a new minivan one night just to get out of the house for a bit. But I told her afterwards that it wasn't going to be something I could do for a long time. She brought up the Excursion again.

The money was not the only problem. She has diabetes, and she doesn't take care of it properly. She passed out on me one morning right after she moved in. I had to take her to the hospital. She was in ICU for 3 days, then on a regular floor for one. Her way of dealing with this was to just take more insulin when she wanted to have something with sugar. I was trying to get her to change that behavior, but I couldn't. She had been this way for years. You can't change someone's behavior like that over night, even if it is life or death. For those of you that know anything about diabetes this may come as a shock... Her sugars where normally between 300 and 500. I knew nothing about diabetes before then.

On top of all this, 2 or her 3 kids were fairly difficult. Her 3 year old would go into screaming fits whenever he didn't get his way. It was so bad that he would make himself sick. I couldn't even look at him in a disapproving way without him blowing a gasket.

Her 9 year old is hypoglycemic. If he didn't eat he would having crying fits. Not in a screaming way, in a quiet way. Then if any bug was in the house (a fly or a moth) he would freak out and lock himself in his room.

Her 13 year old son was fine. I got along with him great.

Then it all came crumbling down. I knew my feelings for her were damaged beyond repair. But I had already had them move in, and now I was faced with kicking all of them out. Not an easy thing to do when so many lives are affected. Everyday I was getting more and more depressed. One day I broke down crying when I made the decision to end it. I was home with my kids. I don't remember where she was with hers. I tried to hide the tears from my kids, but they saw right through it.

When she got home they told her that something was wrong with me. She came up and I told her. I explained all of the things that contributed to the decision. We talked and talked. She convinced me to give her another chance. I agreed to it, but I knew it wasn't going to work. A week later things had not changed, I told her to move out. The school year was about to start, I figured I better get them out before all the school stuff kicked in.

You would think this was the end... But NO!

My kids were not with me the week she moved out. She wanted to get the kids together so they could say their goodbyes. Our kids got along really well, and my kids really loved Chantel. About 4 days later I agreed to it. She drove the kids down and we went to a Chinese restaurant that we all liked (I wanted to eat out to avoid the drama that I predicted would happen). She laid on some guilt by inviting my brother to come along since he was at my house working on some computers. I secretly called him and told him that I didn't want him going, he understood.

At the Chinese place in the middle of the meal Chantel asked her kids if they had anything they wanted to say to me. Her oldest just said that this really sucks. Her 9 year old asked me, in front of my kids, "Why don't you love my mom anymore?" I felt like I was thrown under a bus. I told them that I think we need to hold these questions until we get back to the house. I was totally pissed off that she did this in front of my kids.

We went back to my house. Her kids each came in to talk to us. I explained things as delicately as I could without being a puss. Her 9 year old just kept asking really intense questions. I put an end to the whole conversation.

Chantel wanted to talk to me alone. She tried one last time to get me to change my mind. When I didn't she got very negative and started talking about killing herself. Normally I would have just sent someone on there way at this point, but I knew she had tried to do herself in years before. I got her to calm down so she could drive her kids home and eventually sent them on their way.

I told her that we could stay friends even though after the suicide talk I wanted to run away as fast as I could.

Over the next few nights she would call me in the middle of the night, multiple times, to tell me how miserable she was. I got her best friend that introduced us involved. About a week later she seemed a lot better. The calls we only about once a day, and she seemed like she was mentally getting better. I then had to tell her that as long as I am around she is going to cling to the idea that "we" are a possibility. I told her that I couldn't talk to her anymore for her own good (and mine too).

So that is over...

Whew... I feel like I am on a soap opera.

I have left out so much of what happened, but this was the majority of it. I have learned a lot from this experience. I just hope it doesn't make me cynical like my brother.