Meet you at the top of the mountain...

Tomorrow it will be eight months since my Daddy died.  I miss him so much and I know Kate does too. She doesn't express her grief the same way I do but I still know she is grieving. 

Thursday she asked me to tell her a story that my Daddy made up for her and told her often. It was hard to get through the story as we drove to school but I managed to tell her the story without crying until the very end.

I want to share the story with you. 

When Kate was two and a half she had a love/hate relationship with dragons.  Dragons scared the munchkin to death but at the same time she loved to look at pictures of dragons and watch movies with dragons in them. She even aspired to be a dragon when she grew up!

One weekend we were visiting my parents in Fort Payne and Kate was stalling going to bed.  My Daddy asked her why she didn't want to go to sleep and she told him she was afraid a dragon might get her.  My Daddy didn't miss a beat; he told her this story:

Once upon a time in a land very close by there were many, many dragons that roamed over the land and on the mountain.  The people of the land were very frightened by the dragons and stayed inside their houses so not to be terrorized by these fire-breathing creatures.  Well, one day I put on my hat, laced my boots and took to my steed. I captured all the dragons in the land and I took them up to the top of the mountain. One by one I locked the dragons in a cage and then I left the mountain top and came home.  At home I found Meemee and she told me of one little lost dragon.  We hunted down the one little dragon that had escaped. Meemee caught it with her lasso and together we took up to the top of the mountain and locked it up in the cage with the others.  When you are twenty-one I'll meet you at the top of the mountain and we will release the dragons together.

It wasn't until I got to the last line of the story that I teared up. It was at that point I truly realized her loss.  He will not be here to meet her at the top of the mountain when she is twenty-one.  I believe that she will meet him again someday but I still grieve that she only got to spend four short years with one of the most creative, kind, generous, eccentric, witty and loving people in the world.  I miss him everyday of my life and I know Kate does too. I love you Daddy! RIP~ Henry Samuel Killlian, Sr. 07/21/1940-02/18/2011

I'm not a princess, I'm a bad-ass....

It's interesting how relationships with Alcoholics can impact so many parts of your life. My life has been changed forever in many, many ways because of my marriage to an alcoholic; good and bad.  Financially I'm devastated. I allowed D.W. to make all of the financial decisions in our relationship.  Many of these decisions were about properties I owned, loans I took out in my name, etc.  These decisions will not affect him or his life but will effect Kate and me for the long term. 


I own a house in Louisiana, actually I own 3 houses in Louisiana.  I bought these houses before I knew D.W. or before I knew that I wouldn't retire from LC. When I got the job at UM we, D.W. and myself, decided to put the houses up for sale. He found a real estate agent and he decided on the amount we would ask for the houses.  He thought because of money, time, blood, sweat and tears that I had put into the house that 'we' should turn a good profit.  He decided we should ask $300,000 for the house. The house had appraised for just under $200,000. Now I can't believe I didn't insist that we price the house based on comps or the appraisal but I didn't.  He had never bought or sold a house. He didn't even have a bank account when we married. But I trusted him completely. I wanted him to be right.  I would have never second guessed him. I was silent. I was afraid


Well, the house never sold. Yep, I still own the houses. I've rented them for the past four years. I can barely pay the mortgage, insurance and repairs with the rent that I collect monthly.  I've continually tried to sell the houses but because of the location no one will buy them.  The most recently asking price was $140,000-- Yep that's down from $300,000.  If we had asked $140,000 when we moved four years ago I'm betting that they house would have sold quickly.  I was silent about the price of the house.


He took out a second mortgage on the houses in Louisiana in my name.  He didn't forge my name, he didn't have to. I signed the papers without reading or even talking to him about the loan.  We were having a hard time making ends meet because he was in school full time and not working.  I learned later that the loan has a balloon payment of $28,000 (March of 2013).  I was silent about the loan even after I found out about the balloon payment.


I was silent about D.W. not working. When most grown people decide to go back to school they take classes and work. D.W. couldn't work. He suffers from ADHD and other things that make it impossible for him to do anything other than take classes. He made lots of excuses. He couldn't keep our daughter when I had rehearsal or had to work late; I had to hire a babysitter. He couldn't come home at night; he had to go to a coffee shop or bookstore to study. It was much like I was a single parent long before I asked him to leave.  But through it all I was silent. 


I was silent when he took out around $60,000 in student loans with me as the co-signer.  He has now defaulted on all of them. For the last two years I've received around five phone calls a day from his student loan companies and/or collection agencies wanting to know when I'm going to pay his bills. 


I was silent when he spent over $275 a month on tobacco and coffee. I was silent. We could hardly pay our water bill and I was silent.


I write this to remind myself and others in relationships like this that we have a voice. We do not have to remain silent. You don't have to remain silent about financial issues or anything else for that matter.

Are you afraid if you speak the alcoholic will leave? I was.  Are you afraid that they will yell? I was. Are you afraid that he will push, hit or punch you? I was. Or are you afraid that he might kill you? Sounds dramatic I know, but I was afraid that he would kill me.  I was paralyzed.

You may want to be treated like a princess and he may occasionally treat you that way. He'll string you along with a little love and lots of apologies. But if he has threatened to leave, yelled at you, pushed you, hit you, punched you he is not a prince and it's time that you speak up. It's time that you yell.  It's time for you to be a bad-ass that you can be.


I'm a bad-ass.  There is no way that I would stand for the abuse I once stood for everyday of my life.  I'm no longer silent.  I don't stick my head in the sand anymore.  I'm moving forward emotionally, mentally and spiritually; I'm stronger.  And eventually I'll be financially stronger.  I've made hard decisions recently about the financial mess I'm in and I have lawyer/planner working with me to straighten it all out.  It will take a while but I have faith that we will get past this because I'm not a princess, I'm a bad-ass.....