The Truth About Fairy Tales: How My Prince Turned Into A Frog After 21 Years of Marriage

Most kids have a handful of clear and interesting ideas about what they want their grown-up lives to look like. I was a scrawny, sickly little thing who had to wear leg weights and corrective shoes (not quite Sara Gump, but close enough that I won't hold it against you if you say, "Run, Sara, run"). All my free time was spent reading about fictional kingdoms and far away places, so it probably won't surprise you when I say I wanted grown-up me to have the same kind of fairy-tale life I was always reading about. The majority of childhood wishes fall by the wayside -- a good thing when you consider only so many of us are actually qualified to go to the moon, marry a Hemsworth, or join the Justice League and fight alongside Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash -- but every now and then, when the moon is at its bluest, a wish comes along that has the kind of everyday magic it takes to be granted.

Mine was one of those.

For one precious space in time, my life was everything I'd always hoped it would be and so much more. I'd married my own personal Prince Charming, and together we made some mighty amazing royal kiddos, if I do say so myself. We even found a castle that wouldn't bust the royal budget. (It's actually a 1950's atomic ranch, which is way better than your average castle because it's less drafty and there are no moat maintenance fees.) Nobody's life is perfect, but with happy kids, a loving husband, and a strong marriage, mine was darned close. Things were so good, I forgot an important fact about fairy stories, something the modern, kid-friendly versions don't tell you: most fairy tales are based on old world horror stories, not a one of which ended with "happily ever after."

If I'd kept that in mind, I might not have been surprised when life as I knew it unraveled and then fell apart.

To give you a better picture of how life around here turned from a storybook into a real-life soap opera called, "So Revolves The Redneck," I need to go back to the beginning. (I won't go too far back; my next sentence won't open with the words, "This one time, back when I was a fetus ..."). Because he plays a central role, I'm starting with my husband, Jim. Anyone who knows me knows that's not his real name, but because I'm linking this blog to my other social media accounts, I renamed him for privacy's sak. That, and I get to exact a tiny bit of revenge since Jim stands for the "Jerk I Married." (I also call him Tim, aka the "Turd I Married," and on rare occasions, "Captain Edward F. F. Nasty Pants," -- crazy seeing as how his name's not Edward, either -- but it sounds funny to me so I just sorta go with it.)

Whatever you call him, he couldn't have better set all this in motion if he'd used a giant Rube Goldberg machine.

I met Jim in the early summer of 1994, just after my 20th birthday. (I'm 43 now, but the internet assures me 43 is the new 33, whatever that means.) He was everything I'd been looking for -- smart, kind, quick-witted and funny -- plus he had a whole batch of qualities I never would've thought to ask for in a mate but was glad to get, sorta like in those old infomercials where you could buy 147 Ginsu knives and the good folks at Ginsu would not only double your order but would also throw in a set of steak knives, a juice squeezer, and a horizontal veggie slicer at no extra charge. What's more, he was so good looking he even rocked a mullet, Alabama's state haircut from about 1980 until the middle of last week. It wasn't quite love at first sight, but it was close.

Less than six months after we met, we got married and set about making a life together.

The two best parts of that life we made together are our daughters, who are now 21 and 19. They've been a constant source of joy since before either of them took that first tiny breath. After they came along, Jim worked extra hours so I could be a stay-at-home mom, a gift not near enough parents are given, and one for which I'll always be grateful. We were so disturbingly domestic, my grandfather used to say we reminded him of The Cleavers.

Unlike The Beaver's mom, I've never mopped my kitchen while wearing pearls and a pair of 4 inch heels.

I'm not saying we spent all our time sitting around a campfire, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya. We had the same squabbles, kerfuffles, and troubles as any other family, and we also faced a couple of extra challenges like the mystery illness I started showing symptoms of about 4 years after we married, a disease that was ultimately diagnosed in 2008 as multiple sclerosis. We always seemed to come out of the dark places a little stronger for having made it through. Anytime he'd see me getting frazzled, Jim would wink at me and say, "Remember, honey, it's you and me. At the end of the robot apocalypse, it's gonna be me, you, the kids, and the cockroaches." Not everyone would think of that as a romantic sentiment, but those words meant more to me than an entire book of sonnets because they were a promise to stick together and keep fighting no matter what life tossed our way. The sicker I got, the more comforting those words became.

What neither of us knew was the beginning of our end had already been set in motion.

In 2005 -- 3 full years before we found out why I was sick all the time -- Jim took the kids roller skating and fell, causing a compound fracture of his leg that had to be surgically set with a plate, 8 screws, and a pin. The surgery itself went well, but as they were taking him to the recovery area, his blood oxygen levels (the same thing measured by the pulse ox aka that "blinky clampy thing" on the end of your finger) dropped down to the dangerously low side.

That moment was the beginning of our slow slide toward Hades in a hoopskirt.

It took about six hours to bring Jim's oxygen levels all the way back up,  six of the longest hours in recorded history. After he was stable, they ran some tests and found he had a mild case of emphysema. He was only 31 at the time this happened, but he'd been smoking since the age of 16 and was up to about 2 packs a day. One of his favorite things to say when anyone asked him about quitting was, "I'll quit cigarettes the same day cigarettes quit me." Having lost my grandmother to COPD, I cringed every time he said it, but Jim acted like it was the funniest joke since that infamous chicken dashed across the street to get away from Colonel Sanders. Joke or not, my husband wasn't laughing the day after the surgery when a lung specialist told him he  wouldn't live to see 50 if he kept his habit.

Jim accepted the Marlborough Man's letter of resignation that day and as far as I know, he hasn't smoked since.

We left the hospital thinking he'd be good as new once his leg healed -- maybe even better because he'd stopped smoking -- but it didn't take long for us to realize the drop in his oxygen levels had caused permanent damage to both his short and long term memory. No one told us that could happen, but I'm sure it was in the fine print we signed. Because everyone's so worried about getting sued nowadays, nobody would give us the answers we needed. All the doctor said was it might get better with time, but no one even bothered to tell us this thing had a name: hypoxia or hypoxemia. I've had to piece together most of this through my own research, and while being a writer has honed my research skills, my medical education came from watching reruns of House, ER, and Grey's Anatomy.

I knew I shouldn't have stopped watching Grey's during the early McDreamy-McSteamy period.

Jim's memory loss wasn't like amnesia or dementia, and it definitely wasn't like anything you'd see on TV. He remembered all of the big stuff: our wedding, the day each of the girls was born, and most of the other celebrations, incidents, accidents, trials, and triumphs that make up a life and a family. The memories he lost were small, random things like conversations we'd had, people he'd only been around a time or two, and places he hadn't been since he was a kid. He took the long term memory loss in stride and delt with the short term stuff by making lists and keeping a good sense of humor. Because his thought processes were still as sharp as ever, we believed he was okay, and the memory loss he already had would be the extent of the damage.

Cue the menacing music.

If hypoxemia had been Jim's only problem, that might've been the way it went, but he'd been dealing with high blood pressure and sleep apnea for several years before he broke his leg. Those two conditions glommed onto the emphysema faster than a cheetah on crack, continuing the damage the hypoxemia had started. It happened so gradually we didn't notice it at first, but as time wore on and his stress levels rose -- I got sicker, his overtime was cut, and our health insurance deductible went from $500 a year to $3500 -- he began to lose bigger, more important memories. He forgot things about our relationship, like the movie he took me to when I was three months pregnant with our oldest and so hormonal I started crying because I spilled half the popcorn; and the set of pearls he gave me on our first anniversary because he'd noticed me wearing an old plastic necklace I'd had since high school and he wanted me to have something "as beautiful, real, and special" as I was. Then there are the things he forgot about his life as a father: all the field trips, science projects, and band concerts he helped make happen, and the countless toys he put together late at night on behalf of a white-bearded guy in a fuzzy red suit. Losing the basic core of who you are and how you fit in your own life would've been hard to take under the best of circumstances, but when you factor in some of the pressures he was under ... looking back it's a testament to Jim's inner strength that he didn't crumble like a stepped-on sack of pork rinds. There's a world of difference between strength and invincibility, but I don't think Jim understood that until it was too late.

That's when he got depressed for the first time in his life.

I don't mean he'd never been down or that he hadn't had a case of the blues before. This wasn't the kind of situational sadness we all face from time to time. It was a dark, bottomless depression that tore him into jagged pieces, then turned around and shredded those. Depression and I were already well acquainted. Not only have I had a slew of my own anxious and depressive disorders for as far back as I can remember (nothing puts the fun in dysfunctional like an obsessive compulsive first grader who has both a nervous tick and a passive-aggressive imaginary friend), but my father's side of the family is such a tangle of depression and anxiety, my grandmother once threatened to ditch the cocktail weenies at the next family dinner and serve Prozac and Valium, instead. Knowing what we were dealing with and being able to help my husband were two different things. By the time he finally went to the general practitioner our whole family had been seeing for nearly a decade, he was in the middle of a major depressive episode.

That's the new term for a nervous breakdown.

What followed was a long, exhausting process of trying drug after drug, with none of them working for more than a few months at the most. It was an ordeal that took a toll on Jim the way nothing else ever had. He was teetering on the edge of hopelessness by the time the doctor finally found a pair of drugs he responded to, and while he was by no means cured, he was more relaxed and even smiling once in a while. We had a few really good months, and then our doctor told us she was going into "concierge" medicine.

I'm pretty sure conceirge is French for, "You can't afford this."

Up to that point, all I knew about conceirge medicine was what I'd seen on the show, "Royal Pains," but the basic concept is you pay your doctor an upfront fee before insurance is factored in, a lot like the retainer you'd pay a lawyer. There are plenty of critics on both sides of the idea so I'll spare you my personal soap box. What I will say is most doctors who are converting to a concierge practice usually charge their established patients about $500 per person. Our doctor wanted us to pay over three times that.

My first car didn't cost $1600 bucks, and it came with a beaded seat cover that cushioned your butt as you drove.

Because our whole family used this doctor -- Jim, our daughters, my father, my grandfather, and me -- the total cost would've been $9600 a year just to keep seeing her. We were having a hard enough time paying for our actual health insurance, not to mention such luxuries as food, shelter, and electricity. We were forced to look for another doctor, but because they'd just passed new laws about which doctor could prescribe what medicine, we all ended up going to different places. Jim found a nurse practitioner who assured him she was well versed with the drugs he was taking; she went so far as to say she'd prescribed them under her supervising physician many times before. On his first visit as an official patient she upped his dosage -- I can't remember if it was on one drug or both -- but there's one thing I do know with absolute certainty: shortly after that dosage hike, the Jim I'd loved over half my life was gone.

It was like somebody had reached in and turned off all the bright, beautiful lights that made him who he was.

I don't think the meds alone were the culprit (nothing changed once he stopped taking them). I think they were just another part of some perfect storm that made all this possible. The loving, devoted husband and father we knew had been replaced by a paranoid stranger with the temperament of a rabid weasel. Almost every word he said was so nasty I think Mahatma Gandhi would've been tempted to smack him upside the head. His easygoing, open personality (Jim's, not Gandhi's) became moody and secretive, and I'm pretty sure he had something going with a female co-worker, an emotional affair if not a physical one. (I got a tad suspicious when he "lost" his wedding ring, pierced his eyebrow, and started manscaping in an area most men don't groom to impress the woman to whom they've been married for over 20 years.) Whatever his secrets, the one thing Jim either couldn't or wouldn't hide was how he felt about me. Every ounce of love he'd ever held for me ignited into a blistering hate, and the worst part was he couldn't tell me why because he didn't know, himself.

In September of 2015, 2 months before our 21st anniversary, Jim told me he wanted out of our marriage.

He wasn't quite that straightforward, maybe because even he knew how bad leaving his sick wife would look. Can you imagine that greeting card? "Sorry you've got an incurable disease but I'm ditching you, anyway, because I'm a sleaze!" Hallmark, it's not. What Jim said instead was he loved me, but he was unhappy. He told me he was going to stay with a friend while he sorted through the stuff in his head, and he asked me to give him the time and space he needed to figure it out so he could get back home to us as soon as possible.

He left before I had the chance to ask him if there was an option B.

Three days later, he sent me a message telling me he loved me, but he wasn't sure he was still "in love" with me. One text and we were back in the third grade, where my own husband was telling me he liked me, but he didn't know if he "liked me-liked me," anymore. Two days after that message came another one -- completely free of love and not exactly running over with like, either -- telling me in no uncertain terms he was never coming home. With the elementary school theme Jim had going, I half-way expected the divorce documents to come handwritten in #2 pencil on wide-ruled notebook paper with a set of slightly crooked "yes," "no," and "maybe" boxes beside each section.

I'm pretty sure that's not what those old long-distance commercials meant by "reach out and touch someone."

In spite of the nightmare our last few months as a family became, the possibility of Jim leaving never crossed my mind. He wasn't just my husband, he was my best friend. We'd loved each other so much for so long, I thought we could fight our way through anything together, even brain damage and bad medicine. Then again, the majority of our friends and family don't think brain damage had anything to do with it. They believe Jim left because he was tired of the strain on both his wallet and social life that comes from having a sick spouse. I can't fault their logic. Having a partner with just one chronic illness can be a huge burden; I have so many sicknesses, syndromes, and symptoms I feel like the punchline from an old joke, the one that goes, "Have you seen my dog? She's lost most of her tail, is missing an ear, has only one eye, and walks on three legs.

She answers to the name 'Lucky.'"

My biggest hurdle health-wise is the multiple sclerosis. I have more damage in my spine than on my brain, which could be why I tend to get the wonkier side effects of the disease. Then again, it could just be that I'm weird. Whatever the reason, my most consistent and irritating symptoms have been a type of dizziness called vertigo; walking and balance problems that make me about as steady as a drunken Weeble; pain ranging from mild numbness and tingling to a burning, screaming, stabbing sensation that sometimes hits body parts I didn't even know I had; complete exhaustion no matter how long I've slept; an intolerance to heat that has my family wearing sweaters in the house year round because I keep it cold enough to hang meat in here; spasms and spasticity that make my muscles jerk, jump, twitch, and stiffen up like petrified wood;  and a sometimes visible knot of inflammation to the right of my cervical spine I call my "hump." (The Black Eyed Peas would probably have a conniption if they heard my version of their song.)

That's a whole bunch of stuff going on at one time in one body, and that's just from the MS.

Another fun MS fact is most of us have a whole lot more going on than just MS.  Whether these add-ons are actually bigger, more complex symptoms of multiple sclerosis or if it's because autoimmune diseases like to travel in packs like addle-headed hyenas, I don't think they really know, but in addition to the MS, my list of diagnoses include ADD, GAD, PVFM (aka VCD), PD, PDD, CFS, RLS, IC, FMS, IBS, TMJ/TMD, ST, GERD, and SEAS. For those of you who haven't spent the last 47 years in medical school, that translates to attention deficit disorder, general anxiety disorder, paradoxical vocal fold motion disorder (also known as vocal cord dysfunction), panic disorder, persistent depressive disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, restless leg syndrome, interstitial cystitis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, temporomandibular joint disorder, spasmodic torticollis (aka cervical dystonia), gastroesophageal reflux disease, and superfluously extreme alphabet syndrome (that last one isn't a real thing, but it should be).

Some days I don't know if I'm fighting to regain my health or playing Scrabble.

As if all those weren't enough, the severe vitamin D deficiency I and most other MS patients have has conspired with the constantly dry mouth brought on by my meds to systematically destroy every tooth in my head (the TMJ is no help there; sometimes my jaw pops so loud you'd swear there was a chipmunk on top of my head, cracking walnuts). Nobody wants a mouth filled with worthless teeth, but when you have an accent as thick as mine, one that makes you sound like the love child of Bill Engvall and Dolly Parton, bad teeth put you in real danger of being labeled an unflattering stereotype that usually has something to do with a family tree whose branches don't fork. Hard as my dentist and I have tried to save them, I found out last month my poor little toothies are officially done for. They're too dead to save but not dead enough to surrender without a fight, which means 25 teeth have to be pulled after which I'll get my very own set of false teeth. Considering the cost, that one's gonna have to wait a while.

I never saw myself saving up for a set of fake chompers.

Bad as I know all of that sounds, I got off easy when you consider some of us can't walk or even breathe without help. My walking is by no means pretty, and most of the time I have to use a cane, but I'm still powering around on my own steam, and I'm able to do things like making myself a sandwich, bathing, getting dressed and so on. I might end up needing more help later on, but I try not to worry about what might happen and focus my energy on getting well. Most of what I'm dealing with is irritating but manageable. The only illness I'm having a booger of a time getting under control is one that cropped up just a few months before Jim left.

Agoraphobia, with a capital A.

Agoraphobia, or at least the kind I have, isn't like you see in TV and movies. I can leave the house without curling into a ball and muttering in Klingon, but it's uncomfortable to go too far away from home. When I do go out, it's almost exclusively for doctor's appointments, and I do my best to get back home as quick as I can. And because I have so many days when I'm too sick and tired to go anywhere, it's hard to tell where the MS leaves off and the agoraphobia begins. I don't know that it really matters which is which since they both keep me from doing so many of the things I used to enjoy, things like driving, going for a walk, and shopping at an actual store. For a while, Jim was good about helping me, but as his memories grew foggier, he developed a deep bitterness, first toward my illness, and at the end, toward me personally. He hated all the extra work brought on by a wife who wasn't what he'd bargained for. After he left, all those extra responsibilities came tumbling down on my family like Hell's version of Jenga.

It was especially hard on my kids.

My girls were 18 and 20 at the time Jim took off. They adored their father, but after he left it became increasingly hard to get him to take their calls or see them. My youngest was so hurt and stressed she moved in with my mother about 10 months ago. I respect my daughter's choices, but I miss that kid like you wouldn't believe. And while I understood that she did what she had to do for her own peace of mind, her moving out only made life that much harder on her sister.

The last thing my oldest needs is for her life to be one ounce harder than it's been these last two years.

She'd just finished her first year at a local college and was taking a semester off when Jim left. She ended up dropping her college plans to work full-time so she could help support us.  To give Jim credit, he was/is still paying for some things, but it's never enough to pay for even our basic needs. My daughter took that job to keep me from having to choose between food and my medication. It was a heroic, incredibly unselfish thing to do, and while I'm extremely thankful to and enormously proud of her, no child should ever have to make that kind of sacrifice. She was finally able to get enough financial aid to re-enroll, but she lost her job just after Christmas, and finding a new one has been tough. I can't tell you how heartbreaking it's been as a mother to watch all the joy she felt about going back to school be replaced by fear. I'm not going to give up until I fix this mess and my girls are happy again.

For one member of my family, I can never make things right.

About a year before he walked out, Jim borrowed a big chunk of money from my grandfather, money my grandfather pulled from his home equity account because Jim -- the same guy he'd loved and trusted like a grandson for two decades -- promised he'd make the monthly payments. Nothing was put in writing, and neither of them thought to talk about whether my grandfather would also be drawing from the account after he made Jim the loan. By the time​ they figured out they probably should have done both those things, the payment was higher than an 80's date night hairdo and feelings had been hurt. I'm the family fixer, which means nobody tells me what's going on until the situation is so outta whack a chiropractor wouldn't touch it. That's when they bring me in to see if I can channel my inner MacGyver long enough to cobble together a solution using a couple of Juicy Fruit wrappers, a fraying shoelace, and a handful of pocket lint.

It's sorta like being a secret service agent except I don't get a walkie-talkie or a cool code name.

Unfortunately, not even a seasoned fixer like me could straighten this one out. To be fair, I think my grandfather would've been satisfied if my husband had made even half of the payment each month. Instead, Jim waiting until about 3 months after he left me and then stopped paying on the loan altogether. My grandfather sold everything he could sell -- including the pool hall he'd owned and operated since 1960 -- to pay off as much of the balance as possible. He was paying the monthly payment with his social security check, leaving him with almost nothing to make it through the rest of the month. He lived in a constant state of fear: fear of not having enough money; fear of losing his home; and fear of where he and my dad, who also lives there and is anything but healthy, would go if they did lose the place. That much stress would've been hard for a Zen Buhddist to handle, much less a 79 year old man with 4 stints and 2 clogged arteries who once told his cardiologist that bacon is a vegetable because pigs eat corn. On the 21st of October, my grandfather's heart -- the same big, beautiful heart that led him to loan my husband the money in the first place -- gave out with no warning and no time to say goodbye or any of the thousands of other things I've wanted to tell him since he's been gone.

His death was the cosmic equivalent of a sucker punch?

His loss was especially devastating for me because my grandparents weren't like most other grandparents. My grandmother was only 14 when she met my 17 year old grandfather at a square dance, falling so hard for the whole bad boy, greaser thing he had going on, she eloped with him to Mississippi a couple of months later. A year afterward they had their only child, my father, who was only 17 when he married my 16 year old mother and they had their only child, me.

Hillbillies, gotta love 'em.

When you come from a family that literally grows up together, it creates a unique dynamic. My grandparents were more like a second set of parents than a regular grandma and grandpa. My granny died when I was 22, and I feel her loss every day. Most of my best memories of her -- and of my childhood -- are in that house, the one my dad is in real danger of losing. My father is battling his own list of medical demons, including hemochromatosis, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and anxiety. The anxiety has caused such an aversion to doctors that, even though he's definitely too sick to work, he doesn't have enough of a medical history to file for disability. That also means he has no money coming in to pay the note that's almost 4 months behind on the house that's now his. The stress of knowing he could soon lose the home my grandparents left him is the last thing my dad needs. He shouldn't be in this position, and the kicker is I haven't been able to offer him much help because I'm about two heart beats and a shallow breath away from losing my own home.

The last place you ever want to be an overachiever is in the "Up To My Earballs In Trouble" department.

The reason my house is in danger, too, goes back to Jim who, after 2 years of informal separation, has had a sudden jones for a divorce with all the trimmings. The main thing he's looking to trim is me and any of the financial ties still binding us, especially the house we bought together over 20 years ago. This place doesn't exactly have equity oozing from the attic thanks to the second mortgage we took out when the medical bills first started piling up several years ago, but equity wasn't something I worried too much about since I love this house and don't want to sell it. I raised my children here and although my oldest still lives with me, I know it won't be long until she sets out on her own. My daughters may be grown, but they're still my babies and I want them to know they always have a place to come back to -- whether they're home for a visit or in need of a soft place to land -- that's filled with love and memories. And not just any place, but this place.

Jim and his lawyer aren't down with that plan.

They want me to sign over my rights to the house and to be moved out within ninety days afterward. And because divorce is the gift that just keeps giving, they're also asking that I be awarded no spousal support and no right to any of his retirement benefits when the time comes. There's nothing wrong with wanting things. I'm 5'2" and would like to be 5'9" with a killer nickname like Stretch Reechsitzal, but I doubt it's gonna happen.

If I have anything to say about it, neither is my husband's fantasy divorce.

I have no choice but to fight this thing in court. Jim has been my only real source of income and health insurance for the majority of our marriage, and now here I am, on the edge of losing both those things. I don't qualify for disability because I was a stay-at-home mom for so many years, and I'm not eligible for any kind of public assistance because Jim and I are still legally married and he makes too much money. I can apply for SSI once the divorce goes through, but Alabama is one of those states that voted against Medicare expansion, so it could be anywhere between 2 and 5 years before my case is heard. Even then, there's no guarantee I'll be approved. Considering the current state of my health and the cost of my meds, I'm almost as afraid of losing my health insurance as I am losing my home.

Notice I said almost.

If I lose this place, I'm not sure where my family and I will go, and when I say family, I'm not just talking about my human family members. I share this joint with a 16 year old Welsh corgi/golden retriever mix named Max, and an opinionated house cat trio made up of Scooter, Lilly, and Moxie, all of whom are either 6 years old or about to be. Scooter has stoma, which makes him a special needs kitty, not that he seems to notice. Technically they were all rescues, but I don't like that term because it sounds like I did something good when the truth is they've done more for me than I can ever repay. It would be hard to find a place that would take all of us, but I'd have to do it because we're a set and everyone knows you don't break up sets.

There's no such thing as re-homing your family.

Even before you figure in my animals, I'm no landlord's idea of a hot rental prospect. Seems they all have this crazy hangup about tenants bringing in a steady monthly income. If my critters and lack of traditional employment didn't prompt them to show me the door, the credit check would do the trick. When we bought this house, my credit was darn close to perfect. We're talking about a FICO score so attractive you could frame that joker and stick it on the wall. That's how it used to be. After racking up years worth of medical bills we couldn't pay when Jim broke his leg and I got sick, I have about enough credit left to finance a Tic Tac, and I don't mean anything fancy like a whole box of Tic Tacs, either. I'd be lucky to get a loan on one single mint.

I'm not sure if you'd call that a Tic or a Tac.

Living here has been such a privilege. I have awesome neighbors, several of whom have lived here since their homes were built. They treat my kids like their own grandkids, and I have no words to describe how sweet they've been to me since Jim left. They're the main reason my house is as good on the outside as it is on the inside, but that's not to say my little piece of the world isn't pretty darn special all by its lonesome. Like I said, I'm going to fight Jim in court, but first I have to find a lawyer, and in Alabama, we don't have the same type of legal aid other states have, especially if yours is a civil case. (Even for some criminal cases, in Alabama you can remain silent to your heart's content, but that whole "right to an attorney" thing is a bit iffy.) There's a form of legal aid for divorce cases, but it's only available to victims of domestic violence. Jim's an asshat, but he would never hit me. There's a volunteer lawyer program, but they don't have any volunteers in my county. I'm hoping one of the lawyers from Madison's program will take my case since I haven't been able to find anyone who'll represent me on a contingency basis. Even if I get a lawyer who specializes in eviscerating soon-to-be-ex-husbands, winning won't help me save my dad's house and if what I've heard is true, it might not even help me save mine.

I swear I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere between "I do" and "Dear God, would somebody pass me a Xanax."

About a year ago, Jim took bankruptcy, and although I've never taken it myself and wasn't a part of his, he was still able to include our second mortgage and the late fees from our first mortgage in his bankruptcy filing. His was the kind of bankruptcy that's paid back over time (the reason the bank didn't take my house), but Jim has made it clear he's tired of paying and is going to default on both mortgages if the court sides with me. He's also said he's going to stop paying for anything, my house included, once his bankruptcy is finished, and since I wasn't a part of his filing I have no idea when that is and no way to find out. I'm not even sure if he can do that, but he's so desperate to get out from under any obligation to me, he won't stop until he finds a way. It's like there's a catch-22 around every corner I turn, and the man I once loved and trusted is using all those snags and loopholes as part of some crazed plot to render me powerless.

I never know what fresh hell Jim's bringing next; he's got the Sword of Dorkocles hanging over my head.

Realistically, I know my only hope of hanging on to both houses is by raising the money to pay off what's owed on them, and my only shot at coming up with that kind of money is through crowdsource fundraising. I started a GoFundMe campaign about a month ago that raised $585.00, an amount for which my family and I are beyond grateful, but I still have to raise enough money to weigh down a small yak. I had a relapse right before Christmas and wasn't been able to promote it the way I needed to. Now that I'm feeling better I'm putting my fundraising pants back on and trying this thing again.

You can click here if you're interested in contributing, and I've also posted the link at the end of this post. If you can't donate but would still like to help, passing my story on to everyone you know and asking them to do the same would be a huge help. The only people who reach their goals are folks whose stories go viral. And if you know anyone even remotely famous -- like the cousin of Elvis's plumber -- and think they would be willing to get the word out, too, please consider letting them know. In this case, there's no such thing as too much help. Beyond that, if you could pray for us, keep a warm thought, or just send some positive energy our way, it would mean a great deal. I believe we're gonna be okay, but I'll admit the stress is wearing me down.

My theme song when Jim left was, "I Will Survive," but it's slowly being edged out by, "I Wanna Be Sedated."

This was a long, heavy-hearted post, and I want to thank you for hanging with me through it. I try to see the positive in every situation and I can honestly say that no matter what happens next with Jim, my life is better for his having been in it, and that's not just because our children are the two most amazing people on the planet. Anyway, thanks for reading and take care.

Until Next Time,
Sara


https://www.gofundme.com/qdyewf-help-mom-w-ms-save-home-family