SuperMom Mentality

3. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do: Red Tape

…Fast forward several years, we’d had a daughter, my father had passed away, I had been institutionalized, but had stopped self-medicating with alcohol and was on a decent bipolar regimen.  Amor and I had begun focusing on putting our priorities straight and making God number one in our lives.

Grandma actually got some money from an inheritance and kindly offered to throw me and Amor a Wedding.  We were ecstatic!  It’s something we had wanted for some time but had always found something higher up on the priority list to pay for.

If we had our wedding on October 7, 2012, which fell on a Sunday, we could renew our vows on the beach exactly 7 years since our second vow exchange.  The only glitch was – our marriage still wasn’t legal.  Since his former wife had fled the country a decade earlier, and was no where to be found, Amor had never officially divorced her before marrying me.

We had two options:

1. Pay a private investigator in Russia to locate Amor’s (technical) wife, get the divorce documents professionally translated, have the Russian government officially serve her the papers if they could find her, pray she would sign, professionally re-translate the documents and finally, get a judge to sign off on the divorce decree despite the wife being physically absent OR
2. Get an attorney.  Pay a local newspaper where she was last known to reside to print a daily legal notification for 30 days.  Then she would have a certain amount of time to contest.  If she didn’t object and it was determined by a judge that she couldn’t be found, he may sign off on a divorce decree without her signature.

We chose option number two, which though was expensive, was not as costly, nor as complicated nor time consuming as option one.

So with the divorce finalized, Grandma, our wedding coordinator, started planning the big day.  We booked a venue at a beach in South Carolina, near the NC/SC boarder where Amor and I used to live and therefore had friends and extended family nearby.  Things fell into place quickly and as the big day approached, we scurried to get things in order.  I contacted my cherished childhood pastor and his wife, with whom I had kept in contact over the years, to officiate the wedding and they were happy to oblige.  The ceremony would be a vow renewal but would, in effect, also finally make our marriage legal.

About a month before the wedding, we went down to meet with them and finalize all the details.  Everything was falling into place except…

the great state of South Carolina refused to issue us a marriage license!  One of the forms of identification we needed to provide in order to obtain a marriage license in South Carolina was expired. Freak-out, panic, and anxiety flooded me!  We had an alternate form of identification issued by North Carolina but for whatever reason, SC wouldn’t accept it.  All I could do was pray that the NC would issue us a marriage license…

2. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do: Legally Married?

…So after having exchanged vows online, before God and Dick Wolf, we saw ourselves as married.  Amor bought me an inexpensive ruby heart shaped gold ring and we lived together for a hunky-dory few months.  But eventually, our families started asking questions.  Fed up with fielding them, I admitted, “We got married.”

My folks had an idea of how I felt about being an independent woman and were shocked to hear that we had “eloped” as they put it.  I offered few details and they asked surprisingly few questions.  Belle was now Mrs. Belle and that was that.

It was around this time that we moved four hours inland to be closer to my family.  I had finally gotten an official “Bipolar” diagnosis and I wanted to be near my sisters and parents who, I hoped, would be a source of support.   I knew that eventually, it would come out that Amor and I had no legal document stating that we were man and wife.  So we went to the courthouse to try to make it legal, only to learn we needed certain paperwork and witnesses (real ones, not TV characters).  So I explained to one of my sisters, Sarah, in as little detail as I could, that due to certain paperwork, we needed to restate our vows to make our marriage legal (all true).  She and Joe were happy to help.

So we gathered our documents and on October 7, 2005 (exactly 6 months later) we finally made it downtown with everything we needed.  I don’t even recall what I wore.  It felt like just another day to us.  We were pronounced “man and wife” by the magistrate and a few days later got our certificate in the mail.

The following year (2006), I was doing some different paperwork at a government office.  I had been on a litany of psychiatric drugs to try to find something to help manage my bipolar, and I was feeling “out of myself,” so Amor was with me.  They asked for my anniversary date and I said, “It’s April 7th or 8th”  “No, it’s sometime in October,” Amor reminded me.  “Oh yeah, I think it’s October 7th, 2005,”  I said.  The lady looked at me, like I was clearly mentally unstable (ok, I was).  “Um today is October 7th, 2006.  Are you telling me you are here on your first anniversary and you don’t even realize it?” Sigh, I guess so.  Whatever, we had celebrated back in April!

So finally, it was all settled, right?

One more detail that we, being young and impetuous and a bit screwed up in the head, neglected to take care of:  Amor never legally divorced his first wife who had left him for Russia after just two months of their legal marriage and never returned.

Spending time, money and effort to find and serve her papers was not high on our priority list.  As time marched on, we eventually bought a home and had a baby and put the whole mess in the back on our minds.

But those kinds of things have a way of sneaking back up to you..

Double Talk Quote: “Love you later” – Amor still says this (mix of “love you” and “see you later”)

Bible Verse:  “Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD.” Proverbs 19:14

Word that has Lost its meaning: settled

Relatable Lyrics:  “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I77JyDu0HVU

(March 20, 2015 –  twins 8 months)

***Update Note to clarify***  Amor’s 1st wife had moved to Russia 2 months after they got married.  He followed her and lived there for a few months in an attempt to save the marriage.  When it didn’t work out, he returned.

1. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do: The Proposal

Amor and I have exchanged vows four times.  That’s right four times.  Why? one might ask.  Well, it isn’t because we enjoy expressing our undying love for one another.

15 years ago, I was in a domestic violence type of relationship with a bad man.  Long story short, I got away and made up my mind that I would never again be under that kind of abusive power.  I developed a “I am woman, hear me roar” type of attitude.  I wanted children some day, but coming from that relationship and having had experienced the heartache of a broken home growing up, kids and family were not foremost on my mind.  I decided that I would never get married.  It was an antiquated institution anyway.  That’s what I thought.

I was conflicted about it, however, because, although I lived a rather worldly life at the time, I was still a Christian and still held certain values.  I liked to drink alcohol and have fun, but I did not sleep around.  Since before I was old enough to know what it was, it had been engrained in me that sex outside of marriage is a sin.  If you must have sex, get married.  (Hum, that theory hadn’t worked out so well with the first relationship I was in).  So celibate I remained.

I was not a “good girl,” though, and I actually found it fun toying with boys.  I was a hot, blond bomb-shell type who lived at the beach so I had plenty of opportunities to flirt around and make the male tourists think they’d get some action, just to say “adios” after they had invested their whole evening with me.  This was my way of getting back at all males (especially the self-proclaimed “playars”) for being jerks.

I had a lot of guy friends.  Amor was one of the best of them.  During the first three years we knew each other, he actually got married to a Russian woman and moved to a different hemisphere.  When it didn’t work out and he returned, I started to realize that we’d be good together.  I loved that he had such a giving heart and we were both very hard workers and worked well together.  (Someday I’ll tell that back story entitled “Yellow and Green Skittles”).  So Amor and I started dating and eventually, “messing around.”

But I felt convicted so I told him:  “We have to get married.”  This was about 11 pm on April 7, 2005.  We were both a little tipsy.  I was also rapid cycling (on a bipolar roller coaster ride) during this time and was blissfully yet painfully oblivious to that fact.  So I grabbed an old prom dress I just happened to have in my closet and we went to the downstairs level of my little apartment.  I did a quick “Ask Jeeves” search on the interweb for getting married online.  We exchanged our vows by typing them in to the computer.  There was a prayer and then a certificate appeared.  I printed it out.  It had room for 4 witness signatures.  No one else was there.  Law & Order SVU had been playing, on mute, in the background so I wrote in the names Olivia Benson, Eliot Stabler, Ice-T, and Jack McCoy.  Done.  We went back upstairs to enjoy our honeymoon…

Double Talk Quote: “I’m trying to remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.” – Me 10+ years ago, “But Michelita, you violate it already…long time ago.” – Amor, whose English wasn’t quite as awesome as now, but yielded some awesomely funny quotes.

Verse:  “…But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.” 1 Corinthians 7:28

Word that has Lost its meaning: tipsy

Relatable Lyrics: “Viveme” by Laura Pausini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ_o_uEmzoE – dedicated to mi Amor

(March 17 2015 –  twins 8 months)