settling for less in a relationship – The Mid Life Traveler

Fun Fact: I’m turning my blog into a podcast on Spotify and Apple!

To my tens and tens of readers, I am sorry. I have no excuse…well, kind of. First, I just had writer’s block, then I was lazy but then, in 2020, there was a little incident which put a hinder on my typing skills. I do have a voice texting program on my laptop but it seems I’m a more creative writer when I type than when I am speaking into the mic. So now it takes me twice as long to type up what’s going on in my head.

Since it’s been so long, I thought I would take the time this episode to do a quick recap of my past stories and then next week, begin back in 2003 where I left off. If you remember that’s when I decided to leave Tampa for Ft. Lauderdale chasing a dream job that would have me travelling all over the world with the rich and famous.

But first, who am I and why are all of about 35 people so interested in my stories????

In 1972 I was born in Gary, Indiana, about 10 blocks from the Jackson Five, but didn’t know it at the time. Back then Gary’s black community was growing larger than the rest of the races, but we never noticed. People were people, everyone was just trying to survive. My mother’s background is 65% Hispanic, which I didn’t notice either as a child, it’s a shame today how the media’s destroyed that innocence.

My father is a Marine who spent a few years in Vietnam before hooking up with my mom and popping out a couple of kids. PTSD wasn’t quite recognized and many of our Veteran’s weren’t cared for after returning home and suffered so much because of it. Families were torn apart, marriages dissolved, the Vet’s suffered alone which led to thousands of suicides. So when I was about three, my parents called it quits and mom was somehow able to move us out of Gary, where the crime rate was skyrocketing and over to the next town. She raised us three, on her own, as a waitress in the hood. Still amazes me how she did it!

Dad married Val a few years later and she was a great co-mom. Altogether, between the two families there were five of us kids. We would spend the weekends at Dad’s, which was super strict, military style with lots and lots and lots of chores. Dad had a big yard and we were always mowing, raking and bagging, felt like we were in prison. But us kids were terrified of my Dad, we got the belt, a lot and at the time I hated it, but now I’m grateful for the spankings. I’ve grown up to have an immense amount of respect for anyone in uniform as well as for humans in general.

Then during the week, we would be with Mom. She worked nights until one or two in the morning so us kids ran wild. My oldest sister had a kid when I was 10 who I babysat, by myself, all the time. I was the youngest of mom’s kids, but I would have to say the most responsible. Mom worked her ass off for very little money, so we didn’t have much but she always made sure we had what we needed.

Since I was unsupervised five days a week, my schoolwork suffered but not my social life. We would ride our bikes until all the other kids had to go home and then just keep on going. I also loved working at a young age, really young, around 9. Often, I would bus tables at the Mexican place mom worked, babysit in the neighborhood for $1 an hour, take odd jobs and then as soon as I turned 15, scored a job at the High School hot spot in town, McDonalds, right on the border of Gary and Merrillville.

Being that mom worked all the time and my co-mom was busy raising five of us on the weekends, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about boys. Now, I was a huge tomboy myself, which meant boys were for beating up, playing sports, riding bikes with and playing in the woods, not kissing. (eeeww)

For those of you who aren’t aware, a tomboy is a young girl who likes to wear boy clothes and play all boy things. I wasn’t into dolls so much as I was shooting BB guns and building tree forts. I thank my lucky stars every day that I didn’t have some crazed lunatic convincing me that I should take hormone blockers and cut my tittie’s off before I even hit my teenage years. I remained a tomboy through most of my 20’s until I met a group of girls in Tampa who helped turn me back into a girl…I LOVE BEING A GIRL! Imagine if times were like they are now and I did alter my body to get rid of my girl parts, I would be pretty fucked up now.

Anyhoo, I digress! Growing up running the streets from a young age is a great way to learn responsibility, strength, courage, smarts, adventure and how to get away with EVERYTHING. People underestimate kids and how much they can handle when we are young. Problem was when it came to schoolwork, I couldn’t be bothered. I was happy making a C average with the occasional ‘A’ when it was a class, I enjoyed but only because I loved school activities. I played volleyball, basketball, football, lifted weights and was on the halftime dance team. Without those, the constant bullying and harassment on a daily basis for the last three years of High School would have been unbearable.

If you hadn’t guessed yet, I was not popular…why? Well turns out because I was a threat to all the popular girls who thought I wanted to steal their lame boyfriends. My freshman year I had a one-year boyfriend and then started dating a boy from our rival high school the first week of my sophomore year for two years. I spent so many Saturdays in detention just for defending myself. High School sucked but I never backed down from a fight. Between having a Marine, Vietnam Veteran Dad and an older brother and sister who would beat the crap out of me daily, I knew I could handle those bitches!!

So, this leaves me with college and my 20’s. You can go back and read all the juicy details for yourself but here’s just a teaser of what you will find:

Lots of bad decisions with boys.
Always broke, scraping the car seats for toll change.
A terrible drunk, terrible person which is why I weighed 140 pounds. (picture above)
Many jobs at once.
My experimental drug phase towards the end of my 20’s, that was awesome. Glad it only lasted a couple of years. Trying cannabis, extasy, all kinds of funds stuff for the first time.
Awful, awful boyfriend choices.
Moving a million times from NW Indiana all the way to Florida, typically always either following a guy or running from one.
Faking it till I’m making it.
Always being on my own, taking care of myself, never asking for help.
Crash and burn, hitting rock bottom.
Then somehow surviving it all without going homeless, growing up and steam rolling into my 30’s.

Which brings me back to where I left off in 2003 after just moving from Tampa to Fort Lauderdale to land a dream job working on the private jets. For a girl who’d never been out of the USA, putting me unsupervised in foreign countries for weeks at a time was risky, and I have the stories to prove it!!!

Can’t wait to tell you more…see you next week!

Carrie Lee – The Mid Life Traveler

It didn’t take me long to change my mind. After gobbling down the cheese and inhaling the free bottle of wine, I was dressed up and ready to go out. The stalker scare at the French hotel pool had me freaked out for like 2 hours but once the wine kicked in, I was all of a sudden brave again and couldn’t wait to go dancing. Then just as I was heading out the door, the hotel phone rang. A hot wave of fear came rushing over my body as I picked up the receiver. Maybe it was the pilots checking to see if I wanted to go out or maybe it was the mystery creeper who sent me the wine and cheese.

‘Bonjour’, I said trying not to sound American to maybe throw him off only to hear Dan on the other end. ‘Hey Carrie, did you get my surprise at the pool’? What??? The man I had been hanging out with back in Laudy for like 2 weeks went through the trouble of calling the hotel, tracking me down at the pool (in France) and surprising me with wine and cheese, wow, what a doll!!!! We had a good laugh as I told him about my day. He apologized a million times for freaking me out which I insisted was not a problem because what he did was super romantic. I could tell right away my feelings for him had gone from just a guy to pass the time with to now a man who I could possibly take seriously.

Once I returned, every day I wasn’t flying around the world, we would spend together. After about a month, it was time to ask him what he did for a living. At first I figured maybe he was like one of these guys you see in the movies who had a secret agent man job where they can’t really tell you what they do or what if he was just some self made millionaire who managed to make enough money to retire young? Either way, it was time to find out. It was very strange that he dressed impeccably every day, but never went to a job. The answer was not what I expected and certainly not attractive, at least to me back then because I was still very insecure and had no idea what to look for in a man. Apparently his Grandmother had passed and left him a trust fund which he was now living off of. Really, that’s it, that’s the big story? Dan was like 38, blew through money like water and expected this money to last him another 50 years?

I’m a worker and even if I inherited tons of money, I’m still going to do something I love to keep busy and feel good about myself. So to me, a man who just takes that kind of money and doesn’t do something wonderful, or useful with it or his time, just isn’t sexy. To others it may be a dream come true but to me, back then and even more now, at 46, what I consider hot is a man in constant motion, always keeping busy with his mind.

He then said that he was working on a business idea with a buddy of his but it was on hold at the moment. At the time, I believed him because, one, he was so sweet and spoiling me and two, I had kind of fallen for him. In my heart I wanted it to be true so I figured what the hell, we’re not married and had just started dating so I’ll just keep it casual and see what happens. Besides, I was quickly discovering that the people I had been meeting in S. Florida were super fake and materialistic. Finding real friends was hard in that town and we had fun together.

But to be honest, we didn’t have much passion, he didn’t believe in recycling or taking care of the environment, my dog wasn’t really his thing and when it came to handy work, Dan only knew how to dial someone to come and do things for him. But you know women, in our minds; we can change a man and mold him into what we consider the perfect guy. He already had a good base so now I was on a mission to change everything about him and the poor guy had no idea.

About a week later, we hit one of those outdoor strip malls to do a little shopping and in the parking lot was a Jared’s jewelry store. Dan thought it would be a good idea to stop in, he wanted to buy me a sort of promise ring to show how he felt for me, which I thought was really cool. At almost 31 years old no one had ever asked me or even considered asking me to marry them. If you had read my past blogs you’ll remember that I was a crazy, jealous girlfriend who couldn’t handle her alcohol well so I could understand why I was still single.

Well that promise ring turned into an $8000 engagement ring…..yep, the next thing you know, I was getting married. All of the things about him that bothered me seemed to disappear and just like clockwork, I was staying with a guy because he wanted to be with me, not because he was my perfect match or because I was in love. The girl who was afraid to be alone was making the same dating mistakes from her past. I had no friends, no family and had been away from home so long, I had forgotten what it was like to be part of something, to be loved so why not marry him, I was now in my 30’s and it was about time.

During all of this courting I had managed to fly my 13 year old niece in from Indiana for her spring break. One day we were at the beach when I met the coolest chic and right away I could tell she was just like me. Cathy wasn’t materialistic, loved to go out, be fit, have fun and had was completely normal. I was so excited to have a friend. She lived walking distance from a really cool strip of bars and restaurants by the beach and since I didn’t like to drink and drive, said I could totally crash at her place after we went out. So that night, we hit the strip, had the best time and ended up meeting tons of cool people who also hung out there. She and I would just sit on her balcony for hours, sipping wine and talking nonstop. Cathy had recently been through a terrible tragedy and was still in mourning from the ordeal and like me, only had a friend or two, but not really anyone she could hang out and party with. I was the perfect distraction for her and she was the perfect new bestie for me.

As the weeks went on and the wedding planning began, for whatever reason, I began to sabotage the whole thing. Starting fights, questioning his loyalty, picking out everything that bothered me about him. At one point Dan looked right at me and said, ‘Carrie, it’s me, I’m a good guy, why are you doing this?’ At the time I didn’t know why, but in hindsight, I see now that he was all wrong for me and with my new bestie in tow, Dan was becoming obsolete. I was now engaged to a man that I didn’t love and had no idea what I was I going to do????