Life PT2

My senior year I met this guy through some other friends, and we started hanging out. We became real close, and one night he was staying at my house, and we were getting ready to go to bed, and started being horsing around, and being smartasses. One thing led to another and we ended up dating for three years. For the first time in my life I felt accepted, and loved by another guy. Over the next few years I dated several other guys, and a few girls too. You see after being treated the way I was for as long as I was, by the people that did it, and dealing with the depression issues I was, I needed to be held by other guys, to be loved by other guys, to be accepted by other guys, I needed to feel protected, I needed to hear a guy tell me that everything was going to be OK because he was going to take care of me. I did not give a rats ass about the sex, I just needed the emotional support that I could only get from a man.After graduating I went to work at a factory, and worked there for a about a year. Then one night I stopped by Domino's Pizza to see a friend of mine that was the manager. She was complaining about being short handed, and begged me to work for her part-time on the weekends. Always one to help out a friend I said ok. Within six months of that, I had became a manager myself. I loved the work, and did not mind working fifty to seventy hours a week. I worked there for several years, becoming the area supervisors right hand man. I was his troubleshooter. Any time he had problems with a store, I would go in and fix the problems, build up the store and move to another problem store. At this point I'm going to leave out the long story, and just say that one night I was drugged and raped, if I can talk about this, imagine what happened in my childhood that I can't talk about. I was asked to take over a store about three hours from home, and said OK. They were about to close the store because of the poor performance. When I took over it was doing $3k a week in sales, and losing $3k a month, it was ranked very last nationwide. After three months there, I was doing $15k a week, and making $1500 a month profit, the store was now ranked in the top 100 nationwide. However the 80 to 100 hour weeks took their toll. This was '94 and I had my first major fibro flare, and a nervous breakdown at the same time. Some of my friends went down, and moved me back home and in with my parents. Which Dad told me the only way I could move back in was if I started going back to church. So I did what I had to. It was during this time that I realized that my Dad was not as bad as I always thought he was. I was not the only person he was distant with, it was everybody. It's not that he doesn't care, he just doesn't know how to show it. I thought I was just exhausted from working all those hours for so long. So after taking eight months off, I went back to work. I started at a nursing home as the assistant to the Director of Nursing. Basically I was a glorified secretary. I did the usual secretary work, along with employee scheduling, and I was the supply clerk.Eventually I did get my heart right with God. Then when I felt I was ready, I started praying for someone special in my life. I just wanted someone to grab a coffe with, or go watch a movie, or whatever just a good friend. Then about a month later, this woman came into where I worked and wanted to put her application in. Part of my job was to take the applications, and do a preliminary interview. I looked at her application, and noticed that she had put down that she was still working at a nursing home in Chicago. So I asked how she ended up in Mississippi. She said, several years before her ex-husband had left her for another woman. Shortly after they got married they moved to MS where her family lived. Then a month ago, (when I started praying) the other woman called her and said they were getting a divorce and the ex-husband was trying to get custody of their child. She wanted to know if Dawn would come down and go to court to verify what kind of father he was, so he would not get custody. Dawn was in a bad marriage that she wanted out of at the time, and figured two weeks in MS would give her time to decide what to do next. Then after she got here she liked it so much she wanted to stay. So she decided to put her application in at one place and if she got hired she would stay, if not she would go back to Chicago. She got hired.  In the beggining me and her did not get along. Matter of fact we hated each other. Then we started having fun trying to  piss the other one off. Eventually we became good friends, and I invited her to church with me. So on January 7 1996 I went and picked her and her two boys up, and carried them to church. We have not  been apart a day since. We got engaged February 14th, and married May 25th. Before we started dating however, I told her everything, about my past. I thought it was only fair that she knew what she was getting into. It did not matter to her. Before we were even married her boys told their father that he was not their dad anymore, Robby is. I felt the same way about them, and that has not changed. Even though a few years ago I had a real major bout of depression, and did and said some things I regret. They  realized it wasn't me that did those things, and overlooked them, and told me there was nothing to forgive me for. But, I still feel guilty about them.