True Love Finds Its Way Home

I walked those neighborhood streets every day at 13 and every day in my mind up until I was 45. I remembered the shimmering asphalt on a hot summer day and the way the road smelled as it heated up. Meeting up with friends on the street corner, talking, smoking and hanging out was all we had to do back then. It was the 70's and life was hard but for a 13 year old it was easy. When I look back, I realize my parents must have struggled but I didn't know it. I had the basics and our house, while small, was nice. My dad was in the military and we lived in a small Alabama town for 3 years on one of his duty stations. I loved it.

That summer I was 12 going on 13 and just starting to begin my teen life. I had met some of the "cool" kids and they were accepting me into their group, leaving behind the children I had befriended in the past 2 years. I was excited for summer and what it might bring. I remember thinking I would never be as cool as some of the girls in that group. I so wanted to be. But I was shy. Built like a brickhouse even at that young age, I looked like I was 16 although I was just turning 13. These girls talked about boys and sex and things I had never even heard of. I yearned to understand it all but was to embarrassed to ask any questions so I learned by listening. They all had boyfriends and I envied them and dreamed of the day I would have someone who "liked" me. Most in our group were older than I was and had been friends all their lives. I was the newby and so quiet and shy, they really didn't "know" me at all. But I was happy just to be a part of that group. I smoked even though I'd never done it before because that was what they did. I even went so far as stealing cigerettes from my mom so we could smoke them together.

That fateful day was a hot summer day like any other. I had walked down the road to see if anyone was out and about and a friend called me over to a house she was babysitting at. I had a couple cigs so we were smoking them when she jumped up and ran out the front door. I didn't know what was going on until she came back in the house with a young guy that she introduced as Johnny. He was extremely cute in a bad boy kind of way. He smiled at me and said hi and I just shyly smiled back. They talked for a while then he left. I asked Susie, who was that? and she smiled and said that's Johnny Bradley, he's a really cool guy that lives on the other side of town. His sister lives down the road here and he said he's staying with her this summer. He has the best weed. She must have seen my face and how enamored I was because she told me then don't get any ideas. He's way out of your league. All the girls want to date him.

I spent the next couple of days dreaming about Johnny. I didn't know him but I was attracted to him. He wasn't very tall but very muscular and tanned with bleached blondish hair. His green eyes seemed to look right through me. Even at 15, his voice was super low and sexy.

Most evenings we all would meet up on one of the neighborhood streets and hang out. This June night was hot and we were all just waiting on the sun to go down for it to cool off some. Laughing and joking, maybe 10 of us hanging out on the street corner. In the distance I could hear a motorcycle approaching. As it got closer it slowed to a stop. I was sitting on the curb and looked up to see him. My heart quickened and my palms got sweaty. It was Johnny. He talked for a little while with the guys in our group then turned his attention to me. He walked over to me and sat down next to me and said hi. We talked for a while, what grade I was in, where I lived, etc just basic stuff then it was time for me to go home. It's funny now to think about but I was tall, around 5'9" and he was about my height. He climbed up on the curb so he was looking down at me. He called me over as I was getting ready to walk away. He grabbed my cheeks and kissed me. He said I'll see you later, Debbie. I practically flew home I was so excited.

From that day on, Johnny was a part of my life. He would come to my house and park his motorcycle then we would walk to the street corners where our friends were all hanging out. I wasn't old enough to date but we had some times alone where my parents would drop me at a football game or the night they drove us to a concert in the next town. All the girls told me to watch out, he was only after one thing from me, but he was never disrespectful and never even tried to do anything sexual. We made out a lot but his hands stayed where they should so I didn't think that was the case. My parents didn't like him and they had so many rules around when we could see each other. But it didn't deter me. He was my guy, rough around the edges or not. We talked constantly. We laughed and teased each other. He was my first love. Looking back, I can see my parents were very concerned and as summer turned to fall, they dropped a bombshell on me. We were moving to Hawaii.

Johnny and I were heartbroken. We talked about writing each other and how he would go in the military when he graduated so he could get the money to come to Hawaii to see me. We cried a lot. He really did love me and it was breaking his heart that I was leaving. I grounded him. He had led a very rough life and while all my friends told me he did drugs, he never did them around me. He never showed up at my house messed up in any way. As the fall turned to November the days got shorter and my time did too. We were scheduled to leave on November 13. We cried and held each other every minute we could. We talked about the future when I was older and he could come get me. The day finally arrived when it was time to go. I hugged him and kissed him for the last time then got in my parents station wagon and faced the back window so I could watch him till I couldn't see him anymore.

It was 1973 and even a phone call was out of reach financially for either of us. Back then, it was $30 for a couple minutes to Hawaii and neither of us could afford that. I wrote him often and received a couple letters back from him. They got further and further apart as the years went by. In the end of 1974 I met a boy and started dating him. He was the bad boy in every way that Johnny wasn't. I should have steered clear but I was hurting and wanted someone to make me feel better. We dated on and off until I turned 16. My parents couldn't stand him but I didn't care. I'd lost Johnny I wasn't losing him. He went into the military when I was 16 and asked my parents if we could get married. While he was gone I got a letter from Johnny, saying he finally had the money to come to Hawaii. I was so mad I hadn't heard from him in almost a year. I wrote him back and told him I was marrying this guy. I never heard from Johnny again. I did marry John. My parents left to go back to the mainland 3 days after I got married.

My life with John was horrible. He was abusive and would later become a full fledged alcoholic. We had 2 children, 10 years apart. I learned early on in my marriage that I had made a huge mistake. Did I love John? I had a love for him. I would more say in the early years I was obsessed with not losing him. I set myself up for living a very poor, unstable life for the next 20 years. We would move to Columbia, SC several times and back to Hawaii a couple times. I fought his abuse and his alcoholic abuse for all those years. I had been raised to believe this was the life I chose and I needed to make it work.

I loved my kids, they were my life. When you enable an abuser like I did by being the stable person, you come to a realization that there is nothing you can do to change them. You either live with the abuse or you leave. I stopped the physical abuse by having him arrested. He never laid a hand on me after that time. The alcohol abuse was a fight I lost. That and his infidelities sent me down a path of depression and strength. I became the strong one as the years went by. Always a romantic at heart, I dreamed of Johnny and the love we shared. I could recognize now at an older age that we did truly love each other. Starting in the 3rd year of my marriage, I would call back to that little town in Alabama and try to find a phone number for Johnny. At least once a year I called directory assistance but there was never a number in his name.

Oh the dreams I had of him. Meeting him on the street, him coming to rescue me during my darkest days, us being together again....they went on and on. But in the 1980's and early 90's there was no internet. When my son was born, I went back to school and tried to get my degree. I didn't succeed but just the 2 years I went advanced my knowledge and got me going on a career path that would span the rest of my life.

In the late 1990's I fell in love with computers. I loved the internet and all that it offered me. My career began in 1995 at a software company so I was firmly entrenched in the world of computing. When I made my call in November of 1999 to find a number for Johnny, there was one! I was scared and excited. I knew if my husband saw the phone bill I'd be in major trouble. I finally got up the nerve to dial the number and it just rang and rang then an answering machine picked up. Not a personal message but leave a number in a robotic voice. I hung up. Over the next weeks I called it several times and always the same thing, no answer. Then in December, I called again and it was disconnected. I cried. I had been so close. No new number in his name.

Sometime later I found Classmates.com. I went on Classmates and joined my high school in Hawaii to see if any of my high school friends would contact me. I also joined Johnny's high school even though I never went to it, hoping he might one day see it.

One of our friends, Jean, who used to walk the streets with us, contacted me in 2000. We talked several times and caught up on each other's lives. I asked her about Johnny and she told me he was married to a nurse and had 2 kids and still lived in Ozark. I was relieved he was well and had a decent life but sad because ethically, morally, I couldn't ever contact him now. I would never do anything to damage his life or insert myself in his life. There was a part of my heart that he held for my entire life but now it was time to close that off and go on knowing my dreams would need to die.

For about 6 months in 2000 I had a feeling that he had died so after talking to Jean I was relieved to hear that he had not. I didn't know why I felt that way but it was a devastating feeling that followed me for months.

Life goes on and my life changed drastically in 2002. My daughter was now married with 3 kids and my son was 13 years old when I was laid off from my job. I couldn't find another because so many had been laid off in Columbia, SC. My husband stepped up and kept us going but times were lean that 9 months I was unemployed. I became proficient through my years working for that company in a specific software. I talked to someone who said put that on your resume. See what happens. I thought only that specific company used that software. Within 30 days of posting that resume online I had a job. In New Hampshire! Making twice what I had made before. Over the next 6 months I moved my family to New Hampshire, I made a deal with my husband if he didn't drink he didn't have to work. I needed to focus on work and not have drama at home so that I could be successful and we could get ahead.

For those 2 years we developed a sort of friendship in our marriage. He wasn't drinking and I was at peace for the most part with how my life was going. My son was growing up he was now 16 and in high school with a girlfriend of his own. He loved New Hampshire. I hated it. I didn't like the cold but loved the money I was making. At this point I had been married for 26 years. I wasn't happy but I wasn't totally unhappy. I just existed and lived my life day to day.

In December of 2004 the three of us drove to SC for Christmas. During that trip, my husband showed his ass in front of my entire family. Getting drunk and acting out. I was done. If I could have driven the 17 hours back to New Hampshire by myself I would have left him in SC. But I was afraid to drive through the snow through all those states by myself with my son so I did the grin and bear it and made up with him.

So many different things determined my life and how I lived it. I became another person to deal with all the trauma and heartache that I felt. No one and I mean no one knew the real me. I was my son's mom, my husband's wife but there was no me. I learned a valuable lesson in life, you don't ever judge why someone lives with abuse, because to be honest, it's very hard to recognize it when you are in it. Once I had my husband arrested, the verbal abuse was horrible but I justified staying by thinking at least he doesn't hit me anymore. I thought I was doing the right thing to stay with him for my kids. He was their father and they loved him. But of course, hindsight is 20/20 and it damaged them as much as it damaged me.

To put the time in context, this was the beginning of 2005 and AOL was still big back then. I had AOL Instant Messenger and would talk to my daughter and friends in SC quite frequently on it. The days of Facebook were still far ahead on the horizon. We had our first actual small cell phones and not everyone had one yet.

On January 8th I came home from work and got on the computer. I hadn't checked one of my email accounts in awhile so went to check it. Immediately, my heart stopped. I was actually shaking...there it was. You have an email from Johnny B. I opened the email and it was from Classmates saying I had received an email from Johnny but would need to join their subscription service to read it. I immediately joined. The email was short and just said hi how are you doing etc. I wrote him back right away. We started emailing each other from that point. I learned in 1999 when I got his phone number and couldn't get an answer he had been put in the hospital and had almost died. He has a rare disease that causes blood clots and for almost 2 years he didn't eat or drink anything while his intestines lay dormant. They began to work again which allowed him to live but he would never do any of the normal things people take for granted, hold his grandchild, hold a job, have a normal life.

I found out he had been divorced since 1996 and that the person Jean was talking about when she told me in 2000 about Johnny was actually his brother. We didn't talk about love or our love for each other or anything like that, we just caught up with each other of how our lives had been. He made an account on AOL messenger so that we could talk real time. He rarely left the house and it was easy for us to talk. He created a female name so my husband wouldn't know if he happened to be looking over my shoulder. We talked every day on messenger. It was like a light had come on in my life. I was so happy just to be talking to him. He never acted like he had any interest in me other than friendship.

I asked my friend Jean to make a lunch date with him and find out how he was. She told me after that he was super skinny and very weak. She said during the lunch they talked about me and at one point, he looked at her with tears in his eyes and said I'm still in love with her. It broke my heart. How was I going to get to him, I was still married.

Johnny was trying to work with his old boss to do some research and had a office. I knew he was there one day and found the phone number online. My husband and son were headed to the grocery store since we were in the middle of a huge snow storm. I picked up the phone and called him. The minute I heard his voice I was gone. I knew I needed to see him but how.

My husband was still an asshole. Every few weeks he would ask me for a divorce over some perceived issue that he wasn't happy about. The next time he yelled that at me, I told him okay and that I would give him one and send him back to Hawaii. He freaked out. He knew I was serious. He begged and pleaded with me. He threatened to kill himself. Then came the day he called me at work and asked me who the redneck was in the picture on my computer. I raced home. This man had never ever used my computer so how he found this hidden photograph of Johnny I had no idea. But I told him the truth. I told him, because I was afraid of him, that I needed time to think about what I wanted to do and I would send him to his parents in Las Vegas to give me time to get my head together. It took me almost a month to get him to go but he finally left in March of 2005.

I made arrangements to fly to Alabama in April to see Johnny. He had no idea I was coming. My friend Jean picked me up at the airport and took me to the hotel. I called Johnny and told him to meet me there. After 32 years I was in his arms again. We spent 4 days together and it was as if we had never been apart. He was worried about his scars and body image because of all the surgeries he'd had....I was worried because I was a 45 year old plus sized woman. None of that mattered. The minute I looked in his eyes an electric shock went through my body. I never doubted my decision from that point. The cutest thing he did during my time there was take me back to the old neighborhood. He stopped the car and told me to get out. He walked me over to the curb, got up on it and grabbed my face and kissed me. I'm sure the people in those homes thought we were crazy but I was over the moon.

When I returned home, I called my husband in Vegas and told him I wanted a divorce. He screamed and yelled at me, what am I going to do, who is going to take care of me? I don't have any money, you're going to have to pay me alimony. I told him to get an attorney and we could discuss whatever we needed to. Every day I would go to work and have a voicemail from him threatening to kill me in heinous ways. Johnny was still in Alabama and we talked daily. My son came to me and asked me, "Mom do you really love this guy?" I told him I did. He told me he would be okay with him coming to New Hampshire. He wouldn't try to stop me if I wanted Johnny to come live with us.

Johnny moved to NH in late April. He had one condition to moving with me and that was he would need to be able to fly home to his daughter to spend time with her every couple months. I agreed. His daughter was only 12 at the time and he had visitation quite regularly. At one point, she even came to NH to visit.

In August my divorce was final. That day, my Johnny B got down on one knee and proposed to me. Neither of us had had a wedding the first time around so we planned a wedding in SC. On December 30th, I finally married my life long love. At the time he was given 5 years to live in 2000 so he was on borrowed time. We spent the first year making memories and our entire marriage has been geared toward that.

I made huge mistakes in my life, had people interfere with my life and became complacent with regard to the quality of my life but my true love came back home to me. I get to spend the golden years of my life in peace and to know I'm truly loved and to feel that all encompassing love I wanted my whole life. When I truly gave up and gave it to God, he brought my love back to me. I wish it had been sooner but I will never look this gift horse in the mouth!

So much happened in this story that I didn't include but if anyone has any interest, I'd be happy to do additional stories about our lives.