Can't Imagine: Life with Jon

Life is like a guessing game, you never know what you're going to get until it comes. I just keep my head until someone comes along and keeps me guessing about their life. I never intentionally wanted to get mixed up with my ex boyfriend Jon. You guys already know something about Jon because I told you. We met through myspace. I know what your thinking. Oh no, another internet relationship gone mad. But no, it's really nothing like that. Jon was a bad boy and you can guess that guess what? I'm really attracted to the bad boy type.

So here is how Jon and I met. I began role-playing on the internet in 2005. It was what my life consisted of until recently. Anyway, when I met Jon it was July of 2007. I was working a part-time job at a retail store in town. No we didn't mean in the store and start a fairytale romance. We began talking through myspace in messages. The messages were a little about small talk, mainly about what we liked and what not. He was very adamant about a song that he had listened to on the radio. He said it reminded him of me. I typed back that I was starting to like him a little.

Time progressed and soon we were talking freely. They say you can't love someone until you meet them face to face. Well, guess again. I fell in love from the first time we talked. Jon was very different from all the other guys I've met and dated. Jon and I finally agreed to meet one Friday when he had a gig in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was in between where we both lived. So my friend Jennifer and I went up there. I was wearing a pink polka-dotted dress and heels. I had brought the outfit especially for the evening.

When he was done with his final song, he came off stage and greeted me. I was captivated by him. By the end of the evening around 2 in the morning he was getting ready to head back to Clarksville. We kissed and promised to meet up the next weekend. He was busy with practice during the week and I was busy with work. My friend Sandy mentioned that I looked different the next day when I went back to work. I nodded, "Yeah I think I am doing great for once in my life." That Friday after Jon and I had talked, I noticed he was feeling very depressed. I received a message that night before going to bed that Jon was missing from his sister Kathrine.

My heart leapt into my throat. I was worried the next day as I headed to Wal-Mart to buy some new jeans. All the day I worried and I finally talked Jennifer into taking me to Clarksville. They finally found Jon laying in a hospital bed in Nashville. I went to Nashville with Kathrine and his friend Sadie. Jon was getting blood from a bag and was in pretty bad shape. I was in tears from worry and he just looked at me and said, "Don't cry things will get better. You just have to understand what Tracy and I went through. She was engaged to me and just because she didn't want to be pregnant she committed suicide. It happens every time like this every year. I want to be with her. But don't get me wrong, I love you too, Stace."

I didn't understand how you could want to die so bad after being given a life so freely. But that has always been me until then. I got really depressed after that because Jon stayed depressed. I began to think he wasn't happy with me even though he would often tell me that he was. All this happened in September of 2007. I went back home on Monday after spending the weekend in the hospital with him. I spoke to his friend Matthew on Monday morning and he told me Jon was feeling better. I went to work feeling alright myself. Then when I got home Jon was there waiting on the front porch. My mom and dad hated Jon and thought he was a bad example for a boyfriend. Jon looked at me as I went up onto the porch, "What's kick in sweet cakes?"

I shrugged and leaned against the porch rail, "Nothing really to be honest. It was just another boring day at work. I don't want to go to Nashville this weekend, Jon. I just want to stay home I guess." I shrugged and he sighed pulling me in his arms. He just held me and laid his chin to rest gently against on my forehead. He finally spoke after about ten minutes of silence, "You don't have to go anywhere you don't want to I guess. I just want you to understand how much I love you, Stacey." He looked deeply into my eyes, "You are my life..." I sighed, "I wish I could take your pain away then Jon...let me. I can do a spell and take your pain into myself. I would rather bare it then see you fall." He didn't want me to.

The next thing I knew was he gone back to Gadsden for the night. He spent the night at a hotel because Mom wouldn't let him spend the night at the house. Tuesday and Wednesday we spent together going to thrift stores and eating lunch everyday together. Then we were out one night eating Chinese in Gadsden when he turned to me. "Stacey I am deeply in love with you and I want you to spend the rest of your life with me. Will you marry me?" The tiny diamond sparkled in the partial light of the restaurant. I looked at him and sighed, "I will think about it."

He looked kinda disappointed but said nothing about it. We went to the mall and then went home. The next day I had off from work. I was in my bedroom feeling depressed when I made a decision. If I were going to marry Jon I didn't want Tracy's death to play a part in our lives. I did a spell and took his own pain into myself. I began to drink after that, more than I ever thought about drinking. We're talking two bottles of vodka on my off days from work. All the while Jon acted as if this wasn't effecting him and I kept doing it. And then I learned what Loratabs were. I would go to the emergency room and complain of pain and they would give me the medicine. I would have it filled and within two days to a week I was back in the emergency room asking for more.

It became my way of life. By the end of October I was cutting again, and had landed two times in the hospital for cutting too deep. I was on my way to the morgue if I didn't stop. It was then in November of 2007 that I met Nate. He was a roleplayer with Jon and I in the same little world. He was so sweet and nice to me and didn't ask that I change for him, only look deep down to what I had become. I didn't know God back then. I was ashamed to even mutter the word Christian. One night I had gotten really drunk and high and sat in the bathroom cutting on myself. When all three happened you would know I was majorly depressed and almost to the point of suicide.

Nate called me and asked me to look at what I was doing. He told me God wouldn't ever want me to do that to myself. The next day Jon was angry for some reason when he called and told me that he didn't want to see me for a while. Well I started to cut and while I sat bleeding on the floor I called Nate. Nate said I had to break myself away from Jon entirely if he was the one responsible for doing that to me. I admitted to myself that he was.

I got down on my hands and knees beside my bed as I had when I was a kid and asked God to take away the evil plaguing my life. Somehow I got the strength up and poured out all the whiskey and vodka remaining in my bottles. I flushed the remaining pills I had down the toilet. I felt the guilt inside me being whisked away like a wave of relief. The next day I got up and went to work without calling Jon and without talking to any of his friends. On my lunch break Jon called and asked why I hadn't called him. I simply said, "I don't think this is the place for us to talk. Call me after work." I went to the mental health center in my town and asked them to help me.

The helped me make an appointment to see a therapist. I got put on some medication and by that time it had been two days since I had a serious conversation with Jon. That evening after I had gotten through with the therapist, I called Nate up. We talked about life and laughed. I hadn't laughed in what seemed like forever. Jon finally called me the first week in December and asked me why I was talking to Nate more often. I sighed, "Because he makes me laugh. He doesn't expect me to hang with the cool people and drink all the time. He doesn't haunt me every minute of the day either."

Jon was mad. He came to my house the next day and demanded to see me. My dad wasn't too happy but let him see me. When I went out on the porch he looked at me, "What have you done to us, Stacey? I've never seen you like this...you're more independent...more righteous." I nodded, "Yup and it keeps getting better...because I'm tired of being the way I was before. I don't want to drink anymore, I don't want to pop pills and get high. I want to be drug free...and I want to be free of you. What we had is over Jon, and to make my life better, we're over, Jon."

I walked back inside not looking back. Nate and I began to go steady and dated for four months until March and he and I broke up. Then I met my future husband Shane. I was already best friends with him and he and I began to date at the end of March. Jon and I still have confrontations through the computer and phone calls but he knows I'm not that Stacey that the devil had a hold of that time. I won't ever be again because now I have a friend greater than anyone and his name is Jesus.