Exposed part 2

It is a miracle to me that Bill and I ever got together and realized we were one anothers missing puzzle piece. We completed one another. There I said it, all those strident militant feminst voices in my past be damned. Since the lightening bolt hasn't come out of nowhere and struck me down yet, I'll continue.

2 people couldn't have been raised in such opposite ways or regions or social climates.
Bill was raised in New Orleans and resided the last 2 decades or so in rural Mississippi, until Katrina. But how Katrina helped us get together is a whole other entry.

When Bill was 17 he had quit school. School was a struggle for him with undiagnosed Dyslexia. He always said that ignorance and intolerance were some of his best teachers. He was laughed at all throughout his school years because of his Dyslexia and called retarded and stupid and other things that harmed his belief in himself. So at 17 he joined the navy. He served during Vietnam.

As I'm 12 years younger then he, my memories of the Vietnam era were images from our black and white Tv that I never really understood, nor did I give much thought to over the years.
My years in school were easy for me but restless. I wasn't challenged enough with my subjects and the entire process of education bored me so I took up doing numerous things for thrills and chuckles.
I became the teen your mother wouldn't have wanted you to hang out with.Sex, drugs and rock and roll all became a huge buffet of life, that I explored and experimented with. I graduated high school which was an iffy proposition all the way up until graduation day. My grades were good, it was my attendance that wasn't. I was told 2 days before graduation that I wouldn't be graduating because my attendance was record was poor and I still owed then 50 days of after school suspension. I shrugged my shoulders at the information and said well we all know I'm not ever going to give the attendance back. I don't need your diploma. I showed up on the stage with my class wondering if my name would be called. It was and I was out of there.
I signed myself up for college at a local Jr. college and got a job working in retail at Caldors. Within a few months I was promoted from a cashier to head cashier. I started school and got mixed up in a group that excelled at liquid lunches. Liquid lunches didn't help in my Astromy class. I learned what every 18 year old finds out, college isn't high school and it takes focus and attention to pass.The job I held and school didn't take away the restless feeling that there had to more then this to life.
So I packed up everything and moved out to Boulder, Colorado with the boyfriend I had at the time. Talk about culture shock.

Meanwhile Bill did his 4 years in the navy and when he got out, he enrolled in Johnston College in Redlands, Ca.He had earned his GED in the navy and he had an interest in Phsychology. The day he graduated from college was a proud day for him.Graduating college killed a few of his demons from his childhood and he proved to himself he was more then what people always said he was.

He then went to work for the oil companies purchasing leases for them.He met his first wife then and got married.Here is where his story sounds an awful lot like a plot to some smutty historical romance.

He and his ex lived on the family property, property that was his inheritance. The glitch was he and his wife had to stay married, because whoever left the other would lose their share of the inheritance to the other.So there they both were waiting for the inheritance to clear probate so they could start living their lives apart.
They had grown apart and she had taken up drinking and for years Bill was unhappy and grew even more so. He didn't take care of his health. So from the 80's on, he had health issues rearing their heads, much of it genetic. He ignored his health.

Me, I had moved back home to NY from Colorado, got my own place and met my first husband. It was a whirlwind courtship and we were married 11 months after we met.

I was still restless, still thinking there had to be more to life then marriage, housework, work and kids. Fufilling those traditional roles just didn't do anything for me. I felt empty, so I started filling my life up with things.Buying things, making my house a showplace and living every day on auto pilot. I was still bored but I convinced myself I had it all and I was supposed to be happy. Most days I believed I was.

For 16 years I lied to myself until February 01, 02 when I suffered a massive stroke during surgery of a bleeding brain Aneurysm. I was paralysed on my entire left side unable to walk, remember anything for longer then 2 nano seconds. I suddenly at 37 found myself dependent as a child. My kids were 4 and 10 at the time. I was in rehab for 3 months and was released in a wheelchair able to walk with assistance.
My left hand wasn't functioning and cognitively I was a mess.Recovery from stroke is a harsh teacher. At this time the spouse rejected me, told me he didn't want to be with me any more because I was disabled. His tone when he said that was sneering and mortified. It just made me mad.So for 3 years we existed in the same house, not speaking to one another and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.He decided to take up with the next door neighbor. The day I moved out, she moved in that night. Talk about turning a small town on its ear...we were the talk of the town and everyone was willing to give me their sympathy and pity. Me, I just wanted to hide and lick my wounds and move beyond what had happened. I was gaining more confidence in living alone, I was learning all kinds of ways to survive and live life one handed.

About this time I was volunteering on a stroke support site as a chat host and a guy came into my chat room all depressed and bummed after his stroke. I called him on it, asking him what he was doing for his depression and getting on with his life? I scared him away for a short while.

He came back and started writing essays on the site. I was an instant fan and I found his views thought provoking in a good way and I thought there might be more to him then pity and shyness. He interested me no doubt, but as I had never met anyone like him, I was unsure how to approach getting to know him better.
He kept telling me he had unlimited long distance if I ever needed to talk I could let him know and he'd call.My thoughts were what would I talk to him about? We had nothing in common but stroke and I found that subject boring.