Creeva’s World 2.0

Pic­ture taken from here

Last night I we had our com­mu­nity band prac­tice moved to a church for the night.  Iron­i­cally it was the church of the girl I lived with before I was with my wife (over a decade ago).  I wish I could tell you that we broke up over a mutual dis­agree­ment where we went our own sep­a­rate ways but it didn’t work out like that.   Since at one point of time she was once a huge point of my life I thought I would doc­u­ment her, at that point the facts will be recorded and I’ll put the past behind me.

When I was a fresh­men in high school I met Kim the night of the High School Home­com­ing dance (back in 1990 — cripes this mem­ory is of legal age).  I had friends in march­ing band (this was the year before I started play­ing trum­pet at all) and I was hang­ing out with them some girl was just wan­der­ing around a cir­cle of peo­ple cry­ing on the shoul­ders of those around her.  I was one of those peo­ple, this girl was Kim.   She had just been dumped by some guy and the march­ing band mem­bers were tak­ing the pity cir­cle approach.  She started cry­ing on me and I didn’t know who the hell she was.   Even­tu­ally she moved on to the next per­son.  A few weeks later she started dat­ing my best friend, for­tu­nately I didn’t go out with them to do any­thing so I saw very lit­tle of her the rest of the school year.  She popped up occa­sion­ally but for the most part she was a non issue.

Pic­ture of me and my best friend that brought Kim into my life — bastard.

The next sum­mer I got conned into join­ing march­ing band (iron­i­cally I didn’t play an instru­ment at the time) and I was there around the time my friend dumped Kim (who grad­u­ated the pre­vi­ous year) so he could have a shot at chas­ing after another girl.   Kim hung around the march­ing band prac­tices like grad­u­ated seniors with noth­ing bet­ter to do occa­sion­ally do.  One day it was rain­ing and I asked her for a ride home — curse her.   This started to be a reg­u­lar thing, she was still upset with my friend leav­ing her so she would talk to me about him, and other things.   After a cou­ple months of becom­ing good friends we started dat­ing.   On a cool fall day down the road from house at her friend’s house I had my first kiss sit­ting on the hood of her 1991 pow­der blue Topaz.

I started sneak­ing out a lot at night to see her, I think this was the start of my 4 hours a night sleep­ing rou­tine.   I had sneak­ing out of my house down to the sci­ence.   Some­times I won­der which was greater, the nights I did sneak out or the nights I didn’t.   My par­ents were not too ecsta­tic with their 15 year old son dat­ing an 18 year old.   I’ll also be kind enough to leave out details and allow you to read between the lines when it comes to inti­mate details.

This was also the year I started writ­ing.  I started with poetry and found I had a knack for it.  I did the silly love let­ters and so did she.   I think I still have a few of them.  Almost all of my poetry is already is already on this blog but I’m sure there are some jour­nal pages (folks that was ana­log blog­ging) I’ve left out.   I’m sure read­ing them today would sound very Emo-ish.  If I can find them and read through my chicken scratch hand writ­ing I’ll put them up.

The sum­mer that fol­lowed we spent most of our time with one another, we went to movies, to Cedar Point, and other related activ­i­ties.  One thing I can remem­ber stick­ing out in my mind was when we left Cedar Point because the weather was pick­ing up.  As we were dri­ving back there was a Tor­nado sit­ing in our town.  We watched the skies care­fully and made it back to her parent’s house.   We found out later that a tor­nado did touch down about 2 miles from us.  It was very crazy and stu­pid to be dri­ving out in that.

We dated for 9–10 months and the fol­low­ing year in march­ing band I took my friends lead and dumped her.  I started dat­ing another girl Mari.   About 3 months later that rela­tion­ship didn’t work out and I left Mari.   We’ll dis­cuss more on Mari another day.   At this point Kim was going with Nate, some guy ahead of me in school.

Mari from back when I dated her.

Well Kim and I started talk­ing again since we had always been good friends.  On Decem­ber 31st, 1992 I was hav­ing a New Years Eve party at my house (with a fair amount of peo­ple as I recall) and I get a phone call from Kim.   She wasn’t going to stop by because some of the peo­ple there didn’t like her, which was fine.  She was at her friend’s house at another party just a cou­ple streets over.  What ever was going through her mind, because though we had been talk­ing again off an on, she wanted me to stop over and talk for a few min­utes.   So like a good friend (fool) I wan­der over to talk to her.   What I don’t remem­ber if she told me was that her boyfriend Nate was there.

We were talk­ing (and sit­ting on that damn Topaz again) and some­one started yelling inside the house.  Out of this house busts this big guy.  All he said was “Nate wanted me to mess you up.” and I got punched in the face.  Since I was on the edge of the car he caught me in a spin and knocked me down a few feet from where I was stand­ing. This was the sec­ond time in my life I have been punched (in a true fight and haven’t been punched since).  I think he may have got­ten in a cou­ple more shots, it’s been so long ago it’s a blur.  This guy’s girl­friend and Kim dragged him off an pulled him back into the house, Kim apol­o­gized and I wan­dered back home.

When I got there I was fum­ing, I grabbed a base­ball bat from my bed­room and started back towards the front door.  Luck­ily from a police record stand point I was talked down by the peo­ple at my party.   Granted half the guys wanted to go over there and start some­thing, but the girls at the party and some of the other guys cooled down the sit­u­a­tion.  I never went over.   Since that night was one of the few times I have been punched it’s etched into my brain.

Things calmed down and Kim and I con­tin­ued talk­ing.  A few months later things didn’t work out between her and Nate and they broke up.   We dated a lit­tle bit for a few weeks, but just kind of main­tained a friend­ship point of view.  After that we went our sep­a­rate ways for awhile.   In spring of 1994 my girl­friend at the time dumped me right before prom (today we have dif­fer­ent takes on how this went down).  Shortly after that (some­how I don’t remem­ber) Kim and I started talk­ing again.   Talk­ing lead to dat­ing.    This was the road that it always was with Kim.   Being friends and try­ing to keep it pla­tonic always lead to some­thing more.

We dated through the sum­mer and she even went to my Mother’s wed­ding.  My step-father and I never really saw eye to eye, he came into the house try­ing to be an alpha male.  It wasn’t hap­pen­ing though.  We never got along though for time peri­ods we could fake it and even be civil to one another.   Why is this rel­e­vant?  Well right after the wed­ding took place ( I played trum­pet so I was part of the ser­vice) I guess my step father made a lot of deroga­tory remarks to her about her and about me.  Then and there I didn’t know this.  She told me as we were dri­ving back to my mother’s house for a wed­ding reception.

I was fum­ing.  I arrived to the house just a cou­ple min­utes before my mother and my new step father.  I hap­pily started a scream­ing match on the front lawn.  Luck­ily Kim was house sit­ting at her sister’s place for a cou­ple of weeks I went inside and grabbed a cou­ple changes of clothes and left for a few weeks, never even call­ing.  Some­time dur­ing this time frame being an young fool I asked Kim to marry me and she said yes.  I was just a cou­ple weeks past eigh­teen and I was engaged.

I came home and stayed for a cou­ple weeks before I was to leave for col­lege.   The big day arrived and I was sup­posed to use my mother’s mini van to haul all my stuff an hour south to school.  Orig­i­nally my mother was going to drive me down to school and Kim and my friend Tim were sup­posed to come and help move stuff.  My mother said she would go but my step father also had to come.   I didn’t want him there and asked if we could just take the van and Kim would bring it back after­ward.  Well this esca­lated into a scream­ing match that rivaled the wed­ding recep­tion just a month or so earlier.

I hadn’t been on speak­ing terms really with my father at this point, and there was a lot of ani­mos­ity between my mother and him.  My step-father helped fuel this by mock­ing me and say­ing my father should take me down (I lit­er­ally had to be at the school the next day for col­lege march­ing band camp).  Time was drag­ging on and the fight­ing esca­lated, I ended up kick­ing the mini van in the front pas­sen­ger side fender and leav­ing a huge dent that stayed there for a few years until my step father pounded it out.   For a lit­tle FYI the mini van was already packed and filled with all my stuff.    Even if I had com­pro­mised and capit­u­lated and had him go there lit­er­ally was no room for a fifth per­son in that van.  My mother had enough at this point and handed us the keys.

I think I cried the whole way down to col­lege this was the sec­ond time my mother chose my step father over her child in what was an impor­tant day in his life.   We made it to school and I set­tled in.  We were going to do the long dis­tance rela­tion­ship.  There was a phone on cam­pus where i used to make col­lect calls to her (or I had a huge roll of quar­ters some­times).   When I called col­lect I used a fake name so her par­ents wouldn’t know it was me and think it was a wrong num­ber if she didn’t answer the phone.   She came down and vis­ited once (which look­ing back for a 40 minute drive really is pathetic — that’s less then one way in my daily com­mute).   After three of four weeks I had enough and broke it off with her.  I started dat­ing some­one at col­lege and I called it a day.

Christ­mas break rolled around and I was kind of in between girl­friends at the time (another post for another time) and Kim and I man­aged to get back together.   We spent most the month with each other and when it came time to go back to school, I took a side trip to see my grand­fa­ther who was in the hos­pi­tal.   We drove down to the Day­ton area about 4 hours away and stayed at my my grandfather’s house since no one else was there.   That night Kim went to bed and I stayed up and wrote a let­ter to my grand­mother.  The next day we headed to the hos­pi­tal but stopped at my grandmother’s grave and I left the note for her there.   We went and vis­ited my grand­fa­ther who had suf­fered and stroke and lost 60% of his body mass.  She was there for me and I appre­ci­ated it.

School rolled around and I rec­on­ciled with my girl­friend from the pre­vi­ous semes­ter.  Now for some rea­son this should have been a straight break up with Kim moment.   I held off for a cou­ple days and Kim came down to visit.   The sit­u­a­tion was not a sur­prise to my col­lege girl­friend, she knew what was hap­pen­ing.    I took Kim to the local mall and we walked and talked, but my col­lege girl­friend stalked us and was obvi­ous about fol­low­ing us. After get­ting back to the car Kim asked what it all was about, I explained and broke up with her.  She dropped me off at my dorm room and I thought then that she left.   I went up and spent time with my col­lege girl­friend, while this was hap­pen­ing Kim pro­ceeded to make out with my roommate’s best friend.  That’s the kind of rebound girl she was.

At this point you would think that the Kim col­lege years era was over, well not quite.   I get a phone that she is preg­nant and needs to talk.   I arrange it that I come home that week­end to talk to her.  Prob­lem was col­lege girl­friend insisted on going and I had not told her about the preg­nancy.  I man­age to get up north and slip away for a lit­tle bit to talk to Kim.   This leads me back home and my col­lege girl­friend is upset.  She tells me she is preg­nant (I had not told her Kim was preg­nant yet).  So I’m 18 years old and I find out in less then seven days that I have two girls preg­nant.  To add to the top of the tower here, col­lege girl­friend and I break up.

A few weeks later I’m dat­ing some­one else and I find out both col­lege girl­friend and Kim have mis­car­riages within a week of each other.  I don’t tell any­one and did not tell either one of them, so it’s coin­ci­dence that they both told me, and today I think they were both lying to me over the inci­dent.   Around this time period my grand­fa­ther died and I was deal­ing with that also.   Col­lege pro­gressed mostly Kim until sum­mer rolled around.  I was not going back to school the fol­low­ing year, so two weeks after mov­ing back I moved out of my moth­ers house and moved in with Kim who had taken over her sis­ters apartment.

Kim man­aged to get me a job at the local Speed­way, which at the time was about the size of two of the cubi­cles I have at work now.   I enjoyed work­ing there, I enjoyed the night shift.   One day how­ever I got in a dis­agree­ment with the man­ager and just up and quit.  After that my high school friend that orig­i­nally dated Kim secured me a job at a local marina.   I did that for a year pay­ing the bills until I secured my first com­puter job.   All through this Kim and I stayed together.   One day a girl saw us at a restau­rant and told me (a year or so later) that she felt so bad for me she wished there was some­thing she could do for me.   I used to go out and hang out with friends until early morn­ing hours and around this time I finally got my dri­vers license (I was twenty).

One night Kim went out and didn’t come home, she stayed at a friends house — a sin­gle male friends house — after a night of drink­ing.  from all accounts noth­ing hap­pened, I don’t hap­pen to believe that.  The rea­son I didn’t believe it was that my high school friend kept say­ing she came on to him when I wasn’t around.  I believe him, not her.  Things were get­ting worse and worse over the next year, I would go out more and she would do her own thing.  She crit­i­cized my friends, or say they were too young. or into the wrong things.   Though we did man­age to go camp­ing twice while we lived together.

The first time we drove to some­where in the back­woods of Penn­syl­va­nia with her par­ents.  Her par­ents treated me even worse then she did, so for the week we were there I hated it the whole time.   It’s hard to get me to go camp­ing as it is now (ask Xie) let alone with peo­ple I don’t really like.   The sec­ond time we went camp­ing I took a friend with me, in the mid­dle of the trip Kim went storm­ing off and said she was tak­ing off and going home leav­ing use 300 miles away from home with no way back.  While she was so con­fi­dent and storm­ing off to her car I told her to “Screw off, ” I then laughed at her and told her I had her keys which she asked me to hold.   My friend and I left her at the camp and went off hik­ing.   Things rec­on­ciled and at this point we are at July 1997.

At this point I was hang­ing out in a dif­fer­ent crowd with peo­ple with which I’m still friends with some of them until this day.  There was a girl who caught my eye and I was inter­ested in.  My friend from the camp­ing trip and were talk­ing and I asked him if this girl would be inter­ested in me if I was sin­gle.   He said she prob­a­bly would be (he had no clue).  This is a Tues­day night.  I went over and talked to my mother and asked her if I could move my stuff back home.  I then showed up at the apart­ment with at least 10 peo­ple with 3–4 vehi­cles and I told Kim I was mov­ing out and the group then paraded through the apart­ment and had me moved out in about 20 min­utes.   I told Kim I would come back and we could talk about it after I got every­thing unloaded.

I went back and spent the night at the apart­ment (noth­ing hap­pened) and we talked most the night.   She bor­rowed 100.00 from me so she could pay rent.   The next day I asked the girl I was inter­ested in out on a date.   Kim called me on Thurs­day night to see if I wanted to do some­thing on Fri­day.  I told her I had a date.   The next morn­ing there was books and items strewn across my moth­ers lawn.   Things that I had for­got­ten to take with me.   The date went off with­out a hitch and the girl told me that a year or so ear­lier she had seen me at the restau­rant bro­ken and wished she could have helped me.   This girl was Xie and I mar­ried her.

You would think this is where it ends, but there is an adden­dum.   Xie had recently bro­ken up with her boyfriend.  For some rea­son it was in her boyfriend’s head  and Kim’s head that we mutu­ally dumped both of them to be together.  It was a mat­ter of cir­cum­stance, but to them they felt the log­i­cal thing was to date each other.   Xie and I laughed and let them be on there way.  Kim degen­er­ated more and more, she slept around a lot, some­how every­one thought I wanted to here and know about the sto­ries so they fil­tered in.  After try­ing to make me jeal­ous didn’t work she dated a cou­ple peo­ple and then one day a cou­ple years later I get a note on the wind­shield of my car out­side the apart­ment Xie and I had.   It said she missed me and really jsut wanted to be friends.   Well we’ve seen how being friends worked out in the past, I never called her.

I did have to deal with her for a few years at the High School Alumni Band every year, but I guess while I was in Ore­gon she got in a big huff with some­one and said she was never com­ing back.   Yay me!  That was a treat to hear when I came back.  Other news that passed through the grape vine while I was in Ore­gon was that she worked as a lunch lady for a lit­tle bit, my sis­ters told me they saw her work­ing at the school.  She was mar­ried, but the mar­riage only lasted a few months.   Now it seems that I hear that she is sin­gle and can’t find any­one that wants to set­tle down with her (I don’t blame them).

The last year we were together she was work­ing for my father, and still worked for him a lit­tle ways after the break up.   She bor­rowed 100.00 dol­lars from him and never paid it back.   So she owes him and I each 100.00 dol­lars, it’s def­i­nitely worth eat­ing the loss to have to not deal with her again.

The last cou­ple years she has been at the side­lines with Tim who helped me move to col­lege all those years ago (as friends they always have been) dur­ing the Ver­mil­ion Wooly­bear Fes­ti­val while the whole band is on the float.  She kept her head down, pulled a hood over her head and wore sun­glasses, but it was her.   I think she was hid­ing from teh band in gen­eral then just me since Tim looked shocked my first year back from Ore­gon see­ing me on the float so I’m sure she had no idea I was up there before hand.

I started this off by say­ing I had prac­tice in her old church.  While on break I wan­dered around a lit­tle bit and saw a K Pearce in the mem­ber mail box area with a pam­phlet in it.  I then found a board that had pic­tures of all the mem­bers and who they were.  There was her pic­ture.  She looks a good 10 years old then she she should and who knows if the pic­ture is recent.  I thought for a minute to put my ini­tials in an art style she would rec­og­nize as know­ing where they came from on the pam­phlet in her mail box.   I thought about putting my email address, or just typ­ing in “Google Creeva”.  I then real­ized I might find it funny or humor­ous at that moment, but it wasn’t worth it.   The humor did not out weigh the pain of maybe actu­ally hav­ing to hear from her or deal with her in any way.

If you know her and see her, you can hap­pily tell her about this.   I’m hap­pily mar­ried and in Jan­u­ary it will be my tenth wed­ding anniver­sary.   I’ve man­aged to sum up most the high­lights in the rela­tion­ship in a few para­graphs.  If she wants to meet in pub­lic and talk about them I’ll be happy to.……as long as she has the 200.00 she owes me and my father.  I’ll give her time to fin­ish a cof­fee at the very least.   I’d even bring the cof­fee, all con­di­tional on the back debt being paid.   Oth­er­wise I just look at the life she has, where she has gone, and what she has brought upon her­self.  Do you know what I do when I do that?  I laugh.