How I Left a Liberal Paradise and Ended Up in a Texas Hellscape

I am Boston Massachusetts born and bred. Boston to the BONE, this girl. Absolute raging liberal Democrat, child of a hippie, former biker chick, child of the streets. It would take a book to describe my youth, suffice to say that it was pretty wild times. A lot of fun, a lot of chaos, a lot of love, a lot of heartache.

When I was 19, I met my first husband, Koji. He was about to graduate from MIT, and we met, fell in love, got an apartment in East Boston and both worked crappy jobs to make ends meet while he hunted for a job that he could use his degree in. In early 1985, his step-grandfather hooked him up with a job in Silicon Valley, and offered to sell us a mobile home on payments, so we packed a few bags and a couple of boxes and flew Braniff Airlines to San Francisco. Of note here is that on our way, we had a layover in Dallas, the first time I’d ever set foot in Texas. Little did I know what the future held for me.

Koji and I were very young when we married, and over the course of our 15 year marriage, we slowly became more close friends than spouses. We had a child together, but we didn’t share a bedroom any more, and ultimately, we decided to split. We did 50/50 custody of our child, and remained very good friends, and still are close friends 25 years after our divorce. Not a lot of folks can say that about their ex, but Koji and I can. Our kid has always said they were the luckiest divorced kid they knew of, because we did not fight and hate each other and stick the kid in the middle.

I met my second husband online. He was Australian. I was head over heels for this man and wrapped my entire existence around him. We married, applied for his green card, and what do you know, he married me solely for that green card. Asshole is putting it mildly.

I was so wrapped up in this man that I had a major breakdown when he split. I attempted suicide with an overdose of anti-depressants and spent several months in the hospital getting my head back together. 

When I got out of the hospital, I turned on ICQ, an obsolete internet messaging system, and my friend Jonathan told me that people on IRC (a chatting system) were wondering where I was. I decided it was time to log in there, did so, and went to my old favorite channel, Callahans, which was based on Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Cross-Time Saloon book series. (Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased. Thus do we refute entropy.)

In the chat room I met Nilptr, a graduate student in Texas, widower with three kids ranging from six years old to twelve, lonely, depressed, intelligent, funny, and caring. We wound up talking on the phone one night, and after that we spent every night for hours on the phone, falling in love. He first said I love you on April 18, 2004, and I said it right back. May 22, he came to California to meet me. And in August, he came back to help me pack my shit and bring me to Texas. That was all 21 years ago. Wednesday will be our 21st wedding anniversary.

After we had been in Texas for about two months, the kids came to me one day and asked if they could call me their mother, and refer to me as Ma. My heart melted. I can never seem to remember that these kids share no DNA with me, I love them as if they had grown in my belly, not just in my heart. They, and their father, are my world.

And that, dear readers, is how I met my husband and a Boston and San Francisco liberal ended up in OhFuckMe, Texas.

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#FAMILY

#MEMORIES

#MATTERS-OF-THE-HEART

#WRITING

#MARRIAGE