5 Reasons To Love Again

Chapter One

This is my first time publishing any of my writing. I only discovered Fan Fiction about 6 months ago. C.L. Stone's series caught my interest and then reading all the stories in her forum got me hooked. If there are any grammatical errors, I am sorry. Hopefully everyone will enjoy this...

I couldn't believe it. Only 32 years old and I was a widow. I felt older though. Tired and worn out with life. The only thing I had left to live for was my 4 year old daughter. The turmoil of the past two years had taken a big toll on her too. She would only talk to me now. Never, ever had I dreamed that my life would be like this. I had nobody that really cared about me now. Just my daughter.

Growing up with a critical and harsh mother and a father who always bowed down to her wishes had a screwed me up so bad that I ended up marrying too hastily just to get out of their house. My younger sister had always been the favorite and she could do no wrong. Melanie had lorded it over me and played it to her advantage. Nothing I did was ever good enough for my mother. She constantly told me how weak and stupid I was. I was a constant disappointment to her. Asian mothers needed to be able to brag about their children's accomplishments and she felt like I gave her nothing. She would hit me, telling me that I acted like an animal so I need to be treated like one.

So by the time I met Rick, I was desperate to be loved. He said all the right things to me and swept me off my feet. I thought that I had found true love. Rick hadn't been a totally bad man but weak willed. The first few years of marriage was pretty good. Slowly he started to make me dependent on him alone. He kept me isolated from everyone else needing to be the center of my world. The best thing that came out of all this was our daughter Lexine. Rick adored her and really was a good dad to her. Things started falling apart when he started going to a new doctor. One who prescribed his pain pills for an injury he got. Then she started him on Xanax for his anxiety. It all went downhill from there. Addiction is a terrible thing and since my parents had kept me sheltered, I was ill prepared to deal with any of it. We started arguing constantly about the pills. He kept insisting that there wasn't a problem and that he wasn't hurting anyone. Lexine started to withdraw from her father. She didn't like him when he was confused and whacked out on pills. Eventually she stopped talking to him all together. Part of side effects of the pills was paranoia so he became convinced that I was telling her not to talk to him. I wanted to leave him but had nowhere to go since my family didn't want me back. I struggled with my feelings about Rick. I took my marriage vows seriously, for better or for worse but wondered how much worse I could take without breaking.

Since he refused to let me work until our daughter was old enough to go to school, Rick was the sole bread winner. He owned his own business and as his condition deteriorated so did our bank account. While he was hallucinating one night, he fell and broke his hip. We were forced to close the shop and move the equipment into storage. The worst part was moving in with his mother. She cold to me and treated me like an unwanted burden. Rick started to go to counseling and even considered rehab. But his addiction won in the end and after secretly going to the pharmacy to pick up another month supply of Xanax, he accidentally overdosed one night and didn't wake up in the morning.

My mother in law put up a great act of caring about her poor daughter in law and granddaughter in front of everyone at the funeral. The day after the funeral was a different story. She told me that she had taken care of us long enough and I needed to find a place fast. I decided to sell off the equipment and use the money to start a new life for me and Lexine. As it turns out, my mother in law had already gotten the key to our storage unit and sold off everything already. She handed me $5,000. I looked at her in disbelief since all of it had been worth at least $50,000. I was informed that we owed her for living with her and eating her food.

It only took me 3 days to get everything together and pack up my Honda CRV with everything that I wanted to keep. Not wanting to be in California anymore, I put Lexine in her car seat and headed east...