#22 Never The Same...

He was never the same.

After his heart operation My Cowboy was never the same again. The changes were subtle at first but over they years they became stronger and more powerful. It was as if there was a second, alter ego emerging and this ego was an evil one.

At first it was almost comical. 

My Cowboy left the hospital to convalesce at home. Almost immediately he began telling everyone that I was trying to "kill" him. Everyone laughed, but me. He developed an infection and I took him back and forth to the hospital a number of times. He said it was me... that I was doing it, causing the infection to kill him. He told everyone... so the whole world would know that I was killing him.

I remembered my doctor friend's warning, the warning about personality changes and wondered.

As the weeks past he became less vocal about my threat to him but underneath he was in a paranoid frenzy. One afternoon he asked me to sign papers. Papers which deeded everything we owned together... to him alone. This way he would "know" I wasn't trying to steal everything for myself and kill him.

I loved him, I could NOT sign the papers. In my mind, as silly as this seems, I was proving my worth to him and trying to reassure him of my love... forgetting as I did that it was the dark side of the man with whom I was dealing.

He recovered from his heart surgery but the dark part was only just emerging. The darkness showed itself in strange ways. In little things meant to punish me for wanting to kill him.

In the years which past he punished me often.

Once I went to the hair salon, cowgirl's in my line of work seldom have time for beauty other than natural. Since nature had given me limited amounts of that, I went to have my hair cut and styled. It was a wonderful afternoon for me, the time away deeply appreciated. When I returned home eager to show my new "do" I was met with a furious anger I couldn't explain.

In front of friends and employees (who snickered quietly) he ranted. There was no logic and I stood in silence. Then he kicked me out.

I had no legal rights as I had signed all that over to him although I'm sure a lawyer might have found otherwise. At that moment I didn't know what to do. Shocked and hurt I went to our home.

He followed and his rage continued.

A long and painful evening followed but the results were, as he had cunningly planned, to hurt and render me emotionally at his mercy. I did not disappoint. This would be the first of many times in which he pulled the rug from beneath me and always ending up with me crying and literally begging "his" forgiveness for transgressions of which only he knew.

It is funny what love with do.

It makes us stay when we should go, it makes us tolerate when we should not, it makes us slaves when we were meant to be free.

So changes began, so slowly as to be almost unnoticeable to any but me. Changes which grew and grew over the years and revealed a dark side that destroyed my love, our relationship and ultimately the man. But these changes created the spirit and forged the soul of a cowgirl in training.