Teresa J.
Hopefully this won't be too long and boring for anyone, but I do tend to get wordy and to the point about things.
I was born on November 1, 1963 and was very small. I only weighed 5 pounds, 6 ounces when leaving the hospital. Through my early years, I am told stories about how picky of an eater I was. My mom and grandma always tell me about if it wasn't fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, or cheese, you could just forget about my eating. The story is that I would not go to bed if I didn't have a slice of cheese and then in the morning, there would be part of a dried up piece of cheese laying on the bed as I fell asleep before I could eat it all.
When I was 3 years old, in the winter time, I wanted to go out with my dad to ride the tractor as we had just had a blizzard and he needed to clear the cattle troughs so the cattle could eat. I was told to stay inside, but didn't listen. The next thing my folks knew, was that I had slipped outside, went into the feedlot behind my dad on the tractor where he was backing up and he did not see me. You guessed it. I was run over. The doctors said if it had not been for the large amount of snow and my small size, I could have been dead. I came away with only some deep bruising and a hard time walking for about a year. I had not one broken bone.
I kept a tiny, petite frame until I started into fourth grade. This is where I finally found out that there was more to eating than just fried chicken and mashed potatoes and along with that came the weight. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was one of the larger kids in my class instead of being the "tiny shrimp", that I was always known as. AND the weight didn't stop there. Year after year, the weight just kept adding to my short frame. I was know as "Angus", "two ton Terry", "heffer", etc.
When I turned 12, a new boy came to town. We had a crush on each other (poor boy meets farmer's daughter), but I was forbid to seem him. Though that didn't stop me. He only lived about three miles from us, so on Saturday's I would ride my bike to his place so we could fool around. This went on for some time until things went terribly wrong. One Sunday afternoon, I went over to his place and found him to be gone, but his older brother was home. Being the naive farmer's daughter I was, I was convinced to wait around until the boy came home. I can now talk about this without crying because I have come to terms with what happened. Long story short, I was raped. Shortly after this, the boy found out what his brother did and almost killed him. Both boys were sent away to juvenile detention homes and my folks never found out about what happened.
When I was 14, life started being kinder to my and I was on my way to finding out who God really was, but life doesn't always give us roses, I found out. On a Saturday night in the fall (September), I had gone to a Gospel concert in York with some friends and one of their mothers. On our way home, we were hit by a drunk driver. One of my best friends was killed, her mother (who was driving) was severly injured by the steering wheel and driver's side window, and I was found laying in the engine compartment of the our vehicle. Well, so much for that. I was on a 2 year recovery from my injuries, which kept me out of sports and most exercise, so that weight continued it's journey throughout my body, not leaving one square inch of lean muscle. Life became too difficult for me to handle and I began eating even more and started drinking and smoking.
Ohh, but 16 came around. I finally had my first real boyfriend and not a crush. Growing up in the 80's was just plushy. We lasted throughout the rest of high school until my senior year when he went into the National Guards and went to boot camp. I was quite heavy by this time, which he didn't seem to mind or so I thought. We were typical teens for that era, doing all the things that teens are not suppose to do. We broke up and I went off the deep end. I began to really drink heavily, driving recklessly. I had no regard for my life, let alone anyone that was with me.
I graduated from high school in 1982 and went to college in Lincoln where I graduated in 1983 with my Licensed Practical Nursing degree. Though this was a challenge as well. My high school boyfriend came back into my life, which was not entirely a good thing. I had been dating others off and on, but nothing seriously. I had never stopped loving my first real boyfriend, so other boys were just around for attention and fooling around. In the Spring of 1983, I found myself pregnant, alone, obese, and depressed. The father of my child was my first boyfriend, but he denied this and made my life a living hell. See, I just could not stop loving him or so I thought. In later years, I was diagnosed as being a "co-dependent." I did graduate from college, took my boards and passed, and got a job on my own. I worked for a small town nursing home and lived on my own with my new daughter, the love of my life (then, now, and always--we are almost unseparable to this day). The father left, but then showed back up when my daughter was about 1 1/2 years old. It was proved that he was undoubtedly her father (can't mess with 99.6% of the DNA). Well, his life was a basket case since he has a thing for the females. He was going through a divorce, living in an apartment with two other females, and wanted to start seeing me again. Dumb me, let him back into my life.
Well, on August 1, 1987 we were married in a church with our daughter as the flower girl and a very large wedding. Guess what!!! About a month before the wedding, I found out I was pregnant again. At least it wasn't a shot gun wedding. My folks never did like the man I married as he was and still is over-ego, male chavuanist pig who can't seem to keep it in his pants. We went on and had our son in 1988, and then another daughter in 1990. Things were on an absolute roller coaster by then. My weight was up and down constantly, I was married to a man that slept with almost every female in our small town, and I finally lost my "marbles."
I fell off the deep end and tried to end my life in front on my children by overdosing. Our oldest daughter called my parents and they took care of me getting the help I needed, not my husband. My dad found him at his shop with another female. That was pretty much the end of that with the exception that I still just couldn't grasp that my husband was doing this. It took the eyes of our 8 year old daughter to show me the light. See, while I was away in the pysch ward, he moved in one his "friends" and her children into our house to take care of our children. Our 8 year old found them in bed one day, doing the nasty, and she was told she was just dreaming.
Well, on a visit to see me, she told the counselor and then the counselor made special arrangements for us to talk about this. I HAD FINALLY GOT IT. We were divorced finally in 1995 after a very long, bad divorce. It was not amicable by any means as he was trying to get full custody of our children saying that I would always be insane. Well, he lost for the most part. The judge split our children up--I had custody of the girls and he got custody of our son.
I moved away to Iowa with our girls to get away from things and try to start a new life, but that didn't work out too well. I had finally lost quite a bit of weight and was actually happy with the way I looked. Maybe a little too much so. I started dating a lot and had several different boyfriends. I only went out with them when the kids were on visitation with their father. I would never go out when the kids were around. This is all this ever came to be. I guess I was just lonely and didn't care who or what I was with. After being in Iowa for about 3 years, I moved back to Nebraska to York, where I am still living today.
My best friend had just recently been medically discharged from the Army and was also now living in York. Her and her husband took us under their wings and got my head back on straight. I had just gone wild and needed some direction in my life. They got me back right with God and after much poking and prodding, I was introduced to my sole mate. I told my best friend that I wanted nothing more to do with man. I just couldn't take it anymore. I finally gave in and after a vacation to the east coast for my brother's wedding in 1997, I met my future husband, Kim, on September 11, 1997. I will never ever forget that day for as long as I live. See, he and his partner owned a martial arts school in town and taught Taekwondo and CardioKicks. My friend talked me into joining the CardioKicks program. The night they introduced me to Kim, I shook his hand and something happened deep inside me. This was a feeling that I had never in my life felt before. Later that night, I told my friends that Kim was going to be my husband.
After some prodding by my friends, who were know best friends to Kim, we started dating without any of the students knowing. It was just like being in high school. Kim was divorced and had sole custody of three girls that he had been raising for several years by that time. He had always said that he was not going to date anyone until his girls were out on his own, but then he said that all changed when we first met. Long story short, we had a very long dating period before he finally asked me to marry him. We actually began dating in early 1998 and asked me to marry him on November 3, 2000. It was a shock to many of our students as they still did not know that we had been together all this time. Actually, it was a great feeling to us both. Our love for each other was and is undying to this day and hopefully forever. Kim does not care what I look like. He is always telling me that he did not marry my body, he married my person, my soul, my heart. He still tries to tell me this and makes me cry because I just don't see how such a great man that is physically fit would love somebody that looks like me.
Well, I guess that is about the end of my saga except to say that we have our six kids, 1 granddaughter, 3 grandsons, 1 grandson on the way, and our cat, Sabrina.
Hopefully, you did not become too bored with my life story. Thank you for reading about me and taking the time
