I Run These Towns

In May of 2002 I packed up my car and cats, and my sister joined me for the two day drive to Texas. My ex was still living in an apartment with a friend for another month or so, but then we got our own place. I loved that apartment mainly because it was huge. We also had a great pool and hot tub at our apartment complex. I felt like a legit grown up.  I'm a girl who loves the mountains, and Texas is FLAT. I remember taking a wrong turn once and being able to see for miles across the brown landscape. Texas made me feel small. And lonely, but for more reasons than just the landscape. Letting the cats out en route to Texas Shortly after moving to Texas I got a job working as a paralegal in family law at a decent sized law firm. The firm was largely a personal injury firm, but I loved our tiny family law section. There was a lot to learn, and I became very close to one of the other paralegals. We would go to Bennigans together for lunch and make fun of our colleague (whom we nicknamed ...

It was June of 2001, and I had been married for exactly a month when my ex embarked on the first separation of our marriage, heading to Fort Knox, Kentucky for the summer. I quit my job at the mall and worked in the Dean's office at the law school for the summer. I loved the job and enjoyed seeing everyone who came into the office. I also got to do fun things like go on a field trip with the dean and a small team to buy new artwork by West Virginia artists for the student lounge.  The trouble started in July, three months after my ileostomy was reversed. I started to have abdominal pain and bleeding again, symptoms that had subsided during the time I had an ostomy. I was immediately freaked out because in my head having my colon removed meant I was gong to be free of those symptoms from that point on. I was not physically or mentally prepared for anything else.  I headed to Pittsburgh for a check-up with Dr. Schraut. A nurse took me into a procedure room, handed me a few enema...

I have never wanted to be an attorney. The advice I'd received, to spend the extra year at law school for more options, was the advice I was taking. I did not want to practice law. I was also starting three of the most challenging years of my life a month after major surgery, so that set the stage for my law school adventure. The week before classes started I drove up to buy my books. Law school books are large and heavy, and I was still restricted to carrying 15 pounds or less. I realized I still had to get the books home, so I carried them back to my car despite my restrictions.      I've always been very ambitious, but my mindset going into law school was less ambition and more survival. In the composite photo of my first year class my face is so swollen with steroids that it takes up nearly the entire tiny square in which I'm pictured. I didn't want people to know I'd just had surgery and certainly didn't want anyone to know I had an ostomy. It was time to s...

I had three months until law school started, and I was determined to make the best of them. My fiancé was attending ROTC training at Fort Lewis, Washington for the bulk of the summer, so we decided to go away for a long weekend with his family for the 4th of July. We went to the Canaan Valley resort area in West Virginia where his family had rented several houses.  My UC symptoms were getting too bad to ignore. While we were on vacation I struggled with eating and going to the bathroom often. I was also getting fevers, and then the fevers would break while I was napping, leaving me drenched in sweat. I called my doctor's office only to be told she was in Hawaii on vacation for several weeks. They told me to stop eating dairy, and that was about it. I was barely able to eat, so I was eating popsicles and sitting in the hot tub for long periods of time. One afternoon we decided to hike to the top of Seneca Rocks, one of my favorite places in WV. It's a 1.3 mile trail to the top, ...