Is violence the answer to betrayal? No. Never. However, as Helen saw that wine glass shatter next to his head she felt vindication & shame all in the same moment. It took some seconds for her brain to process all that she was hearing. It would have been funny in a movie, but this was her life. The life Helen had known shattered as the pieces of crystal hit the floor. He finally stopped talking and waving his hands around. He did not bother to say sorry because he was not. He was cruel, cold, & connivng. Then he turned around, walked to the door, opened it, & left. He did not bother to turn around. He was gone.

She was alone. Her back burner plan had failed miserably. How could she be so stupid? How could she be so wrong? Helen took bereavement time off from her job because she could not get out of bed. She would lay there trying to figure out how she never saw him for who he really was. She had wasted so much time searching for a man who would love her & take care of her forever. There he was all along. At least that is what she thought at the time. She would suddenly forget the inconsideration, the selfishness, the lack of respect. All she would feel was the pain of the "what if" moments. What if she had been better in handling her vices? He had his own vices so she never felt the need to discuss her own vices. What if it was her fault that he drugged her so he could get some sleep after going to a party she never wanted to attend? What if she just shut up & let him "be the Man"? If it is true that only losers live in ther past, Helen was the biggest loser of them all.

For the next three months, Helen became a hermit. All of her new Miami friends tried to get her out of the house to no avail. So one by one her party crowd fell away save a few good people she knew. That is why when she got a phone call from her ex's friend she was estactic. He was in town & wanted to catch up. It was like someone had finally found her. They decided to meet at her place & head out to the local dive bar. "Why do men always think the power of cheating on a woman is a forgivable offense?" That was the first thing his friend said to her.

Helen looked quite the mess. While her body was in excellent shape, her hair was several shades of borwn & orange due to her letting her mother give her a make over. Since Helen was not interested in men at the moment she thought it was funny that in trying to be what was magazine beautiful she ended up being beautifully distorted. Helen was not the least bit embarresed. Afterall she had known this secondman through her ex for 3 years. The last thing she was looking for was romance.

They met in a dark place that had no name, but served the best homeade beer. They chit chatted about nothing. She stayed away from the topic of the betrayal & her love for her ex. She laughed at herself & her hair. That is when he threw it on her. Before she could get drunk enough to forget the incident, he planted a kiss on her lips that was as soft as the morning dew. All she could say was "I have to go to the bathroom now." When she returned feeling ridiculous he spilled out an odd confession of feelings for her that she wanted to hear...just not from him. Then she thought that maybe this was God's plan.

All Helen ever wanted was to feel unconditionally loved by a man who would stick by her despite looks, money, etc. She was not in love with this man, but she was going to give it her best shot. So she did. He had sold his place up north, and moved down south. She should have seen the signs. However, everyone seemed to be moving on & finding their own families. Her ex's friend asked her to move in & marry her. Of course there was no ring, but that did not matter to Helen. She said yes to the marriage & to the honeymoon in Greece.

Six months later they were living together. That is when the choking started up. That was when the punches to the stomach started because she was too tired from work to go partying with his friends after she came home. That was when he made her pass out, hit the floor, & chip her front tooth. So she left the apartment, but she did not leave him. Before she moved they discussed what would happen next.

They decided to continue the relationship, but stop living together. When the subject of birth control came up he said that he did not need for them to use any because he still planned on marrying her. Helen getting pregnant would only speed up the process. Helen's period did not come the next month. What a sense of humor God has.

She smoked two packs of menthol cigarettes a day since she was 12. The day her pee stick had a plus sign she stopped cold turkey. She was so excited to tell her baby's daddy until she told her baby's daddy. That was the moment that he decided to tell her it was all a lie. He was in love with a woman he met at work. He had been using her because he needed a place to stay in Florida. He had no interest in being a father, he had no interest in getting married, & he wanted Helen to get an abortion. Helen told him no in the most unlady like way possible.

Helen decided out of love for the life growing inside her that abortion was not in the picture. She did not consider how not having a father or a father figure would or could affect her child. All she thought about was how she would finally have something to live for. She thought that because she had a college degree & a decent salary everything would be fine. If she could not find a husband, find the purpose she thought she was born for (completely wrong about that), she could have a baby...even if she had to do it alone.

She ended up having to work two jobs to make ends meet. In the meantime her first priority was making sure that her son would not feel the sting of not having a father in his life. Helen's father promised to be a father figure to her son, but went back on his word as soon as he realized what being a true father meant. A father is supposed to protect, guide, provide, nuture, & unconditionally love their children. Helen's father was a failure on all fronts except for the providing part. They always lived above their means when the did not have to. Helen grew up being the richest person in her neighborhood & the poorest person in her private school.

That is why she did not realize the colossal cost of raising a child. That is why she ignored the impact of not having a father around would have on her son even though Helen's father was not her father during her teenage years. Helen's father left her mother for several years to be with another woman. It cost Helen's soul dearly. When he came back to her mother, Helen had already left the house. She chose to bury the pain thinking that by going on with her life the pain would magically dissipate. It all came bubbling back to her soul's surface as the years went on with Helen raising her child alone.

Eleven years went by. She received no child support & had two realtionships that lasted a year. She loathed her job in medicine because she realized that money came first & a patients health always came second. Helen decided to stop trying to date. It was too exhausting like running a never ending marathon. She finally accepted that her family was only going to be her & her son. That is how she reconnected with her ex love.

He found her through a social network on the web. She tried to ignore his messages, but finally broke down because she needed to remember what it was like to laugh. Through all the madness she realized she always kept loving him. Helen thought there was no harm in having him over for a glass of wine or bottle of beer. He showed up at her house in jeans & a baby Gap t-shirt. She thought he might confess to being gay. No such luck.

He started with spouting how her baby's daddy had changed. He came with his speech about how Helen obviously needed help & how she needed to let her baby's daddy come back into our lives. It was as if Helen had not spent over a year trying to get child support & get her baby daddy to take any kind of responsibility. At that point it had been over a decade. Helen had been diagnosed with arthritis & was tired of being a celestial robot. So she gave in.

Endings are beginnings in disguise. Helen let her babby daddy come back into their lives. For three months it was if her dreams had finally come true. Her son's biological father swept her off her feet with everything under a bright blue sky. The icing on the cake was that her true love was back in her life as her best friend & personal supporter. However, Helen was determined to make her "family" work. The babby daddy told her once again how he had always loved her. He said he was too young at 29 with a Bachelor's Degree to be a father, but he was ready now.

It sounded practically scripted, but Helen wanted to believe it so badly that when her lease was up she took her, her son, & moved into the baddy daddy's house. It only took him three months to tell her the same lies he told her over a decade ago & for her to believe it. She was so tired of being everything to everyone. She was mother, father, sister, daughter, friend, provider, protector, & lover to whomever she could tolerate occasionally. This was her beginning. This had to be God or the universe or whatever higher power rescuing her from such misery.

She loved her son. He was the only reason she got up in the morning. The only problem was that as he was becoming more spoiled by her the more of a natural brat he had become. This did not help raise Helen's patience level. The baby daddy decided that enough was enough. Her son snuck two cokkies in the middle of the night. When the baby daddy found out he made the child who was almost 12 years old, 5 foot 7 inches, & 150 pounds pull his pants down & gave him 5 lashes with a leather belt.

Helen begged him to stop. On her fourth try to pull him off her son he hit her so hard he slashed her cheek. She knew in the first month of living together that she had made the biggest mistake of her life. All of it because her "true love" convinced her that her babby daddy had changed. She mistakenly believed everything that came out of his mouth as the truth. The truth was that nobody had changed. They were all just variations of a theme. Afterall, you are who you choose to be.

Helen choose to play the victim so she could get some rest. The result of that bad decision was that she lost her SUV, her home, her job, gotten on disability, & watched her son spiral into depression. All the while she knew she had to get them out of there, but she lost her job. She lost her fearlessness. In the meantime she put up with the same verbal & physical excriment that she had to put up with before in life with him & without him. She finally decided enough was enough.

When he kicked her & their child out, when it became obvious to her that he had played her for the fool once again, she decided to finally get the child support the state had ordered years back. She also reconnected with the love of her life.

That was when she dialed 911 & he kicked them out. At the age of 40 she had to call her father to come get her & her child. It was starry midnight on a Tuesday. Helen let the shame consume her like angels wrapping theirs wings around her frail body. She woke up to her the sound of her son's baby daddy telling her that he did not want her or her son back.

Endings are beginnings in disguise. That was when she was on her way. She reconnected with the original "He". Her son's baby daddy was gone again. This time what she got was her true love back. She finally realized this perfectly flawed man was the one for her. Now all she had to do is make him aware of their permanent connection.

They spoke for hours on end for days. That turned into painfully romantic days together where just being close to each other was enough. That turned into him telling her that he felt something more for her. He told her that he loved her again. That his joy came from their days together. He visited with her dying mother just to please her. They finally had the official realtionship conversation where he exalted his dying emotion for his ex wife. It was official now. They could not be seperated. That was what she thought.

All of her sweet vulgarity was shared by this amazing human being. It did not matter what he looked like or if he made a three figure salary which he did. It was enough for her to share his company as well as his bed. Those days flew by for Helen for she felt loved. The original "He" made her feel like she was the only girl in the room...always. Helen could not have asked for more. So when she received a settlement she decided to give him the trip of a lifetime.

Helen took him abroad where they danced, got drunk daily, & had their fill of each other in every way possible. He gave her a ring that he said was symbolic of his faith in her. She had done it or so she thought. He said that he had always known that she was the one for him. All of that sweetness turned sour once they landed in the US.

It was when the customs officer jokingly asked if Helen was his girlfriend since he thought Helen was so beautiful. That was the moment he said no. He would never consider her his girlfriend after going through such a nasty divorce. It was that quick. The next day his ex wife whom he had dicouraged from taking foreign language classes when she went back to school told him he could not see his children since he used money from their college fund to help fund the trip.

This somehow became Helen's fault. Helen who had paid for the airline, hotel, meals, & souveniers was to blame for his children being unjustly pulled from his touch. That was her moment of clarity. When he kept abusing her body while she paid for everything with her time, money, & dignity she kept trying to keep her love pure for him.

Her soul woke up & said enough one day. She awoke to the dimness of the knowledge that he had rendered himself incapable of change. This meant that she became aware that there is no such thing as reconnection. There is only the linear connection which is never ending that continues to let your soul flourish & let your demons be your teachers. Helen realized she did not have to chain herself down to another soul that was not meant for her. Helen knew that he was out there. Where? She no longer had to bog herself down with that question. Just as the universe had brought her a son she knew the universe had conjured up her other half & he was just waiting for her to be ready.

Helen finally was.

The End