My life with Janice seemed to start out pretty good. I was happy to be with a woman. Janice appeared to be a good person. She had moments of anger, but I just ignored them. I figured that I was a really grounded woman and that I could “teach” Janice how to deal with her anger outbursts. Her outbursts were not very often, but they were often enough that they started to bother me. I did not want to be with a person who had such anger issues. Her anger was always over the smallest things too, like if she misplaced something or was late for an appointment. She would flip out if she could not fit into her favourite jeans or a shirt she wanted to wear was not clean. It was actually ridiculous!
Through Janice I met two of probably my closest friends to this day. Sam and Julia were life partners and had been together for a few years when I met them. They are good people. Sam is more masculine in her nature. She is a tough cookie and has a pretty physical job in the construction industry. Julia is more like a stay at home wife. She loves cooking and is awesome at it. She takes care of the house and gets everything ready for Sam for when she comes home or when she is off to work. It is like a lesbian relationship that has stepped back in time to when the husband worked and the wife stayed home. It is a really neat dynamic relationship that works well for them.
Sam and Julia are not married and will likely never get married. They do not believe in marriage. They seem to both think that marriage can wreck a good thing. Maybe they are right, they have been together forever and they seriously never fight. When they disagree on something it is talked about in a calm fashion. They seem grounded. They always remember that the other person has feelings so when they disagree on something they seriously try to respectfully work things out. I think that they truly are life partners and I will be surprised if they ever split. They are good people.
I was and am lucky to have Sam and Julia in my life to this day. They both have been there at the most critical times in my life. I am thankful for them. I am also thankful for Sam and Julia because as time passed with Janice, she started to become extremely jealous and I slowly lost all my friends except for Sam and Julia. Even at work, I could not go for coffee with coworkers. Even my old straight friends were pushed out of my life by Janice. I would go visit Lisa (my closest straight friend I had lived with) and Janice would be calling me every couple of minutes to see if I was still with Lisa and what we were doing. It was embarrassing. I quickly learned to put my phone on silent or vibrate when I was out so that everyone around me would not see the craziness and jealousy that I was dealing with, with Janice.
It got to a point where I would be talking to a boss or one of the employees I was in charge of and Janice would be mad at me. She accused me of cheating all the time and wanting to sleep with everyone. Janice knew the dynamics of the job that I did because we were both cops. I, however, was a much higher rank than Janice and in charge of a lot of people. I had to talk to the people I was the boss of. I also had to answer to the people higher up to me. This was just something I could not avoid. With my phone ringing at work and her blasting me over the phone about cheating and questioning who I was talking to, I realized that my life was out of control.
I no longer had anyone I could talk to. I now know that I could have talked to Sam and Julia, but I didn’t at the time because they were Janice’s friends too. I was also afraid to drag them into my chaos. I was afraid to loose the only friends I had. If Janice knew that I was talking to them, they would be pushed away by Janice. I could not be secluded that much! Sam and Julia also knew the public Janice that everyone loved. I just thought that they would not believe that Janice could be how she was with me, so I was afraid to talk to them about it. In the beginning, I did not know how strong Sam and Julia’s friendship was to Janice so I did not know if I could talk to them.
In the evenings when Janice fell asleep I would go and sit in the living room and ponder about the life I had created for myself. I would stare out into the crisp night and look at the stars and city lights. I found those moments oddly serene even though they were filled with tears. This is not what I wanted in life. I was a strong, educated, intelligent and capable woman that was highly respected and looked up to both at work and in my personal life. How could this be my life?
When I found myself sitting in the living room at night crying about my life, I knew something had to change. I decided that I needed to take control of my life. Enough was enough. Janice needed to get a grip of her anger and her jealousy. I just was not going to accept a life like I had at that moment in time. So I decided that I needed to sit Janice down and talk to her.
Now Janice had major issues and I just did not realize the severity of them at the time. She had multiple personalities. I just never knew which Janice I would be dealing with. There was the public Janice that was kind, caring and funny and that everyone loved. Anyone that knew this Janice would not believe that she could be the Janice I knew at home. Then there was the reasonable Janice that I could talk to. Finally there was this angry Janice who had no control of her emotions or actions. This angry Janice scared me. As Janice became more comfortable in our relationship, this angry Janice started to show up more and more.
Janice was also paranoid. If she lost or misplaced something she would always say someone must have broken in and stolen it. She would always accuse Julia of coming into our house and taking her things. It was weird. I thought she was joking at first and soon I realized that she was serious.
So I sat Janice down and had a talk with her. I was lucky because I had the rational Janice when I sat her down. She understood what I was telling her and how I was feeling and she was very apologetic. She wooed me with great loving words and with how amazing of a woman I was. She told me I was worth the world and worth the effort on her part to get control of her anger. She was aware of her anger and for the first time she said she had a good home and felt like she could work on her anger issues. She said she would make a counsellor appointment and seek help with her anger issues. I actually believed Janice and left our conversation feeling renewed and relieved. I truly felt like I could help Janice and guide her through dealing with her anger issues. I thought we had a plan and that she really could and wanted to work on her problems.
I thought life was going to get better....
At that time in my life I did not realize that in a relationship, what you see in the beginning from the other person is actually better than what you get.
More of the adventure in these posts:
