But when I call, you never seem to be home

I think now it's time to move on to what happened next.
Don and I were together. All the time. It was great, but also had drawbacks.

• Most importantly, I was away from WiFi and smartphones were not like they are now. On top of being internet absent, I was also sharing my phone with Don so his friends and family could get in contact with him if necessary.
  
• The first weekend we were together we stayed with his brother Duckie.

                ......................................

• For the next six months almost we stayed at  his friend Del's house. 
• Del lived next to Don's wife, so like next door to where he lived....Don got to see his kids almost every day. But it was hella awkward for me. As I'm sure you can imagine.
• Living with Del was rough.
•  Besides the fact he was a total sociopath (i'm being literal here), he had ridiculous rules, and he wanted ridiculous rent for the one room we were in. 
• At the beginning of August I had almost $2,000 saved up, but by the end of our stay with Del I had little over $800. I was paying for everything, Don gave his whole paycheck to his wife for the kids. 

We were still working 8 or 10 hour days at Winegard 5 or 6 days a week.
We had the kids on weekends.
I lost time for myself.
The time I did get was when I showered, and even that wasn't private staying at Del's house.
But I did it so we could be together. 
Even though he left his wife mid August, Don and I were not in what we considered an official relationship until mid September. So a month of living together and getting to know the other's routines before we were 100% in an agreed boyfriend girlfriend relationship.

Like I said, living with Del was rough. He was a pusher and he pushed Don towards things I would have rather he stayed away from. In October I had my first experience with an overdose. I woke up one morning to Don on the floor convulsing. He wasn't responding and he was barely breathing. Del said no ambulance and his girlfriend at that time ended up taking care of Don. See, Don was a heavy smoker and also occasionally had fun taking prescription medication he ought not. Well he ended up taking a bunch of pills which were for the cessation of smoking and it caused him to shut down, basically. It was really scary for me to experience this and it's definitely left a mark. (red flag two)

<< In November 2011, Amanda got married. 

    My friend group was still pretty close at this point 3 years out of high school, so it was like a big nerdy gathering that I brought my rugged biker dude to. The mix was interesting and we had lots of fun that night. 

By Christmas of 2011 I was ready to not be living in some shitty ass basement, with access to only one room, no laundry, and a locked door in the middle of the night when I had to piss for way too much money with someone that didn't respect privacy. So we started looking for a new place to stay. It took a little while but in February of 2012 we moved to a trailer park in Ft Madison. 

The park was (and still is) managed by Don's dad. The rent and utilities were cheap. Living in Ft Madison was way less expensive than being in Burlington. The drawbacks were that his kids were farther away and so was work. But life in Ft Madison was better for the most part. I got to meet and interact with his brother. We continued learning about each others interests. I started DIYing my living space and learning to cook (seriously, I really only knew how to cook with a microwave before this and when we moved in we only had a stove oven combo so that was ....fun?). This is also the time that I tried to redownload WoW and it murdered my laptop so then I didn't have a way to get online unless I went to the library to use a computer. It wasn't until the spring of 2013 that I got another laptop.

During this phase of my life I would say overall I was happy. Even though I was farther from my friends and family.
Even though I had to learn a ton of new skills related to homemaking.
Even though I had no idea how to take care of small humans. Who were jerks.
Even though most of the time I felt too much responsibility.
I was happy because I was with someone who loved me. In my own space. Doing my own thing.

We worked. We had (a lot of) sexy time. We hung out with friends. We took care of kids. We slept. And we repeated. For almost a year everything was right as rain. And then the "real" me came out of the box I had so forcefully shoved her into. Or should I say....my unresolved thoughts and feelings finally overwhelmed the wall of "NO!" that I had put them behind and things in me started...crumbling.

In July of 2012 we moved back to Burlington, and for me this is when the happiness started to fade. This was also around the time I first actively creeped on Nathan online since August of the previous year.