That Time I Moved to Texas, and EVERYTHING WAS FINE.

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 "Ellen" for Ellen Griswald from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for her overdecorating of her cubicle). 

I also became really close friends with a college classmate of my ex's former roommate, Charlotte. We hit it off immediately, and I was so grateful to be making friends. I was only in Texas for a month when my ex was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for four months. You probably know Fort Leavenworth for being home to a maximum security prison. The Army built a new prison, and ultimately my ex's unit would help move the prisoners from the old prison to the new. So I hung out in our giant new apartment by myself and worked. 

My sister came to visit again that summer, and we hung out with friends on 6th Street in Austin. I got my first tattoo (my sister and I got the Chinese symbol for 'family' tattooed on our lower back). After our weekend in Austin I ended up with a Crohn's issue. Every time I went to the bathroom it felt like I was passing glass. It was so painful I could barely sit down. I ended up in the ER, and if you haven't been to the ER in a military hospital, you're missing nothing.

With my sister on 6th Street in Austin, August 2002

Several doctors came in, and one of them insisted on giving me a rectal exam. It was one of the most painful experiences ever. My sister, Charlotte and another friend were at the ER with me. Someone called my ex in Kansas, and his question was whether I was really sick, or this was just the usual. They ran some tests and gave me pain meds, and then I headed home in the wee hours of the morning.

I was scheduled to work in the morning and attempted to call off. The office manager at the law firm was a stickler for attendance, and she thought I was calling off because my sister was visiting. I took a shower, pulled back my soaking wet hair and dressed for work. My sister had to take me in because I was on pain meds. As I walked through the parking lot, bent over at the waist because I was in so much pain, the office manager saw me and sent me home. It was the least forgiving work environment I've ever had. 

Thankfully a few weeks later I found a GI doctor in Texas who would prescribe more Remicade, and it was just in time for me to start my third year of law school at Baylor. Baylor Law students have a saying, "At most law schools the third year is a joke; at Baylor, the joke's on you." Baylor's practice court program is for third year students, and it's apparently pretty intense. I was a visiting student, and they informed me that I wouldn't be able to participate in practice court. I was fine with that. All of my credits would transfer back to WVU as pass/fail, and I was happy to coast along during my third year.

The holidays were strange because my ex's unit was again deployed, this time to Waco, Texas to guard Air Force One as President Bush flew to Texas to spend the holidays at his ranch in Crawford. I got a room and cooked Christmas dinner for my ex and his platoon at the temporary housing in which they were staying. I remember distinctly that one guy kept complaining about the food (I was not a great cook then...I was 23 for goodness sakes), and only a few thanked me. I was away from my family again on Christmas and even away from my temporary home. It was tough.

In early 2003 there was a lot of talk about invading Iraq, and I was vehemently opposed to it. My ex and I had strong disagreements about the subject. He was a consummate soldier and agreed with the decision to invade. I felt like it seemed misguided and kept asking "Why now? If Saddam is so bad why now? Why not 5 years ago? Why not 5 years from now? I don't understand." (I still don't for the record).

My political views notwithstanding, my ex was deployed to Iraq in March of 2003. We'd had a very rocky year, and when he left I felt a lot of complicated emotions. I felt sad, scared, and relieved. I didn't want him to go, but I didn't want him to stay either. I won't talk about exactly what happened, but later a friend told me they used to watch us constantly fight and wonder when we were getting divorced. And that's the part people saw. A few weeks after he left I vividly remember sitting in the student lounge at Baylor watching a statute of Saddam Hussein topple and wondering how this was my life.

In May I packed up the car and drove back to West Virginia for the summer. Baylor has quarters as opposed to semesters, and I had to complete a summer session at WVU to graduate. I was able to walk with my classmates on graduation day, but I wasn't eligible to take the bar exam that summer because I didn't graduate until August.

Law school graduation, May 2003
(Although technically I wasn't graduating for 3 months)

I was doing well on Remicade, and I remember that being a very fun summer. I was close to my ex's family, and I visited his sister in North Carolina and his aunt in California. I spent a lot of time with my family and his.. I hadn't felt so well for a long time, and I thought maybe things would be okay.

Then in August I drove back to Texas. Nearly all of our friend group had deployed to Iraq. I had one friend in town, and one wife with whom I was close lived in San Antonio, a few hours away. I was running a family support group for deployed soldiers, and I was not the right person for the job. My physical health was the best it had been in a while, but my mental health was a hot mess. 

I stayed in Texas for a few months when I got the call that my dad had a heart attack. I packed up the car and drove back to West Virginia, not knowing if my time in Texas was over.