To understand my relationship with Dave, I must tell the story of how we met and also about my first real love. It was my senior year in high school, and over the summer my best friend introduced me to a friend of her brothers. His name was Mike, but everyone called him Mitch because her brother's name was Mike. When I first met Mike I had butterflies in my stomach. I don't believe in love at first sight, but I think that's what it would feel like. I was just sixteen. In retrospect, he was my first love, my soul mate.

I met Dave a month or two later when I went to work at a local fast-food place. He was nice and it was obvious he had a thing for me. He was controlling and authoritative, but as usual, I didn't pick up on it until later on. There wouldn't have been a later on if I had stayed with Mike, but it was not in the cards, and being only a nave child I only knew about life through my family and that was very distorted.

When my father realized how I felt about Mike my life became even more complicated and confusing. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but my parents couldn't afford college and my grades were not good enough for a scholarship, and back then it was still a male-dominated world. My father offered to find the money so I could go to school, and become a veterinarian, but only if I would stop dating Mike. I was not going to do that. The trouble with seeing him was not just my father, but also his mother, who didn't like me and didn't think I was good enough for her son.

On my seventeenth birthday, Mike gave me a pair of beautiful rose earrings which I never took off, until they broke years later. He sent seventeen roses to my house and took me out to a beautiful romantic restaurant for dinner. I felt like a princess who had found her knight in shining armor. At last, it was not to be and I ended up breaking up with him because I couldn't take the stress with my father and his mother. Of course, on the rebound, I started to date Dave. My mother just loved him, or should I say his status. He came from money, not rich, but well enough off to go to the college in our town that diplomats' kids and kids from overseas whose parents were considered rich in their country sent their kinds in this country.

My parents pushed me to go out with him even though I didn't want to. I stood the man up at least twice. Dave took me to my senior prom and asked my dad if he could marry me. There was no getting on one knee and asking me. I never had that with any of my marriages. He gave me a heart-shaped locket necklace with a heart-shaped dime in the locket. Dave said if I didn't want to see him anymore to send him the dime. Funny, somehow I don't know how the dime disappeared, and I never wore the locket. Therefore, I couldn't return it to him. In a way, I believed it meant I was to marry him. I also married the man because he took my virginity, which made my father cry. He wanted to be the one to take it.

Dave and I had a big wedding, even though I didn't want one. My mom wanted me to have it. I guess it was because she didn't have one. I moved through the planning and getting everything ready like a zombie. I sometimes wonder if I was even completely conscious. I don't remember much of it or the honeymoon. I look at pictures and I remember some of my experiences. Unfortunately, it isn't the happy moments, but the bad moments that I remember.

I remember being kidded at the rehearsal dinner because when I was supposed to say I will I said it as a question. I remember my mom trying to get the wedding done in the church we belonged to and was told we couldn't because it was in March and it was at the time of advent, or something like that. My mom told me she even went to the bishop to try and get it approved, but it wasn't. Of course, later on in life, I learned my mother was a habitual liar. We were married in a Presbyterian church. I was excommunicated from our church because of being married in the other church and marrying an atheist. I took this as a betrayal from God, and of course, didn't go back to church except when a friend would ask me to come with them. I was not only lost in my mind but in my spirituality, and would be for many years.

The following morning, when I woke up, I looked around me. I was in a hotel room with Dave sleeping beside to me. My gut was in turmoil, which I learned later in life to listen to, I thought "What did I do? I'm 18 years old and married with no experience in life or anything," Dave took full advantage of this with his authoritarian way. This continued the loss of myself and who I should be, for I continued to be with someone who like my father did not look at me as an individual, but as his property.

A month later I learned I was pregnant. I wanted a baby, but I was scared and naive about life and giving birth. It didn't help that I had a husband who believed I was stupid and needed to learn what he felt I should learn. Two months before my son was born my blood pressure was rising and the doctor told me I needed to stay off my feet, I told Dave and he didn't believe me so I was still taking the laundry to the laundry mat in the apartment complex still cooking and cleaning. Still on my feet more than I should have been, and at the next doctor's appointment the doctor put me in the hospital because my blood pressure was too high.

The doctor explained to Dave that I was being non-compliant being on my feet too much. He also told me that depending on my blood pressure will depend on if and when I go home on bed rest. Looking back now I believe I would have been fine if Dave had listened to me about staying off my feet. I did go home on complete bed rest. My son was born two months later. I was a little scared about taking care of a baby but my instinct kicked right in. Four months after my son was born, Dave packed us up and we moved. I still remember what I said to my mother the last day before I left on a plane with my son in my arms. I said, "Mom, I don't think this is a good idea for me to move all those miles away." I just had a bad feeling this was not the thing to do. I wish I had listened to my gut, and not moved.

Things completely changed once Dave and I were in a place with our son, and I was alone. I was completely isolated from anyone. I didn't have any friends or family. We would have people over that of course Dave knew, but since he always felt I was beneath him, they did also. My gut was right about moving because I was losing myself and treated like a child or a possession. My life wasn't great before, but it was going to get even worse, and with that bad feeling I had I should have listened.